Art and The Garage
Updated: Apr 5, 2021
Many, many years ago - ok, decades ago - I spent a summer making leather goods with a friend in Central City, Colorado. Most of it was belts, coasters, Bible covers, etc. We also made occasional fern hangars, which were popular back then. Yes, that's an old stirrup near the top, which was just the right size and shapes to hold a small plant like an ivy, to contrast with the fern pot that went in the large cradle at the bottom.
Last summer I was tidying up our garage and found this hanger in a paper grocery sack on a high shelf. Not quite knowing what to do with it, I took it out of the bag and put it on the garage floor. As I continued cleaning, my eyes kept being drawn back to the interplay of its lines, shapes, textures, and colors, so I took a few pictures of it. (Reminder: if you have an iPhone in your pocket, you have a really good camera in your pocket too.)
When I saw this image on my computer's screen, I was taken by the shapes, textures, subtle color tones, and lines in the image. I was also struck by how our garage floor had a wide range of tonalities, as well as an interesting set of cracks. I made several images, trying to find the right combination of shapes, curves, borders, tones, etc. This one was the best.
Please feel free to share any of your abstract photos that you are particularly pleased with by posting them in the comment area at the bottom of this page.
Once again we find delight and intrigue in the mundane. Before I read Paul's title or description, I wondered if that was a weathered marble background from the old country. Was that a practically repurposed stirrup or merely an everyday item integrated into a Duchampian statement? Those curious queries are really inconsequential, however, compared to the simple beauty, grace, form, and texture of this delightful, serendipitous composition. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all regularly perceive such inherent beauty in the prosaic as Paul does?