Buffalo Bills inflatables on lawn in Rochester, New York
The Buffalo Bills play their NFL game in Wembley Stadium this weekend. And here I’ve been holding out for the English version of football to come this way. We just bought season tickets to Western New York Flash for next year.
I walked with my mom this afternoon. She was too tired to do a lap of the building so walked up and down the halls of her apartment building. There was a real ruckus going on in the big room so we ducked in to see what was going on. A group of woman were playing Wii bowling and we stayed around long enough to watch one of the residents pick off a mean split.
I usually put my iPad in my bike basket but about halfway home I looked down and it wasn’t there. I couldn’t imagine it falling out. I called my mom when I got home asked if she saw my iPad near her chair. She never took to computers and she doesn’t really know what an iPad is so I found myself saying things like, “It’s black and thin and and it has glass on it.” My mom has a little problem with her hearing and lately with her vision so our conversation went something like a Burns and Allen routine. I drove back over there and by the time I got there she had found it.
Rick came over this evening for a few games of horseshoes. We always play best of three and it usually takes the three to determine a winner. Rick’s two and my one. I feel as though I could win more often if I could concentrate on what I’m doing. In a few more years we’ll be sitting in chairs, playing Wii Bowling.
Old gas station in Johnsburg, Adirondack Mountains, New York
Arthur Dove’s father ran a brick making plant in nearby Geneva, NY. There were as many as ten brickyards in the Rochester area at one time. Henrietta’s town historian invited my father to give a talk on bricks. Specifically, the Brighton Brick yard, which used to sit on Monroe Avenue near 12 corners.
Peggi and I helped by proofing his slides. Peggi caught a measurement labeled with “(inches) rather than ‘(feet) and of course we had to tell my father about the scene in “Spinal Tap” where Nigel does a sketches for some Stonehenge props. I exported my father’s Keynote presentation to his first generation iPad and I sat with the iPad and projector, advancing the slides at my father’s pace. I went the wrong way a few times but we worked pretty good as a team. This was not the first time and my father is getting really good at this. His slides contain the pertinent information, not too much, and he is able to talk to the slides in a comfortable way bring the graphics to life.
Yesterday’s 2PM presentation was held at the Senior Citizens Center on Calkins Road. Last time I was out this way we saw Captain Beefheart with Frank Zappa at the Dome Arena. It was not a good period for either. The Henrietta officials started the presentation with the Pledge of Allegiance, which caught me completely off guard. I should know the words to that damn thing by now. And it was followed by an announced but unexplained “moment of silence.” The florescent lights were washing out the opening slide so I asked the town historian if she could turn them off and she obliged. They gave my father a wireless mic and when he turned it on it screeched with painful feedback. The speakers for the PA were immediately overhead, built into the ceiling, a no-win situation. I asked them to turn the PA down and my father proceeded to use the mic as a pointer so the only time we really heard it was when he touched the screen with it to point something out. “Thump, thump, thump.”
The audience here was really into it. Peggi and I were as well. The guy sitting next to me was taking notes and scrambling o keep up. Ingeniously, my father used a handful of existing photos and early illustrations to pick up scale and measurements of the equipment involved in the brick making process. He used Google’s 3D illustration program,”Sketch-Up,” to create drawings of the buildings, kilns, machinery, molds, transportation systems, rail tracks and even the housing for the workers. And he employed his fanciful side to illustrate with his paintings what these plants must have looked like. He overlaid his to-scale drawings on old maps recreated the past for us. No small feat!
Geri’s son, Sam, called to see if we had upgraded to OSX El Capitan. He was doing so as we talked. I might wait a few days and see how the reviews go. We had a few hiccups with the last update. We plan to visit Sam in Elmira this weekend so we’ll hear all about it.
We helped close up the street pool this morning, piled up the chairs, took the ladder out and put the diving board in the pump house. Peggi is in charge of the chemicals this year and she found the PH was a little low so we stopped down to our neighbor’s place to ask him how we should address this. He’s is a chemist so the answer took about a half hour to get to.
I’m not sure exactly what happened at the end of the gig last night. Either someone tripped on the cord for the Zoom recorder, maybe the upright bass knocked the recorder, but it and the stand it was mounted on fell toward Bob’s brand new guitar and it has a few dings in it.
Ossia has their first program of the new year tonight. They’re free at Kilbourn Hall. This one finishes with a Steve Reich piece. We are going to have to hustle home to catch the NWSL final between Kansas City (Heather O’Reilly‘s team) and Seattle. And there is another 20th Anniversary OJ show on tonight.
Marshall Street Bar with Western New York Flash for USA Women’s match vs. Australia
Brad Fox used to call this place the “Glass Bunion” back in the disco days. Officially the “Glass Onion,” I believe it was done in by a cocaine overdose. It’s called Marshall Street Bar now and the WNY Flash gathered there last night to watch the US national team in their first game of the 2015 World Cup, this one against Australia. The US may be favored but after watching the Germans run circles around Ivory Coast in their opener I’d put my money on then. I’m not a betting man though.
The women’s professional league is small and we are so lucky to have a team based here. Many of the US team players have either played for the Flash (Abby, Morgan, Lloyd and Leroux) or come through here to play against the Flash so it was blast to watch them win last night.
They were probably paid by FIFA to attend the broadcast because most of the team (seen sitting in the first row above) was there. They could have seen the game better on tv. Most of them seemed more interested in their phones than the game and who could blame them at their age. Our friend, Kerry, won one of the raffles and got most of their autograghs. I was headed to the bathroom when I spotted the Flash’s Lynn Williams by herself. I told her I watched her in the practice rounds and I thought she was the best shooter on the team. That’s where I should have stopped but I went on to say I thought she should be more aggressive on the field. She thanked me but I will keep my mouth shut next time. I can see how her phone would be more important than being on the national team.
It is the season to binge on soccer. The Champions Cup final with the dream threesome of Messi, Neymar and Suarez up front for Barcelona when they met Italy’s Juventus this weekend really got our blood flowing.
Hank Ballard & The Midnighters photo sent to 4D Advertising when we were doing an album cover for them
My grandparents used to covert their garage into a porch in the summer. The car sat out in the driveway when we arrived for a visit and we’d sit around and talk in their garage. As I remember they even had a rug on the floor. As we rode our bikes down Panaview Drive to the hospital yesterday I notice a few houses with screens rolled up above their overhead garage doors, a couple of them right across the street from one another, ready to convert. This is how I’d like to spend my summer. Sitting on the porch as the world goes by.
Panaview changes its name to Norlane as you cross Bouckhart and there was a sign on that corner that read “Garage Sale Now.” We followed it down Norlane and it turned out to be the house with the pink bike strapped to a tortured tree. Our street is having a garage sale this weekend so we stopped in to check out the competition. I asked how much the pink bike was and the woman said $20. They had a box of Ukrainian records and some pictures from the old country and the sign in front of their house had “garage” misspelled. I photographed it for my sign site.
Well, our street sale turned out to have only two takers. Rick and Monica, across the street, are starting to downsize and we’re still trying to get rid of Peggi’s mom’s stuff. And of course we have a bunch crap so we plan to open our doors Saturday at 9AM.
But first I had to clean out our garage. I started by recycling a box of used padded envelopes. Some photos fell out of one, mostly Polaroids of the King All Stars, Fred Wesley, Hank Ballard, Cal Green, Country Kellum, Bobby Byrd, Pee Wee Ellis, Bubba Brooks, Bootsy Collins, Vicki Anderson, St. Clair Pinckney, Bill Doggett and Clyde Stubblefield. All single person close-ups. We did the album, cd and cassette package for After Hours Records and I think we used these inside.
There was a 35mm print in there too, the one above. Hank Ballard‘s girlfriend sent it to us I can’t remember if we did a separate record cover for him or what but I remember taking the picture out of the envelope and how it reeked of stale cigarette smoke. I have no idea why he is hanging onto an umbrella.
We gathered today in our usual painting room at the Creative Workshop of the MAG. Most of us are long-time students of Fred Lipp’s and our week revolves around Tuesday’s class. A good percentage of the day class were there and our night class had a respectable showing but our teacher wasn’t there. He’s quite sick and we were meeting for two reasons: to discuss a tribute show in his honor and secondly, to determine how to carry on. I specifically did not say “carry on without him” because the gifts he gave us are ours to use.
As the group dispersed a few us were standing around taking about Fred’s teaching method. Bill Keyser was telling my father how he would have a list of things he was about to do and Fred would come by and say, “Forget about your plan. Look at your painting right now.” This in fact may be Fred’s most important point. Always stay open to what is on the page right now. “Painting is not a destination. It is an adventure.” Step back and look at the work. “Always address the worst first.” When the “worsts” are gone, your painting may be done.
I’ve searched my past posts and collected some of the lessons I am still learning from him. I find these truisms apply to most disciplines, certainly music.
The class was not about Fred’s work. In fact he rarely showed. The first thing I saw by him was a sculpture/installation in a Finger Lakes show, ripped open pieces of re-tread tires spewing at you from the corner of the gallery. It was sensational and it went on to the statewide exhibit in Albany. His class is called “Advanced Painting” and students work in collage, watercolor, acrylic, oil, drawing or sculpture. His methods are the same for all mediums.
There are no assignments. He rotates around the room addressing individual students as they work and pretty much says the same thing to each. He does not want you to talk first when he gets to you. “Don’t talk it. Show me.”
His stock of grey paper is his primary teaching tool. With this neutral grey he would cover parts of your work to show you what currently works. He’ll sometimes cover three fourths of your painting and tell you, “There’s your painting.
Many of Fred’s students say “he taught me how to see.” More importantly, I think he teaches us to trust our eyes. We already know how to see but we don’t trust it. If you have doubts about something in your painting that would be your eye talking. “If the question comes up, the answer is yes.”
Fred can be brutal. In many sessions the first class was the last we would see of a new student. He was brutal because he was honest and painters who did not want to learn left.
We visited Fred in the hospital last week and I asked him if any of his students had brought their paintings up to his room. He got a good laugh out of that one. A painting was never done until Fred pronounced it “done.” And it was just as often sooner rather than later than you expected.
Learning is a lifelong process. I’ve pulled these thoughts from my posts over the years. This link will take you to a page with all the posts on Fred.
There is no replacing Fred Lipp. He is one of a kind. He has been a mentor in every sense of the word and I am not alone. He packed the lecture hall at the MAG last summer with his presentation on spacial constructs, a comparison of three paintings from the MAG’s collection by Hans Hoffmann, Josef Albers and John Koch.
His daughter wrote that Fred is “the essence of art.” His ideals will live forever.
I like how the word “Lake” comes before the name of the lake in Great Lakes naming conventions. I’m guessing this is a Native American custom but then that doesn’t add up when you think about how the Finger Lakes are named.
We crossed into New York State at Niagra’s Fort Lewiston Bridge and took the northern most route, 18, the “Seaway Trail,” back to Rochester. Mostly orchards, cobblestone houses and dairy farms sometimes right on the lake, it is a beautiful drive.
Olcot, an old resort town, park on the square and funky summer cottages, is especially dreamy. We sat at a picnic table overlooking the lake and watched a screen door on a bed and breakfast blow open and then slowly blow closed over and over. Like a mantra.
Woman in Mexican mask at Detroit Institute of the Arts
The fawn in our backyard this morning was no bigger than our cat but its legs were a lot longer. I had to wake Peggi up to catch this sight before it ran away. Just as I did we spotted a fox cross our backyard. I don’t know if they bother the deer but this one just kept moving. We watched as the fawn’s mother came from behind our bedroom and proceeded to groom her offspring. The little thing was trying to nurse while it was getting licked by mom and in about five minutes they were gone. All quite extraordinary.
It had me thinking of the fertility section in Diego Rivera’s mural that we had just visited at the Detroit Institute of the Arts. When we were there it seemed completely incongruous with the manly laborers and machinery but the baby in the womb was the image that stuck with me. Even after watching this woman prance around, taking selfies while wearing a mask.
We just visited a friend, in the hospital at the end of his life, and a scene like the one we witnessed this morning certainly helps right the ship.
Our Lady of Lilacs in front of house on Bouckart Street in Rochester, New York
We’ve had a rattle under our car for quite a while so I decided to take it in today. I called Lee at B&B on Saint Paul and he said to bring it in. This meant two bike rides, one back home while they looked at the car and one to the place to pick the car up. It was a beautiful day for both. The car needed front and rear sway bar links. Pothole damage.
In between the rides we planted two rows each of spinach, lettuce and beets. Our neighbor is already harvesting his lettuce. He had it in at the end of April. Our little seedlings were in our living room.
I see this bathtub virgin all the time. She is out near the road on Bouckart Street in Irondequoit. It is kind of a secret street, a straight shot form the 7-Eleven on Titus Avenue to Ridge Road, no stop signs. I keep thinking we’ll interrupt a drag race or something when we take it. We take this route to my parents and Peggi takes it to “the club” (LA Fitness). She looked especially good next to the dark lilacs.
Sixties glass building on Mount Hope Avenue in Rochester, New York
At ninety Kurt Feuerherm is a well seasoned artist. His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, Albright Knox and the MAG. He was my Fine Arts mentor at SUNY Empire State and he received an award from the college tonight in a ceremony at Cutler Union. They asked some former students to show a few pieces along with Kurt’s work so contributed three of my crime faces. A jazz duo performed and they served drinks and finger food.
It was my first alumni event. I usually ignore the junk mail from the school. They may have even taken me off the list. I’ve never shown my degree to anyone, never even had the opportunity to put it on a job application since I mostly worked for myself. I dropped out of school after a year, picked up some credits for Creative Workshop classes, took a couple of fantastic photo classes at the UofR, got some credit for commercial art jobs and then worked with Kurt. In ten years time I cobbled together an art degree.
Kurt helped me a lot. I was doing something close to cartoons with flat color when I first met him. He got me abstracting my subject matter and working at a larger scale. He sent to the library with a list of contemporary artists who were working in a similar vein. He opened my eyes to a bigger picture. He was very helpful and I’d like to thank him.
I’ve never seen the owners of this house but I’m guessing they are of Italian descent. Italians like to shape, stunt and generally torture trees to get them to look like lollipops or poodles tales. This is just my lopsided observation based on living in Rochester for most of my life. Friends, people on my old paper route, the old Italian neighborhoods, you start connecting the dots. Maybe it is their old world connection with fruit trees, a desire to maximize fruit production in a lot in a small space, like a small city lot.
Philip Guston fell in love with the tall, narrow Cypress trees and round ornamental trees in the parks in Rome while he was there on a teaching stint. It is a beautiful custom. You’ll have to the click the photo above to see the tree behind that little pink bike.
Six Basketball Players – Oil paintings by Paul Dodd 2015
Someone came up to me during the break last night. I was still seated at my drums when he asked if I was Paul. He told me I painted a picture of him and I knew right away who he was. He was one of the six basketball players that I had hanging at the Little a few months back. He is shown on the left in the detail above. People kept asking if I knew any of those guys and I just shook my head but here was the one that many had speculated was the captain of the six member team.
He told me he saw the article in the paper, the one where I said I painted these guys from a 1957 high school yearbook I found because the team looked so hapless. He said he was only a sophomore when that picture was taken. Two of the six are dead, the guys in the middle of both rows. One went on to work for the Green Bay Packers and this guy said he was the quarterback for the UofR. And the guy with one eye closed was not winking, he wasn’t injured on the court with an elbow or anything. His eye just didn’t work.
These guys all graduated over fifty years ago and I never imagined I would meet any of them. It was kind of strange. I hope I don’t run into any of the wanted guys I’ve painted.
Can’t figure out why there were so many people in the park and on the beach today. Is school out already or is it some sort of holiday? We rode our bikes along the beach and stopped at Johnson Pond to see if we could see any of the turtles that my father saw down here. He sent us a photo with twenty fairly good sized turtles sunning themselves on a log. We found ten or so on a log along the lake side of the pond. I only have a three times zoom on my camera so my shots are not as dramatic. Spring usually means rain but it has been nothing but blue sky around here for weeks.
Painting behind bar at Carpani’s Restaurant in Rochester, New York
The Lake Ontario Parkway ends at Lake Road in Rochester. We crossed it and the river on the Colonel O’Rorke Bridge and pulled into the Stutson Street Plaza. Can’t go here without thinking about the time we took mescaline and watched a matinee of 2001 in the old Stutson Street Theater. And then I start thinking of the summer job I had with Brad Fox cleaning this parking lot in the middle of the night.
But tonight we were here for a birthday dinner at Carpani’s, formerly Cipriani’s. We split an order of Sautéed Calamari with Calumet olives, red onion, pepperoncinis, chopped fresh tomatoes, garlic and oil and a dish called “Pasta Alla Zia Teresa” with mushrooms, broccoli and olio sauce. Both were very good. If I was still keeping track of these things Carpani’s would have a place of honor.
We got lost in this painting during dinner and made it home for two more episodes of “Bloodline”. 65. Done that.
Small lake with ice in Spring, Rochester, New York
There is often a point in the evening when associations get loose and sometimes even free. On Friday night Louise was sitting across from us wearing her brown Luna t-shirt and talking about the end-of-the-working-week sensation. I said something contrary like, “it’s really just another night” and I think she said, “that’s oldsome.” (like a seasoned “awesome”) I may have heard this wrong but I thought it was brilliant. I feel like I am in that sweet spot, just daffy enough to have a sense of well being, not able to clearly hear as well as I used to and easily astonished but not so easily shaken. Oldsome!
Low Rider on East Ridge Road in Rochester, New York
Our yellow Winter Aconite flowers are more bountiful than ever this year. They were stuck under the snow and about a month late but they are wide open today. They don’t last long like that. They prefer the old weather and is in the sixties today. The low riders and motorcycles are out. Our neighbor’s main water line is still frozen so it’s probably too early to turn on the water to the outdoor faucets. They went out of town for a bit and their water line froze. They have a garden hose connected to the house next door. I threw the last of the snow on our patio out into the yard and got the lawn chairs out of the garage. I’m ready for horseshoes.
We spotted out first Red Wing Blackbirds today hearing their distinctive call before we zeroed in on them. And I found my first golf ball as we cut through the park The X-Country ski email says they are still getting fresh powder at Harriet Hollister and the conditions are excellent. I love this feeling of suspension that we sometimes get between the the two seasons. Much better than the abrupt transformation to flip flops and shorts.
I got a kick out of the Easter Sunday soft news piece about the Talpiot Tombs discovered outside of Jerusalem in the eighties. Assumed to have belonged to a wealthy Jewish family they were inscribed with Jesus, Mary and Joseph, common names at the turn of the century. The widely disputed findings are being pointed to the “Jesus family plot” but hold on. Would this be proof that he didn’t rise from the dead?
“Passion Play” 1998 by Paul Dodd, notebook assemblages for stations of the cross
Years ago, on this day, my parents tried to get us to sit in silence on a day off from school between the hours of noon and three. These were the hours Christ hung on the cross and this was the culmination of Lent. This year we helped my father file his taxes via TurboTax while my mother watched “Guys & Dolls.”
In 1998 I filled a notebook with bits and pieces of news clippings, sketches and nearly disjointed thoughts on a modern day retelling of the Passion Play set in my city neighborhood, all in preparation for paintings of the fourteen stations of the cross. I created large assembleges in Photoshop and printed the series at Scale 2 on St. Paul Street. I still haven’t done the paintings, there are so many approaches. I’m still sort of collecting references and each Good Friday I look at the paper for a Christian related story. The Ted Kaczynski in full-on crucifixion mode picture was on the front page of the old Times Union. In today’s paper there was a story about the Somali rebels going door to door in Kenya sparing Muslims and killing Christians. I entered the prints in the Finger Lakes Show and won the Harris Popular Award. They are kind of fun to look back on.
The original files for my Passion Play prints are so old they wouldn’t display properly. I had to take them into Photoshop, copy the layer and paste it into a new document and then save them out as tiff. Formats do not stay the same.
Tree in icy snow on Hoffman Road in Rochester New York
I emailed Martin to see if we could bring some hummus to his party. The message went as “bring some humans” but he figured it out and responded, I emailed Kathy Farrell about picking up my paintings. I said “I guess pickup is at nine” and that message went through as “Iglesias pick up at nine” Kathy didn’t miss a beat and confirmed the time. Peggi was reading about the local food fair at Harts and I thought I heard her say one of the vendors was offering “homegrown hotdogs.”
After birthday parties on Friday and Saturday night for friends that turned 60, 50 and 65 (all milestones of a sort), I had the hardest time putting down the “T” Magazine Design Issue this morning. I started with it and must have spent two hours with it. The front cover read “The Revival of Everything,” a glorious concept. We’ll pass the issue on to Olga when we’re done with it. She broke her leg this winter, cross-country skiing, and she has another four weeks of immobility. We been saving anything “style” related and passing it on to her. She is going to love the piece on the Gerald and Betty Ford house.
Peggi and I took my show down at the Little on Saturday just in time for Richard Margolis to walk in with some big photos for behind the piano. When the car was loaded with piles of paintings we walked next door for the Hart’s Grocery “Vender Market.” We strolled from outpost to outpost in the store sampling local sweet potato chips, Ouzon licorice pop, Schutts cider and fried cakes, Hedonist chocolate, Native American roasted corn flour cookies, spiced olive oil dippings, Escabeche carrots, Rohrbach Brown Ale, fish oil, Daicon radish kimchi and Coffee Conection coffee.
