i had no idea...

how much fun this
looney, scrappy
sewing was gonna be.





the background striped fabric and the vivid red striped fabric are from trips to guatemala where i collected fabric knowing that one day i would use it somehow.

thanks again to mary ann at dispatch from l.a. for the inspiration

sewing

my first sewing machine
ever
arrived today.

i've always loved fabric
and wanted to, you know, sew something:
arty/crafty, homey, whatever.

what finally got me to wind the bobbin
was winning a place in the
'remains of the day'
journal workshop conducted online by
the marvelous
mary ann moss' of dispatch from l.a.

i've long admired the spontaneity of her
work and her lisbon travel journal is remarkable
so i vowed that if i won a place at the
(sewing) table i'd get me a machine.

the genie in the random number generator
obviously wanted me to buy that machine
and i've threaded it and made my
first practice stitches on paper and fabric.
Hooked.

feeling a bit like the tin man...

central park, march 2009

rusty from
not posting
for a while...
i wanted, nonetheless, to express my
heartfelt appreciation
to everyone who's visited
this past year.

it has enriched my life
in countless ways.

may the new decade
bring wonder and joy
to us all.


morocco, october 2008

city winter weekend

snow falling at night
crowds on fifth avenue



and at the modern.



the lights on sixth avenue



i thought i was going for the tim burton show.
it was 11:30 and the timed ticket was for 3:00.
so i went to see the gabriel orozco show.
the piece above is the only one i could shoot.

Loved the show -





tiffany windows

quel drama

this private, invite only thing is a temporary measure,
precipitated by an incident @ my office and i expect to be
without a job in the very near future.

nearly 30 years with the company and i may get
nothing to show for it but all i want for chanukah now is
liberation.

more details to follow.
maybe even pictures.

wishful thinking

this is not what it looks like here now

new york icons

pat kiernan is the man we wake up with.
he's the reason we stick with time warner.
his pauses are more eloquent
than the commentary of most talking heads on tv.

if you don't live around here you can still
see his 'in the papers' segments here

todays, while not representative
is especially delightful for those of us
who regard him as the thinking woman's sex symbol.

lest you think...

...i'm a complete curmudgeon
i offer this evidence.







caught without my camera
i had to rely on the iPhone.

if you find yourself in the city
on thanksgiving day
and the parade route doesn't change
you could do worse than grab a cup of coffee
at bouchon bakery
and watch the parade from the vantage point
of the A/X store at the time warner center

you do see the back end of the balloons
but it's warm and uncrowded.

black friday: a rant

guest blogger ebby scrooge here
with a bah humbug commentary.

my bona fides include having walked through
the main floor of Macy's Herald Square
this morning.
at 7:30.
for research.

being, as i am,
a speck of dust
near a ball bearing
on a cog
in a gear
that turns the aging machinery
that is media
i'd like to take the occasion
of this arbitrarily exalted day
to apologize in advance.



for the heartwarming stories to which you will,
henceforth and for two fortnights, be subjected.

for the endless instructions on wrapping gifts,
cooking turkey and determining which overpriced
merchandise is appropriate for which relative.

for the adorable photos of animals and children
in Santa and/or elf costumes.

for inevitable coverage of the hyperilluminated houses
of people whose desire for attention
is exceeded only by the octomom.

for the hackneyed ledes which will involve
halls (decked), bells (jingling) and ho ho hos,
and for the overworked headlines
which will invoke nights silent.

for the lists of celebrity resolutions
real and imagined my most sincere apologies.

have a good holiday,
and hold on tight -
there's a new decade
dead ahead.

giving thanks

this post marks the
anniversary of
one year of blogging.

i still dislike the word: blog,
yet the experience has been
enriching, stimulating and
inspiring in unforseen ways.

thanks to everyone who has
viewed, read or commented.

thanks to the online friends
who have become friends in
the so-called real world
and those who will.

wasps, paper

jeanne-claude

jeanne-claude, artist,
wife and partner of christo
died on november 18.

here, some photographs i took
during their new york project
the gates
in the winter of 2005








you'll find more of my photographs
from this extraordinary project here

poised

in the mist
of a distant morning
nothing in focus
i see myself

waiting to be ready
for change

iPhone women

i could sit and draw these women
endlessly.
or until the charge runs out.

texture

perfect for a friday

man and nature

more exquisite miscellany
from snow farm.

iPhone autumn

for more of my iPhone photos go
here

juxtaposing

for more autumn in new england
check out the three galleries here

mass moca

museums are already filled with
isms.
when, exactly, did they succumb to
acronymism?

before it was MoMA,
the Museum of Modern Art was just
'the modern'. i liked the modern.
it was, you know, modern.

the acronym for the
museum of contemporary art
in north adams massachsetts
sounds like a highly caffeinated
flash mob event.

kinda cute though, i admit. the name.
the museum is nothing short of spectacular.

i had the opportunity to visit
with m. heart of secret notebooks during the first week of my well deserved 2 week vacation.

the sol lewitt building - a four floor retrospective
of his wall drawings -
will be around for 25 years.



above is a piece by sean landers from
the exhibition 'this is killing me'
about being an artist,
and the nature of creation

the rest is the architecture of
mass moca and pieces of sol lewitt

last week of october

i had expected
to find massachusetts
past peak and was delighted
to find so much color

you would think...

wouldn't you
that during a
two week vacation
(even allowing for a week
in the wilds of
western mass.)
there would be
time enough to
catch up with blogs and
post to my own.

you would be wrong.

curiously there has been
no time.

thus have i been remiss in commenting
and in replying to comments on my own
meager recent offerings.

sigh.

bygones.

autumn rain, new england

subway

subway collages
welcome me home
from a week in the country
(country collages
and landscapes
to come)

moody

MoMA mini

the museum of modern art
never looked more
manageable.

manipulated with the tiltshift app
on the iPhone

fingerpainting

the app is brushes.
endlessly amusing.

tired

very.
and still a bit achy.
but back @ work.

that's all i got right now.

oh, and this quote from
carrie fisher's "wishful drinking"

resentment is like taking poison
and waiting for the other person to die.

flu

so.
the flu.
not even the trendy one
just the ordinary, achy, feverish, chills,
and other icky symptoms
one.

so.
pictures of things within
a few feet of
lying on the couch...
with the iphone

polaroid-ish

tweets


apps


gnarly


seedlings


these not-quite polaroids
are iPhone photos manipulated
with the camerabag app.



street fair watermelon


MoMA fountain


billboard


Whitney lobby


zinnias (thanks j)


MoMA garden


bittersweet


singular apple


gerbera

at the whitney

no shooting at the o'keeffe show
of course
but then the guard said
i couldn't even sketch
in my ipod.

bummer

in the gift shop
though
these rubber bowls
echoed her forms...









p.s. more of my iPhone shots here

greenmarket

shooting with the iphone
makes everything new

on saturday it rained

each new weather
is an exploration





i've had my iphone now
for a week.
i'm enthralled
amused and
astonished on a regular basis.

and distracted beyond redemption.

trash

niagara falls...

the phrase popped up
a debate ensued...

whose routine was it?

abbott and costello, the stooges, lucy.
they all did it.

this is close to the version i remember

more of Friday morning...

...because i'm hoping to sleep in

some mornings...

some mornings everything i see seems
worth recording.
today that might be because i awoke at
four thirty am
and had consumed a goodly portion of
peet's sumatra blend
by six thirty.

at five i had stumbled upon a short film,
'on detour with manny farber',
which had me wide awake immediately.
it's on pbs saturday again on saturday morning at 5:30.
seek it out. or google his work:
wonderful.

it was probably farber
who made me
see things
this morning.

greenmarket / autumn

o'keeffe

haven't been to the show at
the whitney
yet.
to complement the tv movie
with joan allen as o'keeffe
here's a bit of herself
from the pbs movie

faces

whether masked or open
yesterday's parade
celebrating mexican independence
was all about
the faces

goodbye cheyenne

the cheyenne diner,
corner of 33rd street and ninth avenue,
is no more.

it served it's last club sandwich
more than a year and a half ago
but until this week it stood
where now there's a ragged hole
surrounded by chain link.

it was much like any diner
anywhere. everything was
kind of greasy.
the coffee sucked.
the staff was
usually surly or
distracted.
but it was always there
and kinda cool
and, after all,
you want your fries greasy
or what's the point.




















i took these photos
on october 16, 2002.

torn

when i take the e train
instead of the 1
the billboards
are too enticing
to pass
without shooting.

seeing

i haven't been carrying my camera lately.

i did today
which made me realize
that i see in a thoroughly different way
when i carry it.

not better or worse
just different.



sixth avenue is also
the avenue of the americas.

though no one
calls it that
it still sports the evidence







if abstraction happens in the city
and no one records it
is it still art?

eavesdropping

borders, penn station
september 11, 2009
9:00 am

september eleven

the photographs are mine. the black and white ones were taken in 1998 during a ride in the sanyo blimp. the color images were made on september 11 2003 during the annual tribute in lights downtown

i am not a number...

huge fan of
Patrick McGoohan...
Secret Agent? the best.
it's quiet enough for a drum solo...

and The Prisoner is one of those classics
you don't want to mess with
and yet...



Ian McKellen...



Jim Caviezel...

has possibilities...

i've been, what's the word...

remiss?

distracted?

aloof?

this weekend...long, lovely, hint of autumn,
brown leaves scratching the sidewalk...
i saw two movies.

the first, ostensibly science fiction
the second documentary.



these posters began showing up months ago.
just gorgeous graphically. and, of course, intriguing.

i walked out of 'District 9' on monday
unsteady on my feet. it's extraordinary
on many levels. a familiar tale told
with conscience and soul, the sense of reality
heightened by the judicious use of documentary
technique: news broadcasts,
interviews, surveillance camera images...
none of it new
but used expertly.

i read later that much of the dialog was
improvised and that sharlto copley
who plays wikus van de merwe
is not an actor. amazing.

the allegorical aspect -
man's inhumanity to alien standing in for
man's inhumanity to man
is not overwrought
but it gets you in the solar plexus,
not least because it was filmed in
johannesburg by south african director,
neill blomkamp.

no spoilers here - just see it.

i also saw "the september issue"
the documentary about the creating of
vogue magazine's september 2007 issue -
the largest in it's history.
fun to watch, of course.

but after seeing these two films back to back
i couldn't help being struck by how the former
seemed real and the latter fantastical fiction.



seriously. who's the alien?

objects

for lawendula's one tribe project i have mailed a small
package to germany.



before packing together this collection of odd, unrelated objects
in an empty bandaid box
i drew them in my sketch book.

drawn together they become
related.

this is, too, the purpose of the project:
to bring together a collection
of unrelated individuals
from distant places and
by the act of
collecting
connecting them.

a miscellany of three

contributing

i'm really not a promoter of my own work.
here and on my photography site at pbase.com/magpiejst
is pretty much where it lives.

when someone finds it and appreciates it
i'm delighted. when the opportunity to share it
for a good cause presents itself so much the better.

this was the case in april when i was contacted by
linda ligon, founder and creative director of interweave press,
about the possibility of using some of my guatemala photographs in a book about guatemalan weaving that was being produced to benefit friendship bridge, a non profit ngo investing in microeneterprises to help the women and children of guatemala.



the book, Guatemalan Woven Wealth has just been published
and i couldn't be more delighted. it's a book i would
buy even if i didn't have photographs in it.

it's available through the friendship bridge site and at
interweave press with profits going
via friendship bridge to the women of guatemala.