Happy Holidays!

iPhone Drawings

The fall semester is over, grades are in, and I am taking a little mental break. It has been a while since I posted any iPhone drawings, but then I hadn't done many in a while. Here are a few recent ones; I guess these constitute my purple or violet period, with some more filled out versions of very fast line drawings. (I do the filling out mostly in real time, though.) All are my usual life sketches/portraits, on the various forms of public transportation I take (light rail, PATH, NY subway, etc.). I have yet to sketch anyone on the Newark light rail/subway, though, perhaps because my trip is so brief. I'll have to take it all the way to the end of the line(s) and draw some of the people I see. Newark doesn't lack for interesting subjects for portraits. I also have to return to drawing on the iPad, which has a larger screen. The software for it changed, though, so it's less agile, at least to my fingertips, than the iPhone version.

Random Photos

A few photos from the last few weeks, including some of our recent snowstorm.

On 5th Avenue, looking north

Some of the Santa Con revelers, in Brooklyn

The march of the Santa Conners

Santas trudging through the snow, in Brooklyn

Cadman Square, Brooklyn

Brooklyn Historical Society

St. Ann's Church, Brooklyn

Brooklyn Borough Hall, Brooklyn

Subway vendor

Freedom Tower and St. Paul's Church in the snow

The new PATH station entrance, designed
by Santiago Calatrava, at World Trade Center,
slowing coming together

Snowstorm, Jersey City

A holiday light display

Isaac Julien's "Ten Thousand Waves" at MoMa

Isaac Julien's "Ten Thousand Waves" at MoMa

Isaac Julien's "Ten Thousand Waves" at MoMa

Madison Square Park at night

J. Crew sample sale

Hawk, in Union Square

The Flatiron, like a prow in the night

Cheryl Clarke, this year's CLAGS
Kessler Lecturer and honoree

Yoko Ono's Wish Tree, in Chelsea

Ono's Wish Tree, up close

Photos: Santa Fe, Part 2

More photos from the trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, including a few photos inside the superlative Allá Bookstore, whose collection of Latin American literature has to be seen to be believed. Enjoy!

New Mexico from the air

Approaching Albuquerque from the air

The Sandia (?) mountains, on the road from
Albuquerque north to Santa Fe

The New Mexican landscape

The Bataan Memorial Building (the Old State House)

The New Mexico Veterans Memorial, Santa Fe

An outdoor market, with chilies, serapes, and more

One of the newer adobe-style buildings

A statue in one of the courtyards at the
Museum of Contemporary Native Art

Tisa (center) and Thomas (right) chatting
with an artist selling her work

Sharan approaching down the colonnade

Major, checking out some of the work

Santa Fe Plaza, with the Native American Memorial obelisk in the foreground

A bandstand in the Plaza

Thomas, holding up a work of art by Álvarez Moran,
as Jim, the owner of Allá, an amazing bookstore, looks on

Jim, the owner of Allá, looking through artworks,
as Major looks at one of the prints he's examining

Various sculptures in the window of Züger

New Mexico Museum of Art

Photos: Santa Fe, Part 1

With the end of the semester, a mountain of final papers to read, and a bit of recent travel I haven't been able to blog much lately, but here are some photos from a recent trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I'd always wanted to go to New Mexico and visit Santa Fe in particular (as well as Albuquerque, Taos, and some of the Indian Reservations, though I'll have to wait for another trip to explore these and other parts of the state), and things worked out such that the Dark Room Collective's 25th Anniversary "Nothing Personal" Reunion Tour concluded with a reading at the Lannan Foundation this past week. Many thanks to the Foundation and all involved with it, to my fellow Dark Room members who made the trip possible and who read, and to all the people who packed the Lensic performance space this past Thursday to hear us. Photography was prohibited at the event, so I was unable to get any photos of the reading, but here are the first of a few photos from the trip.



After recovering from the effects of altitude sickness (which included feeling like I was having a heart attack; nausea; lightheadedness; and exhaustion), a redux of my visits to Boulder/Denver, I spent one morning strolling all around New Mexico's capital city's historic downtown area, chatting with people and looking at all the art on display, admiring and photographing the adobe-style buildings, old and new; popping my head into galleries, museums and bookstores; and walking towards the various, ever-looming mountain ranges, none of which, thankfully were in range. It took a day to acclimate, but I finally was able to say that 7,200 feet above sea level wasn't bad at all (i.e., enough for me). Now I can't wait to go back!

Native artists and vendors assembling along

the colonnade at the Palace of Governors

A bronze sculpture at the Signature Gallery

The Museum of Contemporary Native Art

(which has an excellent current exhibit

of emerging and established Native artists)

The south-facing colonnade and arcade

at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art

The north-facing colonnade and arcade

at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi

Looking east toward the mountains (the Lensic

performance space, where we read, is visible at left)

A closer glimpse of the Lensic

A very old pueblo-style building, with colonnade
and arcade, housing restaurants and other businesses
at left; Cathedral Park at right, the mountains
straight ahead

A older adobe-style building

with a beautifully adorned side door

A Native painting adorning a wall

along a Santa Fe street