Category: Portfolios
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Bus Shelter | Wenatchee, WA | 2012 Five p.m., quitting time, and this enclosed bus shelter is an oven. Tired women, clerks from discount stores and the dry cleaners, rest inside on the only bench. They gingerly place sore, bare feet atop work shoes smashed flat to keep skin off hot concrete. They wipe sweat…
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Roof Horizon | Tacoma, WA | 2012 Cities make their own horizons. The line between earth and sky can lie across the street, between office buildings or at a roof’s far edge. The visible horizon, anyway. The true horizon, like so many certainties, often stretches beyond our range of perception. We simply have faith it’s…
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Exit | Wenatchee, WA | 2012 I’ve come to appreciate the between-worlds aspect of vestibules. In the 1970s, my bank in the French Quarter had a transition space from outside’s muggy, messy, mildewed streetscape to a cool, quiet, ordered interior. This classy inter-room eased you into the bank’s inner elegance — a hint of chill…
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Quiet Room | Quincy, WA | 2012 Lines soothe our psyches by providing a focus point for the busy mind. Japanese gardens and buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright incorporate straight lines that encourage mental rest. The comforting line of a distant horizon is one reason we’re drawn repeatedly to the beach. This dedicated quiet…
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Architecture | Tacoma, WA | 2012 Man’s ambition to create complex objects never fails to grip me. Take big buildings, for instance. Each step of construction is its own process of a thousand steps. Mining > smelting > designing > welding > wiring > furnishing. That they all coalesce into an actual structure — safe,…
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Blank Stares | Bellevue, WA | 2012 My 80 facial nodes are spaced differently than yours. That means a computer or smartphone can differentiate between my nostrils, your nostrils and two big grapes resting nose-width apart on a white plate. A very useful computational ability in this digital age, when it seems the no-nostril crowd…
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Bridge | East Wenatchee, WA | 2012 Underneath, I mentally map the bridged terrain. How would I cross if the span wasn’t there? It’s an easy lope down sage-and-grass hills. But to cross the surging river I’d need a boat or superior swim skills. On the other side, only an experienced rock climber could scale…
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Field | Badger Mountain, WA | 2012 You don’t have to wander far to witness unexplained phenomena. Ants massed in a roiling ball. Orange dust blown from Asia. Or a cylinder of vapor forming and reforming over a slushy wheat field. All reminders that mysterious impulses churn our world.
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Flock | East Wenatchee, WA | 2011 Sometimes when birds scatter, a few linger on the perch. They’ve a different assessment of possible danger. A grounded man can’t reach their wire. Not all shadows are hawks. During a fifth-grade fire drill, my fellow student Paul sat calmly at his desk while the rest of our…
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Wenatchee, WA | 2012 This riverbank has lessons to give. Its openness accepts air and light. Its rise provides a panoramic view. Its solidity
IrwinFoto 