Let There Be Light

Have you been out to Shore Acres yet? What about all the lights in the neighborhoods? What’s keeping you? You know the Holiday lights only come out once a year. If you procrastinate they’ll be gone and you’ll have to wait whole ‘nother year.

Who cares, holiday lights are over done, they’re passé, they’re trite. They are, so its up to you to find a new way to look at them, you’re and artist, art!

A year ago, a pal of mine in Maine, who is a fisher person, not an artist, sent me a photo of a present he had created for the river where he fishes. He took all of the tackle the fisher folks lost in the past year and decorated a natural tree with it. Hummmmm, not an artist, hummmmmmm?

If you have been to CAM, and if you haven’t why haven’t you, you know in the lobby there’s a Fisher person’s tree, much like my pal Jack’s, except this one was done with art in mind. And folks, it works. It is a beautiful, unusual tree, full of spirit and grace and brimming with Holiday happiness.

Here at the Trawler Compound, like the Bushies in Kennebunkport, the tree is decorated with the holiday cards the Trawler’s far flung friends send and yes, it works and it makes for an unusual, beautiful tree.

And yes, using unusual things to decorate the tree is a very old, tired idea. Why in the Trawler’s old home stomping grounds, Dallas, Texas at Northpark Center, which is most certainly not a mall, they do Santa and his sleigh and the reindeer in pecans. I like them better there than in my fruitcake. And they’ve been putting this unusual Texas creation up for forty-six years and the crowds still come to ooh and ah.

Forgot all about the lights didn’t you? Well, I didn’t. So let’s go back to the beginning, holiday lights come once a year and now is the time if you are going to do it at all. Put on the Mac and wrap the camera in plastic, (Yes, I know you are an ARTIST and only paint in oil), and take a few pictures for the long winter months ahead. Take pictures from different angles, at night with and without a tripod, take pictures from a distance and take pictures from close in. (You do know that the camera has a macro setting, right. Okay, find the manual or download it and read up, there’s a whole new world just waiting for that macro touch).

Then when you are bored to death with over-tall men on boxer shorts running back and forth with a little round ball, playing on one hundred and fourteen channels, at the same time and being analyzed like they held the secret to peace in the middle east, you can drag out the pictures and see if there is something in them to spark your creative spirit. A few minutes of basketball has been known to drive me to even do chores.

CAM has a Fish/Fishing art show. Were you prepared for that? You had a stockpile of art full of finny friends just waiting for the opportunity to get exposed on the museum walls, right? What if next time the call is for lights, not specifically holiday lights but lights. You think a still life of a traffic signal can stand up to your brilliant, colorful light-filled composition? Not a chance, but you won’t be ready if you don’t get a move on. Load that gear, check the batteries in the camera and hit the streets the day is coming and you don’t want to miss it.

Oh yes, take a look at what a fisher person does with a little inspiration…