My mom and I did the 25 cent tour of the Walker Evans show at Stanford before moving on to bigger and better things: a brownie and dirty chips at the Cantor snack bar, plus a Blueberry Odwalla.
I ran into the bookstore to buy the famous James Agee Walker Evans collaboration “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men“. Walker Evans 1903 to 1975 his dates. The show went well beyond the Poloroids, of course.
It was late in the day so the museum began covering the Poloroids.
The tight edits reminded me of when Terry and I visited Altoon Sultan’s studio in Vermont. I had been storing in my stupid cell phone this photo of the window in Altoon’s atelier. Terry studied figure with Altoon at SJSU a few years prior. We called Altoon from a classroom at Baker Library during my reunion. There was a portrait of the Dartmouth chemistry professor who was poisoned during her work with toxics.
Altoon’s recent work — including one that Terry came home with — includes a series of realistic closeups of things especially mechanical ones that she can see on or near her New England hilltop; we actually thought of Wyeth; definitely more Wyeth than Walker Evans, to most people. Plastic Alto is not most people, everhow.
Happy new year’s and Year of the Dragon to Altoon Sultan.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 
dirty chips are kettle chips, i mean
Terry Acebo Davis studied figure painting, with Altoon Sultan, in the 1990s.
Karen Wetterhahn is the Dartmouth professor who died, in 1997, of mercury poisoning. She was 48.
