Night time at the pier of Seal Beach. La noche en el muelle de Seal Beach

Some expressionist pictures that I´ve taken in the pier of Seal Beach at Halloween night. Artificial light, long shadows and technology. The delights of seaside architecture.

Welcome back Gonzalez. Bienvenido de regreso Gonzalez

This display at the Day of the Dead or Día de los Muertos in Olvera st, Los Angeles, shows the happiness of receiving Gonzalez's soul again. All the things that Gonzalez liked are displayed here, being the Virgin the only serious character in the altar.

Urban Jesus. Jesús urbano

The Crucifixion out of context, with the cemetery constructions and the electrical pole behind. Anyway, it seems dramatic to me. My picture from the Cemetery of the Mission of Santa Barbara, CA

Urban "linescape" at night. Perfil urbano en la noche

Birds on electrical wires. Pájaros sobre cables de electricidad

I understand that animals are also part of the urbanscape (or townscape if we quote Gordon Cullen).

A dead seagull in the street. Una gaviota muerta en la calle

While my husband and me were searching for the super moon on June 23rd to take some pictures of the event, I came across with this dead seagull against the street curb in our neighborhood. I was ¨delighted¨ to see the composition of the bird´s posture, the white and black of the feathers contrasting with the red curb, the virtual triangle, the parallel of the wing, a feather slightly and pleasantly encroaching in the  curb. And of course, I took a couple of pictures from which I´ve selected these two.

Though my husband is an artist and architect, he was upset to see me so interested on the bird; and after two days he´s still claiming that to impress people with shocking images is not art. ¨A dirty toilette is not art at all.¨ Besides, ¨you are influenced by the work of Peter Greenaway, he´s disgusting!¨ I do not agree with the concept, specially after reading ¨Has Modernism Failed?¨, the great book written by Suzy Gablik, who clearly explains why some banal objects are considered pieces of art, among other important discussions.

What is clear for me, and following Suzy Gablik´s explanation, once I take a picture, filter it, and make it mine, then, it´s art, and it doesn´t matter if people like it or not. That´s part of another discussion, if arts is a social tool or not.

It is even more interesting and morbid, -I would recognize-, once I filtered the image, the traces of blood showed up on the street, adding some abstract lines to the composition.

My youngest daughter said the problem was the bird has trash next to it, somehow it looks abandoned (see the candy wrap). I posted one of these pics in my Facebook wall and a friend of mine said ¨it seems it died because it ate snickers.¨ That was an unexpected funny comment from someone who knows how to read an abstract.

After all, this is a real urban street.

Urban clusters. Aglomeraciones urbanas

Layers of a sunken city. Estratos de una ciudad sumergida

Artistic street view analysis. Análisis de vista de calle artístico

This is my artistic version of a 3D surface plot of the street view of two houses in La Boca, Buenos Aires. The roughness of the plot is because of the materials´ textures (steel sheets, wood, tiles) on the facades. I´m looking at it like a forest inside a cube.

At the bottom, in the red lines plot, we still can see the skyline and a window.

Victor Hugo´s drawings

"The Dead City", c. 1850 
Ink, wash, charcoal (scraper), 42 x 64 cm, Lucien Scheler Collection, Paris

Victor Hugo
"Justicia", 1858 
Sepia, wash and indian ink, 53 x 35 cm, Hauteville House Germany

Victor Hugo
"The King of the Auxcriniers", c. 1864 
Pen and wash, 19 x 25 cm, Bibliotheque Nationale Paris

Victor Hugo
Calling Card, 1855 
Ink wash on paper

Victor Hugo
Ruined Aqueduct ca. 1850 
Pen, brown-ink wash, black ink, graphite, black crayon, fingerprints and reserves (stencilling) on beige, gilt-edged vellum paper, partly rubbed (taches on verso) 9x12 in.

Victor Hugo
Town with tumbledown bridge, 1847 
Ink wash on paper

Victor Marie Hugo (French pronunciation: ​[viktɔʁ maʁi yɡo]; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist. He is considered one of the most well-known French Romantic writers. In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry but also rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862, and Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831 (known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism,and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. He was buried in the Panthéon. 

 Hugo produced more than 4000 drawings. Originally pursued as a casual hobby, drawing became more important to Hugo shortly before his exile, when he made the decision to stop writing in order to devote himself to politics. Drawing became his exclusive creative outlet during the period 1848–1851. Hugo worked only on paper, and on a small scale; usually in dark brown or black pen-and-ink wash, sometimes with touches of white, and rarely with color. The surviving drawings are surprisingly accomplished and "modern" in their style and execution, foreshadowing the experimental techniques of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. He would not hesitate to use his children's stencils, ink blots, puddles and stains, lace impressions, "pliage" or folding (i.e. Rorschach blots), "grattage" or rubbing, often using the charcoal from match sticks or his fingers instead of pen or brush. Sometimes he would even toss in coffee or soot to get the effects he wanted. It is reported that Hugo often drew with his left hand or without looking at the page, or during Spiritualist séances, in order to access his unconscious mind, a concept only later popularized by Sigmund Freud. Hugo kept his artwork out of the public eye, fearing it would overshadow his literary work. However, he enjoyed sharing his drawings with his family and friends, often in the form of ornately handmade calling cards, many of which were given as gifts to visitors when he was in political exile. Some of his work was shown to, and appreciated by, contemporary artists such as Van Gogh and Delacroix; the latter expressed the opinion that if Hugo had decided to become a painter instead of a writer, he would have outshone the artists of their century.

Excerpt from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo

Pieuvre avec les initales V.H., ("Octopus with the initials V.H."), 1866.

Le Rocher de l'Ermitage dans un paysage imaginaire("Ermitage Rock in an imaginary landscape")

Flood in the city. Inundación en la ciudad

New York 9 11

 These are digital manipulations of a picture that I´ve downloaded from Google images, I don´t know the author, but it depicted the city of New York with the light sculpture as the memory of the World Trade Center towers.

Fortress city 2. Ciudad fortificada 2

This image above is one of my digital paintings of a fortress city, the second one I´ve done. 

I love to see old maps, specially of medieval cities. Here, more images, from Google:

Metz

Constantinople walls

Kamianets Podils

Luxemburg

Petersburg

Artistic urban fractal morphology. Morfología urbana fractal artística

Playing with New South Wales, Australia

I've generated these images of New South Wales, Australia, working on a screen shot from Google Earth.

http://architect-sensibility.blogspot.com/2013/01/playing-with-new-south-wales-australia.html by Myriam B. Mahiques is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

An old bicycle in Balboa Island. Una vieja bicicleta en la Isla de Balboa

An old bicycle in Balboa Island. Una vieja bicicleta en la Isla de Balboa by Myriam B. Mahiques is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Thoughts on Afghanistan

The events at Afghanistan have a special meaning for me, as the son of a friend of mine is at the German Army, already there. Sometimes I follow the news at Guardian.co.UK and this weekend I´ve come across with the pictures of the market on fire at Kabul.

Regardless the sadness of the destruction, and objectively, I have to say that the photographs of buildings in ruins are amazing, specially two of them that I consider ¨artistic.¨ In the eyes of an architect, the ruins have a certain kind of beauty.

If you look at the last image, you´d think it´s an architectural installation, but not. I´ve cut out one of the pictures I´ve selected and passed it through filters.

The same I´ve done with the previous one, to emphasize the structure of steel lines. The first one, I prefer to leave it as an ¨abstract;¨  I´ve added the red stains like candles, as symbols of the dead.

Here is the link for the gallery and the original pictures:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2012/dec/23/kabul-fire-destroys-market-pictures#/?picture=401528722&index=4

Thoughts on Afghanistan by Myriam B. Mahiques is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Overpopulation in the world. Superpoblación en el mundo

Overpopulation in the world. Superpoblación en el mundo by Myriam B. Mahiques is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Asentamiento ilegal en Buenos Aires. Illegal settlement in Buenos Aires

Asentamiento ilegal en Buenos Aires. Illegal settlement in Buenos Aires by Myriam B. Mahiques is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Aleppo. A sinking city. Aleppo, una ciudad que se hunde

My digital intervention on a picture of the medieval city of Aleppo. The original picture was downloaded from worldtv.com

¨A huge fire has destroyed parts of the medieval souks in Aleppo, Syria, following raging battles between rebels and government troops.

The city is a Unesco world heritage site and the labyrinth of narrow alleys and shops was once a major tourist attraction and is one of Syria's largest commercial hubs.

Over the past two months, the city, home to 2.5 million people, has become a focus of the insurgency against Bashar al-Assad's regime, with near daily fighting and shelling.¨

http://myriammahiques.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-destruction-of-aleppo-syria-unesco.html

Aleppo. A sinking city. Aleppo, una ciudad que se hunde by Myriam B. Mahiques is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.