"Dreams are the realms of ghosts. And Memory," #TomOgburn #digitalcollage from the #HybridWorks #SouthernGothic #weirdwednesday

Lizzie...expressed her concern to Grandma and Mom. “She might take him with her, y’all; don’t y’all worry about that at all?”

#ghosts #dreams #EastCoastKin #Artsyear

5️⃣ ...collective end when I end, in a way; in a manner of speaking.

This then remains a series for the rest of my career, alongside my primary #HybridWorks & interdisciplinary romps through many modes, #multimedia tactics, & depicting our curious World's struggle to survive.

🪔If we can keep it🔥

I've been going to Estes Park for one reason or another since 1979. This is a view from Prospect Mountain, high above the town proper, safe from flooding but not from fire. If I could have figured out a way to live there early on I would have, and in 2004, I almost did. A teaching position opened up at a college back East though, so I left there in August of 2004. I love this town. Resilience stems from Estes, in my imagination. Windswept pines over a hundred years old cling to the rocky outcroppings of Prospect Mountain. Two of them are framing the town of Estes Park below. Colors are all muted buffs, grays, and browns save for the tree in the foreground and the needles of the tree on the right. Those have deeper, richer greens and the bark is a strong deep reddish brown. MacGregor Ridge is in the far distance, about two miles away as the crow flies. From my notebooks; a post: "Between a fire just a few years ago which took out much of the historic district of Estes Park, and the recent massive flooding, the high mountain town has experienced much devastation . My best wishes and prayers to all my friends who are there, working to rebuild and to reclaim their land, homes, businesses, and hearts." ≈ to my friends in Estes Park, 2013

Nest over Estes #TomOgburn #America:Lost&Found #HybridWorks #Photography #BlueskyArt #Skyart #BlueskyPhotography #Landscape #Nature #DigitalCollage

#ParkwaysProjects —A multi-tiered photo essay in 3 media arenas: A Substack, Patreon & Bluesky trio 💙 Please click below to follow ⬇️

Here's the original raw shot. Small dried golden brown chamisa petals in sharp midrange focus while being buffeted by 25mph November chill winds. This made for a great introduction if me to chamisa, hard and dry little tough flowers pelting my lens, swirling and twisting. A dance. In the post copy above I mentioned there being three images, all originate from this one. The previous post is the megaladon digital composite build, which has been used in two much more complex digital collage builds. The one in between this raw shot and the opening build uses Photoshop to craft it into a midway stage. I guess what I'm trying to impart here is how my Hybrid works all continue to grow upwards in levels, layers, collage and montage, digital and analog in more complexity until...I end up with a much larger story, and a larger landscape. At the same time, I keep wanting to pull "Until the morning comes" up and out of its digital cocoon and start shredding various scaled prints of it to create a larger painting/collage just to create a 40" x 30" work just of it on a larger scale. I swear, one can have too much fun when you're weaving and welding from the brick & mortar analog to the digital ethereal planes. Some of the startup analog painting/colleges on cradled wood panel are getting really thick. They're taking on the weight and feel & look—of early era fiberglass boat hulls.

Chamisa of November #TomOgburn #HybridWorks #America:Lost&Found #Photography #Landscape #Collage

#EastCoastKin🦋#BlueskyArt #Skyart #BlueskyPhotography #Autumn #Nature
#PecosNM #GorietaNM

In the late summer of 2011, I walked for days through fields & along the roadway by my home, one of the remaining small sections of Route 66. I was collecting the tiny dried brown blossoms of the chamisa flower. I had in mind to use them in some handmade papers, made by my niece who is a wonderful hand-crafted book artist. It took almost three weeks with a Croghan folding camp saw, used as a thresher collecting the petals & some twigs to fall into large freezer bags. Needless to say, there were a lot of people along old Route 66 craning their necks trying to figure out what I was doing as they sped by in Time. This image was made November 2011 to accompany the actual suspended petals in an assemblage/collage. I was working on a series of digital composite images at the time called “Vestiges.” It was the most fun in years for I could use most any imagery I wanted that was in the public domain. It was in the realm of photo-montage & in actuality was all digital. I began with a base idea of using film negatives from all eras of photographic and filmic history, welded into a mindstream, a nearly visible “current” which was streaming the small image past you. As a paired series forms in my mind, I planned to use handmade paper as both a substrate & torn materials combined with many of the film images in the digitally produced “vestiges” works. The chamisa flowers were meant for that purpose. While I did ship some large bags to Birmingham to my niece & a few weeks later received about 40 sheets of incredibly intriguing chamisa paper back, I only now gone forward with the sandwiched collages. A move to Arizona detoured me for all things began to gravitate in that direction. The “Vestiges” works gave birth to the Hybrid series, as did the “Chamisa Collage” works, which both are still on the idea planks of my mind for weaving together in a similar fashion in a year or so.

Finally found this one #Photography #Landscape
Until The Morning Comes #TomOgburn #HybridWorks #America:Lost&Found #BlueskyArt #BlueskyPhotography
#EastCoastKin🦋 #Skyart

There's a 3rd one, in between this heavily worked #DigitalCollage & the raw shot below. The 3 give a wider view of my builds 🧵⬇️

photograph of a woman seated, working her fingers together as she pondered a conversation across a room. A room where she was sitting for a scene in which she was to be the personification of Peace, arguing with the personification of War, whom she’d grown up knowing since the dawn of Time. I began this particular piece about a week after I returned from Colorado early August, 2004. I had taught four classes as an adjunct for two semesters in Charleston, South Carolina. I’d been making art full time by then for just over ten years, after 17 years as an illustrator, graphic designer, then adding advertising and marketing while in Seattle for eight years. On returning to South Carolina from the Northwest in 1998, with a couple of years going back and forth back to Seattle doing album design work for musician friends. Here’s something I’ve shared before, but now there’s more people reading and likely to be hearing this for the first time. In 1988 I started sharing with friends and peers I’d worked with in commercial art that “I’ll quit when I’m 40.” In hindsight, I’ve always asked myself why I decided to wait. These days, I’d like to go back and yank that idea out of my 34 year-old head. For I should have quit as soon as I realized I was going to quit. I say this as an introduction to something, for we all come to cruxes in our lives. Often more than once. Sometimes more often than we can imagine.

“Peace regards the passage of Light”
#EastCoastKin🦋#BlueSkyArtShow theme #Light

#BlueskyArt #Skyart #HybridWorks #DigitalArt
#DigitalArt #Photography #Persephone #Art
#Mythology #Steampunk #SouthernGothic

A surreal image of a woman, floating or flying in the left upper sky. Clouds are golden and white. A patch of blue sky peeks through at middle right. Two old style covered Southern Train passenger platforms seem to hint at movement, motion. This is a multicored and dreamlike work, with much interaction between painting and collage. Three titles played into making this work. There were a couple of others, but the three floated until the end, and “Isle of Palms and fated wings” was still standing when the designation “FINAL” was given to it at the end. It’s 24x18, and will serve as a start for the next go of making another, larger work. More painting, more digital, more photography, more found images of people whose lives have left the atmosphere, and whose images are the only thing left clinging to the Earth. Like actors who for whatever reason request to not be in the credits.

“Isle of Palms and fated wings," #DigitalCompositeImage
#TomOgburn #MultimediaArtist #HybridWorks #DigitalArt #DigitalCollage #Collage #Acrylic #Painting
To see my NPS/OPN work: @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social #EastCoastKin🦋#BlueskyArt #Skyart #BlueskyPhotography

I've been going to Estes Park for one reason or another since 1979. This is a view from Prospect Mountain, high above the town proper, safe from flooding but not from fire. If I could have figured out a way to live there early on I would have, and in 2004, I almost did. A teaching position opened up at a college back East though, so I left there in August of 2004. I love this town. Resilience stems from Estes, in my imagination. From my notebooks; a post: "Between a fire just a few years ago which took out much of the historic district of Estes Park, and the recent massive flooding, the high mountain town has experienced much devastation . My best wishes and prayers to all my friends who are there, working to rebuild and to reclaim their land, homes, businesses, and hearts." ≈ to my friends in Estes Park, 2013 Windswept pines over a hundred years old cling to the rocky outcroppings of Prospect Mountain. Two of them are framing the town of Estes Park below. Colors are all muted buffs, grays, and browns save for the tree in the foreground and the needles of the tree on the right. Those have deeper, richer greens and the bark is a strong deep reddish brown. MacGregor Ridge is in the far distance, about two miles away as the crow flies.

“Nest over Estes” from #America:Lost&Found #HybridWorks
#TomOgburn #MultimediaArtist #DigitalArt #Photography #BlueskyArt #Skyart #BlueskyPhotography #Landscape #BlueSky #Nature
To see my multimedia work: @bardicarts.bsky.social
#EastCoastKin🦋#scapes #RockyMountainNP #EstesParkCO #naturephotography

Evidently, on some fall day in 1951, a National Parks Service staff member saw a strange sight while driving through the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. My guess would be they had a camera. It's a good guess—one worth betting on as here's a photo of that strange sight. One has to wonder, "Why would a bear do that?" I finally gave up on the mystery you see here and took to just enjoying it for what it is. A digital collage from the Hybrid series of works, it's composed of four elements: the original negative scan from the National Park Service film collection, scanned and archived by Clemson University's Open Parks Network (OPN) located between Clemson and Anderson SC. 98% of the scans on file there are in the Public Domain. The border is from a 1969 print mad in a Kodak Instamatic 102 camera. Then the shrubbery, one set light, one dark. The colors are muted yellow ochres, siennas & grays. The bear is walking north on top of one of the old wooden guardrails from that era. Shrubbery in front is whitish, almost like an infrared photo, while the mountains below are dark grays to mid-level grays. A very grandiose bear. The other mystery is the title, for I don't recall the logic of "Polka Bear," but I'm sure it was present at the time I did the initial workup. What has remained over the course of August 2023 and January 2025 is that I'm still chuckling, for this is an illustration in need of a story. I expect one be arriving via the polka bear’s ghost any day now.

“Polka Bear on the balance beam, 1951"🦉
#TomOgburn #MultimediaArtist #HybridWorks #DigitalArt #Photography #BlueskyArt #Skyart #BlueskyPhotography
To see my multi-media work: @bardicarts.bsky.social #EastCoastKin🦋#scape #BlueRidgeParkway #DigitalCollage
#DigitalCompositeImage #GreatSmokyMountainsNP

From a hike off of one of the overlooks near Crabtree Falls, which I always need to remind people used to be named "Crabtree Meadows." When BRP administrators saw visitation numbers falling in the late 1980's and 1990's, underperforming sections of the Parkway underwent a massive think-tank review. Rather than close Crabtree Meadows campground due to net negatives climbing up the graphs, some incredibly thoughtful person suggested "What if we change the name to Crabtree Falls?" I never met that person. I have never seen their name mentioned. But on that day, they taught all those around them the province of Mind over matter. He scene is a lush concert of Autumn greens, all brilliantly displaying the intensity of the varied greens the Parkway offers. Mists. Fog. Clouds. At this elevation they are so commingled there’s no telling the source of the moisture you are inhaling. In this case, t actually was a cloud as I watched it roll in. On this place, this ribbon of road along the very shoulder ridges of the peaks of these Appalachians, you are walking in areas where once, long ago, on indigenous people inhabited and hunted, foraging their groomed forests. Then, the old Scots-Irish immigrants, of whom we in large part descended—but seem to have forgotten our roots these days. The millions of people who cruise through these areas, like you see here, rarely will stop to get out of their vehicle long enough to notice a trail marker. They take beautiful photos from the overlook then reclaim their seats and go forward. Yet, they are here to see such beauty. Awareness of Nature, and that we are only a tiny speck of Nature as a species, arrives within the mind in the time allotted by one’s own habitual life. Yet, often enough for hope to appear, I see a little kid pulling a parent with them to share what they see as splendor. At times I see the glow on the parent’s face when they recognize that moment which their own child has granted them.

“From Above," #Photograph from #TheParkwaysProjects
#TomOgburn #MultimediaArtist #America:Lost&Found #HybridWorks #Photography #CrabtreeFalls
To see my multi-media work: @bardicarts.bsky.social

#EastCoastKin🦋#BlueskyArt #Skyart #BlueskyPhotography
#BlueRidgeParkway #Landscapes #Nature #Hiking

From "The Parkways Project" — In the 1960's the most vibrant place amid any National Park would almost always be the picnic grounds. In August 2019 returned to the Blue Ridge Parkway for the first time since I was 27 years old. Which seems odd to me now, but the reasons make sense. One of the old original Civilian Conservation Corps handcrafted picnic tables. The NPS set the standard across America for what families could count upon for a feast while in a State or National Park area. The table is made of poured aggregate concrete; convention was that the materials for the aggregate would come from surrounding vicinity, to allow the tables to blend, to meld into the scenery. The wood, when used, would come from surrounding timber logged and planed nearby. This insured a benefit to the local economy. It was a time when such things mattered dearly to us as a Nation. The table resides proudly in the same place it was planted years ago by young men's hands; the CCC workers were part of a Public Works program instated by Franklin D. Roosevelt. The leaves are about to start turning, as it is August. The lichen and moss-covered boulders give the site a magical feel. Colors are pale greens and yellows, soft faded browns and tans of the earth abound. A misty fog, so often accompanying you when visiting in late August and September, softens the forest behind as would scrim drapery on a theater stage. I dearly love the picnic grounds in the National Parks and the State Parks in this era of our existence. There are words still present in these places. When I'm in these arenas of Time's passages, I recede into almost a reverie; a quietude. Wielding a camera in places of this accord is the closest thing to painting I've ever found. I'll be writing about these observations once I get "The Parkways Projects" up and running.

“Elevated Dining," #Photograph from #TheParkwaysProjects
#TomOgburn #MultimediaArtist #America:Lost&Found #HybridWorks #Photography #CraggyGardens
To see my NPS/OPN work: @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social #EastCoastKin🦋#BlueskyArt #Skyart #BlueskyPhotography
#BlueRidgeParkway #Landscapes #Nature #Picnic

This is a digital abstraction, a diptych if you will. I decided to do this work after pondering it's source photo quite a lot one day. While it looks to be a simple mirroring (it's not, many variables are thrown into the cauldron on this one) it was actually a pretty time and mind consuming work. What will you see? Well, as in any art, the viewer will absorb what they sense a work is, but almost always that will be the case with abstracted artworks. I wanted a fantastical, dark and eerie female torso to be more clearly seen—let's say, it is being made manifest amid all the oscillation and vibrant though decaying plant matter. I have rarely built an image from a more dense experiential field of view, as much of that scene is still clearly accessible in my mind's eye to this day. Hint: I have never seen an area more laden with insects. The ground was alive with all different species of them. Very odd, as if all were called into swarm mode in unison. Over the years I've considered this; I wondered if seismic activity was occurring. Birds were flying erratically and hopping all over the place as well, so, hmm... [It is indeed presented as a spirit rising from the fall grasses about a quarter mile south of Mary Colter's Desertview Watchtower, located at the edge of Desert View Point]

“Cedar Spirit," a #DigitalHybrid from the #HybridWorks
#DigitalCompositeImage #DigitalAbstract
#TomOgburn #MultimediaArtist #America:Lost&Found #DigitalArt #Photography #Collage #GrandCanyonAZ
#EastCoastKin🦋#Scape #BlueskyArt #Skyart #BlueskyPhotography #DigitalCollage #Doppelganger

A very somnambulant dreamscape bathed in mercury light in retrograde which seems to yield—Voila! Celadon Green! Not necessarily my favorite color but it's always in the running! The tree to the left is a venerable pecan, so old its harvest is very bitter. Even some of the squirrels reject them! Pat Conroy and Faulkner would be proud! I actually shot this three nights ago after the winter's first snowfall, so you're seeing the back yard of where I'm currently staying, waiting out the final throes of two family estates of which I'm executor :/ Very Gothic All, one might say...

“In the interim," #digitalphoto
#TomOgburn #MultimediaArtist #America:Lost&Found #HybridWorks #DigitalArt #Photography #Collage
To see my NPS/OPN work: @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social AlmostLIVE #ColumbiaSC #EastCoastKin🦋#scapes
#BlueskyArt #Skyart #BlueskyPhotography #Urbanscape
#Cityscape #Gothic

A young Appalachian woman is holding her baby up in her lap for a photographer to record this scene. She's seated on the stoop of her cabin, beside a varied selection of healthy herbs growing beside the steps. The cabin is handbuilt, the boards soundly and well-crafted. Once I recovered all of the the visual data, various items propped against a wall could be seen within the interior shadows of the cabin. With the darkening & grunging up of the image, you can no longer make out the faint shapes of those items. I've created this work to be the lead illustration for a short story I have in mind about a young Appalachian mother.

“Arlena McCarty's Otherworld," Clemson OPN/NPS Scan (public domain) used to create this #DigitalCompositeImage
#TomOgburn #MultimediaArtist #America:Lost&Found #HybridWorks #DigitalArt #Photography #Collage
To see my NPS/OPN work: @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social #EastCoastKin🦋#BlueskyArt #Skyart

Small dried golden brown chamisa petals in sharp midrange focus in a sea of blur. In the late summer of 2011, I walked for days through fields & along the roadway by my home, one of the remaining small sections of Route 66. I was collecting the tiny dried brown blossoms of the chamisa flower. I had in mind to use them in some handmade papers, made by my niece who is a wonderful hand-crafted book artist. It took almost three weeks with a Croghan folding camp saw, used as a thresher, allowing the petals & some twigs to fall into large freezer bags. Needless to say, there were a lot of people along old Route 66 craning their necks trying to figure out what I was doing as they sped by in Time. This image was made at that same time to accompany the actual suspended petals in an assemblage/collage. I was working on a series of digital composite images at the time called “Vestiges.” It was one of the most fun in years, for I could use most any imagery I wanted that was in the public domain. It was in the realm of photo-montage & in actuality was all digital. I began with a base idea of using film negatives from all eras of photographic and filmic history, welded into a mindstream, a nearly visible “current” which was streaming the small image past you. As a paired series forms in my mind, I planned to use handmade paper as both a substrate & torn materials combined with many of the film images in the digitally produced “vestiges” works. The chamisa flowers were meant for that purpose. While I did ship some large bags to Birmingham to my niece & a few weeks later received about 40 sheets of incredibly intriguing chamisa paper back, I never went forward with the sandwiched collages. A move to Arizona was emerging & all things began to gravitate in that direction. The “Vestiges” works gave birth to the Hybrid series, as did the “Chamisa Collage” works, which both are still on the idea planks of my mind for weaving together in a similar fashion in a year or so.

“Chamisa of November," #PecosNM #GorietaNM
#TomOgburn #MultimediaArtist #America:Lost&Found #HybridWorks #DigitalArt #Photography #Collage
To see my NPS/OPN work: @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social
#EastCoastKin🦋#BlueskyArt #Skyart #BlueskyPhotography

#Chamisa #Landscape #Poaque #Autumn #Nature #Art

A Santa Fe Railroad sign rises from this side of the tracks, a narrow dirt service road between it and the crushed rock trackbed. Closer to you is a medium-sized chamisa swaying in the cold, brisk wind. Its colors are fading as it's late fall, to pale green. Its blooms beginning to turn clay yellow. The earth is the deep red of the Pecos region, and in the distance are some homes from the 1970's. The sky in the far distance is a rich azure, clouds above you are light gray. Just off I-25 is an exit to Rowe and Pecos. Rowe seems to me a high desert Brigadoon. There is age there; there is a sense of living in an amorphous act of Time. There was a day when I took over 800 photographs there, pretty much in one yard, a couple of close friends. This is one of five photographs I've published from that day's shoot. New Mexico has these eddies that you can drive into and need to decompress from 2025, so that you don't get the bends from the altered state of being. Seriously, you can see very old things here, still touch things that existed far before your presence on the Earth, and the Earth will call of things for you to experience, to see, to hear. It's small, and real, and very, very beautiful.

“Chamisa rails and Sky," #PecosNM #RoweNM #Railroad
#TomOgburn #MultimediaArtist #America:Lost&Found #HybridWorks #DigitalArt #Photography #Collage
To see my NPS/OPN work: @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social #EastCoastKin🦋#BlueskyArt #Skyart #BlueskyPhotography

#Chamisa #Landscape #HighDesert #SantaFeRR

Chamisa, a very small brilliant yellow flower on what can grow to be a very large shrub in the Four Corners area. Here, you see it in its splendor, a rich deep yellow to almost a brilliant lemon yellow intensity. The small fragile flowers are in the foreground, while the rest of the chamisa is receding into deep blur while the dark olive, cedar greens and dark browns of the tree trunks form the background. This was a summertime shot made in Pojoaque, New Mexico.

"Chamisa like the Sun" #PecosNM #SantaFe
#TomOgburn #MultimediaArtist #America:Lost&Found #HybridWorks #DigitalArt #Photography #Collage
To see my NPS/OPN work: @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social #EastCoastKin🦋#BlueskyArt #Skyart #BlueskyPhotography

#Chamisa #Flower #Wildflower #landscape #HighDesert

"title,"
#TomOgburn #MultimediaArtist #America:Lost&Found #HybridWorks #DigitalArt #Photography #Collage
To see my NPS/OPN work: @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social #EastCoastKin🦋#BlueskyArt #Skyart #BlueskyPhotography

A pine tree between Pecos and Santa Fe NM. It's up in high desert scrublands. The long golden grass has been flattened by wind and fauna. The limbs are low-growing, splaying out and are tough as steel. Dark olive-green junipers are in the background. These pines grow prevalently in high desert passes above Santa Fe. The lower limbs are dense and hard from fire and drought; if you push hard into them, all low to the ground and blocking your way in a thicket of remorseless bars of unforgiving mesh, you become snagged, and at times cut well and deeply.

"Barricade Pine" from the #HybridWorks #America:Lost&Found series of works.
#DigitalCompositeImage #DigitalArt #BlueSkyFineArts

#naturephotography #photography #treemendous
#HighDesert #Bluesky #BlueSkyArt #Woodland
#SantaFeNM #PecosNM #Nature #trees
#EastCoastKin🦋#TreeTrunkTuesday #TreeTuesday

"Non-pareil pinon" (correct title) from the #HybridWorks #America:Lost&Found series of works.
#EastCoastKin🦋#RockingTuesday #TreeTuesday #naturephotography #photography #treemendous
#HighDesert #Bluesky #BlueSkyArt #Woodland
#SantaFeNM #PecosNM #Nature #trees

"Estes Pinnacle Pine," from a perch above town I always walk to within a day or so on first arriving back. Digital photo from August 2000 on a Canon A5. One of the first digital cameras to actually take a great image for 1995. Can anyone picture that little camera still? The image is of a very large stunted pine perched on a windswept cliff, the golden gray-greenish rock formations so prevalent all around the area, jutting up in what is now weathered clusters. I've never worked this image up into any of the digital builds I've made for the 'South by Southwest,' 'America: Lost & Found,' or 'Roadscape' series. The Canon A5 made great images for its day, but within a few years, the small scale of the images, the low resolution of 180ppi & quirky slow motion processing time between shots made it a labor of love to work with by 1999. By then I'd learned to work with its strengths & overlook its faults. I became really attached to it, in time, over he next eight years, buying them up off of eBay when ever I saw one. By 1999, they were selling for $25-35; by 2005? $5 for one bought in original shrink-wrapped box, mint condition! I'll add this & end my praise for it: I bought it by default while I was down in New Orleans, February 1996, helping an artist friend move there. He paid $1680.00 for it, hated it within an hour, cursed up a blue streak (not something never done in the Crescent City) & swore it was a piece of...well... it wasn't. I offered him $1500 for it & he tossed it across the room to me. I bought it mainly to make images of my paintings for the internet, my sales & collectors' records. Within a year, I found it could take some interesting shots. To me, it's the Diana of the digital cameras. I'll be unpacking the mint condition ones soon, to add a tier to 'The Parkways Projects," in which I'm photographing the Blue Ridge & Skyline Drive parkways currently & telling the story of seven family vacations through the turbulent 1960's to 1972, and more...

"Estes Pinnacle Pine," 2025 #HybridWorks #Art #DigitalCompositeImage #RockyMountainNationalPark
#treetuesday #rockytuesday #woodland #Colorado
#EstesParkCO is deeply missedI'm in SC, working on this: @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social 🦉🍁 #FineArt
#EastCoastKin #Landscape #DigitalArt #Nature #Bluesky

This painting belongs to the ‘Invocational’ series. It’s mostly soft earth colors, a monochrome painting, but not quite. Therefore it’s not a very like kin to the rest of its sibling works. In the middle of the paining is a collage image, an enlargement of the small photo I have of her. She’s a young girl, around 10-11 years of age, standing on a sidewalk outside her home in Heath Springs, South Carolina. She’s at a three-quarter angle to you as the viewer, her shoulders scrunched up for she’s cradling a kitten in her arms. There’s strong sunlight on her. The Sun in casting very strong shadows, including hers. It has always seemed to me a terribly intimate and poignant image, but at the same time one of contentedness and love. The town is small today and was smaller then, which was around 1952 or ’53. All sensibilities of he original photograph are my own, for I’ve never asked her to look at it as we’ve never really been close. So you see, it’s a mystery. The title of the other three paintings are a variant of “Marylyn’s Metropolis.” But, I titled this one “We Desire.” There are many reasons, all having to do with how I’ve always interpreted that photograph. That is what art does; just like a writer, you are able to make up a story, and present it to the world, as I’ve done here. It’s also the largest of the four works. The first was 8 inches high by 4 inches wide; this variation is around 16 inches high by 14 inches wide. The other three were all some shade of red as the predominant color. But not this one. This one belongs to me. It's not the last, I think, on this theme. I decided a few months ago to visit Marilyn, and talk. The next one I make, without a doubt, will be a digital (possibly a digital/hybrid build) maybe even a varied edition to explore more of the story I've created since painting that first small one in 1996.

"We desire," 1998 acrylic/collage/image transfer on cradled wood panel. Each side rail is a unique but very related treatment. The eyeglasses are from a 1916 SC newspaper.
#EastCoastKin 🦋 #BlueSkyFineArts #BlueSkyPainters
#Painting #Acrylic #Collage #ImageTransfer #HybridWorks
#BlueSkyArt #Abstract🦉

A shadowform of a large black crow flies across a surreal landscape of old photographs, a woman in a flapper dress, circa 1927 holding a chicken; two young men standing in front of a brand new 1950 Studebaker, trees and bathers in a South Carolina lake in the late 1940's. The colors are all golden tans, ocher tans, dark walnut browns, and light oranges. The tone of the artwork, a collage, is somber. We are no longer in the age of our innocence, but that of depradation. "You walk and talk and move around in circles Your friends telling you you are doing fine You can't see that snowball as it hurtles Through the shattered membranes of your mind If I could talk to you for just one minute Then you would know what it is I am getting at But there again your head's got nothing in it By the way you left without your hat I'm walking in the wind looking at the sky Hanging on a breeze and wondering why, why Your old man's headed for the final pay-off The joker that you got is fading too And all the sharks that come around for the rip-off Are gonna tear the flesh right off you The plastic princess hangs her head in wonder at the silver glittered boys Trying, trying to compete And all at once the room begins to thunder And all that's left is the stain on the sheet The prostitute is standing on the corner Suffering so much pain to stay alive She's so real, that life itself bows down before her She couldn't make that nine to five While the president is crying, crying in the White House The prime minister's really got the blues All the heads of state are busy playing cat & mouse 'Cause you can see none of them have ever paid their dues God knows why, why, why..." ≈ Jim Capaldi & Steve Winwood, from Traffic (1974)

1️⃣"You walk and talk and move around in circles
Your friends telling you you are doing fine"
≈ Jim Capaldi & Steve Winwood

🔥⌛🧮 "As the crow flies through Time's needles" from #HybridWorks #DigitalCompositeBuild #DigitalCollage

#EastCoastKin

#JanuArty #BlueSkyArt #BlueSkyArtists #photography
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"Jerome porch elevation," 2014 (original photo made 2012) Digital Composite Image from the Hybrid Works series. This is a photo from the porch of my home while living in Jerome, Arizona. It's a black and white image, something I've not done much of, and even when making one, it's usually for a special request or event. I keep telling myself I need to start a series of black & white photography. That'll happen, most likely when I make it to New England. Definitely by the time I get to Europe. It's an old, very steep stairway with switchbacks, just like the only road which switchbacks six times on entering the city limits, which are right down below, across the road from the building you can barely see through the fog. There is only one paved road in and out of town; each time it switchbacks, it gets a new street name! From the city limits sign below to leaving town nearing the top of Mingus Mountain, you have driven upwards from an elevation of 4200 feet upon entering, and are at 5280 feet in exiting town. The steepest town in America. There are cross street, yes. But you do not want to try going up or down most of them if it is either foggy or misty or raining or snowing. Trust me.

"Jerome porch elevation," 2014 (original photo made 2012) #DigitalCompositeImage from the #HybridWorks #JeromeAZ
🦅 And these stairs were below my porch. #EastCoastKin #monochrome #DigitalArt #landscape #monochrome #monochromemonday #painting #acrylic #landscapephotography #blackandwhitephotography

"Gleaners, ruin & Raven," acrylic/collage/image transfer on wood panel. The artwork has three very faint persons—one stands out in the center, like a ghost. She's my sister at age 10, my cousin & I on either side of her at age four. We were all three in cowboy outfits in 1960. The colors are largely varied yellows, some blue & red cloth, grays and tans of old newsprint. A small black & white image of gleaners in the field rise from beneath us, and the black silhouette of a raven flies to the left above the "J" and a red heart—the shreds of the Jack of Hearts...lots of subtle allegory. The much larger acrylic/collage/image transfer painting, on a 34x42 inch cradled wood panel, is sill unfinished, residing inside one of the three packed-to the gills large wooden UHaul shipping pods awaiting me to decide where they will next be shipped. I'm about to launch a Patreon site for "The Parkways Projects," a multi-tiered art project which will probably be with me all the way to the end of my career. I've been photographing the Parkways for years, in little snippets, until after my parents & sister died. In 2019, 50 years after our 1969 vacation camping trip (one of 6 or 7 depending on how one counts "family vacations" throughout all six of the turbulent 1960's) I, equipped with a couple of Mom's copious journals written in pencil, in what began as a simple return to run the entire length of the two parkways in three weeks of 2019, grew into something larger. I'll also be starting a Substack blog to pair with the Patreon Visual arts, poetry & prose tiers, which will probably begin with 4 to 6, and within a couple of years will have 10-12 tiers. There's reasons for that expansion, as the two Parkways, and the two National Parks they connect, are struggling today. I plan to publish a photo/illustration & art essay in the third year of the Parkways Projects. Much Peace to all of y'all, & enjoy our wilderness and National Parks areas. Remember, hey need our Support.

1️⃣"Gleaners, ruin and Raven," from the Hybrid works(one of my current main series)—which the HiRez file's been missing since I left Utah. Until 3am today💥 By pure accident #Collage #Acrylic #Painting #HybridWorks #Postmodernism #FineArt #EastCoastKin #ImageTransfer #BlueSkyArtShow #SouthernGothic 🦉🧵⬇️

A current work-up of a Digital Hybrid piece, the image is predominantly golds, tans & gray with accents of orange, reds & turquoise blues. Before leaving Helper, Utah in early June 2023, I was walking often around the old town, collecting images at every turn. I moved to Helper from Santa Fe in early June 2020, so three years were spent collecting as many photos of that area as possible from the onset of the Covid Pandemic settling into our National psyche to the time of relaxation of preventive measures. By 2020 I had been working on the Hybrid projects, which is a weaving & welding of both traditional & digital art starts. In these three years being sequestered where I knew almost no one, I battened my work down to starting as many paintings & some drawings alongside many, many more digital works, from photographs & scans to digital composite builds using Photoshop as a platform for creation. As I worked in both modes of works, the weaving began, & many digital composite images (DCIs or builds; I use both terms interchangeably to a degree) began to emerge as both subject & theme. By the time this original photo was made (which is the root base of this image) I had already in mind three different uses for it. The first was as a promo photo as I’ve shot my own image in reflection now for years. That is the original photo itself. This is however the first Digital Hybrid work based on my departure from the town as a themed remembrance of time spent there. It’s fairly straightforward as a composition, as the fractured windows in the 1930’s era steel casement windows, the sandstone aggregate sill, coupled with skewed reflections needed no alteration or distortion. What is radically altered is taking the angle planes, in realistic color through 60+ stacks of planes. It allowed me to play with the image elements almost as the early cubists were doing in Spain & France of 1903. I’m loving this ALT text space as a way to archive visual works.

“Reflections disremembering by fractures,” from the Digital Hybrids, 2023. The Hybrid Works are allowing me a total merging of all modes of working combined with multi-media s well as applications. ➡️

#digitalcompositeimage #dci #hybridworks #photoshop #abstraction #surrealism #postmodern #steampunk

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