camminando | Water Power: Lowell

Not to far from the "ruins" of the water powered mill of Turners Falls, the city of Lowell offers another encounter with an industrial past, still vibrant in the post-industrial info-technological present.

Lowell is the fourth largest city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; it was founded in the 1820s as a manufacturing center for textiles, located along the Merrimack River, about 30 miles northwest of Boston.

Lowell is also famous in literature as birth place and burial site of Jack Kerouac who staged in the city several of his autobiographical novels.

Lowell's National Park presents some of the greatest memories of the Industrial Revolution from the nineteenth century. Several mill buildings have been rehabilitated for commercial and residential developments.

Not to be missed unusual walks and boat tours among the canals, mills reflecting in the water and smokestack towers.

camminando | Water Power: the Mohawk Trail

The Mohawk Trail (Massachusetts Route 2) takes you through an harmonious human use of natural resources, which seems to coexist even in an industrial (or post industrial) land use.

The first detour from the Trail is a visit to the Natural Bridge, a spectacular natural geological formation, from Cambrian period of the Paleozoic Era site of a marble quarry until 1947. The "natural bridge" is a 550 million year old bedrock marble, carved into an arch by the force of glacial melt water over 13,000 years ago and spans over the Hudson Brook. Nathaniel Hawthorne, visited the site in 1838 and wrote about Hudson's Falls in An American Notebook "The cave makes a fresh impression on me every time I visit it ... so deep, so irregular, so gloomy, so stern." a spectacular natural geological formation, from Cambrian period of the Paleozoic Era site of a marble quarry until 1947.






The next encounter is Turners Falls, a nineteenth century industrial center. The village was founded in 1868 as a planned industrial community according to the vision of Alvah Crocker, to attract industry to the town by offering cheap hydropower that was made by the harnessing of the Connecticut River, through the construction of a dam and canal.

Industrial ruins in Turners Fall

One of the many unfortunately closed stores along the Mohawk Trail

Excerpts from the conceptual multimedia project

“Axes Mundi: Perceptions and Understanding of Places as Intersections of Space, Time and Culture"

camminando | Central Park Summer Evening

A very pleasant mid summer evening and I am planning to go the MOMA Talk to Me exhibition. I get stuck in Central Park, hundreds of people participating (and viewing) to the Jamaica Underwear Run...Ah, New York, New York!
So my evening in the park ends instead in a quiet walk through the Ramble and Lake loop, tracing my yesterday morning steps.

camminando | Framing Views of Central Park

My art | walking theme du jour is framing views.
I started this morning with a walk in Central Park, shortly after the sun rose behind the Fifth Avenue tall buildings. A loop around the lake, passing through the Ramble.

Here it goes, in space-time order:

Photo credit: Daniela Bertol

Map elaborated from Google Maps

Excerpts from the conceptual multimedia project

“Axes Mundi: Perceptions and Understanding of Places as Intersections of Space, Time and Culture"

camminando | Time Travel to Coney Island

Whenever you get tired (as I often do) of the Manhattan cliché, for an easy but radically change, get on the Q train to Brooklyn, Coney Island destination. A less than one-hour subway ride takes to you a 21K New World translation of a Fellinisque adventure.

Already at the exit of the train station, at 8th Street you encounter Vito Acconci’s Wavewall: the integration of the artwork into the station architecture makes the façade bulging out.


The Luna Park greets you with the aging iconic open frame megastructures: the Wondel Wheel and the roll coaster rides. And, of course, the no longer used Parachute Jump, built for the 1939 New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadows Park, and then moved to Coney Island for a thrill ride on cable operated parachutes.




If you don’t like (fearing motion sickness as myself) to indulge on the thrill rides, you can jog, power walk or simple stroll on a two-mile long boardwalk, parallel to the Atlantic coast, bringing you the mighty ocean breeze.
Coney Island offers you several miles of public beaches; the almost one-thousand foot Steeplechase Pier takes you to the ocean.

And back from the ocean to the land: the world famous boardwalk awaits you, with its is constellated by not-so-healthy food concessions —and several interesting pavilions providing shade and comfort stations.







And if you still have some energy left you can visit the New York Aquarium

Following my shadow on the boardwalk, at the end of the afternoon, on my way to Brighton Beach.

Excerpts from the conceptual multimedia project

“Axes Mundi: Perceptions and Understanding of Places as Intersections of Space, Time and Culture"

camminando | NYC, Public Art on the Hudson Waterfront

One of my favorite routine walking itinerary in NYC is the Hudson Waterfront, from the seventies to Chelsea. The route offers comfortable walking, as completely separated from car traffic, nature sounds quite unlikely in such a urban environment —and view of the setting sun, of course. This summer this walking itinerary also offers public art, which I don't find particularly exciting, as it does not relate specifically to such a special site.

Nevertheless, public art is always inspiring and one of the greatest encounters in public places.

River Gazers by Elizabeth Allison

Wish by Noa Shay

Unusual "chairs" and "tables" by Allan and Ellen Wexler

Matthew White Seiren

Vernissages | The Axis Mundi of Ektoras Binikos

The Spencertown Academy of Columbia County (NY) offered an unexpected encounter with the Axis Mundi of Ektoras Binikos: a compelling exhibition of video, drawings and performance from the multi-media Greek born artist, currently living in New York.

The exhibition is, emphatically yes, titled “Axis Mundi”; the opening night ended with one-hour performance where music played by the violinist Eva Ingolf intersected with light projections by Binikos.

The artist says:
“I am interested in the circuitous route but nevertheless limited paths of time.
I see the present as a distorted component of time where memories are not devalued, nor are they fully understood, and the future as a state of quivering anticipation.
I am trying to resist specific locations and determinations or full narrative, whether temporal, geographical or psychological."

Not to be missed —for more information visit the Spencertown Academy or Ektoras Binikos site.

architecture | Miami Architecture Rises Again

Downtown Miami is enjoying a resurgence at long last. An over abundance of condos jammed in all at once pre-recession, threatened to drown Miami in yet another boom /bust rotation that this humidity-soaked environment is apparently famous for.

The plethora of sparkly new condos were rented out at reasonable rate awaiting the upswing which is now occurring. This sudden influx of new, young blood is kick-starting the previously unloved central location into a “whoosh” of new restaurants, shops and entertainment.

Surprisingly to many, original and interesting architecture is still front and center in this fairly young city. Miami was officially Incorporated in 1896 with a whopping population of 300. I took a stroll around recently, armed with camera, to record a soupčon of old Miami architectural design.

Alfred I. DuPont brass elevators

Alfred I. DuPont Building, completed in 1939, formerly a bank; it now holds court to special events after a series of historic renovations on it’s Depression Moderne style of architecture. Designed by the firm of Marsh and Saxelbye, the DuPont sports hand-painted cypress wood ceilings, detailed scroll work, and brass elevator doors bas relief adorned depicting native flora and fauna.

Olympia / Gusman ticket booth and marquee

Olympia Theater / Gusman Center for the Performing Arts lobby ceiling

Olympia Theater - This silent movie palace opened in 1926. The Moorish architecture, marvelous acoustics and ceiling simulating the night sky also achieved fame by becoming the first building in the South to be air-conditioned. Now known as Gusman Center for the Performing Arts, it transports the audience into experiencing old world charm in downtown Miami. It is one of the few “atmospheric” theaters designed by architect John Eberson still existing today.

Ingraham Building brass elevator logos

Another recently renovated 1926 structure, the Ingraham Building was designed by the architectural firm of Schultze & Weaver, designers of the famous Waldorf-Astoria in New York and the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles in the Chicago Style of Architecture.

Ingraham Building ceiling