For the last few years I’ve been able to sell a few of my photos and sketches here and there to various friends and acquaintences. And now, through a series of fortunate connections and events, I was selected as a White House|Black Market “White & Black Emerging Artist.”

It’s “a new series of limited-edition cards featuring work commissioned from up-and-coming artists we want to support.”

WHBM has selected a few of my sketches to place on holiday notecards, but unfortunately they are not available on-line. So if you find yourself near one of their locations, then pick some up and tell them “I know the artist.”

And in conjunction with the notecards being in stores, I’ve set up my own storefront that you can find here at brandonspecketer.com.

The printing, framing and shipping is all custom and on-demand via the ImageKind printing service. All prints are Giclée prints from high-resolution digital copies of my sketches or photographs. The reproductions are perfect if your looking for quick turnaround at the highest level of quality. The work is available on eight different paper types and two different canvas types, and printing is done using Ultra-Chrom K3 inkset from Epson. With proper UV protection, the prints will look as good in 30 years as they do today.

I’ve got a handful of photographs featuring New York City and Italy, and original sketches from various European locations. For good measure, beautiful fine art photography from my wife is also available.

If you’re inclined, or know someone else might enjoy having a sketch or photograph hanging on their wall, then please have a look at what’s available.

And that’s the end of the hard sell.

I hope you enjoy the work, and please let me know what you think either below in the comments, email or Twitter.

No related posts.

I’ve had the chance to walk the High Line a few times now and wanted to offer up some brief commentary of my own. While I don’t necessarily want to comment on the landscaping or design by Field Operations, I will say that in short of leaving the High Line as it was, they could not have struck a better balance at creating access to this derelict relic while retaining it’s wild, over run qualities. The original image of this forgotten place in the middle of the City galvanized support for the project, and in my opinion the final result is designed in a very understated and successful way. The path, benches and lighting appear as a well planned and wonderful contrast to Piet Oudolf’s very naturalistic and wild landscaping selection.

The High Line is just about three stories above the ground. This is one of the few, if only, public places in the city where you can have this experience and still maintain an intimate contact with the street life below. (On approaching the entry point at 14th street, one views a steady stream of people passing above – for me a nice allusion to the continual line of freight cars that once passed and served these same people.) This subtle change in height opens up an entirely unique perspective to the city only open to those lucky few with rooftop terraces above the brownstones of west Chelsea. A wonderful sampling of New York occurs on your walk, from billboards filling your perspective, to cornice lines and washing lines filled with laundry to those longer views that open up down the narrow side streets or out towards the Hudson.

Despite the wonderful design, the biggest impression I was left with is that this is not a park. For a long time, I feel that the idea of “park” and “landscaping” has been placed under the “pastoral shadow” of Mr. Olmsted and his amazing work in parks across New York City and America at large.

I believe that the previous general conceptions of what a park should be center around the idea of the rustic being inserted as a block, interchangeable as a part of the gridded system. The High Line exists in my mind as something more strategic, more surgical, and serves a different purpose than a traditional park might. For me, it quickly became one of the most wonderful elevated sidewalks – a place for a quiet stroll and a brief escape from the atmosphere of the neighborhoods below, without actually leaving the neighborhood.

The moment you emerge on to the rail bed and path ways of the park, you want to walk. There are seats and benches and movable portions that are wonderful, but what draws you forward is that this was originally build for movement and continues to act as a means of passage. Even the largest seating area, a small amphitheater, is angled down to focus on the passing traffic of cars and taxis as they pass on 10th Avenue below.

By simply sitting or standing still, you miss the narrative of the original relic itself – the sinuous path of the rails as they tunnel through an old brick buildings, long stretches that open to the river and spurs that break, dead end and redirect your focus. My wife and I walked the open portions of the High Line this weekend and I told her that I hoped that the High Line would be a generational catalyst for that romantic idea of the flâneur.

Charles Baudelair (1821-1867) described walking down diverse city streets as one of the most exciting adventures. He suggested the use of flâneur, translated literally as a stroller or saunterer, to describe the defining characteristic of ambling around town without a practical goal in mind beyond simple exploration. What you do on the High Line as a flâneur is exactly what it was designed for – you’re not getting something, or even going somewhere on a course that needs to be negotiated like the street. You’re eyes and ears are open and attuned to the unique scene around you and you open yourself up to it. When she looked questioningly at me after my poor explanation, I simply said…”remember when you and I walked along the Brooklyn Promenade and lost track of time?”

Similar to the way that the wonderful Brooklyn Promenade in Brooklyn Heights came to be (and the Promenade Plantee in Paris), you would never invent such a promenade from scratch for this purpose. The growth of the city and its evolution enabled this to become a relic and later a wonderful mix of park, urban boardwalk and part property stimulus. The High Line is not a development that a city would normally undertake if the relic was not already existing; and I believe it sets a perfect example for what is possible – a contrast to the typical demolish and build anew approach that we have seen for so long in our cities.

Over time, this project should get better and better. Hopefully it will inspire the creation of new green arteries that do more to connect our neighborhoods and the existing urban fabric of our cities than road widening and traffic planning could ever do. It’s probably something Olmsted urged from the very beginning.

All photographs are by Iwan Baan.

UPDATE:

In The Beauty of a Park by Alexandra Lange, she asks the question if the High Line “is only a path, or will points along the way gather a sense of place?” Personally I believe it is only a path. The places, I fear will be defined more by access points and the buildings than by the ‘park.’ But, one could argue that the whole path is the “place,” in much the same way that the “journey is more important than the destination.” Regardless, the article The Beauty of a Park provides another interesting look at the project.

Tommy Manuel also describes his viewpoint:

the High Line’s potential never was what it could be converted into, rather its potential was what it hinted at in its abandoned condition. Nature could have been allowed to quietly and chaotically work through its cycles on the bones of man’s work. Saving that would have been a entirely different design challenge.

My counterpoint, which he briefly addresses, is that while the idea of openness, green space and a return to nature probably was at its best when it was abandoned infrastructure, I don’t believe that it was a potentially better asset to the city if left untouched.

Untouched, access was only available to the well connected. (A belief similar to Lange’s questions of “its starry patrons” and how “it could come to be seen as the backyard of The Standard, et. al.”) At least now, the city can create a truly collective memory of a historic part of the city and of something that once was slated for demolition.

These related entries might also interest you:
A Few Updates
On the Waterfront
“The Street Light Just Came On”

ephemera.ryecroft

In college, I would stumble across photographs in books or magazines that I would then photocopy for future reference or to use as a series of ‘flashcards’ when I needed a spark of inspiration. My wife still uses some of these when she’s making ‘mood boards’ for various projects. Now, that I have a monitor and wi-fi permanently attached to my head, its a simple ctrl-c, ctrl-v. Initially via iPhoto, but now its being fully propagated to the interwebs.

There is plenty of commentary about online design curation and presentation – and hundreds of sites floating around right now focused on imagery. The newest are interesting because they concentrate on a steady-stream of eye-candy and the architectural “money shot,” but offer not much else. It’s a new culture of sites easy to create, bookmark, and mimic. Some one described it as though we’ve “collectively walked into the great karaoke lounge of design–all of it somehow comforting but unlikely to result in anything of substance.”

I’m proud to say I’m now a part of that karaoke circuit.

ephemera.ryecroft is purely personal curation and it’s not trying to be anything more. But just maybe, you might find something of interest in what I’ve skimmed from all of this transitory visual matter. The clippings are intended for inspiration, for work…or for avoiding work.

Somewhat related to this idea of personal collection and curation is this point made by Dian Hanson at wallpaper.com regarding one’s personal collection of work (apologies to those who might disapprove of the work – it’s still an interesting point): ‘I worry about what legacy modern photographers [will] leave, having worked their entire careers in digital.’ The physical archives that lurk in boxes, chests and drawers around the world will cease to exist as singular, unique entities.

Will our archives exist as portable, or possibly impermanent – external and flash drives that contain an artist’s work of cast-off shots, multi-layered Photoshop files, clipped jpgs, corrupted files and downloaded mp3s? The idea of restoring or reconstructing work (the LIFE series Artists At Work) becomes a question of retaining antiquated computer hardware and running the obligatory back-ups. How many of us have held on to that old VHS player, sitting beside the new Blu-Ray because of this legacy issue?

A small, but related tangent. Anyways, I hope you enjoy: ephemera.ryecroft

Please note: Ephemera is purely to share what inspires me with as many people as possible. The images hosted on ephemera.ryecroft have been hunted, culled and collected from the world wide web to be presented as visual stimulus. This imagery is not being presented as my own, unless noted under the specific work. Copyright still belongs to the owner / creator of said work and ephemera.ryecroft is receiving no financial benefits from it’s use.

If you see your work on this blog and wish it to be referenced, please email me at memo@ryecroft.net with the post url and I will add your details to the piece.

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“What was good for the country was good for General Motors.” May you rest in peace. September 27, 1908 – June 1, 2009. But why oh why did you have to take our billions, only to flounder for a few months more. What went wrong? (Just look at their legacy expenses!) And how are you going to move forward GM? If you’re looking for answers, check out good round up here at Kottke.org

What does this mean for us? Here are some things I learned today: Well, now I own roughly 0.000000435% of GM. Wow. That’s almost less than nothing. Another way to look at it is that each of us paid $362 for that equity stake.

$50,000,000,000 is the total amount the US Treasury has spent of GM’s survival. (That’s $30.1 billion for 60% of New GM’s equity + $20.6 billion that we spent trying to keep them out of bankruptcy.) And that’s just the beginning of it.

So $83,000,000,000 is what New GM would have to be worth in order for us to break even on our investment. But $56,000,000,000 is what GM was worth at its all time peak in 2000.

And it’s only worth about $7,300,000,000 now. So New GM would have to have about a 48% increase in value from its all time peak. Likely? Maybe.

Here we are, saddled with 60% ownership of an obsolete company that invented “planned obsolescence” – that’s the annoyingly painful sound of irony ringing in your ears. From the start of these recent events, and even during the “ridiculously idealistic” phase of my youth, I’ve believed that “what’s good for the country is good for General Motors.” But for me, that meant that the only way to save GM is to kill GM. (Maybe we should all watch “Roger and Me” again.)

While losing over 20,000 more GM auto workers is never a good option, it doesn’t mean they can’t continue on as 20,000 laborers in advanced manufacturing. These workers are part of our dwindling industrial capacity and they have the skill sets needed if we intend to create and build a much more sustainable, forward thinking future. I enjoy German engineering and the marvels of what Apple has created from Chinese tech manufacturing, but why should the manufacturing of our infrastructural network and goods be offshored?

Since GM is being “reorganized” by the federal government, and I own 0.000000435% of the company now, here are a few suggestions that might actually benefit the nation, the workers and even GM. These idea’s aren’t new, and they represent a wealth of current opinions that have been voiced on the issue.

Just as we did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must convert our auto factories to factories that build alternative energy vehicles, mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. If you have problems calling this a “war,” let the brass at the Pentagon persuade you. I could enter into a debate about ecological issues, oil companies, etc – but I don’t need to. The military has been getting serious about transitioning to cleaner energy operations because it’s clear that climate change will be one of the most urgent national security issues of this century.

Don’t put another cent into the accounts of GM to build cars as we know them. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce – and most of those who have been laid off – employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now. For the time being, build only hybrid or all-electric cars (and improved batteries or dual fuel systems). It will take a few years for people to get used to new ways of transportation, so if we’re going to have automobiles in the traditional sense, catch up with the rest of the world and have a more efficient, responsible fleet. Start building next month and provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or use mass transit. Also give HUGE credits for those who convert their autos to clean-fuel/flex-fuel/hybrid energy and get rid of the loopholes that are keeping business from opening up that provide these conversion services.

The announcement that we will have funding and a national plan (CNN) for high-speed, reliable trains criss-crossing this country is a good start. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. The U.S. is born to compete and we hate losing. They have had these high speed trains for almost 50 years — and we don’t even have one! As Obama said “this is not some fanciful, pie-in-the-sky vision of the future. It’s happening now. The problem is, it’s happening elsewhere. Not here.”

Connecting some of the most economically and socially important corridors in the country will literally get the country moving faster out of this current situation. And while efforts like this would please our closest high-speed allies in France, Canada, Germany and Japan, this is a domestic issue. The growth of the rail infrastructure is where GM should factor in heavily. Build those light rail engines and high speed trains in the GM factories and hire local people everywhere to install and run this system. A few days ago, Michigan’s governor Jennifer Granholm apparently pushed a plan along these lines. During the rail summit at the White House with Joe Biden, Ray LaHood and several other governors, Granholm was making the case that it’s time to start making railcars if we’re going to be building a passenger rail network.

Companies like Siemens make billion dollar deals from the Chinese, and European companies are expecting the US to be a $150 billion market for train equipment. What’s the excuse for not trying capture ALL of that projected market? At the turn of the 20th century, the government started building roads and began the massive shift from mass transportation to the ‘one-person-one-car’ method that exits today. It’s rumored that GM dismantled mass transportation in the United States piece by piece in order to expand auto sales and maximize profits. To speed up the process the Government started, the auto and road industries bought local mass transit systems and privately-owned railways. These were then closed or allowed to deteriorate. If GM can dismantle it, let them put it back together to gain revenue.

It seems like a self evident choice that infrastructure projects would be one of the more beneficial applications of stimulus funding. In addition to interstate projects like the national rail plan, cities across the country should be implementing local mass transit projects. USA Today featured an article on projects linking downtown cores to their airports. Dallas already has plans to connect Love Field and DFW airports. (Where is Oklahoma City on this? If a convention center is such a big ticket item, wouldn’t it be an easy sell to add some ‘pork’ to that package by creating a hard link to the airport?) A national effort like this is transformational in the scale of the interstate highway projects of the 1950′s and 60′s and would balance our transportation network. To make this work, initiate a national program to put light rail mass transit lines in all of our large and medium-sized cities. Hire the unemployed to upgrade and build these new lines all over the country.

This should have been done yesterday.

With the rest of the workforce and unused industrial capacity, transform empty GM factories to facilities that build. It could be windmills, solar panels, fuel cells…whatever. It’s been done before. In 2006, Oklahoma City lost around 2,500 jobs when the local GM plant closed; but the city and its leaders rallied to purchase the former assembly plant and re-purpose it to support the aerospace industry and Tinker Air Force Base. The estimates are now that it employs over 3,000. We need to research, develop and build this technology now and there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build it.

Why am I saying this. Almost forty years ago on July 20th, America put a man on the moon. Then we did it 5 more times. Let me say that again. It was 1969 and a man walked on the freakin’ MOON. There is more combined computing power in my iPhone and personal laptops than NASA had back when they started the program. And they managed to squeeze Neil, Buzz and Michael into tin can, use a rocket to shoot them into space, and bring them back…Safely.

It’s 2009 and we are just now figuring out that regenerative breaking, hybrid electric engines, and fuel economy might be a good thing.

One hundred years ago, the founders of General Motors helped convince the world to give up their horses and carriages and try something new. In this experience of individual freedom and sanctuary behind the wheel, it seemed to serve us well. But we are now in a new century with a new set of realities to face. My grandfather told me stories of riding his horse to school, and at some point in time I want my grandchildren to face a much different future and laugh at a past where we had to pay to put explosive foreign liquid into a car, and manually operate levers, pedals and wheels.

These related entries might also interest you:
Life Without Cars

Needless to say, I’m not the only one thinking about this. There are plenty of NY Times editorials, news and updates via Wired (and of course, only in Oklahoma would a man be arrested for twittering Tea Party Death Threats) and the rest of commentary and speculation via the internet. I simply wonder if anybody is really that interested.

I just never imagined those same thoughts were occurring over one hundred years ago. In David Crane’s biography of Captain Scott, Scott of the Antarctic, I discovered Shackleton thought the same about his first Antarctic diary, 107 years ago:

I turned in about 1am. What a ridiculous thing it must seem to other people to read a diary where such a statement as ‘I turned in at 1am’ appears as if they were interested in the time another fellow mortal at the other end of the world went to bed… Those sort of items are the penalties that one’s friends must pay when struggling to gain a little real information in these reams of paper.

E.H. Shackleton, diary, 14 July 1902

No related posts.

These morning rides have caused me to think about how we (American Cities) have developed our waterfronts. The first few quick examples that came to my mind were New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Portland and Pittsburgh…but also what is currently in the works with my hometown of Oklahoma City.

From the renderings available on the City’s Website, the water’s edge looks to be developed in a mix of low and medium density and buffered by river coves. For Oklahoma City, this is probably seems to be the best option. One of the biggest benefits of living in Oklahoma is the instant access to the outdoors. The sprawl of the city makes it fairly easy to find spots of raw nature and undeveloped land. But for the downtown of a city that is already spread out, it still looks suburban. The application of low density spread runs counter to what makes a great urban condition.

Urban developments that form a distinctive edge to natural zones create, in my opinion, a good contrasting condition. It creates a definable place, or an urban room of the park, and it allows for a higher value and return on those developed areas along the edge. The dialogue between Riverside Park, the residential buildings along Riverside Drive and the Hudson River are a perfect example of this. But unlike the Hudson River, the Oklahoma River itself isn’t a boundary to Oklahoma City and shouldn’t be treated as one, which is how the planning looks to perceive it.¹

The Oklahoma River can be a wonderful outdoor room for the City, but it needs to be addressed equally on both river banks. Now, two caveats: The limits of my analysis are what I was able to quickly gather from the online material available and I am fully aware that this is a long range plan and much will change as markets and thinking evolves. With that stated, my primary questions revolve around phasing of the project and what is happening on the south bank of the river? Brownfield redevelopment is occurring at the Downtown Airpark,² but as of now, this and Wiley Post Park are the only areas that I believe have been planned for and they both lay outside the reach of the City’s planning vision.

In my eyes, the most important part of the Core to Shore development program is the “Shore.” How do you bring a native Oklahoma population willingly to a more dense, more urban environment while at the same time luring those from out-of state with the benefits of our connection to nature? You place a heavier emphasis on great development and excellent public access along the waters edge.³ If the river is viewed as an asset, which its viewed as one even here in NYC, wouldn’t it make sense to allow as many residents as possible to use it on a daily basis. Possibly even within walking distance? The reason Riverside Park and the Hudson River Parkway have met such great success is that there is a density of local, neighborhood residents that support it, use it, and care for it daily – simply because access is easy.

In my perfect scenario, phase one of the plan would be based around development of both banks of the river and a line of connection back to the existing core areas. Alot of what is planned for phase one of the program is green space and parks, the center piece being the “Central Park.”  Planned green space is wonderful, but I don’t believe a created green space needs to be built first when a natural river is already in place. If the downtown core is providing one unique area of focus, the second area should be a unique urban zone that allows visitors, but more importantly, residents access to the river and trail system along both banks of the river’s edge.

Imagine a string of dense mid-rise residential units and linked green spaces that take advantage of the southern exposure; and on the opposite bank, a well defined waterfront of commercial, residential park areas that capitalize on the views across the river towards the downtown towers. Unless a larger plan is in place that accounts for planned development and use along both sides of the river, I believe that Oklahoma City might be falling short of capitalizing on a wonderful asset. The river’s revival is well chronicled and the primary reason for its success is what has been developed along its edges.

1. As an aside, could it be simply due to the naming of their plan, ‘Core to Shore?’ A shore is typically referred to as a fringe of land at the edge of a large body of water, such as a lake, sea or ocean. It’s a river bank, or river’s edge, but that doesn’t lend itself to marketable phrasing. Maybe marketing is influencing the perception of the city’s limits?
2. I love Ferris wheels! For more on the Downtown Airpark “Waterfront”, check out Steve Lackmeyer’s article. Without digging to much into the development, I applaud that the focus of the images is on the street conditions, landscape and general massing. It describes the whole urban condition. See note 3
   
3. Alot of talk is happening in OKC relative to walk-ability and in general a more friendly, inviting city (from a built environment standpoint). In my opinion, walkability isn’t a term associated with suburban site planning, and that is what we are still gettting in OKC. The videos for the Core to Shore development have a closer relationship to a Grand Theft Auto game than that of a human perspective of an urban environment. They do create excitement for the project, but what it delivers is too much of an object oriented view rather than one of a cohesive urban experience.  (Do we really need flashing LED overpasses? Let Vegas and Dubai keep those.)

These related entries might also interest you:
Life Without Cars
High Line
“The Street Light Just Came On”