Produce Crate Labels — The Boston Public Library has added some more great fruit crate labels from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s to their Flickr account.

There’s a lot of social and cultural history in these labels, and they’re also a study in marketing psychology. What kind of images do you think would sell fruit? Maybe those that evoke tradition, power and majesty, like this image of Queen Victoria with oranges, from the Victoria Avenue Citrus Association in Riverside, California. Or maybe the romance of the Scottish Highlands, like Tartan Brand lemons from the Corona Foothill Lemon Company, Corona. And then there are the patriotic images, like Golden Eagle oranges, the exotic ones, like Miracle Brand oranges, and cartoon labels, including an Up n’ Atom Brand carrots label featuring a Bugs Bunny lookalike.

I wandered around alone looking at the exhibit, Michael Mazur, Visions of a Draughtsman and remember being struck by the dark, powerful prints and studies from his Closed Ward series. And when I say struck, I don’t mean I thought “oh, how interesting.” I mean I was dumbfounded, shocked, dismayed, fascinated. These prints and drawings were based on Mazur’s observations of patients when he volunteered at a state mental institution, as I had done at Worcester State Hospital when I was in high school. His works brought back the emotions I had felt there: fear, sorrow, helplessness and just a little pride for forcing myself to come back week after week and act like it didn’t bother me. Looking at the patients in Mazur’s prints, I experienced the same surprising sense of tenderness toward these fragile, vulnerable men and women, and felt myself torn between not wanting to look at them, but being unable to look away. I bought the exhibition catalogue that night, and and have looked through it many times through the years. I still see the sorrow but also the humanity in the patients whose images he captured.

Since that night, I have followed Michael Mazur’s career through books, articles and exhibits, feeling connected to him by what I rather illogically think of as our shared experience. Michael Mazur died on August 18, and though I never met him, he touched my life, and I’ll miss him.

• Michael Mazur; artist reinvigorated monotype; 73 — Obituary by Bryan Marquard from the Boston Globe
• The Art of Michael Mazur — Sideshow from the Boston Globe
• Michael Mazur, 1935-2009 — Obituary by Lloyd Schwartz from the Boston Phoenix
• Artwork from the Late Michael Mazur — Slideshow from the Boston Phoenix

The Democratic National Convention is about to open in Denver, and I feel like I have a role in the event…not politically, but artistically.

A couple of years ago, I was at a conference in Denver, and I stepped outside between meetings and took a couple of photographs of “I See What You Mean,” Lawrence Argent’s sculpture of a big blue bear that peers through the window of the Convention Center. Not great photographs — I was rather disappointed at the time that the blue came out looking darker and duller than it really is. But I posted them on Flickr anyway. Good librarian that I am, I included the name of the artist and the sculpture in my description, with a link to the Denver city government’s page describing the work.

Over the past two years, the one seen here has gotten quite a few views, gradually working its way into my most-viewed photographs, hovering at about number twenty. When Flickr introduced their Stats program, I could see where the views were coming from — nearly all came from search engines. People were searching for Big Blue Bear Denver or Blue Bear Denver Convention Center or variations on those terms. Not a lot of traffic, really — to be honest, it doesn’t take thousands of hits to make it into my most-viewed photographs. Just a steady stream, a few every week.

Until recently — as the Democratic Convention was approaching, the Colorado Convention Center has been in the news, and the most striking aspect of that building is that big blue bear. My photographs started getting more hits, gradually moving from a few a week to dozens a day. Most still come from search engines, but an increasing number come from links in e-mail messages, forums and various other webpages. The photograph has a Creative Commons license (attribution, non-commercial, sharealike) and it’s been used on a few websites. It’s now my most-viewed photograph of all time, and, at the moment, if you do a Google search on Big Blue Bear Denver, this photograph is the first search result.

I must say that I enjoy this. I like thinking of all those people looking for information about this and finding my photograph. And it’s not that my photograph is the best one. It’s not…it’s not even the best one on Flickr. It’s generic — just the standard view of this, one duplicated with slight variations by hundreds of tourists and convention-goers every year. I can’t even identify my own photograph except by close examination to see the red truck reflected in the window.

But for most people just Googling around, my photograph may be all they need, good enough, and that’s good enough for me.

So I’ll be watching the Convention coverage on TV, reading the news sites and following the blogs, but while I am watching the delegate count, I’ll also be checking my Flickr stats to see how my Big Blue Bear is doing!

Links:

• Lawrence Argent: I See What You Mean — Page from the Denver city government site describing the work, with a video clip showing the installation
• Lawrence Argent — The artist’s website which includes his statement on the origin and meaning of the Big Blue Bear as well as information about his other works
• The Man Behind the Bear: Lawrence Argent Q&A — Interview from the Denver.org website
• One Bear Essential for DNC — Article by Al Lewis, Dow Jones Newswires, on the miniature replicas of the bear that Argent is selling

Pratt’s best-known works include the statues of Art and Science outside the Boston Public Library in Copley Square, the statue of Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem, Massachusetts, and the statue of Edward Everett Hale in the Boston Public Garden.

Bela Lyon Pratt — Here’s the link to the Flickr group

Here’s a slideshow of photos from the group:

Bela Lyon Pratt Links

• Bela Pratt — Wikipedia article
• Bela Lyon Pratt — Artcyclopedia article
• Bela Lyon Pratt: Overlooked Designer of Two Underrated Coins — Article by Ed Reiter on the Professional Coin Graders website

Links

• Giant Squid Kinetic Sculpture from Found Materials — If you want more detail, he has documented it all on Instructables
• Nemomatic — This is the artist’s website, with news, articles, images of works for sale and work in progress, and much more

Dogs in Art — Link to the Flickr group page

When I returned to Iceland in the summer of 2003, I took a few more pictures of Sólfar, including the one seen here. I still didn’t really like it, it just seemed like one of those obligatory photographs. I remember walking around it, carefully choosing the best angle, and taking a single shot. I was happy with the result. I’m still happy with it. I think it’s a perfectly adequate picture. I added it to the Reykjavík article on Wikipedia, and that’s exactly what I think my picture is, a dull and dutiful, accurate picture of the subject.

When I joined Flickr, I started exploring other people’s photographs, and sought out pictures of my beloved Iceland. Of course, Iceland being so amazingly photogenic, I found hundreds of wonderful pictures, by both tourists and photographers fortunate enough to live in Iceland, including many of Sólfar.

I quickly learned that many people took pretty much the same view that I did. It’s the standard shot, safe and simple. But I was surprised at the variety of photographs I discovered. So many people had taken much more imaginative and interesting photographs than mine. Rather than framing this careful and making sure they got the whole piece into the picture, many of the most interesting photographs were from different angles, and captured only part of the sculpture.

I set up a Flickr group called Sólfar: The Sun Voyager as a way of bringing these works together. There are now over 160 photographs by over 80 different photographers, an impressive assortment that capture many different aspects of what I now see as a beautiful and unique work of art.

What I love about this group is that it seems we’re never finished. Just when I think I have seen every possible picture of Sólfar, someone posts something new.

The most recent addition to the group, for example, shown here, called Shadowy reflection of a long sailed ship from a departed imagination by Flickr user Olikristinn, captures the reflection of the sculpture in the wet pavement — possibly the only photograph in the group’s pool that doesn’t actually show the sculpture itself. It’s a beautiful and unique addition to the group.

With so many artworks available in so many public locations, it’s not surprising that Chihuly’s work is so frequently photographed. But I was rather amazed when I did a search on Chihuly on Flickr, and found over 42,000 hits! Sort by Flickr’s “interestingness” formula and you see a pretty amazing collection of photographs of different aspects of Chihuly’s work:Flickr Chihuly search by Interestingness

The photograph above is Boat of Blue Lilies by Van Swearingen, photographed at Chihuly’s “Gardens and Glass” exhibit at the New York Botanical Garden, and the one to the right is Chihuly by Thomas Hawk, taken at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.

Photographs like these are really creative works of art in their own right, and Chihuly’s works, in all their size and complexity and with the interplay of light that’s inherent in photographing glass, and the incredible variety of images on Flickr is something I can’t imagine seeing in any sort of exhibition, book or single website. Exploring these Chihuly photographs has really heightened my interest and appreciation of Chihuly’s work.

Chihuly Links:

• Chihuly Art — A Flickr group for devoted to Dale Chihuly’s work
• Chihuly — The artist’s official website
• Chihuly, Inc. : Inside the Glass Empire — A special report from The Seattle Times
• Gardens and Glass — From the New York Botanical Garden website

The statue of Nathaniel Hawthorne shown here, which is on Hawthorne Boulevard in Salem, is by Bela Lyon Pratt, who also created the beautiful Science and Art sculptures outside the main entrance to the Boston Public Library. There are many photographs of the Nathaniel Hawthorne statue on Flickr, from all angles and in all seasons, and I hope many of them will be added to the new group.

Nathaniel Hawthorne — Flickr group