Author: Paul

Our friend, Louise, writing about a nearby, familiar and favorite spot says it “is so beautiful I think I might disappear: out of life, and into it.” I can’t write anything after that. Here’s a drawing.

I exhausted myself writing an artist statement (*required) for two drawings I entered in Auburn’s “Made In New York” show. And now it’s time to watch the Tonya Harding documentary.

We were lucky to get a seat at the MAG’s afternoon presentation of “The Great Confusion: The 1913 Armory Show,” Michael Maglaras’s documentary about the now infamous show of radical art (Europeans, Cezanne, Renoir, Van Gogh and Marcel Duchamp as well Americans, Marsden Hartley and John Marin) that took place a century ago. We were fifteen minutes early, rarity for us, and the only seats available were right down front which is right where we usually sit regardless of how crowded the theater is. The film was very good but how could it not be, centering on pieces like Matisse’s “Blue Nude.” Carol Acquilano was sitting behind us and she reminded us that this was the last day for Rochester Contemporary’s 23rd Annual Members Show.

So after the movie we were some of the last visitors on its last day, in fact Peggi and I took our pieces home with us when we left the gallery. Every member gets to contribute one piece and each time you visit the show you get to put a small yellow sticker next to your favorite piece. I put mine next to Kaavl Obijn’s “Holy Night,” a mixed media piece that could have landed Kaavl in prison if RoCo was in Russia. It was rather hard to photograph but you should be able to tell that parents, Joseph and Mary, the shepherds and wise men and most of the animals are gathered around a small tv set in the corner of the manger while the Christ child is let unattended.

We stopped down to the Creative Workshop in the basement of the Memorial Art Gallery to see the new show of “student art.” There is no shame in being a a lifelong student. I resigned myself to this a long time ago. Learning is not something you grow out of and this is all the more true at the Creative Workshop because Fred Lipp teaches there. Note: Classes start again next week.

I love the play between these three items in the show, my “Investment Banker” with the one eyed dog (Pauline Johnson Brown’s “Buster”) and Violet Paolucci’s “Untitled” ceramic vase establishing real form in the center. The color dialog is quite nice as well. And then around the corner we found a watercolor of the dedication of the O”Rourke bridge by Leo Dodd and Peggi Fournier’s watercolor of an African boy.

I am still buzzing over yesterday’s experience of reconnecting with an old friend. When I first met Greg he was living in the small studio that Indiana University gave to fine art majors. No dorm room, no apartment, an early piece of performance art and when I last saw him, sometime in the early seventies, he was sitting on a stoop in front of the apartment in the lower east side where he still lives.

Of course we had to run down the whereabouts of the Bloomington trailer denizens. He didn’t know Dave had passed on and that was a jolt. Greg had hired Dave to prepare the old drive-in screen that Greg repurposed as an installation. Greg loved the trailer and we all thought Greg was magical. Somehow I knew he would ride his bike back in to our life.

Greg is still a big idea, small footprint kinda guy. When the phone rang with his name on it it was as if he had crawled out of a cave. He has been living a self described, introspective, contemplative life devoted to art and he was excited to tell me he had recently come full circle in a long journey where he had set aside the production of tangible work. I had to hang up when someone knocked on our door. I told him I would call back to say goodbye but that would be silly.