Sidetracked Charley

There is nothing like windshield time to allow you time to think about nothing really. And that is good because we live in a too busy world with too many talking heads telling us what to think about; what to fear. My father, who was first a pilot and then a traveling salesman, used to talk to me about the nothingness between point A and B, whether those were airports, military bases, or cities along the empty highways of the southwest. There is a lot I can tell you about the road to Raton. It is divided almost in half between canyon through the mountains and wide open high plains. I have taken the road enough times because of art deliveries or pickups, court cases (Raton is the county seat), seeking the sometimes elusive bison, or photography treks, that I know where the turns are, what the next mile marker will say, the speed limit changes, and where the bison just might be. I always allow two and half hours for the trip. This is an allowance I make for those bison which just ...

On the Road to Raton Had the cataract taken out of my right eye on the 25th and on the 29th drove to Trinidad and Raton. If my first reaction after surgery was that the world has edges, my reaction on the familiar road to Raton were the colors. Who knew the plains could be so colorful even in a drought. Distant Volcanic hills Vision is about light, color and definition. Painting is about all those and sometimes lack of definition as Monet proved. Photography is supposedly about light. Though lately it seems to be about pixels and hyper definition. A photographer friend and I got into a discussion about the differences in photography as a craft and photography as an art. We were, as artists frequently, critiquing the judging on a recent show. And talking about the ones we will not enter again because of the judging. I was thinking about that and color, light and definition as I drove. It takes effort and money to enter shows. I do it to expand name recognition and audien...

Teeth of Time by J. Binford-Bell I drove to Raton again on May 1st and it was a dazzling spring day. But it was clearly evident, if by spring we mean the bursting forth of buds and flowers, that spring was very late. Delayed by cold or drought? Or are our definitions getting in the way? Time as we mark it on calendars is arbitrary. There have been many changes in calendars that have governed our lives, and by the Mayan Calendar, some say, we should not be here. Spring or the lack there of and a recent experiences in Raton and Trinidad had gotten me thinking about definitions, and boundaries, and divisions. I had just picked up my paintings from the New Mexico Women Artists Show in Raton. The Old Pass Gallery it seems wants to put the focus back on local artists. And that got me thinking of the definition of the adjective Local. How would you define it? One source says "Belonging or relating to a particular area or neighborhood, typically exclusively so . . ." This le...