CONTEMPORARY EXPLORER

  The South is rich with small towns, all seemingly with their own history and quirks. My camera without fail always pulls me out to see them. Some surprise and some disappoint, but are always interesting. I really didn’t expect much when I headed to Gaffney, traveling up US Route 29. After all how much could expect from a town where Wikipedia lists the most notable person as a fictional one. Yes, Frank Underwood the President in “The House of Cards” claimed he hailed from there. The show features a few scenes from the town when he went back to visit.  The town surprised me though. The colorful heritage building and mix of people out about trying to make it or start a new life. The Auto Detail person Terry who was trying to save enough money to have his own building. He had a winning smile and would get there someday I knew. The Museum and library still anchoring important places. Life still thick and rich here. The town like so many started to fade away when Interstate 85 pas...

  Perhaps in our freest moments, we find ourselves talking out loud rather than just to ourselves. Letting loose of thoughts we normally try to sort out in our mind first. They may start out rooted in logic, but grow tp wild wanderings of subject and interpretation. Bystanders may take a step back from all this. Sometimes though, the wildness thrown off yield surprising life truths. The work of artist Cy Twombly may have been the best example of this. He freed himself to create art by scrawls on paper or fancifully simple renderings of scenes. Linking what otherwise seem like unrelated objects. Somehow though his work catches your eye, making you think about its meaning or even being. Ode to him, may we all grow to be as free as he… Drawings by David Young in Ode to Ty Twombly  

  There is a quiet media revolution in advertising going on. Rooted in finding alternatives to the “super flat media viewing age.” One noted example of this is advertisers increasingly using split screens. Often one side is playing a sporting event and the other the advertisers message. On the surface not related to each other. The technical name for this form of presentation is the Diptych. Some actually feel it’s annoying, but there is mental magic at work here. Diptychs have their roots in art presentations that date back to medieval times. Painters would create different religious scenes on wood panels and then link them together. When both sides of Diptych are taken together, they illuminate different perspectives. The viewer is left wondering what the common elements are. Today’s marketing goal is to get people to pause, to think, to absorb the message fully. And most of all remember it. Banksy the street artist often uses Diptychs, perhaps the most famous one the girl reachi...

The Great Pee Dee River country of the Carolinas runs from the Appalachian Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. Small towns dot it banks and byways. The country is deep in history, lure and wildness..  To the west is the Sand Hills full of wildlife and swamps, conjuring up thoughts of a Jurassic world. It is the river though that defines the country. My camera never seems to get its fill of wandering here. There is much revolutionary war and times of slavery written in this land and towns. Slaves were transported on the river north, sold and left. Sherman laid much of the area to waste in his march south in the late 1700’s. You can almost hear the voices of the past if you stop and listen. Sometimes they’re in the wind or the still moments of a Southern Summer. You stumble onto sites like Long House Building in Darlington SC. Only a small brass plate on the corner revealing its name. You search and search for the history of the place. Like many sites here, the history has been lost wit...

  Visiting the small town of Hickory NC, reminded me again on how important Art can be in the fabric of success for these places. The Hickory Museum of Art is a wonderful place, originally started in an abandoned high school by local visionaries that recognized the importance that art could bring. It helped that Hickory residence had a creative heritage forged in the design and manufacturing of furniture. On the day we visited the museum, the key exhibit was Virgil Ortiz multimedia art. His pottery, videos and stories of how native Americans survived and overcome is a visual feast. The link to the museum and exhibit are below. Like larger museums, Hickory incorporates the spaces between the art to engage and draw in the patron. Here there are architectural vistas and seating that rewards wandering. Even space for emerging artists is provided via their “fridge walls” where art they produce can be left. Hickory like a select number of other small towns has recognized how art can play...

 Sometimes even in the land of bland, you find small gems to keep your imagination alive. You find ways to furnish your 560 square ft. or even 360 ft apartment. It made me remember how it was to own property once. The 40 acres we called Amber Ranch. The land made you feel wealthy. I wonder what the apartment dweller feels, where nothing is permanent or real, just Ikea all around...

  It lived many lives. Once a thriving warehouse for the textile industry, carefully maintained and grand. Then the decline. A reprieve of sorts when a large furniture store occupied it for a time. Even that swept away, leaving the three giant buildings alone. Like birds picking at the bones, a few small businesses moved in. You wondered as you walked around what the work inside was like. Were there ghosts from the past who walked with the workers under dim lights in the dark recesses of the place, whispering "be wise move on." The remains of the giant buildings too big to capture in one walk, only threads of life there and a road out…

                                                    Opinions bad and good surround the work of Basquiat. Was he a genius with a brush or just a lucky young man made famous by wild times of Andy Warhol.  A critic once said that in the darkest corners of the art world where paintings are left to die and be forgotten, “that Basquiat’s work will only occupy one second of even that space.”  He was not a fan. Nor are a lot of other people, put off by the garish colors, inhuman shapes and the un defined nature of his whole work. Still there are many things you can learn from Basquiat. The huge number of painting he did in his short life, how he was not afraid to paint big, show what he had, along the way gaining huge following and art sales. Perhaps more than anything though, you are impressed by the free nature of his work.  How somehow he was able t...

  Providence Square is one of those places almost forgotten. Houses stripped away to foundations, buildings half finished, dreams and stories left behind. 150 acres so close to the city, can't be left for long. Now new life stirs with plans for new stores and low income housing. Maybe they might find a way to make this work, tilling the acres to bring back the color of wealth there...

   It’s one of the first signs of a malls decline. Flaws and marks begin to appear on the floors. Management dutifully notes and flags them both for safety and the hope that they will be fixed. Tho money never comes though and they remain just more evidence that a malls days are numbered. The glitter of the place only a memory.

  There are buildings that create aw, cause you to pause, standing as a monument to the architect. Few parking garages engender the same. A developer once cautioned, “Never pay an architect until he finishes the garage.” They are the last thing the architect wants to do, no more than a necessity. If not done well, construction can leave rough edges and marks that remain scars for years. Over time though they take on their own artful way. Such a place is South Park Mall’s parking garage. A giant sprawling place left largely empty the majority of the year, except holidays. Even on quiet days finding your way into and out of the place is a puzzle.  In the sixties, cities seemed to fall in love with giant urban garages. Places they envisioned would make parking your car easy and keep downtown shopping attractive. Often though, they became dark holes in the urban fabric, especially as shopping trends changed. It’s easy to spin a crime story or worse in a dark parking garage. You pa...

  Trade Street cuts across Tryon at Charlottes center. A trading post originally marked the spot. People would travel from both sides of Tryon to do business there. Trade Street's past is Long gone, but change still defines it. The ever change of culture, building and business. Here you can find everything from the Mighty Midget grocery to the building once housing the Mint. One thing you always find on Trade Street is color and surprises around every turn. It still has many stories to tell....

  The Last Showgirl starring Palmela Anderson and Jamie Lee Curtis directed by Gia Coppola is a deep dive into ordinary life. Made even more impactful by Las Vegas. It’s a story all at once of the perils of reaching for glitz and glory, how time and changes can trap you. How getting older corners you. How thinking it will always go on can leave you short of planning for the future until it’s too late. How you can never really escape yourself. It lays bare the imperfectness of relationships. It touches on the times of beauty in part of our careers. The reaching to try to keep it alive. All this ground down into the true lives of ordinary people by the backdrop of Vegas. A city where change is always happening. The movie is not shot from the glitz of casinos but instead from backrooms of shows and parking lots with Vegas only seemingly a distant vision. A place you can’t touch completely or count on. So much of life can be like that, but above it all the movie showed how dreams an...