Who Are We Trying To Please?

Mayflowers in Durand Eastman Park
Mayflowers in Durand Eastman Park

With the trees bustin’ out all over and taking the spotlight the lowly Mayflower gets could easily get overlooked but I’m not gonna let that happen. My first first pointed this plant out to us on one of our first walks in the nearby woods. It doesn’t need much light and seems but thrives now before the trees fill in. It pops out early in May and has only one leaf which is pointed proudly at the sun in the south. Later in the year it develops two more leaves and a delicate white flower. I thought maybe our friend Shelley would have drawn this plant in online “Year In The Woods” journal but I didn’t see it in her May entry.

Seems impossible that there are only three more Wednesdays left at the Little. We won’t be back there until September. Last week we had a piano player sit in and things got a little frantic but things like that happen when you throw everything to the wind. As much as we hated it some people loved it. Which brings up the question. Who are we trying to please? Ourselves or the audience? I know which side I come down on.

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Reacquainted With The Me

Margaret Explosion's limited edition 45 cover for "Juggler/Purple Heart" on press at Printing & Book Arts Center in Rochester, NY
Margaret Explosion’s limited edition 45 cover for “Juggler/Purple Heart” on press at Printing & Book Arts Center in Rochester, NY

I’m not much for talking on the phone but Brad Fox and I are in the habit of talking on our birthdays. He is the same age as me for two days, the two days between our birth dates. This year he reminded me of something we did a long time ago, so long ago that I had to get reacquainted with the me that would have done something like this. I had a summer job mowing lawns at apartment buildings during the day and then sweeping parking lots with this tank like machine at night. Brad worked with me for a few weeks and we stopped at Harry’s Hots on East Ridge for a late night snack. They had juke box there with satellite machines at each of the tables and Brad remembers us loading up the juke box with about ten plays of Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey” and then leaving the restaurant.

Steve Lippincott is in town for a few days and he offered to cook dinner for us last night at Tom Kohn’s new house in the city. Tom’s place is in our old neighborhood and we just loved the house. Tom was was spinning records including the double, white vinyl, live Television album that was released on Record Store Day a few weeks ago. Steve is working on a cookbook and we were a live test group for ten spice chicken and vegetarian tortilla with fresh corn. We gave it our thumbs up.

I check in with So Many Records every day. The juke box in the sky that at first seemed like a museum now feels like part of current culture. With the resurgence of vinyl I thought it would easier to find die cut blanks for a 45 sleeve but the only ones I could find were chip board from Stumptown Printers in Portland Oregon so we ordered a hundred. With the help of Bill and Geri at the Printing & Book Arts Center Peggi and I ran the first color of our two color package on a Vandercook letterpress and tomorrow we are scheduled to run the black.

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Sifting The April Sunlight For Clues

Alex Katz print from "Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror" at Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY
Alex Katz print from “Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror” at Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY

It was still April when we saw this painting in the Lockhart Gallery at the Memorial Art Galley in Rochester. We were there for the opening of the Fiber Arts show but found the sideshow in the Lockhart Gallery more interesting. In connection with Writer’s & Books’ thirtieth anniversary they have mounted a show of the pages of “Self Portrait In A Convex Mirror”, a limited edition (175 copies) of an artist’s book centered around, literally, the pages are round John Ashbery’s poem which was based on Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola’s 1524 painting with the same title. The book included an lp of Ashbery reading the poem, letterpress printed pages of the poem and artist’s prints form Larry Rivers, Elaine and William William DeKoning, Jim Dine, R.J. Kitaj and Alex Katz.

I have liked Alex Katz’s work since Charlie Coco took me to Times Square in the seventies to see his giant murals of people’s heads. And then a few years later we were looking at the Whitney Biennial and there was some sort of installation of drum set behind a curtain in the gallery and it appeared they were inviting people to play the set so I sat down and knocked out something. I put the sticks down and came out from behind the curtain and found myself face to face with Alex Katz. He was wearing brown bucks.

John Ashbery speaks at the Gallery about his his life, the New York School and his work on June 2nd.

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El Sueño de la Razon

Goya's "El Sueño de la Razon Produce Monstruos" print at the Johnson Museum in Ithaca
Goya’s “El Sueño de la Razon Produce Monstruos” print at the Johnson Museum in Ithaca

The Johnson Museum on Cornell’s campus has a room full of Goya prints currently on display. I planned on taking the day off and driving down there to see the show and celebrate my birthday but we had some work that just had to be done this morning so we got a late start. We didn’t take the most direct route either because we avoided the thruway and drove through Canandagua and then down the east side of Seneca Lake toward Watkins Glen. We were driving through Dundee when Peggi said, “I wonder how your aunt and uncle are.” They live in a farmhouse at Starkey’s Corners and we were a stone’s throw away so we stopped by to visit.

My aunt answered the door and showed us the new coal stove in their kitchen. My uncle was sleeping in a chair in the next room and he woke up with all the commotion. He said “Come in and sit down. I’ll put my teeth in.” The four of us sat down on the porch and my uncle talked to me while my aunt talked to Peggi. Two conversations at the same time, both full of tales of yesteryear. He was telling me how tugboats towed barges loaded with salt or ice up the lake and into the Erie Canal while my aunt was telling Peggi how she had been back to her old neighborhood on Rochester’s west side and how everything had changed. My uncle pointed to a painting on their wall of stereotypical Irishmen in green suits with whimsical pipes walking along the canal with horses that were hitched to a barge.

My aunt is also my godmother and I have always had a soft spot for her. She was a nurse at Saint Mary’s when my uncle was brought there because of a farm accident. One of my earliest memories was going to their wedding. They’ve lived on this farm since and it was my favorite place to visit as a kid. It still looks exactly the same but they’ve sold their property to a group of Mennonites who work the land and let my aunt and uncle continue to live in their old house.

We usually park in the Ithaca Municipal Garage and then walk up the hill to Cornell but this time we drove up and got sort of lost. We were across from the hillside where Personal Effects played back in the day when we asked for directions. It reminded us of Dunn Meadow at IU. She said we were on the wrong side of campus. The museum closed at five so we had only forty five minutes to see the show but it was an intense forty five minutes. Goya is often called the first modern artist. His work is every bit as gripping and relevant today as it must have been in the late 1700’s. “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.” A perfect birthday gift.

Listen to Margaret Explosion “Sleep of Reason.”

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Conceptual Photography

John Gilmore photo of lightning storm
John Gilmore photo of lightning storm

Our friend John woke up in that lightning storm that we had early Wednesday morning. He took some photos and we looked at them on my computer last night. He never got a lightning bolt or anything but the purple trees looked pretty psychedelic. I was stuck by a few things. The date on the photo is about four years old and its probably the oldest date that his camera’s software would let him set if he ever found his way to the settings. And secondly, every photo he has ever taken with that camera probably has this same date on it.

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Sempre Culver

I have been cruising down Culver Road for most of my life and I never get tired of it. Sometimes its magical like this Sunday when we drove in to hear Bach’s “St. John’s Passion.” We had an Italian radio show on as we cruised by Dixon Apartments, Dentico’s and Palermo’s Deli. The sky was cloudy but promising.

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Bang RIP

Billy Bang at Water Street Music Hall in Rochester.NY in 2007
Billy Bang at Water Street Music Hall in Rochester.NY in 2007

Billy Bang loved Rochester because Rochester loved Billy Bang. You could tell when he took the stage and he said as much. Somehow the rough and tumble sophistication fit. He was a cocky star in the underground jazz movement when he appeared with Sun Ra’s band at the Red Creek in ’86 and over the years Tom Kohn brought him to the Bop Shop atrium, the German House and Water Street in many configurations. His music soared when he began writing his haunting Viet Nam suite. It took him a while to process his war experience but when he did it came out in an incredibly rich, dark, beautiful way. Track down “KIAMIA” on iTunes and I’ll stop trying to describe it. He tore the roof off of Montage during the 2004 Rochester Jazz Festival and did so again in 2006 when Garth Fagan joined him on stage. The violinist was scheduled to open the fest this year but word has spread that he’s died of cancer and we’ll miss him.

Bang’s music transcends jazz and could easily fit on Scott Regan’s “Open Tunings” or Rick Simpson’s “Gumbo Variations”. In fact I’ll request it tonight. We saw Scott last night at the Margaret Explosion gig and I hope he doesn’t come down with anything in the next few days. I was telling him I thought I gotten sick from sick from a reaction to the drug they gave me for my colonoscopy but it had been in the back of mind that maybe I caught a bug from Scott’s bandmate, Steve Piper, who shook Peggi’s hand after their gig on Saturday night and then told Peggi that he had been sick with a stomach flu. Well Peggi left the stage while we were playing last night in a rather dramatic fashion. I followed her to the bathroom and sure enough she had the bug so I was wrong about my bad reaction and just as wrong to blame Steve Piper for the bug that is going around. Who wouldn’t shake Steve’s hand after his rousing version of an Elvis’s “His Latest Flame”?

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It’s Heavy

Ken Frank, Paul Dodd and Peggi Fournier playing as a trio version of Margaret Explosion at High Falls in Rochester, New York
Ken Frank, Paul Dodd and Peggi Fournier playing as a trio version of Margaret Explosion at High Falls in Rochester, New York

Ken, Peggi and I played as trio version of Margaret Explosion over the weekend and Brian Peterson took this photo. It was a 50 dollar a head auction/party for the The Genesee Center For The Arts. Rick from Watkins & The Rapiers sat in with on trombone in the second set and we tore it up while Ken’s wife yelled for Stones and Neil Young covers. They had nice spread of food but we had already eaten and the small cannolis on the dessert table looked inviting but I was already paring down my food intake for my Monday morning colonoscopy.

This was second one and because they found a polyp on the run so they wanted to do another in five years. I asked my mom how many she had had and she said she’s never had one and my dad said one of his doctors recommended one but the other said he was too old it. He didn’t really like hearing that. I was dreading this whole thing but as they say, “The prep is the hardest part. Last time I had to drink a gallon of Drano. This time it was one two quarts but that pretty much shoots the day.

The sedative never completely knocked me out but it did space me out for most of the day. I was able to read the paper as soon as they were done but I was little wobbly when I stood up. We went directly from the doctor’s to SEA Restaurant on Monroe for a big bowl of Vietnamese Pho and then to the used bookstore next door. Peggi picked up a few things from the horror section and I found a four dollar book on Picasso and Matisse written by Francoise Gilot, one of Picasso’s exs. It was such a nice day we pretty much blew off work and headed out to the Apple store. I wanted to buy a USB Camera Connection Kit for our iPad. I want to be able to backup photos on my iPad and also work with photos when I’m out of town. My laptop feels so big and clumsy these days and it’s heavy!

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Hitchhike Baby

Paul Dodd with movie camera, Rich Stim and Norm Ladd at Norm's wedding
Paul Dodd with movie camera, Rich Stim and Norm Ladd at Norm’s wedding

When I was a freshman Norm Ladd’s mam called me and said Norm, a friend of mine from high school who was a couple years younger, had run away from home and he was hitchhiking out to see me. He lived in my dorm for while.

I used to hitchhike all the time. Back forth to work at my uncle’s store during high school, over to Brad and Dave’s house and then back and forth to Bloomington. I got picked up by one of the famous Wyeth family members. He was wearing leather gloves and driving a small sports car but it overheated around Buffalo and he through a fit. A few times I got picked up by a guys that wanted to “pick me up” but most of the time it worked out. Once I was picked up by a salesman who gave me some potato chips that his company had just introduced. He was raving about how much less shelf space the chips took up because they came in cans instead of bags. He had boxes of them in the back seat and we ate them as we drove toward Indianapolis. They tasted pretty good and he gave me a can to take back to the dorm.

Today in the business section I read about Procter & Gamble selling off their food brands, Jif, Folger’, Crisco and Pringles. The article said their advertising division was located in Cincinatti and they test marketed the chips in Evansville Indiana in 1968. That salesman would have picked me up halfway between those two locations that year. I didn’t imagine all this.

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In Like A Lamb

Lake Ontario from the ridge trail in Durand Eastman Park
Lake Ontario from the ridge trail in Durand Eastman Park

It was sixty something today but we still have a few pockets of snow and I’m happy about that. If there is one thing that really bothers me it is when Spring comes roaring in like a lion. Winter is a test of of metal and we fail the test if we give up on it. It makes us stronger when we give in to it and it makes Spring all the more dramatic when it unveils itself. Besides I like the minimalist palette of grey brown with small touches of color.

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Big Bird

Turkey in our yard
Turkey in our yard

This female turkey must be in a state and it probably has something to do with mating. We usually see turkeys in packs in the woods but this one was in our back yard this morning when we woke up and she wandered around our yard all day. She stopped stopped in front of our window and gave us this mighty display.

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Onward

4D business cards on there way to the trash
4D business cards on there way to the trash

“The Guy With The Tie.” We used to use him for copywriting a long time ago. Anne Esse. She’s a great designer and we’ve worked on many projects with her. CompUSA. They’re long out of business. Telesis. Dan Brumley used to work there before he moved to France. We worked on an industrial at Telesis with David Rose. I just saw him the other night at a house concert. Peter Pappas Shadow Match. I have no idea what that was. Bristol Boarding is still making custom cases. We did a brochure for them last year. They’re in the old HH Sullivan building.on Culver. Spectrum Color Lab. Wow. What did they do? Something to do with high end color transparencies. Innovative Type. I think they set type before everyone with a computer could set type. LefThumb Productions. I think Pauli did a film with one of our songs.

Those cards all would up on the top of the heap when I finished a job I had been trying to get to for ages. That is going digital with our contacts and addresses. It took me way less time than I thought because so many of the cards in our Rolodex are from extinct businesses.

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Dream Baby Dream

Concrete building on Eastman Lake in Rochester, New York
Concrete building on Eastman Lake in Rochester, New York

I can’t be the only one who is tempted to take a photo of this concrete structure every time we walk by it. It’s on the western shore of Eastman Lake in Durand Eastman Park. The trail along this side of the lake is a bird lover’s paradise and we often spot birders with binoculars and long lens cameras hanging off their necks but in the dead of winter it is usually only us.

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Subterranean Surrogates

Still from Subterranean Surrogates", a photo installation by Paul Dodd 2009-2011 Dedicated to Philip Guston
Still from Subterranean Surrogates”, a photo installation by Paul Dodd 2009-2011 Dedicated to Philip Guston

Entering the Finger Lakes Exhibition is harder than doing the work that you are entering. The judges make choices based on viewing your jpeg and color shifts between monitors are a concern, not to mention potentially bigger issues like scale. And what if your piece is a photo installation? Try submitting a whole show in a file under one meg.

View images from “Subterranean Surrogates.”

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Who Stole The Peace Flag?

Studebaker in front of Jerome's Ignition Service in Rochester, New York
Studebaker in front of Jerome’s Ignition Service in Rochester, New York

Cars used to look a lot cooler than they do now.

We are at war in Libya. Just like that. Good thing we have an all volunteer army.

A friend who lived down the street was in Viet Nam dropping Agent Orange out of a helicopter on anything that moved when my mom made a peace flag. She sewed it! It was a white cloth peace sign on a sky blue piece of material. I remember it being beautiful. We flew it on the flag pole out in front of our house and my friend’s mom got all bent out of shape about it. I remember her calling our house and screaming over the phone while my mom made a rational appeal to her. “Surely you want peace too”, I remember her saying, but the argument continued. This neighbor thought it was flat out wrong to fly that kind of thing while her son was fighting for our country. He was only in the army because he flunked out of Bonaventure and got drafted.

I was so proud of my mom but the thing is a lot of people felt like her and it was a bit of a mystery when the flag was stolen a few weeks later. “Who stole the peace flag?” became the family’s obsession as we weighed the suspicion level of each neighbor. We found out months later that it was the younger brother of the guy who was in Viet Nam. I’ll bet the guys over there were real happy there were people back home working against peace.

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Bad Moon Risin’

Big moon rise over Durand Eastman Beach in Rochester, New York
Big moon rise over Durand Eastman Beach in Rochester, New York

Neil Young must have gone crazy with this super moon thing. He recorded his most recent record on a full moon and people say he plans key moments in his life around full moons. Peggi has woken me up to look at the moon before and she was excited about this “Super Moon.” She put her coat on around sunset and said, “I’m headed down to the beach to watch the moon come up.” That got me away from the computer for a bit and I went down to Durand Eastman with her. It was about 35 degrees as the sun went down and it soon felt colder. We were getting ready to bail when the most dramatic huge moon popped up over the beach houses in Sea Breeze. This thing was spectacular!

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The Journey

3 Face Drawings by Paul Dodd 03.14.11
3 Face Drawings by Paul Dodd 03.14.11

I left these three drawings at the Creative Workshop tonight. I did them last night for a drawing show that the Workshop is mounting in the next few weeks. No guarantee that they will accept them of course but they were fun to do.

Duane emailed a link to a Neil Young live recording from Carnegie Hall 1970. I downloaded it but haven’t listened to it yet. Our friend and neighbor, Rick, had coincidentally just lent us two British magazines with Neil Young features. Each had a cd of various artists doing Neil Young covers, a tricky proposition that hardly ever works when you’re crazy about the original.

I liked this quote from Neil, saying “I’ve been too concerned lately with moving on so I leave a lot of unfinished and unreleased stuff.” It struck me because it dovetailed so nicely with this quote from Picasso that was in Friday’s NYTs. “I’ve reached the moment, you see, when the movement of my thought interests me more than the thought itself.”

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Falling Forward

24 ounce cans of Budweiser found on Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York
24 ounce cans of Budweiser found on Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York

I can picture falling forward as well as springing back so this “Spring Forward, Fall Back” thing has always been hard for me to envision. I might just set my watch forward tonight and get a jump on things so it doesn’t feel like we really lose that precious hour.

We spotted a few crocuses out in our neighbor’s yard and these yellow flowers are out in our back yard. The geese are overhead, flying north and carrying on their own conversation. I found nine golf balls where the snow was as we crossed the golf course today. And we found these beer cans in the the usual spot on Hoffman Road. We were ready for the cans. Peggi had two Wegmans bags in her pocket and we filled them both. We continue to speculate wildly about who it might be that drinks these 24 ounce cans and then chucks them habitually in the same spot. It’s been going on for a few years now and kids would have grown out this kind of thing. Maybe a neighbor or someone who comes down here to drink beer and look at the wildlife.

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