Freight Elevator Photos

A professor's retirement party yesterday evening was held at the Lit in an old building in downtown Cleveland. Matt and I got to ride in a freakin' sweet old freight elevator (operated by a cool looking middle aged hippie) to get to the party. Here are a couple photos:

This one is looking up from the second floor but it actually looks deeper (higher) because there was more light.This is on the way back down from the first floor. You can't make as much out but I like the composition so I thought I'd share it anyway.I'm going to try to start up my "drawings of the day" again this week, we'll see how that goes. Maybe call it "drawings of the occasional" instead. Most will be new work but I'll keep throwing in some finished stuff from my portfolio and teen stuff from my old sketchbooks when it seems fitting (aka when I'm feeling too lazy to draw something new).

Studio Space at last

Here are the promised pictures. It's amazing how much a difference it makes having space to work. I feel like I can breathe again. Which doesn't necessarily mean I'm working obviously. Right now I'm more taking pictures of my clean drawing space and feeling really proud of myself. Small steps, right?

The first thing I did on Friday was finally put together the shelves for over the computer. They're made of steel pipe (like my desk legs) and plywood. They're pretty sturdy as a self contained unit, but unfortunately they wobble a little because apparently it's friggin' impossible to get pipes in this configuration level. Live and learn. They're up against the bookshelves though and that seems to keep steady enough. I also went out and got a bunch of these metal mesh thingies to help organize. This, combined with all the shelving and such I already had, seems to pretty much contain all my art junk. For now.These could actually make better file boxes than I would have expected. They look cooler than most file boxes I've seen at any rate.My desk looks like a picture from a storage magazine except the lighting's not as good. It's weird. I'm particularly proud of the gap beneath the bookshelves on the right that let me slide my keyboard underneath, out of the way. Very nice for drawing.Chyna likes to get behind the computer, I guess because it's warm. Apparently when I organized I shifted things around so there's no room back there. Whoops.So she stole my chair instead. Yeah, she looks sweet, but she's not giving it up without a fight.They like to watch.

Ugly-cool

There is something fascinating to me about industrial architecture. This won't be the last time I post on this but I thought I'd make an introduction today.

I don't think I'm alone in this attraction, it's strange, but there is beauty in the ugly, in the fallen or the half constructed. I was reminded of this while paging through photos of Scotland, when I came across some visually stunning scaffoldings on a failing section of Edinburgh Castle. They seem to stretch into eternity, a strange but fitting contrast to the nature surrounding them. You would think that they would look out of place, if not against the greenery than next to the aged walls of the Castle I have to admit that the six-year-old inside me was deeply tempted to sprint up the hill and climb them, but I resisted.

Industrial structures aren't the only ugly things that attract people, ruins are an excellent example of an ugly aesthetic that is so accepted as beauty that most people would argue that they are not in any way ugly. I would argue that ruins are ugly by nature, consider what ruins are. Symbols of deterioration and failure, ruins are nothing but broken remnants. There is not even certainty that what they once were was beautiful, we take this for granted because the ruins still stand as mementos. A sense of awe overcomes us when we look at the scraps of something that might have been great, it is this sense that lets us see them as beautiful.

Then there's the funky, the truly ugly, a push that is rising in popularity. Decorating magazines are beginning to celebrate trash-picking, broken furniture rebuilt into something new. This may be a manifestation of the trendy green movement: don't throw it away, reuse it, the more obvious the better. The rise in DIY also contributes to this trend, it's all the more cool if it looks handmade, and that means ugly. Craftsters, no longer sweet and feminine, but rebellious, young, hip, embrace the ugly as well with large clumsy stitches that once would have been considered inelegant. Now they scream out, "I made this!" The perfect example of this is the Ugly Doll, cuddly and adorable exactly because it is so proudly hideous.

The beauty of the Cleveland Flats is entirely industrial, and I'm sure that there are those who would argue that there is no beauty. There are railroads that seem to go everywhere, with nothing behind them but the sky. Bridges to nowhere, graceful archways shadowing us as we walk beneath them. Most striking perhaps are the bridges that were once raised or swung aside to let through barges, and then one day they were brought up for the last time. There they stand, heavy and black against the clouds, reminding us of their past purpose. So strange to think how long they've sat in disuse, the materials not reclaimed, just left to take up space and glare down at us. The old and ugly sits next to the new, the fashionable until they blend unintentionally into one style. I think the hard edged metal, right on the river, touches something in us that we try not to think about. It's a monument to the past, a reminder not so different from the crumbling ruins people will line up to photograph.