Photography And/Or Art – Page 15 – Yeah, Another Blogger

In Search Of A Story Idea

March 16, 2016Yeah, Another Blogger20 Comments

Funny thing about this blog. When I started it last April I didn’t know what shape it would take or what it might come to mean to me. Shape-wise, somewhat to my surprise, the blog seems to conform pretty well to the template I described in the “About” page. Meaning, I’ve written about this and I’ve written about that, and the articles in toto appear to give a pretty good picture of who I am. Not that I actually know particularly well who I am. Figuring that out would take hours and hours on a psychiatrist’s or other therapist’s chair or couch. “Hey, Sandy!” (note to readers: I’m calling to my wife). “It’s time I found out who I am. Please get me an appointment with a topnotch and nearby mental health professional. Thanks.”

As for what the blog means to me . . . well, it has become a big part of my life. Here I am, almost 12 months forward from the blog’s launch date, and I’m getting a tasty kick from writing. More than 60 times I’ve been inspired to put fingers to keyboard and knock out a story. I haven’t done so much thinking or typing since my school days, back when the dinosaurs were on the verge of extinction. Didn’t know I had it in me.

There is a problem though. To wit, I’m good at struggling to find subjects that interest me enough to write about them. And that are simple enough so that pea-brained me can understand them. Sometimes the well feels awfully dry, causing me to start worrying more than a bit. “What the heck am I going to write about next?” is a question commonly floating in my head. When day after day go by without a pleasing answer, man, the perspiration beads start pooling.

And that’s the situation I find myself in right now. I’ve had a few particles of ideas for stories, but none has swelled to a size that I can grab and knead. Better scribes than I would have turned out excellent articles from those fragments, which is one of many reasons why those writers are better.

For instance, the other day I was at my volunteer job in a medical office building not far from my suburban Philadelphia home. The building is full of doctors’ offices that are reached via a web of corridors. I man the information desk at this facility one morning each week and have been doing so for six years. I was standing beside the desk. My mind was wandering. Perspiration covered my forehead. “What the heck am I going to write about next?” I wondered. And then something caught my eye. It was a watercolor painting, a large appealing abstract in blue and cream. It was mounted on a wall eight feet in front of me. It had been on this wall for who knows how long. I had seen it every time I’d been at my volunteer job. But I hadn’t really seen it. I mean, it’s one of those items that you don’t want to become too aware of. If I started fixating on its existence, I’d be glancing over at it throughout my shift. It would become like a song that gets stuck in your head. Such as El Paso, the Marty Robbins tune from 1959 that I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to expel for decades. When Sandy and I were at dinner with our great pals Susie and Mike a few weeks ago, Mike started singing El Paso to me. He’s cruel that way. “Out in the West Texas town of El Paso/I fell in love with a Mexican girl/Night-time would find me in Rosa’s cantina/Music would play and Felina would whirl.” “Stop, Mike, stop!” I cried. And he did. But here I am a few weeks later with those entrancing lyrics and that sweet waltz-time melody still skipping around in my brain neurons. Mucho gracias, Mike. Mucho gracias.

Ah yes, the watercolor painting staring at me from eight feet away. A bell dimly chimed inside my cranium when the notion occurred to me that the watercolor might in some elusive manner lead the way to a story for my blog. Perhaps there were other art works hanging in the corridors of the medical facility. And if so, that would be my story. Namely, one about lovely objects that often surround us yet remain unnoticed and unappreciated.

Off I went to explore the three floors-worth of crisscrossing hallways. I’d walked these avenues many times over the years, but looking for art had never been part of my quests. Alas, I came up empty. The blue and cream watercolor was an orphan, the only framed object in the various halls. Not so fast, though. A myriad of things were attached to the corridors’ walls or hanging from their ceilings. Fire alarms, fire extinguishers, water fountains, exit signs, digital thermostats and other utilitarian stuff. Who’s to say that they didn’t qualify as art? If they did, then my volunteer job took place within a veritable museum.

“Yeah, now that’s a story for my blog,” I told myself. After all, in 1917 Marcel Duchamp bought a mass-produced urinal, signed it with a fictitious name and submitted it to a prestigious arts exhibition. And in the 1960s Andy Warhol created large-scale facsimiles of Brillo boxes. Duchamp and Warhol were revolutionary modernists, questioning the nature of art, asking what in fact qualifies as art. If they had held my volunteer job, mightn’t they have concluded that indeed they were working in a museum?

Thus I walked the hallways once again, reexamining the stuff on the walls and ceilings and taking their pictures with my iPhone. And as I did I knew that this story idea led nowhere. Oy frigging vey! Try as I might I didn’t feel any aesthetic or conceptual attraction towards the fire alarms or any of the rest. “You know, as art these things suck big time,” I said to myself.

Soon an idea worth writing about will come to me. I’m confident of that. Sort of. Till then, I’m outta here. Where’s the exit? . . . Oh, here it is. Bye.

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I Saw The Lights: A Belated Christmas Story

December 30, 2015December 30, 2015Yeah, Another Blogger10 Comments

Colors. Patterns. I love ’em. Which is why I’ve spent much time over the years in museums and art galleries. And gazing at fireworks displays and at sunsets. Another example of epic and colorful exhibitions in which I’ve immersed myself takes place each year in neighborhoods throughout much of the Christian world. I’m talking about the Christmas lights that untold millions drape on the exteriors of their houses and on their greenery. For most of these millions, yuletide is the one time annually when their inner artists emerge, the one time when they express their creative bents in a big way. As an art admirer I appreciate the hard work that they put forth. And I consider many of their efforts to be at a high aesthetic level. Christmas lights displays, when done right, are gorgeous and admirable and, to me, no different really than so-called fine art.

For many years my wife Sandy and I went out four or more nights each Christmas season to look at the lights. We’d drive through our neighborhood and through many others in Philadelphia and the burbs. My father lived with us for the last six years of his life and he’d often accompany us on these excursions. He loved looking at the lights as much as we did. Slowly we’d proceed along blocks, saying “look at that house” over and over as we made our way. We’d often pull to the curb and stop in front of particularly well-conceived arrangements. Some of those were elegant in white only. Others were complicated and ablaze with color. And we’d always spend a long time ogling the mind-blowing and whacky assemblages of lights, kinetic whatnots and inflatable objects that covered every square inch, including roofs, of a few folks’ houses and grounds. Not every neighborhood has one of those. They sometimes become tourist draws, not a good thing if you’re the next-door neighbor.

During the last few years Sandy and I haven’t explored the lights as much as we used to. Not sure why. Up until Christmas week itself this year, we hadn’t at all. But you know, I got the itch at 5 PM a few days before Christmas. I placed my newly acquired smart phone in my pocket and did something I’d never done before. Namely, look at the lights not through a car window but on foot. Sandy decided to stay home. Her loss.

It was neat-o walking around my suburban neighborhood at night. That’s something I rarely do. Funny thing . . . people and houses don’t disappear after the sky turns black. I passed a couple of joggers, a couple of walkers and a couple more walkers holding leashes. Dogs were attached to the leashes. I saw kids running around their houses, people pulling into and out of their driveways. Wow, I’ve got to get outside more. Life’s a-buzzing aplenty.

And I also saw the lights. My neighborhood largely consists of modest wood-shingled and brick houses, nine or so on each side of each block and spaced about 15 feet apart. In other words, the blocks have a tidy layout and are crowded with homes, conditions that are ripe for a mighty fine dose of Christmas lights. Assuming, of course, that plenty of the houses are occupied by Christians who don’t mind climbing ladders and who have a sense for colors and patterns that work well together. Happily, all of this was the case. Many of the homeowners in my community did a lovely job decorating their properties. I walked for blocks and blocks and had a good ol’ time taking in beauty and snapping photos with my phone. This non-Christian thanks those homeowners for bestowing such presents upon him. Here are some examples of their artistic work. Before I forget though, let me mention two things. First, a larger image will open if you click on any photo. Second, please don’t be shy about sharing this article (sharing buttons are below the photographs).

Van Gogh, Scorsese And I: A Tale Of Mispronunciations

December 12, 2015May 19, 2016Yeah, Another Blogger13 Comments

So, there the three of us were, sitting around a table inside a cozy tavern, chatting amiably about nothing in particular and knocking back a round of beers. Vincent van Gogh, Martin Scorsese and I. Respectively, a powerful and visionary visual artist, a commanding director of moving images, and a plebeian with, by definition, an awfully light résumé. What the heck was I doing at that table, you ask? And where, by the way, were the table and tavern?

In my dreams. That’s the answer to question number two. As for the first query, I was seated with greats solely because we all had something in common: A lot of people did not know how to pronounce our surnames.

Martin Scorsese (Photo by Jeff Vespa; copyright WireImage.com) — Martin Scorsese

There are several purported photographs of Vincent van Gogh. None are totally authenticated. This is believed to be from about 1886. — A purported photograph of Vincent van Gogh believed to be from about 1886.

We’d made more than enough small talk. Turning onto a substantive route, I said to the gent on my left: “Marty, it must drive you nuts that almost everyone thinks your last name is Score-Say-Zee. I wonder how in the world that messed-up notion ever caught on.”

“Neil,” Marty said to me, “I’ve gotten used to it. But it sure would be nice if they’d get things straight. I mean, we’re talking about my name, for crying out loud.” I nodded understandingly.

“Vincent,” I next said, rotating my head slightly to my right, “How do you deal with this? People call you Van-Go, or maybe Van-Gokh. Doesn’t anyone ever do better than that?”

“I gave up on this a long time ago, Neil. My family and my fellow Dutchmen, they know how to say my name. Just about everyone else, fuhgeddaboudit.”

“Guys,” I said. “I hear ya’. I’m not as hung up on the name thing as I used to be. But it still churns me when people say Shee-Nin or Shy-Nin or Shee-In-In. C’mon, I know the spelling is a guarantee to throw almost anyone off, but still . . . ”

Scheinin. That’s my last name. A confusing array of letters. But with a simple two-syllable pronunciation: Shay-nin. To make things easy, maybe I’ll legally change the spelling to exactly that, hyphen and all.

I looked leftward once again. “Marty, the only reason that I know how to say your name properly is because years ago I heard you pronounce it on the Charlie Rose interview show. ‘Score-Seh-See’, you said. And ever since then I’ve been careful to say it that way whenever I gab about your movies.”

“Thanks, Neil,” Marty said. “Finally someone pronounced it right.” And I speedily hoisted my right hand to catch the high-five that he threw at me.

“Vincent,” I then said, gazing in the master colorist’s direction. “Yours is very very tricky. And no doubt I’m not gonna be able to duplicate the from-the-back-of-the-throat nuances of the Dutch language. But, good sir, I’m going to give it my best shot. Vun-Khuhkh. Am I right? Am I in the ballpark?”

“Neil, that’s darn well close enough,” he replied, clapping his hands. “That’s the nearest anyone outside of Holland has come in decades.” He smiled broadly as his eyes examined all the planes of my face. Was he toying with the idea of painting my portrait?

The name situation settled, Vincent, Marty and I began to talk of deeper matters. The meaning of art, for instance, and its value to the human spirit. But almost immediately Vun-Khuhkh and Score-Seh-See left me in their wake. Little could I add to their understandings and suppositions. I was more than happy, though, to listen and hopefully to learn, and to toss in a lame comment now and then.

I eventually shouted over Vincent’s and Marty’s lively conversation. “Waitress, three more Guinnesses please.” A few minutes later the dark brews arrived. We downed them greedily.

The hour was advancing, as it always does. “Gentlemen,” I finally said, gesturing to the waitress to bring the bill. “It’s almost time for me to wake up. It’s been a pleasure. And the beers are on me.”

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(Photo of Martin Scorsese by Jeff Vespa; copyright WireImage.com)

(Photo of a plebeian by Sandra Cherrey Scheinin)

Q: How Cool Is The Philadelphia Museum Of Art? A: Very

December 6, 2015Yeah, Another Blogger4 Comments

The Philadelphia Museum Of Art, PMA to its friends, is one of our fair nation’s best museums. My wife Sandy and I visit pretty often. Its holdings are fantastic. What’s more, for years the museum has presented concerts on Friday nights, and we’ve been to a crazy number of them. During our Fridays at PMA we look at art for awhile and then hear music in the majestic Great Stair Hall. For artsy nerds like me, that’s usually a winning combination.

As we headed museumward on a recent Friday, we found ourselves in traffic hell. Our car windows were fogging up from steam coming out of our ears, but we wound up having a heck of a good time once we arrived. No pain, no gain, or something like that. Late-ish as it was though, we didn’t have barrels of time to check out art if we were to snare seats at a ringside cocktail table for the evening concert. Those seats ordinarily are claimed 45 minutes or more before concerts begin. When the preferred seating is taken, your option is to place your rear end upon the Great Stair Hall’s grand marble steps. And YOW, that’s a numbing backside experience.

And so we navigated to a modestly-sized and time-friendly exhibit, works by the not particularly well-known Dave Heath. To me and Sandy, he wasn’t even that, as we’d never heard of him. This show (it closes on February 21, 2016) is entitled Multitude, Solitude: The Photographs Of Dave Heath, and comprises numerous 35 mm photos, all in black and white, that Heath took from 1949 to 1969. Also on display is Heath’s multimedia slide show from 1969. This is the first major presentation of his early and midlife creations, and one of the few museum exhibitions that he ever has had. It was organized by The Nelson-Atkins Museum Of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, with plenty of PMA input.

Sandy and I had the same reaction after looking at Heath’s photos for the first few minutes: “This guy is great,” we agreed. And I’m convinced that he is, or in any case was in the 1950s and 60s. The photographs are very beautiful and very dark, shades of black heavily predominating over those of white. I’ve always felt that this approach allows photographs to breathe emotionally, gives them depth and resonance.

New York City (1964), by Dave Heath. Nelson-Atkins Museum Of Art, Kansas City, MO; Gift of Hall Family Foundation

Washington Square, New York City (1960), by Dave Heath. Nelson-Atkins Museum Of Art, Kansas City, MO; Gift of Hall Family Foundation

Heath isn’t a chronicler of the natural world. He’s a people observer, usually in urban settings. And he is a lover of the close-up, often capturing folks deep in thought or in seeming isolation. His childhood was dreadful, and his work frequently reflects the hurt that probably never went away. But not all is aloneness or sadness in the Heathscape. Joyful images are here and there in the exhibit.

Dave Heath lives in Canada and is 84 years old. There’s not a lot of info about him in cyberspace. He was born in Philadelphia, grew up in foster homes and an orphanage, took up the camera in his late teens, and has had a full career as a photographer and photography teacher. His greatest fame and acclaim occurred in the 1960s, the decade in which he won two Guggenheim Fellowships and created the book for which he is best-known, A Dialogue With Solitude. The final pre-production copy of Dialogue is at PMA. Its 100 or so pages, mostly photographs, ring several gallery walls. Dialogue is divided into ten sections, among them Fate, Fragility And Diversity; Youth; Childhood; Ends And Beginnings. Dialogue is a deep photographic rumination on many aspects of the human plight.

Sandy and I ended up spending much more time with Heath’s images than we had anticipated. They are powerful. By the late 1960s though, Heath apparently felt that he had said all he could in black and white. He turned to color Polaroid picture-taking and later to digital photography. None of this is on PMA’s walls, and from what I gather isn’t well-known by the arts community. It’s a fine thing, though, that someone (the good folks at Nelson-Atkins and at PMA) has championed black and white Dave and decided to let the spotlight shine on him.

Before the concert in the Great Stair Hall. Photo by Sandra Cherrey Scheinin — Pre- concert in the Great Stair Hall. Photo by Sandra Cherrey Scheinin

Show time was approaching. Sandy and I lucked out after Heath, grabbing two empty seats at a stage left cocktail table in the Great Stair Hall, a mere six feet from where Arun Ramamurthy soon would be bowing his violin. Arun Ramamurthy? Sandy and I knew as much about him as we had about Dave Heath an hour earlier. Brooklyn-based Ramamurthy, though, is a growing name to be reckoned with in classical Indian music and in musical cross-pollinations. At PMA he brought along Perry Wortman, on upright bass, and drummer/tabla player Deep Singh. The Arun Ramamurthy Trio began its first set at 5:45 PM. They played a hybrid of South Indian classical music and jazz.

When it comes to music, I’m an appreciator, not a scientist. I understand little about any musical genre’s technical side. Scales, chords, the inter-relationships of notes and how they shape harmonies . . . forget it, I’m at sea. But the big picture I understand, as did the 200 others listening to the Ramamurthy group. We all clapped madly after each piece. Sure, Arun’s melodies and voicings on violin would be pretty unfamiliar to most American ears, but they were beautiful.

In the Great Stair Hall, Arun sat on a platform, chairless and shoeless. He held his violin vertically, bowing with his right hand, working the strings with the fingers of his left. The trio played five songs in the first set, three of them originals, all drawn from or reflecting traditional South Indian classical ragas, melodies and motifs. The music was elastic, minor-keyed and highly improvised, improvisation being a major component of both classical Indian music and jazz.

Arun began song number one unaccompanied, coaxing mournful sounds from his instrument for three minutes. Wortman’s bass then entered — low, gripping notes played slowly, repeatedly — and Singh’s drums too. Singh played carefully, tantalizingly, creating a steady and simmering beat. One drumstick tapped a drum’s rim. The high hat and cymbals shimmered just so. All the while Arun stroked melancholy lines. This was Ramamurthy’s original song, Conception. I was reminded of All Blues, and other numbers, from Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue album.

The Arun Ramamurthy Trio. Photo by Sandra Cherrey Scheinin

The fifth song, an Arun original whose title I missed, found Deep Singh on tabla. The tune was energetic, Arun going pretty wild on violin, Wortman choosing notes eloquently and perceptively, as he did on each tune. Another thing I noticed was that Arun and Deep barely could keep their eyes off each other. They were in a strong musical relationship. And Singh’s fingers were absolutely flying, maybe wearing grooves in his tabla’s skins.

There was a sixth song, but it was not a full trio number. It was a classical raga played by two humans, Arun and tablaist Deep. They were joined not by Wortman but by a droning electronic accompaniment provided via an app on Arun’s smart phone. Amazing.

Dave Heath and The Arun Ramamurthy Trio. Another several hours well-spent at the Philadelphia Museum Of Art.

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A Cape Cod Sunset Story

October 23, 2015December 9, 2015Yeah, Another Blogger4 Comments

My wife Sandy and I have a love affair going with Cape Cod, which is where we are vacationing as I type this missive. We live in suburban Philadelphia, but in most ways prefer the Cape. Boo hoo . . . we’ll be back home tomorrow.

In 1998 we visited the Cape for the first time, expecting it to be a locale we’d enjoy. Well, we did. And decided to come back the next year for some more good times. I think it was on that second trip that I realized I liked Cape Cod much more than I ever thought I would, that it really suited my soul, that I was starting to become smitten. Sandy and I have returned every year since then, excepting one. Before Cape Cod entered the picture, in my adult life it had never occurred to me that there might be an Eden of sorts waiting for me, someplace beautiful and in which I truly felt at home. A favorite place.

Sandy and I have had only great vacations on Cape Cod. We’ve been there in all seasons except summer, which is the one time of year when the Cape is overrun. With humans. We fill our days with a variety of activities: nature walks on sand or through forests; poking around in country-imbued villages; art gallery and museum hopping; attending movies, plays and concerts; lots of tasty eating in restaurants humble and above; the list continues. No doubt, this is the good life. I feel almost guilty that such fine fortune has come my way. But I’ll take it.

Atlantic Ocean shoreline. Eastham, Cape Cod.

If I had to select one reason above all that puts Cape Cod at the top of my list, I’d point to the expansive areas of natural beauty. Such as the 40 or more mile-long Atlantic Ocean shoreline, much of it government-protected and thus little disturbed or altered by the hands of man. The vistas there are pretty elemental and always knock my socks off. Ocean, sky and beaches backed by dunes-topped sand cliffs. My psychological and emotional makeups, whatever the heck they might be, vibrate in a calm, contented and awestruck manner when I’m in the midst of such.

And there are other reasons. To name one: When vacationing on Cape Cod sometimes an unexpected present drops into your lap, just as with life in general. One day last week an example came my and Sandy’s way. I’m talking about a sunset. Right, right, I know that over the centuries untold thousands of scribes have oohed and aahed in print about sunsets. And millions of sunset photos have been published, more in the last 15 or so years than ever before thanks to the Web. But hey, I’m not embarrassed to add a few hundred sunset words, and a handful of photographs, to the Everest-high piles already out there. Don’t bail out on me. Keep reading.

And so on the aforementioned day at 5:15 PM, Sandy and I were in Chatham, a needless-to-say charming Cape Cod town. We had just watched Steven Spielberg’s latest oeuvre, Bridge Of Spies, in the Chatham Orpheum Theater. Our next planned destination was 20 miles away, Harvest Gallery Wine Bar. There we meant to dine and listen to a tough as nails rock trio, The Catbirds. But there was no need to arrive before 7 PM. We had time to kill. We scratched our heads, coming up empty. Then “sunset” popped into my mind. Sandy checked with her phone, which is much smarter than me, and learned that the Sun would dip below the horizon at 5:57. I steered our car westward and then turned south onto a road I’d never heard of, hoping that we eventually would find our way to a Chatham beach on Nantucket Sound. The sand gods must have been with us, for Hardings Beach Road soon materialized. And moments later Hardings Beach itself emerged.

We parked. The spot was gorgeous. Lovely sands, magnificent Nantucket Sound waters gently rippling beneath a sky puffy here and there with clouds. The clouds made my heart leap, or something like that, because a scattering of clouds, as I’ve come to realize from years of sunset-gazing on the Cape, is key to a good sunset. Their water droplets and other particles refract light beams and reflect colors. Their movements and changing forms turn sunsets into active canvases. And that’s what happened as Sandy and I watched our fiery faraway friend say goodnight.

Sunset with the Moon at Hardings Beach. 6:07 PM. — Sunset. The Moon. Hardings Beach. 6:07 PM.

A lot of people claim to dislike colorful abstract art, certain paintings by, say, Vasily Kandinsky or Jackson Pollock. I don’t get that, because everybody loves sunsets, which to me can be among the ultimate in eye-popping abstractions. I’ve never read that sunsets inspired any brush wielders to go wild and free in their approach or vision, but it wouldn’t surprise me if in fact this were the case. Sandy and I watched the sky for 20 minutes. The pinks and oranges darkened as the big event rolled on. The clouds worked their wonders. And in a little while Sandy pointed up and said, “There’s the Moon.” It was a graceful sliver of white balancing above swashes of pastel hues.

On Cape Cod I’ve been a lucky son of a gun many times. That evening on Hardings Beach was one of them.

(Photos by Sandra Cherrey Scheinin. If you click on any photo, a larger image will open)

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The Michener Museum Shines Yet Again

October 2, 2015Yeah, Another Blogger6 Comments

One of the things I like about art shows is that they can surprise you (in a good way). It’s a gas when a museum or gallery curator comes up with a new slant or assembles a themed exhibition that makes you say “great idea!” That’s part of the fun of going to places such as the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, PA. Not always, but often you can expect the unexpected there. Five years ago the Michener mounted a fascinating display of costumes worn by movie stars in famous movies. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s black leather jacket from The Terminator was in the house. So was Elizabeth Taylor’s gown from A Place In The Sun. That show caught me off guard by its coolness and inventiveness. Its idea seemed obvious, but only after the fact.

A similar sense of forward thinking surrounds a current Michener exhibition, the long-titled Iron And Coal, Petroleum And Steel: Industrial Art From The Steidle Collection. The works on view have been borrowed from their permanent home in State College, PA. There they reside within Penn State University’s Earth And Mineral Sciences Museum And Art Gallery, another mouthful. Hats off to the Michener for knowing of the off-the-beaten-track Steidle collection’s existence and for smartly organizing the paintings and their messages.

Edward Steidle (1887-1977) was a mover and shaker for many years in the worlds of mineral and petroleum extraction and use. An engineer, teacher and college administrator, he was dean from 1928 to 1953 of Penn State’s College Of Earth And Mineral Sciences. He also collected art, much of which he commissioned, that depicted the earth industries in action. The students at Penn State’s earth and minerals school were surrounded by examples of ores and extraction implements in the school buildings. Steidle, to my mind somewhat of a visionary in this respect, wanted artistic representations of the same also to be on view at the university.

Bituminous Coal Tipple, painted by Louise Pershing in 1936.

Louise Pershing’s Bituminous Coal Tipple, from 1936, was the first work I grabbed onto at the Michener after quickly scanning the collection. I loved its muted tones, the hulking mass of the tipple and of the hill in the foreground, the clouds of smoke issuing from all over the canvas, the lonely patch of green grass. Pershing mapped out her painting precisely and filled it with feeling.

Pershing’s oil painting represented a pretty good number of the ah-hah moments that I had in the Steidle galleries. What struck me first when I walked into the exhibit were the colors on the canvases. As with Pershing’s work, largely they were subdued or somber, the hues of earth and coal, of heavy equipment. As I walked around the galleries I noticed some other things. For one, nearly all the paintings were strongly designed and observant. Steidle had a good eye for art. Also, I was completely unfamiliar with the 40 or so artists in the show, excepting one or two. Post-Michener research confirmed that most of them had nice modest careers in their day but didn’t make it to the ladder of fame — only a few have garnered Wikipedia biographies. And I saw that a good number of the paintings were by women, not always the case on museum walls.

Miners In A Lift, painted by Henry Poor in 1947.

The Michener’s Steidle exhibition is a winner because it includes a boatload of works equal to Pershing’s Bituminous Coal Tipple, some maybe even better. Henry Poor’s Miners In A Lift, for example, which he painted in 1947. Five (or is it six?) coal miners are within the tight wooden cage, about to step outside the mine entrance, their shift over. Emerging from near-darkness into light, their eyes are hugely distended. The painting tells life stories, as the workers’ uneasiness about their dangerous occupation is on their faces. The confined framework of the painting brings power and immediacy to this work. It probably was my favorite at the Michener show.

The Steidle collection is said to be one of the best collections of industrial art in the USA. When these works were created, coal and steel were massively important industries in Pennsylvania and nationally. A few decades later they pretty much collapsed. The paintings are in that sense a time capsule of what once was. The historical aspect of the Michener show was presented clearly and didn’t make my eyes glaze over, the museum avoiding ponderous explanations on its informational placards. But, half-baked art aficionado that I am, I was more interested in the painterly aspects of the Steidle exhibit than in straight history.

Forging The Shaft: Hydraulic Forging Press, painted by Rose Ann McGary in 1936.

Take, for instance, Rose Ann McGary’s Forging The Shaft: Hydraulic Forging Press. She painted this canvas in 1936. It shows workmen shaping red hot steel, and would have earned a thumbs up from the artist Fernand Léger and his fellow Cubism descendants. A carefully assembled construction of planes, cylinders and boxlike shapes, Forging The Shaft takes Cubism’s original color scheme of grays and browns and adds, just off-center, an explosion of pink. It is both a contained and dynamic painting.

The Steidle show closes on October 25. There’s still time to see it.

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A Pretty Park Can Be Pretty Hard To Find

August 11, 2015August 28, 2015Yeah, Another Blogger8 Comments

Back in 1981 the Philadelphia Museum Of Art mounted an exhibition of photographs by Robert Adams. Adams took the photos in the 1970s. They were images of western American states, the desolate areas, primarily deserts and mountains. I remember the show fairly well. No matter how remote the locale, nearly every photograph bore evidence of man’s hand: A telephone pole, tire ruts in the sand, roads winding like barber pole stripes around magnificent mountains. One of Adams’s points was that pure wilderness is long gone, so we better get used to it and be glad for the great though adulterated spaces that exist. I imagine that even if you found yourself in the middle of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelf, and I don’t wish that fate on too many of us, you wouldn’t have to wait impossibly long before an airplane passed overhead. Man is everywhere. Yikes.

Now, a half-baked embryonic distillation of those thoughts was in my head recently when my wife Sandy suggested that we walk around the grounds of Abington Art Center, a few miles south of our home in the Philadelphia suburbs. “Sure,” I said, “good idea.” But what I didn’t say is that I’d prefer to stroll some expansive Adams-like terrain. In my dreams. Around here in the burbs, man for the last 75 years has been relentlessly busy cutting down trees and pouring cement. Around here, you have to count your lucky stars that any good-looking patches of territory of any sort still exist.

Manor house and lawn at Abington Art Center.

Abington Art Center is one of those patches. The center contains the manor house and some of the grounds of a former estate. The house is used for art classes and gallery exhibits and the like. The grounds mostly are a huge lawn that slopes away from the rear of the house and 10 or 15 acres of woods. It’s a lovely place. And it is more than manor, grass and trees. Scattered here and there on the great lawn and on side lawns and in the woods are all manner of sculptures, about 50 all told. Sandy and I had a good time at the center. For two hours we looked at trees and artworks and burned off a few calories while walking a couple of miles.

The play of light in the woods at Abington Art Center.

I like the outdoors. But I’m hardly a naturalist. My knowledge of flora and fauna has more holes than you can count. And so at Abington Art Center I found myself admiring a specific leafy tree species, of which many examples exist in the center’s tiny forest, having no clue what I was looking at. They weren’t maples or oaks. Those I can identify. Whatever the trees were, they were the tallest at the center. They measured well over 100 feet from bottom to top and didn’t wander leftward or rightward on their way towards the heavens. Their mothers must have told them from an early age to stand up straight. What also fascinated me was the play of light within the woods, how one tree’s upper reaches might be caught by the day’s intense sun, while others only a few feet away were out of the sun’s direct path. Contrasts of this sort always have appealed to me.

Mazzaroth is Alison Stigora's construction of burnt tree branches. — Mazzaroth is Alison Stigora’s construction of burnt tree branches.

The sculpture I thought the most of in the woods was Alison Stigora’s Mazzaroth. It’s an assemblage of burnt tree branches fitted together tightly to portray . . . what? A serpent? The movement of time? As the years go on, Mazzaroth will crumble and become one with the forest floor, as will the trees surrounding it.

You’re not going to confuse many of the sculptures at Abington Art Center with creations by David Smith, Louise Nevelson or other deservedly famed artists. Few if any are on that level. Some though, like Mazzaroth, had me looking them over from different angles because I liked them a lot. Take two on the great lawn, for instance. They are placed near each other and are as different as they can be.

Partial view of bed and table inside Cabin Van Gogh.

What is a lopsided small wooden cabin doing on the grass at Abington? Well, it’s a whimsical piece of art and is right at home there. Weather-beaten, cute and loveable, it contains within, of all things, a bed, chair and table lifted straight out of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings of his bedroom in Arles, France. This work is Knox Cummin’s Habitation Suite: Cabin Van Gogh. Vincent I believe would have been charmed by Cummin’s idea to build such an unlikely homage, and also by the view of foliage from the cabin’s open back side.

David Schafer's orange sculpture at Abington Art Center. — David Schafer’s orange sculpture at Abington Art Center.

Uphill from the cabin stands what looks a bit like a lifeguard tower painted in bright orange, some of its support slats atilt. David Schafer, the creator, named his piece Untitled Expression: How to Look at Sculpture. I suspect that the notions behind the giddy orange tower are partly conceptual. Sculptures, like just about anything, are multifaceted. No need to try and pin down a precise meaning. Observe, surmise and enjoy. One of my takes, subject to change, is that the sculpture is alive yet indecisive, that it is shaking out its stiff bones and readying to inch forward but hasn’t gotten into gear quite yet. And what’s going on with that public address system speaker? I remembered later that it had a practical purpose once, as a recorded message played from it for months after the sculpture was first installed about six years ago. Sandy and I were at Abington Art Center at that time and heard the message. If we were put into a deep hypnotic state, maybe we’d recall what the message was. Gone silent, to me the speaker now just looks cool.

(All photos by Sandra Cherrey Scheinin. If you click on any photo, a larger image will open)

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“Upward” Was The Theme Of The Day

August 2, 2015August 28, 2015Yeah, Another Blogger2 Comments

My wife Sandy and I spent seven fun-filled hours on a recent Friday in Philadelphia’s Art Museum neighborhood. The first two of those hours we strolled around the grounds of the Philadelphia Museum Of Art and its surrounding trails and parks. The skies were sunny, the humidity pretty low and the temperature not too unkindly hot. There was no getting away from the sun’s power though, and we sweated mightily, a small price to pay for helping the body build up Vitamin D reserves.

During the seven hours we found a fascinating park that was new to us, looked at lots of art within and without the museum, took in a Cuban music concert (“Havana Night”) at the museum and finished with a tasty dinner at a nearby restaurant, Rembrandt’s. But I’ve decided to skip many of the details about all of that. Instead I’m going to concentrate on a theme that, to my impressionable mind, seemed to unite a portion of what we saw. There’s a good chance that I’m stretching reality to find a connection, but what the hay, that wouldn’t be my first time. Besides, reality is flexible. The theme involves optimism, more specifically our species’ seeming desire and need to stay positive, to grow, to look upward. The notion began to bubble a bit in my sun-dappled head near the start of our Friday adventure when, poking around the museum’s outdoor sculpture garden, we were very happy to find Franz West’s colorful sculpture Lips towering before us.

Franz West's Lips in the Philadelphia Museum Of Art's sculpture garden. — Franz West’s Lips in the Philadelphia Museum Of Art’s sculpture garden.

Steps and Pyramid, two sculptures by Sol LeWitt.

Lips is way terrific. Three giant tendrils, (or are they giant worms?), pointing heavenward in pastel shades of blue, pink and lime. Taking a good look at the squirmy designs, I couldn’t help but think that West was putting his mind and emotions on display, that Lips represented his vision of looking on the bright side, of reaching for the stars. I wondered, what else around here might have had the same inspirations? Well, not far uphill from Lips on the sculpture garden grounds, Sandy and I found two modest and monochromatic sculptures by Sol LeWitt. They were sitting within their personal and unassuming open-walled pavilion. LeWitt named the larger piece Pyramid and the smaller one Steps. Pyramid and Steps were fashioned in 2010, two years before Lips, and are made of concrete blocks. Tiny compared to Lips, they nevertheless are objects that to me suggested that we keep our minds open and on the ascending path. Pyramids point skyward, duh. And although stairs go down as well as up, LeWitt I’m sure placed Steps next to his pyramid to reinforce the “up” reference.

So, I appeared to be on a roll. What else might I fit into my Upward container? One reason that Sandy and I had decamped at the museum area was to check out some of the newish stretches of the Schuylkill River Trail, a river-bounded pathway for pedestrians and cyclists that planners hope one day will extend 140 miles from the bottom of Philadelphia to Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. We walked a short distance southward on the River Trail and lo and behold came to a park we never knew about. It’s a haven that Philadelphia created for skateboarders. Paine’s Park is its name, probably because pain and skateboarding go hand in hand. Anyway, 30 or so guys and gals in their teens and 20s were gliding around the park, flipping off contoured walls and doing whatever else it is that skateboarders do. I was amazed by the park’s existence. Skateboarders had once made their home in Love Park, near Philadelphia’s City Hall, and garnered the wrath of city officials and ordinary folk in the process. Rather than continuing to scare the daylights out of tourists and office workers trying to lunch and lounge in Love Park, skateboarders needed their own officially-sanctioned facility. Now they have one. Paine’s Park opened two years ago.

Jonathan Monk's two sturdy sculptures, Steps and Pyramid, in Paine's Park. — Jonathan Monk’s two sturdy sculptures, Steps and Pyramid, in Paine’s Park.

But did my eyes deceive me? There in Paine’s were two creations that looked suspiciously like Sol LeWitt’s Steps and Pyramid. Sure enough, they were near-replicas. Their artist, Jonathan Monk, liked LeWitt’s sculpture garden pieces so much that he paid homage by creating cousins. And he even gave them the same names. But whereas do-not-touch signs are planted near LeWitt’s pieces, the Monk sculptures, fashioned from really tough materials, are meant to take whatever abuse skateboarders can dish out. Sandy and I didn’t see any of the gliders take on the challenge of Steps’ and Pyramid’s narrowly and sharply angled spaces, but I have it on good authority that it happens regularly. Monk’s works not only continue LeWitt’s figurative idea of staying on the upside, they provide the surfaces to allow someone actually to soar.

Skyscrapers in Center City Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia Zoo's ZooBalloon. — The Philadelphia Zoo’s ZooBalloon.

Yes, I smugly said to myself, there really is something to this idea I have. I looked around. In one direction were skyscrapers in Center City Philadelphia, testaments to man’s hopefulness. And in another was the Philadelphia Zoo’s gigantic and somewhat iconic ZooBalloon. Its daily flights, weather permitting, allow zoo visitors to come close to getting their heads near the clouds. And as Sandy and I made our way back to the museum grounds we passed Raoul Josset’s massive bronze statue of Marquis de Lafayette, his cape-enshrouded right arm pointing to the heavens. “Onwards and upwards, citizens,” the Marquis seemed to be saying.

The two tall works are Brancusi's Bird sculptures. — The two tall works are Brancusi’s Bird sculptures.

Sandy and I entered the museum. She headed toward a photography exhibition. I told her I’d meet her there in a bit after I continued my search for further examples to bolster my theme of the day. The museum holds a superb collection of sculptures by the great modernist Constantin Brancusi, and has devoted an entire room to his works. In it I stood before two related sculptures, Bird In Space and Bird In Space (Yellow Bird), the former made from bronze, the latter from marble. Both are sleek and very beautiful. Brancusi must have felt his spirit soaring as he designed and shaped them in the early 1920s, and post-creation too. Going up!

Paul Cezanne's The Large Bathers. — Paul Cezanne’s The Large Bathers.

I was tiring. One more stop, and then my quest to try and make a point would end. On many levels, Paul Cézanne is hard to beat. For maybe the 100th time I let wash over me one of his many masterworks, The Large Bathers. It was one of his final paintings, completed shortly before his passing in 1906. This time I focused on the trees providing cover for the tribe of naked folks at ground level. The upper reaches of the trees are not shown, by design. I could imagine the trees going on almost forever. I believe that in them Cézanne symbolically infused man’s basic nature to ascend and achieve. To move upward.

(All photos by Sandra Cherrey Scheinin. If you click on any photo, a larger image will open)

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A Friday Frolic In Philly

July 13, 2015July 29, 2015Yeah, Another Blogger4 Comments

My wife Sandy and I lived in Philadelphia for many years, both before we met and subsequently. The year 2005 was a momentous one for us, because that’s when we made the leap from the city to the nearby northern burbs. In some ways I prefer living where I now do, in other ways I wonder if leaving the city was a brilliant idea. Our house is nicer than the one we used to occupy, the current neighborhood is cuter than its predecessor. On the other hand, automobile traffic around here is as blood pressure-elevating as in Philadelphia. And there aren’t enough fun things for us to do, which is why we head south a few times each month to check out the offerings in various sections of the City Of Brotherly Love.

My overall opinion of Philadelphia is a good one. Yes, the city has plenty of problems, like too much crime and a pitiful public school system. And yet it has so much going for it. Loads of history that we all know or should know about. Great parks big and small. Fabulous buildings from the late 1600s onward. More restaurants, music venues, theaters and such than anyone could wish for. I’m sounding like someone from Philadelphia’s official tourism bureau, but my feelings are legitimate. For physical beauty, culture and food, Philadelphia is world-class.

Which brings us to Friday, July 3. Sandy and I were itching to get out of the house. Not much that we knew about was going on in the burbs. Philadelphia it would be. Where in the city though? Sandy had noticed in the paper that July 3 was First Friday in Philadelphia’s Old City section. We hadn’t been to a First Friday in a year or two, and we decided to go.

Old City's Church Street is paved with grey bricks. — Old City’s Church Street is paved with grey bricks. They contrast nicely with plastic recycling bins.

Old City is a part of town that was full of homes, businesses and people in Colonial days. It still is, and many of those 1700s structures are with us today. The area is quaint and often lively, and plenty of streets retain their ancient paving bricks and stones. There are quite a few art galleries in Old City. In 1991, attempting to lure customers and imbue Old City with needed panache, some gallery owners began keeping their doors open in the evening on the first Friday of each month. They spread the word and a monthly mini-festival, a kind of happening, was born. All over the world, events similar to First Friday are taking place. They can be good.

You never know what you’ll come across on Old City First Fridays. Painters and crafts people and assorted vendors set up tables for their wares on the sidewalks and in alleyways, which are also where musicians set up their instruments and wail. And many art galleries, the original driving force, are open. Sandy and I strolled around Old City without a plan. Not having done advance research, we ended up missing a few blocks with galleries we’d have liked. Next time. Most of the action that we caught was on a two block stretch of 2nd Street between Market and Arch Streets, and on Arch between 2nd and 3rd. A small chunk of territory, actually, but enough.

Our eyes were open for human creations and human activities. Who wouldn’t have loved the brash New Orleans-style brass band occupying a niche where Cuthbert and 2nd Streets meet. Or the long-haired White dude who, catching some zzzs, was draped like a caterpillar over one of those large and ubiquitous green utility company sidewalk boxes. He was Mr. Flexibility personified.

Or the head-scarved lady in blue on 2nd Street whose tables and racks held as eye-popping a collection of pillows, fabric trivets, shoulder bags and cloth drapings as one would ever see in a 30 square foot parcel of sidewalk. Middle-Eastern and Asian patterns and color combinations burst from her goods, clashing outrageously, looking great together nonetheless. Henri Matisse, who threw wild design combos into so many paintings and never met a color he didn’t like, would have loved this lady’s display.

Artworks by Keith Sharp at 3rd Street Gallery.

Artworks by Bettina Clowney at 3rd Street Gallery.

There were beautiful paintings, sculptures and crafts to be seen in the galleries. I’ll mention a few places. We liked just about everything we saw at 3rd Street Gallery. Two artists were showing there. Keith Sharp’s dark and dramatic photographic manipulations were intriguing, some a bit ominous. They were very different from Bettina Clowney’s spare paintings. Clowney uses a lot of whites in her depictions of fruits, of people, and in non-representational designs. Gazing at each other from opposite walls, the Sharp and Clowney artworks made a good marriage.

Leora Brecher with some of her sculptures at MUSE Gallery.

Paintings by Charles Newman at F.A.N. Gallery.

MUSE Gallery was filled with Leora Brecher’s small fired clay sculptures, all in white. Many were abstract suggestions of human movement, open and flowing. Very lovely.

F.A.N. Gallery on Arch Street is one Sandy and I visit occasionally. I wasn’t knocked out by its smorgasbord of works by gallery artists on this First Friday visit. We both liked the oils by one artist though, Charles Newman. He paints Philadelphia street scenes, focusing on old buildings, very well. The perspectives from which he views his brick and stone subjects are off-angle, giving the pictures a quiet tension, and his earthy subdued color choices are just right.

Dinner time. Off to Prime Stache, a few blocks from First Friday, on Chestnut Street. Atmospherically, it’s for lovers of exposed brick and stone walls, which Sandy and I are. A pubby place short on wines but decently long on beers, its food is good. Prime Stache has some fancy offerings, but we weren’t in a fancy mood. We both enjoyed our simple burgers, Sandy’s of the salmon ilk, mine of the turkey.

Race Street Pier and Benjamin Franklin Bridge.

The best part of the evening lay ahead. We strolled northward from Prime Stache to Race Street Pier, one of my favorite spots in Philadelphia. I’ve been there in daylight and late at night, and late night is better. The pier lies near the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, and in darkened hours the illuminated bridge overhead is breathtaking.

Jutting into the Delaware River, Race Street Pier once was a commercial municipal pier. It has been converted into a serene and intimate two level public park with long walking paths, a lawn and oak trees. Much of the Philadelphia region’s population has yet to discover this park. It opened four years ago, the first and still the only of its kind in Philadelphia. At the tail end of our First Friday evening, Race Street Pier bewitched Sandy and me. We walked romantically. We were inspired by views of the Delaware. We shook our heads marveling at the beauty of the massive Franklin bridge. And then it was time to head home.

(All of the photographs in this article were taken by Sandra Cherrey Scheinin. If you click on any photo, a larger image will open)

The Day My Father Went Eye To Eye With Van Gogh

June 21, 2015December 9, 2015Yeah, Another Blogger8 Comments

My father came to live with me and my wife Sandy in Philadelphia soon after his 90th birthday, in 1999. He had been living alone on Long Island, but health issues necessitated his relocation. Good doctoring in the Philadelphia suburbs improved his physical condition quickly, but there was no cure for the declining state of his kidneys. He became a dialysis patient one year after he moved in with us, and he remained on dialysis till his death in 2005 at age 96.

My father was in pretty good shape until the final nine or so months of his life. He loved getting out of the house and joining Sandy and me and others at restaurants, concerts, museums, you name it. On this Father’s Day I’ll relate one incident that I look back on fondly. It was the day that he and I and my brother had a private viewing of a rarely-seen Van Gogh oil painting at the Philadelphia Museum Of Art.

Vincent van Gogh is one of my two favorite artists. The other is Paul Cézanne. I never can decide which of the two I like best. For wordsmanship, however, I go with Vincent. In spring 2001 I read all 800+ of his mesmerizing letters, in their English translation. My father got a kick from this. He told people that I was becoming a Van Gogh expert, which was hardly the case. But my semi-obsession with Van Gogh was rock solid, and it is here that the story really begins.

One day in January 2002 I poked around some Van Gogh websites and discovered that the Philadelphia Museum Of Art, which Sandy and my father and I frequented, owned five Van Gogh oils. Yet, I had never seen more than four of them on display there. The painting that I wasn’t familiar with was Still Life With A Bouquet Of Daisies. Most experts believe that Vincent painted it in summer 1886, a few months after he moved to Paris to live with his brother Theo and to contemplate the new techniques and perspectives, most notably those of Impressionism, that had been invigorating the French art scene. Why wasn’t the painting on display? I needed to know.

A few days later, from my desk at work, I dialed the museum and got connected to an assistant curator. I asked about the mystery painting. She told me that the museum did occasionally bring it from storage to the public galleries, but that it had been a long time since that had happened. We chatted a little and then I said thanks and was about to hang up. But before I could the curator asked “Would you like to see it?” Huh? Huh? I couldn’t believe my ears. Yes ma’am, I would.

My father was about to turn 93, on January 19, 2002. A few days before that, to help our dad celebrate his birthday, my brother Richard planned to fly to Philadelphia from his California home. I explained this to the curator and asked her if my brother and father could come along with me (Sandy, chained to her job, wasn’t free to get mid-day time off from work). Sure, she said. Fairly stunned, I set the date for Friday January 18, a non-dialysis day. I knew that something special had just occurred.

The momentous day arrived. We drove to the museum and were met in the west wing by the curator. She was a lively and lovely person and probably was getting as big a charge out of the situation as anyone. Down an elevator we all went to one level of the museum’s cavernous underbelly. We followed our hostess along a long corridor, walking past many locked rooms. At our consecrated storage area she unlocked the door and we entered. Perpendicular to one of the room’s sides were very large moveable display panels. All of them were in their retracted positions. The curator pulled out one of the panels, both sides of which were covered with paintings, maybe 20 per side. I noticed a Chagall on the side facing us. Can’t recall what else. Except of course for a work near the left edge on the top row. The Van Gogh.

Still Life With A Bouquet Of Daisies. Philadelphia Museum Of Art — Still Life With A Bouquet Of Daisies.
Copyright Philadelphia Museum Of Art

It was show time. The curator wheeled over a tall moveable step ladder. Richie and I went up first. What did I make of Vincent’s oil? Well, Still Life With A Bouquet Of Daisies doesn’t have the brilliant color schemes that Vincent was developing in Paris. It is dark, with lots of deepened greens. Maybe that’s why the museum doesn’t bring it out of storage too often. But they should. With Vincent, there’s always something to admire. I took in his trademark broad brush strokes, the intense tangles of flower stems. The greens upon greens.

Richie and I and our benefactor were excited and happy for my father when his turn came. My dad was excited and happy too, a muted gleeful smile on his face, his eyes on alert. I’m sure he knew how lucky he was to do what he was about to do. Holding the ladder rails carefully, up he climbed. Admirable mobility for a guy one day away from the big 93. He gazed at the painting for a good long spell, longer I think than my brother or I had. He spouted words of admiration. He was having a ball. Finally he came back down. Thank you, thank you, thank you we said to the wonderful curator.

Over the following years, my father and brother and I talked about our museum visit many times among ourselves and with friends and relatives. Always with a grin. Always feeling a tingle. And so, I dedicate this Father’s Day essay to Hyman Scheinin, he whom I’m sure is the only nonagenarian ever to climb a step ladder to go eye to eye with Van Gogh.

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