Noir: Sad otter

This is another photo in series of photos of garden statues I’m working on. Most of these statues are barely more interesting that a stone; in fact, many stones are far more interesting. Chances are good you pass these little statues every day without noticing, or if you do notice, they don’t catch your attention. Saying they’re bland might be too glorious a description for them.

But they caught my eye. One day I just took a photo of the owl statue on our front steps (Yes, we’re guilty of owning and displaying one of these statues ourselves.). I took the photo in black and white, one of the art options on my camera, and realized I had something else. And that something else was interesting.

Art is often transformative. It often takes the ordinary and mundane, things you barely think about on a daily basis, and “repackages” it as something else. Whether is impressionist scenes of sunsets or cubist guitars or pop art soup cans, suddenly the mundane becomes more interesting.

By taking extreme closeups of these garden statues in black and white, I’m transforming them into something different. I think they’re more interesting this way, more alive.

I hope you like this one. In its more natural state, this is a very small statue of an otter, barely longer than the length of your hand. It sits on a window sill, where you’re even less likely to notice it. Perhaps, that’s why it seems so very, very sad.