Albuquerque
It’s been two years since Tricia and I had visited my parents in Albuquerque, and nobody’s getting any younger. Though the timing was tough — squeezed in between our yearly Maine camping trip and a pilgrimage tour Tricia is leading to Chartres (she’s there now) — we picked the first full week of October both for Albuquerque’s world famous Balloon Fiesta, and my father’s birthday. Our first fall visit, we think.
The bottle of great wine I brought was stolen out of our suitcase (more on that perhaps, if American ever answers my email), and the weather ruined not only our personal balloon flight (twice) but much of the Fiesta itself, yet we still had a great visit, refamiliarized ourselves with the food, art galleries, and smells of the southwest, and gave my father a memorable 77th.
Oh, and natch — took a few pictures .
Adam, it is time for another exhibit. These are gorgeous.
Comment by Chris — October 17, 2006 @ 8:00 am
Wonderful! Ole! Ole!
I particularly liked the “Non-Idiginous Sunset”. The wall, with its dusky brown color matches the surrounding natural colors so well, and then there is that abrupt edge at its end that catches your eye. And the odd & odder art was great fun. Where is that gallery? I’ll probably visit Albuquerque sometime in the coming year (it’s just a day’s drive from Boulder), and I’d like to check it out in person.
Comment by rakkity — October 17, 2006 @ 9:40 am
Outrageous! Wine stolen from your suitcase? My cousin Gerry just returned from a trip to New Mexico, and his TSA-approved suitcase locks were broken by the inspectors. What is going on?
Comment by rakkity — October 17, 2006 @ 9:50 am
Great pictures! I especially like the shots of the adobe buildings and the church. What did you use to make the gallery?
A good friend of mine was there for the hot air balloons too. I wonder if you saw each other, not that you would have known that you knew someone in common….
Comment by pesky godson — October 17, 2006 @ 11:07 am
The “odd” and “odder” art objects were actually not in ABQ, but at the Philly airport. We were supposed to fly Providence to Chicago to ABQ, but weather in Chicago (tornados, I think I heard … ) cancelled all flights to that area, so American put us on US Airways to Philly, back onto American to Dallas, then AA to ABQ. Long day, and a much-anticipated bottle gone.
I couldn’t get worthy images of a better and another even odder installation. The latter giant lacework made of human hair — fascinating but kinda ugly. The former clusters of vertical monofilament with tiny models of birds mounted on them at varying heights, the aggregates forming 3D images of other birds and airplanes.
The best way to understand this is a floating cube of space with a grid of strings hanging in it, their tensioning weights all at one level I’ll call the “floor”. Now imagine a projected image on the “floor” of the cube, with strings only at the gridpoints that are part of an outline and features of that object. The counterweights thus form a 2D view of the object, but the birds along the length (one per string) make a cooler but harder to resolve 3D image. Oh, and it’s over two-story space on the other side of security glass separating them from the people-mover conveyor belts we were on. Challenging, to say the least …
Comment by adam — October 17, 2006 @ 11:34 am
Chartres!–can we hope for a picture or two?
Comment by rakkity — October 17, 2006 @ 11:43 am
Try this which links to Carson’s website or look at all of the art at the Philadelphia International Airport.
Comment by michael — October 17, 2006 @ 12:00 pm
None of the links show the bird aggregates, that I found, but the objects of which I took pictures are by Warren Muller, the first link:
http://www.bahdeebahdu.com/light_sculptures/index.html
And they got way better pictures of the hair than I did …
Comment by adam — October 17, 2006 @ 12:11 pm
Silly Adam. “Rara Avis” by Ralph Helmick is in O’Hare, on their way back:
http://theplacewherewelive.blogspot.com/2005/10/from-wright-brothers-to-rara-avis.html
Adam may be confused, but in defense of his photography skills, these images were taken from below, and Adam had no time to leave and re-enter security to achieve that vantage point.
Comment by el Kib — October 17, 2006 @ 12:18 pm
You beat me to it by two minutes. I was so close to chastising you for making your followers do all of your work.
Comment by michael — October 17, 2006 @ 12:23 pm
Thanks to both for the links. Actually, if you probe just a little more deeply into Adam’s link, you get
http://www.handsart.net/landing.html
This is at the Seattle-Tacoma airport, but the pix show the 3-D totality a lot better.
Comment by rakkity — October 17, 2006 @ 3:59 pm
What a difference the right background and some feature lighting make … ! Thanks!
One of the things I loved about Rara Avis at O’Hare was the use of tiny birds to make big birds. Kind of like what would happen if those wonderful swirling, direction-shifting masses of starlings one sometimes see flying about suddenly resolved itself into something representational.
Comment by adam — October 17, 2006 @ 4:23 pm
Great link rakkity. One word – wow – but my how we’ve strayed from Adam’s photos.
Comment by michael — October 17, 2006 @ 4:26 pm
Stray, schmay. That’s the fun of the web. Speaking of straying, I just happened onto some mentos, and was reminded by previous blog posts of what they do in coke.
I need a break. When it stops raining, I’m going to do some experiments. If the fountains are good and if my camera captures them, I’ll post a few for the blog.
Comment by rakkity — October 17, 2006 @ 5:56 pm
That Sea-Tac sculpture — wonderful! Thanks. I much prefer over Grohe, btw … And Adam’s photography — THANK YOU for sharing it here, Adam! The light in Albuquerque is unique, I swear. Just one annoying thing: I have to scroll up and down to see most of the photos … is there anything that can be done about that?
Comment by Jennifer — October 17, 2006 @ 10:21 pm
Adam and I share that trait of creating photos that barely fit conventional monitors. I always worry that mine will get lost on La Rad’s 20″ iMac or Dan’s screen set at the absurd resolution of 1600×1200.
All right, I guess I’m left to ask the question. Do your parents raise deer? What’s with the big guy sitting in the sandbox?
Comment by michael — October 18, 2006 @ 6:41 am
The deer are wild, but frequent visitors. They move through the neighborhood up the arroyo that runs between my parents and their southern neighbor, and into the Cibola National Forest a few hundred yards away at the foot of the mountains. They like the neighbor’s apples but also my parent’s sheltered sandbox.
Also spotted are coyote (we saw a whole pack last visit), bobcat, roadrunners, quail, packrats and rabbits.
Comment by adam — October 18, 2006 @ 6:47 am
“coyote (we saw a whole pack last visit), bobcat, roadrunners, quail, packrats and rabbits.”
Sounds like Boulder.
Comment by rakkity — October 18, 2006 @ 10:47 am
Or a zoo.
Comment by Michael — October 18, 2006 @ 12:27 pm