Sidetracked Charley

Bare Bone by J. Binford-Bell Mornings in Black Lake, New Mexico include walks with the fur kids. And the camera. Mardi Gras and Magique are sniffing out everything and I am snooping around trying to find a new subject on a well worn path. Which brings me to the bare bones. Both my immediate neighbors and myself have medium to large size dogs that we treat and amuse with marrow bones. Cid's, an organic food store in Taos, is our major source of these canine treasures. And I am often totally shocked at the number of these I must buy when I clean up the yard before mowing or gather them into a basket when sorting through the living room. This is expected. But I and my neighbor fence our dogs except for these morning excursions. So why are there so many of these on the path? Winged Thief by J. Binford-Bell I think I must blame it on the ravens. They seem to be attracted by round white objects. I know this because I am four miles from the Angel Fire Resort Golf Course and ...

Apologies to Monet And I find myself asking what that is all about. Us humans seem to want to mark time. Measure it off in neat little blocks like weeks and months, days and hours. None of them make a lot of sense. Seven days in a week/why not 5? And we know they have the number of days in a month all screwed up. Sometimes our formula for keeping time has been so out of step with the rotations of the earth and paths of the planets that there have had to be corrections. Rioting in the streets once because the populace thought 10 days had been stolen from them. And yet we suddenly seem so very sure of not merely our measurement of time but the civilizations that came before that we are sure the world is ending on December 21st of this year per the Mayans that did not even have a December. Let alone the year 2012 CE. CE stands for Common Era incidentally and replaces AD which I always said as After Death when it meant Years of our Lord. But he was not everyone's Lord so the CE ...

July Spider Web by J. Binford-Bell It has been an interesting week. At such times I am rather amazed at the complexity of life. I thought it was just allergies and resultant congestion, and had you asked me I would say it had been going on for just two to 3 weeks. That I might be losing my hearing only occurred to me in the middle of the night when I would wake up being only able to hear the roar of my own pulsing blood. It was allergies and blocked Eustachian tubes, but it was also wax buildup in my ear canal. It it was not just two weeks bur more like four that the combo had gotten bad enough to notice. How long it was bad enough my cat noticed is hard to say. Living with just fur kids has its issues. There is nobody to tell you that you are not listening to them. I just figured Wee Willow was not meowing. Finally got in to see the doctor and get the problem on the way to healing on Thursday. It was then I noticed that not only could I hear Wee Willow meow but I cou...

Clouds in My Coffee by J. Binford-Bell Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything which no longer  serves you, grows you or makes you happy. A year ago this month I made some tsunami like changes in my life. After more than 17 years deeply involved in art organizations in my valley I quit. Never one to do things half way I decided to no longer do art fairs (decision based on sound financial analysis), and to leave a gallery I had been involved in for nine years (decision based on independent market research - I talked to my customers). And I decided to take a break from painting to devote my energies to photography for a while. We all need a vacation. After winning several prizes for my photography and selling quite a few I am diving back into the shallow end of painting. By that I mean I have given up the "production" painting that doing fairs demands and working on  pieces that mean something to me. Some are from photographs that as always were a spri...

Peony by J. Binford-Bell Or day 185 on my 366 day photography challenge on my Facebook Page. I am debating the above picture to be day 186. And while I am focused on that I totally missed Monday. Half the year is gone. Photographs taken and posted. Six months too hastily spent it would seem. I am, as usual, not where I would have liked to be at this juncture in 2012 but I feel far better positioned than I was a year ago. Lots has changed. And lots remains the same. This time last year I was madly putting paint to canvas to get half a dozen new pieces to take to Artfest here in Angel Fire. This year I have two paintings on the table I would like to finish for people visiting my gallery this summer. And I have almost 30 new photographs taken, matted and framed. And I have 25 photographs of my sisters my studio now represents. And all my jewelry is in my studio now instead of split between here and Artspace Gallery. Old Town Gallery in Cimarron still represents my paintings. My...