Henry Powderly » abstract

The faces in the store

Henry E. Powderly II — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 02:02:23 +0000

So on a recent trip to Vermont I actually found a way to entertain myself at a local antique shop. Usually, when I’m dragged to these types of shops, I wander around, staring at the ceiling, hoping my wife or family doesn’t take too long. I just don’t have the antique bug. I take nothing away from people who love antiquing, but it bores the hell out of me.

So at this recent visit I started checking out the various plastic dolls and statuettes, specifically their faces. And the more I did that the more they started to seem almost alive, with sad, happy, lost, and even demented expressions.

I decided to take as many photos of these faces as I could. I must have looked strange to the store’s staff, me some weirdo taking photos of little dolls and wooden statues, not buying anything, just snapping away.

The set came out great. And the more I look at them the more human they seem.

You tell me.

Enjoy the photos. I think I’ll take more of these.

TV break, through the kaleidoscope

Henry E. Powderly II — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 02:06:12 +0000

If you thought watching television through a kaleidoscope would give you a headache, you’d probably be right. However, it just might put this parade of mind-numbing entertainment in perspective.

On my recent trip to Minneapolis, I was surprised that in addition to the squat tubes of soaps and lotions, a ubiquitous white robe and an overpriced minibar, there was a small kaleidoscope in the room, perhaps there to help adulterous trysters pass the time while they wait for their pot brownies to wear off. Because having looked through it at the gray and cold landscape of the frost-bitten city, there’s no way it was meant for enhancing the drab skyline.

But watching television through it? It was early, and I was passing time before having to head out to full day of corporate meetings, so I turned on CNN and watched a fluff-filled newscast spin and flash in dissecting, blooming, bleeding and flashing patterns of light crystals.

Suddenly, it all made sense, the repetition, the hypnotic glare, the cells flowing into one another.

It may sound like an overstatement, but I found the mask slipped away when I watched TV through a kaleidoscope. My mask, their masks, all of it. It’s not real, the box, it’s a snowflake melting on your eye, keeping it wet so you don’t have to blink.

I put the kaleidoscope up to my camera, and took a few pics so you can see what I’m talking about. The patterns are beautiful, eerie, gruesome, hypnotic and delicate, like the experience.

Enjoy the photos.

Up close and abstract

Up close and abstract

Henry E. Powderly II — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:24:16 +0000

I’ve been holding on to these photos.

Back in the summer, one rainy day I noticed as I was walking my dogs that the wood grain in the Adirondack chairs on my back patio looked like fish scales. And while when they were dry the chairs were gray, when wet the green moss in the cracks and hidden brown in the wood stood out.

I also took a few photos of a wet sawhorse I had used a few times to hold bed frames as I spray painted them white. With the wet grain and speckles of white paint, the texture in the photos was wonderful. I also photographed one of the rusty wing nuts holding the sawhorse together.

I do love to snap pictures of patterns, and love it when the results look almost like an abstract painting.

These were a batch of really good ones.

Enjoy.

Making art from a splatter

Henry E. Powderly II — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 15:30:36 +0000

I can’t paint.

I know I can write, and for the most part I take decent photos, though my subjects are still limited. I can draw a little, but all of my sketches are cartoonish and abstract. Realism, no chance.

But painting, no way. Luckily I have some prowess with digital mediums, so maybe, just maybe, I can satisfy my canvas craving that way.

Here is my first attempt.

The other day, as I was sitting in my office cubicle, I knocked my coffee mug with my elbow, which launched a bulb of the brown hot stuff into the air only to crash like an exploding water balloon on my desk. But after I shouted my token obscenity and rushed to grab a paper towel, I stopped to notice the splat. It was a pattern I could never draw, so I took a photo of it.

Then, I ran it through a handful of Photoshop filters, in addition to playing with the colors and contrast. In the end, I came up with a pop art, abstract image that I really like. I’ll try to make more of these from time to time.

Before:

After:

Photos: Art is a vandal

Henry E. Powderly II — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:28:34 +0000

We’re always walking through an art museum, wherever we are, as landscapes and still life pieces, portraits and even abstract art can be found everywhere you look.

For example, simple vandalism, lines, scribbles and love notes scratched into the Plexiglas windows of a train station’s rain shelter, is worthy of being hung on a wall.

And thank goodness for that.

Enjoy these photos, taken at the Saint James Long Island Rail Road Station:

Photos: The light show

Henry E. Powderly II — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 10:42:39 +0000

I took the following photos a few years ago. I remember I was traveling into Brooklyn to see my brother-in-law’s art show when I decided that I wanted to be a better photographer. So I spent the night shooting.

For the most part, I didn’t get too many good shots, a few cityscapes, some pictures of the art (some cool ones of the inside of this lighted barrel, one of the installations, that I’ll share later). But when we were driving home to Long Island I took a few photos of the highway from our moving car, resulting in a series of photos with streaks of dancing lights, some straight and coursing and some coiling and fat.

Maybe when I’m done taking photos of flowers I’ll return to the light shots. I love how they look like paintings.

Photos: Going bananas

Henry E. Powderly II — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:00:02 +0000

The spots on an overripe banana double as great abstract art.

Enjoy. I especially like the blurry one.