urban flora # 19 / diptych # 195 ~ chaotic messes

urban(ish) flora ~ Keeseville, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
meter mess ~ Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen

As evidenced by the picture - made in the small village of Keeseville, NY - of the unfettered growth of urban chaotic scrub in this entry, it should be obvious that kind of scrub growth is not limited to big urban areas. In fact, it would be far more accurate to write that urban scrub growth is quite common to areas marked by depressed economic circumstance or as a result thereof. Keeseville most definitely fits that description.

Perhaps my working title, urban flora, for this body of work needs to be amended to include some notion of blight.

On a different but similar topic of blight, Pittsburgh is also a prime example, but not the only example, of what might be labeled electric blight. That is, the rat's nest of wires, meters and other electronic apparatus which is placed willy-nilly on the facade of homes and businesses without even a passing regard to order or unsightliness. And, once again, this phenomenon is most common in areas of the same depressed economic circumstances as urban blight, flora style.

While it is certainly possible to create objects of beauty - pictures, in and of themselves - by organizing lines, shapes, colors and the like within the frame of a picture, to the naked eye they most often are little more than an eye-sore.