Month: April 2012

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Exaggerated Gesture

3 white deer on Seneca Army base in New York
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When we were in Spain years ago we did a bit of the famous Camino de Santiago, a religious pilgramage across the top part of of the country. We did our stretch in a rented car, passing hundreds of people who were doing it the old fashioned way on foot. I felt the same guilty twinge this weekend when we drove down the east side of Seneca Lake and then back up the western side. The Seneca7 relay race was the same day so we passed runners, each from a group of 7, as they ran the 77.7 circumference of the lake in the same direction as us.

The exaggerated gestures of German Expressionism are some of the most exciting art of all time so I planned to celebrate my birthday surrounded by works from the “Age of Discontent” at the Johnson Museum on Cornell’s campus. Max Beckmann, Erich Heckel, Ernst Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff are all there but Beckmann steals the show here with his intense, jam-packed compositions of people at home, in concert halls, taverns, strip clubs and opium dens. And how about this chimney sweep?

An added bonus at the Johnson is the “Witness: 20th-Century Photographic Images from the Collection of Gary and Ellen Davis” show with Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and a disturbing “Bravo 20” photo of a bomb crater by Richard Misrach. Bravo 20 was the name the U.S. Navy gave their illegal bombing exercises in the American west on a site the Native Americans called the “Source of Creation.” Coming back from Ithaca you pass 9,500-acres of land between Seneca and Cayuga lakes, the old “Seneca Ordnance Depot”, that is still fenced in and rather imposing except for the beautiful white deer and I couldn’t help but think of Misrach’s photo.

The Finger Lakes region is gods’ country, a wild mix of Indian reservations, Mennonite communities, mobil homes, luxurious second homes ringing the lakes and hundreds of vineyards catering to the stretch limo hoards. We whizzed by a sign mounted on someone’s mailbox that read “God’s Judgement Will Come” and then passed under a giant electronic sign on the NYS thruway that read, ” No Texting While Driving.” Peggi said, “Didn’t New York State just text us?”

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How Does It Feel To Feel?

Side of yellow wooden building on Goodman Street in Rochester, New York
Side of yellow wooden building on Goodman Street in Rochester, New York

Vinyl does sound better even when it’s an mp3 file made from a 45 from 1967 and especially when the song is by The Creation.

In my reading the newest release from MX-80’s Bruce Anderson and Rich Stim, the heroic “Bar Stool Walker” nods a few times to Rochester’s Margaret Explosion. The music is lyric free, there are songs called “Happy Hour“, a video shot on the Golden Gate Bridge and “Tall Boy” and they have a clumsy drummer.

Bar Stool Walker is a multilayered project and I can’t say for sure that this is the case but we haven’t found any sax in there yet. Rich Stim taught Peggi to play sax. Her first song was “Hava Nagila.”

Rich Stim wrote a popular Personal Effects song, “So Hard.”

Many of the songs on Bar Stool Walker are already fully realized videos but it looks like we will have to wait a bit for the luscious Beach Boy cover “The Warmth of the Sun.”
Happy Hour
Calcutta Cutaway
Smoky
The Unsuspected
Major Pipe
The Bridge
Paper Hat
Hodaddy Humanoid
Tall Boy
The Warmth of the Sun
Bar Stool Walker

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Sculpting In Time

Loading docks on Mushroom Boulevard in Rochester, New York
Loading docks on Mushroom Boulevard in Rochester, New York

The Russian director, Andrei Tarkovsky, defines filmmaking as sculpting In time. “The Sacrifice” is a magnificent sculpture. We spent three nights with the movie, watching it and the extras a few times. Tarkovsky says an artist doesn’t look for a subject, “the subject grows within the artist.” This film is so beautiful that it hardly matters that the story is about Armageddon.

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Wild Eyes & Crooked Nose

Paul Dodd "Model from Crime Page 24" 2012 Charcoal on paper
Paul Dodd “Model from Crime Page 24” 2012 Charcoal on paper

Police find eye witness information some of the least reliable. People see what they want to see or what they have been taught to see rather than what is there. We lose our ability to see at a very early age. The peak period for most kids’ art is around age five. Relearning to see is huge project but worth pursuing.

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I Spit On Your Grave

9-11 flag on Culver Road, Rochester, New York
9-11 flag on Culver Road, Rochester, New York

One of our neighbors still has their Irish flag up from Saint Patricks Day and some others fly a Puerto Rican flag but I had never seen a 9-11 flag until I spotted this one flying under an American flag on Culver Road yesterday. I googled “9-11 flag” online and didn’t see anything like it so maybe it’s homemade. The towers are kind of short. My mom made a peace flag back in the sixties and we flew it out front until someone stole it. We always suspected it was the youngest son of one of the neighbors. His mom had called my mom and asked “How dare you fly a peace flag when my (oldest) son is fighting in Viet Nam?” Patriotism comes in all stripes.

Peggi was telling me she stopped at a light behind a pickup with two NRA stickers in the window and a bumper sticker that read, “If the earth is your mother I walk on your mother.” That goes beyond patriotism’s borders. As the light turned he blew smoke from his cigarette out the window.

Coming back from the Margaret Explosion gig at High Falls last night we pulled up next to a car that was cranking’ the tunes. I looked over and it was white haired dude with a baseball cap on and he was bobbing his whole body with the music. I rolled down my window to hear what he was playing and it was Ozzie “goin’ off the rails on the crazy train.”

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Artspeak

Paul Dodd "Model from Crime Page 24" 2012 Charcoal on paper
Paul Dodd “Model from Crime Page 24” 2012 Charcoal on paper

I spent most of the day filling out a form for the Arts & Cultural Council’s Member Showcase, a juried art show scheduled for August. Picking three pieces that I like is one thing but picking three pieces that I think the judges might like is another and then the one page biography/ artist statement is really tough. I don’t do artspeak so I usually try to skip that stage because my explanations sound so obvious and redundant but the artist statement was “mandatory” for this show.

Although I like this guy with the wild hair I decided not to enter him. I’ll enter him in a show where artists statements are not allowed.

Here’s Pete LaBonne’s track “Artist Statement” from his Earring Records cd entitled “Glob”.

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Frozen Custard

Abbots Frozen Custard on the corner of Culver and East Ridge Road in Rochester, New York
Abbots Frozen Custard on the corner of Culver and East Ridge Road in Rochester, New York

The corner of East Ridge and Culver is certainly prime real estate so it is sort of surprising to see local favorite, Abbot’s Custard, holding down a quadrant with Sunoco, Walgreens and Culver Ridge Plaza. Especially considering the place is closed for five months of the year. I’m thinking they’re holding out for the big bucks when the real estate market returns.

I was still in my pajamas when my neighbor, Rick, called to ask if I would come over and take a picture of him and Patty Larkin before Patty hit the road. She played a house concert there last night and we went to this one. One of her songs with the line “traveling alone is a wonderful thing” stuck with me. She sampled a four note progression on electric guitar and then played on top of it. The guy sitting next to us leaned over and said “this sounds like Margaret Explosion”. Mostly she plays acoustic guitar and is a strong rhythm player, so strong I couldn’t hear what she was singing about and I suspect that is what people like about her. She was kind shy and had a funny smile, kinda like the drummer in The Incredible Casuals. I liked her.

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Perfect Day

Magnolias in full bloom with blue sky, Rochester, New York
Magnolias in full bloom with blue sky, Rochester, New York

Ken Frank has returned from Puerto Rico, Bob Martin flies in this afternoon from Las Vegas. Four band members in one city! I just stepped outside. It’s a perfect day for the Margaret Explosion. 7:30 tonight at the Little Theater Café, free admission.

Listen to Margaret Explosion “Juggler” with Jack Schaefer on bass clarinet

Margaret Explosion 45 RPM "Juggler/Purple Heart" (EAR 16) on Earring Records, released 2011 on black vinyl.
Margaret Explosion 45 RPM “Juggler/Purple Heart” (EAR 16) on Earring Records, released 2011 on black vinyl.
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Saving The Day

Spinach and lettuce in our neighbor's garden
Spinach and lettuce in our neighbor’s garden

Our neighbor emailed us that he has an overload of spinach, some of it wintered over and then then three rows that he planted in early March. He has also stated these new plants (above), some more spinach and some lettuce. We went down there with a shopping bag and we easily filled it without making a noticeable dent in the plants. And while we were there we planted two more rows of spinach and some cilantro.

Spinach, for me, will forever be associated with the superhuman strength the it gave Popeye. Our friend Bill needs his spinach now as the battles the cancer they found last week. We plan to make our favorite spinach dish for him, garbanzos con espinacas, and drop it off this afternoon.

from wiki — In every Popeye cartoon, the sailor is invariably put into what seems like a hopeless situation, upon which (usually after a beating), a can of spinach which he apparently regularly carries with him falls out from inside his shirt. Popeye immediately pops the can open and gulp the entire contents of it into his mouth, or sometimes sucks in the spinach through his corncob pipe. Upon swallowing the spinach, Popeye’s physical strength immediately becomes almost superhuman, and he is easily able to save the day (and very often rescue Olive Oyl from a dire situation).

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There Are No Mistakes

Paul Dodd Crime Face drawings on studio wall
Paul Dodd Crime Face drawings on studio wall

Mile Davis famously said, Do not fear mistakes – there are none. ” I like that but I like this quote better. “Don’t play what’s there; play what’s not there.” ― Miles Davis

Remember the two tone pencil/ink erasers with the beveled ends that we used when we were kids? Have you tried to buy an ink eraser anywhere lately. It is next to impossible. I tried Walgreens in the School Supplies (my favorite section of any drug store). I tried Staples and then two art supply store until it became obvious that they don’t make them anymore. I realize it’s the last thing a paperless office needs but I need one to scrub some charcoal drawings. And I’m still trying to get used to this ‘no mistakes” concept.

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Vapourspace

Tree roots 0n bike paths in Tryon Park, Rochester, NY
Tree roots 0n bike paths in Tryon Park, Rochester, NY

We still had some credit left on the gift card that Heather gave us for doing her web site so we stopped into Good Luck for dinner last night. Their red lentil, sweet potato soup is incredible so we ordered that again and then split shiitake mushroom, bok choy and red onion salad with barbecued trout and soy. It was as good as the best tapas we had in Spain but of course we weren’t surrounded by dozens of equally enticing options and there weren’t any giant hams hanging overhead and we weren’t standing at a bar with an assortment of interesting characters.

At some point I realized I had not transferred my wallet from my painting pants to my out-on-the-town pants so not only did I not have the gift card but I didn’t have our credit card either. Peggi felt pretty confident that she could recite our credit card number so we continued eating. I guess the pressure of coming up with the number when it really counts got to her and she transposed two of the groups of four numbers so it didn’t go through and they brought the manager out to our table. Peggi decided to call our neighbors. Rick was off doing his radio show. I had played horseshoes with him earlier in the day and he told us he was going to play a Margaret Explosion song in a juggling themed set with The Incredible String Band and Waylon Jennings. Monica gave us her credit card number and our debts were settled. We were off to Geva for a one woman show about the black experience. Other neighbors who both had the flu gave us their theater tickets. Mark Gage was in the lobby but we didn’t have time to chat. He seems to have slipped into Vapourspace.

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Great Place To Trip

Tryon Park trail with fallen tree, Rochester New York
Tryon Park trail with fallen tree, Rochester New York

We walked up to the Lake Ontario this morning along the trail on the west side of Eastman Lake. A bicyclist whizzed by us, all suited up in bike drag and moving too fast for us to say anything like “Bikes aren’t allowed on trails in this park.” We used to walk over to Tryon Park when we lived in the city. It was a neglected county park at that time and still is really, even though the county has officially reopened it They created a parking lot and put up a sign with Maggie Brooks and Larry Staub’s names on it and someone has already shattered the plastic cover on the sign and the trails are littered with Hawaiian Punch cans but it is still beautiful in a apocalyptic sort of way. ” I found this comment about the park on the RocWiKi page – “When I was a kid (in the 80’s) my friends and I loved to take acid and wander around here at night. Great place to trip.—SavageHenry”.

The 82 acres overlook the basin of Irondequoit Bay and lowland valley that extends south through Ellison Park. Unlike other county parks there’s old car parts in the woods and the remains of old concrete structures and decaying drainage infrastructure. We came across this fallen tree and at first thought it was the work of a beaver but then realized it was the handiwork mountain bikers trying to clear the trail. The park is now a test site for trail biking, the prefered sport of overgrown boys. There are bare trails everywhere sometimes six feet away from one another with exposed roots from ancient trees running through the paths. I’m not sure how long this experiment will run but the way it’s going if we return here in ten years I would guess the undergrowth would be gone, trampled or just washed away, the trees will have fallen over and the place will be a barren rutty hillside. Perfect for mountain biking.

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King Of Beer

New 24 ounce Budweiser cans on Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York
New 24 ounce Budweiser cans on Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York

The phantom Budweiser guy is back with a whole new look, the newly designed 24 ounce Budweiser cans. He dumped three of them in the his favorite, exact same spot in the last few days. I don’t really care for the new look. If they had asked me I would have suggested something clean with lots of white space or maybe red space and a bold retro looking crown icon. Certainly not the hideous bow tie if they they’re going after young kids.

I also came back with a golf ball that I found when we crossed the course. It must be left over from last year because they haven’t opened the course yet. A groundsman told us “maybe tomorrow.”

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House On Fire

Modesto Foreclosure Quilt by Kathryn Clark at RoCo show "Work It: Artists Address Labor & Unemployment"
Modesto Foreclosure Quilt by Kathryn Clark at RoCo show “Work It: Artists Address Labor & Unemployment”

San Francisco’s Kathryn Clark has some handmade quilts that are actually maps of neighborhoods with some of the highest foreclosure rates in the United States. She is one of four artists in Rochester Contemporary’s new show, “Work It” where four artists address labor and unemployment, an art topic even more dreary than crime faces.

Since the the recent art attack piece on 60 Minutes I’ve been thinking about the inescapable relationship between money and art. This weekend’s death of Thomas Kincaid, the “painter of light” who said that God guided his brush, was another interesting study. He’s regarded as the master of kitsch and genius of commercial marketing and had a signature Lazy Boy chair and a California housing tract designed after his painting. Joan Didion wrote “A Kinkade painting was typically rendered in slightly surreal pastels. It typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit, to lurid effect, as if the interior of the structure might be on fire.”

It’s easy to knock the guy but I couldn’t paint those cozy little cottages. I might be able to crank off some of these Obama paintings though. That is, if my heart was in it.

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Passion Days

Still of Maria Falconetti from The Passion of Joan of Arc
Still of Maria Falconetti from The Passion of Joan of Arc

They really were better actors in the silent days. If you don’t believe me check out 1928 movie “The Passion of Joan of Arc”, “one of the greatest movies of all time” according to the Netflix envelope. The expressions on the actors faces are so over the top I kept wanting to pause the dvd and take a photo. Cindy Sherman could have shaped her whole career with this movie. No movie has ever effected me this way. I couldn’t wait to watch it again in the morning before the sun light steams into the room and wrecks the mood.

Joan is a heroine in France and a saint but in the fifteenth century her claims of divine guidance were met by the church hierarchy with a drawn out trial and death by burning at the stake. This movie portrays the leering old men of the cloth in devastating fashion as they challenge Joan on her manly dress and push for details on her vision of Saint Michael at one point asking “Was he naked?” They wish. And they couldn’t wait to pile into the torture room to exact a toll on nineteen year old Joan.

The poor church did not like the way they were portrayed and the movie was denounced, cut, and burned just like Joan was. So little has changed this movie could have been made today! Perfect fare for a Good Friday evening. I hesitate to mention that the entire movie is available on YouTube because you really should see the higher res Criterion Collection dvd.

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Sam

Sam Jones photo of his old Macintosh Plus
Sam Jones photo of his old Macintosh Plus

I have always wanted to have my own Sam Jones photo. I’ve admired his work for years and I was thrilled when he asked if he could use my camera to take a picture of his first Mac, a Macintosh Plus with a broken floppy drive.

Sam had taken me down to their basement where the old computer sits near the laundry tubs. I noted that the black and white screen is not any bigger than an iPad. Sam told me he pats it every time he goes down there to do his wash. His father had scanned a batch of Sam’s Polaroids and put a slideshow online years ago but I wasn’t able to find that link so we’ll have to make do with this one shot.

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Bird

Red wing blackbird in marsh on Hoffman Road Rochester, New York
Red wing blackbird in marsh on Hoffman Road Rochester, New York

We watched this red winged blackbird for quite a while. I even took a movie of it while it sat there in the sun drenched marsh surrounded by golden leftovers from last years invasive species. I tried to record it’s bird call but once I turned the camera on all I got was a few chirps. The bird seemed to sum up all of life somehow. A minor masterpiece.

The student run new music Eastman collective, Ossia, is performing Ruben Seroussi’s “Jazz… à propos de Matisse.” tonight at Kilbourn, 8pm. I have no idea what this piece will sound like but the title is intriguing.

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Forget About Logic

Four hawks in blue sky, Rochester, New York
Four hawks in blue sky, Rochester, New York

Fred Lipp altered my drawing last night by strategically placing a small piece of white paper on top of part of the drawing. His collection of black, white and mostly grey paper is his primary teaching tool and it is incredibley effective. You use your eyes to see what he is talking about. My father was standing nearby and questioned something Fred said. Fred snapped back, “Forget about logic. We’re talking graphic.”

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Pity The Photographer

Window at Baobab Cultural Center in Rochester, New York
Window at Baobab Cultural Center in Rochester, New York

Don’t you hate it when someone makes a point of noting that no Photoshop was used in a photo. Who cares? The camera lies and that’s why we like it. I snapped a shot of a statue in the window of the Baobab Cultural Center and wound up with this magical composition full of reflections I didn’t see.

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