After nearly eight years of writing and posting monthly weblogs, featuring in-depth analysis of the greatest works of world cinema, as well as ten years of writing and directing a handful of original films and contributing time and skills to more than a dozen more, I’ve taken a sabbatical.
You may have found us after attending a film festival, or seeing our films on the web. You might have encountered this website upon searching for serious commentary on international films. The series “Films of Our Enemies,” which has generated interest among many film enthusiasts, worldwide, will likely be continued before the year’s end, but please acquaint yourself with other projects of mine in the meantime.
On the other hand, you may have resurfaced here from our Youtube programming that is dedicated to Dr. Charles Greenleaf Bell’s epic series “Symbolic History Through Sight and Sound.” There are over 160 videos there that attempt to span the entire cultural history of humankind, from the prehistoric to the great beyond, all in one collection.
Then again, there are some of you that have been with us since the nineteen-nineties when we first went online. If you knew us then, you may already know about the multi-award-winning work I’ve done as a display artist throughout the years? Recent creations have been tailored toward the customers of Goler Shoes in Santa Fe, but there was an entire decade previous to this when we were traveling a lot and putting our art in front of a quarter to a half a million consumers per year.
The featured image was taken from a bricolage that I composed using a clothes hanger and a high-heel shoe, evoking not only dry bones of antelope, deer and livestock remains, scattered over the southwest desert, but, of course, Georgia O’Keeffe, whose paintings so fetchingly abstract images from those artifacts in her breathtakingly original way. O’Keeffe is so emblematic of Northern New Mexico that there exists an entire museum dedicated to her in Santa Fe. That’s where Goler Shoes is also headquartered, comprende?
The bricolage from which this image was taken debuted as a Goler Shoes display for the Fall of 2016. I simultaneously oversaw the digital capturer, layout and reproduction of the design (with thanks for the expertise of Steve Zeifman at Rush Creek Editions), for Goler’s print advertisement campaign.
Above is the poster for the billboard. Here is the bricolage in the photograph above in a Goler Shoes’ display window for Fall 2016:
Here is the front window from the same campaign:
The theme for the window display above was “like moth’s to the flame.” It consists of my small collection of cheap, colorful asian insect kites, hovering over a pink Himalayan salt lamp, in front of an exceptionally enchanting original, hand-painted silk scarf that my lady dashed off some 20 years back.
The object is to help Goler sell shoes, but for me it was also a way to acknowledge the plight of the many refugees cast about in search of freedom last year. Along with our marketing pitch, I added a proposal for my clients to consider donating a percentage from the big sale to the Red Cross.
Refugees are a formidable set, reminders of the tenacity of the human race. Facing down considerable hazard, they, the dispossessed, leave everything behind.
The conundrum they’re faced with is sacrifice home or die. Maybe all of us will be faced with it some day.
The third and final Autumn 2016 display, began with a slice of real life. The phrase in the bottom of the window, hand-lettered, on satin ribbon, sheds both literary and figurative light.
“You can try to wrap the world in leather or you can put on some boots.”
Years back I heard someone drop that quote and never forgot it. That black deer hide, I bought from a local skinner. That green globe, is a ceramic planter. The light-grey one next to it, is solid granite, and weighs half-a-hundred pounds.
Those sexy shoes are all stamped Donald Pliner, the store’s biggest brand. The map underneath it all was drawn when Santa Fe was still Old Mexico. It bemoans how, despite how many wars are fought, and refugees are displaced, geo-political boundaries forever drift, like dunes in the wind.