Home » Posts tagged 'mostly pictures' (Page 3)
Apparently my phone had a panorama feature all along and I didn’t know. I’d sort of created panoramas by taking several shots and putting them together, but this was so much better. I found this after accidently touching the wrong part of the screen.
These were taken late May in Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina.
From our cabin.
Sunset at the top of the mountain.
The walkway to the swinging bridge.
I appear to have a fascination with places that don’t exist. These are buildings that used to be there, but aren’t anymore. Nothing else has been built in that location. Often the mailbox and the steps are left, but otherwise there is no sign of it.
I noticed this forlorn house while eating at a restaurant called “Blu Fig”. That address is 6444 Nolensville Pike, Antioch, TN 37013. This is located across from it, to the south west.
Here it is a little closer.
It was raining that day, so we didn’t wander around it. There is something weird/interesting/exciting about wandering around an abandoned house. I’d never think to go into someone else’s yard and look in the windows of their house if it was occupied. But once abandoned, the rules change. Is it still property if nobody lives there?
We suspect that the reason the house is abandoned is the construction/destruction right next to it – just to the north.
This is using the 3D GPS feature on my phone. The orientation is to the south. The red pin is for Blu Fig (which is a very good restaurant if you like Middle-Eastern food.)
What is this destruction? Is it for a road, or a shopping center?
What would it have been like to be in this house, listening to the explosions as they blew up the rock to make this area level with the street?
Imagine how the plates would rattle when the explosions went off. It must have felt like being at war. It was war, in a way. Imagine owning this house free and clear – you’ve paid on your mortgage for 30 years, going to work every day to make enough money to have a nice place to live. You’ve raised your children here. Or perhaps this was an inheritance – you lived here with your parents, and their parents before that. Many generations of memories here. This is where all the family gathered for holidays and transitions – graduations, birthdays, weddings, deaths.
And then some developer comes in the name of progress, and takes all of that away. It is theft.
Here are more 3D pics of the house and yard, from different angles. Notice the wall of rock to the left of the house (north of it, but more south in these pics). It is 12-20 feet high.
This is all gone now.
I just think it is cool looking.
I have this fascination with outside stairs that are attached to buildings. These are stairs that are substantial, that appear to have been constructed out of the same material as the building.
Very few of the ones I really like have a rail – either attached to the building or to the edge of the stairs. Normally I would feel worried about going up or down these, but perhaps because they are attached at one side it is OK. I still wouldn’t want to use these stairs at night or in bad (rainy) weather. I find it interesting that the stairs are all uncovered. Perhaps these are all in locations that have very little rain?
Some do have rails.
Outside stairs in America seem to be for fire escapes only. They are not the main way into and out of the upstairs living area. In fact, you are not supposed to use fire escapes unless there is an emergency. Sometimes they are used for upstairs apartments, so the tenant can go out whenever they want without disturbing the landlord (who lives below).
Perhaps these outside stairs were built afterwards – that the second floor was an addition to the house, and rather than punch a hole in the first floor, they simply put the entrance outside.
Some are quite mysterious.
Here are some that I don’t really like. It is good to have a negative example every now and then to understand where the boundaries are.
These aren’t very solid looking, and are inside.
Something about the stairs doubling back I don’t like, as well as the open sky.
Another doubling back, and also inside. One flight is completely not attached or railed.
These look dangerous. I seem to not like outside stairs going down.
Especially these – I feel like I’d pitch right into the sea.
Here are some other interesting options.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little side trip into this particular fascination. I plan on making more posts with stairs and paths, so click on that tag if you are interested in more.
(All pictures are from Pinterest)
I decided that I wanted to try to make art like Nick Bantock does. I still don’t have image transfer down, so I’m using several of his other techniques in the meantime. You can learn a lot about collage and layering art from many other sources, but Mr. Bantock has two different books that will give you an insider’s look into his personal process. They are “Urgent 2nd Class: Creating Curious Collage, Dubious Documents, and Other Art from Ephemera” and “The Trickster’s Hat: A Mischievous Apprenticeship in Creativity”.
Here is the first bit, which actually has two layers – paint and ephemera such as foreign money, stamps, and maps.
Closeup of top left
Top right
Bottom right
Bottom left
Middle
It took two days to get to this point. Then it took a few more days of looking at it to start painting over the areas that still needed work. I wanted to darken it at first, but then I decided to work with the colors I had. I mixed together copper and olive paint with some watered down white and got a mix kind of like camouflage and worn American dollars. I started to apply it and then added more of yellow and black to adjust it. It wasn’t the colors I’d used at all, but it was a nice alternative than just painting black.
This is what I got.
When doing the cropping of the photo I decided to enhance the colors a bit digitally to see if I can show what they really look like in person. This is a little much, so you’ll have to kind of imagine that it is a little less than this, and a little more than the previous.
The idea of continuing to work on it is to make it all good. There are always areas that are better than others when you work on a collage or painting. Keep those, and add to the areas that aren’t so good. Keep editing until it is perfect.
I’m not enjoying this process as much as I’ve been enjoying the art journaling. That is faster, certainly, but it also seems to produce strong emotions and memories while I work. That in itself is the reason to do it. This is not producing many feelings, other than a desire to stop working on it to preserve it as is.
I’m learning that I feel very attached to the layers as I make them. I’ve not wanted to paint over any of it, even the so-so parts, because I don’t want to lose anything. This is the mindset that makes some people keep old things stored away in their basement with the idea that “one day” they will need it. I’m trying to work with and around that, so that is why I decided to take pictures as I work on this.
Here are the detail photos from the second set. There are two to four layers in each photo.
Top left
Top left (enhanced)
Top right
Top right (enhanced)
Center left
Center middle
Center right
Bottom left
Bottom center
Bottom right
I’ll add further pictures in a separate post as this progresses.
—-Materials used (so far)—–
Stretched canvas
gesso
Acrylic paint
tissue paper (some with Distress Ink on the underside)
matte medium
stamps
Asian map
photocopies of foreign money
“crushed glass” glitter
tools – fingers, paintbrush, sponge brush, tissue paper
The old saying is true – you can’t ever go home again. I decided to see if there were any images of the house I grew up in online. Turns out there are a lot. I’m a little freaked out, actually.
One – the house is no longer for sale, so why are the pictures up? This benefits me, of course, but do the current owners care if the whole world can see inside their home?
Two – what did they do to the house!? It looks so spare, so lifeless. Where are the books? They ripped out all the bookshelves. I’m a little suspicious of people who don’t read. The wall colors are a bit bland and noncommittal. Maybe these are “staging” pictures, and not pictures of the seller’s furnishings. It took me a while to figure out what they’d done with the half-bath downstairs. The yard! My mother lovingly landscaped it – and it has all grown over. So sad.
Three – it sold for what!? I sold this house in 1998 for $69,900. The couple who bought it assured me that they were going to live there a long time. I’d gone to school with the husband, and as he was a real estate agent, we were able to talk before the sale. The neighbors had all expressed concern that they didn’t want someone to buy it and flip it – they wanted a neighbor, not an investor. He assured me that he was here to stay. Well – turns out that was only for seven years, because they sold it for nearly double what they paid for it, at $127,500. I feel a little cheated, and lied to. Then it sold again two years later for $141,000. Eight years later it sold again for $155,000. Stunningly, that owner put it back on the market not two months later for $163,000, but it didn’t sell.
We lived in that house for 30 years. It was home, not a house. I still have dreams that are set in it. That was what defined “home” to me, and in many ways it was ideal. I needed to move because I couldn’t afford it, and I needed to get away from some bad situations that were happening in my life. But in some ways, I want that house back. I especially would have liked to have found a house that size (3 bedrooms, 1.5 bath, 1600 sq feet) for the price I got for it. My current house has the same number of rooms and is 400 sq feet smaller – and cost $30K more!
Here’s the info from the listing –
“A comfortable and charming 1920’s Dutch Colonial that is conveniently located. This well maintained home offers character and charm with original hardwood floors and two piece crown molding throughout. The large living room offers hidden wiring for wall mount flat screen tv giving way for more spacious living. The separate dining room and adjacent kitchen offer a great flow for entertaining; enjoy double oven plus gas range with microwave hood. The second level offers 3 bedrooms, one with an oversized closet and a full bathroom. Don’t miss the 1/2 bathroom off the kitchen and the large unfinished basement, great for storage with walk out access to backyard. Enjoy days and evenings on the side screened in porch.”
I’m amused that they did all that work with the house, but the basement is still unfinished. The basement is huge – you could live in just it. But, it is haunted, so there’s that. Wonder if they know? I called a friend to exorcise it before I moved, but who knows if the ghost actually left? Sometimes they don’t want to leave. Maybe that is why the house sold four times in 17 years.
Here are the pictures of the front of the house
Go in the front door and here’s the living room
Turn around from that last picture (this is to the left of the living room) to see the dining room
This is looking back towards the living room from the dining room
Here’s the kitchen as soon as you enter from the dining room
They enclosed the back porch and changed how you get into the bathroom downstairs
Here is the half bath that is attached to the kitchen.
Outside, the back porch area (this did not exist, nor did that immense fence)
The sad-looking yard
Back in the living room, go right to go out on to the side porch
Back in the living room, the stairs going up.
At the top of the stairs, looking towards the main bathroom
In the bathroom itself.
The bedroom on the Southwest corner (the one my brother had initially, and after he moved I took it.)
The bedroom in the Northwest corner (my parent’s bedroom)
The bedroom in the South – a dark, small room. This was the one I had, as the youngest.
I have noticed that I really am interested in houses on top of houses. Not apartment complexes, but separate houses built one on top of each other, almost randomly, stair-stepping up a hillside. I looked on Pinterest and discovered there are several such house-collections (Villages? Towns?) all across the world.
I’m not sure why I like this, since I value privacy and certainly didn’t like sharing walls with other people when I lived in a townhouse. You hear (and sometimes smell) everything your neighbors do. Sometimes the noises are very disturbing to the point that perhaps the police need to be called.
So why do I like this? I decided to dig deeper using these images.
The last picture I found was a big part of it. This is in Santorini, Greece.
Steps on the outside of a building, attached to the wall. Something very intriguing to me here. You can come and go without anyone in the house knowing. Private access. You share a house, but not a life. Not all is revealed.
Yet also part of what I like with these large collections of houses is how does anyone get home? What is the “road” and what is your neighbor’s roof? Sometimes the two are the same.
This is in Masuleh, Iran
Closer –
Here is Kandovan village, near Tabriz, Iran. It was constructed from a cave system.
This is in Turkey – Ortahisar.
Here is El Aleuf, M’Zab, Iran. While not stacked on top of each other, it is still intriguing to me because the walls are all shared, like one house grew onto another. It looks like a nest or a hive, rather than a planned thing. More organic.
Then there are shanty towns, barrios, favelas in Brazil.
One got painted – it is Santa Marta. The people are still very poor, but at least their houses are beautiful.
This is Cinque Terre, Nanarola, Northern Italy
This is on the Amalfi coast, Positano, Southern Italy
These are all Santorini, Greece
This is a Buddhist monastery, Phuktal, in Ladakh, India
Here are some similar ideas, of housing complexes that no longer exist. They are further from the main idea, but still close enough that they say something to it.
This is Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong
and this is Derinkuyu
How do you get home? What is it like to share walls and roofs with people? How well do you know them? Does living close create community? Or are people so close that they crave distance?
I like the ideas I’m reading about communal living, intentional communities, and cohousing.
I don’t think these are that at all. I think for most of these villages/towns they were unintentional – a lot of people wanted to live in the same place. Some had no choice – they were very poor and built wherever they could. Sharing a wall or a roof meant you didn’t have to build one. Some of these are very wealthy places – highly desired tourist destinations as well. Some are slums.
Yet they all share the same idea – shared houses, stacked on top of each other. No distinct roads or easy ways to get to your home.
How would you draw a map? How would you tell others how to get to your home?
Maybe that is part of the point – it is so hard to get there that you can get lost inside it, never worrying about people visiting you. You are hidden in plain sight. The very nature of it means that you have privacy, in a seemingly counter-intuitive way.
(All pictures are from Pinterest.)
I was at a movie theater recently and took a look at the toy dispensers. These are the ones that you put in a quarter (or three), turn the knob, and a plastic ball comes out with a toy inside.
The usual things were there – bouncy balls, cheap rings, stickers – and then there were these.
Here’s a closer shot.
Grenades. Army tanks. Jet fighters.
But wait – there’s more. There were two machines with questionable stock.
and closer-
Handcuffs and grenades.
These are marketed to children? These are supposed to be toys?
And we wonder why our children are violent.
We reap what we sow. We must be more mindful of what we teach our children to admire. If we give them weapons for toys, what will the harvest be? Who will they become?
Sometimes the real world and the video game world have crossover. While it is said that art imitates life, sometimes life imitates art.
After playing role-playing games long enough, you might start to look at the real world differently.
It may make you look at things more closely.
It may make you notice differences.
Here’s another weird wall –
If you play a game known as “Grand Theft Auto” – you may be tempted to try for an “insane stunt bonus”.
But hopefully you’ll learn some valuable life lessons.
A home is a sanctuary, an entrance into a special place to recharge and restore.
The perfect home for me involves a lot of places to lounge about near natural sunlight.
There would be reading nooks with lots of pillows.
The bedroom would have a view onto the garden.
The dining room would have an entire wall be a window. The focus is on the outside, not the inside. Notice the sparse furniture. Simple, efficient.
The yard would be enclosed in such a way that nobody could get in, but the walls would be concealed on my side with plants. This would provide safety without a sense of being trapped.
The back yard would have a staircase
That led to an outside room, perhaps like a Japanese tea house. But it would have cushions and pillows.
In some ways I like the idea of an outside bathroom. It feels daring and bold.
But it also seems like it would be cold and drafty.
So then there is the idea of a bathroom that has a lot of light – again, the idea of a private yard would be necessary.
A view out onto a Japanese tea garden would be excellent.
The house would have no straight lines – all curves and waves, with white or cream on the walls. The color would come from the floor and accessories like pillows.
And there would be a lot of books. And tea. And craft supplies.
betsybeadhead 
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