Through a frosted window
Bloody big ship
When one artwork passes another
Not my best composition ever, I must admit…this is WAY too busy. We were sitting in a turn lane in Geneva, NY, waiting to turn left to go into downtown and visit a favorite breakfast place, and a train was rolling by. In Geneva the main rail line lies right between the downtown and US20, so sometimes you have to wait to enter the city. That’s totally fine! I love railroads and trains and I am firmly on Team MOAR TRAINS. What was pretty cool here is that my left-turn signal was obviously keyed to the railroad crossing, so I wasn’t tasked with turning into that little stub of street.
As for the photo itself, I wanted to capture the graffiti on that hopper car. I actually like graffiti tags a lot of time. Setting aside that it’s technically vandalism, there is often a ton of skill and artistry involved. I consider stuff like this “mobile public art”. In this case, I caught it (using Ophelia, my phone) as it was rolling past a big permanent mural on the back of one of Geneva’s buildings.
I really love the old train-towns of Upstate NY, the ones that grew along the rail lines that once provided the transportation infrastructure for the industries of the region. I hope they regain some of their former energy, someday.
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A scene from Seneca Falls
Shadows
One dog, two cats
Scenes from a Winter’s Week
It was a very cold and somewhat snowy week here. Nothing we couldn’t handle on either front–the lake effect produced probably 18 inches or so, maybe a little more, over several days–but nevertheless, I’m seeing reports that the first week of February may bring higher-than-normal temperatures. Here’s hoping. I wouldn’t mind melting some of this off.
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The Hammerman
We have been members at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum for over a year now, and as wonderful as the rotating exhibits have been (two close this month!), I’ve found myself developing relationships with specific works in the permanent collection. Occasionally I have heard people refer to their favorite paintings or sculptures at a given museum as their “old friends”, and damned if I’m not starting to understand that phenomenon. This is about one of mine.
This is The Hammerman, or more properly, Le Marteleur, by Belgian scupltor Constantin Meunier. This is not the original work, which I believe resides in Lausanne, Switzerland. Several casts of the statue were made, though, and one resides in Buffalo. It looks tall and forbidding, but in reality it is only about four feet tall, with only its pedestal bringing the subject to eye level.
From the National Museum of Fine Arts (Lausanne)’s website:
The hammerer is a contemporary of the Walloon uprising of 1886, a wave of workers’ strikes that were fiercely repressed. Meunier treats his subject in a realistic vein that conveys the arduous nature of a job that requires strength and dexterity, close to the suffocating heat of the large furnaces and exposed to the dangers of handling molten materials. The body, gestures and attitude of the hammerer at rest benefit from his live observations in the Cockerill steel foundry in Seraing, as do the characteristic clothing with the visor, the large leather apron, the overshoes and the pliers. By associating this realism with a posture from the classical repertoire, the contrapposto, left hand placed on the hip and right foot forward, Meunier elevates the metalworker to the dignity of a modern-day hero.
I always find something stirring and moving about this sculpture…its realism, not quite in the level of detail, but in the stance and the posture. The figure conveys physical strength, but also a kind of dogged weariness. I also wonder what exactly it is that he’s looking at; his head is turned to the right and he is turning his stern eye on…something. What? Who knows?
This statue has become one of my favorite subjects in Buffalo, and I take a few shots of it every time I’m in the AKG. I think it’s a good thing to have a few favorite things to shoot when you’re around them; it’s a good way to test one’s increasing (hopefully!) skills and develop the creative eye. Here are several of my photos of The Hammerman over the last year.. The last couple are from our most recent visit. I loved the effect of shooting the distant couple through The Hammerman‘s elbow and arm, and I took several of those shots, with this one being the most successful, in my opinion. The painting they’re discussing is a Monet.
This really does seem as good a time as any to delve as deeply as I can into art….
