rust | Romancing Reality

Looking at the Overlooked

March 19, 2023

A show of my photographs, called Looking at the Overlooked, went up Friday in our Community Center. Ten days ago Lynn Wohlers (bluebrightly) posted The Call of the Quotidian on a similar theme. If you haven’t already, you might want to check it out; her narrative is worth the trip, let alone her photographs. This is what’s in my show.

1 I titled this photo Rennie’s Flowers because it reminded me of work by the artist Rennie MacIntosh. When I tried to find an image of his work featuring flowers something like these rusty paint blisters (I don’t think a term to describe these things exists), I couldn’t find one. The closest I could come is this Wikipedia entry. It shows windows and chairs that feature a graphic element bunched at the top and a long line beneath. It’s okay if you don’t see Rennie MacIntosh art in my photograph, which shows an old propane tank in a marine junk yard in Placida, Florida. I’m just happy that I could devise a title for this photo at all. Unlike Mic. (Landscapes and Other Abstractions), who is a wiz at it, I find titling works the hardest part of the process.

2 You may have seen this and many of the other photographs in the show on this blog. I took it at my friend’s farmhouse in Pennsylvania. It has the obvious title of Clothes Rack with Golf Ball.

3 This is another photograph taken at the farmhouse. Title: The Hidden Dormer.

4 The Bathtub is the third photo from the farmhouse that I put in the show.

5 As you may have noticed, I like to hang around my community’s groundskeepers’ yard. That’s where I found this spiral of fencing. The photo is titled Spiral.

6 The unusual shade of the green in this drying leaf drew my attention. Title: The Leaf on Buttonbush Bridge.

7 My neighbors probably prefer their hostas green, but I don’t. This is The Morgan Hostas.

8 This boat was resting in a open area pretty far from the water in Cortez, Florida. Title: Abandoned in Cortez 2.

9 This and the following two photographs were also taken in Cortez. This boat was in a boatyard, awaiting refurbishing. This is Dry Docked 1.

10 This boat was about to be dismantled. I’m so glad I got there before the destruction began. This is Dry Docked 2.

11 This is Dry Docked 3.

12 I showed this dumpster photograph in a link on my last blog post. It acquired the title Loading-Dock Dumpster for the show.

13 The loading-dock dumpster was in my neighborhood; this one was in Sarasota. Title: Dumpster 61367.

14 David and I were out on an anniversary ride (it’s the way we celebrate our anniversaries) when he spotted an old grain elevator. “Isn’t that the kind of thing you like to photograph?” he asked. Sure thing. Title: Ruffled.

15 I was visiting a friend in Asheville, North Carolina, and came across a paper-recycling yard. I was in heaven; there were aisles and aisles of cardboard bales. Title: Recycling 1.

16 Recycling 2

17 Recycling 3

18 I did some recycling of my own for this new show. This photograph and the next five are from a 2015 show I had at the Ginko Gallery in Oberlin. All depict films of Leptothrix discophora and are untitled.