You don’t have to have a $5,000 camera setup to create images. You don’t have to travel to Europe or South America to find beautiful scenery. You don’t have to look far at all to find beauty. There is beauty in simplicity and it doesn’t get more simple than a camera phone. See. Create. Slow down.

In the past couple weeks I’ve stopped when things caught my eye, and snapped a pic. Some of my favorites are below.

Trees over Lawrence Road

Erynn enjoying some breakfast with daddy

Erynn loving our new shag rug with her stuffed friends

Alyssa looking all cool after a Big Ed's breakfast

Right now all the photos are together in one gallery, but you can see they break down into four categories… Architecture, Landscape, People, and Texture. (Though, I must admit, there’s only one photo in the ‘People’ category.)

Soon enough I plan to set up a way to order prints directly from the webpage of a handful of my photographs, if all goes well, that will be expanded over time.

Cheers!

Inspired by an “interesting” article in the N & O, I recently put together another piece for NewRaleigh… Something beyond Architecture for a change, a debate is rising about public art, past, present and future. Check it out, here.

Hope you have as much fun reading it, as I did writing it.

The mythology that will arise out of the Gulf Coast in our lifetime as a direct result of Katrina, and her aftermath, will be amazing to watch. It’s very difficult for me to empathize with those who have truly lost everything, not just materially, but losing loved ones. I believe the art and music that comes from and focuses on the lives impacted by this storm will key in reforming the system that failed us in those days. It will also play an important role in the process of rebuilding.

Take the time to watch it, you’ll thank me.

I myself am having a hard time coming to a decision on the piece. Some think that $165,000 is too much for an important piece of public art, but instead I’m wondering about the timing and implementation of this piece. Was the bridge designed without the artwork in mind? What kind of results would we have had if the three artists were brought on board earlier, working in a more integral way with the bridge designers? (And while we’re on the subject… Why don’t people appreciate the intrinsic beauty of a bridge itself anymore?)

Okay, comparing a pedestrian bridge in Cary, North Carolina to one of the most important structures in the industrial revolution isn’t really fair… However, it is fair (I think) to compare Cary’s attempts at civic art to Raleigh’s projects. Case in point, the shimmer wall on the new convention center. Surely a good Architect teamed up with a talented Artist could have come up with a more integral sculpture, allowing the art to feel less applied?

I’m afraid the answer is, “Yes, but not for under $156,000.” Hopefully the three pieces to be integrated into the new Walnut Street Park will really be something to write about.