An afternoon spent in the village of Appomattox Courthouse, where a hundred years of household stories were eclipsed by the surrender of General Lee to General Grant. It made me wonder what had been their most historic event, before the war ended on their doorsteps? I thought of a woman in one of the...
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Today was a rough, tough and unwieldy day artistically – jagged and ragged in the core of it, a creative state that has been building for a few days as I have felt slightly at odds, syncopated, outside the inside of my work. It’s okay to be uncomfortable with the process. It’s absolutely all...
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It seems as though upon landing in Sheridan, I was given a dog’s eyes – all charcoals and chalks, and vistas driven by canine dream: infinite grey fields of languid deer and elk and pheasant, wild turkey and golden eagles and raccoon. I have arrived at Ucross – a snow-swept Braque landscape of brutal,...
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Spent the day taking photographs at the – wait, no, I am forbidden to invoke the site without prior notification of, permission from, and authorization by “Richmond.” So here goes: Dear Richmond - I am poised upon the precipice of incipient exploration of my own personal thoughts and reflections as they emerge within the...
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The autumn equinox has already radically changed the shape of the light here at the Cemetery, and the drying of the leaves reveals more limb of tree – and that loss of leaf in turn brings out new stones, revealed from the shadows. A lot of the graves at the Old City Cemetery were...
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The Shenandoah Valley has a devotion to commemoration that simultaneously delights and horrifies me. This weekend I found it impossible to travel for more than a handful of miles without a brown metal historical marker beckoning from beyond the blacktop, testifying to the existence of a nearby cemetery, farm, battlefield or church that for...
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Yesterday was one of the special, beloved days – photographic field work. This time, at the old Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and the Feebleminded, where the State of Virginia conducted various tortures during the nazi-linked eugenics movement of the 1930s. Yesterday, a special day – it was especially intriguing to go on that...
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Whisper the stinkbeetles: we are on the wrong side of the window, by any point of view. The artist whispers: Three at a time, if you are compliant and kind. An offer of exodus. The stinkbeetles whisper the terms: do not fold, spindle or mutilate the stinkbeetle. Whispers the artist: Everybody stays calm, nobody gets...
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Ah, the autum equinox is upon us! Mabon, when our day divided equally into day and night. A rare and perfect balance. Last night, I slept for twelve hours – six of daylight, six of darkness. I dreamed that my bed was covered in a canopy – a luminous, opaque grey cobweb, and there...
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UPDATED at the end of the post: PART TWO on 09.22.09 Happy birthday to one of my very most absolutely belovedly adored friends, comrade, compatriot and conspirators in all the universe, Lady A.B., iconic lioness and neighbor, who was a little baby girl all the way around the world in Paris on this day...
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Here in the prehensile hinterlands of Virginia, deep in the acres upon acres of pasture and woods that refuse to let go of us, we hole up in our studios amidst the many things with legs, most of which fly. Some have that It's about time - the fourth boxwood on the right, please,...
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