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.
Small white table and chairs by the street in the snow
I had something else in mind for today. And I’m sure Peggi did too but the big trucks backing into our neighbor’s driveway while we were still reading the paper signaled a change of plans. Instead of working on my small wood panel paintings we would be collecting wood. The owners of the house across the street were taking down a huge oak, the one that snuggled up to their front door and towered over their house.
We dressed for the weather, mid twenties and just perfect for working outdoors, and Peggi walked down to Jared’s place to see borrow his pickup while I got the wheelbarrow out. She was ringing his doorbell when she noticed the truck was gone. We put a plastic tarp down in our CRV and loaded it it up, four times and then a fifth load for Jared who is still getting over his chemo treatments.
We had a mountain of wood to split and a fire in the fireplace before the sun set.
Leo Dodd watercolor Brighton Baseball Sheehans Field 15″h x 22″w
My father would so proud to know that Historic Brighton, a group he was one of the founding members of, has an annual award that they present in his name, the “Leo Dodd Heritage Preservation Award.” This year it went to Mary Jo Lanphear, the Brighton historian and someone my father thought very highly of. When she was appointed town historian she went back to school to earn her masters in history. My father was a history buff. No degree the subject. When a photo didn’t exist he illustrated the source. There are no photos of the ball field that used to sit at 12 Corners so my father envisioned it (above). My father’s uncle, Paul Dodd, played baseball there for money.
We celebrated the Asian New Year last night at the home of my brother’s Vietnamese lady friend. One her son’s friends gave us this riddle. “A lawyer in New York has a brother in Jamaica but the brother in Jamaica doesn’t have a brother in New York. How can this be?” The women sitting around him were all stumped. I was too. Of course the brother in Jamaica had no brother because the lawyer In. New York is a woman.
Last year I was lucky. My red envelope had a 2 dollar bill in it. I was not so lucky at the start of the year of the rat. My envelope had a five dollar bill in it.
We recorded the Grammys and came home expecting to cut to the good stuff but our recording quit about an hour in. The show was still on so we switched to live tv and found we were not getting the station through our cable. All the other stations worked. How does something like that happen? We were happy to see Billie Eilish clean up. A breath of fresh air! And recorded in a home studio with her brother.
Turned out the cable outage was just a warning shot. We were out walking this afternoon when a tree, a tree on our property, came down out back. It took all three wires down, power, cable and phone and it stopped traffic in both directions for hours. I took my saw down there and we grabbed some firewood.
1982 letter from Gary Lucas concerning our inquiry about purchasing Don Van Vliet artwork.
Our friend Duane, tells us “Parapliers the Willow Dipped,” the first show of Don Van Vliet’s paintings in New York in over a decade, opens January 31st at the Michael Werner Gallery on 77th Street. We may not be there for the opening but we plan to see that show. Years ago (1982) someone told us Gary Lucas was the guy to talk to about purchasing a Beefheart painting so we wrote him a letter. Peggi had a radio show on WRUR at the time and we told him she played Beefheart. We thought the prices he quoted were too high. We were part owners of ten Warhol prints and they weren’t even near a grand a piece. Our reasoning was seriously flawed!
Stan the Man gave me a box of Beefheart stuff from Justin Sherrill, someone who was leaving town or something. These photos were in there, from an opening at Michael Werner in 1995.
I was lucky enough to see the Captain a few times, in Cincinnati in 1970 for the Trout Mask tour, Columbus in ’71 for Lick My Decals Off and here at Red Creek in ’77. I recorded that show on our little Sony mono tape recorder.
Captain Beefheart performing Low Yo Yo at Red Creek in Rochester, New York 1977.
We needed to get out early this morning as the sun and warm temperatures were ready to take a toll on the ski paths. We skied out to the lake and down Horseshoe Road, over the bridge (above) and then back up to Hoffman Road before our second cup of coffee. The only other person we saw out there was the guy that zips around like it is a matter of life and death. He doesn’t even look up as he passes.
I had Annie Wells’ version of Phil Marshall’s “Nothing Left To Lose” stuck in my head as we skied. And something Peggi said triggered Trump’s, “I’m looking at it very strongly” quote. That’s now become one of my go-to phrases. There are ski tracks going in every which direction on the golf course. We’ve had five days in row of near perfect conditions with very little new accumulation. It is time for Mother Nature to cleanse the pallet.
“Fe La” by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre Café on 11.20.19. Peggi Fournier – sax, Ken Frank – bass, Phil Marshall – guitar, Bob Martin – guitar, Paul Dodd – drums.
Zanne Brunner and Nancy Valle have organized another “Sight & Sound” show (2012 • 2013 • 2016 • 2020) in their studio. It will open the first Friday in February and I was planning to do some abstract watercolors based on a series of photos I have taken in Spain over the years. I spent quite a bit of time culling the photos and then sequencing them and eventually decided to enter the photos themselves. I’m calling it “Abstracting Spain.”
I have them running on an old iMac and will carry that up to their space for the show. I dressed up the grey brushed metal screen frame with some black duct tape. We saw Nancy last night and she was trying to talk me into showing them on their projector but I am concerned the studio won’t be dark enough at the opening.
Blue snow on steps in front of Monroe County Hall of Justice, downtown Rochester, New York
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. They just threw this blue chemical on the snow and waited 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 jump suit guy prattled on.
This time 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!
Snow covered trees near the creek at the end of Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York
If every winter day was like this one we wouldn’t appreciate this one as much. Full sun can turn the ski trails to mush so you need temperatures well below freezing for crisp, squeaky traction and today was perfect. Except for the part when I went off trail on short hill and caught my skis under a frozen branch. It was pretty much a face plant but I did manage to break the impact with my arms. I would go out there again in a second but I have jury duty tomorrow.
We’re scrambling to watch the Oscar nominated movies before the awards so our queue is all contenders. I’m hoping Anthony Hopkins gets best supporting actor for his role in The Two Popes. He made the creep he played enduring. And I’m pulling for Antonio Banderas for best actor in Pedro Almodóvar’s “Pain and Glory.” We had more fun watching “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” than any other movie so that gets our vote.
We watched the Linda Ronstadt documentary, “The Sound of My Voice'” and I was blown away by how good she was. She was so popular I pretty much dismissed her. The Gilbert and Sullivan and especially the Mexican work she did near the end of her career was amazing. And I really liked listening to her talk. We have three friends with Parkinson’s and her story made the debilitating effects all too clear.
Everett Shinn “Sullivan Street” 1905 Memorial Art Gallery collection
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.
“Oh Yeah” by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre Café on 11.13.19. Peggi Fournier – sax, Ken Frank – bass, Phil Marshall – guitar, Paul Dodd – drums.Leave a comment
Gaston LaChaise “The Mountain” Memorial Art Gallery collection
I love this sculpture by Gaston LaChaise. It is in the permanent collection of the Memorial Art Gallery. We stopped there yesterday to see the Art Nouveau show before it leaves town. Our favorite part wasn’t on the walls it was a reference book in the main gallery that had a section on Moderismo in Barcelona, the Spanish cousin to Art Nouveau.
A bi-monthly visit to the MAG is always in order if only to see/hear the rotating shows in the Media Room. Ja’Tovia Gary”s “NÉGRESSE IMPÉRIALE,” shot in Claude Monet’s French garden connects her experience as a black woman with art history.
Maureen Outlaw Church has some beautiful en plan air paintings in a show that opened last night at the Williams Gallery. Not the best weather for that (en plan air) but something to look forward to.
Annie Wells has a stellar band at the moment. We heard them last night at the Little Theatre Café, Phil Marshall on guitar, his son Roy on drums Mike Kaupa on trumpet and Dave Arenius on bass. I hope Annie records with this band before the youngest one leaves town. The band makes magic with Annie’s Cool Ice Age song and others by Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, Phil Marshall and The Squire himself.
One of the local wonders of the world, this broken, fake rock, hiding some mysterious machinery, formerly nailed to a surface and now sitting in a parking lot near Starbucks on East Ridge Road.
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.
Just imagine if you were on the cross country ski team this year. Our dental hygentist was telling me her kids meets have been canceled. It was perfect weather for a walk up to Wegmans.
Without the snow covering you notice all sorts of debris along the sidewalks and roadways. I collected discarded drugs bags for a while. I have a project in mind for them. It keeps getting better in my mind. Maybe it will stay there.
Lately we’re noticing more and more little plastic airline-sized bottles of liquor. Not just Fireball whiskey but maple whiskey, vodka and gin. I guess you could paint them and line ’em up.
View of Lake Ontario from Durand Eastman in mid January.
There must be plenty of snow around the corner. Until it flies we will keep walking. Cross country skiing calls on a whole different muscle group and they want their fair share.
We had dinner down the street at our friends’ (and neighbors’) place. Their Jamaican relatives were there and they were talking about how everyone in Jamaica has a nick name, a “yard name.” They were talking like no-one knows your real name. They wanted to know if I had a yard name. Kids called me by my last name for a few years in high school but that doesn’t really count. I told them my name was too short to be abbreviated but that didn’t fly.
I could use a nickname. My one syllable first name is hard to enunciate. When someone on the phone asks “who am I speaking with?” I try to say my name slowly but there is not much there to work with. It makes matters worse. I often just spell it out.
Someone in this morning’s paper described the orange one as a “popinjay.” We looked it up and have added it to our vocabulary.
“No One Will Ever Know” by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre Café on 11.13.19. Peggi Fournier – sax, Ken Frank – bass, Phil Marshall – guitar, Paul Dodd – drums.
Abandoned house on Saint Paul Boulevard in Rochester, New York
“Swatted a fly the other day and thought, Outlived you.”
Like my brother, Mark, I would start reading the New Yorker at the back, in the Critics section, with Peter Schjeldahl’s column on contemporary art. So the news that he was unable to continue writing is devastating. In his exquisite parting essay, “77 Sunset Me,” he says, “Oddly, or not, I find myself thinking about death less than I used to.” I was happy to read that line.
And this: “I like to say that contemporary art consists of all art works, five thousand years or five minutes old, that physically exist in the present. We look at them with contemporary eyes, the only kinds of eyes that there ever are.”
Guy with Suicide Silence shirt in line at Wegman’s Pharmacy.
I stood behind this guy at Wegman’s while waiting for my Shingles vaccine. That’s Peggi, off to the right, up at the counter with her backpack on. We were doing a shop on foot. I made a note to look up Suicide Silence when I got home and I found this. Some 87,000,000 people beat me to it. I watched it with the sound off and still heard it.
Colleen Buzzard artwork on the white walls of Colleen Buzzard’s studio gallery.
We made some art stops over the weekend and I came home with a few photos which I just got around to looking at. I took a photo of a big red abstract over at Warren Philip’s Gallery. It was painted by John K. Hansegger in 1984 and was part of Warren’is annual Collectors show. I really like the painting. The big red ball like subject was arrived at by painting into the edges with the ground color. It was painted on paper and under glass so a reflection of my image wound up in the middle of the big red ball.
We stopped by RoCo to see the Member’s Show one more time before it comes down. My piece has sold. We didn’t really get to see the show because artists were giving five minute talks about their work. We were standing in the back talking to Chris Reeg when we we were asked to keep quiet.
Colleen Buzzard’s Studio was our next stop. It has become one of our favorites. She was showing her work this time and the show is a knockout. Colleen has been sneaking color into some of her recent pieces. Not this one. It doesn’t need or want it.
Down the hall on the fourth floor of the Anderson Building Zanne Brunner and Nancy Valle are hosting a self portrait show in their studio. Lots of fun stuff there from some familiar faces.
John Baldesari at David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea in 2015
We were looking at a Giorgio Morandi show at David Zwirner in Chelsea in 2015 when we spotted the tall guy. I tried not to make too much of a fuss but managed to get a few photos. Later I read that Baldessari bought one of the paintings from that show, one of the few paintings he ever purchased. He had great taste. I loved his artwork and was so sad to learn that he passed.
We have run into a few artists over the years and I have a few photos to show for it. I thought I would put a few those shots on Instagram.
We ran into Chuck Close a couple of times. Once at an Alice Neel retrospective where he and the guy pushing his wheelchair were hogging the view of a Neel painting. I was getting upset at how long they were taking and then realized it was Close himself.
In 2002 we were in Chelsea on a Friday night, popping in and out of galleries. Pace Wildenstein Gallery was showing Chuck Close paintings in the main space and Close’s daguerreotypes in a darkened side room. Most of the work was closely cropped faces of his friends and fellow artists in wooden box-like frames on shelves. The show was opening the following day and Close was one of the few people in the gallery. I watched him push the door open a crack and smoke a cigarette. When he wheeled back in I said hi and asked if I could take his photo. I told him his paintings were psychedelic. He sort of ignored that comment and asked what I thought of the daguerreotypes
At one of the Whitney Biennials there was drum set and some sticks in a little room. I had heard someone playing as we entered the show. I went in and played for thirty seconds and came out face to face with Alex Katz. I didn’t get a photo.
We heard John Zorn performing in a Chelsea gallery on Saturday afternoon and Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson were sitting near us. I snuck a photo but felt bad about it. They both looked really tired. The MAG brought Jullian Schnabel up to talk and I went. I didn’t know much about him at the time. In 2016 Peggi and I saw Schnabel walking around the Metropolitan in his pajamas or cargo pans anyway.
Our friend, Kathy, suggested the Genesee Valley Greenway to us. It is an old canal bed that runs from the Genesee River near RIT down to the Allegheny River. It saw peak traffic in 1854 when 5,345 boats passed through Lock Number 2, pictured above. Our friends Jeff and Mary live along the river so we started at their house. They were busy packing for a trip to Mexico so Peggi and I walked it alone. We headed toward Scottsville but didn’t make it. I was picturing us stopping there for a beer. It was like being back on the Camino and it is a lot closer to home. I recommend it.
“International Velvet” by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre Café on 09.04.19. Peggi Fournier – sax, Ken Frank – bass, Phil Marshall – guitar, Paul Dodd – drums.
Turquoise camera case on Durand Eastman beach on Lake Ontario
There were a lot of people on the beach today, like maybe twenty, twenty five. All it took was a little sunshine. And there was more beach to walk on than there has been. I’m wondering if the lake level is already going down for the season. The Saint Lawerence shipping routes are closed for the season so they have lowered the level there. We still have four other Great Lakes upstream of us so we will probably each record high levels again this Spring.
