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WALKING ON THIN ICE

The Greatest Mountains, the All Argon Hills, & the Cold Cathode Plains by Jeff Chiplis

September 30, 2013 No Comments

Jeff Chiplis’ installation at Ingenuity 2013
The Greatest Mountains, the All Argon Hills, & the Cold Cathode Plains

Poet and artist Kevin Eberhardt and I helped Jeff Chiplis install and remove his 60 x 9 x 2 foot recycled argon tube, steel and soil sculpture titled “The Greatest Mountains, the All Argon Hills, & the Cold Cathode Plains” in warehouse 32 down on the Lake Erie shore for the 3-day Ingenuity Fest 2013.

Here’s a fotomontage I made of the process and event: TGM,tAAH,atCCP

You can see more of Chiplis’ work over the last decade at AgentOfChaos.com/CHIPLIS/index.html.

hot not

September 27, 2013 No Comments

Some seriously aggressively named and unpolitically correct hot sauce brand names
at the Asian spice shop this morning in the West Side Market.








impolite sauce – fotosmith

Society for the Dissemination of Art

September 25, 2013 No Comments

SDA Tract #1, Fall 2013, published & edited by Jo Meinke

Here’s my kind of religious tract – brief with gentle art, poetry, thought, mystery, and whimsy.

SDA Art Tract #1 from the Society for the Dissemnination of Art . . . online at ArtTracts.com and Facebook Society for the Dissemination of Art . . . publisher/editor Jo Meincke.

Jo Meincke’s design page JoMeinckeDesign.com.












2.5 x 4 inches closed
5 x 4 inches 1st open
10 x 4 inches 2nd open
SDA Tract #1, Fall 2013, published & edited by Jo Meinke

church of not quite so much pain & suffering

September 24, 2013 1 Comment

2005 card designed by Lady – fotosmith

Me?
I had bad ant blood within
but nurtured my grasshopper core more
these 30 yrs past Mother Mary coming in me
Multiple Orgasmicly in the green green grassijuana.
And old rabbit dead died in vain in vein when I became
the central sum son n sun tent tenet n tenant
of
THE CHURCH OF NOT QUITE SO MUCH PAIN & SUFFERING
where I sing the song 6 Sins Assorted
sporting pearl for spine.
Swineless. Spartan. Shrine.
But, my me mine.
Look!
Up in the why…
Vaster than mere greedy gullet!
Stranger than local motives!
Able to leap sheep in a single bound!
It’s…. just Smith
at all your loco malls petit mals siezures xtra
bogus points for mass deception
For the iniquitous are ubiquitous
And that is entirely too many vowels for me.

Go thee, and suffer less

The Church of Not Quite so Much Pain & Suffering
The irreverend Smith and his beloved Lady presiding

our nine tenets
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Go thee and suffer less
Do as you would be done
This too will pass
What does not come from within may be lost without
It’s your life, you live it
Weigh way, not what
Space, place, pace
Think before say
Listen before reply

Church is sixteen years old. For the first eight years, I was its sole member. Then Lady joined eight years ago, and Mandycat 4 yrs later made it three. Not bad growth – 0.187 life forms per year. Five years from now we’ll be a whole four members strong, and it’ll take us only 200,177,299,894 years to convert the entire world, assuming no one borns or dies until then.

So go thee, and suffer less — darn good advice if I do say so.



2006-13 Lady church calling cards – fotosmith

original 2005 – fotosmith

I’M AS READY

September 21, 2013 1 Comment

I’M AS READY

As a rabbit,
shuddering

As a sparrow,
huddling

I’m as ready

As a deer,
munching

I’m as ready

As a child,
pointing at sparrows
on a telephone line

I’m as ready
and innocent
for everything

Wrapped
in the comforter of air

Standing
On solid ground

Hearing dog plane buzz,
car door slam

Trusted parents

Child, I
Friend, I

Animal, I
I trust you

Bounty for frog
Sunning in a pond

I’m trusting you

You’re taking care
of so many things

~ Lady

me goofy, The City great

September 19, 2013 No Comments

mindweb – fotosmith

“every word opens a box to another paradox” ***

online geek science jokes from HuffingtonPost:

How do you know the moon is going broke?
It’s down to it’s last quarter.

Why can’t you trust atoms?
They make up everything

Where does bad light end up?
In prism

What does a subatomic duck say?
Quark.

Scientist reads book on anti-gravity
Can’t put it down

What is a sleeping brain’s favorite rock band?
R.E.M.

There are 10 kinds of people in this world.
Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.

A hotel bellhops asks the photon checking in, “Can I help you with your bags?” “I don’t have any, I’m traveling light.”

A cop pulls Heisenberg over and asks him, “Do you know how fast you were going?” Heisenberg replies, “No, but I know where I am.”

Later Shrodinger gets stopped. The cop searches the car and asks, “Did you know there’s a dead cat in here?” He replies, “Well, now I do!”

*** line from Craig Kurtz poem in Lady’s new nearly here online issue of The City: Fall, Year One, Starlight (a poetry/art zine) . . . soon at all your finer establishments. You can check out her previous issue “Fall, Year Zero, Learning to Swim” HERE if you desire.


mind eye – fotosmith

Chiplis/Ingenuity 2013

September 18, 2013 No Comments

Yesterday we went from this

to this, for Chiplis’ installation at Ingenuity Fest 2013.

Chiplis is in the small segment of artists whose medium is neon/argon tubes. And in that thin slice, he’s the only one I know who works exclusively in used tubing.

He gets a lot of his art supplies from dead Cleveland buildings. He figures if they’re being demolished, he can save the old signage for art. I helped him take one off an abandoned restaurant years ago, which was a lot of fun because it was technically illegal. Now days restaurants ask him to take their signs when they go under.

Don’t know how many shows Chiplis has been in past couple years . . . there’s the solo at the Butler Institute of Art in 2010, Ingenuity Fest 2009-13, the Busta Gallery last February and NYC’s Scope Art Fair 2013 a month later, a permanent installation in the new underground Cleveland Convention Center, last month’s group show at the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art, and at least a couple more out-of-towners and probably a few in I heard of, and probably some I haven’t. Is good when good things happen to good people.

Yesterday poet/artist Kevin Eberhardt and I helped him install a 60 x 10 foot installation titled “The Greatest White Mountains, the All Argon Hills, and the Cold Cathode Plains” for Ingenuity 2013 down at dock 32 on the lake front. All these tubes use argon gas.

Ingenuity runs this Friday-Sunday at docks 32 and 30 on the lakefront north of the Browns Stadium and Great Lakes Science Center, is free and open to the public.

Jeffry Chiplis also collects carrot bags from around the world, was born on February 29th so only ages once every four years, landscapes, gardens, is a certified Bar-B-Q judge, has been on the board of SPACES art gallery for 30-some years and my friend almost as long.

He was also our landlord for two weeks to two months when we stayed in his 2-room love shack out back after we sold our place in 2006, again when we briefly returned to the US in 2007, and finally on our return in 2009 . . . it was a fairytale shack, with the glass shower in the kitchen between the refrigerator and the stove.


detail of Chiplis sculpture at Ingenuity Fest 2013 – fotosmith

black bear, Smiths

September 17, 2013 No Comments

Camping Sunday morning, soon after I’d taken a foto of a Black Bear Crossing sign nailed to a tree in front of our in-laws’ western Pennsylvania cabin, Miles the dog jerked his head up and stared at the woods across the lane. My sister-in-law noticed and said “There’s a bear.”

She went into the cabin for her camerafone, then headed for the lawn across the lane. I asked why she thought the bear would come out of the woods into the yard and she explained the folk there fed them in a bear trough when they were camping and the bears usually checked it out.

Sure enough, out comes the bear, slow, lumbering, smaller than I’d expected but still big enough to get his way.

My first foto looked like a big black bag so I considered bear danger versus foto and started around the forest edge to get closer. But as I crept up, it started off. Got two more bearblob fotos, then I made clucking noises and it stopped, looked back over its shoulder at me, waited as I explained I just wanted a good foto, then took off even faster, and that was that.

Not bad.

The bear statues below were at the campsite store, were carved with chainsaws.

The Smith plaques were in the cabin because my in-laws on my sister-in-law’s side are also named Smith. Go figure. The fruit farm bag is from near my in-laws’ Ohio farm. So Idaho/Washington/Cleveland meSmith drives to Pennsylvania Smithplace to eat apples from Ohio FruitSmiths which is near the Ohio FarmSmiths.

Today I help found-neon-argon sculptor Jeff Chiplis install a piece for this year’s Ingenuity Festival; poet Kevin Eberhardt will be helping as well, so I’m going from black bears to neon and poet.

Life do be interesting.











black bears and Smiths, real and imaged – fotosmith

Vulcan eye-meld

September 13, 2013 No Comments

In between procession takes for the Daniel Thompson documentary yesterday, I shot some nice fotos in closed Coventry store shop windows.

All you fotogs out there, there are few simpler yet more rewarding tricks than shooting objects in display windows because the window glass reflections unite the world behind with the one in front — rather like Spock’s famous Vulcan eye-meld.

Here’re 7 of my 131 fotos taken yesterday.







when worlds collide – fotosmith

Nature

September 12, 2013 No Comments

~ Lady