Art in other places

If I keep my eyes tuned to the road, I’ll find it everywhere.  And so it was on the Jersey Turnpike, I think that’s where I was, in a bus to Lenox, Mass.    Very tall slender poles, a few stories high, guyed to the ground with red wires, three such objects in a row, symmetrical and perfect.  I didn’t know what they do, though I now think they are simple radio masts, which I’ve since learned can be quite complex and also camouflaged. They’re beautiful, to me at least.  Much of my work is about lines, and this road furniture was as inspiring and exciting as anything I see in museums and galleries. 

This photo, a set of radio masts in England which was the closest image I could find to “mine” in NJ, might cause you to scratch your head and ask What is she seeing.  The NJ masts are more slender, or so I recall from zipping by them in the bus.  Well, I can’t help anyone else with this, I only can say that when I saw them my attention was riveted, fleeting though the scene was.

Today I was waiting on the subway platform, #1, 125^th Street, which for me means leisurely pacing back and forth from one end of the platform to the other.  In the pleasant outdoors of this platform, a man sat on a bench with two or three rats draped around his shoulders, dyed in various colors.  I couldn’t tell if they were somehow bound to his shirt, as they seemed to be scrambling but not going anywhere.  I saw it and kept walking, as they were not so interesting actually, just dyed rats.  I only hope they are well cared for.  I tried to find a photo subsequently on the internet, but it seems that there’s a trend, and I couldn’t be sure I was getting the right rats, or the right person.