I’ve been looking at some Robert Ryman images in preparation for our visit to DIA Beacon and I like what I see. The impetus for the DIA trip is the Robert Irwin book that we went crazy over. Irwin designed the repurposed Nabisco box factory on the Hudson for the DIA foundation. He talked about Ryman’s influence in the book and so I tracked Ryman down. I like this Ryman quote from the sixties. “There is never a question of what to paint, but only how to paint.”
It bugs me when people deface trees but I have to admit this little yellow patch on a tree near Eastman Lake looks pretty sensational.
Over the years we’ve developed a few theories about who the Hoffman Road Budweiser guy is. We’ve suspected kids, the neighbor with the dog whose breath smelled like liquor one morning when we engaged him in conversation and the guy who built the new house up on the hill. In fact last summer we became certain he was our man because he defaulted on his mortgage, moved out and the pile of beer cans dried up.
I stuck my head over the embankment as we walked by the other day and couldn’t believe my eyes. We brought two Wegmans bags with us the next day and the pile of 24 ouncers barely fit in. Whoever he is he probably has a red nose and black bow tie.
My favorite thing about the Neil Young autobiography is not the wild stories about familiar names, it’s the little things like when he visited Costco for the first time. “My first big purchase was a set of replacement brushes for my Sonicare toothbrush.” Marveling at the vast organic food section and then remembering all the small mom and pop stores from his youth he writes. “I felt pretty old for a moment and then I regrouped and realized I was alive and should be thankful.”
Beautiful dark grey snowy day in Rochester, New York
I shoveled the driveway in my pajamas this morning. Not the first time I’ve done that. I go out to get the paper and if it looks like it’s over my slippers I shovel my way to the mailbox. I have always liked shoveling snow. I used to do three driveways when we lived in the city, sometimes four, as our neighbors got older. And I used to make money with my shovel when I was in my teens. The rules never change. You have to get out there right away before the snow gets too heavy, before cars drive on it. And do it two or three times in a heavy storm. My father was showing me a Ralph Avery watercolor last night, a scene of downtown Rochester, and told me Avery died shoveling snow in his driveway. Not a bad way to go.
There is nothing like a fresh snowfall. I wish we had more of them. It’s like mother nature has low Testosterone these days.
Alarm Will Sound performs “1969” at Kodak Hall in Rochester New york
I think of our time, early twenty first century, as turbulent but pointing to a reflection of this turmoil in contemporary art or music is not so easy. The late sixties were very turbulent and the evidence is everywhere.
Alarm Will Sound, a new music group which started while the principals were students at the Eastman, returned last night to perform their newest work,”1969.” Three projection screens surrounded the 20 piece orchestra as they played arrangements of pieces originally performed by John and Yoko, Stockhausen, Luciano Berio and Leonard Bernstein, pieces that today clearly express those heady days. Images of Stavinsky, Father Berrigan, Hunter Thompson, Martin Luther King, the Civil Rights protesters, Kent State students and the soldiers in Vietnam cement the connection between the times and the art. I was thinking how Philip Guston’s art changed in that same period but that played no part in this program. These were our formative years so Peggi and I deserved the second row seats we took. Actually we arrived as the show was starting and someone was in our seats already so the ushers said we could sit anywhere we want.
I loved this presentation, short pieces of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass’, Lennon and Yoko’s “Unfinished Music”, the Beatles “Revolution Number 9” and Stockhausen’s “Set Sail for the Sun,” collaged together with dialog taken from the artist’s own words. The entire piece was centered around a connection that actually never took place, a meeting between Stockhausen and John Lennon. They did talk about it though.
You can’t hear Kim, standing on her drums in this photo, but she’s telling the crowd “to have fucking fun,” as if the packed Armory needed any guidance. Our friend Kevin, manages this band and they have become a sensation. It must be so satisfying for a pop music fiend to have an act at the top.
And this band is intense pop. Boiled down to the essentials of drums and melody they deliver their major key, sticky tunes like mini anthems. Kim may be smiling full tilt but she is working her ass off. As a duo their huge, live sound (I wore my Home Depot ear protectors) is quite fragile and that only adds to the excitement.
“Fragment of a Head” from Chiapas, Mexico Eighth Century
The Memorial Art Gallery has a really interesting show to celebrate their Centennial. The staff picked local artists and invited them to reinterpret works from their collection. The new work in “Art Reflected” is for sale and it is scattered throughout the gallery, positioned next to or in front of the work of inspiration. This arrangement encourages you to wander into rooms you normally whizz by. Like an Easter egg hunt the show is full of surprises. It reinvigorates the collection.
My brother, John, has a really nice piece here but as a celebration the show is a bit stuffy. One hundred artists for the one hundred years would have added to the merriment. If they had asked I would have given my reflection of this beautiful Mayan, stucco “Fragment of a Head” from the eighth century.
NFL burger flippers at Eastview Mall in Rochester, NY
Peggi and I headed out to the mall this weekend. We don’t get out there much but Peggi needed new jeans and our niece told her Old Navy was the best place go for jeans. The corridors to the big box stores are lined with small vendors and once I figured out what this Russian guy was selling I took out my camera to grab a shot. He asked, “What are you doing? I said, I’m taking a photo for my father. I know he would want one of these but I don’t know which team.” What was I supposed to say? “You have a bizarre product line.”
I’m just realizing yesterday was the first Friday in Lent. No wonder Captain Jim’s on East Main was so crowded. We had suggested bringing fish frys over to my parents. They weren’t real fish frys, our four orders were baked and came with a baked potato and cold slaw. Mom mom microwaved some broccoli and we each had milk to drink. My parents get their milk from the Pittsford Dairy and it comes in glass bottles just like the one in the picture above.
Popwars was moved to a new server, one with the most recent version of php. The move knocked out my nav bar because I was using full urls in the includes but I was able to update my blog software. Took me a few days to recover. Wouldn’t want to get hacked.
Man, I can’t put “Waging Heavy Peace” down. It is so much fun to read.
