Turn On The Lights

If you are reading this post, and if you are like me you are most likely on some type of digital device with a glowing screen, a PC, a tablet, or maybe your smart-phone. Our screens may be three inches and we are scrolling to see everything bit by bit. If we have a tablet or laptop we can see more stuff at once, it's better and still very portable. Or we could have a desktop monitor and lots of screen space.

We are also seeing hundreds, more likely, thousands upon thousands of images, pictures of family and friends on Facebook and places like that, news and entertainment images, and of course the ever present advertising images. Oh and I forgot the artistic stuff, paintings, digital art, photography, and images of things like sculpture to mention a few. And we get all of this on TV also. The stream of images seems almost infinite these days. For most purposes it is infinite! We can not hope to take it all in even at the high speed at which it is presented. The images whiz by, pop up, pop down, fade in, fade out, and crawl across our screens. They come they go, like so many people in a hurry, they seem to push, rush, take cuts in line, all impatient to make an appearance. Then they are gone, replaced by the next and the next and... few have made much of an impression.

We shut off the phone, the PC, the TV and BLIP they're gone.

They were real, for awhile, in their own way I guess. Now I sit here with you, sort of, in a odd reality. I am communicating to you, or maybe with you in a digital time lapse, about images. I think images are much more enjoyable and meaningful when they are real, when you can touch them or see them in a more permanent context. Galleries, museums, and art shows are great for that. I was at a show a recently talking to a photographer when a gentleman who was looking at some images of Italy suddenly exclaimed “I know that place, my wife and I were there on vacation and she got lost!” He ran off to get his wife so she could see the photograph. I hope they took it home, put it on the wall and discussed who really got lost with their guests. Physical, tangible art is like that. It enriches our lives and homes day after day.

We can turn off our lights... and BLIP, when we turn them back on hey our art is still there.

I am still(a kid)