jakecolman – The Waiting Room Project

Sherman Gallery

Waiting_select_230 — Sherman Gallery, Marina del Rey. November 2014

Sherman’s is our local framing shop. We have been getting art framed there for more than 20 years. As Jake progressed through his art education, we had a number of his early works framed there, through his photographic career, right up to the last picture he created a few months before his death.

Jake_Art_246_C — Pastel. ©2016, Jake Colman.

I took this photo while we waited for our guy, Andy to help us with that last piece of Jake’s, a beautiful pastel he made while he was in Palm Springs. It is a large work, and we floated it inside a magnificent black Italian wood frame, like in a shadow box. As usual, Sherman’s did a spectacular job matching the texture of the matte inside and perfectly displaying this wonderful picture.

Our most recent trip was to get a portrait of Jake framed. Taken by my Mom’s friend Penny years ago, it is a fabulous picture of Jake with his camera at my Dad’s studio. Look at it closely; it perfectly captures who Jake was, his authentic self. We found a gorgeous hand-made Italian frame and they did a masterful job with the matting and framing. It hangs in our hallway next to Jake’s last pastel.

PennyJake copy — Jake Colman. Photograph ©2016, Penny Wolin, all rights reserved.

Roberta’s House

Waiting for Jake

Waiting_select_136 — Roberta’s House, Palm Springs. December 2013

This is in a little courtyard outside Jake’s apartment in Palm Springs. Not exactly a waiting area per se, I don’t remember seeing anyone waiting here, but we were waiting for Jake to join us. I liked the slight bleakness of the image slightly softened by the wall hanging. Not too much to say other than this was during our last trip to visit him. During our visits we usually took him shopping for groceries, out to lunch and dinner, and on this occasion for the haircut and some new shoes. He always loved new shoes. One of the very first sentences he ever spoke as a baby was “Lucky boy got new shoes at shoe store.” The last words I ever said to him, via text, were Shabbat Shalom.

Stanley Kubrick at LACMA

Culture, People Waiting

Waiting_select_071 — LACMA, Los Angeles. June 2013

Jake, Terry, and I want to the L.A. County Museum of Art one fine June day to see the Stanley Kubrick exhibit. We were sitting at one of the cafe tables having coffee waiting for our alloted time when I snapped this photo. The exhibit was fabulous. Memorabilia, equipment, scripts, letters, props, production sketches, stills, and notes from every film he directed, some projects that never came to fruition, and photos from the beginning of his career as a young photographer for Life magazine. We spent an engaging couple of hours exploring the intricacies of his thought process and visual style. I learned about a his early films, read letters he wrote to some self-righteous clergymen about Lolita, saw a wonderful miniature model of the War Room from Dr. Strangelove, special lenses he used, and a wealth of other fascinating exhibits.

I took this photo of Jake through one of the lenses Kubrick used during the filming of LensJake 2001: A Space Odyssey, that ended up on Jake’s Facebook page as his profile picture. It is still there as his page has been “memorialized” by FB which means existing friends can still post to it – no new people can be added – and presumably will be up for as long as Facebook exists. His friends post messages to him from time to time and I occasionally put up things I think he would have enjoyed. Somehow it helps keep his spirit alive. For whatever reasons, I haven’t been back to LACMA since that day.