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Artist Leo Villareal created “The Bay Lights,” a public art light sculpture across the San Francisco Bay Bridge, which will shine for two years starting March 5, 2013. The artwork is made up of some 25,000 energy-efficient LEDs, mounted on vertical cables 30 feet apart. The LEDs are controlled individually by computer, with the light turning on or off some 60 times a second via a 1.8 mile fiber-optic cable, to create a variety of patterns that flow into one another. He states, “I’m interpreting all the kinetic activity around the bridge: the traffic, the motion of water, the sky — it’s such a rich environment to draw upon.” The artist told a reporter at Mashable that the computers controlling this are a “bunch of $500 Mac minis mounted inside the bridge” and that those Macs are running Windows via Apple’s Bootcamp. Wow!

I’ve been in San Francisco, primarily for Macworld, and I’m very behind on writing posts. To get moving, I’m posting a photograph I took while on the Land’s End trail. It was a treat seeing a raven swoop down in the area, especially a day prior to the Superbowl.  The first is the original photo, and I then processed it through various iPhone/iPad apps. The 5th down is my favorite.

After my trek to the Guggenheim, we headed to a few other places, including the Leslie Feely Fine Art Gallery to see an exhibit of collages and box constructions by Hannelore Baron, an artist Benedicte spoke very highly of.  The pieces on display were primarily from private collections and her estate. I found the work haunting.  The more I read about her, the more I found myself looking deeper into her pieces.  I learned Ms. Baron was born in 1926 in Dilligen, Germany to Jewish parents who were the owners of a small textile shop.  During “the Night of Broken Glass,” she witnessed Nazis horrors, including the destruction of the shop and her father beaten with a hammer. You can read more about her from this news release from Stanford News Service  and this Wikipedia page. Eventually she and some of her family managed to get out of Europe and settled in the Bronx where she studied costume design.  Sadly, she suffered from depression throughout her life, had the first of three nervous breakdowns after age 20.  She died in 1987.

– Michael Kimmelman, from a The New York Times, October 1, 1993 described the defining characteristic of her work as fragile, “both physical and spiritual-the sense of quiet, private anguish expressed through forlorn materials and cryptic, edgy scrawls.”  Here is another New York Times review on her work.

Photographs were allowed, and I share several images below.

From the catalog, ” Everything I’ve done is a statement on the, as they say, human condition…the way other people march to Washington, or set themselves on fire, or write protest letters, or go to assassinate someone. Well, I’ve had all the same feelings that these people had about various things, and my way out, because of my inability to do anything else for various reasons, has been to make the protest through my artwork…” H.B.

On Wednesday I joined Benedicte and some new friends — Teri, Shirley, and Pat — for a whirlwind day of art-related fun. We started at the Guggenheim where Picasso Black and White is on exhibit through January 23rd (photos were not allowed). The exhibit is the first to explore his his use of black and white (gray, cream) to create his 118 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper. There’s good information about the exhibit on the Guggenheim website, and a gorgeous book that includes more than 150 reproductions. The book is a hefty 228 pages and is available from the website.  Pat also posted some wonderful sketches she did on her iPad while at the show which you can see on her blog.

We also visited the Kandinsky Gallery that was featuring pieces created during 1911–1913.  Again, no photos were allowed.

From any vantage point in the main lobby, where photos are allowed, you cannot see any of the artwork on the walls. However, on the seventh floor, photographs were allowed and even encouraged at Gabriel Orozco’s Asterisms exhibit, a “two-part sculptural and photographic installation” that includes “traces of erosion, poetic encounters with mundane materials, and the ever-present tension between nature and culture.”  The exhibit is made up of thousands of items that the artist collected from a playing field near his NY home and a protected coastal biosphere in Baja California Sur, Mexico, which also happens to collect industrial and commercial waste from across the Pacific.

Next up was lunch, then a visit to a gallery for what we hoped would be paintings by Bob Dylan, but that show had concluded, and then a visit to Leslie Feely Fine Art to see Hannelore Baron’s superb exhibit. More photos in the next few days.

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Some of the images I took while in NYC with Benedicte.  I love the contrasts, reflections, lines, and so on.  So many ideas for artwork, too!

I spent a couple hours for the past three afternoon taking butterfly picture. While  have many that are very pretty, this one was pure good timing!

I took this photo at Colonia Park in Franklin Park, NJ on September 1st. I just happened to focus and hit the shutter just as the butterfly took off.  This is one of my favorites from the season, and I plan on posting more.  I’m also thinking about putting together a 2013 calendar of butterfly pictures.  If I can find something reasonable, I may try to offer it through my website.  We’ll see.

On Thursday, my mom and I took a train to NYC to meet up with my sister, her  childhood friend, Debbie (mom was also friends with her mom), her husband, and her husband’s mom.  Our eventual goal was visiting the 9/11 Memorial downtown.  However, first we walked the High Line Park (like I did last Thursday with Louis). We then stopped at The Ink Pad so I could buy a few things, and then we took a subway downtown.  The photo of the bird isn’t on the High Line, rather I took it at a park in the West Village. I have a lot of cool shots that I took while strolling of the park. I added a bunch on my Facebook page from last week. I may add more.  I will add photos from the Memorial later or tomorrow in my next post.

Louis Kettle is Derry’s very cool nephew. He is currently on a whirlwind holiday going to various destinations around the U.S. for the next month. He started his journey in NYC, and I had the pleasure of spending all of Thursday with him.  After a quick bite to eat, we walked to the start of the High Line on West 34th, which is a public park build on a 1.45 mile elevated area that was once a freight rail line.  It was a lovely stroll, lots to photograph and take in, and the weather was hot and felt great. We walked to the end in the meatpacking district.

From there we walked through the Flatiron district, eventually heading up Fifth Avenue where he had his first NYC pretzel from a corner vendor.  We went into the Empire State building, got a ticket for the NY Skyride, which was fun, and then continued along Fifth, making a detour at Rockefeller Center. Back on Fifth we carried on to the fountains in Central Park. Afterwards, we walked to Times Square, stopped for more food (and his must have “I heart NY” t-shirt), and then eventually made our way back to Penn Station where I said goodbye and headed to NJ.  He is already off on the next leg of his journey to California.

I do believe he is taking his first picture of the Empire State Building.

At the start of our walk on the High Line.

A great day for a stroll!

Farther along our walk.

Taking in the sights.

Me doing the same.

In the lobby of the Empire State Building.

Taking pictures of Rockefeller Center.

Fifth Avenue near Central Park South.

Near the foundations in Central Park.

In Times Square.

For the benefit of his family, I put an album of these and some additional pictures on my Facebook page.  I may add some additional scenic shots here another day.

A few of the water lily pictures I took while in Central Park with Louis Kettle, Derry’s nephew from London who is currently visiting the US. I have lots of pictures of our adventure, some that I’ll be posting soon.