Category Archives: Friends

The ravages of time (class reunion)

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The photo above was taken last September at the 50 year reunion of the Kennett High School Class of 1966. Richard Peck and Larry Mullen standing; Joe Browning, John Robison and another guy seated. I attended my ten year reunion but skipped all the others. I’m glad I went to this last one. Got to spend a little time with Joe whose energy was released back into the Universe this week.

I took the other photo in 1968 in Richard Peck’s basement. A place to drink beer and be as young as we would ever be. L-R: Richard Peck, Jim Bob Green, John Robison, Jane Marshall and Lynn Strickland. Charlie Peck and Joe Browning down front. This photo became (for me) iconic of that wonderful time. How we came to be the old men in the class reunion photo is a mystery.

Joe Browning: 1948-2017

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Joe Browning was always an artist. He became an architect. And accidental intellectual. He’s the only person I know that looks good with a beard. He only speaks when he has something worth saying. I’ve held Joe upright while he peed next to his back door. (“No, there’s no problem Mr. Browning…Joe will be right in.”) Joe used to run away when he got drunk.

Henry

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The following images were created using the Prisma app.

I took this picture a few days ago while on a walk with my friend +Henry Domke. Curious what the Prisma app would do with it, I ran it through a few filters (below). While looking at one of the resulting images it occurred to me that someone with the necessary skills and tools could create such an image from scratch. Either digitally or in some more traditional medium. Seeing the image, one might reasonably describe it as “art.”

If that is so, when does the “art” happen, and by whom? I’m reluctant describe a common smartphone photo as art. At least not this one. So did the art happen on the Prisma servers as their secret algorithm turned my photo into something art-ish? If yes, who’s the artist? The smart kids who wrote the code? They never saw my photo so I can’t comfortably call them artists in this instance. Can some lines of code create art (or anything)? Must there be an artist before we can have art?

Did social media kill graffiti?

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Jane Marshall, Joe Browning, Larry MullenI’m not talking about spray painted tags on the sides of rail cars, rather those pithy little observations on the walls of restroom stalls.

This was a big thing (at least in my circle) during the late 60s and 70s. My first recollection of this art form was in the hall bathroom outside Dr. Peck’s TV room. This was hangout #1 for our tribe (we didn’t call it that back then). Someone (Richard or Charlie?) had tacked a piece of poster board to the bathroom door with a Bic pen hanging on a piece of string. Someone would scribble something clever and others would comment in endless strings of puns and nonsense.

I don’t recall these ever being discussed face-to-face, the conversation was limited to the poster board. When it was so filled there was no room for one more witticism, the poster was replaced and the old one archived somewhere.

In the photo below you see what I believe is a piece of sheetrock leaning against a wall in the living room of the house where AJ and I lived (Church Street, Kennett, MO). There was a party nearly every night and it didn’t take long to completely cover a piece of poster board.

If there was a zeitgeist for this golden age of my youth, it was scrawled on these graffiti boards. Today these bon mots are tweeted or IM’d Instagrammed but surely something is lost.