For Tina

Per her request, this one is for my love:

Random neighborhood. Iowa City, 2007.

The Built Environment

When I was a kid there were three possible things I aspired to be: a travel journalist, a chef, or an architect. While none of the three came to fruition, I still live out all of them in some aspect of my life. To this day I am mesmerized by the built environment. Frank Gehry once said, "Architecture is a small piece of this human equation, but for those of us who practice it, we believe in its potential to make a difference, to enlighten and to enrich the human experience, to penetrate the barriers of misunderstanding and provide a beautiful context for life's drama." Buildings, whether they be in their beautiful glory, or in a sad, dilapidated state, evoke emotions in me that penetrate my core. Here are some photos I have taken of buildings or skylines over the last couple of years:

Beacon St. Boston.

North Church. NYC.

University of Iowa. Iowa City.

East Village (?). NYC

Trinity Church. Boston.

NYC.

First Church of Christian Science. Boston.

Random St. Montreal.

Boston.

 

Red Doors

For as long as I can remember I've been intrigued by red doors. In Feng Shui, a red door symbolizes the mouth of the home. It is the entry point in which abundance and opportunities find their source. In the time of the Underground Railroad, homes with red doors were considered "safe houses." Or in the case of Albert Einstein, he simply painted his door red because he couldn't recognize his house without it. The following pictures were taken over the last few years during my travels.

Finding Art in the Mundane

How does one transform the mundane? To borrow from Joan Miró: "A big stone on a deserted beach is a motionless thing, but it sets loose great movements in my mind." Objects impel imaginative use- a discarded wrapper, a junked car in a ravine, a decaying building. They all appear to be forgotten ugly items. But the true beauty lies in the story each tells.

As a hopeless lover of maps, creative cartography and, especially, maps as art, I was utterly enchanted by the work of mixed-media visual artist Ingrid Dabringer, who uses acrylic paint to draw — or, more precisely, find — extraordinary, playful characters and vignettes in ordinary maps. Here is a piece she did using a subway map of NYC: