taking instruction from (a not so) new climber

(note: this guest blog entry was written by my friend matt d. i thought you all deserved a break from my usual dribblings.)

this past weekend, i had the distinct (read: dubious) honor of taking instruction from the purveyor of this blog. to set the scene: a massive, sparsely populated climbing gym in the heart of san francisco’s mission district. the muffled music of a street festival just outside the gym, distracting a bit from the otherwise serene atmosphere. yours truly, clumsily stepping into the wrong spaces of his tangled climbing harness.

having not climbed or bouldered in over a decade—and even then, only every other month or so, on random boy scout treks—i suspected the experience would be vaguely familiar. after a quick refresher from my patient instructor, i whizzed through my belay test, and felt strong enough to tackle any track on the wall.

impressions after my first 5.8: this isn’t as daunting as it looks from the ground.

5.9: what? is this supposed to be challenging? bring it on!

5.10a: oh, wow. now I get it. not so easy when you jump to the next level. technique really does make a difference, apparently.

(a quick aside: am i the only one that thinks the yosemite rating system is nonsensical? maybe it’s the mathematician in me, but shouldn’t a difficulty scale be somewhat uniform? if a 5.9 is 10 times harder than a 5.8, shouldn’t a 5.12 be 10 times harder than a 5.11? even the dewey decimal system seems straightforward by comparison.)

back to a 5.9: rounded out my day as a new climber with a solid, speedy climb in my skill range. endorphines running high after a successfully traversed track.

the experience left a great taste in my mouth…or perhaps the more accurate cliché would be: ‘a tingling sensation in my fingers’. actually, that’s literally how my hands felt after 3+ hours. at the risk of sounding like a drinker of the kool-aid, this is a pastime that everyone should try at least once. going vertical can be quite a rush! and if you’re a seasoned veteran and taking a newbie to the gym with you, practice patience and give vague helper hints—your new climber companion will thank you. who knows, you might even gain a long-term climbing buddy out of the episode.

one last thing. the keeper of this diary isn’t so new to climbing anymore.

sfmoma elevates climbing art

on monday i had the awesome opportunity to visit san francisco's museum of modern art. what i found there left me inspired.

as a photographer who aspires to create strong climbing-influenced art i often struggle with the results of my efforts. i've wondered: is it possible to make images that rise above the specificity of the athletic climbing experience?

an installation and a painting series at the sfmoma answered my question.

as you round the third floor staircase at the sfmoma you encounter a 6' tall triptych by german painter antje majewski. this photorealistic painting series, entitled bergsteiger (the mountain climbers), depicts a group of rock climbers from poland.

from the artist's website:

"the size and the thematic recall the "manly heroism" of both nazi and communist paintings, but my mountain climbers are very normal people, nice guys with soft beards whose nationality isn't obvious. they could be polish, german or czech. their mountain climbing in the peculiar soft rock formations of the stolowe mountains isn't heroic at all; no new race or state is built, nothing more is at stake then a leisurely afternoon.


i tried find a way around the history of how "naturalistic" painting had been used by both national socialist and communist regimes, and i found that it can be done very well just in the way a deeply compromised scene like that of men struggling against the mountains is painted."


the other piece of climbing-inspired art that i came across at the sfmoma sits high inside the building's atrium. this installation/performance project was created by matthew barney (random aside - barney is romantically entangled with bjork) and is part of the artist's drawing restraint project. what you see in the atrium is a series of pencil sketches and words that barney created while suspended in space with a climbing rope, a series of carabiners and slings.

these two projects show us that inspiration for art can be found anywhere. and that climbing, with its large palette of physical, thematic, and aesthetic possibility, makes for some great creative inspiration.