“Untitled”
“Untitled II”
My preoccupation with geese traces to childhood and the scarcity of what now has become abundant. This is the second in a series. Note, the gander trails the female always protecting his territory.
What works (I think) about this image is the context (marsh sedge in the foreground) and the center focused composition.
“September Meadow”
Late September and early October in northeast Ohio are warm in hue … landscapes changing subtly each day. Summer’s decedents, some lost in shadow, others flame. Field grasses disappearing in the moment; ironweed, goldenrod slowly burning until extinguished.
Seed-heads across Squire Valleevue Farm stand in relief against a background of goldenrod, asters and late meadow grasses, many verdant until a frost.
I do not know what grass or weeds these may be but I see them here every year before their seeds scatter on autumn winds.
Autumn brings to mind the last stanza of Robert Frost’s poem “Reluctance”
“Rails into Autumn”
This is the scene I’ve walked into for sixty years. An arching pin oak or two have passed since my childhood but new ones rise. What has never changed are the rails, rails that take me into each season, ones that orient me through snow, morning fog, autumn hues and a lifetime of magenta mornings and afternoon shadows.
Fog Across The Dunes
6:30 a.m., May 28, fog had settled into the dunes north of the small town of Pentwater, Michigan. It was a phenomenon unlike any I had seen in the forty-seven years I had walked these eastern shores of Lake Michigan. Occasionally, fog banks would descend obscuring the contours of the landscape but this time fog clung to the division between each dune, exposing only the tops of white pine and sporadic clumps of tag alder. As remarkably, three quarters of the scene and subsequent image were sky, tinged with subtle, almost imperceptible hues of color as the fog spreads its fingers across the dunes down to the beach.
It brings the quality of “impermanence” to mind – a key dimension of the Japanese art of Wabi Sabi. Within minutes the long fingers had receded, replaced somewhat ironically by the forest; its own beauty transient and ineluctably transformed as day ascended.
This is one of the images from my 2011 exhibit at the Butler Institute of Art. It has been a popular limited edition print over the last eight years but this is the first occasion I’ve printed it as a large canvas (40″x60″). We have it on view for one more week (thru Sat. Feb. 25) at the gallery.
Pentwater, Michigan, May 28, 2008 C. Geoffrey Baker
Outbuilding, Leelanau County, MI
“Outbuilding, Leelanau County, Michigan”
After printing this image I tried to imagine whether the scene would have appealed to three of my favorite artists, Edward Hopper, Grant Wood and Andrew Wyeth, each whose work may be considered an example of modern American realism. I think the almost surreal landscape would have attracted Wyeth; the nostalgic throwback, Wood; and the solitude of the scene, (especially the isolation of the towering outbuilding), Hopper. I mention these artists because, for many years I’ve been drawn to their work and suspect it has influenced the way I see landscapes and architecture.
This outbuilding resides on the property of Carsten Burfiend, the first settler of Leelanau County. Mr. Burfiend built two farms in the late 19th century just north of Glen Arbor. The farm is closed though restored and sits between a spine of dunes to the east and Lake Michigan less than a mile west.
Rolling Mill, West Side Cuyahoga
Early February provided a perfect day to photograph smoke stacks at the former J&L Steel melt shop and rolling mill on the west side of the Cuyahoga river. Purchased from “Otis Steel”, J&L’s mill was home to thousands of steelworkers and millwrights since 1942. Over several generations the facility has been through numerous incarnations, the most recent of which was its acquisition by LTV Corp. (a consolidation with Republic Steel in 1984), a shutdown in 2002 pursuant to ISG’s purchase and finally the eventual acquisition by Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal and the mill’s reopening in 2004.
The billowing “smoke” animating the image is really only steam as the morning’s low air temperature (-10°) created ideal conditions for condensation. The shot reminded me a little of a Braque or Picasso Cubist painting … each of the pieces reassembled, seemingly creating more than the sum of its parts. There is something ironically anthropomorphic about the structure with its jaws turned skyward and hot breath billowing in successive bursts. I resisted the temptation to include the sprawling length of the mill in a landscape format. And finally, rather than producing this as a black and white image, which would have reduced the image to a study in “shapes,” I retained the colors to add tonality and dimension.
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