East/West/1980 website

East/West/1980 was designed at the same time as the Color Years, and like that site, it was the culmination of all I had learned in my first semester of web design studies. I used Adobe Dreamweaver and hand coding in HTML5 and CSS to create the site.

My original photography from travel in West Germany and the GDR are the inspiration for the design elements and the featured items.

From Mark Rothko, to the sea and back

I took this photo at a fish ladder in Oregon many years ago. To find out what a fish ladder is, go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_ladder

Looking at this fish ladder from the observation area as I did, it resembled a painting by my favorite mid-century artist, Mark Rothko. You can see more of his work here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rothko

It turns out that after his family emigrated from Russia, Rothko spent a good part of his life in Portland, Oregon. But I think that is just a coincidence.

A year or two after I photographed the fish ladder, I designed a set for Ariel Dorfman’s “Death and the Maiden” at San Diego Repertory Co. I needed an iconic image to represent the sea, which is like an ever-present character lurking, aurally, in the background of the narrative. I designed a backdrop based on a painting by Mark Rothko, which you can see in the picture below.

Tonight, I stumbled across both the photo of the fish ladder and the production shot from “Death and the Maiden.” Tonight, for the first time, I realized there might be a connection between the two images and the life and death stuggles portrayed within…..