I went hiking over the weekend in the hills near where I live and saw this.  I had heard about it from several friends, but for whatever reason never checked it out.  I don’t know anything about the history of the building or what it was used for, but I really like the graffiti.  Inside the open door there is a large vertical ruler on one wall and a metal ladder up to the open door on the second level.  From there is a narrow staircase leading up to the orange “slick” lettering where it simply ends at a small landing.  Sadly, the art extends onto many of the surrounding rocks.

UPDATE: A friend of mine, who is a Civil Engineer, just emailed me and told me that it’s “Definitely water control/management.  That ruler is called a staff gauge, used to determine height of water inside.  Two doors for access when full (top door) and when drained (bottom door).”

I’m going to be adding some new limited edition, made to order lamps to the store in the near future. Here are a couple shots of them off and on. I was originally going to include compact fluorescent bulbs, but the ones that I have tried thus far really alter the colors in the art and are way too bright. Until I can find a better “green” bulb that I’m happy with, I will be including 25W incandescent bulbs. These lamps also look gorgeous using the battery powered “flicker” type LED votives.
I’m still working on how many different versions of them I will offer, but each of them will be made to order and be based on my original mixed media artwork.

One of my heroes died yesterday. Robert Rauschenberg was an incredible artist whose genius was not only in his outcome but in his process. Robert often had little or no money early in his career, which forced him to improvise with what he had available to him to create his art. He used to buy unlabeled paint at the local hardware store because that was all he could afford. It was only when he got the cans home that he discovered the color palette from which he could create. Canvas was no exception. One of Rauschenberg’s most famous pieces, Rebus (1955), was painted on eight cheap drop cloths purchased for two dollars, since that’s all he could afford. His use of non-traditional materials continued throughout his life, from his “combines” of the 1950’s through his later work created for ROCI. Like his contemporaries, who included de Kooning and Jasper Johns, his was a career of invention and experimentation. From the moment he gained prominence in 1964, winning the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale to his later years at Captiva, Robert Rauschenberg used his art to inspire us to look at the world around us and our relationships to it and to one another.

He will be missed.

Rauschenberg on Wikipedia
BBC Story

A couple of my favorite books on Raushenberg:
Rauschenberg: Art and Life
Off the Wall: A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg

UPDATE: In 1997 Vanity Fair ran a wonderful story about Rauschenberg, his life and work. Read it online HERE

I love photography and have a passion for the American West, so I was thrilled to happen upon a recent photo essay that captures the spirit of the classic cowboy. The New York Times recently published this fantastic interactive photo essay on photographing cowboys in tintype. In the essay, photographer Robb Kendrick narrates his inspiration and experiences photographing modern cowboys in the classic tintype process. The photographs are the result of Kendrick’s 41,000 mile journey and are presented in his newest book “Still: Cowboys at the Start of the Twenty-First Century“. The photographs are beautiful and capture perfectly the rugged style of the American West.

Watch and listen HERE

More…
Robb Kendrick’s SITE
Robb Kendrick on NPR