The rhythm of the accounting dept.
An essay and a drum solo, on character, worth, and what we Keep mistaking for It on any given Tuesday.
I want to tell a story.
It’s 05:34 on Aug 31st. Time to get back to the rhythm of the war drums.
I’m writing this in real time. I guess I’m doing that so it creates a semblance of reality, not staged illusion.
I am a person, and I never thought that I would feel the need to defend that.
I have feelings, and I genuinely love people. I never thought I would need to defend that either.
I want the best for you, and the love that I have for you, or, have had for you, has never stopped. It has always been.
However, It has changed, and for that, I will always ask for forgiveness and expect it in return.
How that love and forgiveness is shown or reciprocated is lost in the fog sometimes.
But love cannot be measured and it cannot be destroyed.
I wrote another essay this last week. It’s an important one. It deserves to be read on a Monday or a Tuesday.
It falls at a subtle moment where I feel uniquely compelled to act in an unprofessional manner. Perhaps, out of charactor, and I don’t think I’m alone either.
I’m upset that the beautiful people didn’t turn out to be so beautiful after all, and not very loving either. Turns out that it’s all relative to the size of your steeple, and how much shade you find in it.
But even wolves in sheep’s clothing have their day in the sun.
Sketchy Sundays.
It one of those days when I haven picked up the pen yet. I decided not to. This is a drawing update. Steal Magnolias is complete, and so “Brain”
I also started working on a mirror version of this style, and have had several conversations with folks as I’ve enjoyed drawing them. The method is really simple. Start with a random shape at the start, trace a line around it imperfectly, and a little random. Then repeat the process. Fill in the funny space that now surrounds the original shape in its own random way. Repeat. It’s time consuming, and incredibly therapeutic for the minds random shortcomings.
Each piece turns into its own random creation because every line and narrow edge is shaped to something unique. It never repeats itself, yet can’t exist without being affected by its repetitions.
I took same style, and then applied it to concept that I’ve wanted to try for a while. That is a South American style skull. This has been an ongoing project for weeks now, and a first. Each eye started as light and dark, and it’s been random applications of ink, mistakes, happy mistakes, and a lot of patience. Lots of tiny scribbles. I can’t wait to draw the next one. I might leave this one alone for a while, but each time I sit down to add to it, I see it differently.
I think it’s time to take some long exposures. The portfolio feels long in the teeth. Thanks for visiting. Have a great week everyone.
-Nate.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Good verses. Good contexts.
It’s just another day.
It’s Fine Art Friday. I think its #11, doesn’t really matter anymore. I had a plan, and my author had a different one.
Firstly, thank you for being here and reading this.
I've spent my entire life witnessing creation and its nature. Trying to see it all as a process took an experience to actually understand. I'm still changing, willfully
This essay took me a bit longer to think about, but it’s been a topic of conversation for decades. The process of renewal is not a new one, and will continue to change by its very definition.
That’s why we have Fridays. Even if the week was spent working on nothing but a blueprint for the weekend.
Rest is important.
This was a bit of pencil shading practice and re learning to use a geometry-set, last month. I’ve since moved on to pens. No shading and no erasure is teaching me to learn to live with my mistakes.
I have lots to draw on.
Have an evolved weekend everyone.
-Nate.
It’s Thursday. It’s not there yet.
I’ve been writing. Lots of coffee, lots of ink. Lots of recognition. Grounds for creation.
It is inevitable that with all of the writing, reflecting, and thought putting, that eventually controversy and disagreement will hit the proverbial fan. Tomorrow’s essay tackles one of the oldest Christian disagreements.
Creationism vs Evolutionism.
For many people reading this it is a none issue, for many Bible readers out there, it’s also a none issue.
I have long since made a declaration on where I place the ultimate Authority, but critics will be critical thinkers. Take it with a grain of salt. I hope you enjoy reading it.
For those of you who are here for the first time, welcome.
Write you tomorrow,
-Nate.
Btw. I took this photo on Sunday. I nearly walked past it. The truth is, I didn’t really look at it. I just like photographing unique patterns and colours sometimes. Especially on things that are often missed. I didn’t see what I saw until I edited it. I just had to let the chalk speak for itself.
This was someone’s abandoned artwork. I can’t imagine how many artists contributed to it. I have no idea what they were imagining. I just know that they kept drawing and I kept seeing the only thing that we ever see when we look up.
To me it looks like every type of heavenly body, and astronomical phenomena in a chalk drawing. lol
It inspired my imagination.
The Heaven’s through the children’s telescope.
Drawn with chalk at their feet. Ready to be washed away. Faith like a child, paints the darnedest things. It certainly spoke timely to me.
Essay# 3 Choice, the work in progress.
I need to choose more words carefully.
Being on the side of critical thinking is never a bad thing, doesn’t mean it’s always correct.
This essay is about how we arrive at a river, not the solution to cross it.
This is a sensitive subject to a lot of people, different groups, and different motivations, each with well founded reasons for choosing to stick to a side. I have no interest in doing that. You do you. I just know deep down that good choices start by listening to the right voices. Mine is my own, I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I’m choosing to speak with it.
Choose to have a great weekend everyone.
-Nate.
Work isn’t a choice, but it is. It’s like laughing.
Faf# 10.
Sometimes it means choosing to stop laughing and start working. Yet the heart keeps beating, why? Because it’s there.
I scribbled this on a note pad during a flurry of edits a couple Februaries ago. A lot has changed since then. I have loved, I have felt distance, I have found joy and I have found freedom. My identity has never been in question. Who people thought I was didn't really matter, and it still doesn't. I don’t care. This is not a popularity contest. Anyone reading this knows that we are in a crucible right now. The crisis is Charactor, and how valuable it is to us. My God never stops working. Rest is part of that. It's in the pauses, in the strikes, in the hesitation, pain, exhaustion, and service, that He returns our joy. When our bodies delight in who made us, recognition is inevitable. He delights when we turn our eyes back to the only King that there has ever been. My job is to point in that direction. That direction is Jesus Christ. If that makes me a freak, so be it. He didn't just die. He rose and He spoke up. That’s often confused with being a freak of nature. It’s not, it’s reasonable. Reason starts with speaking a name.
He called me to speak for Him alone. That's an easy burden when all a photographer has to do is speak about choosing love. I love who God made us. Relentlessly loving ourselves, and proving it to us by choice.
I’ll post essay #3 tonight. Questions need answers, but choosing correctly needs voices. First we should ask a frog, it has a voice in the matter. That’s the theme.
It’s Friday after all, and Friday has always been its own work of art. Sometimes you don’t have a choice in the matter. Sometimes you do work.
Sometimes I sit and laugh.
-Nate
-laughing with God. also crying because of how I can see him working, and all I have to do is sit. That inspires joy.
Sometimes I sit and play drum solos. It’s like laughing while working. But not.
I enjoy it.
This was #10 this week. It doesn’t have a name. It’s an expression. A Zoom just happens to be the recording tool. That’s funny.
What’s in a Name?
Faf #9
It’s Friday, but this essay is less about art as it is why we call it that. It’s a line.
This weeks post is about identifying something old, something new, and suddenly making sense by putting a name to them. I will probably add to it as I see fit. Names tend to repeat when properly recognized.
This repetition turning into a series, and I’m already working on #3. Time will tell with the choices we make.
Have peaceful weekend everyone.
EOE-RLR. Same thing.
Different context, different pattern. Same result.
That riddle is for tomorrow’s essay.
Sometimes explaining the moment, lacks the words. It needs experiencing. That’s where words like intensity come from.
It gives something meaning.
I can’t help myself, I did it again.
I started writing essay #2 yesterday, however, after the events of today (The world cup final), I needed to re-write the opener. The irony of events was too good to pass by unacknowledged. No one is saying it, and it wasn’t ironic or confusing at all.
“A man stood alone in the middle of a field today. He stood on a small pedestal, what he spoke were grand claims.
He gave a speech on a stage built only for himself. The declaration of the tournament. A speech to its grandeur, its participants, if not so bold. He stood in front of everyone and declared something. He named the moment. He named the people participating in it. Then in closing, Sunglasses in the left hand, and mic in the right, he paused, looked skyward, voice cracking, and declared that “this is unity, this is greatness.”
At the end of the game, a man of great notoriety, who wanted great again, sought more notoriety. He did this by trying to insert himself in a photo where he didn’t belong with a team he didn’t play for, for a pierce of history in the greatness of something that he wasn’t a part of. He was sent stage left, appearing confused with his own greatness.
What’s in a name? '“
That’s the opener for essay number 2, or two, it’s up to you. It’s all in the context. It needs discipline and some re-alignment. There’s a reason you cant be color blind and fly for a commercial airline. I’ll let you read it to judge for yourself. It does’’t matter what you call it. It takes time and consistency. I cover new ground, from a lot of different perspectives, some of them painful. Seeing red sometimes is.
Time to go to back to the auction board, to the drafting table, and then the slaughter house. Time to talk Lamb, and how you like it, or perhaps don’t.
But first, we need to mow the lawn. Its time for a football game. Speaking is fun when you can remember with it, speaking in front of everyone. Well, that’s quite the picture.
Have a good week everyone.
Thoughts on Friday that started on a Friday.
This week’s faf#8 submission is the story of the finest artwork imaginable. Its not my works, its not my thoughts. It’s thought on an identity brought together in one place. It’s what’s been occupying my mind lately, it’s the story that inspired it.
Its not exclusive, its for everyone.
This is an essay that tries to answer the questions, what is awareness, and what do we do with the wrong information?
It speaks to the boundaries and the barriers.
I talk about the beginning of life, awareness, and resurrection of it. Both Intended, and not.
It’s a long read, a coffee or tea in hand would be a good idea.
Have an enlightened weekend everyone.
-Nate.
The accidental Renaissance of thought,
starts with stopping and being selective on the focus.
Something important happened today. I asked the computer and existential question, and it told me to go sit alone in my car.
I was doing a voice recording and it was getting wordy, I needed space and quiet.
My condescending, contemplation needed proper audio recording for proper validation.
Quick.
Written, Edited, preformed,.. wordy. Blah.
The stillness it was supposed to inspire, lost in the process, and suddenly not palatable. I was losing the point and recording it in real time.
No wonder the computer thought the isolation of a car was a good solution for this.
But that’s where the renaissance of thought happens sometimes. Sitting with a really strong plan and executing a bad decision while sitting in a car that’s not moving. It’s the same as being told to sit in the corner.
To sit with the decision. Live with it.
What it lead to, was a different decision and course correction. I took out the eraser and started drawing in pen.
I saw a new blueprint, and I liked it better. I decided to start a new season again. Selective on where to begin. Choosing to put what is first, first, and what is second, negotiable.
Repeatable. Scalable.
A season of repeatable positive process. Endless creation, and the right vehicle to speak to it with. Life to life freely and travel, with.
Stopping along the way.
That’s mouthful, it just means that I figured out something that I was over complicating, and not learning the lesson before speaking about it. I needed to slow down and be quiet again.
Sometimes it’s best to leave to caution fence up until the work is done. Especially if it’s around yourself. That part isn’t accidental.
Last fall I wrote a post about the first leaf to rest and the mark that it spoke to me about the coming season. This week, nearly the same spot, different leaf, new art. New Friday,
I hope you have a pleasant thought that leads to a stop this weekend.
-Nate.
The power of knowing, and holding.
Nothing.
FAF #6.
Nothing but carbon chemicals ignited by the light and pressure applied to them. No grand thought this week. Just learning to see light suddenly again.
-Taken this afternoon as repeating patterns found my eyes on the clock. The sun shone through my window at the precise moment an internal nudge became a competent thought. Pattens repeating. There with me again, the hand steady. Light, love, peace. Joy in the gift that I tried to bury.
My thoughts and my actions have found me with pen in hand this week.
I sat still. Very still. Holding my breath, still.
I haven’t written a thing. I haven’t picked up my camera. I haven’t been thinking about it. I haven’t even picked up a pencil.
I’ve been using a ballpoint pen that was a movie prop. A souvenir from the SetDec Dept. It’s proven to be a game changing tool.
I’ve been drawing with it. The ink flowed well, and before I knew it, it was. Is. Will be.
This is the result of more hrs than I care to admit. Many mornings. It’s not done. It’s not a visual of anything but my mind. That’s the inspiration, I just didn’t realize that until this morning. It isn’t finished, I haven’t abandoned it yet. I bought more ink.
Have a pleasent and peaceful weekend everyone.
-Nate.
# The surface tension of stones.
FAF #5
As I spun around on my heal, not 30 min ago, my phone lit up. It was resting face up on my bed. I hadn’t made it yet. This is a true story.
The reason I had changed direction is that my mind kicked in gear and the only way that I was going you properly organize my thoughts was by writing them. So I thought for a moment about this blog title that I wrote last Friday. The surface tension of stones. There was a concept there, I just hadn’t walked my thoughts out of it yet. My next question, I wondered what Bible verse would retain an accurate description of God and a stone? That’s the moment I turned around and my phone lit up. That exact moment. It was my Bible app. Verse of the day.
Today.
Isaiah 26:4
Trust in the Lord Forever. For the Lord God is an everlasting rock.
This prompted a quick flick of the phone/stone as if it was suddenly too hot. The timing was too fast, it was suddenly heavy. I stept back from my bed, the light from the flame now hidden by waves of fabric. I attempted to keep the air from escaping my lounges with my hand. What followed was a conversation. I’ll try to describe it to you.
This was but the smallest of reminders that I have been receiving from Gods voice to me in this last season. He is drawing me back to the artist, back to the freely given.
This isn’t about finding photos any more. This about finding the Creator. This is about the Artist Himself.
I should probably write today. Something is in the air.
You were made on purpose.
Fine art Friday w4.
I sat at my table this week, I sat on my couch. For at least 2 hrs everyday, I put pencil to paper.
I haven’t been writing anything. I’ve been drawing.
One afternoon as I sat sketching at my table, the much larger round table next to me filled up with High School students. Together, they opened textbooks, calculus calculators and got to work.
What I witnessed and overheard was remarkable. The students collaborated, explained, stayed on point, and diligently worked through math I will never understand. One student in particular was clearly the Math ring leader. She understood, she explained, she lead. Then quietly out of the discussion I heard a voice speak out late in the solution. This student didn’t get the concept yet. He was falling behind, and he knew it.
It occurred to me that during the last 5 minutes of shared problem solving of Math, He had probably spent nearly all of it privately trying to come up with a creative way of explaining to his peers that He didn’t get the concept in the first place.
It’s what I would have done.
I wasn’t involved in the discussion or the group, but I heard the desperate creativity in the voice. How to explain the unexplainable. One is an accountant, the other, the cook.
The collective students immediately turned their attention back to the concept and explained the solution differently to the one that didn’t get it. Homework successful. Good kids. Teamwork.
Left Brian Right Brain. Sometimes Both. Sometimes in Starbucks. This is a photograph that I took the next day. The ghost of shared learning. Unity.
Honestly this is such a massive subject that I feel like pausing. This has everything to do with purpose.
This is a word that we’ve forgotten.
The brains and the math have purpose, the usage and the implementation do too. All of it.
Structure, composition, pattern. To much to distill, to much thinking. Back to the drawing.
The spring before last, a gorgeous tiny magnolia tree bloomed in my back yard. The unique placement of the tree means that it really doesn’t get any sun until later in the season. It’s a late bloomer. I photographed it. I called series Steel Magnolias and I will make those photographs available soon. I returned to the tree this spring, but the magic just wasn’t the same. The original photographs were just fine. So, I picked one of the compositions and used it as a model for the first pencil work that I have put any effort into in a long time. Art is art, and I started with a pencil long before I picked up anything else.
This was the result of a week spent not thinking and plenty of concentrating. Fine lines, blurry details, and sometimes not touching the paper at all.
Have wonderful weekend everyone.
-Nate
Be still and know nothing.
Fine art Friday. w3.
This felt like an appropriate shot for the week. It is a single photograph taken in the middle of the day. It was taken with a filter that allows me to take a very long exposure even in broad daylight. (really powerful sunglasses for my lens).
The key to the photo is the absolute stillness of the camera. 55 seconds is a long time to steady the tripod at rush hr. During that time, anything in motion disappears from view.
If you look closely, you can see the lights of cars traversing across the bridge. Busy, but in the stillness, you just don’t see them anymore. Light as feathers in the wind. Quiet.
It was cause for contemplation. But not too much.
We’ve really built a world that equates stillness with laziness, and quiet as problem to be solved.
There isn’t any room to simply “be”, anymore. Sitting still isn’t always an option in a busy life. Real presence and authentic critical thinking have been erased from the priorities list.
We are constantly told to be someone, somewhere else. It’s a race against time. Don’t think.. Do.
Then I stopped. I questioned.
I thought this was a race against something, but its actually a sit with something.
The truth is this, the clearest thinking, creativity, deductive reasoning, and grounded decisions are always best to be made with less noise and more stillness.
Presence is found there.
I sat with the quiet and my sketchpad this week. Each afternoon has been a lesson. I will confess that I have been lazy with this gift. The truth is that drawing takes me back to a very core part of who I am.
The first afternoon, I decided to draw a feather. It’s seemed to best represent the feeling at the time. I saw my hand holding one for observation. Another drawing perhaps.
Being still and knowing something seemed important. I was still trying to resolve issues that were not mine to solve. I knew better, but it persisted.
So I sat with it. Intentional paralysis by analysis, pencil in hand.
Then I realized it didn’t matter, and it didn’t matter what I thought or did. The weight was out of my hands, it wasn’t mine to carry. The lead and wood replaced it.
So, I sketched.
Drawing something real from nothing was easier than drawing from nothing at all. Then I recalled the theme for the week.
Be still and know.
I am learning to trust, and I feel like I just opened the textbook.
Psalm 46:10 - Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among nations, I will be exalted in the earth!
That’s a good verse for the current situation. It says to sit still and watch.
Have a wonderfully still weekend everyone.
-Nate
Throwback Thursdays.
It’s a good day to recognize the road traveled, and steps taken.
I learned photography when a good friend of mine insisted that I buy the “vintage” camera from the pawn shop.
I reluctantly abandoned my latest and greatest camera choice, and paid the $25. A Yashica 50mm 1.8. Film. Money well spent. That fall, during a month long road-trip to North Carolina, I learned, frame by frame how to use that camera.
This is the first image that I took with intention. It’s the first time that I considered the moment and the creative direction. I remember how free it felt to create art with the camera that way.
Life is journey.
Tomorrow, lets stay still.
Weddings on a Wednesday.
I’ve been sitting on a lot of past work. DVDs stored of weddings shot yrs ago.
This engagement shoot was one of my favourites. For this couple, it was love at first sight, and they have grown a beautiful family since. We started the shoot on a beautiful afternoon in downtown Chicago. Finding hidden gems along the way is the best part of revisiting a session like this. Rachel and Dan were fearless, and had fun. Genuinely in love. Both were willing to roll with an idea that came to mind as I strolled to meet them in the park. The cab ride home would be wet, they didn’t care. So fun.
If you have a wedding date in 26/27, please reach out as availability is limited.