Remnants of hurricane Sandy on Lake Michigan shores

Coastal devastation on the Atlantic seaboard shore,

they had known it was coming and where it was going to go.

Making a left turn when blocked by the Greenland high pressure ridge,

and than a hard right being steered by an approaching cold front.

The trajectory forecast was made five days ahead of time,

A natural disaster or geo-engineered?

The wind fields were greater than 1,000 miles wide, 

and reached the southern half of the Lake Michigan shoreline.

As seen at Klode Park in Whitefish Bay in Wisconsin.

These images are from the Messer/Mayer Grist Mill in Richfield, Wisconsin. Kathy and I visited here during their annual art fair. Another treat was the tour of the Ebling Farm restoration. The Richfield Historical Society has done an excellent job with the farm house and the artifacts inside.

I am always fascinated with close up images of gears.

Sydney Hih is gone!

August 30, 2012

Demolition progress

When textures and photos coalesce...

While I enjoy creating interesting, thought provoking and artistic photographs; I also enjoy making them "stop to get noticed" with colorful textures that make them pop.

This year started with yet another collection of images I call WIP (works in progress), which differentiates with the collection of last years WIP. Individual chapters for each year usually start with the opportunity to be outside on a pleasant day. This image is of piling being driven in to the Milwaukee Riverbed, to form the foundation for the new bridge on Juneau Avenue. This expedition commenced with going downtown to see if Sydney Hih was still there - since it was (still there), I was pleasantly surprised to find this plethora of steel beams rising to the occasion.

I enjoy photographing nekkid trees. This was taken at Catalano Square in the Third Ward when nobody was looking.

The demise of a shattered building within the Horlick complex in Racine, WI.

The Wisconsin DNR side of the Horicon Marsh.

Here is a slide show of more coalesced images.

Here is the "Works" on my website.

Enjoy!

Thunderstorm... May 3rd, 2012

Prelude

 After the storm at Klode Park, Shorewood, WI.

Views over Lake Michigan

Kletzsch Park oxbow area - May 1, 2012

I perhaps, am drawn to this place because of my past life.

A History of the St. Joan of Arc Chapel

April 16, 2012

By John Pick (d.1981)

Former Professor of English
Chairman, The University Committee on the Fine Arts

Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (London)

For more than five centuries the special little Gothic oratory known as the Chapelle de St. Martin de Sayssuel was important to the noble countryside and to the little French village of Chasse. There a rambling cluster of buildings grew up around the Chapel, forming the ecclesiastical center of the village and of the surrounding château.

Like most European medieval structure, it was not built in a single generation but showed the accretions of various periods and architectural styles, a living record in miniature of the history of the little village and of France.

Saved by Couëlle 
After the First World War, Jacques Couëlle, a brilliant young architect and archeologist from Aix-en-Provence, passed through Chasse and came upon the Chapel that he excitedly referred to as "ce monument absolument unique en son genre." In the 1920's, Couëlle made meticulously careful architectural drawings of the Chapel at Chasse, taking numerous photographs and measuring and numbering stones. All of these drawings and photographs are stamped with his special seal.

The Chapel's Trip to America 
In 1926 Gertrude Hill Gavin, daughter of James J. Hill, the American railroad magnate, acquired the Chapel, and it was Couelle who negotiated its transfer to her fifty-acre estate at Jericho, Long Island, in the New World.

Among the many historic memorials in the Chapel he especially noted the tomb, still a part of the sanctuary floor, of Chevalier de Sautereau, a former Chatelain of ChasseStone-by-stone the Chapel was dismantled and shipped in 1927 to Long Island amidst anxieties lest the French government stop the exportation. These fears were well founded, for shortly thereafter the French "Monuments Historiques" halted shipments of such monuments abroad.

Added to the Chapel were two important and priceless treasures - duly noted by John Russell Pope on his blueprints - with which numerous legends are associated: the early Gothic altar and the famous Joan of Arc Stone. The stories surrounding the latter are especially interesting. They tell of how Joan of Arc (1412-31) prayed before a statue of Our Lady standing on this stone and at the end of her petition kissed the stone which ever since has been colder than the stones surrounding it. What seems certain is that the niche, of which it is a part, is of the same period as Joan of Arc and as the Chapel.

In 1964 the Rojtmans presented the Chapel to Marquette and had it dismantled and sent to the campus for the University to reconstruct.

The Move to Marquette University 
The dismantling of the Chapel on Long Island began in June 1963 and took nine months to complete. Each stone was marked in three places: green for the top, red for the bottom, the inside carrying the number of the stone in relation to the others. Eighteen thousand antique terra cotta roof tiles were removed and packed. A fleet of trucks, each truck carrying forty thousand pounds, brought the Chapel stones to Milwaukee, where the first shipment arrived in November 1964. After the material was stored for the winter and the ground was cleared, reconstruction on the campus started in July 1965.

After traveling from Chasse to Long Island and then to Marquette, 

the Chapel so fittingly dedicated to St. Joan of Arc on May 26, 1966, 

has come to a new home far from the Rhone River Valley 

where it stood for over five hundred years.

"It is doubtful," wrote Milton Samuels, Chairman of French and Company, New York, in the official appraisal papers dated April 9, 1964, "if such an historic architectural monument would be permitted to leave France today."

The Chapel is, to our knowledge, the only medieval structure in the entire Western Hemisphere dedicated to its original purpose: 

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.

Sydney Hih will soon become a memory..

The City of Milwaukee will purchase the Sydney High building and will be demolishing it once the asbestos has been cleared.

The Sydney Hih building had been spruced up and several of the areas had been cleaned out and served as a gallery for art and photography during August, 2009. I have included a gallery of interior photographs from that time, as well as others from before and after the IN:SITE event.

 Gipfel Brewery was demolished several years ago

 Collage of posters

From the north side looking south with the new Moderne in the background.

I had a post regarding Sydney Hih during the IN:SITE Public Art Project in August of 2009.

Monches Farm, Colgate, Wisconsin

Charming, rustic, lots of chickens running around and a delightful gift shop for home decor. For March... it was a beautiful summer day!

Monches Farm is a nursery featuring more than 2,000 varieties of hardy field grown perennials. “We specialize in rare and unusual perennials and annuals, including native prairie plants and a collector’s selection of daylilies,” says horticulturist ZannahCrowe. “It’s well worth the trip when the daylily garden blooms in July,” she says. Visitors can also purchase locally grown pumpkins and heirloom squash in autumn, hand-made dried floral wreaths and arrangements, and one-of-a-kind garden art created by local artists. Free and open to the public March to December, the farm is closed Monday, but open 10 a.m.- 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 10 a.m.-4p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

M Magazine March 2012

More with the iPhone ...

Another excursion with the iPhone, this time to a forgotten land within Kletzsch Park. This is an area beyond Picnic Area 4 (at the north end of the park) and past the soccer fields to the south, behind the maintenance building. It is like a peninsula formed by an oxbow of the Milwaukee River.

There is a shabby trail on the circumference lined with rather old and broken trees. While this area has not been maintained, there are nice homes on the opposite side of the Milwaukee River. The topography of course, is exposed at this time of year. There is a meadow of tall grasses at the center of this parcel, I plan to visit there during the summertime.

Currently, I process these images in Lightroom 2 to include the color effect and blur the edges in Photoshop® CS4. This tends to be the rave for iPhone photography, but done with iPhone aps. I did not use textures with this series.

 

iPhone 3Gs that is now an iPod - good by AT&T

iPhoneography - a change of pace

This is a popular craze that has hit the streets running - accounting for the plethora of $2 & $3 ap sales. While I use my iPod (that used to be an iPhone), I transfer my images to a computer and finish things up in Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4. here are some results.

These were taken at Kletzsch Park with 20 to 30 mph winds and the temperature in the low 60"s.

Poladroid

Nifty... open the ap and it puts an image of an SX-70 camera on your desktop. Drag your JPEG image over the camera and it "clicks", there is a short "process" and then you hear the image pop out. The image will develop right before your eyes - like the real thing. Half the fun is just watching it work.

Here's one that I dd - "Waiting for Spring".

The ap is free HERE.

Enjoy!

Appreciation

My wife told me the other day 

that she appreciates me.

Not for any particular reason,

just that she appreciates me.

That's why appreciation is such

a wonderful thing.

It goes full circle.

Whisper

Almost silent

virtually never seen

vaguely distorting

beyond recognition.