Sunflower, Rhubarb, Sun Flower and Horseradish leaves on wall at Toko Imports in Ithaca
You don’t have to be a drummer to like Toko Imports in Ithaca. The owner, Tom, carries hats and hammocks as well as congas, djembes, gongs and every type of percussion instrument imaginable. Peggi rattled a donkey skull with the teeth still in their sockets, a primitive Vibra-Slap.
I bought some brushes and commented on the huge leaves on the wall behind the counter. Tom confirmed that they were indeed real, locally grown leaves from some common plants. He told us that we knew what these leaves were and pulled the right answers from us by giving us well rehearsed clues. Sunflower, Burdock, Rhubarb and Horseradish. The woman from Holland who was standing next to us had never heard of Horseradish.
Witch-hazel near Durand Eastman Park in Rochester, New York 2011
This Witch-hazel, along the road leading into Durand Eastman Park, is in full bloom now. Your nose detects it before your eyes but it but it is not as fragrant as the winter Witch-hazel which bloomed, like a miracle, up in the park in February. Still to come is the Witch-hazel that will blossom to much less fanfare in our back yard in the Fall. They remind me of Geri McCormick’s paintings.
Bill Jones asked for a little help moving his type making equipment around. The router, the band saw and every one of those big green woodworking machines are heavy. Bill makes wood type from oversized patterns. You can’t be around all this stuff without dreaming about type projects, signs or posters that you could put together with all these little wood pieces. I’m thinking about a letterpress cover for the upcoming Margaret Explosion single.
On the way over, a ten minute ride, I scanned the college radio band and found Matt & Kim’s “Silver Tiles” on WITR, Althea & Donna’s “Uptown Top Ranking” on WRUR and Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side” on WBER. I thought my iPod on shuffle was pretty good.
Bleu Cease and Wendell Castle at the Makers Mentors opening at Rochester Contemporary
We got a personal invite from Heather Erwin so we started First Friday at her place. Met an up and coming photo journalist there and told him I thought photo journalism was getting better. This opinion is only based on the number of photos I’ve cut out of the newspaper lately.
We cut through the creepy leather store in Anderson Alley and stopped in the Bop Shop. I had tried to download Billy Bang’s newest, “A Prayer For Peace”, but it wasn’t in the iTunes store and I thought I’d pick up the cd here but they were sold out. Like any good record store Rick made a persuasive argument for picking up another cd, “Tara’s Song” by Ahmed Abullah who used to play trumpet with Sun Ra. His band does two beautiful versions of Ra tunes and a amazing cover of Ornette’s “Lonely Woman.”
Onward to Record Archive where Lucinda Storms showed some brand new luscious Valentines Day paintings. Stan Merrell was onstage playing a therimin. Alayna offered us Genny Bock Beer and we settled in for some free ranging conversation. Rick Simpson who had earlier tried to sell me a down jacket that he picked up at Eddie Bauer for forty bucks and was now trying to sell the coat to Jeff Spevak. Jeff’s dad had just died and he wrote a beautiful piece on him. Stan and Brian Williams tried to help me find the black and white mode on my new Nikon and I bought one of the Dick Storm’s appropriation t-shirts. He did a tempting Warhol VU banana one but I went for the bright green “Archive Rock Beer” shirt.
It was only fitting that Wendell Castle would be holding court when we got to Rochester Contemporary for the Makers/Mentors show featuring his work. Perhaps Rochester’s most successful artist, he has influenced a generation of woodworkers.
We were looking at the other makers’ armor art with Martha O’Connor when Martha exclaimed, “Of course!” It dawned on her that Nancy, Wendell’s wife, had certainly crafted these dwarf sized amour suits to hang in their “castle.”
We discussed going to Abilene for the Spampinato Brothers but had spotted a beautiful black and white snow scene painting on the First Friday website so we headed off to a place called the Living Room Cafe on Monroe Avenue. Perfect name! A small crowd was watching “Reality Bites” on a projection tv. The screen was pulled down over some of the paintings that we had come to see but this place was comfortable. We were offered a free cup of coffee and stuck around for the rest of the movie.
Lake Ontario and Lakeshore Boulevard in Winter 2011
One of our neighbors down the street emailed us about some community pool business and she refered to “this awful cold weather” we’ve been having. We had just returned from a ski through the woods and down to the lake and we thought the weather was perfect. But then Mike Deming used to chide me that I’m a “Glass half full kind of guy” so I would see it that way. OK, it was fifteen degrees but the sun was out (click photo for full shot) and the snow was fresh and crisp. In fact it glistened.
Graffiti on construction site in downtown Rochester, NY
With about ten inches of fresh snow we followed a snowshoe trail through the woods and out to the park where we expected to find the Mayor and his buddies drinking beer at the top of the bobsled run. But it seemed we were the only ones in the park. There were no tracks from other skiers. Were we the only ones waiting for more snow?
We took a break at the top of the big hill and spotted a small American flag taped to a tree branch with the words “One World Under God” written in magic marker over the stripes. When we got back to the house there was a message from Rochester Contemporary reminding me to pick up the painting I had in the Members Show so I headed downtown and found this graffiti on the building next door to RoCo.
I had six cans in my arms already when I spotted these. The Budweiser man has struck again. I say “man” but who knows. We speculate endlessly about whether this is the work of a kid. It can’t be. No kid would continue doing this for three years! It must be an adult and it must be a man. A lady wouldn’t buy a 24 ounce can of Bud, would she? And are these cans thrown here from a moving car? Tossed across a lane from the driver’s side. I doubt it. They are always in the same spot. He would have to be too good a shot. Who would walk this far down a nearly deserted dead end street? We usually come to the same conclusive guess. It must be one of the neighbors. “Honey I’m going out to walk the dog.” Someone who is already in the doghouse for their drinking!
The paying kind of work has slowed down and I thought I might be able to take care of a few things around here in the downtime but it seems the more time you have the less you get done. I’m afraid to find out what happens when I retire. I probably won’t get anything done at all. I remember my soccer coach at Indiana University telling the team that even though it is hard to believe you will be a better student by devoting so much time to the team. I only lasted one year and I was a terrible student but it didn’t have anything to do with all those hours spent with the team. I was the first freshman ever in the starting line up and I loved every minute of it but the sixties got in the way
Which brings me back to my desk. I was going to clean it off today. I’ve run out of room for my mouse pad and there’s stuff piled all around my keyboard. My neighbor down the street asked if I could help split some wood. He rented an hydraulic splitter from Home Depot but it was a piece of shit. It squirted oil and the foot was bent so the wood kept wanting to squirt out. We save some money burning wood but even when a tree falls in your yard you work your ass off preparing it for the wood stove.
We worked late last night wrapping up the crap that just had to be done before the dreaded holidays and we were getting pretty psyched to watch our new Netflix disc of “Breaking Bad”, 2nd Season, Disc Two. We stuck the dvd in and it wouldn’t play because it had a small crack in it. A series about crack with a crack in it! It wouldn’t play in my computer either. In fact I had a hard time getting it out. I had to reboot for the holidays.
Local film director, Robin Lehman has two Oscars under his belt or above his fireplace or stashed away somewhere in his Rochester home. The Eastman House honored Lehman last night by showing three of his documentaries and then grilling him in a post movie Q and A session. I liked the first short the best. Beautiful, liquid shots from inside an African volcano that were orchestrated to a Bach organ fugue. The second short, close-ups of underwater creatures, was unbelievably beautiful but the soundtrack was cornball and the third, main feature, “Forever Young”, about aging well, was just what you would expect. Get into something and get into it good, advice that could just as easily be offered to people of any age. My neighbor, Leo, in his nineties, is a perfect case. Whenever I say “Take it easy,” as a parting salutation he shoots back, “I don’t want to take it easy.”
And then (we were following Rick and Monica around tonight) off to L&M Lanes on Merchants Road in the old hood for a few games of bowling and some pints of Victory Hop Devil. The juke box hits the spot as well with Neil Young, Parliament and Zeppelin. This place feels like ground zero Rochester.
Kodak building across from the Rochester Art Supply Sale at High Falls Gallery
The gallery space at High Falls in the shadow of Eastman Kodak’s world headquarters was home to an art supply trade show yesterday. Rochester Art Supply is Amazon’s art vendor so they buy in bulk and Mike, the owner, had some barn-burner prices on canvas and paint and brushes so I bought some of each. You were supposed to pre-register for the seminars that ran throughout the day but we hung around the entrance to a watercolor demonstration and they waved us in. Canada’s “Windsor & Newton Artist-in-Residence ” passed around some near photographic prints of landscapes he had painted but didn’t spend any time on composition or expression or any of those sort of painterly concerns.
He started with the composition of paint, pigment, binder and medium. Watercolor is uses gum Arabic as a binder between the pigment and water. All of the gum Arabic comes from Libya and for a few years the art world was panicking because of the instability there. He advised against re-wetting water color from the tube and seemed to recommend what he called pan paints. He demonstrated how much water sable brushes hold but he warned that real sable brushes are getting more expensive because the hair on a sable is not as long as it used to be because of global warming. He showed us a Windsor Newton Series 7 Number 10 brush that lists for $400. And if you spring for a good brush he said, “don’t use it with acrylic or ink.”
Three CrimeFaces (Rochester mug shots) for Lucy Bryne Show at Creative Workshop in Rochester, NY
For the last six months or so I’ve been painting on paper with water color, opaque water color, kid’s tempera paint to be precise. The Creative Workshop passed out a flyer to announcing a portrait show and students were asked to submit up to three works that were properly mounted and ready to hang. I don’t Know if push pins through the corners of works on paper would qualify and I waited ’til the last minute so I chose three small oils from earlier this year. I snapped a photo of them in my driveway before dropping them off. Rachel, the Workshop director told me they would only have room for two which I took to mean two of your “crime faces”. So I let Rachel pick the two she liked and I took the one on the right back home with me. The show is up now and it looks pretty good.
Stop by the Little Theater Cafe tonight for Margaret Explosion. We’ll be there every Wednesday until the new year.
I almost forgot I had a blog. I haven’t been here in a few days. Too much work. Don’t call us. We’re too busy.
We celebrated the Autumnal Equinox in style last night. I think it was a full moon, it looked it. We fired up our Home Depot chiminea and burnt some scrap wood from the garage. It was mostly pine but there was some redwood and cedar scraps from various home improvement projects. It got too hot out there for a while. There is a whole ‘nother world in that chiminea. We were transfixed.
I suspect Martin eats out more than he eats in but I know he is a great cook. We’ve had his homemade pizzas and olive salad and things I can’t remember right now. He emailed us that he and Boo had bought thirty pounds of tomatoes at the public market and made sauce by baking the tomatoes. We have always par-boiled the tomatoes and then simmered the sauce for most of the day so we were intrigued by the baking approach. We grow tomatoes in the gardens of the neighbors on either side of us. We don’t have enough sun on our property to grow them. In fact I only have to mow our lawn twice a year because it just doesn’t get enough light to grow.
We picked both gardens clean and split the tomatoes in half as Martin suggested. Here’s his recipe:
Cut in half and put in roasting pans with chopped onion, garlic, some with red peppers and olive oil, baked for 3 hours, pull the skins off and blend. We started at 400 for an hour then lowered to 350. They get real juicy at first then the juice starts to evaporate. When most of it is gone take them out and let them cool. We dug in and slipped the skins off before blending them and putting them in freezer bags with a funnel. We put sliced carrots in some batches- they sweeten it a bit. Don’t bother with Basil, the flavor disappears almost as soon as you put it in so it should never be added until you’re ready to eat.
I was working out in the tomatoes cooked down and the whole neighborhood smelled like an Italian restaurant. We started to pull the skins off and then bagged that idea. And we didn’t blend them either. It almost like stewed tomatoes but chunky and rich. The next night I baked a big eggplant at 400 for about an hour and then peeled and sliced it. I mixed it in with the sauce and we served it over whole wheat pasta.
A. Botts art at the Record Archive in Rochester, New York
First Friday comes around pretty fast these days. We started at the Bop Shop Atrium and heard a few songs by John and Mary. This was the last of a series called “Fourteen Fridays” there. Peggi and I played quite a few gigs with John back when he was in 10,000 Maniacs and we reconnected after their set. We walked across the street to the Print Club’s show at Rochester Arts & Cultural Council. The definition of a print is pretty wide open these days and it gets a little tedious trying to figure out how the images were made so I skip that part and just take in the imagery. There were some especially nice prints there. My father and I used to be members of that organization.
A. Botts art at the Record Archive in Rochester, New York
We headed over to the Record Archive next where a band had just finished. One of the band members, who goes by the name of A. Boggs, was showing his drawings and collages there as well. A. is influenced by Philip Guston and even used a photocopy of a pile of Guston’s feet in a few of his Dylan collages. The detail above is from a piece called “Two Heads Emerging.” A. Boggs work was priced at around $25 each. Since I am obsessed with Guston I got pretty excited at the show.
We started some seeds from scratch this year, lettuce, peppers and basil, and they did well. We bought our plants, tomatoes and more jalepeños, at Case’s on Norton just like other years. But we picked up some zucchini plants at Aman’s on East Ridge Road. The plants were labeled “zucchini ” but they got huge in a hurry and ran all over the garden. I pulled a twenty foot section out of our tomatoes and threw it back where it started. The leaves are as big as elephant ears and the vegetable that emerged from the blossoms looked a lot like pumpkins now. Some are already orange. We will probably have enough for the whole street. The one see above escaped the garden and is now hanging off the fence that is supposed to keep the deer out. Do deer like pumpkin? We will find out.
Good Luck game at Holy Cross Carnival in Rochester, New York
Peggi and I were talking to my brother about our nephew and my brother said, “He’s like a rat on a wheel.” This was a vivid analogy for us because we had just seen a rat on a wheel at the Holy Cross carnival on Lake Avenue up near the lake. We put 50 cents down on a color and the attendant spun the wheel and dropped the rat on it. In a flash the rat dove down one of the holes and it wasn’t the one next to our colors. As I watched the guy pull the rat out I was thinking of the white rat I had in Psychology class. We tortured it in rat lab and then I brought it home as a pet. I don’t remember what became of it. I hope my nephew has a better fate.
These shelves from our garage were full of junk when moved in. We piled our junk in front of them and couldn’t find anything in the heap. So after five years we decided to sort it all out, the old door hinges, motor oil, jars of nails and the industrial strength velcro.
I emptied the shelves and brought them out into the yard so I could even up the lines. I reworked the shelving and supports so they line up with one another. I know this is a bit obsessive but they looked like they had been put together by a madman. I can deal with the bright orange but I at least had to straighten out the site lines before I rehang them.
It only two two nights to do this. Not really worth an “After” shot.
8-tracks for another lifetime: David Bowie, Low; Ramones, Leave Home; James Brown, Reality; Patti Smith, Radio Ethiopia; Muddy Waters, After The Rain; Ramones, Ramones; Kinks, Village Green; James Brown, Hell; Beach Boys, Holland; Toot & THe Maytals, In The Dark; Fela Kuti, Africa ’70; Bootsy, Player Of The Year; Iggy Pop, The Idiot; Bootsy, Ahh…The Name Is Bootsy, Baby; Patti Smith, Horses; Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka; Sun Ra, The Magic City; Lou Reed, Metal Machine Music
8-Tracks have to be one the clunkiest mediums ever invented for playing music but in 1969 they seemed wondrous. My college roommate had a white Plymouth Barracuda and a collection of ten or so 8-Tracks. I couldn’t get enough of Led Zeppelin’s first but the one that seemed absolutely perfect for our off campus outings was Paul Butterfield’s “In My Own Dream.”
Elvin Bishop played guitar on that album and I always figured it was him that sang the title song but Bob Mahoney straightened me out. It was Paul Butterfield singing and playing the slinky guitar part. Philip Wilson had left the Art Ensemble and he played drums on this album and a young David Sanborn played sax but the gorgeous sax solo on this track is credited to Gene Dinwiddie. In my own dream, what a place to be!
White Owl Blunts packaging found near Durand Eastman Park in Rochester, NY
I guess I should admit it. I like to play golf. I’ve got my own rules though and I don’t use any clubs. I don’t even start with any balls. When our walking route takes near the golf course I’ll stay off the fairways and walk the woods next to the fairways looking for balls. The other day I found four and today I found six including a “Nike”, a “Nitro X Factor” and and a “MC Lady”. If I find a beer bottle I throw it back out on the fairway.
Speaking of beer, the Budweiser guy has slowed his pace this summer. I’ve checked his usual 20-ounce dumping grounds when we take that route but have been coming up clean.
Another one of our routes takes us by an entrance to the park where dog walkers park. You gotta watch where you step here. Lately I’ve been picking up these brightly colored cigar tubes. At first I pictured some guy have having a smoke as he walked his dog but yesterday we walked by a group of teens who turned their music down as we walked by. I’m thinking it might have been Wu Tang’s “Method Man”. “I got fat bags of skunk/I got White Owl blunts.”
