PopWars

If we had taken Peggi’s sister’s suggestion we would be on our way to Miami for Christmas. Our nephew and his girlfriend have a restaurant down there, Boia De, and we’ll have to check it out but not over Christmas. We walked up to Wegman’s today and stopped on front of this house grab a picture of the inflatable penguin family. By the time we returned it was dark enough to turn on the blue lights which line our roofline.

Our neighbor across the street works from home and they do most of their shopping online so there are delivery trucks there throughout the day. I watched as he accepted a delivery and then saw the driver walk up to our door. He had the MX-80 album we ordered, “Crowd Control.” I helped Rich prepare the mechanical art for the re-release and Rich offered to send me a copy but I said no. We already have the album. But from time to time I would wonder how the thing came out. I simplified the 4 color formulas thinking the reissue would be a more electric combination of the red and yellow and when I thought of MX80 for some reason I found myself working about the result. So I ordered one from Ship to Shore. It’s being offered for $6! Red vinyl and a bonus track, the Theme from Halloween. And who doesn’t want a clean copy of “Obsessive Devotion” or “More Than Good?”” As a holiday gift it is guaranteed to please the most discerning taste.

1 Comment

“Here Denonville’s French Army landed to invade the Seneca Country; July 12, 1687. ” So reads the historical marker on the lake side of Lake Road in Webster. We walked over there this afternoon, across the seasonal bridge, and we stopped across the street from this sign for a salad and sandwich at a place called the Bayside. It is out of time and a world away.

Leave a comment

This post has been uppdated:
In my original post here I stated the Roc Holiday Village was constructed by the City. Martin contacted me to say a private company is responsible for the winter paradise. This makes a lot more sense. It is too well done,

Our friend, Kathy, recommended we check out Roc Village. The area between between the skating rink and jungle gym in Martin Luther King Jr Park is elevated on a giant wooden plank patio. Fire pits are scattered about. Vendors and transparent hospitality tents are lined up. We bought some olive oil and handmade soap and after watching the kids skate we had a beet salad and a Space Kitty in the big tent. It was great to see so many people outside in the winter.

We were in Ottawa a few years back for their Winterlude, skating through downtown on the canal with hundreds of other people and wondering why Rochester doesn’t do something it. They have.

1 Comment

Why did they pick Jeremy Irons to narrate The Prado Museum: A Collection of Wonders? Because he is so damn dramatic! And he rises to the challenge of talking about some of the most dramatic paintings in the world as the Prado celebrates its two hundredth anniversary. The documentary played for just two showings this weekend at the Little and we were lucky enough to catch it.

Marina Saura also narrates and talks of first visiting the Prado with her father, the painter, Antonio Saura. When we were in Madrid in October we saw a show of Saura’s work at Antonio Macon where the gallery owner, Margarita, encouraged us to visit The Museo de Arte Abstracto Español in Cuenca . We saw more Saura there along with Tapies and the champions of Spanish abstract art in Spain. We were blown away and when we returned to Madrid we found even more of his work in a show at the Reina Sofia. The worlds are colliding.

We visit the Prado each time we visit Spain but my favorite was the first time. After flying overnight we rented a car at the Madrid airport and drove directly to the Prado. We sat in the car until the Museo opened and we had coffee in the basement café. I remember people smoking in there, in the museum. We went upstairs and were blown away.

Leave a comment

The first Refrigerator was an 8 1/2 by 14″ broadsheet, offset printed and available in restaurants and bars in Rochester for free. The circulation grew from 500 to 3,000 and the number of pages climbed to twelve. I did most of the graphics and wrote some, Peggi Fournier was the production manager. Ted Williams, Martin Edic, Chuck Cuminale, Carol Bradley, Chris Schepp, Rob Tyler and Frank Petronio all contributed content. The late Norm Davis hysterically surveyed the shops on Monroe Avenue. This was back in the nineties, before the internet, and all of this work was done anonymously until the D&C did a story about the Refrigerator..

With front page tag lines like “Does Caffeine Make You Smarter?,” “Love World’s Mental Heath Tipsheet,” “Recycle The Earth Issue,” paid for by the advertisers With a tag “George Eastman Is Dead,” “My Funeral,” “Bad Acid Trip,” “Because You Don’t Need an Entertainment Guide,” (a dig at Freetime Magazine), “Rochester’s Only Demolition Derby Fanzine” and “Virgin Mary To Appear in Rochester” we attracted a faithful readership. The “Why Are You Here? issue was especially popular as was Pete LaBonne’s “Dream Breakfasts.”

Lead-ins to pieces like “Rewriting Rochester’s Cultural Heritage,” “Readers Are People Too,” “Dealing With Denial,” “The Difference Between Right and Wrong,” “The End of the World,” “Thel Sound of Doom,” “Virtual Rochester,” “Finally, The Future,” “The Tediousness of Facts,” “I Live Next Door to a Genius” and “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” were often the whole story.

The back page of “The Refrigerator” carried ten dollar, one square inch ads like those shown above. Pyramid Arts Center, The Village Green, The Bug Jar, The Cadillac Hotel, Squires Of The Subterrain, the Rochester Club and City Newspaper were all regulars. Nicholson Baker, the author, was an advertiser. 

All 28 editions are available in pdf format here. There is also a PayPal button for $10 Refrigerator hats.

2 Comments

With the temperature near fifty today I got up on the roof and blew the leaves off. And then we raked those same leaves out of the pachysandra and out on to our so called lawn. I only mowed once this year. We don’t get all that much sunlight through the trees. When all the leaves are out in the lawn I use the mower to mulch them and we just let those chopped leaves turn into dirt. It takes about a year for that to happen and then we start all over again. This cycle is bittersweet.

Leave a comment

We were kinda late for our train or I would have stopped to talk to this guy in Penn Station. He looks like a one man band with his stage gear on and his equipment case advertising a Funky Percussion Machine, Country, Irish, Polka, Zydeco and something called Bachata. I wanted to go where he was going but our train was boarding in the other direction.

Maybe it was the cup of coffee we had up at Starbucks but I had a hard time getting with the program in our yoga class tonight. Jeffery usually starts by going around the room asking people what they want to work on. I always say “anything.” Someone suggested shoulders so we got on our backs and stayed there the whole class, opening our spines, breathing deeply in three stages, stretching our shoulders and putting tennis balls under our piriformis (butts).

That was another problem. We walked up to Target this afternoon and ate rather hurriedly before class . Jeffery talked about being in the moment, how the class was just for this group at this time but my food was still settling. I must have stared at the ceiling lights o long because when we closed our eyes I kept seeing a small dancing bear, like one of those little Grateful Dead figures, moving from right to left.

1 Comment

We saw the Elton John movie on Netflix and then Pedro Almodovar’s new one at the theater and now I’m getting them both mixed up. They both had similarly dysfunctional upbringings and both were clearly gifted. We put the subtitles on for “Rocketman” and I was amazed at how good Bernie Taupin’s lyrics were. As good as Elton John’s amazing melodies. I woke up singing Tiny Dancer.

Almodovar’s “Pain and Glory’ is his best yet. Having just been in Spain it was visually sensational but that is just scraping the surface. The movie was deep. Aging, mortality, futility, all that stuff. Check it out.

I put a photo in the annual RoCo Member’s Show. I came home with so many good ones from the Iberian Peninsula. I had Joan down at Frametastic cut a piece of glass for me. Visiting her is always a treat. She and her husband built the business but he is long gone. Joan, at 87, is the only employee. She had Jazz 90.1 on when I walked in and she was cutting nine holes in one piece of matt board. Each opening was a different size. She showed me the boxes of glass that she starts with, sheets that are 32″ by 40.” “i used to be able to handle a bigger sheet but not anymore.” She only takes cash.

1 Comment

This tree was not as close to the lake last year. And its roots were underground.

At one time the Memorial Art Gallery had a biennial show of a half a dozen local artists’ work. They handed the show off to Rochester Contemporary, a good move, and two years ago RoCo had their first Rochester biennial, a three pronged affair with two artists at three different sites. My father and I were chosen to show our work at RoCo. The exhibit was entitled “Witness.”

This time around the biennial, entitled “Current Seen,” is spread all across town in nearly twenty venues. We were in Spain when the shows opened and we’ve been scrambling to get up to speed since our return. On Friday night we met a group at Joy Gallery on West Main where the graffiti show celebrating 30 years of work by the collective known as FUA is on display. Our group walked further west to 540 where Siena Pullinzi is showing her prints of women’s bodies, a show called “Not Your Object,” and then down King Street to the Douglas Auditorium where Mara Ahmed is showing her beautiful collage/paintings, photographic imagery of family members in painted fields that illustrate the displacement imposed on people in India at the end of British colonialism. Thankfully our city is so much broader than the East side.

There is a guide book (5 dollars) for Current Seen, one designed by Tate Shaw at Visual Studies that is packed with insightful articles about the shows and some solid history of our fair city. In the opening Bleu Cease asks, “Can the visual arts connect people across a divided city?” I think it can.

Leave a comment