An Inability to Shake the Feeling of Running the Wrong Way into the Unknown by Colin Blakely

B-b-b-brisk Wednesday greetings collector friends. NYC turned into an icebox yesterday, but I've been warming myself with summertime memories and planning for the one to come—dreaming of long days at the beach, meandering bike rides and backyard barbeques. Colin Blakely inspires a different kind of warm and fuzzy nostalgia, one for a place far from the shores I'm daydreaming of, nestled deep in the heartland, Somewhere in Middle America. We're ever so pleased to debut his fourth (!) edition from that series here today, An Inability to Shake the Feeling of Running the Wrong Way into the Unknown.

I'm a city girl born and bred and don't imagine that I'll ever end up living anywhere that isn't close to the ocean. My identity is much more strongly tied to being a New Yorker than it is to being an American, but my life is very much rooted in an ethos of opportunity and idealism that I consider to be distinctly American. Alas, it's a version of this country that feels very far afield of the one we live in right now, and Colin's neighborhood evokes what I imagine it was and might still be in some small corners. This brings me back to the Carson McCullers quote I referenced when introducing Colin's last edition:

It is a curious emotion, this certain homesickness I have in mind. With Americans, it is a national trait, as native to us as the roller-coaster or the jukebox. It is no simple longing for the home town or country of our birth. The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known. - Carson McCullers

Before I go, a couple things you shouldn't miss:

- Colin's previous (nearly sold-out) 20x200 editions: The Seeming Impenetrability of the Space Between, Recollection of the Battles Fought Maintaining the Home Front and The Emptiness Left by a Denial of the Use for which it was Intended.

- Colin was a Winter 2007 Hot Shot, winning us over with his work way back then.

- Hot on the heels of those accolades, Colin was a 2008 Aperture Portfolio Prize Runner-Up.

- Also with Aperture, he's put together a gorgeous, very limited edition of 25 prints of Effigy of the Unmarked but Persistent Passing of Time, 2007, from the series Somewhere in Middle America.

- If you're in Texas, catch Colin's work in person at FotoFest Headquarters in the three-person exhibition A Matter of Wit. The show is on view in Houston now through February 25th.