Okay!!!!

Starting Monday, as in tomorrow, DEC 1, I'll be guest-gramming for @southernglossary all week. I encourage everyone to follow 

along as I scope out a 532-mile radius of‪#‎Nashville‬. Yes, there may be a road trip because anything is possible. So hurry over to instagram and tune into @southernglossary this week. You won't be sorry. 

There's more to report, but we're hustling for culture tonight. 

Rosebud.

Untitled, 2011

Untitled, 2010

I've been sifting through old images- ones from ages ago, as well as ones I started taking when I moved into this house. I knew there would be a photography project in all of this, but I was in the middle of a couple of solo exhibitions for the paintings and the general mayhem of the task at hand. I kept shooting, alternating between different cameras, but most of the time was I was in a hurry to get on with the clearing out of things. I know better now, and did then as well, but in truth, I'm only able to work on so many things at one time and it was necessary to perform triage among life, studio and work. Even though for me they are the same, there are some finer points to hash out that can make one or the other softer, more gentle.

There are themes. Things appear and disappear. The background changes, but the story remains the same. People shift in and out of roles, and then, they too are gone. There's no real chronological order anymore. There was at one point, but I thrived on making order out of chaos in my art for so long that it infiltrated other areas of my life. There is no real past. The furniture and the objects are simply instruments of time travel. 

Some of the older photographs are labeled Winter Garden and contain a picture of my mother. In my case, Winter Garden is a small town in Florida. But still, fascinating coincidence. 

And so it goes. I walked around today. Free parking. Streets were deserted. I kept wondering what I was looking for. 

Drive-by

November 21,  2014. Knoxville, TN

Knoxville, TN

I am still processing this occurrence.

More later about why I was in Knoxville, Tennessee, but for now, just accept that I was. And accept also that I wanted biscuits and gravy around 8am EST, at a diner—an "original" diner, not a strip mall knock-off. Now that I've been magically transported to said diner, know that I ordered and consumed my biscuits and gravy in the splendor of overhead fluorescent lighting, tacky shit on the wall, and if grades were given out like they are in the wacky state of California, ten to one, there would have been a little note on the door letting me know, I could eat at my own risk. Nonetheless, I am alive and I'm not complaining about the food. Or the kitchen floor. The owners were nice, and I was nice back. That counts for something.

So now that we've established the location and my pleasant rapport with the owners, I will proceed.

I ate at a diner, paid, tipped, and asked the owner if I could take some photographs. He said yes. On my way out, in the foyer, I was trying to shoot the claw machine. It sounds cheesy but that's not the point. An old man came out and started yelling at me, telling me that my camera was scaring away all the other old men and they didn't want any part of that facebook stuff. (Yes, earlier, I had aimed my camera in the general direction of the table of old men, but no faces were visible, only their backs). He ranted and yelled for me get out. He yelled at me about 3 or four times and each time I calmly said was just shooting the claw machine and didn't mean to offend anyone. He kept yelling at me and then asked me if I wanted him to go tell Sam, like I was going to get a whooping or something. I told him if Sam was the owner, I had already asked Sam and it was cool by Sam. He yelled again for me to get out and I asked if he was kidding, because at this point, I was in disbelief. I was shooting the claw machine. Oh, and during breakfast when I looked over at the table of old men, one of them was making a lewd tongue gesture to the young cashier. That was my Friday morning and I still never nailed the exposure of the claw machine.

Cold Storage

Film stills from In My Mother's House, 1995 ©Mary Addison Hackett

One thing led to another and I stumbled upon some negs from the documentary, In My Mother's House. This is the scene in which I open a working fridge that contained only empty glass jars and the carefully preserved bones of a turkey breast. And twenty some-odd years of freezer frost. I was shooting the scene and interviewing my mom at the same time. We both laughed so hard we cried. 

Yesterday's Bounty.

Every now and then I cross-post so if you're following me on tumblr, it's double your fun day. 

Nov. 13, 2014 Nashville, TN.  Mt. Olivet Cemetery 

Most everyone died in the dead of winter. This was my first visit in autumn. My people are buried further up in the granite headstone section where no one leaves plastic flowers. It’s much bleaker, but I respect their wishes to rest with a sense of dignity. I’ll drop by again this winter with holly clippings and the spray-painted gold pine cones I found in the closet.

Countdown to something.

Untitled,  Nov 9, 2014

Pardon My Dust….

...Renovations underway.

Christopher Wool, "The Show is Over"