SUBURBAN 'STANG

"Suburban 'Stang"
Polaroid Photo credit © Lydia Marcus 2009 / www.lydiamarcus.com
Photographed May 17, 2009 in Lake Balboa, CA

MOM, THINKING OF YOU ON YOUR BIRTHDAY. THANKS FOR ALWAYS BEING MY GUIDE.

Beverly Burton Marcus November 30, 1931 - December 15, 2002

Today I was cleaning house and going through old photos and found my Mom's signature written for no particular reason on the inside flap of one of my photo envelopes that had pictures from the 1980's. Crazy huh, but stuff like this has happened before on special days relating to my Mom. In ways I can never predict, her presence will pop up.

LUCY THE CHOCOLATE LAB

Lucy is a Chocolate Lab I met a few weeks ago. Lucy's "Mom" Chrystyna and her boyfriend Jorge were walking past my yard and I invited Lucy in to play with Cali. Chyrstyna got Lucy from an ad on Craigslist. The owners had neglected her and were going to dump her at the pound and they were threatening to put her down if no one came to get her! She's only a year old and she's super sweet and loving and thank God she's out of a place that doesn't care about her into a a loving home that does.

Cali and Lucy have had a few doggie play dates, gone on one off leash hike together (their first!), and today Jorge brought Lucy over so we could bathe Cali & her in my backyard. He helped to hold Cali while I washed her and I held Lucy still while he washed her.

Lucy is a gem and has so much potential. She was overweight when she was adopted and in just a few weeks of regular exercise she's already trimmed down. She doesn't know a lot of commands (I think sit and lie down are it), but today in just a few seconds I was able to teach her "Leave It'. Cali and I are happy to call her a friend.

Here's a cropped version of the first shot.



Lucy has beautiful yellow eyes and a radiant smile. This is how she looks most of the time, ears back and relaxed.





I took a few Polaroids of Lucy and Cali too. It took Jorge and I quite a lot of futzing and commands and treats to finally get them close enough for a side by side portrait, but we finally did it!







Digital and Polaroid Photo credits © Lydia Marcus 2009 / www.lydiamarcus.com
Photographed November 18, 2009 in Encino, CA

CONTINENTAL TRIPTYCH

Polaroid photo credit: © Lydia Marcus 2009 / www.lydiamarcus.com
Photographed May 9, 2009 in Culver City, CA at the Sixth Annual Cruisin' Back to Culver City Car Show

From Hemmings.com:

"Bizarre or beautiful? Lincoln's all-new Mark III, IV and V Continentals upped the ante in luxury motoring. To some, the 1958 through 1960 Lincoln Mark III, IV and V Continentals are under-appreciated middle children, straddling the line between the understated, classic 1956-'57 Continental Mark II and the Camelot-chic 1961 Continental; others consider them the redheaded stepchildren of the 1950s Lincoln line. Whatever your thoughts, there's no escaping these Continentals' advanced unit-body design, massive stretch-out room and distinctive styling. With prices on their forebears and followers rising by the day, now is the time to aim for middle ground and pick up a 1958-'60 Continental."

LANDSCAPED

Polaroid Photo credit © Lydia Marcus 2009
Photographed April 4, 2009 in Encino, CA

HAPPY 4TH!

Polaroid Photo by © Lydia Marcus
Photographed May 2008 at Los Angeles National Cemetary
Westwood, CA

SO LONG "GOOSE"

Lucy lost her six month battle with Lymphoma today. I adopted her on December 8, 2007 and let her go on June 30, 2009. Words just cannot express how I'm feeling. It's been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I'll let this photo taken less than an hour after her passing do all my talking for now.

Lucy The Boxador R.I.P
Photo © Lydia Marcus 2009
Photographed June 30, 2009 in Encino, CA

DOXIE LOVE

Meet my doggie "nieces" Mathilda and Talullah, blue Dachsund sisters that are two months old. Their human mommies are very close friends of mine. They just brought them home yesterday. They're the first blue doxies I've ever seen!

Talullah (on the left in the Polaroid below) is the one that seems the most photo savvy - she stared straight at the camera in practically every shot. Mathilda (on the right) seems to be more shy (or maybe less interested) in the camera. Talullah is larger but a lot more easy going and gentle. Mathilda has an obvious Napolean complex and is a raging little scrapper!


Sheryl & Denny (aka Shirley and Lennard) with their new doggie babies.








Photos by © Lydia Marcus 2009
Photographed in Lake Balboa, CA on June 7, 2009

A FACE IS LIKE A WORK OF ART, IT DESERVES A GREAT FRAME

My Dad and Lucy The Boxador.

This is VERY special Polaroid film called Image Wild Sides. I got it from polapremium.com where it's $16 dollars a pack (plus shipping). I never knew they made Wild Sides for Spectra cameras. I used to love shooting the 600 version in my One Step. I held onto my last pack for years and just tried shooting it and it was a total dud - what a disappointment. Well at least I have 3 boxes of the Image Wild Sides to shoot. They're dated 10/2008 but the color is perfect. I gotta get my hands on more of this stuff!

Photo by © Lydia Marcus 2009
Photographed May 10, 2009 in Encino, CA
Polaroid ProCam with Image Wild Sides film (sold by polapremium)

GOT WINDOWS

Photo by © Lydia Marcus 2009
Photographed May 9, 2009 in Culver City, CA

FLY PEGASUS FLY

Photo by © Lydia Marcus
Photographed February 8, 2009 in Barstow, CA
at Tom's Welding near Route 66

SOMEWHERE IN TIME

1955 Packard Clipper Custom Constellation Polaroid Photo by © Lydia Marcus
Photographed April 4, 2009 in Encino, CA

KITCHEN KITSCH

These are tchotchkes perched on my kitchen window sill. The two female figures belonged to my Mom and were probably a garage sale find. The slender flower vase is either Murano or a look-a-like. It was one of my Mom's favorite pieces and it's always been one of my favorites as well. The lavender jar I recently bought it at an antique shop in Oatman, Arizona while I was on my Route 66 trip. The antique shop had a note next to it that said it was a "ghost town bottle" dug up from an early mining camp in either California, Nevada or Arizona. MOUTARDE DIAPHANE LOUIT FRERES & CO is embossed on the glass. I researched it and apparently this stylized "barrel" shaped bottle dates from the mid-19th century until the early 20th. The last item is a small, cobalt blue glass pitcher with chevron details on each side. It dates back to the 1930's. I always had a thing for cobalt glass so I probably picked it up at an antique shop or garage sale but I have no memory of ever buying it. When I was cleaning out some kitchen cabinets I found it tucked in the back and decided it would go well with the rest of the kitchen kitsch. It sure picks up the afternoon sunlight nicely.

Polaroid Photo by © Lydia Marcus
Photographed March 5, 2009 in Encino, CA

GEYSER GAZING

I visited Yellowstone National Park in the summer of 2001. Old Faithful gets all the fame but honestly it was one of the least impressive geysers that I saw at Yellowstone. Old Faithful is known for it's frequency of eruption and the great height it achieves, but this tiny geyser called Pink Cone Geyser was probably my favorite at the park. While Old Faithful's bursts last anywhere from 1-5 minutes, this little guy generally sprays for 1 - 2 hours at a time!!!!! Plus you don't have to deal with the crowds to view it. If you ever get to Yellowstone - go check it out! - Lydia Marcus

Polaroid Photo by Lydia Marcus. Pink Cone Geyser photographed at Yellowstone National Park, July 5, 2001.

HOLE N" THE ROCK

Hole N" The Rock is one of the wackiest and most unique tourist stops I have ever visited. I HAVE to stop here every time I visit Moab. I look forward to checking out the gift shop for one of a kind items and stopping by the petting zoo to see an unusual assortment of animals that includes those wacky and very odd ostriches. Hole N" The Rock is a kitsch tourist attraction at it's very best. - Lydia :-)

From the website www.theholeintherock.com :

"Travelers along U.S. Highway 191 in Southeastern Utah are amazed to discover this unique 5,000 square foot home and gift shop. Inside are fourteen fabulous rooms arranged around huge pillars. A fireplace with a 65 foot chimney drilled through solid sandstone, a deep french fryer, and a bathtub built to the rock are among the attractions.

Outside the living quarters is a rock and cactus garden and nearby are picnic tables and benches carved from stone.

In a 12-year period Albert excavated 50,000 cubic feet of sandstone from the rock. During this time he completed his famous painting "Sermon on the Mount" and his sculpture of Franklin D. Roosevelt on the face of the rock above his home.

When Albert died in 1957, the home was not complete. Gladys, in keeping with his wishes and lifelong dreams, continued to develop the home and gift shop into the world-renowned attraction it is today.

When Gladys passed away in 1974 she was laid to rest next to Albert in a small cove within the rock near the home. The simple stone markers were sculpted by Gladys.

Hole N" The Rock Home, Gift Shop and Tradin' Post 12 miles south of Moab, Utah U.S. Highway 191"

Polaroid Photos by Lydia Marcus. Photographed at Hole N" The Rock in Moab, Utah, July 3, 2001

IT WAS 39 YEARS AGO TODAY...

Click image to enlarge my birth announcement, scanned from my baby book. "Unbelievable?" my Mom wrote because my parents were married almost 15 years before they finally had me - their one and only child - my Mom was 38, my Dad 48! No IVF, no multiple births, just moi! I share a birthday with Elizabeth Taylor, Joanne Woodward, Chelsea Clinton, Ralph Nader, and writers Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Steinbeck. Happy Birthday fellow Pisceans!

BMW ART CARS @ LACMA

Yesterday I made it over to LACMA to see the four BMW ART CARS on display and I was not disappointed. I had wanted to see Andy Warhol's M1 since I saw a video of him painting it on You Tube last year. The Warhol car in particular is the star of the show - although in a way it looks like someone set a five year old upon the car with finger paints - all together the paint and colors and haphazard nature of the application just make the M1 look like a car in motion even when it's dead stopped. While so many of Warhol's famous silkscreens weren't even made by his own hand (in some ways you could say the manufacture of his art was akin to Ford's Model T production), but here, Warhol painted and designed every inch of the M1 himself by hand. Even his signature on the left side of the rear bumper was signed using his fingertip.



LACMA put out a very nice brochure curated by Christopher Mount, a Design Historian. What Mount says in the intro paragraph just reiterates what I wrote in my previous post about some cars being art.

"In his preface to the catalogue for the 1951 exhibition Eight Automobiles at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Arthur Drexler observed, "Automobiles are hollow, rolling sculpture." Justifying their display in a museum, Drexler summed up his belief that if you could for a moment disregard the functional aspect of cars and instead look at them as works of art, appreciating their beautiful lines and fine craftmanship, you would see them in an entirely new light. Eight Automobiles was in fact the first time an art museum had ever displayed automobiles alongside more conventional works of art, treating them with the respect and regard usually given to sculpture. Countless exhibitions of automobiles in otherwise traditionally fine art museums have taken place since. The BMW Art Car project, which asks artists to transform both series production models and race cars into new "painted rolling sculpture," takes the relationship between art and automobiles to fascinating and unique heights."

Here are some of my digital photos and Polaroids from LACMA plus more text by Chistopher Mount from LACMA's catalogue brochure.

Andy Warhol (USA) 1979 BMW M1 Group 4 Race Version



"For Andy Warhol, the actual painting of the car became a performance piece, done by his own hand live before cameras as a publicity event. Warhol approached the car with a carefree spirit and an uncharacteristic interest in a sort of "action painting." The car, a BMW M1, is covered with multicolored areas of paint that suggest movement (blurred particularly at racing speeds), but also perhaps individual side panels taken from different cars. This greatly oscures the overall form of the car. With the handle edge of the brush, Warhol scraped lines into the painted surfaces, implying wind moving over the surface but also further de-materializing the surface of this fine racing car. "I adore the car," Warhol said after he'd finished. "It's much better than a work of art." Certainly from a formal perspective much differs from Warhol's paintings, which were often achieved with the use of stencils or silkscreens with a prescribed order."













Frank Stella (USA) 1976 BMW 3.0 CSL



"A car enthusiast and collector, Frank Stella employed the most rational approach to the painting of his BMW 3.0 CSL. "My design is like a blueprint transferred to the bodywork," he said, and in fact the graph paper-inspired decoration suggests a two-dimensional drawing inflated to three dimensions. Stella sought inspiration from the car's technical drawings and found this to be the "most agreeable solution." However, this is not truly a technical exercise, and Stella references his own sculptures and drawings with the recurring appearance of the French curve and other forms taken from an architect's drawing table."




Roy Lichtenstein (USA) 1977 BMW 320i Group 5 Race Version



"Like the Stella, Roy Lichtenstein's automobile (BMW 320i) incorporates an artistic vocabulary familiar to him (including Benday dots and flat areas of color), but also adapts to the unusualness of the assignment. He said, "I pondered on it for a long time and put as much into it as I possibly could....I wanted the lines I painted to be a depiction, the road showing the car where to go." Again the modulated strip of color indicates movement and wind traveling from front to back of the car. However, Lichtenstein goes further conceptually: "the design also shows the countryside through which the car has traveled....One could cal it an enumeration of eveyrthing a car experiences - only that this car reflects all of these things before they actually have been on the road." On one side a rising sun, and over the rest a depiction of the natural and physical forces that a car encounters on its daily journeys."





Robert Rauschenberg (USA) 1986 BMW 635 CSi



"Robert Rauschenberg took a completely different approach, not attempting to play with the materiality or non-materiality of the car or suggest speed, wind, or movement like the others. Instead his painting is static and approaches a painted car from an almost educational point of view. "I think mobile museums would be a good idea," he said. "This car is the fulfillment of my dream." Renowned for his use of collage and a multiplicity of materials and forms, Rauschenberg employed a kind of appropriation in his BMW 635 CSi. The most humorous of the automobiles, Rauschenberg painted the hubcaps as though they were fragile antique plates and reproduced Bronzino's famous Portrait of a Young Man on one side of the car and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' Le Grande Odalisque on the other. In a reference to the posssible ecological damage caused by the proliferation of automobiles, the artist included his own photographs of flowers, trees, and swamp grass to the hood and roof."