CONTEMPORARY EXPLORER

  Sometimes a place just draws you back, the reason unsure. A parking lot on East Main in Rock Hill such a place. I parked there before taking in the quiet, hoping my camera would find a shot. Nothing special stood out, the lot gravel and broken payment, a few old cars oddly parked and unattached power poles. Still the place spoke of story. It sat there like an unclaimed body just waiting to be tended to and remembered. Next to it the eight story Cobb Apartments stood iconically, away from the city center by itself, still somehow playing a part. It’s orderly bricks standing strongly against the randomness of the lot. It the only hint to the history of the place. Curiosity tugs at you in these places and you begin to search for facts. At the turn of the century a 12 year old boy named Charles Cobb folded newspapers here. His father had died and he needed to turn efforts into cash. He soon had 20 other boys helping him deliver papers. The routes taught him about what the communit...

  The Carolinas are rich with a legacy of old factory buildings. Elegant and powerful icons in their time when textiles and tobacco were kings. Most faded in empty shells after the internationalism of factories, their manufacturing equipment shipped abroad. They have stood for years on the fringes of small and large towns still a part of the landscape, but seemingly far from resurrection. Change has come with the speed of prosperity.The value of the sheer size and majesty of these structures finally recognized for their potential. Many are now in a “adaptive reuse” redevelopment into multifaceted facilities including restaurants, offices and light manufacturing. An example of one is The Thread in Rock Hill SC which found this 400,000 sq foot once vacant plant a natural extension of its vibrant downtown arts and living venue. If you wander these giant places you can still find glimpses and remainders of the past. Found art if you will on the wall and floors. They cry out for special...

  This is the time of year when you formulate business plans. Road maps for career success in 2026. What about the Other You though? Your special advocation or inner artist. It’s reaffirming to plan for these endeavors. Things you might consider include evaluating what you did for the Other You in 2025. What you want to do in 2026. Resources you have, equipment or material needed. Education for improvement. How you plan to share your interest and art. Networking to help enhance your experience. Special trips or time off to pursue these interests. Future plans be it art sales, teaching or just life enhancement. Having a plan for the Other You gives you something to fall back on if your business world starts to get off track. It can also open up new avenues for success. It’s not too late to become a lounge singer, stand up comic, great photographer or expert crafter. You just need to do a little planning.

  People have wanted to record their thoughts, art and records all the way back to the times of clay tablets. Even in the electronic age with all its blogs, applications and social media, the urge to record on paper is unmatched. The feel and senses of moving pen on paper connecting mind, body and thought is wonderful. The journal by nature speaks of perfection. You want your journal to reflect the best of your writing, poetry, occasional sketch or photo, and life thoughts. Problem is life is not perfect. It gets interrupted by random thoughts, notes from calls, travel expense records and even to do lists. The journal is all too handy to reach for when this randomness occurs. So you start finding odd entries into what was once a perfect set of blank pages. There is also the issue of number of pages. It’s hard to fill out all 100 or 150 pages with perfect work and thoughts. As you look over what now has become a not so perfect journal, your mind drifts to artists like Picasso, Joan ...

Sometimes you're lucky enough to find things that speak of art in every way. Some even have a history and legacy to them. Such was the case when I stumbled on a packet of Taisho Era letters, stamps and envelopes. They looked beautiful on their own, but I knew they could be made into even more artful items. The surprise though was learning the legacy they also carried with them. The Taisho Era was named for Emperor Taisho lasting only from 1912 to his death in 1926.  Despite being in ill health during his reign, he recognized that Japan must modernize and move beyond traditional ways. He had learned much from being exposed the West during World War One when Japan fought on the allied side. The Taisho Era was marked by significant modernization, cultural change, and the burgeoning of arts. However, it put too much wind in the sails of Japan, leading it toward expansion and conquest.  You ponder all this as you work with the items, thinking of the art. Realizing you can’t change ...

  It's human nature to want to match things up, weave them together, even write a story about them. When you wander with your camera, magic doesn't always happen. What you see and experience lives only in isolation. Residing in your photos as unfinished business. Yet, these things call them abstract or not still have an art about them. While not encompassing a string of thoughts, they are part of what you find important in the world. Some you play with attempting to extract meaning and being. Most though just are.... Lancaster Tractor Trailer Reflection  Portland Mail Boxes and Poster Charlotte Hospital Awning Cotswold Village MarK - Charlotte Atlanta Wall

  I have a camp chair in the trunk of my car. Sometimes, I carry a kit of watercolor pencils and always a camera. All to remind me to put the busy world on hold. To pull off the road and just sit, contemplating a found scene in life. You're never sure what that is, but you are always searching. It’s tough to block out the traffic, the phone calls, the blare of the radio news. Once in a while though, you find a place to pull over. You unfold the chair and just sit. What you are hoping for is the question. Maybe, something or someone entering the scene that would foster a story. Colors that would grasp you enough to sketch, applying a bit of water to make the hues sing. Maybe just a person stopping to talk about what you are doing or thinking. Most of the time, none of these things happen. You still take a photo though. When you get home, you look at it reminded that you were there and wise enough to stop...

  The sunny day found me out wandering with my plastic $53 HOLGA Camera. My other cameras were far more sophisticated, producing perfect pictures. But, here I was on this beautiful day with the HOLGA, a camera many regarded as a toy. Still, I would meet new people attracted by the look of the camera. None of which would stay around long enough to learn the mystery, history and fame of it. I also knew great photos would be only once in a while. The camera just had too many faults to produce anything consistent. That was in fact the great appeal to it, the blurs, light leaks, and film quality of the results. It had a cult following among Retro fans. Ones led by generation Z who had never known anything without the immediate feedback of a display screen. There was none of that with the HOLGA. A film camera the required processing and time to see the results. They were all different than anticipated. Sometimes you forgot to take off the lens cap or advance the film producing double exp...

  It’s so rare these days to find the artful special item. One that is real, has traveled the world, and bares the marks of life to prove it. Too often you find yourself in a gift shop atracted to things, only to turn them over and find “Made in China.” So when you do find something of beauty that is special to your eye, you want it. A question lingers though, do you have a place on the wall for it?  As a collector of found objects, you often find yourself at this juncture. Should you take this wornderful thing from the world or leave it there for others. The travel author Paul Theroux once advised at each place, choose only one item to buy. That way you will remember the rest even more….

  Bringing back interest to our cities is a hot topic. Too often overlooked are the value of small unique places. Ones that set the place apart from others. Katarina Mall in her article “Capitalism in the Cracks” for Reason Magazine addresses this challenge well. She describes how Japan works with districts to promote all types of enterprise, especially in the small places including alleys often not possible with city planning in this country. Think back on a recent visit to another city, what do you remember about it. Was it the giant development that squashed a neighborhood just for another strip mall or ditto market. Maybe, but more likely it is for a unique place you found. Often, these are small places.  It mighr be Sun May Co. a tiny asian gift shop at 5 Canton Alley S in Seattle, or Commonwealth Used Books at 9 Spring Lane in Boston, or Daiso a Japanese variety store in the basement under an escalator of the old Woolworth building in Vancouver, or Collectors Nook a stam...

  Sometimes you have to take an image, even though it doesn't fit anywhere. Await it does for the right time to belong to a passing thought or theme.... Factory Wall, Great Falls SC LA Under the Bridge, Portland OR Hidden Downtown Mall, Charlotte NC

  I stood outside the dollar store with my bag full of treasures. Then I thought about my image, what would people think. Still there were plenty of advantages to going to the dollar store in these blurry uncertain times. First, with inflation, your likely to meet your friends there, all hiding between the aisles. Secondly, you feel like a zillionaire, one capable of buying out the whole place for $1. The disorganized clutter of the place speaks hidden treasures in every aisle. Perhaps most importantly, you can find art there if you look. Small things that with a little creativity become wonderful art works. The gold rimmed picture frame, the little plastic box, the art board and multitude of filler beads and bobbles.  So I drag them home, play with them throwing away most, the cost is nothing you know. Still once in awhiles something of note appears. What to do this those artful works? After all you don’t want to explain where they came from. So you establish a gallery of Dol...

  I filled up the tank of my hybrid and started out of the gas station. A look at the dash stopped me. It read 629 miles to empty. To the East was the ocean, to the North the giant east coast cities, to the South the low country and the grade B movie that is Florida. To the West, was the rest of the country where I had lived most of my life. It had been too long since I had been on the road. They say with age that your world becomes smaller. It’s true in some ways. You don’t walk as far or as well as you used to. A few medical detours take their toll. Your just not as sure about things as you used to be, maybe life has shown you too much. But I remembered when I did live out west and was young. How you thought nothing of driving eight hours from Seattle into the high desert to find peace and dreams. Where had those years gone? All these things weighed on my mind, still there were new places to go in the East. Maybe a story or two to write. I looked at the dash 629 miles to empty…

  "PAPER NOTES" - Great Falls SC (collage of old bank notes and found wall in vacant lot)

  Sometimes you see things that grab you. Your not sure why. The camera clicks though, but they just don’t fit anywhere. Lingering in the back recesses of your mind, they haunt you. Finally, you sit and review each image. Still theres no real fit with anything. They just are what they are. Just like the other no fits of your life. Ones you will always ponder, but are somehow you.

  I  stood looking at the wedge shaped piers that held the Fremont bridge in place. Only the industrial land beyond. You could hear the traffic above and feel bridge moving to balance it all. It was the farthest place you could walk in Portland, Slabtown they called it. Laying between the tree lined NW district and the river, west of the tony Pearl District. The long walk from downtown left one tired, but happy for it. The Cities unfinished edges were here. The walls not yet sanded and painted nice into restaurants and shops. The name, Slabtown, coming from the discarded pieces of wood after the sawing of timber. The city left unfinished space here, perhaps to sort out what it had done. Space to pause, reflect and think. There were already the first signs of development attempt. The Montgomery Ward building, came and went quickly. The rest of the district still just torn edges. The walls carrying half messages, scrapes and it’s own form of art. I turned to look at the bridge...

  New horizons rise on the hopes of a small town. Murals are painted on the wall, history brought back, small shops reopen. But, not all horizons last, the town slowly falling back to the way it was. Still it has stories to tell if you listen and colors rich if you stop. I wandered the streets, hearing soft jazz coming from around the corner. I did not need to turn and look. It was Terry who fixed things and detailed cars, a personality that knew no small town bounds. Still he stayed here mated with the way of life, still looking for horizons...

Frank wore worn blue overalls, his strength defied his older years. Most just knew him as the metal man who owned a scrap yard under the freeway. The yard full of metal, some in barrels, leaned against the wall and larger pieces on the ground. They came from every source imaginable, dismantled ships, demolished buildings and factories gone.  He grew accustomed to the roughness of the material and his life, even fond enough to attach a name to some of iron pieces. Names like waterfall, desert lines, sand storm. He sold the iron to scrap buyers, contractors, architects and the occasional artists. Frank favored them the most. Their study of the metal pieces led him to think they saw the same specialness in them that he did. Frank kept to himself aside from the occasional stop for a beer at Stellas. Most evenings he would head back to the small house on the River. The one with the garden in back. His wife gone from the cancer five years now. Still he worked each evening in her gard...