Author: Paul

Everyone knows I am a Philip Guston nut. It is a mystery to me why everyone else is not. I have a lot of Guston books, monographs and art books from shows and retrospectives, Guston’s “Collected Writings,” his daughter’s book, “Night Studio, Ross Feld’s book about his relationship with Guston. They are all good but seeing Guston’s images in person is a sensation, a three dimensional, physical sensation. He is quoted as saying he would like to draw like the cavemen, the first people to ever attempt to draw something, when nothing is known and there are no clichés. He says his own paintings “baffle me, too. That’s all I’m painting for.” The following is from a lecture at the University of Minnesota in 1978. It really knocks me out.

“Regarding the general situation in art today, which I suppose is the subject of this conference, I haven’t really too much to say. It has become official, obviously; it is so insured against failure, against bad painting, against risking. But something must be wrong somewhere, because there is this overwhelming success and at the same time such an overwhelming apathy. Everyone knows about art, except the artist. He, it seems, must find out not about art, but how to stay on the treadmill. Each time he paints he must discover how to trust himself, his instincts without knowing how it will turn out. It sounds easy until you try it.

I think it was Picasso who was interviewed and who was asked “What has been the most important thing in your life, master?” and he replied, “self‐trust.” He said that it had taken him a life time to learn how to trust his inchoate urges and instincts. And it’s not easy to achieve because we don’t even recognize the extent to which we are victims of the institutionalized art which is all around us. Nor how often we check ourselves. You have a feeling or thought‐check, check, check. Of the two writers that I’ve admired the most for years, Franz Kafka and Isaac Babel, Isaac Babel gave a lovely, ironic speech to the Soviet Writers’ Union. It was 1934. He ended his talk with the following remark: “The party and the government have given us everything, but have deprived us of one privilege. A very important privilege, comrades, has been taken away from you. That of writing badly.” Isn’t that beautiful? Where am I? Doesn’t anyone want to paint badly?”

more excerpts from this talk

I never thought we’d find another mechanic as good Ted was over at Jerome’s on Atlantic Boulevard but the guys over at B&B Auto on Saint Paul Boulevard are great. We rode our bikes over there to pickup our car and then continued downtown to the main library with the bikes in the back. We checked out art space in the lower level of the library, my basketball players are going up there next week, and we hopped on the bike trail that runs south along the river.

They’ve cleaned up the homeless area under the Freddy-Sue bridge, mostly by fencing it off, but there was still a row of tents. The multi-colored apartments that line the river looked pretty cozy and the UofR campus with the carloads of freshmen unpacking looked absolutely dreamy. Those long skinny crew boats were racing up and down the river and large gatherings of people, some looked like church groups, were cooking out in Genesee Valley Park. We rolled on to the intersection of the Erie Canal and the Genesee and hung out on one of those old arched concrete bridges that appear in so many of my father’s paintings.

We crossed the river there on a pedestrian bridge and rolled back in to town along the West Bank of the river. The area along Exchange has really come back and it was easy to see the synergy that Patrick Burke, a business columnist for the local paper was talking about in his recent piece “Copenhagen’s Lessons for Rochester“

Twenty years ago Chuck Cuminale was chanting, “Death to the Inner Loop” at his Colorblind James shows and that is now a reality. Let’s rewater the Erie Canal downtown!

My computer time for the last two days has been devoted to feeding the beast of Facebook. I went to the Personal Effects Facebook page for some reason and discovered a broken link to the real Personal Effects website, not a broken one but one that never would have worked. And I had just come across about a hundred scans of Polaroids from the eighties, ones that I originally submitted to the Scorgie’s web site when we did that reunion. That site went down so I posted the Polaroids to Facebook, the perfect depository for such artifacts.

I took the one at top just as we were about to take the stage at the Peppermint Lounge in 1983. We played that place a few times but this was the first time, in their old location, and it was on Bernie’s birthday. Bernie had Tony Levin’s number in New York and he invited him to the gig. He was right down front when we played. He told us he “liked the act.” Bernie is wearing my shirt in this photo. We used to trade clothing because we were the same “build” as they say.

View more Polaroids from this time period.

We are working on this concept and we need a little help to pull it off.

Leslie Peterson, a Utah artist who took her first art class three years ago, painted all 34 wives of the Mormon founder, Joseph Smith as part of her “Forgotten Wives Project.” It is presumed that each of these 34 women married him because they felt they were doing the Lord’s will. I think some priests mined that same territory. Working from photos and imagination Peterson gives shape to these women and tells a big story.

Louise Wareham Leonard’s book, “52 Men” succinctly details her relationships with a larger number. Of course some of these are closer to encounters but who’s counting? The stories unfold crisply in fast motion and move in surprising directions. They are tragic and often funny. They add up in mysterious ways.

In Number 26 John’s second wife, who he describes as a performance artist, sends him videos of herself dancing naked in a giant barn. The book’s lead character sees the video and tells John, “That’s not performance art. That’s her sending videos of herself naked and talking to you.”

Part 2 of “52 Men” provides some context to the mystery but it may never be solved.

When a hawk flies low over your head it gets your attention. When one flies overhead with a whole squirrel in it’s mouth it is startling.

Someone has been eating the jalepeños in the garden. First it was just the fruit and then it was whole plants. Red peppers were missing too and yesterday every last eggplant was gone. We had been baiting our Hav-a-heart trap with apple pieces and the chipmunks were getting them. Even if they set the trap off they are small enough to escape. We had trouble earlier this year with our cilantro. We got lucky last night and we caught the varmint, a docile woodchuck. I felt sorry for him. Animal control came and took him away. I hope he’s happy where ever it is that they dropped him off.

It strikes me that these two vignettes are the well that “Big Ditch” goes to for their material. “Dry Cow Blues,” “Chicken Legs,” “Crooked Creek,” “Stump Grinder,” “Log Jam,” and “Cold, Cold Ground.” They launched a fantastic new cd on Saturday night at the Firehouse Saloon. This place looks like a sports bar from the road but the back room is a pretty damn good facsimile of a rock n’ roll club. Big Ditch sounded great in here. I recorded my favorite song.

It takes us twenty-five minutes to walk to the lake but on hot days we can hear the cigarette boats on the lake from our house. Those things are loud, even at slow speed. We rode bikes down to the bay outlet this morning and watched the boats go in and out of the channel. I never noticed that boats have the steering wheel on the right side. Were they a British invention?

We’re taking care of two cats on our street. Well, three, counting our own, and they are all in different houses. A couple of neighbors are away while we take our summer vacation here. Rick called me from Maine this morning to say he had bought some bait – worms and crabs – that he was going to bring with him but he left them in his refrigerator. He suggested we dump the crabs in the creek when we take our walk. I put them in my bike basket and we gave them to a couple of fisherman down at the bay. They looked like members of ZZ top and were very appreciative.

We watched the US Women’s soccer team play their first game since the World Cup. Heather O’Reilly scored a fantastic goal in the fourth minute and picked up another later in the game. The coach has to narrow the roster to 18 for the Olympics and we’re pulling for Heather.

Summertime and the living’ is hectic. There were only three people in Jeffrey’s outdoor, 9:30am, all levels, $15, hour and half, yoga class this morning at the Rochester Yacht Club. Almost like being one of his “clients.” That’s what he calls students when they meet one on one with him. There is just so much stuff going on in the summer months here, every fair weather activity packed into a small window. This is why we welcome winter. We’re just worn out and we need a little space to get some work done.

After class we are in the habit of picking up a medium-sized iced Latte from Sips in Stutson Plaza or whatever they call that place these days. But today we put that off and crossed the river to check out the “Lake Guardian,” a big Environmental Protection Agency ship that was docked at Charlotte pier. Of course we had to walk over to the hundred year old merry-go-round to check out the controversial racist art. And we walked along the beach, which was closed, but packed with people playing all sorts of organized sports in the sand. We watched a little bit of men’s and women”s volleyball, women’s pole vaulting and men’s and women’s rugby. There’s some photos of these events on my home page. And of course there’s the big bike race through the streets of downtown Rochester tonight.

Not sure what you call these tie-up posts that are bolted to the round concrete piers in the mouth of the Genesee river. I’m sure there is a nautical term for it but I prefer to see it as an abstract sculpture. The city has turned the former wide-water, turn-around area (for big ships that came off Lake Ontario and into the Port of Rochester) into Turning Point Park. It has been around long enough for some of the boards on the boardwalk to need replacing. We rode our bikes over there today and road along the west bank of the river up to near Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. We ran into an former student of Peggi’s and she proceeded to tell us a story in Spanish about visiting Peru with eleven other girls.” This park is really beautiful. A hidden gem.

We went over there to see if we could see any signs of the National Geographic photographer, David Liittschwager, who is conducting one of his magic cube experiments in conjunction with Seneca Park Zoo and the George Eastman House. We spotted a new ladder and a flag on the other side of the river. Maybe that is where his cubic foot is stationed.

I was saddened to hear that Billy Sherill died. He produced and co-wrote some of my favorite country music, big hits for Tammy Wynette and George Jones, in a lush musical style that became known as “Countrypolitan.”

Speaking of country, our old neighbor, Sparky, stopped by to see us over the weekend. We weren’t home so he left a note instructing us to “have a nice day.” I had been thinking about Sparky because Bob Mahoney just sent us a photo of himself, beaming and standing in front of a life size Sparky painting that I did years ago. It was one in a series that were shown in Godiva’s windows, this one with type on it that read, “Might Just Side The Bastard,” a quote of Sparky’s from a conversation I had with him about his garage. The painting is still hanging in a bar on Monroe Avenue.

“Don’t Touch Me“
“He Stopped Loving Her Today“

My blog was recently overrun with spam. I had over 600 comments in one day, ones that I “mark as spam” to train the server not to accept from that IP address again. There was a hole in my spam plug-in and I couldn’t update it because I was unable to back-up the blog up because I had reached some sort of limit on the server. Well we took care of business today. Peggi updated her site as well and I’m now running the latest WordPress version. Still have the ancient, original, default theme but I am up to date with the software. Like the scene in “Spinal Tap” when David St. Hubbins tunes his guitar, shoves it aside and exclaims, “I’m in.”

My favorite spam comment read, “Go here for the best under eye wrinkles.”

We had my parents over for dinner last night. I cooked out in the rain, pulling that off by keeping the Weber real close to the house. I grilled eggplant from our garden. After dinner we ate ice cream out on the porch and listened to the rain. Our neighbor, Jared, told us today that we had an inch and three quarters of rain.

Our driveway is a little tricky at night so we walked my parents out to their car. It is a new car so it has a camera for seeing behind the car. We watched as my dad tried to clear the windshield and after a few minutes he asked us to get in. We sat in the back and tried to help him with the controls. The air conditioning was on because it was warm, the fan was on full blast and the icon for the windshield was lit up. We tried raising the temperature setting and then lowering it but nothing worked. My father gave the manual to Peggi and she skimmed through it while I went in to get my iPad. We were both scrambling to find a solution while my father was wiping the windshield with the towel. My mother asked if we could give her a ride home and then wondered aloud if their car was running. One twist of the key and the fog cleared in seconds.

I’ve been popping on Apple’s Beats 1 international radio program for a few weeks now. I can usually get a good twenty minutes out of it before that Zane guy plays something unbearably auto-tuned. This Halsey has an anthem on her hands and I heard something by Dr. Dre’s that I really liked but I can’t find my way back to it. After stumbling over the 3 Month free Apple Music come-on I finally pulled the trigger. This afternoon we listened to a playlist of “modern bachata.” It’s a great time to be alive.

We are the new Americana,
High on legal marijuana,
Raised on Biggie and Nirvana,
We are the new Americana.

We rode our bikes over to my parents’ apartment to celebrate my mother’s 88th birthday. We were a little late, as usual, but had to check out this yard sale. These books were displayed on the lawn outside the garage. “Desserts for Diabetics,” “Controlling Your Fat Tooth,” T.D. Jakes “The Lady, Her Lover & the Lord” with the enticing subtitle, “Woman Thou Art Loosed,” “Are You Rapture Ready.”

I know you can’t read the title on the video cassette. It is labeled “Groomadog Videos Inc. Present The Poodles.” In fact there was a scraggly little white dog yapping behind an aluminum screen door. The owner came out of the house and stood behind a table in her garage, one with the most mundane articles imaginable neatly arranged on it. Two blond wigs were perched on styrofoam heads, a 3D picture of Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane and dime store frames with the original package pictures under the glass. We were speechless.