Beyond the Limits of Reason

preliminary test pairing of X and Y chromosome

2011-11-20T20:27:00.000-06:00

Image of the Y Chromosome, composed from elements, finally developed.

2011-11-17T16:20:00.000-06:00

Final Version of the first Creation of Life nears completion!

2011-11-06T17:52:00.001-06:00

At long last, this first image is almost finished. This is an image showing the result of the alchemical production of an X chromosome, created from elements. The image appears as viewed through the dust-coated lens of an ancient microscope. This image will be complemented with a mate, in the form of a Y chromosome.

the first recording of Life from Elements nearly complete!

2011-11-04T20:53:00.000-05:00

Photographs of the Creation of Life from Elements

2011-10-27T16:56:00.002-05:00

More images of the creatures depicted below will continue to appear in the upcoming weeks. These are actual images of the Creation of Life from the coming together of non-organic elements, through which some inherent force of attraction, combine to form a living entity.

Another look at the work-in-progress

2011-09-09T13:54:00.002-05:00

A few changes have been made since the last version. For instance, a layer of vegetation has been added. Next, background layer was duplicated, and then horizontally reversed, to achieve a more symmetrical composition.This duplicate layer was then selectively erased as needed before flattening.

Detail of New Work-in-Progress: Digital Photocollage

2011-08-22T13:42:00.007-05:00

This is a work-in-progress that has been long in the planning but I only recently began to actually compose. It is a collage made from scans of film, all of which was photographed using a pinhole camera. Most of the negatives were double or triple- or quadruple exposed, but not all of them. The scans are then of course dragged individually onto a new common file, and recomposed.Of course, you can see the previous image below and note a single component of the above composite image.

New Work, July 2011

2011-08-08T14:17:00.004-05:00

This is a close-up, triple (at least) exposure still-life of some objects I found in Rogers Park, Chicago, in my daylight studio. They were made using a cheap pinhole disc (replacing the multiple-thousand dollar glass lens produced in the 1980's or 1990's)on a silver-gelatine-consuming, shadow-analogue-recording dark-box once considered a standard in the professional photography industry (i.e. a film camera), way back in the end decade-and-a-half of the last century.

New Work, May 2011

2011-07-14T12:23:00.005-05:00

This image was made in my home last May. More from the same series can be found below.

Shadow Abstraction: Counting Flowers on the Wall, 2011

2011-05-05T12:26:00.001-05:00

Recent Work

2011-05-04T11:53:00.004-05:00

selections from new series

2011-04-29T10:15:00.005-05:00

Recent Work

2011-04-28T18:30:00.005-05:00

Monarch Butterflies

2010-12-17T14:23:00.003-06:00

Untitled, Chicago, 2010

2010-12-13T11:32:00.000-06:00

Monarch Butterfly, Chicago, 2010.

2010-12-13T11:15:00.001-06:00

Untitled, Chicago, 2010

2010-12-10T14:10:00.002-06:00

Monarch Butterfly, Chicago, 2010.

2010-12-05T11:37:00.001-06:00

Untitled photograph from the series "The Limits of Reason"

2009-05-05T15:34:00.000-05:00

Winter morning, shore of Lake Michigan, 2009.

2009-03-20T14:33:00.001-05:00

Nuclear Mao Peach Flower (digital collage)

2009-02-27T14:53:00.000-06:00

Chair on the shore of Lake Michigan (version 2)

2008-10-22T17:46:00.010-05:00

Another version of the chair on the shore of Lake Michigan...

An excerpt from Arthur Machen's story, "The White People"

2008-09-24T22:34:00.004-05:00

"...What would your feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you, and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with horror, I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you had noticed at night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning?"

Chair on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago

2008-09-19T16:59:00.007-05:00

This chair, hidden amongst the boulders and rocks which serve as a breakwall along the edge of the Lake, near my residence in Rogers Park, would have served the needs of Roderick Usher or HP Lovecraft equally well.

Dolls Gone Wild

2008-08-15T14:50:00.001-05:00

Dolls Gone Wild

2008-08-15T13:32:00.001-05:00

Champagne Inferno:Blood Orange Orchestra

2007-12-11T22:30:00.000-06:00

Champagne Inferno: The Blond God

2007-12-11T21:41:00.000-06:00

Usher in his Library

2007-11-09T16:50:00.000-06:00

Quadrapod, 2007

2007-08-31T12:03:00.001-05:00

This image is a hybrid, a ribus, a mutation, a transfiguration, of a previous image. The original photograph was made using film in a camera which had its lens removed and in its place a bodycap with a drilled pinhole. The pinhole body cap was purchased from Pinhole Resource Center, the world's leading archive of pinhole imagery and supplier of pinhole materials.

2007-07-31T13:58:00.000-05:00

This image is the first from an upcoming portfolio entitled "The Champagne Inferno".

2007-07-31T13:25:00.000-05:00

Excerpts from the short story Rappaccini's Daughter by Nathaniel Hawthorne:
"Soon there emerged from under a sculptured portal the figure of a young girl, arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid that one shade more would have been too much. She looked redundant with life, health, and energy; all of which attributes were bound down and compressed, as it were, and girdled tensely in their luxuriance, by her virgin zone. Yet Giovanni's fancy must have grown morbid while he looked down into the garden; for the impression which the fair stranger made upon him was as if here were another flower, the human sister of the vegetable ones, as beautiful as they, more beautiful than the richest of them, but still to be touched only with a glove, nor to be approached without a mask..."

"...That this lovely woman", continued Baglione, with emphasis, "had been nourished with poisons from her birth upward, until her whole nature was imbued with them that she herself had become the deadliest poison in existence. Poison was her element of life. With that rich perfume of her breath she blasted the very air. Her love would have been poison - her embrace death. Is this not a marvelous tale?"

2007-07-31T13:12:00.000-05:00

Decorative Insects
(They appear to be preparing to waltz - Or is it a prelude to a loving embrace?)

2007-07-16T10:20:00.002-05:00

2007-07-16T10:20:00.001-05:00

2007-07-16T10:19:00.000-05:00

2007-07-16T10:18:00.000-05:00

2007-07-16T10:17:00.000-05:00

2007-07-16T10:16:00.001-05:00

2007-07-16T10:14:00.002-05:00

2007-07-16T10:14:00.001-05:00

2007-07-16T10:08:00.001-05:00

2007-07-16T10:03:00.000-05:00

2007-07-16T10:01:00.000-05:00

2007-07-15T19:58:00.000-05:00