Textured Tuesday: Subtle Gold

The colors of winter are subtle. 

What often appear to be flat grays 

are usually subtle turnings of gold, red, 

and purple, each leaning on the other 

to provide richness and depth

to an often bleak season. 

Here the remaining leaves on

a neighborhood tree stand poised 

against a backdrop

of greenish-yellow lichen.

Textured Tuesday: Precursor?

When leaves fall onto the pavement. I find myself fascinated by 

the imprints they leave when the rain blows them away.

Sometimes the mark is the silhouette they made as the rain fell

around them, while others gather the sediment the water

washes along the pavement, leaving muddy little prints.

It's almost a precursor to the time, a bunch of eons away, when 

someone finds a broken rock, revealing the image

of a fossilized leaf inside. 

Textured Tuesday: A Study in Gray

As I left the Natatorium Monday night, I looked up to see 

the bell tower of the IUPUI Student Union building.

Illuminated by lights against the fading daylight, it made 

a study in gray with the clouded sky.

Downtown, as I waited for the bus home, the moon

kept company with workers in the offices

across the street from the bus stop.

No, it wasn't a full moon, but the sliver

was very bright.

Textured Tuesday: Brushy Brick

While costumed people were all around me outside

 the Indiana Convention Center, I happened to notice 

these brushy patterns in the brick pavers near 

the main entrance. It appears that calcium deposits had

been made on the pavers over the years by water 

leaching from large planters. 

Textured Tuesday: Sun Filtered Through Trees

Saturday morning, I was downtown waiting for the bus 

to the fairgrounds. The sun was rising from behind 

the buildings to the east, filtering its way through the trees. 

I loved the shapes of the tree's limbs as they meandered 

their way towards the light, contrasted with the staid, 

predictable patterns of the buildings.

Textured Tuesday: Landscape

A tree branches off to the left in the foreground

of this rainy day landscape, as the horizon line is broken up 

a bit by a grove of trees just emerging from the mist.

Otherwise, it's seams in a bit of sidewalk.

Textured Tuesday: Orange and White Triangles on Pointy Gray Stuff

There are acres of open land awaiting development 

in the Town of Speedway. A number of new buildings, 

such as those for Dallara Indy Car, Sarah Fisher 

Racing, and Community Hospital have been 

completed in recent years. These open bits of land

were created by tearing down old, abandoned

businesses that had not been used for many years.

Instead of remaining passive, allowing the

surroundings to continue into dereliction,

the town created a development plan and,

along with other businesses, the ones above are

a part of the efforts to once again have an

active business core for the town, much of it 

related to auto racing.

Parking areas for race spectators have been marked off 

in the lots by the Speedway Police Department, 

creating a decorative chain of bright triangles against 

a background resembling gray boucle'.

Textured Tuesday: Majestic African Textiles

After leaving Ai Weiwei's exhibit Saturday at 

the Indianapolis Museum of Art, I took a bit of time 

to visit some of the other galleries.

In the Gerald and Dorit Paul Gallery, I found

Majestic African Textiles, an exhibit of 

beaded and embroidered objects, drawn primarily

from the IMA's textile collection.

The exhibit is organized by geographic region, 

representing various ethnic groups, and includes

items ranging from royal and prestige cloths,

masking and ritual garments.

The colors and patterns are wonderful and

strikingly contemporary, with masterfully

balanced shapes that would be the envy 

of any modern painter.

My favorite piece is an intricately

constructed garment, an Egyptian woman's shawl

made in the early 1900s. It is almost entirely

covered in strips of German silver attached to

a backing cloth of cotton netting.

From a distance the scarf almost gives 

the appearance of silver lame'.

I wa-a-a-a-nt one.

Textured Tuesday: Firry Shade

I walked through the IMS RV lot on Georgetown Road 

to visit the trees. Summer has come with a vengance. 

After a winter that didn't want to leave, the heat and humidity, 

while appropriate to the season, are sort of a shock 

to one's system. I made a point of finding 

shade under a tall fir tree where I looked up to see

the hot sun filtering its way through the dark green lace

of the tree's needles, contrasting against

the thick, black lines of its branches.

Textured Tuesday: Bead on a Wire

Most of the time, the yard ornaments I see 

are the usual plaster rabbits, gnomes, and deer 

available at any home supply store between 

Speedway and Hanoi. 

Every once in a while, though, I see 

something that charms me and this little tree

was one of them. Apparently, someone wound 

heavy gauge wire around a broom stick and stretched

it out to create the branches for the tree.

They then threaded various sizes and colors of 

glass beads on lighter gauge wire to attach it to the tree. 

The result is a pretty, simple ornament 

that glints in the sunlight. 

Textured Tuesday: Haphazard

Someone has laid these bricks around the base 

of bushes in their front yard. 

The reason for this is not apparent because

the area is not large enough to be a patio,

nor or is there any consistent

pattern to the layout.

No matter. In winter snow adds interesting

contrast between the clay and the

rows of holes. In summer, the leaves

overhanging the bricks give both an unusual

twist with positive and negative shapes.

  

Textured Tuesday: Green and Gray

It had rained overnight, but the only remaining 

hint was the damp outline around 

this fallen leaf. I loved the green shades against 

the striated concrete sidewalk.

Speedway Street Art: The Moon in the Pavement

When I saw the circles in the parking lot, it was 

as if I'd seen the moon at my feet.

Crews were adding a new seal coat to a nearby

parking lot, with sections marked off as they

progressed across the expanse of asphalt. 

It looked as though the moon was being balanced in 

the night sky by strategically placed strokes

of sumi-e, creating what appeared to be minimalist

ink paintings in the middle of a strip mall.

Textured Tuesday: Corrugated Concrete

I've lost count of the number of times I've walked along the Canal.

 It wasn't until last week I noticed the beautiful mottling 

of the concrete retaining walls along the Canal basin, 

near the fire station. The walls are corrugated, not only to create 

some visual interest, but to increase reinforcement of 

the walls themselves. The fact that such beautiful colors and textures

 have appeared over time, simply adds to the subtle

beauty of the place.

Textured Tuesday: Jackson Pollack Had a Lilac Period

Who knew?

There is a nice touch of yellow scattered throughout,

a deft complement to the lilac splashed and

dribbled over the asphalt.

What the hell were they painting and why on earth

are there sneaker prints on the pavement?

Who just could not avoid walking through something

as obvious as lilac colored paint?

Doh.

Textured Tuesday: Circles in Dimension

The circles moved in and out, acquiring dimension,

becoming hexagons. 

They hypnotized me. They spoke to me.

 They form the sides of a trash can.

Textured Tuesday: Taylor, Softening

This is Taylor, who is named after the young woman who brought her to me 

one cold night over two years ago, when the streets were covered with snow and ice.

She was thin and filthy dirty, her fur matted in places with oil.

Holding her was almost impossible; stiff-legged with fear, she did not

care to be held, and we both struggled, me to hold her, she to get free. 

Someone had abused her because loud voices and heavy footfalls 

outside my door would send her into hiding for twenty-four hours at a time.

Now, she's not gone so long after being scared and may even

respond when I call her name. If there is a noise and I tell her it's OK, 

she will often stand for a moment, consider the information,

then come back to hide beneath the couch rather than inside the

bathroom washstand.

I'd gotten my previous cats when they were small kittens. 

Over the years we developed a vocabulary and they knew, 

over time, that certain events would happen, or not, 

related to whatever sounds had emanated from their human. 

I could play tag with them, a version of hide-and-seek that Taylor

interprets as a threat, so that game's out. One would fetch, 

the other would sit up, lie down, or leap for treats, at my request, 

because, after all, you do not command a cat.

Taylor and I are a work in progress. She'll let me hold her a bit and,

 when I rub my face in her fur, she smells like cookies.

Usually, she's curled up in a tight wad about six feet from wherever

I happen to be and spends a good portion of the time sleeping

beside me on the couch. We are developing our own

vocabulary, which is small, but she's telling me she likes to be

close and I am happy with that.

   

Textured Tuesday: Winter Rose

I was surprised to find these flowers during my walk last week 

in the IMA grounds. Called a winter rose, it is not a rose,

but a Hellebore which flowers during the coldest part of the winter.

I found them planted beneath trees beside the walkway 

that, during the summer, would provide just the sort of cover the

plants would enjoy. The information about the flower

stated that it "thrives on neglect."

Sounds like my kind of plant.

When I saw these pale pink flowers, they had emerged, 

almost defiantly, from amid brown winter leaves, to add a touch

of beauty to the stark day. 

Textured Tuesday: Detritis

We've gotten a short reprieve from winter's torture; 

the forecast was for freezing rain, but we got rain instead. 

With temperatures in the mid-50s, the Speedway alps 

have melted away, leaving no more than 

small hillocks of snow in the parking lots, if that.

I found these images in the parking area of

a vacant restaurant, a place where, in the past, I've seen killdeer, 

screaming away from me, doing their "broken wing" act, 

to draw my attention from their eggs, 

laying in nests among the rocks.

These images were found in one of the "islands" in the parking lot.

The plants and rocks have been neglected, with milkweed

growing into another plant, and the remains of a broken concrete

parking barrier have been thrown among the rocks.

While they provided attractive color and composition, 

they speak to the attention needed to maintain the neighborhood,

to keep it from becoming rundown, and inviting vandalism.

Textured Tuesday: Crystal Screen

On my way to the grocery Sunday afternoon, 

I spotted a screen that had been blown out of a window 

during the overnight storms. Its beauty stopped me in my tracks.

Droplets of water clung to the underside of the screen, creating a pattern

of clear circles against its black grid. Then, as the weight of the accumulated

water caused the screen to sag, the puddle below acquired a pattern

of dashed lines. The best bit, though, was when I bent down

to see the shadows the screen had cast on the puddle:

there they were, the beads of water, both reflected and reflecting 

upward, revealing the gray sky and the grid that held them,

that kept them from joining the pooled water just below.