California 2007

Young James birdwatching!

June 5th to 14th

In and about Calle Salto Thousand Oaks

On the beach at Osmund

Least Tern

American Avocet

Black-necked Stilt
Waders at the tide edge
Willet, Marbled Godwit and Whimbrel
Marbled Godwit
Killdeer and feigning injury

All the above were from a morning at Osmund beach at the lagoon where I have always found something interesting to watch. This time a group of 8-10 Ruddy Duck with males displaying but too far off for useful pictures.

Airport Cafe Camarillo
James at the Airport Cafe Camarillo
Airplane Museum Camarillo


The Getty June 13th


Tim Hawkinson's Uberorgan suspended in the Entrance Hall

Getty Museum gardens Los Angeles
Tidal Creek and Old Warehouses south of Southwold, Suffolk c 1886
P H Emerson - albumen print

At the Getty today with Tracey. In particular I wanted to see an exhibition of photographs taken in East Anglia by Peter Henry Emerson during the period 1885-1895 - The Old Order and The New. The above picture of a bridge crossing seems to be familiar to me as the location of the footbridge crossing still present to this day. Many other fascinating images of life on the Broadland marshes were depicted by Emerson. Reed cutting, bulrush (Gladdon) cutting, leading to such evocative picture titles as Quanting the Gladdon along with Rowing Home the Schoof-Stuff (grass for fodder). There were some pictures of decoys pipes, punt gunning and snipe shooting.
The following are some of the very best of Emerson's work.

The Old Order and The New
The Wealth of Marshland
The Haysel
A Suffolk Dike
The Gladdon-Cutter's Return
Marshman Going to Cut Schoof-Stuff
Gathering Water-Lilies
In the Barley Harvest
Rowing Home the Schoof-Stuff
A Winter's Morning
Marsh Weeds
At Plough- The End of the Furrow
(note the fall off in focus away from the horses)
Snipe Shooting

Gunner Working up to Fowl
The Fowler's Return
That Southwold bridge again!

Another fascinating exhibition was Oudry's Painted Menagerie. Enormous canvases depicting exotic animals including one of an Indian Rhinoceros - the famous 'Clara' that became a traveling exhibit touring most of Europe over a 17 year period between 1741 and 1758 and, as a consequence, spawning a whole industry of pictorial and sculptural Rhino representations. Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755) was probably the first European to correctly depict this species from life. Before him pictures were based on drawings derived from descriptions, notably a famous one by Durer that became the model for most other artists. The copying error is easily traced by the fact t hat Durer shows a mythical extra horn between the shoulders - this feature is faithfully included by all plagiarists! Oudry's massive canvas of Clara was 'lost' for 150 years until it was recently discovered in the archives of the Staatliches Museum Schwerin and restored by the Getty Museum Conservation Department. Other notable paintings on exhibit were a Sarus Crane, a Cassowary, African Crowned Crane and the Great Bustard. Numerous line drawings by Oudry were also on display.

I enjoyed Tim Hawkinson's Zoopsia , particularly Leviathon which 'envisions dinosaur vertebrae as a line of figures rowing, each stroke frozen in time like an Eadweard Maybridge stop-action photograph'. The gigantic Octopus was created from reshuffled images of body parts, in particular fingers and lips ,to montage an enormous pink beast. The Uberorgan, a massive music playing construction suspended in the Entrance Hall of the Getty, is another of his works.

Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergere was on exhibit . It was on loan from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. I had previously seen it in Canberra some years ago when works from this Institute were brought to Australia while renovations were being done at the Courtauld.

We had time, briefly, to look at Defining Modernity - European drawings 1800-1900 and A place in the Sun a contemporary photographic depiction of Los Angeles, particularly along the path of the Los Angeles river, by John Humble. He captured well the 'incongruity and ironies of the Los Angeles landscape'.

Examples of John Humble's work

Hummers in the Calle Salto garden
Allen's and Anna's
Using the Leica Elpro close up lens attachment on the Canon EF 70-300mm IS zoom!
No tripod and Auto focus. Not the best way to do it! But it sort of worked.
Large fly and a small bumblebee
Squirrel
Conejo Botanic gardens