Roads connect us to family and friends, enable commerce, and open up new vistas. In art they are often the pathway for exploration of the wider world in a manner that provokes introspection in the traveler. These photos show the modern US highway system underneath the clouds, appropriate since roads chart a course towards the horizon where land meets sky and the unknown awaits. I took them recently, the first standing at the side of an entrance ramp to the highway and the second out the window while driving. Follow the road below the fold for more...

Journeying out on the roads to see the country and meet people is a time-honored tradition. There are many works of literature centered around pilgrimages (Canterbury Tales ) or quests (Don Quixote ) that teach the seekers something about themselves as they learn about their surroundings. As T.S. Eliot famously put it in Little Gidding : We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time. With widespread access to the internet, cheap digital cameras, and blogging tools, anyone can create their own record of their travels. One of the early web-based books in this style is Travels with Samantha by Philip Greenspun.

As a change of pace we'll look at some modern art, this time from Minnesota painter Leonid Shchigel, whose work evokes the surrealism of Dali. From this MPR piece: "Shchigel is completely self-taught. He also learned how to create digital art and became familiar with the Internet while working security. He doesn't have a fine arts degree, nor a need for one."

Probably the most well-known road-related poem is The Road Not Taken , by Robert Frost. On of my personal favorite poems having to do with the theme of roads and journeys comes from Tolkien and appears in various forms throughout the Lord of the Rings series. Here the roads seem to share similarities with waterways, coming together to form larger roads like streams flowing into rivers.

"Road to Nowhere" by Leonid Shchigel; see here for more.

The Road Goes Ever On The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.

For music, we turn to two legends of rock, Bob Seger with "Turn the Page" (Metallica cover here ) and Bruce Springsteen with "Thunder Road" performed live in 1975.

What's your favorite road-related art?

Previous installments in the weekend art series:
Feb 24: Madonna of the Yarnwinder and art theft
Mar 01: Pros and cons of digital cameras
Mar 08: Barber's Adagio and interpreting classical music
Mar 15: Romeo and Juliet re-imagined
Mar 22: None (Easter)
Mar 29: Paul Weller, one of the best Brit rockers
Apr 05: Waves in paint, verse, and song
Apr 13: Finlandia
Apr 20: Flash fiction