WELCOME TO U.S. PIPE

you will see many photos of the 124 year old industrial site of U.S. Pipe. It will be demolished very soon and a massive environmental clean-up project begun - then development - then who knows what will become at the foot of Lookout Mountain between the bend in the Tennessee River and South Broad Street. Right now it is where i spend a great deal of time with my camera.

found the underground

since 1882




there's an entire underground system of these wheeled metal baskets on conveyer rails. i still haven't figured out if things from upstairs came down here or vise versa...




FACTOID: David Giles built the Chattanooga Foundry and Pipe Company in 1882. This facility was the South's first pressure pipe shop to use the pit cast method. At the time of its incorporation to US Pipe in 1899, it is estimated that U.S. Pipe produced approximately 75% of the production capacity in the United States.

...always.

The Highland Park Project

Highland Park Methodist Church circa 1908
I have been commissioned - meaning i am actually getting paid - to write/produce / shoot alot of a short doc project on the history of the Highland Park neighborhood. The neighborhood has seen plenty. Right now there are at least 12 different languages spoken in a 4 block radius of the St. Andrews Center there. The neighborhood knows a great deal about embracing diversity.

DAY TRIPPIN' 2005

you missed.it. because you never come to visit you missed the Moonpie's 100th birthday party in nearby Bell Buckle, TN. The Moonpie, or the Lookout Mountain Moonpie as it was originally knows- indeed the very original marshmallow sandwich everyone knows are made in Chattanooga at Chattanooga Bakery, a company owned and run by the Campbell family of Lookout Mountain.



this here is the largest moonpie ever baked being devoured by young and rather old alike. this is actually a still created from digital video i shot that day.



i love a good salt lick

37409 back

can you count how many projects exist in this picture?

this is the scene outside my kitchen window. money and time is all it needs. well mostly money. rumor had it round this way that there might be some kegs brought in from big river on any planned work day. i'd believe it....

1. first we gotta remove that tree. roots and all
2. finish cutting the trees that snapped when this one came down
3. remove the chicken house and get the wood
4. general brush clearing
5. rock wall repair on all 4 levels
6. plant stuff / landscape

37409 front

christmas tree lights in my front yard. st. elmo, tn

africa and chattanooga

My friend and neighbor Andy started Widows Harvest Ministries here 20+ years ago and it is now now in Isreal and Africa. He asked if i would help him on a documentary about widows and their special place in certain cultures and societies. ....and we have begun that good work this month beginning with a group of widows in chattanooga.

the hardships of widows in other countries is something i am learning more about.

this is a typical widow's home in kisimu africa. (i think that is the right village name...) widows are singled out as worthless and become property of the dead husband's brother. if he doesn't want her then she's on her own with nothing. as you see here with barely a home.


a fund for widows in africa was created in memory of Andy's' daughter Hadrienne after she died last november 19. money raised this year thru the fund helped build about a dozen new homes like this one.



the fund also helped build this prayer center named after Hadrienne Kathleen Mendonsa and was dedicated last month on the anniversary of her death.

my very public debut

this is the cover art for the dvd of the short documentary i worked on this past year. the project never had a budget though we did receive a small grant to get editing and duplication done. The story is a great one and deserves to be told in full not just in 12 minutes. My collaborator and the project's producer, Ann Coulter, really made it possible and was very patient with me and some of my very stupid mistakes.. i was honored to be in the mix (shooting + then pulling edit together) and making new friends and trying something new. i never said i knew what i was doing....

The art installation where the story takes place is now nationally acclaimed and the artists, all back in Oklahoma, are getting some great attention. And i have 5 more brothers in ken, bill, robbie, demos and gary. Thanks to Ann, who is a Loeb fellow at Harvard University, the short had its world premiere at the Loeb Conference, "The Soul Of Place." this past May in Cambridge. Nice huh?

The broader discussion of what cities can do with public art and history is touched on in our documentary and Chattanooga has been recognized as a city with some really progressive initiatives. (...uh, was until the last election that is.) I even had to sit on a panel at the Regional History Museum and discuss the topic with Ann and others after they'd showed the short movie. weird.

and we were included in the 7th annual Artists and Authors sale here where they had this to say:

"This years show will also showcase a new film project by two of Chattanoogas own. This year we are really excited that Ann Coulter and filmmaker Mary Barnett will be at the show to talk about One Road, a film that documents the story of the making of the Passage at Rosss Landing, Shavin says. Its a great project, and it brings another creative dimension to the concept of art and authors."

26 copies were sold during the one day evvent.

circanow :03:57:06;40pm

...circa then

meet todd, swiffer, 10 years old

meet mollie, best friend, 12+ years old

...sorry, i guess she's not ready to meet you...

meet jon mcleod, artist.

jon is a wonderful and true artist. he makes abstract sculptures out of wood stone and bone. abstracts of universal fundamental questions and concepts. in these pictures he's working on a piece of wood from a fallen and beloved community tree in our Coolidge Park. Over 35 artists and craftsmenwomen got a piece of this tree from the City's urban forestry dept. They held a lottery one tuesday morning and gave it all away.

Jon took a 500 pound piece of the slippery elm's trunk.

From it today he is making a piece of sculpture for his friend and fellow artist, brent. Brent was married under that tree and asked jon to make something for his wife. She's getting it this christmas so jon is working fast. the finished art will have a carved stone as a centerpiece.


I'm spending time with Jon and with many of the people who are making something from their piece of that beloved tree, and shooting a documentary about community and art and how to live forever. Hopefully there will also be an exhibit of some of the wood pieces as well.


Jon is also making a baptismal font for a local church. he is giving the bark sheets to another artists who is going to use it as a background surface for something. And he is giving the woodchips fllying off this piece here to his own girlfriend Beth, a potter. She has a way to fire clay by wrapping it in woodchips for some special effect. We'll be following all of that. This tree has many branches in the afterlife.

This time last year...

2005 december i was getting ready to relocate for winter. not far. just across the river and up a knoll to my dear friend and lost sister Eve's home.

You see, I still live in a 100+year old home that i love - but the furnace was 30 years old and gas! ouch every winter ouch. and in 2005 it started finally breaking down. forget running expensively. [not running was also pretty expensive.] While staying with eve and her family for about a month - even molly had a huge room of her own that she hated - she snuk up and stayed with me some nights - ...so, while staying there "my room" was the sun room. And in the sunroom of the house at the top of the knoll it was also a moon and stars room and kinda great. I made boxes with her daughter Skyler and relaxed about my worries back at home for awhile.

One day Eve, the Mother of Invention, tossed me some old lampshades she found and said "make something" so i did with some of my found favorites.





Almost one year later, i have a brand new electric furnace, and the lamp shade was emancipated from the laundry room at the knoll and recently installed at Eve's brand new location of Mojo Burrito (tm). It has a red lightbulb in it and hangs over a black shiny coated table table. the redfuzz reflection as you look down into the bottomless black table is pretty bad ass. i'll have to take a pic of it. meanwhile, here it is a-glow. but its my camera that allows you to see the detail and different colors. in the room it is just a hanging fuzz glow.






CHECK OUT MOJO BURRITO
Interior of the new restaurant is like no other place on earth. But of course! She and her ever lovin' man TIM are just like no other. I love them both all ever.


romantic two tops under the mirror ball. wabi sabi tables.





tim williams, co-propriator


love at the burrito shop. thats my wife Eve back there getting the hug. come and get yours.



Meanwhile, Here's the most unusual thing they've ever created:

"hi. i'm lily"

wabi sabi

some of you are familiar with my explorations in tissue paper and glue over the years. this year's have been the funnest yet and i took them public to a openair sunday market with a modest booth and sales to match. i found that i didn't like cranking em out as much as i liked hanging out making boxes. the reason i even started was as a meditation of sorts. churning that into weekly inventory was not what i was into - at all. the results are never the same.




[ ALMOST FAMOUS.... ]
My friend jaime makes beautiful candles www.umbraessence.com and tried to pull me into a signature collection package concept for a chic boutique here. She was to create a private label fragrant candle for this boutique and each would be packaged individually in my uniquely designed boxes. The owner changed her idea and went in a different direction. it was nice to be asked.

over 800 images available

and growing. makes amazing screensaver visuals. this one is my desktop right now. want some?

...guess where?

fetish explained

i am in photographic heaven right now. i have a new camera and an assignment that i have always hoped i would have the chance to do. i have one friend here who gets it and i wish he could hang out with me when i go on site but he got a real job and has to wear pressed shirts and be on time and whatever. The place is an old (like 100 years?) 10-acre industrial site. that is about to come down early next year. i am photographing the life out of that entire place and it makes me so happy. I'll share a few more pics but then we have to move on...its not the ONLY thing i do, you know!


NOTE re FETISH I+II
[ps the pics below are of these tall vertical strips of plastic curtains that hang over the entrances to some of the assembly buildings... the trucks have battered the curtains to death over many years. these are just two pictures i took when the sun was coming thru them. they remind me of rauschenberg. i am standing inside one of the giant buldings where they assembled giant iron works to make america stronger. i call it fetish because i am probably the only one who thinks these two pictures are really beautiful. ]

fetish II

fetish I

YOU ARE HERE

do you have any idea where you are about to go>?

welcome to My world. the 'great adventure' as some of the local intimates like to say.
this year has been another fabulous flux. and i mean that in the most wonderful of ways.
Some that love me worry but i don't worry because its all alright.

check me out these days. come inside, i have heat!