Upcoming Photo Show

I've been preparing prints for a small photo show in a local business office. Here's my write-up:

Raleigh in 6 Small Prints
Photography by Andy Osterlund

Downtown Raleigh continues to grow and change. If architecture can be read, Raleigh’s streetscapes are building a novel. Walking the sidewalks, a visitor finds chapters on warehouses and industry, moderately ornate turn-of-the-last-century storefronts, towers of a growing banking center, neighborhoods of eccentric affluence and communities of generations-old poverty. Dramatic chapters are being written now, and the suspense is building: a multi-modal transit hub, neighborhood redevelopment, a returning urban population.

These photos are portraits of our moment in architecture. Remember the colors, remember the shadows, the perpetual changing of places.

1. Fashion Center of New York, Inc. Wilmington Street
No.2 in a series of 4 storefronts. The second floor windows are blacked; daylight is visible at the first floor – the rear wall and roof are absent.

2. Reliable Loan Wilmington Street
Closed on Sundays, the best place in town to get a used diamond ring. Who can miss this color?

3. Smoked Turkey Grill South Street
A new business on a desperate block. Blocks around the corner from the Mayor’s house. Pegged a “gateway corridor;” pending wholesale community rehabilitation.

4. Dillon Supply Steel and Pipe Products Harrington Street
The solid brick warehouse edge of the downtown. Now being emptied to make way for a colossal transit hub. Three silver SUV's.

5. Audio Buys Glenwood Avenue, near Fairview
An experiment in the International Style, just like Mies. Set across a wasteland of an intersection, flanked by BP and trimmed with power lines.

6. Firestone at Dusk Dawson Street
The sun catches this tire shop and the city on the crest of a hill, on a one-way street out of town.

All 5x7 Cibachrome prints, non-digital; all available for purchase.

Liking Libeskind More

I passed the half-way mark today in Libeskind's Breaking Ground - almost up to page 500 on my PDA. My opinions have shifted several times.

Before reading, my asumption was that this would be an eccentric explanation of life or archi-theory, detached in too many ways from actual living or construction. Instead, within the first few pages, Libeskind describes his family and his heritage, his warm partnership with his wife, and then the experiences of touching the foundations below what was the world trade center in NYC.

Second, because of the conversational style, I thought it would be too overtly ghost-written, and wouldn't likely describe anything architecturally significant. However, the next chapters describe profound experience and metaphor and architecture that goes beyond form-follows-function.

He describes a relationship between a building and the public that is rare and extraordinarily significant for a city. Stories are about the cultural need for certain projects, the public's aesthetic and functional desires, and then the very one-on-one bureaucracy that attempts to divert the people's attention.

The word "democracy" comes up often, related to architecture in the interest of the people.

Breaking Ground with Daniel

Spurred by a non-architect's comments, I bought and started reading Daniel Libeskind's Breaking Ground: Adventures in Life and Architecture last night. An entirely theoretical architect until the last few years, this name has always been an intriguing mystery to me, and I'm excited to read his book - it looks actually pretty light for such an enigmatic character: I hope it's authentic. Of course, Libeskind has been in the news as the named champion of the New York WTC design competitions.

If anyone is interested in reading this with me, I guarantee you'll have no trouble keeping up. Let me know.

Is Art Un-Presbyterian?

I've begun a study of Presbyterian thoughts about art. This started when I bumped into the Westminster Larger Catechism's explanation of the Second Commandment:

". . . the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever."

Our associate pastor has gotten me going on this too with some articles about the absense of Puritan art and general discussions of art in the church.

Reading Calvin's commentary today on the second commandment was very helpful. A few points: 1) All representational art is not wrong. 2) Representations of God are wrong because they insult God - so there's the bite to chew on. 3) Calvin and Westminster might not be saying the same thing.

Anyway - here's a link to Calvin on Commandment #2: http://www.ccel.org/c/calvin/comment3/comm_vol04/htm/iii.htm

Some comments from our associate pastor:
http://twosons.blogspot.com/2005/02/packer-pictures-of-christ.html#comments

If Calvin is right, what should we do with the Sistine Chapel? I can do without El Greco, and I still haven't seen Mel Gibson's Passion, and Monte Python's "Brian" was already blaspheme, and those laquered Jesus pictures always weirded me out, but Giotto and the Pietà Rondanini will be harder to let go.

This discussion will be continued on Peace Arts - www.peacepca.org/arts

samples that sing

A quick qualifier in choosing materials -
I ordered some samples last week for a project: glass block and acrylic "glass" block. I tapped the glass one with my pen and it rang out this happy note - the tone changes depending where you hit it on the block. The acrylic block makes more of a "thud" tone. A famous quote says that, "architecture is frozen music." So . . . maybe I'll tell our client that we should use glass block instead of acrylic because in a hailstorm it would sing a nicer song. It might be easier to find another excuse.

A perpetuation of things

After visiting my parents recently, we came home with a set of goblets that had belonged to my grandparents. They're not extravagant, but they're heavy with an authentic art deco style that's a relief in our buy-stylish-merchandise-at-Target era. My grandparents used them for water glasses. Tonight, some time after dinner, I noticed the glasses still on the counter with a drop of pinot noir remaining in their bowls. I had a terrifying flash of guilt, considering (maybe naively), that this is the first time they've been used for alchohol in my conservative family, that somehow they had been desecrated.

The guilt passed quickly. But, it reminded me that these glass things had survived when the mood swings of families and mores had not. My wife and I discovered wine after college. At first it was a kind of elitist academic thing, being ushered in by eccentric connoisseurs who didn't mind buying so their company could experience the craft. Then, on a vacation to Spain, we ordered house wines with our dinner and enjoyed the taste and the happy experience and the absolute appropriateness of it. Now, you can throw in that connection with Jesus' first miracle and the communion table, and add to it many more enjoyable dinners with friends, and a glass of wine has become a wonderful gift, and a discovery.

So, it's nice to finally have some stemware, but I hope my grandparents aren't offended.

Welcome to Wilson

My buddy at work lives in Wilson. He commutes 45 minutes daily to Raleigh. His world has recently changed by the opening of a new bypass around Knightdale directly to the 440 loop. When we ask him why he does it, he talks about his 19th century house with 11' ceilings and the value of his dollar in a small town.

I've shot a lot of small towns, and Wilson reminds me of a couple of them. It reminds me of Duluth, MN - a town that used to be busier. It reminds me of most every town between here and Columbia on Rt. 1 - towns where the conversation about "revitalizing the town center" is a couple generations too late.



Within the dozen blocks I walked on a Sunday afternoon, an easy majority of storefronts were empty. If a town can be judged by the storefronts on its mainstreets, the primary industry of Wilson must be pentecostal evangelism, with barbering a quick second.

Photography inevitably betrays my emotion of the moment. Somehow in the collage of light and color and composition, a critic can deduce an accidental intent. Walking these streets on this Sunday afternoon, I was unprepared to be alone (my colleague was unable to meet me in town.) I was confused by the mash of ornament and styles (when exactly was Wilson's heyday?) I was confronted by another question of faith (why don't I believe that the depth of these ubiquitous storefront chapels goes beyond the catch-phrase in its window signage? Where are the believable churches and what could they do about the emptiness?)

(This was originially posted on Peace Arts OnLine)

Southern Village and the Rest of the World

(Our servers are down today, so I'm getting some time to write.)
We met on site Tuesday in Southern Village, a planned community near Chapel Hill. Our site was a market square area - a horseshoe surrounding a small green with retail and office. The topography puts the square on a kind of sloping plateau, overlooking rolling residential streets with private homes on small lots. I noted to my supervisor that this square felt isolated - disconnected from any major city or thoroughfare. He responded that it was actually quite a large community.

This is a moment in history when developments, even whole towns are created, ex nihilo. Sprouting en masse, as if planted in entirely miscellaneous locations. In the past, development was traceable and predictable. It was at ports and points of trade, along rail corridors, or bounded by hills. Development now is selected, as if by darts on a map. Connection is not necessary (isolation is preferred.) Landscape is irrelevant. Natural resources are unleasable, redundant to public services, or undiscovered. A master plan is concocted in a half-week of meetings and late night brilliance while the grades are cleared. Construction is already behind schedule and delays are costing everyone money.

The master plan is too small.

North and South Bloodworth

Class lines in Raleigh are obscure. Where some towns have lines drawn by railroad tracks or school districts, Raleigh's seem to be drawn by developers and the limits of intention. These two storefronts are along South and North Bloodworth Street. The transition is over about four blocks of schoolyards, ball fields, and undeveloped land. Property values transition from mid 5 figures to mid 6. More telling are the portraits of homes - dilapidated two bedrooms to Victorian sixes. Driving through this Sunday, people were out on their streets, porches and yards - more in the South than the North. The shop owner on South Bloodworth approached us asking who we were and what the pictures were for. He was, to our surprise, white, mid-thirties, with a cell phone wired to his ear. He leaned against a telephone pole while we shot his store. The landcruiser was probably his. No one approached us on North Bloodworth, except for a man asking for money for food.

As a note - these shots were my first attempt at large format film (4x5). (!)