NEW from The Selfportrait Series -

"Selfportrait of the Artist Flummoxed by the OH SNAP! Photo Booth"
digitally manipulated photograph by Mick Mather
- original photograph from the OH SNAP! photo booth -

Yesterday's celebration of Syracuse Arts Week, a connecting series of art events & activities developed with a variety of partners and managed by the Cultural Resources Council, was a huge success. One of the highlights was seeing "The Hand" erected over the course of the day. This new public artwork designed by Brendan Rose is a brilliant marriage of art & architecture and a superb demonstration of project management, cooperation and fabrication. The entire team deserves a big round of applause. Also a huge success was Joanna Spitzner's "Urban Art Rangers" and "The Arts Week 'Zine" project - Edition 1 & 2 are available as a FREE download at the Rangers web site, scroll down and have at it! Lots of painting went on courtesy of Th3 and the "Michael Berman Interactive Arts Project"; the 40Below Public Arts Task Force was on site with the "OH SNAP!" photo booth as well as the "Syracuse PARK(ing) Day" platform; The Redhouse brought in blank maps for "An Atlas: Radical Cartography Exhibition"; and a fund raising event for children with cancer via "Alex's Lemonade Stand". There's a lot more to be said here and if you're interested follow each of the links. Suffice it to say that today's post is another image in The Selfportrait Series where, while waiting for my photo booth photographs, I'm totally befuddled as regards the timing between snaps! OH!

Thursday Challenge: Hot -

"Burning Hand"
digitally manipulated photograph by Mick Mather

This week's theme at Thursday Challenge is hot. As I was strolling through my photography files looking for something that fit, I found this image of a pair of crossing signals located about a block away from my office. After cropping this from a much larger photo it went into the super secret array of plug-in filters at the Secret Visual Laboratory. The brightly lit DON'T WALK sign seemed to be on fire but there's a triple meaning here for me. In addition to the theme this is also a play on words of "Burning Man", the increasingly popular, contemporary, counter-culture festival held every year in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. The third is that in a few weeks a tectonic sculpture of a 15' tall hand (designed by the very creative and talented Syracuse University architecture student, Brendan Rose) will be constructed as part of Syracuse Arts Week on the 26th of July. I don't think it's going to be red though.