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artny.com
ERB
@artny.com
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𝙾𝚋𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚎𝚛 | 𝙷𝚞𝚍𝚜𝚘𝚗 𝚅𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚢 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙽𝚈𝙲

𝙰𝚕𝚕 𝚆𝚘𝚛𝚔𝚜 © 𝙴𝚁𝙱
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artny.com
I was interested the graphic simplicity of this scene.
- Queens, NY

I hate looking at hashtags, but they may be a necessary evil here on BlueSky.

#NewTopographics
#UrbanVernacular
#StreetGeometry
#UrbanStillLife
#FoundComposition
#DocumentaryPhotography
#NYC
#Queens
A tall, gray, modernist building rises against a clear blue sky. Its facade is flat and uniform, with narrow vertical lines and small balconies repeating along the right edge. The shadow of its own mass forms a sharp diagonal across a lower roofline. In the foreground, a vivid blue stucco wall takes up most of the frame, crossed by a single utility cable and topped by a white metal roof trim speckled with rust. The blue wall creates a strong geometric wedge that intersects the gray tower, turning the scene into an arrangement of planes and shadows. The overall mood is quiet, minimal, and architectural, built from simple shapes, texture, and winter light.
December 3, 2025 at 3:29 AM
artny.com
I’m stacking shapes again…

NYC
A clear blue sky frames a blocky brick building with a rooftop stair tower and metal fire escape. Sun-bleached streaks run down the brick facade. In front of it, a bright orange storefront sign reads MingBo Light in bold yellow letters with a black outline, along with the address 131–55 Sanford Ave. A U Haul truck is parked close enough that its roof nearly touches the bottom of the sign. The truck’s silver top and red band add another graphic layer, creating a stacked composition of rectangles and typography. The overall effect is a clean, urban scene built from color blocks, signage, and sharp winter light.
December 2, 2025 at 6:28 PM
artny.com
I feel like I stayed in this hotel 20 or so years ago. I can’t remember.

Flushing, Queens, New York
A hotel sign with Chinese characters rises against a clear blue sky, seen through the blurred links of a chain-link fence. A large white sign in the foreground shows the word Trespassing in bold red letters. The frame splits the scene into layers: warning, barrier, and the distant building. The result feels controlled and observational, with a tension between access and exclusion.
December 1, 2025 at 3:20 AM
artny.com
Two more jets on approach to LaGuardia’s runway 31. I used the trap technique here. I composed the scene and then hoped the planes would enter the frame. Luckily they were coming in at 60 second intervals so I had lots of chances to get the images I wanted.

Flushing, Queens, NYC
A commercial jet passes low overhead against a deep blue sky, captured from street level. The plane is centered high in the frame, its underside lit by the sun as it banks slightly. Below it stands a tall modern apartment tower made of pale gray stone and glass, its facade a grid of narrow vertical window panels. Strong morning or afternoon light casts dark angular shadows across the building’s lower floors. On the right edge of the frame, out of focus, is a metal utility pole with worn tape and a faded red sticker, adding a sense of street-level immediacy. The image conveys urban density and the nearness of the flight path. A jet descends overhead against a clear blue sky, viewed from street level. Its landing gear is down and its body tilts slightly as it approaches. Below it, a wide building under construction fills most of the frame. The structure is wrapped in dense red and blue scaffolding that forms a repeating grid. In the foreground, tall wooden utility poles stand close together, threaded with a tangle of cables that cut across the scene in many directions. The mix of wires, poles, scaffolding, and the low-flying plane creates a layered view of urban infrastructure and motion.
December 1, 2025 at 1:40 AM
artny.com
I was going for compressed visual density here.

Flushing, Queens, NYC
A small storefront on a sunlit corner houses a carpet and blinds shop, its aging white facade streaked with grime. Korean and Chinese lettering runs across the upper sign. A dark gray BMW SUV is parked at the curb. In the foreground, a green and white rental scooter rests on the sidewalk. Several metal poles and street signs cut through the frame, including a one way sign, a no standing sign, and a stop sign at the left edge. The scene feels ordinary and a little worn, with sharp midday light and strong shadows.
December 1, 2025 at 1:32 AM
artny.com
I watched jets approach LaGuardia on Sunday, one every minute. Most followed the same path but drifted a bit left or right. For a moment, this one looked as if it were trailing smoke from a missile strike. The cameras and wires seem to balance out the composition.

Flushing, Queens, New York
A jet approaches from the upper right of the frame, angled downward as it descends toward the runway. The sky is a clear deep blue, giving the scene a sharp, open backdrop. On the left, a tall building under construction rises in layered floors, its scaffolding a thin grid of orange and blue lines that catch the light. In the lower foreground, the corner of a bright blue wall and a section of black tile form a bold geometric block. Wires cross the image diagonally, creating tension between the clean sky and the dense city forms. A bare tree branch enters from the top, delicate and irregular, contrasting with the straight lines below. The composition feels like a moment suspended between movement and structure, the airplane threading through an urban lattice.
December 1, 2025 at 1:19 AM
artny.com
The absence of a subject is the subject.

Keelung, Taiwan - 2025
A dense urban scene made of stacked rooftops and weathered walls. The buildings are close together and vary in color and age. Surfaces show stains, rust, peeling paint, and mildew. Small green awnings jut out from windows fitted with metal security grilles. A long metal ladder leans from the roof of a cream colored building, rising into open air. Electrical wires cross the frame in loose arcs. The palette is muted with soft pink, beige, gray, and green, giving the scene a quiet, slightly worn atmosphere.
November 26, 2025 at 4:08 AM
artny.com
My attempt at a New Yorker style cartoon.
A black and white cartoon shows an artist standing in front of an audience at what looks like a gallery talk. He holds a framed photograph of a vase with small flowers. Several nearly identical drawings lean against the wall behind him, suggesting he has made many versions of the same subject. The artist looks irritated, eyebrows low, shoulders slightly hunched. His camera hangs from his shoulder. A raised hand from the audience appears in the foreground, as if someone has just asked a question that annoyed him. Above the scene, written in loose handwritten lettering, is the line: No, it’s not AI, smartass. The tone is defensive and exasperated, implying someone questioned whether his work was algorithmically generated instead of a real photograph.
November 26, 2025 at 4:03 AM
artny.com
Luna rising - February 10, 2025
The scene shows a pale sky filling most of the frame. Near the bottom is a gently sloping roof covered in snow or frost. A single narrow vent pipe rises from the roof. The full moon sits directly above the pipe, almost like a glowing sphere resting on its tip. The tones are cool and muted, giving a sense of stillness and early morning or dusk. The composition creates a simple alignment between the man-made form and the moon, turning the scene into a small visual poem about placement, calm, and scale.
November 24, 2025 at 9:34 PM
artny.com
United Nations Secretariat Building, Manhattan, New York
A tall pale rectangular tower rises against a clear blue sky. It sits directly behind a black construction screen that is stretched across a chain link fence. The screen is torn down the center in a long vertical zigzag, exposing glimpses of wood and metal underneath. The tear aligns with the tower so the bright structure appears framed by the dark fabric, creating a strong contrast between smooth geometric form above and the rough broken barrier below. The tower is the United Nations Building in Manhattan.
November 24, 2025 at 3:18 PM
artny.com
Still life with Asian lilies, 2024
A clear vase with a few inches of water and white stones holds a small bouquet of lilies. The upper blooms are golden yellow and mostly unopened. The lower blooms are deep red and fully open, catching warm side light. The light creates strong rectangular window shapes on the wall and a crisp shadow of the flowers. A wooden table edge and a dark chair anchor the lower left. The scene feels quiet, late afternoon, and softly introspective.
November 23, 2025 at 10:31 PM
artny.com
November 23, 2025 at 2:29 AM
artny.com
Still Life at Denny’s - 2023
A close view of a breakfast plate after the meal. The white plate is smeared with leftover egg yolk that has pooled into glossy streaks. A small scrap of toasted bread sits near the center right, its torn edge showing a recent bite. A fork rests near the top with traces of egg clinging between the tines. A dull metal knife lies along the left side. The scene is quiet and ordinary, focused on what remains rather than the meal itself. The textures of grease, crumbs, and scratched metal give it a grounded, everyday character.
November 22, 2025 at 3:34 PM
artny.com
Little Citizen

Digital collage - 2023
This collage uses a vintage photograph as its base. A young boy sits on top of a large old cannon that is perched on a hilltop overlooking a winding river far below. He wears dark pants and a patterned sweater. His face is scrunched with concentration as he points his fingers forward in the shape of a pretend gun, mimicking the cannon beneath him. Balanced on the mouth of the cannon is a tiny cut-out figure of a woman in an orange dress. She is posed mid-step, almost dancing, as if unaware that she is standing at the center of a child’s imaginary line of fire. Her scale is impossibly small in relation to the boy and the cannon, which creates a surreal tension. In the upper right corner, the phrase A LITTLE CITIZEN appears in bold black letters on a white rectangle. It frames the scene as a commentary on childhood, imagination, and the social training of aggression or power. The overall effect is unsettling but quiet. The playful pose of the boy contrasts sharply with the literal cannon and the vulnerable tiny woman. It suggests a miniature lesson in authority, danger, or the shaping of behavior in youth.
November 21, 2025 at 1:52 AM
artny.com
Men are different

Digital collage - 2022
November 21, 2025 at 1:40 AM
artny.com
I’m seeing more and more eagles returning to the Hudson Valley.
A framed black and white photograph hangs against the trunk of a tree in a flooded winter forest. The frame is slightly tilted, held in place by a simple loop of twine. The print shows a Chrysler Building eagle gargoyle high above New York City with steam or smoke rising from rooftops below. The urban scene feels cold and industrial. The surrounding forest is quiet and dim. Bare trees stand in dark water that reflects their branches. The ground vegetation is sparse, with only a few patches of pale grass rising above the surface. The bark of the tree holding the frame is sharply textured and catches a bit of soft light. The contrast between the staged urban image and the natural, almost swampy woodland creates a dislocation. It feels like an intervention in the landscape: an object from another world inserted into a still and muted place. The photograph becomes an artifact pinned to nature, suggesting memory, intrusion, or a dialogue between human-made ambition and a quiet, indifferent environment.
November 20, 2025 at 1:12 AM
artny.com
Soldiers
Newburgh, New York
Cyanotype - 2021
The photograph shows a hand holding a cyanotype print. The print depicts a tight group of soldiers in uniform, all facing forward and saluting. Their faces are serious and stylized, almost like carved figures or mannequins rather than living people. The cyanotype process gives everything a deep blue tone with white highlights, creating high contrast and a slightly ghostly look. The central figure is a soldier saluting with his right hand, his expression stern. Two other soldiers flank him at close distance, also saluting. Behind them is a dense cluster of additional uniformed figures, their hats and raised hands overlapping so closely that their bodies merge into a pattern of shapes and shadows. The cyanotype print has irregular dark edges, brush marks, and a border around the image, emphasizing its handmade quality. The background of the larger scene is an outdoor setting, out of focus, with bare trees and muted light. The overall impression is of a repeated or massed image of military figures, unified in gesture and tone, rendered in a historic photographic process that adds an aged and somewhat haunting quality.
November 19, 2025 at 4:13 PM
artny.com
Happy Wednesday
A tabletop still life arranged with a sense of careful balance. A camera sits at the upper left, viewed from the back. Its body is dark and angular. The lens rests on a rich red hardcover book that anchors the scene. To the right of the book stands a small decorative bird made of painted metal. Its body is pale and textured, and its head is capped with a cluster of pink dried flowers like a tiny crown. Behind it is a large round clock with a white face and black Roman numerals. Only part of the clock is visible but the hands point roughly to the upper right. In the lower left sits a carved wooden frog with a ridged back. A short stick rests in its mouth, the tool used to create a raspy croaking sound when rubbed along the ridges. The objects differ in material wood metal glass paper but they sit closely together. The light is warm and soft. The arrangement creates a quiet mix of time memory craft and observation.
November 19, 2025 at 12:59 PM
artny.com
I made a still life, or maybe an in camera collage, using a book on still lifes.

08:59, 11/18/25
A page from an art book lies open, showing a black and white photograph of a smooth spherical object lit from the side. The printed sphere casts a bold oval shadow, and the page curves gently upward, creating a strong diagonal of light and dark tones. Resting on the right edge of the book is a real egg. It is warm reddish brown and lit by a strong beam of sunlight. That light creates a bright highlight on its shell and a soft shadow on the page beneath it. The real egg overlaps the printed sphere so that the two forms visually rhyme. The entire scene is built from simple shapes. The curved page forms arcs. The printed shadow creates a dark wedge. The egg adds another rounded form. The composition plays with illusion: a flat printed sphere and a real egg appear side by side, confusing depth and flattening space.
November 18, 2025 at 3:09 PM
artny.com
Maspeth, Queens.
I’m nearing the limits of abstraction.
A tall metal fence dominates the foreground. Its vertical bars are dark and close together, creating a strong grid that partially obscures what lies behind it. Through the gaps, an old corrugated-metal warehouse comes into view. The siding is deeply rusted, streaked with reddish brown and faded white, giving the building a weathered and abandoned look. Several windows are visible. Some are broken or missing panes, others are clouded and grimy. A cluster of ivy climbs upward between two windows, adding a small patch of green against the rust. Below the building, metal crowd-control barricades sit scattered across the pavement, empty and unused. Light falls softly across the scene, emphasizing texture: the rough rust, the worn paint, the scratches on the fence. The overall feeling is confinement and decay, as if looking into a forgotten industrial yard through a barrier that keeps everything at a distance. The result is a photograph where the literal subject exists, but the dominant experience comes from shape, line, and repetition. The physical space turns into a series of stacked patterns, creating an abstracted view of an ordinary industrial yard.
November 17, 2025 at 3:46 PM
artny.com
Homes in Woodside, and an industrial facility in Maspeth.
This photograph shows the front of a brick residential building with a layered, slightly chaotic arrangement of stair rails, columns, and balconies. White metal railings with decorative diamond patterns zigzag upward across the frame, creating a strong sense of lines and angles. Two white columns support a small porch roof at the entrance. Above it, two satellite dishes are mounted on the brick wall, surrounded by tangled black wires. The doorway at the center has a metal security gate with a geometric pattern. Steps lead up to it, and potted flowers sit on the right side near the railing. The overall color palette feels muted, with soft browns, whites, and grays, giving the scene a subdued, almost atmospheric mood. The composition emphasizes intersecting lines and repeating shapes throughout the structure. A tall corrugated metal gate fills most of the frame. It is weathered, streaked with rust along its edges, and tagged with looping black graffiti near the center. Above the gate, sheets of brown and blue roofing overlap in a haphazard way, some bent or broken, giving the structure a patched and makeshift look. A brick wall painted gray runs along the left side, while on the right, more corrugated metal panels continue upward. A small security camera is mounted high on the right, pointing toward the scene. At ground level, the concrete is cracked and uneven, with a small weed pushing through. The overall atmosphere feels worn, improvised, and slightly tense.
November 17, 2025 at 3:11 PM
artny.com
I walked from Williamsburg in Brooklyn to Woodside in Queens yesterday. This photograph I made in Woodside represents both the beginning and the end of my journey.
This photograph shows a small stone statue of a cherub standing in a shallow birdbath. The cherub faces right, slightly turned toward the viewer, wrapped in a cloth that covers part of its body. Its expression looks calm and faintly amused. Behind it, farther up the sidewalk, there is a very large human skeleton decoration positioned as if towering over the scene. The skeleton leans forward with long arms outstretched. Trees without leaves and the fronts of row houses line the background, creating a dense, urban setting. The image is in soft monochrome, giving it an aged, atmospheric feel. The image is a dark themed map showing a walking route. A thick orange line traces a long, winding path starting in Williamsburg at the lower left and moving northeast through East Williamsburg and into Queens. It continues through various neighborhood grids, then turns north and ends in Woodside, marked with a red dot. Neighborhood names like Greenpoint, Long Island City, Sunnyside, and Woodside appear faintly across the map. Streets form a tight web of light lines against the dark background. The top shows “6.90 MI Outdoor Walk,” and the start point is shown with a small green circle.
November 16, 2025 at 12:49 PM
artny.com
Antique store near Newburgh, New York
The image shows a close view of a sculpted figure, photographed from slightly below. The figure appears to be a stylized warrior or mythic character with a strong jaw, high cheekbones, and carved markings on the cheek. The head is turned to the left in a calm, resolute expression. The hair is arranged in thick, textured locks or featherlike shapes that gather at the back of the head. The sculpture has a smooth yet worn metallic or stone surface, catching light along the forehead, nose, and chin. Behind the figure is a dark ceiling with bright grid lines of fluorescent panels. These lines form diagonals due to the camera angle, creating a geometric backdrop that contrasts with the organic form of the sculpture. The lighting is soft and dramatic, emphasizing contours and giving the scene a quiet, contemplative tone.
November 14, 2025 at 11:33 AM
artny.com
Invasive Japanese barberry near the Taconic State Parkway in New York’s Hudson Valley.

𝘋𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘬 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩, 𝘢 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘴.
𝘕𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘣𝘺, 𝘢 𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮 𝘰𝘧 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘴.

~ ERB
The photograph shows a dense woodland in late autumn or early winter. The trees are tall and leafless, their bare branches weaving an intricate pattern against a pale, overcast sky. Several trunks lean and cross each other, forming angular shapes that look almost architectural—some broken limbs are lodged between trees, as if propped deliberately. The forest floor is covered in a vivid blanket of reddish-orange shrubs—the invasive Japanese barberry. Their low, tangled growth contrasts sharply with the vertical austerity of the trees. The color brings warmth to an otherwise subdued, gray-brown landscape, suggesting a quiet tension between natural decay and persistent life. The atmosphere feels still, almost suspended, with a sense of muted complexity in the geometry of fallen wood and the rhythmic spacing of trunks fading into the distance.
November 12, 2025 at 2:34 PM
artny.com
Walking with an open mind in Boston
The photograph shows a layered urban scene with strong geometric repetition and a sense of separation between the viewer and the subject. In the foreground, a gray metal railing fills most of the lower half of the frame. The bars are thick, industrial, and weathered, with patches of paint worn away, giving them a matte, slightly corroded look. Through the gaps between these bars, part of a street and greenery are visible below. Beyond the railing, a multilevel parking structure dominates the middle and upper portions of the image. Its facade is covered in alternating vertical slats in orange and yellow, creating a rhythmic pattern of color and shadow. The structure’s horizontal layers echo the railing’s bars, reinforcing the image’s grid-like feel. Behind it, modern glass buildings rise, tinted blue and white, completing the city backdrop. The overall tone is cool and muted, with the orange facade adding a striking contrast against the gray metal and glass. The composition feels controlled and architectural, emphasizing form and repetition over activity or human presence.
November 12, 2025 at 1:42 PM