Perfect Word : DREAMS

Driving down I95 and what do you spot looming out of the boredom and madness of green and kudzu a discreet red brick building with severe decoration, a parking lot and the word in capital letters DREAMS do you continue driving at cruising speed ,or u-turn and drive back.I never ask Gordon Stettinus how he made the choice to take this picture but I am glad he did. Gordon and I met back in one of the first potfolio reviews I did portfolio. He was and still is a person of many characters and though the portfolio I reviewed at that time was different from what he does now, remember he is an artist...I never forgot his images and the approach he took to communicate with them.Long story short I finally got a chance to use some in Southern Memories I wanted to use signage so I started to search websites Gordon's is eyecaramba.com visit, it is a lot of fun , eyecaramda had a lot of images that I wanted to use.but most of the signs were from the west or the southwest.I was looking for signs that left you wishing for answers not laughing about missteps in ideas or educations.

Something grounded in reality maybe, I understand the Southern tradition of photographing words in loose sentences and associations, but I was looking for lean abstraction. And there it was DREAMS , without modifiers the word allows you to muse which is a wide awake form of dreaming.There is no bad so we avoid nightmares It is just dreams.

I like to believe and the artist gives me room here to see a cool blue neon for dreams, in truth the word is probably red-orange or magenta at night. I like the way the picture is divide into 3 the sky, the little building and a place to park. So what lies behind the doors and formally placed windows and lights... dreams ,maybe a bit of heaven in 7 1/2 minutes ?

When installing the exhibitions I surrounded the photographs within a group of images that reflect other sense of dreams too.I would like to thank Donna Rosser for this second image of the hanging of Southern Memories with an aside, this photograph by won a place in another group show latre last year.