Our neighbor collects our leaves and uses them as mulch for his garden and the we use his garden so it all works like a charm. He was telling us that when they get together with their son’s in-laws about the only thing they can talk about is the weather. They are sort of opposites especially when it comes to politics and everything is political so the weather is a pretty safe topic as long as you don’t wander into global warming territory.
This Fall has been especially beautiful, unusually warm and sunny. That is probably all about to change but that’s why we live here.
Green hummingbird with red flowers and blue sky in Los Angeles
While we were in Los Angeles Peggi’s sister took us for a ride throughout the hills of Bel Air. She had the top down and it was a gorgeous day with a pure blue sky. I took this photo of a hummingbird in her backyard before we left. I made a movie of the ride but it was so full glare and sun streaks that I dumped it. In fact I can be heard complaining about the light in the movie. Such a problem! Too much light.
When we got back we downloaded the Getty app for the Pacific Standard Time exhibit. Their “In Focus: Los Angeles” photography show doesn’t open for a few more weeks but there is a video included in the app where Judy Fisken talks about how she thought Los Angeles was ugly when she was growing up but through making photos she found beauty in the photos where she was shooting into the sun. The sky would go white and the subject, houses or buildings, would be evenly lit and then she would doge the street so it too would white.
Our polling place in the Point Pleasant firehouse, a short walk away if you cut through the woods, is like something out of a Stephen King novel. It could be the teen rec center when we were kids except there aren’t any girls smoking cigarettes near the doors, only old people, election volunteers behind the tables and stray voters propped up with walkers. I keep trying to imagine how we could use the space. Throw a party, serve Genny beer, get someone to spin records, maybe get Bob Henrie and the Goners to play. But then we’d probably attract the same crowd as this season’s candidates.
Dock behind Hungerford Building at night in Rochester. New York
After our recent LA art bender First Friday in Rochester was bound to be a bit of a let down but it provided some wonderful surprises instead. It was almost impossible to find a parking space near the Hungerford buildings so we invented one out back by a loading dock. This place feels like ground zero for funky art but we found a few jewels. By contrast the “Scapes” electronic media arts show at RoCo was pretty sophisticated. Jason and Debora Beragozzi, husband and wife video geeks, each had engaging installations. I used the word “geeks” because they both are intrigued by the relatively low tech nature of live image processing, no whiz bang image manipulation software or fast cut editing, more like watching the snowy static when a station went off the air or watching a station you couldn’t quite tune in in the pre-digital days. Jason plays with settings to intentionally achieve video errors triggering startling effects. Judd Williams’ “Sandpapers” at Philips Fine Art, exquisite collages made entirely with used sandpaper, was as good as anything we saw in LA.
Chuck Cuminale aka Colorblind James opening for Personal Effects at Scorgies in 1985. Photo by Gary Brandt.
The headline in the “Local Beat” section of today’s paper reads “Colorblind James Experience Reunites.” I wish! Chuck Cuminale, aka Colorblind James (both colorblind and real name, James), song writer extraordinaire, lead vocalist and rhythm guitar player, has been dead ten years now. Chuck insisted that the lyrics to his songs be included in any lp or cd package. They address life’s big themes and read like poetry, dark and funny and sweet, a world away from trendy punk or new wave of the day. Chuck was humble but opinionated. He knew exactly what he wanted in a backing band and he ran a tight ship.
Gary Brandt took this photo of Chuck when Colorblind James opened for Personal Effects at Scorgies in 1985. Gary worked at Midtown and MotoPhoto and used to shoot black and white film and run it through the color processor at work to achieve this look. It was Colorblind’s first gig at Scorgies and Bernie Heveron, PE’s former bass player was on stand up bass. The band had recently settled in Rochester after a stint in San Francisco and Phil Marshall, Chuck’s brother-in-law, moved back with the band on lead guitar. Gary Miexner, who was with Colorblind when we first saw them at Red Creek in 1980, was back in the band as well. Jim McAvaney was the perfect drummer for Chuck’s theatrical numbers.
Chuck is seen performing “Considering A Move To Memphis” above. The band could move mountains and continued to do so with Ken Frank, now with Margaret Explosion, on bass. Tonight, with Chuck’s son Mark standing in for his father, they pay their respects at Abilene.
Chuck gave us a copy of their first 45 at that Red Creek gig. Jan Marshall did the cover art. This is the B side.
Anne Havens Sideshow – Forth floor Anderson Alley on Goodman Street in Rochester, NY
Anne Havens tackles big subjects like Milton’s Paradise Lost and Lot’s wife turning to salt. She does this in the most innocent way. Her touch is pure and her voice is distinctive so you recognize her work immediately even though her mediums span drawing, collage, sculpture, prints, video and fiddle. If you stop in her studio on First Friday be sure to sit on the white stool and look into the stars through her homemade telescope.
Peggi’s reading the the Steve Jobs book on her iPad so I get glimpses of it as I fall asleep. I gather there is a lot of pages devoted to nurture vs nature, “Do not fold, spindle or mutilate” vs open source, the merits of a college education vs dropping out and pot smoking vs the corporate mindset. I’m happy we have moved beyond all that and I’m looking forward to the cyberdelic future.
John Gary joins Margaret Explosion on bass tonight while Ken Frank joins the masses in Armory for the Pixies. I hear they open their show with a screening of “Un chien Andalou“
We flew Delta but I’ll bet all airlines share a similar game plan in their race to the bottom. They took our bottled water at the gate and gave us a short lecture for having it in our bag. Bottled is $4.50 at the concession stand on the other side of the gate. There is a charge for the disposable headphones and the monitor on the back of the seat in front of us works fine when they’re showing you ads for Lincoln Continental and Coca Cola but you have to swipe your credit card for movies and special programing. The plane is equipped with WiFi but it costs $12.95 for the flight. We paid $31 for two sandwiches and a drink and they wouldn’t take cash. Tiny bags of salty peanuts are free, just like in bars where they want you buy more drinks, but on our flight the attendant announced “we were traveling with a passenger who is highly allergic to peanuts so in order to ensure that passenger has a safe trip we will not be serving peanuts.”
My nephew is considering a move to New York to continue making his top tier chef inroads. We asked if he could handle real weather and he said it was a concern. LA is unreal. You forget. My sister-in-law said, “If I lived in Seattle or a place like that I would kill myself.” That is SAD or seasonal affect disorder in a nutshell. I’m a minor key kinda guy so I don’t even notice when its cloudy. If fact I found it hard to take photos in LA because there is too damn much sun. You need a polarizing lens to minimize all that glare. My skin gets so dry out here that my feet pop open and wearing a hat and all that sun screen in eighty degree weather is whacky. But I do love LA and I was sad to leave.
I was surprised to find my brother-in-law, an entertainment lawyer, reading a book on the minimal artist, Robert Irwin. “Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees” was recommended to him by his son, our nephew in New York. My brother-in-law described some of Irwin’s philosophical ideas on questioning and frustration. He sold me and and I navigated to Amazon to add to my cart. I tried to return the favor by suggesting “Philip Guston The Collected Writings, Lectures and Conversations” but my brother-in-law laughed and said “this book will be enough of that kind of thing.” You can’t get enough of that kind of thing.
Ai Weiwei is a big guy. He was huge before he was imprisoned by the Chinese government and now of course he is bigger. He’s everywhere especially on Twitter. His work addresses Chinese traditions, multinational intrusion and out right theft and of course censorship. He recreated ancient Zodiac figures that were looted from China in the Opium Wars and they are now on display in a courtyard at the LA County Museum. I loved them. In their permanent collection it was a pure delight to see Picasso entertaining himself with exaggerated form in a room full of portraits and just around the corner a room devoted to Giacomenti’s elegantly refined sculptures.
Another day and another PST stop, this time the Getty overlooking the construction on the 405. I would love to go back and photograph those partially dismantled retaining walls, orange cones and new infrastructure. Robert Irwin designed the gardens at the Getty. “Crosscurrents in LA Painting and Sculpture” was nice but not earth shattering with some Dieberkorns, Hockneys and Ruscha’s but the John Altoon’s painting, “Ocean Park Series”, was the bomb! It reminded me of Don VanVilet’s best work. No time for the permanent collection here and the Rembrandts that knock me out just thinking about them.
“Now Dig This!”, our third installment of “PST” at the Hammer Museum in Westwood focused on the African American art scene in LA and it was an eye opener with strong, graphic, physical, rough and tumble work in a distinctive earthy palette, beautiful Charles White drawings and John Riddle sculptures, names I had never heard of, mixed with political art that still feels fresh, Aunt Jemima with a machine gun and women with Angela Davis Afros shoving the stereotypes back in our face. Minstrel to militant. Right on!
The Hammer’s permanent collection is stellar. Take the fifteen small head sculptures by Daumier!This time I feel in love with Toulouse-Lautrec’s “Touc“, a gorgeously painted dog sitting on a table. I’m no dog person but this looked like it was done by Leon Golub. In the book store, the Hammer has one of the best, I bought a book from the EVA Hesse painting show that had just left and sitting next to that I spotted a complete collection of Robert Irwin”s writings.
Animal is one of LA’s hottest restaurants. Google it, they have great publicists. We first read about it in the New Yorker last year but we’ve known about it for a few years because our nephew works there. Someday he’ll have his own place. He’s an amazing chef. We had dinner with him at Animal last night and the five of us shared eleven plates. “Plates” includes appetizers, salads and entrees and they are typically shared as we did. They do “New American” cuisine, “maximum flavor from a minimalist kitchen.” Each dish from their daily menu is entirely distinctive and sensational.
Our nephew took us to the Beverly Hills farmer’s market this morning where he shopped for mushrooms, delicata squash, cilantro, a persimmon that he used in our arugula pecan salad tonight.
Record album covers and stereo from “California Design – Living In A Modern Way” at LACMA in Los Angeles
The Getty has organized a sixty venue overview of work by LA artists entitled “Pacific Standard Time”. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has a few of it’s galleries devoted to the show including “California Design – Living In A Modern Way” the first major study of California midcentury modern design. Although more style than art the style is so distinctive it still looks cutting edge or at least contemporary. On display are photos and plans for Neutra homes, Eames furniture, the first Barbie and these classic lp jackets. This gallery is where Duane Sherwood will spend eternity if he’s good.
Wandering in the hills west of LA without a star map you get a sense of the wide open design possibilities when money trumps steep slope ordinances. Swimming pools hang over cliffs. Architects have free reign to tear down and rebuild for the heck of it. Good taste crashes into bad. Mexican laborers transform the landscape. Houses are built in a Greco-Roman style or look like they were imported from Vermont, Switzerland, Turkey or Mexico. We saw one that looked like a castle from a Johnny Depp movie. Snow is not a concern, rain and cold hardly, roofs are flat, walls are made of glass. People here live in a modern way.
Mushrooms from Jeff’s yard displayed on his his car in our driveway
Our friend, Jeff, found these mushrooms in his yard last weekend and brought them over to show us. He laid them out on the hood of his car. This has been an exceptionally good year for mushrooms or so I’ve read. Maybe it’s just that we are more tuned in to them because our friends Pete and Shelley have taken to eating wild ones. The more you walk in the woods the smaller the items of interest become. You find yourself looking at lichen and seed pods and moss and mushrooms.
“Jaqueline Kennedy III” 1966 Warhol silkscreen print at MAG in Rochester, NY
This morning’s paper had an article about the photographer, Nan Goldin. Living in Paris “since Bush stole the election”, as she puts it, she has an upcoming show at at Matthew Marks gallery in Chelsea where she will be showing photos from as far back as the seventies along with a slideshow of photos she shot inside the Louvre at night. As popular as Jerry Lewis and Mickey Rourke over there she was given free access to the museums collection. Any artist’s dream come true.
I was rummaging around the Memorial Art Gallery’s collection recently, online of course, and found this delightful Tiepolo drawing. I wish the photos were bigger and there is so much in the collection with “Image Not Available” tags. I can’t understand why a museum wouldn’t put a priority on photographing the collection. Wouldn’t it be fun to let artist and social networking types assemble their favorite pieces on the MAG’s site. Sounds like a php job for Joe Tunis.
I grabbed this picture of Warhol’s Jackie at the MAG on my way up to say hi to Dreamland Faces. Playing three sets there left no time to see the “Extreme Materials” show. My father liked it quite a bit so I plan to get over there soon. And same story at the Eastman House. I want to get back over there to see that giant photo collection of people with their eyes closed. The collection is so big that this Robert Maplethorpe photo of Alice Neel was out in the hall.
So much of art these days is appropriation, the Warhol silkscreens from photos of course, my scrapbooks from newspaper clippings, the drawings I’ve been making from crime page mugshots, photos of the woods even, all photography for that matter, landscape painting! Come on.
Model From Crime Page – Paul Dodd Charcoal on paper 2011
The class is called “Advanced Painting” and I’ve been taking it for more years than I can remember. I did my first oil painting in this class a long time ago and then last year I switched mediums to kid’s Tempura paint. This year I haven’t done a painting yet, just a pile of charcoal drawings. It’s a funny kind of progress.
ad·vanced
1. Far on or ahead in development or progress.
2. New and not yet generally accepted.
Dreamland Faces performing upstairs at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York for the opening of the “Extreme Materials II” show
It was great playing with Minneapolis’s Dreamland Faces at the Extreme Materials show but because they were playing at the same time as Margaret Explosion we didn’t get to hear much. We chatted before the show and Andy said they were going to do their “dissident stuff”. We heard from others that Karen didn’t sing for some reason. I caught part of one song while we were on break and it didn’t sound dissident to me. It sounded other worldly. Andy’s from Rochester so they’ll be back. With two accordions, two saws, two totally unique voices they are a marvel. Here’s a clip of Andy from Prairie Home Companion.
We have a mouse in our spice cabinet but it’s not going after the spices, it is stripping the labels of the Cream of Tarter and other containers in order to use the paper in it’s nest. That’s not so bad but the droppings are sort of unappetizing. Our cat has been looking at the walls like there is something going on in there so I’m thinking it’s time to bait the traps.
The misty white center portion of this photo, what I thought was a light leak, turns out to be dust on my lens. The lens cover on my Nikon P7000 is acting up again. Here it looks like an apparition as volunteers who help the county maintain the park hosted another of their weekly arboretum tours. The last tour of the year is next Sunday at 2pm and starts in the parking lot of the old zoo.
The shot above is from weeks ago. Yesterday’s crowd was so large they had to split it into two large crowds. Sun will do that. We went with the one that did the tour in reverse. The tour is interesting enough to do more than once. We found cherry blossoms in full Fall bloom, the once “extinct” Dawn redwoods, blue Juniper berries that smelled like gin. We learned how to tell fir trees from spruce. The cones on a fir tree point up and the ones on a spruce point down. Our guide pointed out that “fir” has less letters than “spruce” like “up” is to “down”. I remember “forks on the left” with a similar trick.
When the tour was over one of the guides urged us to vote Democratic in the next election because the “Republicans could care less about the environment.” He said they rejected spending 15,000 (that would been matched by the state) on the parks in the the last year alone.
Pete and Shelley are coming down from the mountains for tonight’s gig at the George Eastman House. Shelley emailed from the library that she was bringing her shakers so we’re in for a special treat. How do you think this tree lost it’s needles?
Members of the Basque separatist group, ETA, announce cease fire in San Sebastian, Spain
I look at the Spanish papers most days, El Pais, El Mundo and ABC. I look at the headlines mostly and if I must read an article I’ll ask Peggi to translate it or use Google. Big news there today with the Basque separatist group ETA announcing an end to their violent tactics with this theatrical video.
Mickey Mantle would have turned 80 today if he was still alive. We’re watching our first baseball game of the season and it’s almost November. I’m not really crazy about red but I’m partial to the National League unless the Yankees or Detroit Tigers are in the series. The Rochester Red Wings used to be a farm team for the Saint Louis Cardinals so that’s reason enough to root for them and George W. used to own the Texas Rangers so that’s reason enough not to root for them.
Margaret Explosion records most shows. We never rehearse (we sound it, I know) and we hardly ever play a song more than once so it takes a while to work our way through the recordings. Some songs survive multiple listenings and stay on the “A List” until we can give them a title. “Strip Club”, from October of last year, is one that wouldn’t go away. It features Jack Schaefer on bass clarinet and Pete LaBonne on piano. I just added it to the site today.
Pete LaBonne joins us for Friday’s gig at the Eastman House opening and Saturday’s gig at the Memorial Art Gallery. Jaffe, former keyboard player with Colorblind James, said he might stop by and sit in tonight at our Little Theater gig. Stop by. Live a Little!
