Bleu Cease, Rochester Contemporary’s director, characterized my obsession, what I call my “Models from Crime Page” series, as a “long running meditation on the mugshot.” I like that and I realized how accurate this description is when Peggi and I were making this video of the video. I created a slideshow of my source material, mugshots that I scanned from the Crimestoppers page of our local paper and exported the slideshow as a movie. I put the video on a dvd and RoCo played it continuously in the round video presentation room during the show.
Wikipedia says “the term meditation refers to a broad variety of practices that includes techniques designed to promote relaxation, build internal energy or life force and develop compassion, love, patience, generosity, and forgiveness. A particularly ambitious form of meditation aims at effortlessly sustained single-pointed concentration meant to enable its practitioner to enjoy an indestructible sense of well-being while engaging in any life activity.”
“Model from Crime Page” 1999, 2010,2004 and “Model from Crime Page” 2017 oil on canvas, installation view “Witness – Paul Dodd, Leo Dodd” at Rochester Contemporary 2017
Today was the last day for the Witness exhibition. We stopped by yesterday for a last visit. My brother, John, was there, studying my father’s sketchbooks. Peggi and I were in the round, video-installation room making another video of the video of mugshot sources. The first attempt had a few glitches and Peggi walked in front of the camera at one point. I felt like it added scale but she wanted to do it again.
We were almost done when we heard a lot of conversation out in the main room. A group of eight people or so were talking about the paintings. One guy thought one of my portraits looked like him and he was posing in front of it. Someone else was making a video and talking into the microphone. Bleu, the gallery director came out of the back room and greeted everyone. He told someone that I was the artist and I was introduced to the others.
Rahsaan. P. was the name of the guy making the movie. He said he plans to use the footage he shot of the show in a video he is making with a singer. The song is called, “The Mona Kiesha” and he said it should be available on his video channel by Thanksgiving. One of the guys with him is known as the “Tarmac Dancer.” Country singer, Terry McBride, was flying out of Rochester and he shot this video of Kyran Ashford doing his job at the airport.
Our kale plants are still thriving in this weather but the jalapeños and eggplants have had it. We picked the last of those. With the temperatures in the twenties we determined it was safe to go back in the woods. Our favorite trails had become so overgrown with invasive plants that we avoided them this summer. We feel like tick nets in warmer weather and hope science can find a way around this menace. For now, we feel safe below 20 degrees.
We met Phil Marshall for lunch at a Thai restaurant. It was basically a band rehearsal, one where we talked philosophy rather than play instruments. I guess it was a goals clarification discussion, confirmation that we are all on the same page and all want to get there quicker. I think it went well.
Pete LaBonne has a song called “Mega Fig Leaf Man” and, of course, I thought of it we when came across this. The 1994 release includes “Down Where The Bitey Things Breed” and “Trophy Bowler.” The best seven bucks you will ever spend.
We spent the afternoon at the bottom of the hill behind our house. We drove down there and strategically parked behind a tree so we wouldn’t clobber the car when we set the 18 inch sections of red oak free. I rolled the first section down switchback style and then Peggi positioned it to catch the following sections. John Gilmore sold me his chainsaw when he left the country and I gave that thing a workout today. The tree was too heavy to roll over so each cut I made touched the earth before the section came free. I’ll be heading over to Titus Mower to have it sharpened tomorrow.
Voting booths at Point Pleasant Fire House in Rochester New York
When I was growing up the City dropped off small wooden houses, the size of large Home Depot shed, in all the neighborhoods. We walked by the one on Humboldt Street on the way to school and I couldn’t wait to get inside one of those. When I was finally old enough to vote the houses were gone and the polling stations all had those technical denies where you turned a small metal lever for each candidate and then locked in and cast all your votes with one pull of the big arm. Today, while the rest of the world is going paperless, we fill out large cardboard ballets with markers and then we slide the ballet into a scanner. Well, mine was rejected yesterday and I was pretty sure I knew why.
We had read a bit about the NYS Constitutional amendment. We like a lot of what it was proposing. Our local paper recommended a yes vote and the Times recommended a “no.” The more we read the more we were leaning toward no but just to be sure we asked our friend, Matthew, what he thought. Although originally from Australia he is the most informed person we know. His reply was short but more than we had asked for. “Flip the ballot over and vote no, yes, yes.” That stuck with me or should have but I have a bit of dyslexia. I voted “yes” on the first one and almost a no on the second but I realized I had messed up. I scribbled a big “X” on the answer and filled in the circle for “no.” One of the voting attendants came over and wrote “Spoiled” on my ballet and gave me another.
I tried to do the second one in record time but in my haste I made the same mistake! The assistant said “I’m not supposed to look at the ballet but she went ahead to see what I was doing wrong. Another assistant came over and introduced herself as the Democratic representative. “We need to be nonpartisan.” My ballet was marked “Spoiled” and I was told this would be the last time I could try. Three strikes and I’m out.
I got the third one right and even managed to write-in “Gary Pudup” for Sheriff. I would like to know the story of who was behind that last minute campaign and we may find out tonight as Gary is usually there for Margaret Explosion gigs.
Leo Dodd “Douglas Anthony Bridge” watercolor on display at Rochester Contemporary as part of “Witness” exhibition 2017
We lay pretty low, I think, but the last five days were a whirlwind. It started last Wednesday when Pete and Shelley came into town. Pete joined us on piano at the Little Café and of course we carried on into the night after the performance. There is so much to talk about when you come out of the woods with a bottle of homemade dandelion wine. My brother and his wife came up the day Pete and Shelley left. They operate in their own time zone so even though we gained an hour we still managed to see 3AM two nights in a row. They left Sunday afternoon and we met Alice and Julio, who were visiting from Maine, an hour later.
We visited “Witness” with all three guests. The exhibition is up for another week and my brother became an integral part of the show once we connected the dots. I met Alice when I first started taking Fred Lipp’s class at the Creative Workshop. At that time she was painting luscious abstract constructions but she has moved closer to landscapes. She is one of my favorite painters and I was so pleased to learn that she was knocked out by the new charcoal drawings in the show. Her comments carry more weight than anyone else I know.
I was lucky to be at RoCo when Howard Ressel, the chief design architect of the Douglas Anthony, was there. He was drawn to the show by the postcard image, my father’s painting of the bridge. He told me he remembered someone sketching the construction and told us how the initial design was modified to include the bigger central arch, the one that shared weight from both directions of the eight lane highway. Formerly known as the Troup–Howell Bridge the triple steel arch bridge carries Interstate 490 over the Genesee River and Exchange Boulevard and is a major commuter route connecting eastern and western suburbs to downtown Rochester.
The official name of the bridge is The Frederick Douglass – Susan B. Anthony Memorial Bridge, a mouthful. And it is commonly referred to as the Freddy-Sue Bridge but Howard Reseal refers to it as the “Douglas Anthony Bridge.” I like that. The other was irreverent to such important figures. I told Howard the “Death to the Inner Loop” chant was a lonely cry twenty years ago and today the eastern half is filled in. So I will from hereafter refer to the bridge as the Douglas Anthony Bridge. Pleas pass this along.
We spotted a buck out back and he saw us but it was only a glance. “Oh them.” We like to think they know us enough to realize we don’t present any danger. He was following his nose, inhaling through his nostrils as he swept the ground. We had just seen a doe come through, alone, which is not so unusual this time of year, and this guy was tracking her scent, retracing her steps exactly. He was headed across the road where the guy who lives there could be waiting with his bow.
Deer, in the number we have here, are a nuisance so I can’t get too upset about this ritual. We were talking to Steve, a neighbor, friend and outdoor enthusiast, about the bow hunting thing. I asked him if it was really a sport to wait for a deer to walk across your property and then let him have it? He felt that it was and told us he can only shoot an arrow accurately about fifty feet (or was it yards?). He pointed to a tree down the road. “Some guys can shoot twice that distance.”
I would guess it feels more like a sport when the weather is cold and the deer are actively running around, chasing the opposite sex. Steve knows we’re not hunters and wouldn’t eat deer meat but we collect sheds if we see them in the woods. He says we are “non-judgmental” and he doesn’t mind answering our silly questions. I remember a conversation with him about some gay deer sex he had witnessed. He likes to talk.
We made a special stop at Wegman’s to buy Halloween candy, just in case. We used to get a handful of trick or treaters but those kids have grown up and the for the last few years we haven’t gotten any at all. When we lived in the city we had an an army of them. So tonight we had Snickers for dessert.
Matthew and Louise let us borrow their 75 Anniversary edition of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula about three months ago. It is packaged with a 1931 Spanish language version, one that was shot simultaneously with the Lugosi version and one that is reportedly “sexier.” I don’t know what took us so long to get to it but I can’t think of a better night than Halloween.
It rained all day yesterday, never let up, and it got really windy in the night. It was the first time we slept with the windows closed so we didn’t hear the big tree come down out back. It was hung up, leaning at a forty-five degree angle for the last year. A red oak, it was probably ninety feet tall with very few branches. We were worried it was going to take down the power lines on the other side of the street when it fell but we miscalculated.
It fell toward the road and the top quarter was surely blocking the road. Good thing a car wasn’t coming by at the time. When we spotted it in the morning the town had already cut the top off at our property line and hauled it away. We went to work on the rest of it, cutting it into log length sections and loading them into our car so we could drive them up to our wood pile.
The guy across the street came out. We hardly ever talk and we’ve never been introduced. He asked us if we had seen a wounded deer. I told him we saw the eleven point buck on the back of Steve Greive’s car the other day. Steve is in the town’s bow program and he shot the deer on his property at the end of the road. This guy didn’t know Steve but he said he too was bow hunting on his property and he hit a buck but it ran off. He wanted the rack and asked if it was ok to look around in the woods by our house.
Peggi and I visited Rochester Contemporary last week so I could take some still photos of the art installation. While I was moving my tripod around the gallery Peggi took some movies with her iPhone. She edited them over the weekend and made this composite video. We added a soundtrack of our band, Margaret Explosion, two live songs that were recorded last week at the Little Theatre Café. The exhibition runs through November 10. I hope you can out and see it. If you can’t, I guess this video is the next best thing.
Giant puffball mushroom in Durand Eastman Park, Rochester, New York
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” That quote is from Joan Didion. We watched the Netflix documentary on her last night and loved it.
“A painting is an adventure. It is not the execution of a plan.” That one is from Fred Lipp. Somebody should do a documentary of him.
Nikole Hannah-Jones spoke tonight at the Third Presbyterian Church. We were there. Now we must act.
Hannah-Jones is an award-winning investigative reporter who covers civil rights and racial injustice for The New York Times. She was just named a prestigious MacArthur fellow. She is a truth teller. Here first chart had a few key dates in American history. 1607 when the English landed her. 1619, twelve years later when the first African slaves were imported. 1776 when the Constitution was signed. 1954 when the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, or the Fair Housing Act. Peggi remembers canvasing her neighborhood with her friend Christine Latti in Suburban Detroit in an effort to get the Open Housing Bill based. Up north we discriminated by redlining, obstructive lending practices and impediments to home ownership.
The second graphic that hit home was one that showed the narrowing of the achievement gap between white and black students. That was in 1988. Integration was working but it became branded as “forced integration.” The gap has continued to widen since then. Nikole says its funny how we never hear anyone call it ‘forced segregation.” “Separate but equal” is a crock of shit. She says the one thing that has been proven to work is the one thing we are unwilling to do. Our schools in Rochester are some the most serrated schools in the country. NYC is worse.
Someone is going to have to sacrifice if once again integrate or schools. Many more being sacrificed now. Justice is not easy.
We’re so proud of our friend and neighbor. Just her second competition and she brings home a medal from the USA Power Lifting Championship in Florida. Go Sierra!
Still haven’t got over to the MAG to see the Bill Viola piece in the Media Art room but we were thrilled to hear the Memorial Art Gallery plans to commission three works by international artists inspired by the City of Rochester, New York. “Reflections on Place” will feature Javier Téllez (Venezuela, b. 1969), Isaac Julien (U.K., b. 1960) and Dara Birnbaum, (U.S., b. 1946). We’ll have to wait til April 2018 for the first of those exhibitions.
Tonight marks Phil Marshall’s fourth performance as a Margaret Explosion member. We are thrilled to have him in the band working his magic. Before he joined he sat in with us on many occasions. Here he is on live track from the Little Theatre Café in 2009.
Here’s Rain Dance by Margaret Explosion featuring Phil Marshall on guitar.Leave a comment
Sea Breeze neighborhood with Jack Rabbit, Rochester, New York
We buy our coffee in bulk at Canal Town. We get two five pound bags of “Rochester Choice” at a time and I don’t notice any drop-off in flavor as we get to the bottom of that second bag. We took a chance and didn’t call ahead this time. They had some on hand but Pete said he was planning on roasting more this afternoon so said we’d stop back and pick it up fresh. I wanted to grab cup of coffee but decided to wait until we got to our next stop.
We had a arranged to meet Shoshannah White in her studio space at Visual Studies. She is doing a one month residency there and we were introduced to her at last Wednesday’s Margaret Explosion gig. She had chunk of coal on a table in front of her and had already taken some beautiful photos of it. She works somewhere between low and high tech. She uses expired Polaroid film and takes photograms by directly placing objects onto light-sensitive paper. But she also photographs with 2 1/4 film and subtly manipulates large format prints. She currently lives in Maine and even photographed Stephen King.
We suggested a cup of coffee but she didn’t have time so Peggi and I went across the street to the Memorial Art Gallery. We thought we’d check out the Bill Viola exhibit while we were there but both the cafe and gallery were closed.
We decided to stop in Fifth Frame which had just opened a few days ago. The coffee shop/brewery is on Saint Paul and the article in the paper about them called the place “Fifth Flame.” A typo in the headline of that story. They describe their coffee with ratios instead of the common coffee names like latte, cappuccino etc., and told us the fifth frame in bowling is the beer frame. We had a couple of 6:2s. Delicious.
Three “Models From Crime Page” paintings 1999, 2009, 2008 by Paul Dodd from “Witness” show at Rochester Contemporary through November 12, 2017
Peggi and I stopped by Rochester Contemporary to take some pictures of the show. I brought my tripod and set the timer to ensure the shots would be in focus. I was prepared to use the incandescent or florescent setting on my camera but the cast from RoCo’s’ led lights looked most natural in the auto mode. Peggi took a movie of the show, walking from front to back, panning slowly along each of the walls in and out of the round video room, sound the display case and back up to the front. I’ll post that here when she gets it edited.
For me the best thing about the show is the freedom it gives me to move beyond it. I will surly revisit the theme, my “meditation on the mugshot” as Bleu calls it. I keep coming back. But for now I am moving on. Have you seen the most recent Crimestopper page?
Renée Valenti in Main Street Art Gallery studio, Cliffton Springs
Clifton Springs is a hike. Any place you have to take the Thruway for is a hike. It’s really only 35 minutes away and it is worth the drive. It is one of the most well preserved old New York towns you’ll find. We were there for the opening of “Sacred Curiosities,” a group show of Rochester area artists at Main Street Arts. Martha O’Conner has about thirty of her exquisite, mostly clay small abstract figures in the show. Two were sold by the time we got there. This is a beautiful gallery space and there is a great restaurant across the street when the gallery closes.
But we drove a short distance to Manchester and had a “Middle Finger Lakes IPA” at Reinvention Brewery. This place is like a small town Irish pub, warm and friendly, a family style beer hall. Painter, Renée Valenti, is doing a month long residency in one of the upstairs studios at Main Street Arts. She had a piece in the recent Whitney Biennial. I really loved her paintings. She told me she had been doing figurative work but had recently started painting abstractly with flesh tones and charcoal. I spent the way home thinking about her work.
Our friend, Pete, was trying to install an update on his iPad and he got part way into the install but couldn’t remember his password. Someone at MCC, where he teaches, tried to bail him out and they restored the iPad to its factory state. But Pete had never turned on his iCloud backup and wasn’t able to retrieve anything. Five years of photos and sketches from SketchBook Pro. I tried to help him get some music on the iPad tonight but his wife had already synced the iPad with her pc so I couldn’t get Pete’s Mac to connect to the iPad. So I went back to the pc and dragged some songs out her Windows Media Player into her iTunes so I could get them n the Pad. As I did each song came up with a little message that said it was converting the files from .wma to .acc. It’s like the Tower of Babel.
Peggi and I tried helping Jeff earlier in the week. He had a related problem. ITunes on his PowerBook would not launch anymore. It froze when he was trying to Restore his father’s iPad. I reinstalled iTunes on his PowerBook and reacquainted it with his media files but it wasn’t easy because Jeff couldn’t remember his admin password. Meanwhile Peggi got on the phone with Spectrum to see an operator would give her Jeff’s father’s password for his email account so we could set up his restored iPad. The operator had Jeff’s father’s password hints on file and she asked Peggi what his favorite song was. Jeff called his father and asked him what his favorite song was. He thought for a minute and said, “the Star Spangled Banner.” Peggi said “Star Spangled Banner” to the operator and she said “No.” We all laughed and the operator told us what the right answer was. “Summertime.”
We were on bikes headed to Staples and eventually Starbucks and we were only a block from home when we stopped at a garage sale. Someone the neighbors called “Harmonica Johnny” lived in the house but we hadn’t seen him in a long time. Sure enough, we learned Harmonica Johnny had died. His sons were selling the stuff and there wasn’t much to look at. I went through the stack of lps on the basement bar (shown above) but most were cornball 1950’s harmonica records. As I walked away from the stack one of his sons said, “You didn’t find any rock ‘n roll records in there did you?” I laughed and he said “I found a Black Sabbath album in there.” I said “And it was probably yours.” He said it was.
He told me he played drums and his brother played guitar and they used to play in a band with their father. “Mostly Ukrainian weddings.”
Boat, dressed Shriners for a gig at Snake Sisters (now Lux) for a Halloween gig in the late eighties.
Kool & The Gang did a Spanish language version of their song, “Celebration.” It is the first thing i think of when I hear the word, “celebrate.” Phil Marshall is not even 24 hours into his 60th year on Planet Earth and we plan to celebrate tonight at the Little Theatre Café. Although this is only Phil’s third official gig with Margaret Explosion, he played guitar on two tracks of our 2002 cd “Happy Hour.” A link to “Three Chins,” an outtake from that project, is included here.
Phil also played guitar with us in Boat, a late eighties party band. We’re shown here below on Halloween at Snake Sister’s Café, now “Lux” in the South Wedge. Phil is conspicuously not wearing the Shriner nose piece. Kevin Vicalvi played bass, Peggi played Farfisa, I’m back there on drums and Bob Martin played guitar.
We occasionally see this pick-up sitting near the entrance to the park. He is probably out there walking a dog, we’ve never seen anyone getting in or out of the truck. Don’t know if anyone has seen “The Meyerowitz Stories” yet but there is a hilarious scene in there where the brothers, Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler, try to beat the shit out of a car with sticks and stones. It is not that easy. Anyway, I thought of that scene when I saw this truck.
Elizabeth Marvel plays their sister, Jean. Her character works at Xerox and lives in Rochester, New York. Dean & Britta do some of the music. Dean’s sister lives in Rochester.
