kno1

Sometimes pictures have stories, or maybe they always do. The picture in this entry has a story anyway. I'd just gotten a new camera, a pretty good point and shoot, and also a new computer, a mac, with great picture management qualities. I had been taking a camera along on our walks, my wife and I are pretty avid walkers both to get some good exercise, and because we love to be in nature as well as man made environments, and I look for interesting thing to shoot.

That's what we were doing, taking a walk in our little town of Sebastopol in northern California, just 50 miles north of San Francisco. We walked so much in our town that we know just about every street, shortcut, tree, interesting building, little secret places, bits of nature, gardens and empty lots. There is a former lumberyard right across from the 10-year old town plaza. The yard has had several business incarnations since the lumber business went down, and the one just before the present tractor sales and repair place (Sebastopol still has some of it's agricultural heritage left, plus a lot more suburban and rural dwellers with gardens and lawns), was a furniture and upholstery place run by the Basso family. The entire area east of the plaza is an industrial area full of old corrugated building and some interesting businesses such a closed apple packing plant, the Art Center, and art foundry, an exotic juice place and a movie house that used to be a distillery. While walking among the old buildings, we happened to walk down an ally called Brown Street, right behind the old lumberyard. Four loading bays open onto the alley. As we walked, it was hard to miss the graffiti covering the bay doors. I was immediately attracted to the bays and took photos of all four doors. The interesting thing to me is that quite a bit of graffiti had found a home in this out of sight place. On top of the graffiti 3 letters and one numeral had been rolled in big blocky shape, as you can see. They are K,N,O and 1. I took the photos and off we went to continue walking.

Later, I found that the Sebastopol Center for the Arts was having a show and called for entries in any media. I decided to put the photos together into a coherent (to me anyway) piece and submit it. To do that I enhanced and brightened the photos on the basic mac photo program. I then cut a matt and enclosed the photos in plexiglass held together with small nuts and bolts. The title of the piece reflects the letters KNO1. Interestingly enough, when I matted, the piece I had to do in upside down, and so inadvertently placed the letters backwards. The bays were just the opposite. But so what, let's go with it.

I'm please to say that the piece was accepted into the show, for which I am grateful.

Postscript: the letters were painted on to indicate what stuff got delivered to what bay, but in this world of impermanence, the bays have been painted over.