Hwhup The Deans List, The Jason Dean here. As I sit down to write this weeks edition of The Weekender, I’m not sure if it’ll be long, short, or some other third thing. I feel like I have much to say and to share…but I spent a chunk of last week traveling and I’m still sort of regaining my bearings so I’m feeling a little compressed.

Let’s just see where this goes, eh?

Art

Spring is not my favorite season, and it’s not even close. I might like it more than Summer, but I’m a Winter and a Fall guy full stop. But when Spring drops…or at least, when it feels like it drops…it becomes my favorite season, if only for a short while.

Okay okay, of course this is not a Spring photo (although it is from the first week of March). Let me explain. February into March is a weird time of year for me as an artist. It feels like there’s so much Winter to explore, but it’s also coming to an end, sometimes at a screeching halt. That can leave me with a queue chock full of winter images and nowhere to put them! I’ve said this before, but I’m not a big fan of getting home from a shoot and then just pumping out a bunch of those shots right away. Even though that means I miss out on some ‘FIRST’ cred, I’m fine with it because it means I end up putting out work that I’ll be proud of for a long time which is more important to me than it getting lost in the sea of other images other people took of the same event on the same day. However, being an abstract landscape/nature photographer I recognize that at least a part of the appeal of my work is dependent on being slightly topical to the season at hand. My winter photos, as much as I love them, have a shelf life.

So let’s try something like this:

Better? I was downstate for most of the week (dropped off my daughter back at college on Sunday) where spring is a little more springy than it is here in da Yoop. This was taken in Mt. Pleasant. I don’t know what this red-branched plant is but I just know I love it.

I can’t say for sure if it’s my favorite shot from the week or not; I have way, WAY more photos to still sort through and sit with. Rest assured I will share the best of them in future Weekenders. For now, here’s one more photo of Spring to get you in the mood for the warm weather to come:

I joke I joke, I kid I kid.

Creative Writing

I do have a couple of poems to share. The first is a fragment of a poem that I wrote years ago, but it just popped back into my brain and I figured I’d share it here:

Heaven is a moment song 
Set in a time frame
We long to attain

The second is one that I was riffing on while driving through Ann Arbor one night last week. There was some sign for some place named after some person, and well I’ll just let you read it for yourself:

I hate
These great men that ask you
To build statues
To celebrate
All the ways they
Laid waste
To you

Recently I’ve started to think about the ludicrously wealthy people in our country and how they are completely insulated from the lives that we ‘normal’ people and how the decisions they make solely for their best interests often have negative impacts on the rest of us.

I’m sick of blindly supporting it.

Because of that, I’m consciously trying to reduce my dependence on billionaires. This is going to take some time and I know I’m not going to be able to fully cut myself off. I left Facebook, but I still have Instagram. I’m dropping Amazon Prime, but I’m sure I’ll still order stuff on Amazon. I have an iPhone and a MacBook. Our family has started to grocery shop at the local food co-op instead of Walmart, but we still have a family subscription to Spotify.

What does it mean? I don’t know. But I’m ready to find out.

Field Trip

Not much going on other than, oh yeah, I sold a piece of art to a local business!

I’ve sold some pieces before, and it’s always an honor when someone chooses to spend their money on your art. What’s exciting about this particular sale, other than it being the hugest piece of my art I’ve ever seen, is that more people are going to see it out in the wild! It’s such a blessing to know that the wonderful folks at Life Restoration and Wellness trusted me enough to be a part of their vibe.

I also wanted to share another photo of The Apple that I am using to create An Apple a (100) Day(s).

This one won’t be part of the actual 100 Day series- I’m trying to keep the final selections super locked up until the actual show at The Bonifas- but I also want to give folks a sense of what I’m working on. This one was taken at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Marquette, with the stained glass as the backdrop. Part of me wishes I had spent a little more time with The Apple in that space, but holy cow I just wish I had been able to spend A LOT more time in that space. That cathedral is amazing.

Lastly, I spent some time at sunset last night with a couple of other Marquette photographers. In February, a group of us started meeting at Second Story Studio, a new gallery in downtown Marquette. This is me with those guys last night:

I haven’t gotten the sunset pictures off of the camera yet, and frankly I didn’t love the few I saw on the back of the camera…but man, it just felt so good to be out in the wild with a couple of other photographers! I’ve spent most of my photography journey with an internally antagonistic view of other photogs. Part of this is inherent to being an upstart outsider. Part of it is the competitive chip on my shoulder that obsessively fuels me. And part of it is the attention economy that social media creates; in that space, if someone else is getting attention for their work it feels like they’re taking attention away from you.

Being involved with this group, and stepping away from Facebook, is allowing me to step out of that antagonistic mindset and to embrace the community that I became a part of when I decided to pick up a camera and use that camera to create art and tell stories. I’m looking forward to many more spontaneous photo sessions with these guys and other people in our group!

Extracurricular

I mainly want to use this section to give a massive shout-out to Carrie, my…oh gosh…um, cousin-in-law, I think(?) and her significant other Brandon. They let me crash at their place for a couple of days after I dropped Lane off at school. They are the BEST hosts. Their casa es su casa, like literally. Brandon is an incredible cook and loves to do so, and I have no doubt that if I had asked him for the shirt off his back, he would have given me his cloak too.

But as incredible of a cook and a host as Brandon is, he might be an even incredibler sports hang. We had SO MUCH FUN watching the conference championship game of the Socon (Southern Conference) between Methodist Wofford and Baptist Furman. From the granny-style free throw shooting Canadian Defensive Tackle from Wofford to the three-point shooting Austrailian center, Bowser, and the Catch-ball-shoot-ball skinny kid from Furman, we just had so much fun diving into a part of the sports universe that we didn’t know existed.

Welp, that ended up being a lot! I hope you have a great week friends 🙂

See you around,

Jason