Filling in the Empty Spaces
Some really interesting responses this week to the prompt of Negative Space.
From the sketchbook
More of the doodles which are very freeing. I’m doing these in a sketchbook on mediocre paper i.e. not taking them seriously.
Just fooling around having my hand in is good enough. And it always feels good to paint and draw.
Have a good week! Nina
435 Central Park West (Thursday Doors)
hidden
door, guardians
on a side street–
I release them—recognized,
seen
My daughters told me to meet them at the 103rd street entrance to the subway on CPW–I never realized there was even an entrance there. It’s around the corner, so I’d always just passed it by. The building on that corner, which took up an entire block, seemed pretty uninteresting. Just look at the front door.
They texted that they would be late. I started looking closer at my surroundings.
Here, obviously, was the original entrance to the building. Had they closed it off because it was too close to the subway entrance? But, also, it was totally out of context with the rest of the plain brick structure above and behind it.
The window guardians along this side of the building had also been somehow preserved. Why and how?
I could find no official history of the building, just that it had 120 rentals and several addresses attached to it. A little digging provided the information that it was originally constructed in 1930. That made sense. And that it had been “altered” in both 1970 and 2002.
Several pages in on my google search (won’t someone construct a better search engine??) I found a bit of history that explained at least some of the changes. In 1969 Jacob Haberman purchased nine separate tenement buildings–431-439 Central Park West–and took out an HUD loan to rehabilitate and combine them into housing that would remain affordable for the timespan of the loan–until 2011. My assumption is that he was forced to leave the bottom floor as it was along 103rd street so as not to force the closure of the subway entrance, which is the only one for this station.
And so the guardians remained.
The 2002 alterations–perhaps that lovely front entrance was redone?–came about because a corporation purchased the building from Haberman. They paid off the loan, and tried to raise the rents. The tenants sued, not only about that, but about the fact that the HUD loan agreement was allowed to circumvent NYC rent regulations. They won, and their rent was refunded and returned to the original rent controlled or stabilized status.
It looks like the new owners renovate and charge market rents for any apartments where the original tenants leave. But those vacancies don’t seem to come very often.
I’m glad not only for a tenant victory, but for the fact that some of the original details of at least one of the buildings this pedestrian architecture replaced remain.
The poem is my attempt to write an elfje poem on the theme of “soar” as provided by Sarah for the W3 prompt this week. I had no idea really how to fit a theme into such a short and rigid structure, but releasing the guardians from the owner’s attempts to hide them will have to do.
And there are always lots of doors at Thursday Doors, hosted by Dan Antion.
Zen Tangles
I was just doing some doodling in the manner of zen tangles. This was the second one from this weekend and I added color.
The first one I did. I like it black and white so probably will keep it this way.
This doodling is a good way to get your drawing going, something I don’t do enough of. Just keep going til it looks good. I have a few more drawings started and glad I was productive this weekend.
We also played Scrabble and I got thoroughly beaten as always.
Have a good week!
Nina
I attempt to write a list poem about cars (Thursday Doors)
I have never owned a car.
I have not even driven a car in many years, nor can I any longer tell one kind of car from another.
When I was a child, cars were more distinctive, and I knew who had manufactured each one, and the car’s name too.
Ours were always Chevrolets because my uncle was a mechanic at a car dealership and he got a discount on cars that were used for test drives.
In my city life, as an adult, I would look out my window and draw the cars parked on the street below in front of the building.
They were often the same cars. Humans are habitual.
That window was on the second floor, so I never worried about falling out.
Now that I live on the eighth floor I can’t see the cars on the street at all.
I see my neighbors’ windows and roofs.
I know who is always up late, and who comes up to the roof to smoke while pacing and talking on their cell phone.
But I don’t know what is parked out front, or if it’s the same car every day.
I don’t draw that much any more either, so I probably wouldn’t be drawing the cars, even if I could see them.
But I’m always taking photos of things on the street when I’m out walking.
And every once in awhile, a car catches my eye.
After all, cars have doors too.
The top car is a photo I got from the internet, which looks exactly like my favorite childhood car–a red Impala with tail fins. They don’t make them like that any more. The other red car is one I saw on the street recently.
The vintage car photos were taken when I happened upon a crew setting up for a movie or TV show filming. There were a few of us taking photos and the crew was not too happy about it so we had to be quick about it and move on.
And the car below is a Pagani photographed years ago when I took the train to Boston to visit my daughter. It was parked right by the train station. Both my daughter and I had to photograph it, along with seemingly everyone that walked by. I’m still wondering why and how it came to be there.
The W3 prompt from Lynn this week is to write a list poem incorporating some form of the word fall. I’m actually not sure this is really a list poem, but I’ve been wanting to put those vintage cars into a post, and, remembering my old car drawings, it worked perfectly. And, as I noted, all cars have doors. Even drawings of cars.
As to the aforementioned doors, there are always lots of them at Thursday Doors, hosted by Dan Antion.
Strandbeest
Lots of movement in these works inspired by the wonderful Strandbeests of Theo Jansen.
September 9, 2024
Today is the anniversary of my two lab/German shorthair mix dogs, pictured above. The year was 2009. They would have been 15 today but sadly they are both gone. The photo of Birdy is from the day before he died. Gone but not forgotten; great dogs with a crazy streak.
Jane, my younger sister, peering out the window of a house in France. I used her photo and painted around it. She is also gone-eleven years now. I miss her terribly. I like this small painting I just completed-she looks very happy.
A friend sent me this photo from the Armory Show in NYC. She knew I’d get a kick out of it; I actually think it’s pretty brilliant. You know I love rocks.
Lovely day here in New Jersey and I just got a text that I could take a PTO day as the doctor went home sick. Rearranged my colored pencils and sharpened them. Also worked on a couple of clam shells-not finished.
Have a good week! Nina
Wood Duck (Draw a Bird Day)
Tableau for Wood Ducklings
Duck out of water–
born inside a tree
high above the ground–
no time to prepare–
mother calls below–
the first leap of faith
The Wood Duck is the only species of duck who perch and nest in trees. They do not make their own nest cavities, instead using naturally occurring ones in the forested wetlands they inhabit. Wetland habitat loss has increased the need for nesting boxes to keep populations stable.
Laws such as the Migratory Bird Act of 1918 helped pull this species from near extinction due to hunting and habitat loss in the late 1800s. The wood duck is still the most hunted bird in the US, after the mallard, although hunting is limited in most places. There are also now many efforts to preserve wetland habitats; expanding beaver populations help create ideal forested wetland habitat for these birds.
The male wood duck has a vibrant and distinct coloration, although it becomes more greyish-brown like the female in the fall. Wood ducks have a boxy crested head with a thin neck, short wings, and a broad tail. They are excellent flyers, very comfortable flying through woods.
Surface feeders, they forage with their tail up, head below water, for aquatic plants and animals. They also eat seeds, fruits, flowers, grain, insects, caterpillars, snails and salamanders on land. One of their favorite meals is acorns.
Residents of most of the United States, southern Canada, and Mexico, they are most populous in the Gulf regions. Northern populations migrate south in winter. In Europe and the British Isles they are considered invasive species, having been imported as exotic ducks by collectors and escaped into the wild.
My poem is in the tableau style, as suggested by Laura at dVerse.
Central Park Carousel/Thursday Doors
I don’t often walk across Central Park in its southern sections. I walk across where I live, uptown, or walk down on the West Side if I’m going to Midtown. So even though I had visited the carousel with my children when they were young (a long time ago…) I needed to consult a map to figure out its location. But instead of walking along Central Park West, where I could easily locate 65th Street, I rambled through the center of the park.
It was a nice day for a walk. And I had no schedule to keep.
Despite looking at one of the maps posted in the park near the Dairy, I ended up turned around, walking for ten minutes in the wrong direction. When I realized my mistake, I retraced my steps and went the opposite way. There were no signs for the carousel, which I thought strange, but the music finally guided me to my destination.
the journey from there
follows a circle to here
but does not stay here—
we spin our years and try to
balance—neither here nor there
The first Central Park Carousel opened in 1871. There was some controversy about having a commercial enterprise within the park, but it proved so popular that it both remained and thrived. The original carousel was powered by a horse and a mule who walked on a treadmill in an underground pit. I don’t know which version this is; it was the only old photo of the carousel I could find.
Versions two and three were steam-powered. Both were destroyed by fire, the third in 1950. Its replacement was relocated from Coney Island. Number four, the current carousel, was crafted in 1908 by Solomon Stein and Harry Goldstein. It had been abandoned in the 1940s and was found in a warehouse.
The current carousel has 57 carved horses and two decorative chariots, which have been carefully restored. A new structure was built to house the horses in 1982, and the grounds around it were redone as well. It has lovely details.
Interestingly, the carousel was managed by The Trump Organization from 2010-2021. Mayor de Blasio voided all the city’s contracts with Trump in 2021 because of January 6 and the storming of the US Capitol. The carousel was closed at the time due to the pandemic; it reopened that October under the new management of Central Amusement International.
One of the largest carousels in the US, it carries 250,000 riders each year. Open 7 days a week, weather permitting, a ride costs $3.50, with discounts for multiple rides.
The Daytonian has a story about the carousel, a girl, and her lost doll, and also, as usual, a bit of history.
I wrote the tanka as a kind of golden shovel with the refrain from W3 PoW Sally’s poem, inspired also by the painting she provided by Winslow Homer, below. I then attached it to my prose for Colleen’s tanka prose prompt.
And find more doors, as always, at Thursday Doors, hosted by Dan Antion.
And of course this song by Joni Mitchell came immediately to mind.
Joni suffered a brain aneurysm in 2015, and only started performing again in 2022. So inspiring to discover her performance at this year’s Gershwin Prize Tribute.
There’ll be new dreams maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through
Labor Day weekend
We went up to Milton, NY in Ulster County where our friends have a house. I did an address stone for the front.
Messed around painting some shells and rocks for around places.
Some rocks just look like faces.
And some pieces of wood look like alligators.
Some rocks ended up in the rock garden.
method two madness 
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