Author: Paul

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Big Heart Benefit

Magnolia Warbler on our patio in Rochester, New York
Magnolia Warbler on our patio in Rochester, New York

I’m happy to report that this Magnolia Warbler shook off its collision with our window and flew away shortly after I took this picture. I hope there was no lasting damage.

I was knocked out once by three fraternity guys. I was a freshman at Indiana sitting on a stone wall near the street waiting for my friends to come home. I had sort of long hair at the time and a car drove by and someone yelled “faggot.” I flipped them the bird. They circled the block, stopped the car and three guys in blue windbreakers with yellow Greek letters on the front came at me. I got a few punches in but these guys were swinging like they wanted to kill me. I came to with my face planted in the sidewalk. My nose was broken and my jaw was dislocated. And my glasses were completely smashed.

I was in the charcoal section of Rochester Art Supply this afternoon when Sally Wood Winslow walked by with her RAS bucket. She and a few other employees fill the buckets with Amazon orders for virtual customers. Peggi was in the next aisle picking out a tube of watercolor and I heard her talking to someone. Turned out to be Jim Mott buying small canvases for paintings he’s doing of the migrating Warblers.

Joe Monacelli Snell works there as well and we said hi. We were just at his mom’s funeral on Tuesday. Pete and Gloria Monacelli have organized a benefit (six kids, no mom.) Six bands play and there’s lot’s of art for sale with all proceeds going to the family. This Sunday at Hochstein School of Music 6-10PM. Margaret Explosion starts at 8.

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Meet The New Guys

Three Paul Dodd drawings on wall at Creative Workshop in Rochester New York 2014
Three Paul Dodd drawings on wall at Creative Workshop in Rochester New York 2014

They painted the walls in our Creative Workshop room. I’m not crazy about the yellow tint but it does set the unframed drawings off. The drawings I bring to or do in Fred Lipp’s class are not done until Fred says they are done. Fred often tells the story of a student who titled his finished painting “Done.” These three were pronounced “done” last night.

Margaret Explosion plays tonight at the Little Theater.

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Matisse The Master

Matisse Prints Show at MAG in Rochester, New York
Matisse Prints Show at MAG in Rochester, New York

Someday the artist statement, the placards, the descriptions of the process, the photos of the artist and the back story will be a bigger percentage of the show than the work. Art educators and museum directors, responsible for the turnstile head count, are getting more aggressive. One way to work around this studied presentation is to start the show at the exit. This view knocked me out.

When Matisse’s artwork is in the house just get out of the way. The drawing, his life’s work, speaks for itself. Watch Matisse capture and portray form in an ever more essential, direct and wildly expressive display. “Matisse As Printmaker,” currently on view at the MAG, is a pure delight.

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Down Where The Bitey Things Breed

Mayapples in woods on May
Mayapples in woods on May

So many masterpieces, so little time. As I see it you take them down, one project at a time for seven bucks, or you swallow the Gigunda package for a Benjamin. “Down Where The Bitey Things Breed” from Pete LaBonne’s 1994 “Mega Fig Leaf Man” was last weekend’s theme song for me.

We were spending quality time with Pete and Shelley and I skipped a few days of showers so by the time I spotted the tick on my chest it was engorged. That is bloated. We had exchanged bodily fluids. Peggi got a hold of him with our tweezers but snoot was still drilled down and hanging on. Weekend evening options are scattered about town but most were closed so we headed out to Webster to an Urgent Care on Barrett Drive, a street that didn’t even exist when I lived out there. It was named after Webster’s long time town attorney, the man who gave the commencement speech at RL Thomas when I graduated and the father of my buddy, Joe.

The doctor out there numbed my skin and used a small scalpel to remove the snout. I went home with a fourteen day supply of antibiotics. Hoping I don’t wind up like The Punk Singer.

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Fake Review

Danny Fox Trio at the Bop Shop in Rochester, New York
Danny Fox Trio at the Bop Shop in Rochester, New York

We hadn’t quite finished this morning’s paper when Alice and Julio called from a nearby Best Western hotel. They were back in town from Maine to see a play and visit old friends. Hours flew by as the talk veered back and forth between art and Spain. And then back to the paper.

A review in the Art and Leisure section of the Danny Fox Trio caught my eye, a reference to chamber jazz and Duke Ellington, so I called up a sample on my iPad. The front page of their website said they were playing on the 18th at the Bop Shop so I checked the date. It was today and they were to start in ten minutes. We hopped in the car.

Turns out the drummer is from Brighton so it was one of the best crowds I’d seen at the record shop. I sat up on a counter. The piano player writes beautiful tunes with plenty of room in the arrangements for the bass player and drummer to bring them to life. They were a joy to listen to.

We talked to the piano player after the gig and he told us that for fun he used to write fake reviews of the band in the critic, Ben Ratliff’s, style. And guess who reviewed his band today?

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Hit Single

Tank behind the Bergen Family Restaurant
Tank behind the Bergen Family Restaurant

We still have a stack of 45s, a foot and a half tall black column of them, sitting next to our stereo. Most of them are Peggi’s and one with her friend, Chris Firth’s name on it, Bobby Darin’s “Nature Boy” is still on the top of the stack. We played it at our 45 party on 4/5 and we played at two in the morning last night when our friends, Pete and Shelley, were getting ready for bed. Both times it skipped after the second chorus but I can’t get the song out of my head.

I know Andy had some sort of falling out with Greg and the Chesterfield Kings are history even though the two live next door to one another but their new book is a smash! Greg is is happy and moving on and he seems to be in good graces with the House of Guitars again. That seems right.

Andy has a new group, the “Empty Hearts.” Steve Van Zandt came up with the name and they (Clem Burke from Blondie, Elliot Easton from the Cars and Wally Palmer from the Romantics) recorded an album in Rochester. “Ed Stasium produced it and I’m having a hard time getting this song out of my head too but it’s not as good as Nature Boy.

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Tick Check

Creek in commons in early Spring
Creek in commons in early Spring

The trillium, the trout lilies, the cut leaf toothwort, the mayapples and mayflowers are all up and soaking up the sun before the woods fills in. But don’t take my word for it, get out there. The Spring rush does not last long.

Pete LaBonne has come down from the mountain. He’ll be sitting in with us on the grand piano tonight. All of us will sit on the piano! The song below features Pete from last time he passed through Rochester.

"Dreamland" by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre on 11.06.13. Peggi Fournier - sax, Ken Frank - bass, Pete LaBonne - piano, Bob Martin - guitar, Paul Dodd - drums.
“Dreamland” by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre on 11.06.13. Peggi Fournier – sax, Ken Frank – bass, Pete LaBonne – piano, Bob Martin – guitar, Paul Dodd – drums.
Listen to Dreamland by Margaret Explosion
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Fore Play

Graffiti on ad at 14th hole of Durand Eastman
Graffiti on ad at 14th hole of Durand Eastman
Graffiti on ad at 14th hole of Durand Eastman

Most days we head in to the woods near our house and quickly lose ourselves in nature’s overwhelming beauty. And it is always a shock when, maybe a mile or so in, we need to cross the golf course. The manicured greenery is startling enough but the golfers can really jolt you back to unreality.

We usually wait in the woods until they have played through and our spots allows us to eavesdrop for what that’s worth. A few years ago I made the mistake of crossing part way and standing in a grove of trees. When someone yelled “fore” I naturally turned in the direction of the ball and took it between the eyes. I heard someone say, “Holy shit. You hit someone.” and then they took off.

Which brings me to the tee on the fourteenth hole. I love this kind of stuff. Simple, sly, sneaky and subversive. It’s more than graffiti and a lot less as well. Like the best minimal art, it gets maximum effect from minimal means. I wonder how many golfers have even noticed the magic marker spider on the kitchen floor of the “Floor Coverings International” ad.

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Paving Paradise

Abby Wambach scores 2 goals on Sunday for WNY Flash
Abby Wambach scores 2 goals on Sunday for WNY Flash

We were attempting to call up the tv show “Fargo’ with our new TW “On Demand” box when we came across the public access channel, something we had never seen before. A guy with the worst crop of jet black hair on top of mismatched sideburns was addressing a woman about a driveway variance and the subhead read “66 Wisner Road,” a road that is only a block from us. This was real local tv and it was better than Fargo.

The gentleman who lives on a corner lot, across the street from the woman was petitioning the town to let him add a second driveway, one on each street of the corner, because he has so many cars. He works nights and his girlfriend’s kids moved in with them and they come home at different times and he has to wake up and move his car so he can out and it would be so much easier if he could just put another driveway in – something like that. This was riveting stuff.

The next guy up wanted to build a six foot fence around his house in order to park and hide his RV next to the garage. The town only likes to see four foot fences close to the street. The guy after that took the cake. He and his wife had five cars between the two of them and in the next couple of year two of his kids will have their own car so that would be seven vehicles and he wanted to widen his driveway by eighteen feet or something. The town has a regulation that limits the percentage of your lot that you can pave to 35 and they weren’t buying his argument.

Abby scored two goals this afternoon.

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Thinking About Drawing

Fingernail hands in shop window on Monroe Avenue
Fingernail hands in shop window on Monroe Avenue

We were all over the city yesterday. Out to MCC to meet with the financial master, Joe Marchese, over to Sophia’s Shoe Repair where my father picked up his reconditioned leather satchel, down to the the co-op to pick up some cherry concentrate, just enough time to stop home for a tuna sandwich and be at I-Square to take down the show and then over to Carroll’s on East Main where we had a pint to celebrate Martha O’Conner’s birthday. Onward to Geri’s, significantly numbered, Mexican themed, birthday bash. Her son, Paul, was bar-tending and I turned down his Patron and grapefruit in favor of a Tecaté.

I was ready to sleep in today but it was our neighborhood pool opening. We take off the winter cover, stick the umbrellas into the tabletops, wash the chairs, prime the pump, brush the scum off the walls and dowse the water with shock. The water temp is not even fifty so we’re a few weeks away from cannon balls.

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Bloggers Law

Quonset hut house on Titus Avenue in Rochester, New York
Quonset hut house on Titus Avenue in Rochester, New York

I thought I would read a bit more about Putin’s new “Blogger’s Law” before I risked speaking my mind but as I typed “Putin” in Google I was prompted to check out “Putin’s girlfriend” and I never got to the law so here goes.

When I was building homes as a “rougher” we built three types of homes, split levels, ranches and center entrance Colonials. Oh and there was this thing called a “raised ranch.” These “Domas Homes” were in a new development off Lyell Road. They were cheap and probably didn’t age well. In case you don’t know what a rougher is, some people call them framers, they build the basic wood structure and get out before the “finished” carpenters move in. When I first started as a rougher I hollered out a measurement to my boss, Salvatore Caramana, something like “62 and an eighth.” And he hollered back, “An eighth? I can’t see a fucking eighth.”

Anyway, we didn’t build any Quonset huts. They look like something they might have in Russia.

Here is a Contemplation from last week’s gig.

"Contemplation" by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre on 04.30.14. Peggi Fournier - sax, Ken Frank - bass, Bob Martin - guitar, Jack Schaefer - bass clarinet, Paul Dodd - drums.
“Contemplation” by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre on 04.30.14. Peggi Fournier – sax, Ken Frank – bass, Bob Martin – guitar, Jack Schaefer – bass clarinet, Paul Dodd – drums.
Listen to Contemplation by Margaret Explosion
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Generic God

Orange cone and dumpster at I-Square
Orange cone and dumpster at I-Square

A friend of ours is running for NYS assembly in the the town of Greece, the same town that W. came to when he wanted to sell the country on privatizing social security and the same suburb of Rochester where two women had their day in Supreme Court on Monday. I wish him luck.

As someone who came up in Catholic schools where the nuns would stop everything in the middle of a lesson and take us over to the church for some reason or start talking about religion in the middle of math class I understand that I (or my parents) asked for the intrusion. But when addressing the town on a legislative matter why should someone be made to feel uncomfortable or be put in a position of sucking up to some cult?

The town claims to be trying to recruit members of various faiths to offer prayers, “non-sectarian prayers” of course. Just what boundaries surround “non-sectarian prayers?” This calls for active, performance-art resistance, wacky, outrageous prayers to all sorts of imaginary devils, witches and gods.

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Adiós

Big tree down on Corwin Road and Winton
Big tree down on Corwin Road and Winton

Corwin Road starts in the city at Winton Road right where this photo was taken. Corwin was cut in two pieces when they built the expressway. Our guitar player and my parents live on what is now the other side, Town of Brighton, Penfield schools and Rochester address. A tiny piece of trivia, an excuse to show how big this tree was and a metaphor for my parent’s departure. They closed on their house today at 4PM so I will definitely not be helping to put their awnings up this Spring.

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P Doddy Talks

Six "Models From Crime Page" at I-Square Gallery 2014
Six “Models From Crime Page” at I-Square Gallery 2014

What I am trying to do… What a dreadful opening to a sentence or a thought even. Why should you have to or want to explain what you are trying to do? Why wouldn’t you just do it and shut up? I have been asked to give an artist’s talk, this time along with my father and brother. Our show comes down at the end of the week and it is a fitting time to take a step back and ask myself why I do what I have put on display here so this entry is somewhat of a dress rehearsal.

The context, three of us from the same family, is curious. How does one influence the others and just how does such wildly different work come out of that? I was awestruck when my father painted Disney characters on the furnace pipes in our basement. I was not in charge of decorating our house when we were growing up but Rouault, Klee and Van Gogh reproductions certainly packed a wallop. My father has an amazing ability to boil down and present concepts in a concrete form. I watched him create symbols for our rebel church group and much later distill the early wafer-stepping machines in to 35mm slides for Hampshire Instruments. But most of all I was witness to his endless collecting, in sketchbook form, of observations from woods, the countryside and construction sites. And he has a lifetime’s worth of watercolors to show for this.

My brother picked up on the boil down thing. His mostly wood pieces are exquisitely pure manifestations of form following function.

Like a punk rocker or rapper, I go for expression, both trying to capture the expression of my subject and expressing myself in the picture. And the challenge of depicting form in two dimensions has me hooked. P Diddy, playing a convict who sketches fellow inmates and guards (a variation on my thing) in the movie “Monster’s Ball” had a very cool quote that stuck with me. “I’ve always believed that a portrait captures a person far better than a photograph. It truly takes a human being to really see a human being.”

3 “D”s in Dodd Artists Talk
Monday 7-9 pm
I-Square Gallery Titus Avenue

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Broom Clean To Show

White lawn jockey, Rochester New York
White lawn jockey, Rochester New York

This year Kentucky Derby Day presents a dilema. Do we go down to O’Laughlin’s to wager a bet, watch the 2 minute race and gaze out at the sailboats or do we dress even warmer and cheer the WNY Flash on in their first home game? It was much warmer in Kentucky when watched the race in person while on our first date.

We watched as the lawyer led my parents through the final steps of transferring the title of their house to the new owners. It needs to be “broom clean” and we have to find the garage door opener and she asked if we had a carbon monoxide detector. I said, “We did until I gave it to the church a few hours ago.” I unplugged it and put in one of the last boxes to go. It went off in my hand and was as loud as hell until I found the little button on the back. As Paster Jack was putting the last few boxes in the truck it went off again and I’m laughing just thinking about looking at him holding that thing in his hands while the alarm was going off.

Now, I’m wondering. Do I send the new owners the video I made of my parents and me putting the awnings up?

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Pre Verbal

Stephan Crump"s Rosetta Trio at Bop Shop in Rochester, New York
Stephan Crump”s Rosetta Trio at Bop Shop in Rochester, New York

My parent’s realtor recommended the Bethel Church as someone who could take the remainders from last weekends’ garage sale so I called Pastor Jack and arranged to meet him at my parent’s old house this afternoon. He was going to round up a crew but that must not have worked out. The crew consisted of his wife so in three hours we were able to fill his truck and flatbed trailer with remainders. I have no idea what the church does with all this stuff but they will take almost anything. I’m meeting them there tomorrow morning for a second load. Praise the lord.

Stephan Crump, bass player with Rochester native, Vijay Iyer’s Trio, brought his hard-grooving all-string Rosetta Trio to the Bop Shop tonight. Featuring guitarists Liberty Ellman and Jamie Fox the trio leaves plenty of space for the bass maestro while the guitarists work their magic. This was close your eyes and get transported stuff, achingly beautiful, melodic and rhythmic as hell. Crump knocked us out with a pretty number called “He Runs Circles” from his new cd which was inspired by his four year old’s pre verbal method of showing affection.

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Bliss

Bubble Hockey game at Rochester Tap Room
Bubble Hockey game at Rochester Tap Room

We usually take an automobile trip on my birthday and yesterday we started by looking at a google map of the southern tier. I didn’t want to drive too far so I picked Bliss, New York but we never made it there. We saw a big green blotch on the map, a state forest and thought we could stop and take a walk there. We stay off the Expressways so we drove west along the lake, across the river, and out English Road to Route 19. We had to stop the car when a lift bridge went up over the Erie Canal and then again at a train crossing.

We had lunch at the Bergen Family Diner. The specials were Meatloaf, Stuffed Peppers, Greek Lasagna, Portobello Parmesan, Liver & Onions, Crabmeat Quiche, Beef Tips with Noddles, and BBQ Pork Riblets. We went with a club sandwich and a cup of coffee. They were playing “Today’s Soft Rock.” By the time we got down near the town of Warsaw we couldn’t remember the name of the state forest. We stopped at a grocery store that was either going in or out of business and the lady behind the counter said she had been there sixty years and she didn’t know of any state forest. Kind of hard when you don’t know the name of the place you’re looking for but further up the road we managed to get directions at a Cornell Cooperative Extension.

Carlton Hill State Forest was beautiful, just beginning to blossom. We came back along the Genesee River Valley and stopped at Casey’s place on the river, the newly christened “Rochester Tap Room.” Peggi and I both had a Three Heads Kind IPA and we each won a game of bubble hockey.

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