Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Invented arts.


At night the camera is bored with the dark, and invents a new art from the patterns of neon lights in the saloon windows.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

All history is hand-made.


We found this old building on our trip to Southern Minnesota. It wasn't locked. These hand-made doors were held shut by a cotter pin.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

The call of nostalgia


Sara uses her cell phone in a phone booth. We just had dinner at the Pedal Pusher Diner, where they play Buddy Holly songs and serve soda fountain specials, like a "Brown Cow" ... a Coca-Cola, ice cream and chocolate syrup. What will evoke nostalgia from these times fifty years from now? The iPod? Abu Ghraib prison pictures on the cover of Newsweek? Shreck?
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

What is the word for this place?


Simplicity.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

Except the 21st Century...


This picture has everything except the 21st Century.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

It was up to us


This is a lamp in the window of a country church. We drove for hours to find this particular place. There was a lamp in the window, but it was up to us to light it.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion


The Bible is open to Psalm 137.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

The looked-at and the looking.


Sara looks for me. Jeff, where are you? Are you in there?
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

Et In Arcadia Ego


The Last Supper, a very old chromolithograph on the wall of a country church, in the last light of a winter day.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

When we stop


Sometimes I pretend the shadow of the van, running along side us, is another van. It is driven by someone I loved who has died, and is racing to keep up with me. When we stop, he will explain everything. I will finally understand.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

What have I forgotten?


The simple altar has all the necessary parts of a moment outside ourselves. There are candles, to remind us that light comes and goes, and is not the real story. There are collection plates, to remind us that money comes and goes, and is not the real story. There is a Bible. There is a piece of handkmade linen on a handmade oak table. What have I forgotten? Oh, yes, the sun.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

His finger


We have come to church when the sunlight is shining on the altar, on the open bible. God doesn't speak in the winter afternoon, but he points, and you cannot ignore the light of his finger.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

This is my church. It has no electricity. What does that tell you about God's real needs?
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

This is what my world looks like when I want it to.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

In the middle of the American continent, we are so far from the ocean that it is just a word. Ocean. A word for other people. But we have sky. And winter. This sky is dark with rippled clouds. They look like rumors of the ocean, echoes and imitations of a vast watery field somewhere else, in someone else's world.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

Southern Minnesota, where land is just dirt.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

A low sun behind us thrusts the broken road and stubblefields up into the sputtered pewter sky. Suddenly the horizon is just outside our door. It is too close. We didn't invite it. Go away, horizon, we have earned more jouney than this!
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

This tree reaches back into the dirt. It is not okay to grow up, and outward. It has lost something, in its roots, and will not be happy.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

Gate and horses, Amish farm.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

Bright foregrounds and greyed down skies make winter an upside down season. We shield our eyes against the ground!
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

The wheels of the Amish carts braid thin resolute tracks in the dirt roads near Harmony, Minnesota.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

This is a giant cable reel tethered to a post in front of an Amish farm. They are making an example of technology: showing how technology cannot escape the judgement of honest men and women, no matter how round, how big, how blue it might be.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

This tree wants to give up, but won't. Not for years. While the trunk says ?I am tired. Let me sleep?, the branches stand up, and lift up the twigs, which reach inside the sky. They are finding a handhold there. The grass seems not to notice, but it does. It knows what is going on.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

The boy hides his face from the photographer. He is now hiding his face from you, which makes you the author of this work, and the accused. The horse leaves the frame. He will still be leaving the frame years from now, long after the boy has grown up and given his face to the world.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

The style of rural Minnesota is square and austere, like these two old friends.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

Life comes into the picture at a trot, and steals the show. But the undulant clouds and sere purity of snow fields retain their value long after the trot of life is spent. With the trick of art, we can piece them together into a lie of frozen time. Somewhere far from you, the clouds have moved, the horse has slept, the snow has sighed and turned over in its bed.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

The style of rural Minnesota is straight backed and square shouldered.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

The clouds and snow in the stubble field form stippled frosting patterns behind a serene beauty. I can go on and on about Sara's beauty, because it is mostly beneath the surface. The beauty you can see is a token of God's appreciation of humanity. The beauty you cannot see is God's appreciation of the human soul.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

Our friends are like things on the dashboard when we travel. They are important to us, but we can't really look at them because we are concentrating on our driving.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

Nowhere. It's on the map.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

Whoever is brushing the sky has nice technique.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

A family of tourists from Heaven stop to admire the Minnesota snowscape. It doesn't take long.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

You are welcome!
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

In the middle of nowhere, there are lines, lights, and paving. There is snow, which is water in a solid form. There is water in a liquid form. There are clouds. Are clouds a gas, or the emissaries of a liquid state to a foreign empire?
copywrite@2006 Jeff Beddow

The other white meat


I saw this truck on the way to work this morning and had to take a picture.

Monday, January 16, 2006

They don't see us


In the distance we see workers with golden skin. They don't see us. Do they?

Your turn.


Buddha is watching me watch you. It's your turn.

Back to the drawing board


The Buddhas take a break in their workplace. They have considered the situation here in America and have decided to go back to the drawing board.

See the resemblance?


Family is unconditional smiling.

They asked the Buddha to hold their empty spray paint cans. He was distracted by infinity and didn't seem to notice.

Sunday, January 15, 2006


The temple is built from scratch. To see a temple built while the scaffold is still in place, is to know how man cajoles his gods into sitting for a portrait.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

In the beginning was the logo. Really. Then came the reflection, which contains the promises we attach to the logo. Then, finally, the shadows, which the logo seeks to conquer. This logo can conquer shadows as long as it is plugged in.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

When you can do nothing better than design, do nothing at all.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

Change, like art, requires sacrafice. Choose your gods carefully, my son.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

I am prepared to make sacrafices, as long as there is something in it for me.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

If you can't swallow art, then drink design.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

A composition strews valiant accident against rigorous expectation.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

Old forms have become cartoons. New forms have become satires. Both offer, neither accepts.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

Gunpowder Green Tea: The moment exists on the boundary between wet and dry.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

Family is unconditional smiling. Posted by Picasa