Ignore Me Fred. Act like I'm not here.

Fred Black whom I've written about in the past is an extraordinary weaver. Peggy and I can pick out Fred’s spectacular rugs from across an aircraft hangar. And, as I have said, Fred is a man of many talents, a pilot, an architect, a high level martial artist and a tango dancer, the last two pursuits with his wife, my fellow photographer, writer and dear friend Daryl Black.

A highlight of the fall art season in Taos is the Taos Wool Fest and within it Fred’s booth which reigns supreme among the dozens of stalls and displays. After leaving the Taos Fall Art Festival’s four venues we crossed Paseo del Pueblo Norte and entered Kit Carson Park to see the churro sheep and alpacas, the hordes of wool aficionados and, most of all, Fred’s rugs. They are not shown here except in the blurred background in image number one. Instead here are a couple of candids of the steely eyed weaver himself.

Ignore me Fred. Act like I’m not here.

Intimate Histories

It was mid-September and I was heading toward to the Cruces Basin Wilderness with one last chance to find and photograph my amigo Victor “Cuba” Hernandez at his high camp. Maybe ten miles west of US 285 on FR 87 just beyond San Antonio Mountain my journey was brought to a screeching halt by bridge construction just ahead, an event with two results. First, I have yet to visit Cuba at his mountain Shangri-La and it won't be this year. That sheep has left the barn. And second, it propelled me into the fallback subject revealed here.

With mission one aborted I turned back to a nameless wildlife sanctuary I'd spied on the way in, nameless not because it had no name but because I've already forgotten it. It was last month after all. I hopped the locked gate, always a plus, and walked a rutted path to a discarded homestead with two buildings and a concrete foundation with a rusted water tank. Set in a grassy valley running west toward Laguna Larga the ruins whispered intimate histories into my ears. 

Whining Aside

All whining aside I did get one dollop of fog during my second annual coastal California safari. By the time I reached for my second breakfast scone in Tomales the soup lifted and another sunny day in paradise reared its lovely head. These came during the five mile drive from my tiny cottage at Canvas Ranch to the nearly as tiny village of Tomales. Apres sconces I drove up the coast to Fort Ross and the towering redwoods of northern Sonoma beneath which I camped as a wee laddie around 1950.

Found Art Redux

Years ago I launched a series called Found Art which deals with, for want of a better phrase, street art and artistic assemblages of ordinary stuff. Here are a couple in which great care was exhibited by the artist to "assemble" stones just so or, as in image two, to carefully wire and weld garden tools, muffler pipes and other detritus into zoomey sculpture.

On Museum Hill in Santa Fe

By the roadside in Rinconada, NM

Folks make art out of pretty much whatever's available. Always have. Always will.