dock

Woods Hole at midnight.

worry

Photo from a magazine, manipulated in-camera.

What's Cookin'?

...good lookin'?

PIZZA

OM NOM NOM NOM

rainbow bee

Polarized black-and-white print. I cut and peeled off pieces of the top layer of the photo paper, then colored in the blank spots.

blindfold

The black and white print is a picture of a picture from a magazine. I used an X-acto to slice it up and then I mounted it to a torn-up piece of cardboard with packing tape. Then that cardboard is mounted on another piece of cardboard.

Big Digits

Clare and the Big Digits homemade oversize faux foam #1 hand.
Great for high-fiving, with GUSTO.

weekend bedroom

My old bedroom, after I had been permanently moved-out for a while, and my mom mom-ified it.

Calico

This picture was taken in New Bedford.

needs flames

I feel like this could've been the box art for Back To The Future, if the movie starred Roger instead of MJF and a Moog instead of a Delorean.

trash-folk

Hobo guitar case.

lamp & bookshelf

Another in-camera abstract.

Laser Cats!

When Renfield isn't shooting cat barf out of his mouth, he's shooting lasers out of his mouth.

lotus lady

In-camera digital abstraction thing.

clues

Some random stuff I packed together before I moved.

Cellophane cd. CHECK
Agoraphobic Nosebleed & Converge "The Poacher Diaries" cd. CHECK
Other cds. CHECK
Maxell cassettes. CHECK
Used thrift-store roll of 110 film. CHECK (does anyone know a place that will develop this?)
Weird piece of wood. CHECK
"Game Over" death mushroom wristband. CHECK
Wind-up Frankenstein's monster. CHECK
Two tooth owls. DOUBLE CHECK

spreader

mmmmmmmmmmmmmanure spreader. Yum.

Concord, MA.

crazy RV face

Crappy image quality, but too hilarious not to post. Buck teeth! Eyebrows! I'm calling that number and buying this vehicle.

shirts

I actually have about 3x this many shirts, and I'm not proud of it.

seaweed

Next to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA.

cat lamp

The all-mighty cat lamp. Touch-sensitive. Three levels of brightness. Infinite levels of cuteness.

ghost stories

This house has been in my dad's side of the family since 1919. I don't know much about its history, except for a few things, vaguely. Most of it was built in the early 1800's, and it was first a convent, and then it was a firehouse, before my ancestors bought it.

On the right side of the photo there's a fireplace. It's one of four fireplaces, one on each side of a huge central chimney. Beyond that is the living room. In the foreground is the dining room table. As you can see, the living room is huge. I wonder if it used to be the cathedral part of the convent. I'll have to find out.

The place is supposedly haunted. Many people who have stayed in the house over the last century have experienced ghostly happenings. For instance, a common one is that that wicker rocking chair in the center of the frame can be heard creaking back and forth in the middle of the night. Some people hear footsteps at night too.


GHOST STORIES

I've always heard talk of other people having had run-ins with ghosts, or spirits, or whatever you want to call them. I don't know too many specifics though. I haven't spent much time there since I was in my early teens, and whenever ghost stories came up in conversation back then, or earlier, the conversation was hushed up because people didn't want to freak out the little kids. But I have had a couple weird experiences of my own, too. First, here are some other peoples' stories:

One night one of my relatives was asleep in bed. She woke up suddenly and opened her eyes to see a very old man standing next to her bed, staring at her. He said, "How long have you been coming here?" in a friendly and inquisitive tone. She had half a heart attack and pulled the blankets over her head. When she looked out he was gone.

My dad recently told me that one time my mom was there alone in the middle of the day. She was in the kitchen, minding her own business, when she heard a woman weeping from another part of the house.

My mom once let her coworker's family stay at the house for a weekend. The coworker brought along a friend who happened to be a medium. As soon as she walked through the door she stopped dead in her tracks and said "Someone is here." She spent the whole weekend gathering information (however it is that mediums do that) about the various spirits who live there. One of them is apparently a nun who watches over the females of the family, and occasionally talks to some of them.

That's all pretty freaky. As a kid I was always a little uneasy at the house, mostly at night. I think any kid would be. You're trying to fall asleep, and all you can smell is oldness, and all you can hear is the sailor's clock on the mantle, ticking loudly throughout the house... FOREVER. It's creepy. I've heard the rocking chair creaking once or twice, and the footsteps now and then, but neither ever convinced me that ghosts are real. But these three experiences made me wonder...

I was sitting on the couch in the living room. Everyone who was at the house that night was there with me in the living room; my parents, my sister, and my grandfather, all sitting around reading. But I wasn't really aware of this at the particular time. I was just sitting there, chillin', reading the Hardy Boys or something. At one point, out of the corner of my eye I saw (saw, but didn't notice right then) a person in a white shirt walk from the kitchen hallway, through the dining room, and into my grandfather's bedroom (the doorway at the left of the frame, next to that portrait on the wall). I was so focused on my book that it was one of those things that your brain perceives but doesn't really tell you about immediately. So I keep reading, a few minutes go by, and then I look up. First I notice that everyone (none of whom are wearing white shirts) is there with me in the room, and then my brain says "Hey man, then who just walked into grandpa's room and hasn't come out?" Answer: no one? Or some... THING????!

A few years later I was lying in bed. It was really late and I had been trying to fall asleep for a long time, with no success. It was totally silent, which is quite different from the day times, when my grandfather has either classical music or NPR playing on the living room radio, low volume all day every day. So I'm finally drifting off to sleep when all of a sudden country music starts blaring from the living room at full volume. Really, really loud. Right on the other side of the wall. Country music, something that my grandfather has probably never even heard of. It went on for at least a few minutes. But it felt like hours while I tried not to suffocate under my quilt/drown in my own pee. Finally I heard someone (probably my grandpa) walk across the living room and turn the radio off. It has the kind of power switch where to turn it on or off you have to press it in, it clicks, you let it go, and it clicks out again.

There's a beach nearby that we would always go to. One time my mom asked me to help her bring some beach chairs down from the attic. We went up and opened the door and there were the beach chairs leaning up against a pile of old shutters. We grabbed them, went to the beach, and had a lovely time. The next day as we were preparing to go home, we brought the beach chairs back up to the attic. When we opened the door the first thing we saw was a ripped-off bird wing lying on top of the shutters. It was definitely not there the previous day. Everything I've heard about the supposed ghosts indicates that they are harmless, but whoa, super creepy.

Do you think ghosts or spirits exist, and that they interact with us in some way? Do you have any ghost stories of your own? I'd like to hear them.

thunderbucket

Bathroom in Quissett, MA.

boat barn

A barn used for storing boats that are being repaired, in Quissett, MA. Locked with a stick, the only way to fly.

Here's Weegee!

I have a big piece of fabric hanging on my wall with a small section of this picture printed on it. It's called "Crowd at Coney Island, 1940", by Arthur Fellig, a.k.a Weegee. Weegee was a great documentary-style photographer, and was also responsible for the greatest 5-word combination in the history of the English language:

HUMAN HEAD CAKE BOX MURDER

Jack Nicholson was shopped in, but IRL!! OMGGGGGGgg!!!

It took me a few minutes of squinting at the full Coney Island photo to find the section from my tapestry thing. Once I did, I realized I've had it up on the wall backwards for 4 years. ROFL MY WAFFLE!!

Robin

Before and after of a photo from the 1950's.

Shanghai

I've been doing a bunch of restorations lately. This is Shanghai on some 4th of July. Not the city, Shanghai's the old guy. Got a flag. Some kind of wackypack flag. The kids behind him have the right idea, but I don't know what country Shanghai thinks he's in. It's definitely not China, which is too bad because that picture would've been an awesome metaphor... for something.

The top picture is the original scanned color print. The next one is the finished retouched image, and the bottom one is just the same image cropped, to cut out all the empty space on the side. Shrubs count as empty space.

Cool as Ice T

Bussin' ain't easy.

Us Versus Them @ Abbey Lounge

First show.

the brook

Holy Hallmark moment! This is the brook behind my old house. I had an awesome treehouse in that tree at the left, but unfortunately I don't think I have any pictures of it.
35mm black & white, blah blah blah.

Pompeii

A wall at Pompeii, 2001 (35mm film).

My wisdom tooth post will have to wait until I get some wood-carving tools. You'll see what I mean, someday.

vein

My wisdom tooth post is coming soon. I'm going to make some kind of art with them, but I've been too busy drugging myself and holding ice packs on my watermelon face to do anything like that yet.

In the meantime, here's a digital light image. I have a bunch of different series of abstract light pictures that fit into various categories, such as cells, bugs, landscapes, skeletal, etc. This is from the "veins" series.

Jimbo

Squirrel Nut Zippers! Remember them? "Oh, sure, 'zoot suit rioooottt, RIOT! Throw back a bottle of beer dun da-dum da-dum...'" No, not them, that other swing band that had that other song. They played here last Friday, and Paz from Ukulala asked me to come take pictures of some of the band members while he interviewed them before the show (go here for Paz's account of the interview and the show). One thing led to another and suddenly I was on the guestlist, because I'm kind of a big deal. The show was great, and I got to touch the baritone ukulele that was played on "Hell" (THAT song).

I've been shooting a lot of shows lately for this site called mel.opho.be. I'll try to make my next few posts un-music related. Look for my Friday post, which will probably be some kind of gruesome picture of my wisdom teeth.

Boris

Boris at the Middle East last night. It was probably one of the top 5 shows I've ever been too.

fence in november

In Concord, MA. I take a lot of pictures there.

I haven't had much to say about a lot of the photos I've been posting lately. I think most of them pretty much speak for themselves. So here are some anagrams of "Photo-Go-Round", and their significance or whatever:

- Top honour dog
(Arfstanding!)

- No troop dough
(Topical and sobering.)

- Poor donut hog
(Is there any other kind?)

- Hot dog on pour
(Wouldn't it be awesome if bars had draught hot dogs? No, because that would be absolutely disgusting...)

- "Ooh, ground pot"
(...or would it? Think about it, man. Dude, look at me. Look at me................... think about it.)

- "D'oh! Gout porno!"
(Man, we've all been there.)

- Good ho: nut pro
(Makes sense I guess.)

- Too Rough Pond
(Never, ever, go skinnydipping there.)

- "Uproot hog." *Nod*
(An exchange between two hog farmers about to gather up the season's pig harvest. From the pig fields.)

- Our dong photo
(I promise you won't see it here. Maybe on Ukulala.)

- "Run to God, Pooh"
(Christopher Robin's sad, sad last words.)

chandelier pt. two

From inside an abandoned theater, which also might have been a church, because there was a gigantic Jesus hanging on a cross backstage.

Us Versus Them

Photo shoot for Us Versus Them.

celebrity

I used to take a lot of pictures of my brother when he was little, because he wasn't self-conscious and would do whatever I said. One time I had him posing in front of the sliding-glass door in the porch, which had a large, heavy curtain covering it. As I was focusing the lens I told him to back up a little. Then a little more. All of a sudden he disappeared through the curtain. Turns out the sliding-glass door was open. He went tumbling backwards down the stairs into the backyard. I felt pretty bad about that. But even though I almost killed him with photography, he still kept posing for pictures. What a trooper.

stove sitter

35mm negative printed through crumpled cellophane.

hand mirror

There's a universe within your own nostrils.

(b&w film)

win a prize

At a 4th of July fair in Lexington last year.

Carpineto cross

Another one from Carpineto della Nora, Italy.

diamond heart

No "jewel hearts" here, no sir.

The Rog + cat

Roger mans the electronic pianos in The Appreciation Post, but sometimes he lets his American flag t-shirt cat play a few bars. It's much like Toonces the Driving Cat, but with Moogs.

jewel heart

This image started as a digital picture I took by setting my camera on rapid-fire and waving it around. The actual image I captured is only half of what you see. What I'm saying is, imagine a line going down the middle of the image. One half of that is what the camera actually captured. I took that picture, made a copy, reversed it, and put the two together, and that's what you see above.

To me it looks like a chest cavity, or maybe a throat, with a heart dangling by a thread, and the heart has jewelry impaled in it and hanging from it.

This is probably one of my favorite things I've ever made. First of all, it looks really cool. Secondably, it's just crazy to me that I captured such a great image in such a haphazard way, and that I knew exactly what to do with it when I saw it. I like when things like that happen.

The Mansion Show pt. two

It's been almost a week. I think that's the longest I've gone without making a new post since I started this thing. I have a good excuse though. I was preparing my work for The Mansion Show reception, which happened this past Friday. It was good. Between the 5 other artists and me, there ended up being 50 pieces total. A lot more people came than I expected. All the work seemed to be very well-received.

All my pieces in the show were from my Deconstructure series. In the top image are six 11x14 prints. The Beebe Estate is a historic (and haunted) building, and they don't allow you to attach anything to the walls. So they have chains (probably borrowed from the ghosts) hanging down from the moulding, from which you can hang your work on hooks. This makes hanging your work properly an infuriating process, but it ends up looking pretty badass. With the chains and all.

In the second image are ten 16x20 prints. I had originally wanted these to be frameless; just the prints mounted on black board. But the day after I hung them up, the humidity in the building caused the boards to start warping. So the morning of the reception I rushed out to buy frames, put all the prints in them, and hung them back up. I'm not a fan of having glass over them, because the images are very tactile-looking, and printed on matte paper, and having shiny glass over them totally nullifies that effect. But there wasn't really anything else I could do to prevent them from warping, and I guess it does look pretty good despite the glare.

Know what else looks good? Hot pink walls. I'm mounting all my black & white prints on hot pink board from now on. I'll also give out snap bracelets at all future shows.

shed

Last week I talked about how I plan to take a walk down the train tracks and take pictures of stuff. This picture is almost like that. When I take the train, I like to set my camera to rapid-fire and hold it up to the window. Usually I get one or two pictures I like out of every one- or two-hundred I take like this. This is one photo that grabbed my attention.

I don't know what's going on here. It seems to be some kind of shed plopped down in the middle of a fence. It's not just a wall with a door in it, it's actually a three-dimensional structure that someone built at the edge of their backyard.

There are a lot of weird things about it. It's much bigger than a regular shed. You could fit a fleet of lawnmowers in there. Its placement is strange. Why was it built in the middle of a fence, rather than just in the yard? And If you assume that the fence is the boundary between these folks' land and the rail area, why does it straddle the two? (You can't tell from the picture, but the structure comes out beyond the fence). Baffling.

I like the blurry, out-of-focus quality of the picture. Yeah, any photo that's blurry and out-of-focus can seem dreeeaaammmliiiiike. But I think this photo works well because of the composition, this odd monument in the middle of the frame with the fence sections stretching to the sides, and the sharpness and richness of the trees and sky compared to the blurriness and dull brown + yellow/green of the lower half. I probably wouldn't hang it on the wall, but I like it.