"Usually it would be at end of day, twilight. Then, the gloaming. I’d go out there to sit with her often, until even the lavender & purple light left by the Sun, I would guess, as a child would, waned away."🌙
#MagicalRealism #Ghoststories #Story #DigitalArt
#Opossums #TheParkwaysProjects #TomOgburn
The Digital Hybrids are primarily linked directly to the Hybrid Works. Think of them as siblings... When finished, it will be one of the first five or six of my large Digital Hybrids to be available in print form. It's about 65% done as you see it here. Stay tuned, the Sea Oats are coming (far less dangerous than "the Sand Snakes of GoT), plus a few less recognizable architectural features! I'll be finishing this work up in a few weeks, and when done I'll do a Work in Progress string. The composition is built of three primary photographs. The central one an interior view, the outer views worked into place as a digital collage puzzle, in a way. Based on a place I've loved for years and years and years, yet, I've not seen it since these photos were shot there in March of 2023. The Ghosts Forests at Huntington Beach State Park have been growing faster (according to SCPRT signage) and I'm curious to get back there to see just how the salt water levels are settling. It's an eerie thing to behold. The composition is done, so far, in muted avocado greens and natural clay color, with rich deep reds in the bricks. Other elements are about to be added, almost as scrim layers on a stage, which will be foliage, trees, perhaps some of those scary sea oats!
"Atalaya Triptych," [work in progress] a #DigitalCollage (DCI) from the Digital Hybrid series, for 'The Parkways Projects." #TomOgburn I'm back, sort of in little dribs and drabs...
#BlueSkyArtShow #Horizontal #HuntingtonBeachStatePark
#SCPRT #SouthCarolinaStateParks #DigitalCollage #CarolinaCoast
South Carolina's Huntington Beach State Park!
#SouthCarolina #HuntingtonBeachStatePark #SCPRT
#TheParkwaysProjects #TomOgburn #NationalParkService
#NPS #AtlanticOcean #TheGrandStrand
🦉🪔🍂The final feed, with intro, which technically speaking, should have arrived first on the scene.
#theparkwaysprojects #ChestnutTrees #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway #TomOgburn #TheSixties #1960s #TheGreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark
🦉"The Seven Vacations (of nine tales) #TheParkwaysProjects
#TomOgburn #TheBlueRidgeParkway #Appalachians 🪔
An introduction of a place, a family, and a once turbulent Time called "The 1960's." #Photograph by me at age 12, 2nd #Photo by my father. #EastCoastKin #ArtYear #BlueSky🦋
🦉"Recede" #TheParkwaysProjects #TomOgburn #Photography
"Looking up is a major occupation in Jerome. There are things above you that otherwise, you would just never have a sighting by looking straight ahead."🌙
#Landscape #MountainMonday #DigitalCollage #JeromeAZ #EastCoastKin #ArtYear #BlueSky
"After the Deluge" It's the small things...
#photography #nature #storms 🦉
"You move away from storms as an invite for them to find you"
#Stunday #ArtYear #EastCoastKin
#TomOgburn #TheParkwaysProjects
🌙 "After the Deluge" #photography #nature #storms 🦉
"You move away from storms as an invite for them to find you"
#Stunday #ArtYear #EastCoastKin
#TomOgburn #TheParkwaysProjects
"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
🌙🦉🪔 "This film is the heart & soul of 1981, extruded from the dawn of Reagan—the original summarily curbed as nominal. A music video to MTV's legacy after the long and dark night of it's decline to follow." ≈ #TomOgburn
#ArtYear #EastCoastKin #Music #MTV #MTVAnniversary
#TheParkwaysProjects #Memory
A timeless square shot, of a bridge crossing the Little Pee Dee River in northeastern-most South Carolina. The day is still, white clouds calmly abiding ahead of blue sky. The blackwater mirrors darkly the sky above. Still water, currents only underneath, carrying secrets within its deeper recesses. The underside of this bridge is mirrored, casting a near-black shadow. It seems suspended through ebony reversal. To read the full story: https://theparkwaysprojects.substack.com/p/a-bridge-too-far Just over a year ago, I began to wander my Jeep into the deep Carolina Bays region of the two states as part of 'The Parkways Projects.' Where the two states conjoin. It is not a place of ease, no matter your constitution nor your mindset. It’s an eerie place of separatist belonging, for I felt I belonged there by birthright but was excluded by today's currents. In these Carolina Bays, it is the crows which sound the back and forth of present participles versus past tense. These murders of crows were out in abundance on this trip into the swamp basins of the Carolina Bays crossings between Little Pee Dee State Park (South Carolina) and one of the newest North Carolina State Parks, Lumber River. It's an old bridge but with a new and shiny guard rail assembly. Nothing like an allegory there, for we are not about that, no, especially not in Carolina Bay territory. Lumbees. Witches. Panthers—or paints. Others. Neithers. Amalgams from the in-betweens. Dark, light, good, evil, all exist within these swamps. Along with the fish curiously trying to consider the humans above the surface of their waters. I walked this bridge four times, shooting each time something caught my eye. There’s no stopping the sounds, the caws, the currents and eddies, the blackwater abundance in shallow layers hiding just what we do not wish to know is under there. But things which the hackles tell us are under there. Like today. Then I made my way into the swamp to shoot it from this vantage point.
🦉 A Bridge Too Far #TheParkwaysProjects #TomOgburn #Photography #Landscape #ArtYear #EastCoastKin
#BlueSkyArtShow #Smooth #Nature
An old bridge, but with a new & shiny guard rail assembly. Nothing like an allegory there, for we are not about that, no, especially not in Carolina Bay territory 🌙
There is a wall, I presume it is still standing in Seattle. I struggle still to this day to remember which bridge it was; more a viaduct structure, a wall made beautiful by human hands who has clearly evidenced by their touch so many years go the love they held for their craft. This bridge, this abutment, this wall was a place she chose to have her photographs made that year for her first solo album, which would be a CD, not an LP. There was a huge tree across from it that she leaned against as I photographed her, in a simple sheer black dress & leather boots. She laughed & the sky listened. We had gone to the tree first, for this was her first idea. I kept looking at this wall. When done we walked to the wall & I shot a sequence of her looking directly into the lens, then to the left, to the right. I loved her profile. We'd joked & tossed around ideas for the World to come in the next few years. This was 1988 & 89. I'd flown out on tickets bumped on each trip back to Seattle from South Carolina, always scheduling my trips alongside holidays so that I could volunteer my seat to those who had family to see, dates to make. On one 3 week trip, I landed 9 cross country flights from Charlotte NC to Seattle WA. And in this way we began our friendship, me with a place I could crash at anytime when in Seattle, on Whitman. Her with a wish to just walk, talk & listen, to swap & exchange ideas & dreams & art. A few years later it suddenly ceased. Every 100 years it awakens & allows an entrance. Only of you love someone dearly are you allowed to stay, for if one person leaves, then all would dissipate. Brigadoon. "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 living in an amorphous act of Time." "So I stayed a third night, considering that this town hidden in sort if a high vale alongside the Arkansas River was beginning to feel as though I'd wandered into Brigadoon in the Rockies."
You saw Brigadoon #TheParkwaysProjects #TomOgburn #Photography #Landscape #Minimalism #ArtYear #EastCoastKin
1989 in Seattle—shooting an album cover, when I saw this incredible bridge wall across from us. Shot with an old Minolta, my negative today is lean.
You saw the Whole of the Moon 💙🦉🌙
4️⃣ALT⬇️
A quiet day on the placid waters of Lake Marion saw the skies rent asunder with chortling, churning noises, a fire across the lake spewing smoke into the upper atmosphere in a westerly direction, producing a great Smoke Phoenix to spread its wings to signal, "This is not just another ordinary day." Low rumbling thunder was noted as well, but no lightning in the vicinity of sight save for low wavelengths in the farthest distances. Sirens added to the surreal nature of this scene, which cast another brilliant golden sunset claiming a third of the sky but contained by the turquoise blue above, rather than a deep pressing midnight blue of a falling night. All sounds were heightened by crackling cold air. You are looking more at the edge of the shoreline of Santee proper, across the lake, more so than the actual causeway. It too, was just as grand and scattershot. We don't have Lake Woebegones in the Modern South, much to my chagrin. I could use a little peace, quiet and what use to pass for relative sanity. “Do you think that Hemingway knew he was a writer at twenty years old? No, he did not. Or Fitzgerald, or Wolfe. This is a difficult concept to grasp. Hemingway didn't know he was Ernest Hemingway when he was a young man. Faulkner didn't know he was William Faulkner. But they had to take the first step. They had to call themselves writers. That is the first revolutionary act a writer has to make. It takes courage. But it's necessary” ≈ Pat Conroy 'My Losing Season: A Memoir'
🌙 A Dieselpunk sunset #TomOgburn #Photography #Landscape #ArtYear #EastCoastKin
#BlueSkyArtShow #Vibrant
Smoke & contrails in the Sky above Lake Marion Oh My!
“My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.” ≈ Pat Conroy 'The Prince of Tides'
Ahhh, South Carolina. Exhales. Here indeed is a very vibrant sunset cascading across Interstate 95 at that perfect point just in between New York City, New York and Miami, Florida. The 2.4 mile long causeway is a source of constant traffic twenty-four seven, 365 days a year. Imagine that. Except around mealtimes. There is a brilliant orange-gold sunset lying flat, just above the two and one half-mile causeway, casting its dying breath of light upwards while issuing a deafening deep blue roar downwards to the waters' surface. In just three minutes, all will be dark save for the headlights of travelers. Lake Marion, a lake my Grandfather helped build for six years far below the levels of these waters today, sprawls across a low horizon, the deep midnight blue sky pressing down upon the last glower of the Sun as he drops into darkness just before the gloaming. He already knows he has lost to Nightfall. The Sun is a creature of Habit, as we are to him. I call this a Victorian sunset due to just the abject beauty of it, predating the hubbub of the sounds I heard as I shot this image. Yet quiet enough to qualify as the Victorians did love to glom about and inebriate themselves quietly while watching such events occur. Just 350 miles from here, there will be 20 to 50 hardy Americans sitting in their lawn chairs where the Blue Ridge Parkway meets the Skyline Drive, at one of the finest vistas to the West in America, no matter the season. In the summer, you will not find parking, so, you may as well be traveling south to Miami, crossing his causeway. This is the Victorian view. Just six days before, I shot the postmodernist sunset from this same location, give or take a thousand yards. I'm about to pass that one around 11:15pm, just 25 minutes away from now. A sunset with teeth. I've launched "The Parkways Projects' Substack just last week, a newsletter/blog with various modes of writing and visual art. I hope y'all will visit every so often!
🦉A Victorian sunset #TheParkwaysProjects #TomOgburn #Photography #Landscape #ArtYear #EastCoastKin
#BlueSkyArtShow #Vibrant
From Jan 26th 2019, the golden light you see is above Santee State Park, hearkening back to a Colonial era event in which a large earthwork still exists. I'm 1.3 miles away.
"I’m not so certain that certainty even knows how to knock. But I know it glides like an owl in a humid night." ⬇️🦉
≈ Here's my first Substack post. The official start of #TheParkwaysProjects in full writer's mode.
#Photography #Nature #Scape #ForestFriday
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #TomOgburn
Water laden gray clouds scroll over a pale and overcast silver sky. It had been 50 years since my family had embarked on the third year of traveling up both parkways. In 1969, we were pulling a new Coleman Pop-up camper towed by our aging 1963 Chevrolet Impala, with no air conditioning. That was the reason for the Coleman, for in 1968 we discovered just what brakes could not withstand barreling down the mountain grades with too much weight behind us. During both years, my Mom, who was ostensibly the navigator on such trips, was busy journaling. I'm thankful she wrote in longhand, for she was an excellent shorthand stenographer. That would have been nearly criminal as I doubt I could find a shorthand reader these days. Due to those journals in 1968 and 1969, I was able to follow the exact same route, stop in the same National Park campgrounds, for both Parkways were the first two such National Parks in America, and even in seven cases she wrote down the campsite number as well. I stayed overnight in five of them in August 2019. I do have a thing for ritual, revisiting that which can never really be regained, or even really be understood. But we can try. For the Appalachians were my havens. It was the days when even on faraway junkets, we were allowed to run free, explore thickets of mountain laurel, follow bears, wander about while the parentals were doing siesta time, for after all, the purpose was to do as we all pleased. There's far more to this story, and that's going to be the challenge as it progresses, for I have many folders of shots I never intended to take. Then images I had planned but turned out to become something else, for 50 years is a short time for trees, while a long time for us. The first thing I noticed was the old vistas had often disappeared. Although it's a National scenic parkway and modern practices of allowing the flora to do as Nature intended has resulted in a lot of 40 to 50 year growth at overlooks built between 1933 to 1948.
🦉 Station's Breach #TheParkwaysProjects #TomOgburn #Photography #Landscape #Travel #Mountains
#RockinTuesday #ArtYear #EastCoastKin
"Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy - your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. ≈ Annie Leibovitz
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"What you need, above all else, is a love for your subject, whatever it is. You've got to be so deeply in love with your subject that when curve balls are thrown, when hurdles are put in place, you've got the energy to overcome them." ≈ Neil DeGrasse Tyson The simplest palette of natural colors explodes at your feet. Orange clay, pale grayish-yellow spagnum mosses, silver gray twigs, deep charcoal grays and blacks, vestiges of a fire sprinkled with various tones of winter's leaves. This grill has not been used in some time. "Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy - your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself." ≈ Annie Leibovitz
Standard Issue Heavy Metal #TheParkwaysProjects #TomOgburn #Photography #Landscape #Camping
#MinimalistMonday #ArtYear #EastCoastKin
A classic Campground Grill, the utmost of minimal but functional design.
“To me photography functions as a fossilization of time.”
Hiroshi Sugimoto
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A misty mountain scene of an unpeopled picnic ground in a late August day in 2019. Cold, damp, and foggy up on the Skyline Drive Parkway in Northern Virginia. The colors echo the environment, brilliant green mosses reflecting their color onto the soaked bark of the trees, with the moisture darkened 1940's vintage Civilian Conservation Corps Picnic tables and the ubiquitous heavy 1943 vintage Campground Grills installed during the WPA era. Mists abound with ghosts...
Indefinitely Tabled #TheParkwaysProjects #TomOgburn
#Photography #Landscape #ArtYear #EastCoastKin
#MountainMonday
A Skyline Drive Parkway picnic area lost to Time in a deep Appalachian Mountains fog.
“I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” ≈ Mark Twain I learned years ago that at times being an artist means bearing down and "living lean," as my old friend TR Ritchie used to say, who was a fine singer-songwriter, poet, and writer of scenarios on the snippets of an artist's existence if one stayed the course. And so three years in Carbon county passed, with my photographs becoming much more attuned to all of the above. In time the beauty of the leanness began to emerge, and the awkward nature of all things just trying to survive in such an environment became more and more the script which fed my work. The railyard was a river of change usually six to 15 times a day. Just to walk alongside the tracks was a story, the chapters chock full of subjects within each ten yards of foot travel. Often then, there was that light, from the other side of the World which deemed to visit that town with the bowl of dun, gray, and black colored reefs and escarpments. No matter how we live, as artists, our works need to thrive, even when things are ruthlessly lean. "For me the noise of Time is not sad: I love bells, clocks, watches — and I recall that at first photographic implements were related to techniques of cabinetmaking and the machinery of precision: cameras, in short, were clocks for seeing, and perhaps in me someone very old still hears in the photographic mechanism the living sound of the wood." ≈ Roland Barthes
Blue sky, green tin & weeds #Photography #TomOgburn
#Urban #Rural #MinimalistMonday #BlueSkyMonday #ArtYear #EastCoastKin
"Ultimately, Photography is subversive not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks." #RolandBarthes
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"What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous." ≈ Thomas Merton An old brick wall made of dun and dark bluish gray bricks, all dating from the turn of the 20th century, these circa 1918-1925. The dark gray ones were the only brick used to build the interior walls of the building I rented there in Helper those three years. The long side walls, and the 18 foot back wall, all built from those specific brick. For they were inexpensive back then because they were made from lower grade coal produced from the mines in Helper. They came from the Union Pacific Rail Yard just 30 yards in back of this, my unit's courtyard. Hauled just a short distance by hopper cars into town, named Helper as it was a Helper Engine Rail Yard at the top of the mountain to aid the trains on either elevation with extra engines to haul the long coal trains. Then, the waste coal would by ingenious magic be mixed into very low-fire brick. The Union Pacific made money. The Coal mine owners made more money. The businesses paid high company rents for a coal brick unit. The dull yellow dun color is also under-fired, again, a cost-saving procedure back in the 1900-1920 era. There were only two disadvantages to these two very odd cost saving choices: neither kind of brick was strong. Most cracked and crumbled, spalling off into the interiors of the buildings for their lifetimes, and the coal brick, being low-fired, would burn like...well, coal. There is a modern but very rusted steel stairway up to the second floor units, with a modern but also rusted steel-mesh floor. Here you can see a section of the scrap mesh used by the owner of the building to try to shore up the old wall. The repair methods made for an interesting pastiche of character in the courtyard. They are 60% dun clay, 40% coal. Ingenious, indeed.
Wrought, dun, and coal, from 'Rainy Courtyard' series #Photography #TomOgburn #Urban #Streetscape
#MinimalistMonday #ArtYear #EastCoastKin
"What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?" ≈ Thomas Merton
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Oh cool! Here's an RP for #MinimalMonday
At play in the field of the Goblins #Photography
#TomOgburn #Stunday #EastCoastKin #ArtYear
“We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there. We have been conditioned to expect..." the rest of this quote in within the ALT text 🌙🦉 ⬇️4ALT
This is a photograph hearkening towards one of my favorite artists of the 20th Century, Aaron Siskind. Definitely considered a street photographer, his work would prove to be some of the most sublimely gritty abstractions the World of Art has ever known. Yet, the sublime was always present. A quirky sense of humor was often spied lurking amidst the detritus of his surfaces. At other times, a regal and quiet charm. “We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there. We have been conditioned to expect but, as photographers, we must learn to relax our beliefs. If you look very intensely and slowly, things will happen that you never dreamed of before.” ≈ Aaron Siskind This flat sidewalk section of concrete too heavily laden with fly-ash, thus making the section too light, too fragile to withstand the footsteps of coal miners in the place it came from, eluded my notice for two years, due to an obscured location. A long dead leaf soaked in the dead ash when the concrete was poured and was mummified, but left in a fragile state. I photographed it for almost an hour—just hours before it was tossed into the back of a city dump truck for its own trip to oblivion. "Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos. An ugly or grotesque subject may be moving because it has been dignified by the attention of the photographer. A beautiful subject can be the object of rueful feelings, because it has aged or decayed or no longer exists. All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person's (or thing's) mortality, vulnerability, mutability." ≈ Susan Sontag
At play in the field of the Goblins #Photography
#TomOgburn #Stunday #EastCoastKin #ArtYear
A rather stunning slab of concrete.
“We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there. We have been conditioned to expect..." the rest of this quote in within the ALT text...🌙🦉
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Today I'll write this quickly between the words of Mary Wallstonecraft Shelley. A very subdued work, a study in texture, both real & digital. The surround is a photo of a very old & weathered concrete slab, once part of a sidewalk in Helper, Utah. It's an illustration made of five photos, including the slab. The image is very muted colors resembling a daguerreotype, with a hint of gold. The rocks & structure are comprised of two different landscapes in the Arizona high deserts. "Aurora's Sentinel aka de Chelly," a Digital Hybrid I've been working on since the mid-nineties through a Canon 35mm SLR to a tiny Canon A5 point & shoot. Intermediaries like a Nikon 35mm film & slide scanner, a very large Epson scanner that has figured prominently in my years, a small flat bed Canon office scanner I use for grunged-up captures. Then, lots of sand, gravel, weeds, grasses, seeds & such. This work has been drafted, drawn & quartered in my head now for 39 years. I've finally finished the first full hybridization of the two photographs I've had circling inside my head like two 18th century cast iron ponies on a rumbling carousel. Or like two sequential dreams entwined by circumstances from the Way Back Machine. Events made it necessary to finish it this weekend. Something here now brought to Life again from alien constituent parts by me, much like Shelly's Doctor Frankenstein. He was created in her mind on a cold, dark, humid, and frigid night in Cologny, Switzerland, 1816. The year Tambora erupted and layered the Earth in a winter which lasted until the next winter. Mary Shelley had lost a parent, and a child by that year. This image, an homage to Aaron Siskind. I'll post the original image I made that wintry day in Helper, Utah, after staring at that section of concrete yanked from its bed of decades & left akilter against an old building in far worse shape. I almost missed it. It's to be my 1st substack post tomorrow, with far more words.
Aurora's Sentinel aka de Chelly #DigitalCollage
#TomOgburn #DigitalHybrid #Illustration
#Stundayc#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Photoshop
“Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose” ≈ Mary Shelley
🧵⬇️4ALT
Two stately trees recede into shadows as the Sun outlines a fisherman in the distance. An orange to gold to turquoise sky in the far distance across the placid waters.
Dreher Island Sunfall #TheParkwaysProjects #TomOgburn
#Photography #Landscape #ArtYear #EastCoastKin
#BlueSkyArtShow #LightAndShadow
A fisherman's day in the Sun. #DreherIslandStatePark #SC
A cabin built circa 1855 by the Walker family. The walls of hewn logs and hand-planed wooden planks are aged, warm dove-gray and faded golden tans. The colors of the past, tints of the ages. "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down." ≈ Robert Frost It's been very different this week, working on 'The Parkways Projects.' I keep stopping to write thoughts down. But today my iPhone is blinking in and out a lot and seems not able to hold to a signal. So I decided to add the most relevant two sentences in Robert Frost's poem, "Mending Wall," for these are the key words that most never remember these days. It seems the peaceful thing to do, to offer peace and care to all remaining in Helene's wake.
Peace is a ladder #TheParkwaysProjects #TomOgburn
#Photography #Landscape #ArtYear #EastCoastKin
#BlueSkyArtShow #LightAndShadow
The Walker Sisters' cabin. #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark
A rather large flat-topped boulder stands on a promontory point near the top of Mount Mitchell. It's about 14 feet wide and around 9 feet deep. Mostly darker brown and dark gray tones with a section of pale tan and reddish ochre hues. It's about 4 feet above the ground to the top of the boulder. And over the years, it's probably hosted over about 11 million persons standing atop it since 1933. Simply to have their photo made. From Wkipedia, for this is interesting: “Appalachian Mountains and the highest peak in mainland North America east of the Mississippi River. It is located in Yancey County, North Carolina in the Black Mountain subrange of the Appalachians about 19 miles northeast of Asheville. It’s within Mount Mitchell State Park and surrounded by the Pisgah National Forest. Mount Mitchell's elevation is 6,684 feet above sea level. The peak is the highest mountain in the United States east of the Mississippi River and the highest in all of eastern North America. The Cherokee people, who long occupied this area as part of their homeland, called the mountain Attakulla. It was later named after Elisha Mitchell, a professor at the University of North Carolina, who first explored the Black Mountain region in 1835. He determined that the height of the range exceeded by several hundred feet that of Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Elisha Mitchell fell to his death at nearby Mitchell Falls in 1857, having returned to verify his earlier measurements, which had been challenged by state senator Thomas Clingman, a former student of Mitchell's. Clingman's favorite for the highest peak was "Smoky Dome," now Kuwohi. Mitchell was originally buried in Asheville, but was reinterred in a tomb on the mountain in 1858. In 1881–82 the U.S. Geological Survey upheld Mitchell's measurements and officially named his peak Mt. Mitchell. At 6,684 feet high, Mt. Mitchell is the highest point east of the Mississippi River.”
“Why is patience so important?"
"Because it makes us pay attention.”
≈ Paulo Coelho
The standing stone, Mount Mitchell, North Carolina #Photography #ArtYear #Landscapes #TomOgburn #TheParkwaysProjects
"He stood at the gateway between two worlds, at the place where imagination passed into creation." ≈ Michael Bedard Handmade doors from circa 1912. Check out the hinge. These are very old doors crafted by hand. They stood inside the courtyard for the entire three years I was there, in all kinds of weather. The image is a close-up of the edges of three very thick wood doors, laminated layer by layer with rough-cut nails It is from the 'Rainy Courtyard' works. Silent and lean, slow running, under the radar parabolic mode...I still keep adding to it, as, well, it keeps raining. Which is a very, very good thing with a series title like that in the high desert of Utah. "Unhinged—Unfettered," digital photograph, from the 'Rainy Courtyard' works, a new thing. A new beat, a new place of being. These shots are turning out to be a few more than I expected to continue with. "A very little key will open a very heavy door." ≈ Charles Dickens
3️⃣🛤️ the idea of suites of photos be offered on same subjects or micro-locales, such as a suite of about 40 photographs selected out of over 900 photos made of my utterly unique Helper rail-side back courtyard. Like this one, "Unhinged—Unfettered' #photography #ArtYear #TomOgburn
There is a town in central Utah. Most of my changes in three years I was there. But this is an image made in 2001, 20 years before I moved to Helper Utah, an "arts town" on the verge of "happening" in May of 2021. The structures you see here were still well cared for, in 2001. Either by the town, Carbon county, or the Railroad. It's hard to say who would have cared more, or less. But it was beautiful on this day. Probably made during the monsoon season, for only then (after having lived there for three years) for then is the drama of sky splayed against the Earth and our buildings, our bridges, our trestles. It is an eerie reflection, to know, upon every walk up to this part of town, I never saw something as beautiful as this scene. For it no longer existed by 2021. Whether, again, the town, county, or railroad is responsible for this manifold crossroad (I expect it’s all three) the ugliness of the scene was heartbreaking. I did shoot some photos here, often enough, actually, to have caught something appealing. I do have a few I plan to use in the 'America: Lost & Found' series, as that which is lost. For even in degradation there is beauty. But nothing like this sense of being, sustained within the 1990's, actually when a small town, a small coal mining town, took pride in its facade. I've thought of using this image as a root base for an "America: Lost & Found" work...but at this point, I have to smile, and reflect on the fact that it was not yet lost in 2001, but still held to a stolid and placid beauty. I’ll never use this image as a ‘A::&F’ base, but will use it as a Hybrid work, exhibiting its strength of purpose and beauty.
Charcoal Sky #photography #TomOgburn #ArtYear
2001 Helper, Utah.
⬇️4ALT
A 1950's model Studebaker pickup, painted the requisite blue which was offered back then, parked on the main drag of Pecos New Mexico, shot from the from the left front fender looking back into the clear #Bluesky🦋 of his home town. I wish I could say what year and model but I cannot, for it was before my time. Perhaps not before George Adelos' time though, for I had the feeling George presaged me on this Earth. This is a view from the north side of town looking south, an old Studebaker pickup truck, most likely a 1950's model, lovingly restored and repaired to near perfection, as George was want to do, in Pecos, New Mexico in 2011. I did not know anyone there upon arrival. But I discovered the Hummingbird Cafe in my second week there, and tried to figure out their actual schedule for being opened. George was the grandson of the original owners of the Adelo's Mercantile (at this location) where they also lived out the rich and varied life they shared with all around them through all their years. Their cash register, their refrigeration units for prepared foods, all played a role as supporting actors for my eye and my camera for the two years I lived in Glorieta, NM just up old Route 66 about 12 miles. There was nothing in Glorieta save homes except for the Post Office which was shut down the second year I was there. But the Hummingbird, and Canela's Restaurant, between this location and my home on Cur Trail, proved to be liasons for me to meet new people, new views to Life, new souls along the way. George being one of them. George was a lawyer (a damned good one), an entrepreneur, and a man who love his heritage and his family. He was a character, and deservedly so. He was a founding member of the band "White Buffalo," a solid presence in Northern New Mexico. Their drummer died of a heart attack on stage one day at a festival. A couple of years later George died from complications of a brown recluse spider bite. Pecos. Land of Enchantment. And it was that.
Pecos Study. #photography #TomOgburn
🌿 The Ides of April #Photography #TomOgburn #TheParkwayProjects #Stunday #ArtYear #EastCoastKin
🦉"Ninety-nine percent of wisdom is being wise in time"🌙
#TheodoreRoosevelt #Illustration #Landscapes
