Homewood Studios, More Images...

Photos By John Hoff

Normally, when I take pictures I am just trying to DOCUMENT things. Yes, I've tried to take artsy photos before. I once had a photo on display in a gallery, when I was quite young and may have gone in a more artsy, less journalistic direction.

But I believe art and expressiveness is inherently a part of our being, especially if we consciously choose to live as artists. So even when taking a mundane blog photo, I am at least TRYING to apply certain aesthetic principals: images with people are inherently more interesting, especially if you get CLOSE, not FAR AWAY. Some pictures look "balanced" and some just look...like a jumbled toybox. Sometimes a person's character shows in their face like a painting, if you can snap off a photo at precisely the right second...

Walking around Homewood, the art seeping into my mental pores, I unconsciously slipped into my artsy photographic mode, and this is some of what I found in my camera afterward. Top to bottom...

Those are tiny clay figures, getting dry, made by some children at an art class. But through my lens, from a certain angle...their small scale appeared lost, the tray and the wall behind appeared part of a surreal landscape.

In the second photo, after explaining the origins of the phrases "upper case" and "lower case" letters, George Roberts tells me (his theory of) why "capital" letters are called that.

In the third photo, the North Minneapolis "WHAT WE WANT" project, brainchild of George Roberts. I'm not going to spoil the surprise by saying more about this project, but it's going to generate positive buzz for our neighborhood. Turns out what North Minneapolis wants...is what ANYBODY might, reasonably, want.

In the last photo, an object in the window of George Roberts' studio.

I highly recommend going to Homewood Studios and just...wandering around.