...In looking through this submission, I was reminded that the distinction between art forms is thin. The "Bolt" piece in this submission is a good example. Taking in/digesting/metabolizing that image is not entirely unlike taking in/digesting/metabolizing a good poem, essay, story, etc. The connection between the mind's eye, the hippocampus and all the rest of the sensory and spiritual receptors with which sentient beings are "blessed," is traversed via the very same circuitry. In the case of Bolt, spend some quality time with the image. Notice the intentionality with which the artist has excised the image from the rest of the natural context provided by the placement of that Bolt within its functionally purposed "real life." That is, the Bolt that is the star of this particular show, could, very easily, at the whim of the artist's shifting attention, have been passed over for another subject. And, presumably, the artist's talent would have been exhibited similarly--the same way a given writer might land on a story about an old man who heads out to sea, catches an enormous fish, lashes it to the side of his humble boat and vainly, unsuccessfully, fights off sharks, which systematically devour the man's fish as he makes his way to shore, leaving his prized fish all but skeletonized, the townspeople in the seaside village watching the sad and pathetic arrival of the old man and his brutalized prize, just as the reader of that story and the viewer of Bolt inadvertently (by us viewers) and utterly intentional--though potentially subconscious-- (by the artist) enjoin a similar connection to a similar sort of observational cohort. ...We've now all seen Bolt. And, somewhere in the creases and bumps in our individual brains and the collective (un)consciousness of all who've seen it, the Platonic First Form of that image will live--perhaps never to be explicitly referenced or called-up again during our conscious lives...Yet, it is there, nonetheless. We all hold slightly differing versions of the Bolt image somewhere between the span our our ears, perhaps to surface as another of the zillion seemingly random thoughts, images, feelings and fleeting glimpses of long-past experiences, many unremembered consciously, showing up in dreams, meditation, prayer, and driving down the freeway on any given Thursday afternoon, the sun stabbing through the windshield, squinting your eyes and momentarily blocking out your other sensory indicators, leaving you anchored to the long-lost-but-somehow-so-familiar image that's clung to the underside of your consciousness since seeing Bolt the first--and perhaps only-instance. One can't unsee stuff. Or unread stuff. Or unlive stuff. ...While some might consider this enormous bolus of stored mental/psychic data, a hidden landscape of useless and random detritus, the fact is, it is this individual, custom-built, one-of-a-kind, always-growing heap of detritus--This is the stuff that makes each of us Us and all of Us human. ...Bolt...really great image.
I was going to say I really liked the tree shot, but after Parnell that seems a little lame. 😂
Great series of photographs! Glad you took the time!
Nice essay Dan and that soap-a-roid is so cool!
Dish soap? Who would have thunk? Great aporoach! Love it.
Really like that Polaroid.
...In looking through this submission, I was reminded that the distinction between art forms is thin. The "Bolt" piece in this submission is a good example. Taking in/digesting/metabolizing that image is not entirely unlike taking in/digesting/metabolizing a good poem, essay, story, etc. The connection between the mind's eye, the hippocampus and all the rest of the sensory and spiritual receptors with which sentient beings are "blessed," is traversed via the very same circuitry. In the case of Bolt, spend some quality time with the image. Notice the intentionality with which the artist has excised the image from the rest of the natural context provided by the placement of that Bolt within its functionally purposed "real life." That is, the Bolt that is the star of this particular show, could, very easily, at the whim of the artist's shifting attention, have been passed over for another subject. And, presumably, the artist's talent would have been exhibited similarly--the same way a given writer might land on a story about an old man who heads out to sea, catches an enormous fish, lashes it to the side of his humble boat and vainly, unsuccessfully, fights off sharks, which systematically devour the man's fish as he makes his way to shore, leaving his prized fish all but skeletonized, the townspeople in the seaside village watching the sad and pathetic arrival of the old man and his brutalized prize, just as the reader of that story and the viewer of Bolt inadvertently (by us viewers) and utterly intentional--though potentially subconscious-- (by the artist) enjoin a similar connection to a similar sort of observational cohort. ...We've now all seen Bolt. And, somewhere in the creases and bumps in our individual brains and the collective (un)consciousness of all who've seen it, the Platonic First Form of that image will live--perhaps never to be explicitly referenced or called-up again during our conscious lives...Yet, it is there, nonetheless. We all hold slightly differing versions of the Bolt image somewhere between the span our our ears, perhaps to surface as another of the zillion seemingly random thoughts, images, feelings and fleeting glimpses of long-past experiences, many unremembered consciously, showing up in dreams, meditation, prayer, and driving down the freeway on any given Thursday afternoon, the sun stabbing through the windshield, squinting your eyes and momentarily blocking out your other sensory indicators, leaving you anchored to the long-lost-but-somehow-so-familiar image that's clung to the underside of your consciousness since seeing Bolt the first--and perhaps only-instance. One can't unsee stuff. Or unread stuff. Or unlive stuff. ...While some might consider this enormous bolus of stored mental/psychic data, a hidden landscape of useless and random detritus, the fact is, it is this individual, custom-built, one-of-a-kind, always-growing heap of detritus--This is the stuff that makes each of us Us and all of Us human. ...Bolt...really great image.
-parnell