My World: Exploring Awesome and Fabulous

[Asher Kelman]

Some things are awesome. When we see a fire consuming a forrest and homes, life is on the edge.

We have hundereds of acres of forrest and hillsides burning now. To me this symbolizes the delicate threads of life we have and how awesome nature is.


So I took 6 overlapping pictures of giant trees in Holmby Park and tried to render "awesome and "fabulous"!

Asher Kelman: Prince of Mordor #1

Trees Holmby Park

Stitched in AutoPano Giga 4

Processed in Photoshop CC 2017 & Topaz Simplify and Impression ​

No trees were endangered making this picture!

Asher

 

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Asher,

Very effective work. Scary, evocative of that other famous work native to not far from you, "Fantasia."

Thanks.

Best regards,

Doug

 

[Asher Kelman]

Doug,

Thanks so much!

I was stunned by the ferocity of the destruction and wondered, technically, how could I create this impression from the very fuel of the fire.

I realized that I was really sticking my neck out to put my work out as meeting the criteria of the words "Awesome & Fabulous", but I love a challenge and finding a route to meeting it.

I was thrilled that I could come up with a concept and find a way to fabricate that idea into a physical form that evokes, in me at least, the eruption of feelings I hoped to achieve.

It worked in that I felt I had moved myself. So for me, it is already "art".

But does it rise to "Art" for the public space?

That Wendy my wife, was amazed, might be related to the fact that I was crazy to stay up till 3:00 am working on it, and she's loyal and a psychotherapist to boot! So her acknowledgment, while nice, is no proof of anything, except her reliable support!

Now whether or not that "Arc of Intent", (see here, post # 10, ), reaches others, is the real "risk" in "Riskit!".

In this section of OPF, "Riskit!", posts are examples of our work in areas where we are experimenting and have no certainty in the process. It's not like a portrait shoot, where one has set up the same lights hundreds of times before and knows it always works. So here, by contrast, our capability is as yet, unproven and we are vulnerable to prematurely advertising our failures! That is the risk! Still the payoff is advancing one's ability to express ideas.

That it really moved you, Doug, is to me already an achievement I accept with appreciation.

I didn't claim I, myself am "Awesome and Fabulous", that would be really Hollywood conceit, just that the destructive land-eating fire raging towards us is exactly that!

Of course I risk overreaching in thinking I can represent that, but at least I made that attempt and spent hours to do it, as i was driven, as if it was an "essential" thing to do!

Asher

 

[Jerome Marot]

Doug is right, this is very effective work.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Doug is right, this is very effective work.

Thanks Jerome! Your reaction is important to me!

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

Here. is a revised version #2

This is still a dark vision, but at dawn, a pwer beyond our control!

Asher Kelman: Prince og Mordor #5

Trees Holmby Park

Stitched in AutoPano Giga 4

Processed in Photoshop CC 2017 & Topaz Simplify and Impression ​

 

[Charlotte Thompson]

Asher

I shall leave a poem I dearly love for your work in admiration that you would challenge yourself beyond what you think is real or not real . This poem I think describes the deep feelings of your work!

​

William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963


Red cradle of the night,
In you
The dusky child
Sleeps fast till his might
Shall be piled
Sinew on sinew.

Red cradle of the night,
The dusky child
Sleeping sits upright.
Lo how
The winds blow now!
He pillows back;
The winds are again mild.

When he stretches his arms out,
Red cradle of the night,
The alarms shout
From bare tree to tree,
Wild
In afright!
Mighty shall he be,
Red cradle of the night,
The dusky child!!
​

Charlotte-

 

[Asher Kelman]

Asher

I shall leave a poem I dearly love for your work in admiration that you would challenge yourself beyond what you think is real or not real . This poem I think describes the deep feelings of your work!

Charlotte,

What a blessing you are to inttorduce. me to this poet's work. Amazinggly he obviously thought what I did, well before me. Nature is awesome and can be frightening but still we love her.


William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely
associated with modernism and imagism. In addition
to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician
practicing both pediatrics and general medicine. Wikipedia


....and he was a physician too!

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

The California wildfires are a devatating beast that consumes our land and so far is unstoppable. It's a warning to me about us spitting in the eye of Mother Nature when we put arsenic in her rivers and plastic pellets in the mouths of fish!



2017 California Wildfires in Photos
By Jonathan Lloyd

Monday, Dec 11, 2017

This story was last updated at 1:13 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 11, 2017.

The hot, dry and sometimes windy months of summer bring the threat of large wildfires in California, where hillsides were left with crops of grass that turns into fuel for the fires.

CAL FIRE reported four active large wildfires -- 300 acres or more -- burning across California as of early December. The worst wildfires have been in Northern California, where the death toll from several fires that tore through communities stands at 41. More than 5,700 structures have been destroyed.

Through Dec. 3, more than 6,762 fires burned 505,391 acres this year. During that same period last year, 4,742 fires burned 244,297 acres. The five-year statewide average for that period is 4,749 acres and 202,696 acres.

NBC Photograph: Helena Fire

Smoke from the Helena fire can be seen Sept. 3, 2017 in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.​