Journal » Michael Ast

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Frames / Los Angeles, January, 2020

February 16th, 2020

Frames / Los Angeles © Michael Ast, 2020

By Michael Ast | Tagged California, January rampage, LA, Los Angeles, Michael Ast | Comments Off

Idleness Will Kill Me in the End

July 15th, 2019

Back from Dixie . . . 1,000 miles and more of back road volition, and nearly as many concerted photographs made. Too many days idle in the safe harbor of home, suburbia, white-washed, where privileged politicking rattles like a relentless paradiddle, from a population’s pulpit that never steps into other’s rings . . . or, maybe just to get away from myself?

Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama. Idleness will kill me in the end.

Editing commence.

Michael Ast, backroads, road trip, roadtrip, Dixie, the South, West Virginia, bwphotography, black and white photography, WV, bridgeport, Allegheney Mountains, rural, mason-dixon

near Bridgeport, West Virginia © Michael Ast, 2019

By Michael Ast | Tagged Allegheny Mountains, back roads, Dixie, road trip, West Virginia | Comments Off

Digital Negative / Silver Gelatin Print, Michael Ast (June, 2019)

June 27th, 2019

silver gelatin print, digital negative, print, fiber base paper, darkroom, michael ast, Ilford Warm tone, Ilford, dektol, nature, printing, analo, analog photography, alternative process, alternative photography

Threshold / Walking (silver gelatin print from digital negative) © Michael Ast, 2019

By Michael Ast | Tagged alternative photography, Analog Photography, digital negative, Michael Ast, silver gelatin print | Comments Off

Self Portrait / Composite (April, 2019)

April 22nd, 2019

Recently featured in exhibition at Hicks Art Gallery, Newtown, Pennsylvania (May 3 – May 14, 2019)

Michael Ast, composite, self portrait, photographer

Self Portrait © Michael Ast, 2019 (Archival Pigment Print)

By Michael Ast | Tagged composite, Michael Ast, self portrait | Comments Off

Equinox

April 10th, 2019

Equinox Arrived.

I’ve been loitering a lot in random woods, toeing at the underbrush, seldom stirred enough to make a photograph.

The blacks have to make jazz with the whites. Things are still a bit gray inside.

Michael Ast, threshold, equinox, walking, photographing

By Michael Ast | Tagged Equinox, Michael Ast | Comments Off

Self Portrait / Composite Sketch (April, 2019)

April 4th, 2019

composite, layers, selfportrait, self portrait, self-portrait, Michael Ast, shadow, silouhette, psyche, psychology

By Michael Ast | Tagged composite, Michael Ast, self portrait | Comments Off

Early Melancholy (Sitting on a Rock in the Schuykill)

August 26th, 2018

Afternoon, feet and sandals submerged in the Schuykill. The temperature feels so good. A reckoning, refreshing. I didn’t walk barefoot enough this year. Reading Mary Oliver reconcile anxiety and night tremors, awaiting the morning redbird outside her window. Rum on my tongue. Orange anodized flask, wedged between rocks and river bottom. Revelry on the shore beneath the foot bridge. Betzwood. Somewhere, always, a dog is fetching a stick. Let that be consolation for borrow, anytime. A dog is jumping in the river here. Black and wet, happy as heck, his owners taking cell phone pics. Three Mexican girls are giggling and wading where the creek greets this old river. Water trickle. Mud odor after the heavy rains of last week. Mary speaks of a comforting colt, its warm body, and trillium. So beautiful. Summer afternoon. This Valley Forge. August winding down. Melancholy. Another sip of rum. The sun in and out of clouds. Happy I found this half sunken stone to sit upon. To sulk, a smile, inside out.

By Michael Ast | Tagged Melancholy, Schuykill River | Comments Off

Daniel Shea, 43 – 35 10th Street

May 7th, 2018

Making room on the top shelf!

Daniel Shea’s 43 – 35 10th Street.

This is a massive brick of exciting imagery. Everything from the images, to the design, to the conflated shifts and changes of pairings, mood and materials is nothing shy of aesthetic celebration. Some artists just nail it everytime. Shea’s work is a courageous, elated blend of artistic license and stern visual gaze at our hand hewn social landscape. It’s hats off to the man-made, while at the same time conjuring up a layered lament. The journey we’re given and left bedazzled to decipher is entrenched in the mire and magnitude of Shea’s rapidly modernized neighborhood of Long Island City. Unlike so much urban-based work, we’re not abandoned, simply left stranded in some ironically delivered, witty claustrophobic mayhem. Instead, we bounce and swirl in the frenetic psychology of an artist hyped up on surface, texture, color, sound and tattered cacophony. This adventure dwells far outside the urbane at times, in the ethereal workings of the pliable mind. Somehow, Shea manages to calm the adrenaline and present it in such delicious form.

Published by Kodoji Press, 2018 (signed)

Daniel Shea, 43–35 10TH STREET, photobook, kodoji press