In and out of focus

Photos by Grier Horner - all rights reserved.

Grand Central appears cloaked in gold Friday evening as the figures of rush-hour commuters swirl and as flames seem to jet from the wall on the left.


While I'm on my gallery quest, I'm doing a little house hunting.
I mean this place going up on 10th Avenue between West 23rd and 24th might fit the bill.

But when you live in a glass house in the city you become part of the view, as a friend observed.

That dark form slicing through the left side of the photo is the new High Line elevated walkway. Not a bad thing for a country boy to have at his front door.

This is my reflection in the window of the train taking me home. I didn't have time to get a martini at my favorite Grand Central bar. But I grabbed a Coors Lite at Gate 30 and drank it on the train.

In the old days when my father used to commute to Tarrytown, you could buy drinks on the train. My mother wasn't a big fan of that amenity.

Walking to the subway stop on 8th Avenue after scouting out galleries I took a picture of this middle-aged couple holding hands.

(To enlarge the pictures, click on them.)

West 24th Street

Photos by Grier Horner - all rights reserved

This photo symbolizes my position in the art world. Outside, looking in. Which I am trying to change. Anyway, those are my sneakers planted on the sidewalk in front of one of the big galleries on West 24th Street Friday.

I got up at 5:15 a.m., which is pretty amazing for someone whose normal wake-up time is 9 or 10. I drove to Wassaic, rode the train to Grand Central, took the S subway to Times Square and the E train from there to Chelsea.

That's pretty mundane. But I'm a novice at subways and riding them is an adventure. Lots of potential photos underground, but I haven't worked up my nerve to point the camera at riders yet.

Back above ground, these women on West 24th look like they're about to be mowed down by a cab or two that have mounted the sidewalk. But they're OK. The cabs were parked.

I scouted out more than a dozen galleries on Friday. And that was just the north side of the street.

It's going to take a lot more trips to Manhattan to cover the Chelsea galleries. Which is fine with me. I love looking at the art and talking with the gallery staffs.

And I'm having a field day shooting in Manhattan.

(Click on the shots to blow them up.)

On the fly

Remember when Janet Jackson had her "wardrobe malfunction" during halftime of the 2004 Super Bowl?

I had something less traumatic but nevertheless troubling happen to the fly of one of my favorite pairs of pants, pictured above. The strip of cloth that hides the zipper started malfunctioning, exposing the zipper.

Even with the zipper up, it's sort of embarrassing going around with it showing. So I fixed them by attaching Velcro with a staple gun.

In case you need to refresh your memory, I've tucked in this picture of Janet exposed. A lot of people contend that Justine Timberlake, who was singing with her, intentionally yanked off the material over that breast as a publicity stunt.

Adding credence to that was the fact that this part of her costume was attached with snaps, making it detachable. MTV, which produced the halftime show, had promised a "shocking surprise."

But back to my wardrobe malfunction. Snaps probably would have been a more tailored solution for my pants.

But I don't think that the staples really show that much. Here's proof. If I hadn't drawn the arrow, would you have noticed?

Overhead

This has been a year of magnificent clouds in the Northeast. Here are a few shots to illustrate my point.

The one at the top was taken last week from the newly opened pedestrian bridge crossing the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, New York. It was an abandoned railroad bridge before its conversion.

This shot was taken in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, this weekend.

A patch of blue sky, above, looks like a gigantic bird soaring over Pittsfield.

Then there were these clouds adding to the drama of Niagara Falls, which made clouds of its own, as well as rainbows.

To enlarge the photos, click on them. All photos © grier horner

The Canary

I'd like to fly this pretty yellow Piper. But I don't know how. Steve does. He's building one, an open cockpit job. That would be great to fly in. But I don't think he's ever going to finish it.
He doesn't either.

I took the shot of the Piper when Steve, an ex paratrooper, and I visited the grass-strip airport at Ghent, New York.

Years ago a North Adams 12-year-old and his friend swiped a plane from the North Adams airport and landed it safely in New York state.

That was pretty impressive. He had never flown a plane before, only read about flying planes.

I only bring up the thing about the kid taking the plane because Steve and I kidded about stealing one.

Amelia Earhart's first plane was yellow. She called it Canary. Too bad this shot wasn't in color.

Jonas has a wild plane (above) that he built. If he took me up he'd show me some stunts. That would be wild. Like the way Mickey's giving us the finger.

Looking backward

Sometimes when I ride the train
from Wassaic to New York,
I sit in the seats facing backwards.
Other times in forward facing seats.

I have friends who say
they can't stand sitting the wrong way.

As for me if night blackens the windows
or I close my eyes,
I can't tell whether I'm pointing
toward the future or the past.

The shot at the top is Harlem under a heavy sky. I took it from the train going into New York yesterday. It looks like the Apocalypse.

The guys on the right are having fun watching the guys on the left. What's in the blue bag? A body?

I like this photo even though it's out of focus.

This man with the cool folding bike sat across the aisle from me on the way home.

New York reflections

Today I'll show you some of the photos I took in New York last week. I was shooting with one of those miniature Nikon's you can slip in your pocket. It has a strong telephoto.

A problem, as you can see, is I managed to imprint these with the date and time. It was my second time handling the camera and I didn't know how to switch that feature off.

I love all the layers of reflection in the building above and the one below.

Like me the man in the dark suit was looking at this woman's shapely legs. And doesn't that look like the face of a ghoulish giant looking on from the second-story window in the building across the street?

To get big enlargements of the photos, click on them.

Gallery quest 2

Here's a smattering of other things that I liked during my tour of some galleries on West 57th Street last week.

Above is a still I captured from a video of a chess champion,, Jennifer Shahade, and a friend keeping hula hoops spinning around their waists while duplicating the chess moves of a game played by Marcel Duchamp, the artist.

It was part of a show at Francis M. Naumann Fine Art at 24 West 57th Street called Marcel Duchamp, The Art of Chess.

I watched the video over and over and it made me smile each time. You can catch a segment by clicking this link.

The video was done by Daniel Meirom of DimMak Films in conjunction with Shahade, who is also an author and self-defined games player.

This thoughtfully gathered and presented show is up through October 30.
This sculpture of a dancer is at Bernarducci.Meisel.Gallery, 37 West 57th Street. It is a painted bronze by John DeAndrea. She sat amid a solo show of paintings by photo realist painter Gus Heinze. The show just ended but you can still see Heinze' images at this link. While you're there you can see some of DeAndrea's nudes under his name in the artists category.

I took this photo of the dancer who is in a window overlooking the building across the street. DeAndrea's sculptures, from the gallery's booklet on his 2006 show, is a photo realist himself.

One of the most incredible things about his sculptures is that they look as if you touched them, the flesh would yield. I don't know how that is done in hard metal.
This wooden sculpture is part of a timely show at the Franklin Parrasch Gallery, 20 West 57th Street. The solo show of work by John Cederquist is called Treachery of an Economy.

Surprisingly this piece is also a functioning, finely constructed chest of drawers. I never saw that coming until Chris opened a drawer for me. It is up through October 10.
And here's a pre-installation shot I took of a photo by Peter Bialobrzeski of Germany. It drew me into the Laurence Miller Gallery, also 20 West 57th.

Called The Abstracted Landscape, the show, up until November 14, will also include photography by Stephane Couturier from Paris, DoDo Jin Ming of Beijing and New York, and Toshio Shibata of Tokyo.

You can take a look by clicking this link. You can enlarge the photos in this blog by clicking on them.