Foothills Folly

I’ve been scanning old family photographs, not sure why,  but it seems like a good idea.  But what a headache!  iPhoto won’t read the scans, then it will, then it won’t, then it will.  Can’t get the Flicker uploader to accept the scanned photos.  Uploaded some with their old online uploader and the pictures have a little copy of the image in the corner. Grrrrr!  I’m about to try here.  I don’t know if this part of my grandparent’s trip in the 20’s is in New Hampshire or Maine.  I think they may have driven past the ‘Old man in the Mountain’, so perhaps NH:

There were actually others on the road!

And here it seems they stopped for ice cream:

And the last photograph is of their destination, near Middle Dam in Maine, the Anglers’ Retreat. I think this was a publicity photo they got there, not taken by them:

There are others of brooks and lakes, the dam itself, and a lake steamer— but I am tired of trying to make these images behave!

I see I’ve put a vertical border to the left; I’m afraid if I take it out I’ll lose the text and photos.  I can only get photos that I’ve scanned into Flicker, and thus into here, by taking them from iPhoto, putting them into the Preview app, save them, and lo!  then they can go in the uploader. I even downloaded a new Uploader for Flicker, and it sure is nicer then the one I was using, and the images now don’t have the little copy in the corner, but it won’t accept the scans either.  Maybe the fault, Dear Brutus, lies with the scanner. Tried to take the line out, now there are two! (Ah! I have made them go away!)

I visited The Clark Museum, in Williamstown MA on Sunday, to see the “Like Breath on Glass” exhibit.   It was so good I went back today, as it ends soon and my opportunities to get there are limited.  The exhibit includes Whistler, Inness, Twachtman, Dewing, Steichen, and others.  Definitely a show to pique a painter’s interest; it’s about ‘painting softly’, where texture and soft edges reign and detail and sharpness are left in the dust, along the road-side. I couldn’t take pictures in the exhibit as most of the paintings were borrowed.

But the Clark has a new collection of John Constable’s work; a bequest of Sir Edwin and Lady Manton. It was new in 2007, and I had not seen these works.  My oh my; I paint like Constable; just not as well!

My photos were overall out-of-focus as the lighting level was so low my digital camera had a problem focusing:

But I was smitten on Sunday and had to return. Yes, the Inness paintings are wonderful, but the immediacy of Constable’s vision and follow-thru just sing with me. I am taken with the bold brushwork and the capturing of the moment, all plein-air (on the spot, from beginning to end) and so “real”.

Little bits of paint in this sketch of the Salisbury Cathedral are so right on the mark.

The Clark has a new building, Stone Hill Center, opened this past June, designed by Tadao Ando.  Squarish; the two exhibition rooms with the Museum’s Homers and Sargents on display seemed too small for ever hosting a major event.

I did like the terrace and the shadows; the concrete-ness of the building looks old but I am sure it is meant to seem new.

On the way home I drove holding the camera out the windows and snapping away (someday they will pass a law against this!) and plan to turn some of the more successful shots into Constable’s:

Of course many of the out-of-the-window shots are fuzzy, but, hey! That’s my style!  A fuzzy realist!