In Search of Robert Service

2024-02-02T20:37:00.000-08:00

Groundhog's Day, 2023

My favorite holiday!

Little commercialization, 100% American, silly, nothing political or religious and, thanks to Bill Murray, it is fully set in the last generation's consciousness.

Tyche, at 10 months, the new pup (birthday at the end of March), a welcome addition as my canine companion.

Ava Gardner and Anton Chekhov, begrudgingly welcomed him into the household in June. After two prior canines, they were sure the house was their domain.

And now there is Margaret.

I'm a lucky guy, off to new adventures.

Marking 3 Years

2023-07-19T22:47:00.001-07:00

I moved to Trinidad in mid June 2020, and opened 221B Gallery at the end of 2021. I've had the pleasure of presenting work from Steven Benson (Orlando, Florida), Hans Droog (Trinidad, soon St. Louis), Jo-Anne Green (Boston), Sheigla Hartman (Trinidad), Bonnie Lambert (Helena, Montana), Bobby Neel Adams (Bisbee, Arizona), Robert Welkie (Los Angeles) and Jennifer Korsen (Los Angeles - who also created a mural on an exterior gallery wall). Work from Ken Abbott (Asheville, North Carolina) goes up tomorrow.

Raven, my faithful companion for 9 years who traveled with me to ten states, passed away in April.

10 week old Tyche arrived in the household at the beginning of June, and siblings Anton Chekhov (male tabby) and Ava Gardner (female calico) are not thrilled about having to baby-sit a third dog, and have to train another from the beginning.....

Things are rapidly changing in Trinidad with an expansion of businesses downtown, a new Hilton about to open, Fishers Peak opening new trails and the East Street School now open and under the umbrella of Redline.

If you are reading this and a bit more curious about what I get involved in more often, you can go to 221BGallery.com (which is also on FB) or JaketheSheik on IG.

2022-09-27T10:38:00.001-07:00

2022-09-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

"Framing Place and Time" <www.cophoto2022> just concluded here in Trinidad, with 40 individuals from coast to coast, curators from History Colorado, the Center for Creative Photography (Tucson, AZ) and the Smithsonian attending. We were historizing the photography workshops and events that happened in Colorado from 1970-1990. It was a rocking good time!

Relocation!

2020-06-05T12:44:00.000-07:00

Trinidad Lake State Park

Time for a change of scenery, from Coeur d' Alene, Idaho, to beautiful Trinidad, Colorado. I've not lived year-round in Colorado since September 1977, when I left Colorado Springs for Los Angeles.
I've been following the Colorado Creative Industries for about two years, and have been extremely impressed by the State's Creative Districts - most specifically the Corazon de Trinidad.
So, while I decided last year to relocate, the whole process was sped up by the events which have buffeted lives world-wide in the past four months.

Trinidad is in the southeast corner of the state, about equidistant from Denver and Albuquerque. It has a rich history, a magnificent downtown Historic District, and is home to the newest (42nd) Colorado State Park - Fisher's Peak.

Amtrak runs the Southwest Chief from Union Station in LA to Chicago, and Trinidad has long been a stop along the route. It is also located along the I-25 corridor, and abuts the beautiful San Luis Valley, which houses the Great Sand Dunes National Monument.

So, it's worth either a drive or train ride to check it out...

Some thoughts about re-titling this blog come to mind:

"In Search of Stanley Biber", or

"Playing the Flute in Drop City", or

"A Fox in Trinidad"

Moving Forward

2020-02-26T11:22:00.001-08:00

I haven't created a post in over a year....so many changes....."shifts," rather than anything radical. October 2018, a good month spent in Colorado. It began with several days in Colorado Springs, much of it spent working with Bonnie Olson on her father's (L.H. "Ben" Benschneider) archive.

The work isn't completed, but possibly will be later this year....placing much of it in the collections of Colorado College, and possibly the Pioneer Museum and Pikes Peak Library.

Hooked up with my pal Chester Murphy in Trinidad, and then we visited Bishop's Castle, the Great Sand Dunes, Colorado Gator Farm and Bob and Maggie Sauer in Durango.

A great deal of joint work occurred in 2019, as Raven had her left ACL surgically repaired in January, and her right ACL in November.

She is now the bionic dog....

Oh, and I got a new hip in October which, in retrospect, was about five years over due....Now, I'm pain free and much more mobile!

Might was well throw that one in, too!

2020 is shaping up to bring new adventures, which I'm eagerly looking forward to experiencing.

A short trip to Montana

2018-06-13T14:45:00.001-07:00

Over Memorial Day, Raven and I ran over to Montana for a week....visiting Bonnie Lambert and Marshall Mayer in Helena, and then onto Big Arm and Bigfork around the Flathead Lake, first visiting Sandy and Mike and then Kathy and Stephen.

The bottom image is Glacier Lake from Apgard. Raven has now been to 6 states, and gone swimming in 2.....

2018 January

2018-06-13T14:39:00.002-07:00

Raven and I took a couple of jaunts this spring. The first about a week following New Year's Day, ran down to Nevada to catch some warm weather, and met up with Eric Minuth at Cathedral Gorge - an absolutely great state park on the eastern side of the state.

Great hiking, immaculate campground - and lots of hares! Boy, do those animals bound - up to twenty feet!

Travels with Chester

2018-03-05T12:52:00.001-08:00

Chester Murphy and I have been taking road trips around the West for the past 5 or 6 years. Several trips to Grand Junction, Durango and the Four Corners area. We also ran up to Canada and over to Oregon.

These are on one of the Southwest trips, through Capitol Reef, Natural Bridges and, of course, the Goosenecks (2016).

Whoop dee dooo - 12 November 2017

2017-11-12T17:15:00.002-08:00

It has been almost three years since I posted anything, and a great deal has changed. Jack Lucido and I finished "Wish You Were Here" (The Robert C. Bishop Story) in 2016, and it was presented at film festivals and at the Western Colorado State University (Gunnison), and the Grand Junction Art Center, where both had an exhibition of RCB's photographs.

Alas, we lost Robert "Bob" Bishop this year at the respectable age of 96. You can view and download the film at Amazon Prime Videos.

Jack is off to new film ventures, and I'm both trying to get an exhibition, film and podcast off the ground - and writing.....
One of the articles I've recently written was about Victor Landweber's American Cameras (1983), http://www.landweber.com/about.htm and I'm writing an essay about one of his other series: http://www.landweber.com/Artist%20to%20Artist/index.htm

Many other changes....which I will later write about in an appropriate fashion....

“Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” Benjamin Franklin

"If you like it enough today, you can do it again tomorrow." Anon.

2013-11-11T19:03:00.000-08:00

Another interesting year.....punctuated by a 110,000 acre fire around us in mid-August. We got evacuated and, although the fire came within 1/4 mile, 1500 fire fighters did AWESOME work and kept us - and all the Valley - safe. During the evacuation, we threw three cats and the dog into the Sprinter and drove West to a friends' ranch for a few days.

Anton Chekhov (top) and Ava Gardner were just a year old, our two most recent additions to the menagerie.
We knew about a wedding of some friends in mid-September - both families are dear friends. AH, a BREAK! So, we drove down for it....in Boulder, at the height of the floods! FIRE & FLOOD!
October brought a 12 day trip to Oregon, when True North added 2 more states (Oregon & California) to where he has traveled. (He has been in the Pacific - now comes the Atlantic!).

2012-12-16T06:18:00.001-08:00

What a weird year, weather-wise. WAAAY too many fires out West all summer - at one point, we had forty in Idaho alone, and Deb and I were breathing smoke for two weeks in the haze.
But now, the snow has finally started to fall in a serious way. It is still slim here in town (Hailey, southern end of the Wood River Valley), but there is 4 feet on Baldy (Sun Valley) and over 5 feet at Galena Lodge (23 miles north - superb groomed cross-county trails and snowshoe routes - and food).

For your viusal entertainment: Year 4, our annual visitor.

Moving around the West while it is burning

2012-08-17T04:50:00.000-07:00

Deb and I got back from a glorious trip to Arkansas - good friends, people who we care about - beautiful country. Hell of a drive from here. Now, everything is burning up around us.

We dodged fires across the West, and came back through an area of Colorado that was smouldering across the ridge.

We got ourselves a 12 state dog now, in True North.

2012-04-25T22:58:00.002-07:00

In Search of Robert Frank

Mashall and Bonnie and I - collaborating on this new postcard website - were "raised" on "art-education-discover-the fringes for yourself" Robert Franks's photographs in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

He published a book mid 90s titled: Titled "Thank You."

We'd like to loop him into this project, if he would be most gracious to share some cards on the site, as it is in the spirit of flipping a running super-8 camera up into the air from the backseat of a convertible, or taping polaroids together.

Artists sending postcards to artists (much more time-consuming and fun than tweeting) prior to the age of cellphones and phone machines.
Look for - ArtGoesPostal .com

(Three of my self-portraits, made into postcards.....the last: with Arnold Newman in his NYC livingroom. You'll have to go to the website to get more information about the others...)

Robert, are you listening?

Thanks - Mark

A New Direction

2012-04-16T13:58:00.001-07:00

Marshall and I went to Alaska together in 2010. The vehicle that we traveled in (Marshall's Sprinter) was so enjoyable that I bought one in late summer 2011, and have begun to make frequent trips around the west.
Right now, Marshall and Bonnie are in Marfa, Texas (on Facebook, check out "A Month in Marfa.")
Next month, we're going to begin and post a website of postcards between artists, dating back to the early 1970s.
I'm probably going to launch a new blog in the next couple of months.....travels around the west, and my work on the archives of photographers L.H. ("Ben") Benschneider, and Robert C. Bishop. Stay tuned.

okay, it ain't canada or alaska

2010-11-24T00:15:00.000-08:00

15 miles south of Salmon Idaho.....November 12.

The Road Goes On Forever - II

2010-10-05T15:53:00.000-07:00

The Road Goes On Forever - I

2010-10-05T15:41:00.000-07:00

Well, not exactly; however, Marshall has just sent me some of his photographs (from on the road, somewhere in Colorado), and I still have a number of my own to wade through....

Bynum, MT - dinosaur country

If some of them look familiar, well, duh, we were traveling together. However, they tend to provide something of "the rest of the story."

Fort Nelson, B.C.

Crossing into Alaska (northern access)

Masonic Lodge, Dawson City

Bradford Washburn photograph of The High One in the Eielson Visior Center, Denali Park

Why Idaho, redux

2010-09-27T16:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I really wonder about Idaho.

I mean, I drive out towards "Craters of the Moon" National Monument, about ninety miles east of where I live (and believe me, it is exactly what the name describes), and I have to go through Arco.

One thing: when you go through Arco, eat at Pickle's Place. and have the fried pickles.

The Park, in front of "Numbers Hill," across from Pickle's Place.

The relevance is due to the long-time nuclear energy research done at the Idaho National Research Laboratory, 100 miles southeast.

Valdez, Boise State and the Orange Hat

2010-09-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

Marshall and I poked around Valdez, walking the streets and visiting the docks....and decided to have a beer before returning to our campground, which was about twenty miles from the city. We stopped in the bar of a restaurant that overlooked the harbor - and the Boise State - Virginia Tech football game happened to be on....

I overheard a guy at the table next to us, talking about the game - and he was clearly a Boise State fan. I asked him if that was the case, and he enthusiastically asserted that was the case, as he was attending school there (although originally from Cordova, AK).

He told me that he thought I might be a fan - because of my orange hat.....which is actually from the Sun Valley Gun Club, which is no longer in existence - I picked it up for a buck at one of the thrift stores....(For those of you who don't know, Boise State's colors are blue and orange - they're the football team with the blue astro turf at home...Matthew Barney, married to Bjork, grew up in Boise and used the stadium in one of his films.)

Misc Photographs - Narrative and Something Else B

2010-09-19T00:58:00.000-07:00

Steward, B.C.

Dawson City (catty corner to Jack London's cabin and
a half block from the cabin of Robert Service)

On the Road, outside Glacier (west side) in Montana

Homage to Ken Josephson

2010-09-19T00:33:00.000-07:00

Ken Josephson is a very cool photogapher, who also has happened to be an influential photographer and important educator.

The photo of Denali (below) is an homage to a series of works that he made in which he held postcard views against the site of the original place (as it was, the "new view" did not necessarily match that reality of the postcard - he made photographs of "images within images" for over fifteen years).

http://www.tfaoi.com/newsm1/n1m693.htm

http://www.berk-edu.com/RESEARCH/ken_josephson/index.html

Denali, 2010

Ken was a long-time professor at the Art Institute of Chicago; sometime in the mid-1980s (I'm forgetting the actual year) he did a visiting professor stint at UCLA.

                                                                                 From the early 1980s, for about ten years, there was a group of us in LA - photographers, artists, filmmakers - who met regularly to play poker from early evening until sometime near dawn the next day (for about ten years afterwards, it became an annual poker game during the day of the Super Bowl - rotating houses, where the host would make chili - and we could all return home while it was still light).

                               Ken got invited to one of the poker evenings, which happened to be at my studio in downtown Inglewood (Los Angeles), and a group of six or seven of us played into the early/late morning hours. Ken left somewhere around 4 AM and, unfortunately, drove the wrong way down the alley behind my building onto a main thoroughfare - and had the unpleasant experience of spending the next few hours of an early Sunday morning at the police station.

I've always felt badly about that.
                                                       So Ken, if you ever happen to read this - I'm sorry about that, and wish you could have been in Alaska with us.

Misc Photographs 5 - Bar elements

2010-09-18T17:42:00.000-07:00

Bynum, Montana - where me missed a pig roast by a couple of days.

The Salty Dawg in Homer, AK - which could provide the basis for an entire art exhibition (ideally it would be an installation, not just photographs).

Misc Photographs 5 - Chetwynd

2010-09-17T23:10:00.000-07:00

More images of the artwork from the World Chainsaw Carving Championship that was held in Chetwynd B.C., in mid-June. Chetwynd has billed itself as the “Chainsaw Sculpture Capitol of the World” since 1987 - the approximately 50 pieces that are annually on display are part of a public art program.

Misc Photographs - Denali

2010-09-17T14:47:00.000-07:00

Marshall photographing Denali

At some point in the next few weeks, we'll be adding some of his photos and text.