About the Flaneur
![Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day (La Place de l’Europe, temps de pluie). 1877. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]](../../wp-content/uploads/2009/02/gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day_1877_wiki.jpg "gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day")
I walk through my blindness the way I wander down streets in Paris: unfettered and alive, alert to the raw material of the senses. I am a flaneur. Come along with me. Just don’t try to take my arm, unless I ask. What’s a flaneur? Read the first post, Return of the Flaneur to Galerie Vivienne. After that, try Foot Rage and the Blind Flaneur. Then stay tuned.Kiki: Man Ray’s Dada Muse
The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse posed for Man Ray’s Le violin de Ingres (1924). See more from Imaging Paris.Lee Miller: Surrealist Muse
Lee Miller traced a meteoric trajectory from flapper fashionista to surrealist muse. She played the Statue in Jean Cocteau's first movie. Picasso painted her portrait. She apprenticed with Man Ray and later became a noted war photographer for British Vogue. Read more.Miss Tic: Paris Street Art
Poet and street artist Miss Tic isn't exactly a kid in a hoodie with a can of spray paint. Maybe she can still run like hell when the police show up, but can she sprint in high heels? Well-known in international avant-garde circles, her work is exhibited now at the Venice Biennale as well as the alleys of Paris. Read more. See Ethics of Love for a video montage of Miss Tic's provacative poetry. More Paris Street Art.
The Lake and the River
![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](../../wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
I’ve canoed on Lake Superior for almost as many years as I’ve been losing eyesight. I return year after year like a migrating loon to learn the other side of a slow, uncertain process that we could call “going blind.” After 35 years with the lake as my teacher, I know what lies on the other side. I call it letting go of sight. Read Big Water. See more about the Great Lakes.
What is a village? A small place, yes, as wide as the world, layered with histories and stories, where you can walk wherever you want to go. My vision of that place is Yellow Springs 2.0.
Not This Pig
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in Not This Pig (2003).Blind Photographers
In the moment when Paul Strand photographed her surreptitiously on the street in New York, the social engineers who created a system for licensing beggars never imagined that a blind woman had culture or could make culture. She herself may not have imagined it. Paul Strand probably didn’t give her much credit for making culture, either. Read more: Curiosity & The Blind Photographer [MiT5 2007] See more on blind photographers.BottomFeeder U.S.A.
![Grant Wood. Parson Weem’s’ Fable. 1939. Amon Carter Museum, Forth Worth.. Steven Biel describes the painting: “Parson Weems, imitating Charles Willson Peale’s pose in The Artist in His Museum (1822), opens a red velvet curtain on the legendary scene: Augustine Washington, elegant in crimson coat, white ruffle, tan breeches, silver-buckled pumps, and green tricornered hat, grasps in his right hand the slim trunk of the bent cherry tree. A row of cherries dangles from the perfectly rounded treetop, mirroring the very cherry-like fringe of the Parson’s curtain. Augustine’s outstretched left palm and furrowed brow signal a serious inquiry. His son George, boyish in stature and dress—coatless, with sky-blue breeches and petite buckled pumps—is manly in his expression. In fact, his white-wigged head is that of Gilbert Stuart’s portrait and the dollar bill. He points with his right hand to the hatchet in his left. Wood chips lie in the circle of soil at the base of the tree, its lower trunk smoothly incised and poised to split off. In the background, a well-dressed slave couple harvests the fruit of a second tree.” [Alt Text Source: Common-Place/ http://www.common-place.org/vol-06/no-04/biel/ ]](../../wp-content/uploads/2011/08/grant_wood_parson_weems_fable_200px.jpg "grant_wood_parson_weems_fable_200px")
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Category Archives: landscapes
Blue Hole, Little Miami River
In the Glen: The First Flowers
Even though north winds carried a hint of snow, I found the first wildflowers on my Sunday walk in the woods. Feathery green clumps of Dutchman’s Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) covered the sides of the ravines, especially near rock outcrops. I … Continue reading
Monet: The Houses of Parliament, Sunset
Claude Monet. The Houses of Parliament, Sunset. 1903. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. See the series: Monet at the National Gallery of Art.
Ransacking The Archive: Kerosene
Lawren Harris. Ice House. A father’s rant. 1996. For Brendan. Kerosene When you need to know how to stay alive one more day find some sand, an old oil drum a gallon of kerosene. A gallon costs a buck. If … Continue reading
Ransacking The Archive: Voyageurs
Lawren Harris.Afternoon Sun, Lake Superior. For Brendan the Navigator. 1995. The hardest conversation is the one that may be the last. Voyageurs When my heart started again I was naked on a steel table. A catheter snaked through the coronaries … Continue reading
Ransacking The Archive: Whitefish Bay 1990
Lawren Harris. Clouds, Lake Superior. 1923. [Source: Wikipedia] One of many poems written on the beach at Whitefish Bay, Lake Superior, where I yearn to return like a migrating loon. Whitefish Bay 1990 My love sweeps a circle through the … Continue reading
Flaneur’s Gallery: The River of Light
Frederick Edwin Church. El Rio de Luz (The River of Light). 1877. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
