"Unfinished Business" - Postcard Collective Summer 2016

Keys to previous places called "home" are on my mind. I searched the archives and found an image for a set that stares me down from a plastic bag day after day.

This is leading somewhere ... I promise.

161 Cat Scans Later...

Tonight I learned that it takes 2 hours and 45 minutes to scan every single cat in the July 2011 issue of Cat Fancy while stationed next to the darkroom answering questions about print quality. 161 jpegs later. I think it might take all lab days this semester to scan the rest of that box but here's to trying.

Also of note, I forgot I had tossed a few other pieces of my past in with the cats shipped back from the YMCA last summer including the exhibition announcement above next to the keyboard from a 1995 two-person exhibition with my father...



... several "best of" images from contact sheets from the New Zealand trip with Li Rader in the summer of 1994 that were featured in our exhibition Finding Stewart in the Lionel Rombach Gallery on the University of Arizona campus. My brother is also featured in some of the images....



...an exhibition announcement for a two-person exhibition of Cheryl Shurtleff-Young and my father from approximately 1988 (it's always been a reference for what an eye-catching exhibition card could look like and it's 8.5" x 11")...



... and for some inexplicable reason I kept this (c. 1982).

More fascinating encounters with my scanning activities coming soon.

YMCA Untouched Round 3: May 2011

A rare documentary moment.... 2008 and 2009 as previously viewed in this post. I avoided home in 2010 and chose to wander around the country floating fake cakes instead. I didn't have a tripod this year so there are far more details than environmental views.


Father's Day card from Javy & Jacinda, c. 1982

My old bed frame for sale in the gym (previous owner was Aunt Eleanor)

Boise State is the missing pennant.





The red and green towels I bought at Macy's in Tucson, Arizona in 1998.


The scale that was in every house where I grew up. It was the last scale I intentionally stepped about 20 years ago.

Piles and the painting that once hung above the sink in Dad's studio.

The mannequin on the right was one of the very first images that I ever photographed in my Intro to Photo class at Boise State (in the front seat of the Studebaker truck).





My old pillow (and the very first photograph in the Wunderkammer.)

New Town, New Piles

The story of my week (after Round 1):


YMCA


Burn Pile


Astoria Dump


Final after the first round to be retrieved in the not so far future.

A Small Sign of Spring and I'm Dreaming of Bicycles...

The warm weather is coming (though it may only be a glimpse). I keep dreaming of riding my bicycle as soon as the ice pack melts.


YMCA, Astoria, Oregon, c. 2007


August Sander, Westerwald, 1926-27


Bill Brandt, Coal Searcher Going Home to Jarrow, 1937


Henri Cartier-Bresson, Plazza della Signoria, 1933


William Eggleston, Memphis, 1980


Claes Oldenberg, Buried Bicycle, 1990


Romuald Hazoumè, La Roulotte, 2004


Olafur Eliasson, Your New Bicycle, Urania, 2010


Ai WeiWei, Forever, 2003

Wunderkammer Part 1: The Source

I am thinking about the wunderkammer these days. I received the box documenting all keys that were given to my father when he bought the YMCA in the mail (above) just last week; the last stray box before I pack up this series and put it to rest indefinitely. It was an important turning point for me due to the sheer amount of pieces (50). Rather than wondering how on earth I was going to store them, I decided to worry about that later and just make the work - ironically "later" is now.

The source of this imagery comes from "home" - that place that smells like kneaded erasers and WD-40. I am not a documentary photographer and find that I must have a hand in manipulating the subject matter to believe it is successful. Starting in the summer of 2008, I began to photograph the YMCA "Untouched." I picked up the camera again one year later documenting the changes. I always gravitate toward my Dad's easel and the drafting table in the studio. I wasn't able to go home in 2010 so maybe 2011 will bring some photographs of the drastic changes that have taken place since my last visit. I don't know what I am going to do with these photographs (if anything). They have resided on my laptop and very few people have seen them. It's their first public "outing" so to speak. These images remind me of the subjects I photographed when I took my first photography course in 1991. Maybe that's why they aren't spectacular. They haven't changed much at all.

And so... here is where the wunderkammer comes from .... August 2008:















August 2009:














Below are two of the wunderkammer objects featured in the photographs above - the original carved wooden head and the mannequins have always been most meaningful.