Tag Archives: Art

What the Hell Is That?

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”
― Albert Einstein, The World as I See It

 

Trailer in front of us on US 75 – North Central Expressway

As we were transporting one son to the other’s apartment we were forced by cruel geography to drive down US 75 – Central Expressway. I have lived in Dallas a long time and have many memories of traffic jams on this long strip of concrete. Today was no different.

 

We saw a column of white smoke drifting up miles ahead and I knew it was going to be bad. So we settled in for the wait – about an hour, which is really not as bad as it could be. We chatted, listened to music, and stared at the back of the cargo trailer in front of us. I know it’s not a big deal, but I was forced to look at it for over an hour.

 

What the hell is that?

Cropped version of the back of the trailer.
What the hell?

It’s obviously the remmnants of a sign or a painted ad of some sort – heavily weathered or purposely mostly removed. You can see the white circles where the rivets are. There are two URLs on the design, I looked them up. One is a manufacturer of trailers, another is a local dealer that sells used trailers. No clue there. But the URLs overlay the design. Does that mean that it is supposed to look like that? Did they sell it that way?

As I stared at it – I wondered… What is that in the upper right? A dancer? Is that a skull in the upper left quarter? A lot of random shit ends up looking like a skull. One the bottom, those look like artistic shapes of some sort – but what?

I stuck my phone out of the window and snapped a photo right as we passed the charred carcass of a big burned out SUV (hope nobody was hurt) and the traffic began to speed up.

What the hell is that?

The Cracked Plate Has To Be Retained

Posted on by Bill Chance

“the cracked plate has to be retained in the pantry, has to be kept in service as a household necessity. It can never be warmed on the stove nor shuffled with the other plates in the dishpan; it will not be brought out for company but it will do to hold crackers late at night or to go into the ice-box with the left overs.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

State Street Gallery, Dallas, Texas

A Gorgeous Fiend

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I can’t help being a gorgeous fiend. It’s just the card I drew.”
― Anne Rice, The Queen of the Damned

Mexican Vampire Kiss Mural, Cozumel, Mexico

 

 

Nanowrimo Day One

Posted on by Bill Chance

Ultimate goal – 50,000 words.
Daily goal – 1,667 words
Goal total so far – 1,667 words
Words written so far – 1,685 words
Words to goal – +18

“He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.”
― Jean-Luc Godard

Writing in my Moleskine Journal outside the Mojo Lounge, Decatur Street, French Quarter, New Orleans

As I committed the other day, I am doing Nanowrimo – the National Novel Writing Month this November – writing a 50,000 word (small) novel in a month. Not necessary a good novel, or even a readable novel, but one of 50K words.

On October 31 – I came home from work and took a nap – getting up at midnight to write on the first hour of the first day. I have collected a series of prompts or inspirations – the first one was a snip from a Jean-Luc Godard film – the famous dance scene.

I hammered out 1,685 words, then tried to go back to sleep. Unfortunately, I was so enervated by the writing I had trouble falling into slumber and had a worn out, tired day at work. But at least I’m on track for the first day.

Snippet of what I wrote:

I was mesmerized. The music was complimented by the chatter of the other diners and the clinking of plates and silverware, but the three seemed to exist in a reality all of their own. They were dancing in the diner but also living outside of it, away from it, beyond it. They did not belong there. They were style, beauty, and grace, and a… cool was the only way to say it.

They were the epitome of cool in the least cool place in the world. And the diner wasn’t able to understand… to appreciate the miracle that was inside it. Like aliens from a distant planet… no, they weren’t the aliens, they were the real people. The diner was the alien planet and they were the only authentic humans that had ever graced its grimy linoleum floor. And the diner with its oblivious patrons kept on slinging its grease completely oblivious to the miracle moving about the space in front of the jukebox.

I warned you – if I’m going to write 50K words in a month – it isn’t going to be very good.

The Only Truth Is Creation

Posted on by Bill Chance

There is neither painting, nor sculpture, nor music, nor poetry. The only truth is creation.
—-Umberto Boccioni

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, by Umberto Boccioni, Cole and Blackburn, Dallas, Texas

I like sculpture. Though I am not picky – I especially like a certain flavor of sculpture. I don’t know what it is called, but I know it when I see it – modern, yet semi-representational, it has to have a certain strength and a feeling of movement.

One example is The Drummer in The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, New Orleans Museum of Art.

The Drummer, Michael Sandle

Another is, arguably my favorite sculpture, Large Horse, by Duchamp-Villion.

Horse by Raymond Duchamp-Villon

Large Horse by Raymond Duchamp-Villon

So, that is not the only thing I like, but it is something that I always like.

One day, a while back, I was on a bike ride from downtown through Uptown, Dallas. I was with a fairly large group, riding downhill, riding fast, when out of the corner of my eye I caught an unexpected glimpse of a sculpture. A sculpture I liked. In a flash, it was gone. I didn’t even remember the street I was on – only the general part of town I was in. It took a long session of exploring with Google Maps until I found the sculpture at the corner of Blackburn and Cole.

Today I had to drive Nick down into Uptown to pick up his car and on the way out I stopped and took a couple of photographs. Then I had a web search to find the sculpture – it’s a famous one, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space by Umberto Boccioni. It’s a Futurist sculpture – with a well-known version in The Museum of Art, New York.

From the museum website:

Umberto Boccioni
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
1913 (cast 1931)

Boccioni, who sought to infuse art with dynamism and energy, exclaimed, “Let us fling open the figure and let it incorporate within itself whatever may surround it.” Breaking with the tradition of self-contained sculpture, Boccioni opens up the silhouette of this marching figure, who forges ahead as if carved by forces such as wind and speed. While born of Futurist aspirations, it also remains evocative of an ancient statue: the wind-swept, striding Victory of Samothrace in the Musée du Louvre in Paris.

I have no idea how this cast (or reproduction) came to be placed in front of a high-end apartment complex in Uptown, Dallas. It’s cool, though I seem to be the only person aware of it.

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, by Umberto Boccioni, Cole and Blackburn, Dallas, Texas

Just Get Wet

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.”
― Bob Marley

Mural, Cozumel, Quintana Roo, Mexico

Iron And Coke, And Chromium Steel

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Well we’re waiting here in Allentown,
For the Pennsylvania we never found,
For the promises our teachers gave,
If we worked hard,
If we behaved…
So the graduations hang on the wall,
But they never really helped us at all,
No they never taught us what was real,
Iron and coke,
And chromium steel,
And we’re waiting here in Allentown…
But they’ve taken all the coal from the ground,
And the union people crawled away…”
― Billy Joel

‘Tatlin’s Sentinel’ by John Henry, Arts District, Dallas, Texas

The Maestro’s Button

Posted on by Bill Chance

“My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

The button on the Maestro’s shirt – detail from “The Storm” a mural on Ace Parking Garage at 717 Leonard Street, Dallas, Texas

The full mural (previous photo center bottom) – Ace Parking, Dallas, “The Storm” Art Mural on Ace Parking Garage at 717 Leonard Street

The Interior of the Soul

Posted on by Bill Chance

“There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

View Skyward, near the Pearl/Arts District DART station, Dallas, Texas

And what the same spot looks like from the side:

The Pearl/Arts District DART station, Dallas, Texas

People Get Brain Fade

Posted on by Bill Chance

“This is what comes from the wrong kind of attentiveness. People get brain fade. This is because they’ve forgotten how to listen and look as children. They’ve forgotten how to collect data. In the psychic sense a forest fire on TV is on a lower plane than a ten-second spot for Automatic Dishwasher All. The commercial has deeper waves, deeper emanations. But we have reversed the relative significance of these things. This is why people’s eyes, ears, brains and nervous systems have grown weary. It’s a simple case of misuse.”
― Don DeLillo, White Noise

Fading, Peeling Mural, somewhere in Dallas, Texas