It’s a hot July, but we’ve had a good breeze and I’ve been able to take walks and shoot photos regularly by heading out early. So walk this way.
Black-eyed Susans come up every year where they will no matter what else is going on in the world. Blackberries ripen and Pat gathers them so Sandra can make jam on the dark winter days ahead. I took a picture of Sandra’s mother’s lovingly tended oleander plants. They don’t normally live up North, but Sandra pounces as soon as she sees an aphid and that’s why they are still healthy.
The rust-painted “Recycling” sculpture at the New Shoreham transfer station (former dump) is by Peruko Ccopacatty and shows the possibilities of reclaiming history.
Speaking of history, I think we need to enjoy old-time movie theaters now, while they last.
Outside the Spring Street Gallery, I added a grape vine to this “community fiber tree.” I am also planning to thread and hang a feather and a couple shells with holes if I can interest a grandchild in helping.
Inside the gallery, there’s a large ceramic version of a skate’s egg case. Next Nature herself appears, in the form of a blue claw crab who was about to release thousands of eggs into the salt pond. Blue claws are moving north, which is nice if you love to see them, not so nice if you realize it’s because of a warming climate. The little girl at the Nature Conservancy seining-net demonstration was entranced with a green crab, too.
Painted rocks of various sizes are next, followed by precarious ones threatening to fall from the ever changing bluffs. All islands have messages about about the precarious — what Nature makes precarious, what humans do.
Photo: Robert W. Hart / Dallas News contributor Ron Olsen, who launched the rock art trail, holds one of the hundreds of painted rocks at Parr Park in Grapevine, Texas.
People like to paint rocks. It’s an art that’s simultaneously permanent and impermanent. In New Shoreham, for example, the beloved Painted Rock is like a mural or community bulletin board (there’s a real bulletin board, too, online). I’ve blogged about it often, including in 2015, here.
In the summer, you need to photograph your artwork quickly because the rock gets painted over faster than you can say Jack Robinson. But an archaeologist would find all the layers still underneath, and the rock itself has probably been there since the last Ice Age.
Similarly, there are small, smooth rocks people paint for sale, for charity, or for gifts. In a May post I wrote about local kids painting rocks during the pandemic and raising money for medical workers.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post has a story on another pandemic-inspired rock project, one featuring thousands of painted rocks from around the country.
Cathy Free reports, “Chris Penny figures that his mail carrier must have spectacular biceps by now.
“Most every day for the past seven months, when the carrier arrives at Penny’s home in Grapevine, Tex., he unloads a few heavy bins and hauls them one by one up the driveway to Penny’s front porch.
“The boxes are filled with packages containing painted rocks, most of them intricate works of art, handmade and mailed from people all over the country. Since the beginning of the pandemic, people have been sending them to Penny so that he and his family can place them along the Parr Park Rock Art Trail — a mile-long public walking path that has become a wonderland of more than 4,000 art rocks. …
‘These aren’t just any rocks — they’re works of art,’ said Penny, 44. …
“The rocks — painted to resemble everything from the Beatles to Mickey Mouse to a face mask — started arriving at Penny’s house ever since he bought a bunch on eBay after noticing a dozen painted rocks scattered along a nature trail in Parr Park. Penny said he knew right away that he wanted to flood the trail with them and make it a destination.
“Penny learned that the colorful rocks he’d stumbled upon were painted by [Grapevine photographer and RV dealer] Ron Olsen and his three grown children in March, after Olsen returned from a trip to Iceland and discovered that Grapevine, a city of around 46,000 people, had practically become a ghost town due to the nationwide coronavirus shutdown. …
“Soon, he and Penny decided to join forces to transform the trail into an artsy attraction for anyone in Grapevine and beyond who wanted to escape the stress of covid-19 for a while.
“ ‘We wanted to make it a getaway for people and give parents something safe to do outdoors with their children,’ said Olsen, 62. …
“Penny, who runs the nonprofit Broken Crayon, focused on helping women and children living in poverty in the United States and Ghana, said the project has provided his family with something fun and positive to do close to home during the pandemic.
“In the early days in March, after he’d painted several dozen rocks with his daughters and bought dozens more online, Penny posted on Facebook, asking anyone who would like to contribute to the project to mail him their rocks and he’d pay for the shipping. …
“Penny said he’s contributed almost $10,000 of his own money for shipping costs (rocks are heavy), although many people now pay to ship their rock masterpieces on their own. …
“All along the nature trail, visitors will now find painted owls, unicorns, tigers and humpback whales, along with the emblems of favorite sports teams, salutes to fallen soldiers and paintings of beloved cartoon characters and classic cars. Somebody even mailed Penny a giant tic-tac-toe board. …
“Penny’s favorite part of the project is that every rock tells a story. ‘Some people have painted rocks in memory of family members who have died, and others have painted memories of high school, like a favorite teacher or a favorite song,’ he said. ‘One woman painted a rock to honor her daughter because she’s serving with the military in Afghanistan and she misses her.’ …
“Whether a rock is painted by a professional artist or a 2-year-old doesn’t matter, Penny said. ‘When it comes down to it, there’s really no such thing as a bad rock,’ he said.”
Check out photos of some beautiful rocks at the Washington Post, here.
Today’s photos include two beauties that Sandra M. Kelly took at the Painted Rock in New Shoreham. I think the seal and mermaid are better than any work I saw on the Painted Rock this year, and I wish I could find out who the artist was. (NWG, if you know the painter, please let me know so I can give credit.)
The cow jumping over the Davis Square subway station has something to do with the bucolic history of City of Somerville. The mysterious door to nowhere is near my house, and I never get tired of taking pictures of it.
The next few photos are of the Sudbury and Concord rivers and include two shots of a popular canoe-rental business on the Sudbury. The antique metal pole in Wayland Square, Providence, is another mystery. Is it a lamppost? I’ve never seen it lit.
I felt compelled to post another picture of shadows, my favorite subject, plus food for thought from Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Here are some recent Rhode Island and Massachusetts photos. (Connecticut is also considered Southern New England, but I haven’t been there in ages.)
I wonder if other people have preferences for seeing certain kinds of photos on certain kinds of social media. For example, unless it’s a picture of one of my grandchildren, I really don’t like seeing people pictures on Instagram, but on Facebook, people pictures are the only kinds of photos I want to see. I’m still figuring out Ello, which is more likely to have art or gifs. I like almost any kind of photo on twitter or on blogs.
My own pictures are mostly from my walks. I’m starting off here with the plant sale at the New Shoreham library fundraiser and a typically short-lived scene on the island’s famed painted rock. Also in Rhode Island, an intensely serious heavy-equipment operator in a sandbox, the alley beside the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, fancy church architecture, and a plaque commemorating H.P. Lovecraft, a popular Providence-based horror writer with some regrettable character flaws.
From Massachusetts, yellow iris in a meadow that is more often than not under water — or ice. Also a clematis, a remnant of a once-spectacular garden at a house that got sold. (Too spectacular for the new owners to live up to. Kind of like the garden in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.)
Feeling the cold setting in? Well here’s a summery scene on New Shoreham’s famed Painted Rock, one of my favorite pictures of the island’s constantly changing bulletin board. Wish I knew who the artist was.
John is behind the new tumblr blog featuring the Painted Rock in as many iterations as folks can dig out of the albums and send along.
Here’s what John had to say about it on the island e-board:
“Thanks for the kind comments and great pics submitted to paintedrockbi.tumblr.com The ‘mini cooper rock’ and the ‘hamburger rock’ are especially cool.
“There was also a question about me and the reason for the blog, so here goes.
“About 20 years ago my mother painted the rock early one morning to celebrate my sister turning 16 and my turning 21. Our summer home is a only short walk down Mohegan Trail from the rock, but if you took careful note of our ages, you might guess that my sister and I were not really morning people.
“So by the time we had rolled out of bed and made it down the street to look, it was already painted over. No photos were taken, but I know it’s there buried under all the layers. Now I am a parent, and it kind of reminds me of the many things we do for our children that no one ever really sees, but we keep doing anyhow.
“For many years I’ve been thinking about how best to document the many cool rock paintings. And last week I finally got around to doing something about it; hopefully the page will continue to get submissions and we can save the many small memories behind each coat of paint.”
A bouncy boat ride in heavy rain last night. A warm sunny morning. Here are a few photos from my last island weekend of 2015.
An especially nice autumnal theme for the Painted Rock. Whoever painted it was lucky to have their artwork survive nearly three days. That would be unheard of in the summer, when birthday messages get painted over by wedding felicitations several times a day.
Down the bluffs on a steep path. Waves breaking on the beach. Tide pools.
I was delighted to find a little urchin (I don’t think I ever had before) and a slipper shell with a smaller slipper shell hitching a ride.
I’m not much of a world traveler although I always enjoy new places once I get there. I feel sufficiently challenged, though, just trying to see what is in front of me and delving into meanings.
I overheard two men who were walking in a shade-dappled lane this morning. They were discussing “operations” and the “lowest cost per month” and were consulting a smartphone. I’m not sure they saw much in front of them.
Not to be superior, I miss things, too. How many times have I come up out of the Porter Square subway station to cross the street and not noticed the bollards with the mysterious carvings? I’ve pasted three samples below.
A few more photos. Two sides of an especially nice paint job on the Painted Rock. A whole family brought their beach chairs and drinks to watch the artists among them paint the sunset, boats, and sea creatures and then photograph the art before someone painted over it with new messages. Which happened in a couple hours and involved much less style. But that’s OK — the rock is the billboard of pure democracy.
On another rock, one I had never noticed until early Saturday, please note directions to China.
Circling back to the “lowest cost” guys, when I got to the bend in the lane, they were gone. I was walking so much slower than they were.
I’ve got a few more photos to share: my neighbor’s lilies and new pink growth on a Japanese maple, for starters.
I also snapped a wedding notice on the painted rock, the unofficial island billboard, before it got painted over with new messages. A bride and groom actually hired a woman to do the painting, which is a new one on me. The painted rock notices are generally more spontaneous.
I’ve included three family photos. Erik’s sister’s family rented the sailboat for a couple weeks of catching up with friends in the U.S., and John and my husband joined them for the initial leg of their trip. If they all look a little slaphappy here, maybe it’s because they made it from Newport to the island in an unfamiliar boat without incident.
I continue to be a fan of street art and the way it allows informal artists to express themselves while also letting passersby enjoy both homespun and professional achievements as they go about their errands.
In Rhode Island, there’s a painted rock. Everyone paints it, and no painting lasts for long. In the summer, paintings wishing someone happy birthday may last only a few hours, as mine did one Birthday Week when Suzanne turned 16 and John turned 21. (They didn’t wake up in time to see it.)
There has also been some amazing work by experts on that rock, too, but it gets respect for only a couple days. It’s essential to capture it with a camera.
Yesterday I passed along an idea to a gallery owner that she liked. How about painting the painted rock to look like a rock!? Crazy, huh? She may do it, too. She has a painting of rocks in the current show that she could replicate. She knows she’d have to take a photograph, though, or the rock might be painted over before anyone sees it.
Meanwhile, here’s a nice story about street art in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.
Amy O’Leary writes at the NY Times, “Growing up, Joseph Ficalora would sit on the roof of his family’s steel fabrication business. In Bushwick, Brooklyn, in the 1980s, it was one of the few safe places outdoors. The view was grim. The streets were dirty. Graffiti was endless. …
“Most people want to hold onto their past as it was, but Mr. Ficalora has found greater comfort in obliterating it, bathing the neighborhood in paint.
“Today the rooftop of [his] family business, GCM Steel, offers an eye-popping panorama of street art. More than 50 multicolored murals have transformed a swath of nearby buildings into a vast outdoor gallery called the Bushwick Collective, anchored at the intersection of Troutman Street and St. Nicholas Avenue.” More.
Photo: Victor J. Blue for The New York Times Gaia, well-known among street artists, paints — legally — on a building in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
I noted the little blue talisman but didn’t stop, walking on toward the path. Then I turned back. “Asakiyume would take a picture,” I thought. On the way back up the path I saw the little white talisman.
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