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The Turtle Goddess Scarfing Fistfuls of Lettuce

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To be Grabbed at by Every Squirrel and Monkey He was startled, entering his own kitchen, to discover her kneeling in front of the open refrigerator and rummaging through the vegetable bin. She had been gone for weeks. Now, unannounced, she was back, pulling fistfuls of lettuce from his fridge and cramming them into her mouth, unrinsed. He recognized her immediately, frozen in his fascinated stare. Eventually he cleared his throat, to announce his presence. She did not respond immediately, but eventually turned her head toward him, very, very slowly; still munching leaves. She said nothing, just eyed him, forcing him to break the silence. “I worried you were dead or something”. She continued to chew, continued her silence, scanning him, up and down. The refrigerator had one of those “Door Open” alarms. The intermittent buzz was the only other sound to accompany her chewing and gulping. She did not respond, turning away from him and back to the vegetables. “I t...
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REJECTED BEAUTY / Indirect Portraiture, Part Two

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The "Whose" is Not an Issue The “Whose” is not an Issue When I capture the image of a snarled garden hose or a soap suds filled kitchen sink or a random discarded mattress by the side of the road, I am simply recording an unexpected vision, an odd surprise of what otherwise is passed by and not worthy of documentation. These things are so ordinary as to be invisible. I record them anyway. Sometimes they are gorgeously exquisite and worthy of more than a glance. One might see these objects as visual poetry. That is how I view them. I had one such photograph of a sagging roadside mattress printed, matted, and framed as a 11 by 14 picture in a 16 by 20 frame for inclusion in an exhibition with friends. It was the glorification of a no longer wanted chunk of an unknowable individual's existence. It was a portrait in absentia, in which the person has vanished, not unlike the seventeenth century Japanese images of clothing haphazardly hanging over a screen: Wh...
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A Photographic Gallery of Old Mattresses Al Fresco

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Mattress Number One: FREE MATTRESS and PLATE GLASS #2023/5094 Paris, 2023 Gold Hill Mesa Dumped Mattress Colorado Springs 2019 Big Dog City (flower) Mattress or Simply a Curious Juxtaposition Paris 2022 Mattress Belonging to An Unknown Cripple Creek Woman Colorado Springs 2022 Mattress and Curiously, and Perhaps Delightfully-Wrinkled-Sheet Paris 2019 Alas, the Princess Was Unable to Locate the Pea Colorado Springs 2025 Off Madison Avenue: Mattress In the Rain New York City 2024 On Photographing Discarded Mattresses Generally, people smile or sigh when they see I have photographed yet another water hose. These hundreds of garden hose images, which I have been documenting for decades, are generally lyrical snarls or orderly coils, each hose a visual poem worthy of being illustrated on a greeting card. The mattress images are quite different. These are not portraits of fresh, new, unslept upon bedding. Each trashed mattress holds...
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Drawing On the Underside of Floorboards: Homemade Cave Art

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Homemade Cave Art Imagine yourself on a mountain top or in the middle of a field of grass. It is night time. There are no city lights and won’t be for another fifty thousand years. As you tilt your face upward you gaze upon an infinite sea of bright tiny specks. Your outstretched hand cannot touch these points of light held high in the firmament. No stone you hurl will shatter their rest, in the way your rock disturbs a calm pool of water and sends ripples outward. Yet you can own these sparks that flicker out of reach with your eye and mind. These specks beg to be named, put into order and relations revealed. A wolf may tip its head upward to howl at the moon and stars. But this wolf will not look at the clusters of lights overhead and impose a world of images: bears, lions, ibex, snakes, birds, or hunters. The act of naming and imposing or exposing structure is advanced and sacred knowledge. The vault of the night sky is a sacred canopy, a light bespeckled cloak...
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The Ordinary, Normal, Unexceptional Tale of the Princess Smudge Knee

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The Ordinary, Normal, Unexceptional Tale of the Smudge Knee Princess Illustrated by Giselle Restrepo Her only distinguishing features were her dirty kneecaps, a result of crawling around in the dirt and through the underbrush. Other than that she looked average and normal. During her play, she scampered on her knees over and through mud, skunk cabbage, blackberry bramble, ferns, and jack in the pulpits. Despite wearing a heavy, mud colored, canvas jump suit when she went to play, the muck and plant material seeped through the thick fabric onto her skin. When she changed from her play clothes, she always discovered: a mark that resembled a bent potato on her right knee and on her left an unmistakable diamond shape; albeit a smudged one. A good scrubbing with soap and water would temporarily remove them, but they'd return as soon as she crawled in or out of her burrow. She adored playing in the mud, like a little piggy. Her world was truly puddle luscious. Mud w...
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EARTH DAY: Putting The World On Wheels: 1969

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I wrote this little fantasy piece in 1969, after spending time in Detroit, erstwhile car capital of the known universe. I spent a day with some designers and engineers at Chrysler and came away with the idea that what these guys really wanted was a problem they could sink their teeth into. They presented themselves as practical problem solvers for the consuming public. I wondered what they might do if given a chance at tackling a real enigma. What might be more worthy than to save our planet? The concept of all the people on this planet coming together to save the planet seems silly and childish. Some people understand, but too few. Even in the 1990s just picking up candy wrappers from the elementary school yard took much effort. Back in the 1960s few could see the potential of planetary warming. Alternative modes of energy and an awareness of global issues were not yet on the horizon. Problem solving was equated with the creation of new money streams. Around the same time, paper...
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The Peculiar Saga of Abe Tater

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The Peculiar Saga of Abe Tater Above is an 1864 photograph of a heart-shaped potato. This, the only known image of the mysterious potato, was taken by an unknown studio assistant of the famous photographer Mathew Brady. The glass plate negative of this obscure potato portrait rests in a locked drawer in an unmarked and secure room in the Library of Congress. Undoubtedly there will be those who declare this image to be fake. It is not. It is the real thing. It has been whispered that in addition to being "heart-shaped", the potato seemed to emit a rhythmic sound: lub dub lub dub much like a human heart. Unfortunately, neither video nor motion picture had yet been invented to capture the pulsing motion of the heart-shaped spud as it beat like a human heart. Thomas Edison, an unknown teenager at the time, might have captured the sound and motion of this unique potato if he could have also time-travelled with the appropriate instruments. Time-travel has yet to be...
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