PopWars

Last night’s opening for Bea Nettles show, “Harvest of Memory,” was in fact a harvest of memories. Nettles taught art here at Nazareth College. She finished her masters at Visual Studies and went on to teach at RIT. She raised a family and continued to work. Old friends and students of hers were there. We didn’t know Nettles but some our old friends did and they were there.

Nettles uses alternative photographic processes and achieves organic results. She plays with mythology, family, motherhood, place, landscape, dreams, the passage of time and she makes art with it all. She gives a talk on her work on Saturday, February 1, at 1 p.m.

Jason Farago’s bad review of a photography show at the International Center of Photography in NY was fun to read. “The Case of Art vs. Instagram.” He calls out the Center for playing to the gate, a problem for all the art institutions>

Peggi dropped me off in front of the Hall of Justice this morning. I was bracing for the worst. They couldn’t even get somebody to shovel the walk. Someone just threw this blue chemical on the snow and was waiting for it to melt. I was here for jury duty, called back after only four years because I had weaseled out of the last one. It was the middle of summer, I was shuttling my father back and forth to doctors and they picked me for a trial they expected to last three more weeks.

The lawyers had already presented the gist of their case. The trial was moved from Niagara Falls because the incident had been covered so heavily there. Three cops answered a 911 domestic abuse call. They came into the courtroom in their finest cop regalia, all puffed up, and sat right in front of me. The guy who was beating his wife was representing himself in a orange jump suit, claiming the cops had roughed him up. Within twenty minutes the cops were all slumped down in their chairs while the guy prattled on.

My name was called for a morning case but it wound up being postponed. Forty of the four hundred people in the jury room were instructed stick around for an afternoon trail. The judge want a four part form filled out. “Have you ever been the victim of a crime? Been accused of a crime? Been a witness to a crime? Have you ever been employed by Law Enforcement or Criminal Justice Agency? I answered yes to all four and that case was settled out of court. I’m free for another eight years.

Wouldn’t you love to have been around before the first cars mucked everything up? Just like the guy in the painting this Everett Shinn piece from 1905 always stops me in my tracks. I’m waiting for self driving vehicles so we can all sit back and dream again.

I put a bunch of new songs on the Margaret Explosion mp3 page. This one is from a few weeks ago.

Jeffery was calling our class a restorative one. We spent good bit of the yoga class on our backs with a rolled up blanket in various positions under our spines. I fell asleep at one point. But before that I was restless. I was noticing all the infrastructure on the walls and especially the ceiling. There is a four-way speaker up there, one horn-like speaker pointed in each direction, maybe something from the nineteen fifties for a duck and cover drill. And then there is a small wooden PA speaker with a grill cloth. I was picturing getting called down to the office on that thing. There is a grey plastic box mounted to the wall with a few short ethernet cables hanging out. And a brand new wifi repeater that looks like it could double as a drone.

The classes held in the small gym in the former Brighton High School administration building. It must have been a grade school at some point. The gym is small, not regulation size for basketball but the sealed wooden floor is lined for free throw marks, half line and out of bounds nonetheless. I spent a lot time in gyms when I was growing up and I feel really comfortable in here.