I got back from Las Vegas last Monday afternoon, but it took
most of the day Tuesday to recover from
the fun. Joys of post-middle age, I guess. Tuesday night I opened Archives six, seven, and eight, and set to work on a
marathon photography session. I shot ninety three photos, and recorded eighty seven pictures.
Archives Six, Seven, Eight are all labeled as miscellaneous collections
of Lost Canyon and Lost Era paintings. They include some sketches, and a few very early
pieces from Pete’s high school years.
Most of these are small paintings done in wide aspect ratio
for Pete’s Arc-a-Vision screen. None of these is framed. Several of the older
pictures on paper and/or cardboard have considerable damage.
Now, photographing these paintings would seem to be a pretty straightforward
task. Put the painting on the easel. Put the camera on the tripod. Point,
click, and let the computers do the rest.
It only sorta’ works like that. Sometimes it’s a simple
matter of placing one painting on the easel, dialing it in, clicking the photo,
and replacing it with another painting, and another click. But that happens a lot less often than you’d
think. All the paintings are odd sizes, and dimensions. Every new painting takes some fiddling with
the camera. It would speed things up a lot if I were to take all the pictures
in an archive and sort them according to size, but I just have The Voice
telling me that Pete put them in a particular order for a particular reason. I
have this weird, almost superstitious instinct telling me not to mess with the
order of the paintings. (Blog posts are exempt from the rule.)
And in the same vein as my reluctance to fool with the order
of the paintings, this whole project still seems to be suffused with its own peculiar metaphysic. There are so
many coincidences, so many just-so events. Here’s a small case in point. I am doing the
photographs in my den using Pete’s easel as a stage to take the pictures. The
easel is a big piece of furniture, and my den is not exactly spacious. One
piece of furniture that I had in here is my grandmother’s old secretary desk.
The desk fit neatly into the gap between the computer desk, and the bookshelf. When I moved the easel into the
room I pulled the old secretary desk out, and slid it over in front of the
bookshelf.
Coincidentally (again) The easel just happened to fit into
the gap with less than an inch to spare on either side. And then there is the Mickey Mouse Ear insulator... But that's for another post. Anyway--
Boy in Anise Candy Fairyland/ Watercolor & Tempera
After the photography the paintings are measured, and any
inscriptions are transcribed for the catalogue, and for the blog.
Each photograph needs to be cropped, labeled, numbered, and adjusted in P shop. The camera’s computer takes a clean, clear shot, but the brightness on the images needs to be turned down anywhere between 18 an 85 points. Here’s a couple of examples:
Each photograph needs to be cropped, labeled, numbered, and adjusted in P shop. The camera’s computer takes a clean, clear shot, but the brightness on the images needs to be turned down anywhere between 18 an 85 points. Here’s a couple of examples:
A frequent problem with these paintings is glare. Pete worked mostly in acrylics, and he loved the
depth, and intensity of color that the clear coat gave to his paintings. Unfortunately, the clear coat is reflective
as glass. Flash is out of the question. The lens filter that is supposed to
eliminate the glare, doesn’t. Even with the diffuser umbrellas, it’s a real
challenge to get the lights and camera at exactly the right angle to avoid the reflective
glare. Some of these, especially the dark night scenes are very heavily
lacquered, and almost impossible to photograph
At this point in the project we have eight archives of
paintings, drawings, sketches, notes, and writings, and a total of four hundred
and three pieces photographed. I’m still working on getting the last batch of
photos processed, and catalogued.
Last week I left off with Pete’s horror story sketches, and
how he used to love to perform them for us neighborhood kids.
As I mentioned before, I stayed friends with Pete after the rest of the kids moved on.
Again, I am not trying to pretend that Pete and I were
constant pals, or that we spent huge amounts of time hanging out. But I did
visit often, and we became good friends.
The time period here would be from 1964 through ’67. Pete was in his
mid-twenties and I was making the transition from grade school to high school.
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