Algis Kemezys's Open Salon Blog

teardrops around flowers...

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:05:38 -0400

For the whole effect please play this music. Once it gets going slowly scroll down for the full experience. Hope you enjoy this and have a wonderful day because of it.

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All Photographs by Algis Kemezys

These images of the wildflowers of Québec were created by using the scanner as a camera.

I spent two consecutive summers in the Laurentian town of Val Morin, whose most notable feature is a cascade of wildflowers that circles its lake and extends along the bike path that spokes away from the town for one hundred kilometers.

I yearned to record this profusion of colour and shape, but I was rather broke at the time, so conventional film photography was just out of the question. The scanner would have to do.

I would go out in the early morning and ask which flowers would like to be picked and enter the digital world as a new creation. Then I would pick the ones that were swaying most in the wind just to catch my eye. While picking them I would ask for a visual picture of how the flower would like to be arranged and then try to recreate that inspiration on the platen of the scanner.

Part of the difficulty of composing a picture in this fashion is that you are working with a reverse image. The other is that the arrangement must be just so or it won’t work.

There is freedom and spontaneity in creating a photograph but one still has to follow strictly the rules of dynamic composition of the Pythagorean golden formula of 1: 1.618

Here's what Byron Ayanoglu wrote about my wildflowers:

"Nature humbles the most insouciant among us with its frills and its ability to dazzle. Artists, who by definition enjoy above-average sensibilities and powers of observation, have in nature a fount of endless inspiration. In this portfolio of skillfully reinvented wildflowers, Algis lets his imagination run wild to present for our consumption a feast of addictively visual portals into a world of his own making. These are no longer merely beautiful flowers that most of us usually look at for fleeting moments during a walk in the countryside. These are works of art that tell stories and that linger in the mind long after we have looked at them. He has taken these fleeting wonders of springtime and made them eternal with attention to detail, with whimsy, with bold use of color and composition, with awe for their fragile and ephemeral airiness, with enormous talent. And an intellect that can particularize the universal truths of seemingly ordinary miracles of nature, enhancing their meaning and exponentially expanding our appreciation. I could happily surround myself with these images to look at them daily, to marvel at their simple complexity, to begin to understand myself."

Mother Day Memories

Sun, 13 May 2012 10:05:10 -0400

Mother and Mentor: Berenice Abbott

Mothers are cool

unless your a fool...

They taught you not to drool

and find your way home from school!

They cared when you were uncaring

and pushed you forward

when you were not daring

They were there when Dad was done

and stopped you from

sucking your thumb

Sharing hugs n tears and lifes little tips

My Mother was always fun... for she said

Tulips are better than one!

This is for all those mothers,

who still live on through our memories

and whose words and fine wisdom

still ring true in our soul

for

They taught us to pray and the lead way .

Images and text by Algis Kemezys 2012

Sunshine + Magnolia Blossoms = Happiness

Tue, 8 May 2012 07:05:11 -0400

What Is Happiness

What is happiness?

Such simple yet complicated word

No exact words can match it

Is it the feeling of warmth in the summer?

Is it the feeling of success?

or is it the feeling of no worries?

Nobody can actually tell what happiness is

It is such a dynamic word

Its like the wind

That is felt but not really seen

But still happiness still bugs me

Where can you find happiness?

How can you be happy?

Such questions going through my mind

Maybe happiness is just within us

Maybe happiness is like a fairy

Stuck in out heart wanting to get out

How could you tell you found happiness?

Some people say you found happiness

When you feel light as a feather

Maybe that is true happiness

I can never really tell what it is

But I think I found happiness

Happiness within me

Karima Puzon

What do you think your happiness is and do you think it will stay that way?

Photographs by Algis Kemezys 2012

Turkish Memories and the Journey Home

Tue, 1 May 2012 08:05:11 -0400

It has been an amazing and wonderful winter on the Aegean, and this photographic love-letter to it is my farewell. Starting with this mother-daughter combo in the therapeutic red- thermal waters in Pamukkale.

Only royalty were allowed to wear Purple in the ancient days.

The tavertines of Pamukkale and the azure pools of warm water.

A May Day drink for you?

This was my adopted cat, SugarGirl. She was so loving and over the top affectionate especially in the early part of the morning.

This face was found on the rocks near Pedesa. A town 6 km north of Bodrum that came to be after people from the destroyed town of Troy settled here.

This is from the grounds of Heirapolis, the ancient town above Pamukkale. The gate was open to a fenced-off part of the ruins. So I went in and photographed this and got kindly escorted out a few minutes later. This place has hundreds of great sculptures on broken marble that now rest here.

I love looking for Pareidolias. This is the wild- eyed boy from Treetrunk.

These are baby almonds, with an edible skin, locally used as a vegetable and also for jam-making.

I only have eyes for you.

I love this view of Mytilene from Ayvalik

I'm very pleased to have found this "lion" on the rocks near Bitez. I go back and visit it once a week.

Found this skull face (lower-left of the frame) on the cliffs just near Bitez. I filmed my time-travel video just down the escarpment from here, near the ancient burial tombs.

Always try to stand out in the crowd.

I became friends with these two dogs not far from my house up the riverbed road. They were always so affectionate and skinny. The female had a few pups to. I used to feed them and here they are the last time I visited with them.

I stopped making these sculptures when the weather warmed up and I a huge centipede startled me. Their bite can be deadly and very painful.

I thought this tree looked like a poodle.

Bitez Beach and Byron in February.

Blue Eye and I used to sit by the tree in the next picture. She disappeared the last few weeks and I never got to have my fair well walk with her.

Alexander the Great fought here for a few days before gaining entrance through this gate into Halicarnassos (Bodrum). It is the last remaining segment of the wall that used to surround the ancient city, and named after the conqueror.

Sculpture from the Afrodissias Museum.

You can call me anything but don't call me Late for Dinner!

The oldest Greek food writing is a recipe for fish.

An astounding Roman mosaic, now in the garden of a hotel.

The mulberries are the first berries of the season, and they'll be ripe very soon.

My dolphin mosaics from the Byzantine chapel.

Poodle Mimetolith in the Tavertines of Pamukkale.

Poppies and cactuses in Aktur.

Morel mushrooms from the forests around Bitez.

A cat in Ephessos by the famous library

My friend Seda Arun with a page of a book about her famous-poet father. Özdemir Asaf

The blooms of a bay leaf tree

The Elephanta Tree

A sample of Born-in-Stone, my new fine-art project.

Aah, Springtime!

Alexander The Great's Sarcophagus in the Istanbul Archeological Museum. May he rest in relief...

I told you I wasn't feeling well.

Plaka in Athens, with the Acropolis behind.

For me the whole trip got the stamp of approval when I made this image called Venus Eros Satre. I am selling these at a friendly price to fund the creation of this body of work. This sculpture is also just about one of the finest things in the world to see and stand next to.

The Magical Sphere of the Sun used during Dionastic rituals in conjunction with the Elussian Mysteries.

A horse is a horse, of course, of course, / And no one can talk to a horse of course / unless of corps, it's a flying horse.

On the plane home...

May this day be May Day... and a Day for you to Relax.

Mark Zuckerberg resembles ancient Greek sculptures 338 BCE

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:04:35 -0400

See this short video and see if you notice the same thing I do. While visiting the Istanbul Archeological Museum I was checking out the Tomb of Alexander the Great. There beside it was a small replica of how it would have looked in it's hayday. The colors are garish and quite unbelievable so I decided to film it for reference. Upon doing so, at the end of the pictured scene, I noticed someone who looked remarkably like Mark Zuckerberg CEO and founder of Facebook. I then wondered if this is indeed The Days of Future past?