Painting in gallery on Consell de Cente in Barcelona
Wandering for art is easier in some places. We do it wherever we go and it gets you into some of the nicest neighborhoods and then some of the most interesting ones. Often there’s an art district near a big gallery or museum. Many times they are in run down but up and coming parts of town. Usually though it is like following the money. There is a Marlborough Gallery Branch in Barcelona and galleries scattered about on Consell de Cente. I liked this beautifully painted portrait by the very un Spanish sounding artist by the name of Schmitz. It’s called “Sunomi Mori” and it’s selling for 2,000 Euros. At least that is what the tag said.
Paul Dodd “Model From Crime Page” charcoal on paper 2011, 11″x14″
I put this charcoal drawing in the Rochester Contemporary Members Show and two others in the upcoming iSquare Show. I really like the medium. The charcoal is graphic and cheap but it’s messy as hell. Once I do a drawing I can’t even close the sketchbook without creating a reverse image on the opposite page and the drawing itself smudges. You have spray a each sketch with fixative if you want to keep it in the state its in. The fixative is rather expensive. I have drawings spread out on the floor all over the house. I’m thinking of going back to painting.
Georges Rouault painting entitled “Abandoned” at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York
We only scurried through the “Extreme Materials” show at the Memorial Art Gallery when we played the opening so we needed to go back and take in the show. Of course there are no rules as to what materials an artist can use but you shouldn’t have to read the tags to appreciate a work. That’s sort of backwards.
We wandered upstairs where a woman was practicing on the pipe organ in the antiquities section and reacquainted ourselves with some of the minor works by big name artists. I have some real favorites up here and this “oil paint over intaglio print on paper mounted on masonite” by Georges Rouault pronounced as “Zhorzh Roo-oh” is one. Rouault was an original Expressionist and a devout Catholic. He painted clowns, prostitutes, corrupt judges and gorgeous religious works. This is extreme painting.
A while back Zanne Brunner asked if I’d like to show some work in an upcoming show that she was organizing at the temporary art space in Irondequoit near the House of Guitars. Developer/dreamer Mike Nolan has some great plans for the lock of buildings at Tutus Avenue and Cooper Road. He’s bought up most of the block and has devoted space for a small gallery in the shop right next to the Chinese restaurant there. I dropped off the two charcoal drawing pictured in the blow-up of the photo above and I picked up a flyer for the show at the same time. I didn’t know they were calling it a “Holiday Show”! I probably wouldn’t have submitted something in red and green anyway. I was happy to learn Todd Beers, Edward Buscemi and Wendy Menzie were in the show. The opening is on Saturday, January 14th.
I am anxious to get back to painting but I’m digging charcoal. I’ve been drawing with it for the past few months and really having a good time. Same subject matter (as if it it matters) but more freedom. If I get off to a bad start I can always crumple the thing and start over but I am enjoying the paper trail. That is I like it when I see the struggle. That’s why they call it drawing. It’s messy as hell. This is the way my work table looks.
Alice de Mauriac painting entitled “Interval Before The Brink” at Rochester Contemporary Members Show
The First Friday Gallery hop gets bigger every month, so big I heard talk last night of venues switching to the second Friday of the month. Places that don’t have any real gallery space at all are jumping on the bandwagon. How would you like to have your art featured on a bright yellow wall on the down ramp at the Record Archive? Only Frank DeBlase could pull that one off. We checked out a few of these not-really-an-art-space shows last night. Geri McCormick had some beautiful letterpress prints in a show at Joe Bean on University. We had never been to this coffee bar, a real bar format but without the alcohol. They roast their own Fair Trade beans and prepare each cup to order, your choice of coffee and brew method. We bought a bag of beans to take home. It took me about a half hour to get the bag open but the coffee was delicious.
Next stop was Jembetat on Park Avenue where Heather Erwin was holding court with her Barbara Kruger meets Russian constructivist prints. I had my iPod Touch with me but was afraid to whip it out because of the rather hostile “Please . . . No Laptop or WiFi use. Please refrain from cell phone use.” signs. Meanwhile the owner was plopped on the couch cruising fb on his smart phone. I wanted to check the First Friday site to see what else was happening. Turns out we missed Pete Monacelli’s “Thoughtful Influences” show at the Philips gallery. We saw Pete at our last stop, the annual Rochester Contemporary Members Show. We talked art for a bit but mostly drums and the art of playing minimally.
I was so happy to see that Alice de Mauriac’s painting, “Interval Before The Brink” (detail shown above, click photo for full painting), won the Record Archive Award at RoCo. It was the strongest, most beautiful piece in the room. If only the MAG would feature her work in one of their biennials of regional artists. She has many more where this came from.
Paul Dodd charcoal drawing “Model From Crime Page” 2011
I finished this guy last night, another face from Crimestoppers page in our paper. I’ve been painting these guys for quite a while. I used to paint directly from the tiny pictures and then I started scanning them, blowing them up and painting from print outs. It was a little easier to paint from a bigger source but the quality didn’t improve any. And then I discovered the police were putting the files online at a decent size with no dot pattern! I downloaded the pdfs for a few months and worked from those. I just checked the site for the new flier and it’s a tiny .gif file so I called their hotline and asked the officer if there was any way to get a bigger file. He had me call an Officer Renee but her message said she’d be out of the office until after the Thanksgiving holiday.
Margaret Explosion plays the Little Theater Café tonight – 7:30-9:30
Dock behind Hungerford Building at night in Rochester. New York
After our recent LA art bender First Friday in Rochester was bound to be a bit of a let down but it provided some wonderful surprises instead. It was almost impossible to find a parking space near the Hungerford buildings so we invented one out back by a loading dock. This place feels like ground zero for funky art but we found a few jewels. By contrast the “Scapes” electronic media arts show at RoCo was pretty sophisticated. Jason and Debora Beragozzi, husband and wife video geeks, each had engaging installations. I used the word “geeks” because they both are intrigued by the relatively low tech nature of live image processing, no whiz bang image manipulation software or fast cut editing, more like watching the snowy static when a station went off the air or watching a station you couldn’t quite tune in in the pre-digital days. Jason plays with settings to intentionally achieve video errors triggering startling effects. Judd Williams’ “Sandpapers” at Philips Fine Art, exquisite collages made entirely with used sandpaper, was as good as anything we saw in LA.
Anne Havens Sideshow – Forth floor Anderson Alley on Goodman Street in Rochester, NY
Anne Havens tackles big subjects like Milton’s Paradise Lost and Lot’s wife turning to salt. She does this in the most innocent way. Her touch is pure and her voice is distinctive so you recognize her work immediately even though her mediums span drawing, collage, sculpture, prints, video and fiddle. If you stop in her studio on First Friday be sure to sit on the white stool and look into the stars through her homemade telescope.
I was surprised to find my brother-in-law, an entertainment lawyer, reading a book on the minimal artist, Robert Irwin. “Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees” was recommended to him by his son, our nephew in New York. My brother-in-law described some of Irwin’s philosophical ideas on questioning and frustration. He sold me and and I navigated to Amazon to add to my cart. I tried to return the favor by suggesting “Philip Guston The Collected Writings, Lectures and Conversations” but my brother-in-law laughed and said “this book will be enough of that kind of thing.” You can’t get enough of that kind of thing.
Ai Weiwei is a big guy. He was huge before he was imprisoned by the Chinese government and now of course he is bigger. He’s everywhere especially on Twitter. His work addresses Chinese traditions, multinational intrusion and out right theft and of course censorship. He recreated ancient Zodiac figures that were looted from China in the Opium Wars and they are now on display in a courtyard at the LA County Museum. I loved them. In their permanent collection it was a pure delight to see Picasso entertaining himself with exaggerated form in a room full of portraits and just around the corner a room devoted to Giacomenti’s elegantly refined sculptures.
Another day and another PST stop, this time the Getty overlooking the construction on the 405. I would love to go back and photograph those partially dismantled retaining walls, orange cones and new infrastructure. Robert Irwin designed the gardens at the Getty. “Crosscurrents in LA Painting and Sculpture” was nice but not earth shattering with some Dieberkorns, Hockneys and Ruscha’s but the John Altoon’s painting, “Ocean Park Series”, was the bomb! It reminded me of Don VanVilet’s best work. No time for the permanent collection here and the Rembrandts that knock me out just thinking about them.
“Now Dig This!”, our third installment of “PST” at the Hammer Museum in Westwood focused on the African American art scene in LA and it was an eye opener with strong, graphic, physical, rough and tumble work in a distinctive earthy palette, beautiful Charles White drawings and John Riddle sculptures, names I had never heard of, mixed with political art that still feels fresh, Aunt Jemima with a machine gun and women with Angela Davis Afros shoving the stereotypes back in our face. Minstrel to militant. Right on!
The Hammer’s permanent collection is stellar. Take the fifteen small head sculptures by Daumier!This time I feel in love with Toulouse-Lautrec’s “Touc“, a gorgeously painted dog sitting on a table. I’m no dog person but this looked like it was done by Leon Golub. In the book store, the Hammer has one of the best, I bought a book from the EVA Hesse painting show that had just left and sitting next to that I spotted a complete collection of Robert Irwin”s writings.
“Jaqueline Kennedy III” 1966 Warhol silkscreen print at MAG in Rochester, NY
This morning’s paper had an article about the photographer, Nan Goldin. Living in Paris “since Bush stole the election”, as she puts it, she has an upcoming show at at Matthew Marks gallery in Chelsea where she will be showing photos from as far back as the seventies along with a slideshow of photos she shot inside the Louvre at night. As popular as Jerry Lewis and Mickey Rourke over there she was given free access to the museums collection. Any artist’s dream come true.
I was rummaging around the Memorial Art Gallery’s collection recently, online of course, and found this delightful Tiepolo drawing. I wish the photos were bigger and there is so much in the collection with “Image Not Available” tags. I can’t understand why a museum wouldn’t put a priority on photographing the collection. Wouldn’t it be fun to let artist and social networking types assemble their favorite pieces on the MAG’s site. Sounds like a php job for Joe Tunis.
I grabbed this picture of Warhol’s Jackie at the MAG on my way up to say hi to Dreamland Faces. Playing three sets there left no time to see the “Extreme Materials” show. My father liked it quite a bit so I plan to get over there soon. And same story at the Eastman House. I want to get back over there to see that giant photo collection of people with their eyes closed. The collection is so big that this Robert Maplethorpe photo of Alice Neel was out in the hall.
So much of art these days is appropriation, the Warhol silkscreens from photos of course, my scrapbooks from newspaper clippings, the drawings I’ve been making from crime page mugshots, photos of the woods even, all photography for that matter, landscape painting! Come on.
Model From Crime Page – Paul Dodd Charcoal on paper 2011
The class is called “Advanced Painting” and I’ve been taking it for more years than I can remember. I did my first oil painting in this class a long time ago and then last year I switched mediums to kid’s Tempura paint. This year I haven’t done a painting yet, just a pile of charcoal drawings. It’s a funny kind of progress.
ad·vanced
1. Far on or ahead in development or progress.
2. New and not yet generally accepted.
Art on the wall in painting class at the Creative Worksop in Rochester, New York
This white wooden block was screwed to the wall near the light switches in our painting class and someone stuck some blue tape on it. It looks like a Richard Tuttle piece.
Our class, with many regulars and a handful of newcomers, is so full that the moments of engagement with our teacher are compacted and all the more intense. There is no time to fart around and Fred Lipp rises to the challenge. The class description emphasizes honesty and he cuts right to the chase. He pointed to the way I laid in a neck on a pencil drawing and said, “You’re boring me.”
I didn’t say anything at first but when he left I thought, “thank you.”
White flower weeds lining the path in Spring Valley
As a long time one movie at a time Netflix customer I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about when they jacked up their rates to cover the Instant Play movies that weren’t part of the package when I signed on but the announcement of the two separate companies seems plain crazy. At least they didn’t bring Meg Whitman on board.
On Tuesday we watched the Alice Neel movie from our Instant Queue. She is one my favorite painters so all they had to do was fill the screen with her paintings and I was happy. The movie was made by her grandson and he tried to come to terms with how Alice put her painting in front of family as if it follows that great artists should also have stellar parenting skills. Alice put her all into her work and her paintings testify to this. She was mostly ignored by the art world until well into her seventies. The story of how her sensational paintings could ever have been overlooked would have made a better movie.
The same art world embraced Mark Kostabi, the subject of Wednesday night’s movie, “Con Artist.” This one came in the mail in a red envelope. Kostabi did some really cute little line drawings early on and then decided to stop getting his hands dirty. He out flanked Warhol and hired a staff to not only churn out the work but come up with the concepts, mostly ugly, noisy paintings. They were snapped up as fast as he could sign them. Kostabi reminded us of Bob Ament, the muckraking candidate for our town supervisor. He rubbed his fakeness in the faces of the art establishment and demand continued to soar. So this really is the movie about how the art world ignored Alice Neel and it really isn’t all that good a movie.
I’d like to saunter into the Yummy Cafe, take a look around, pick something out, something brand new or at least creatively arranged and freshly presented but the Yummy Cafe is closed so I’m left with one move. I must go to the well and surprise myself.
Although I never set foot in the Yummy Cafe I see their demise as an opportunity, an opening that was impossible to see until I established a nearly blank slate this summer with the white wall in my painting room. I reviewed old paintings and sent most to the trash and then sold a series of 1996 Crime Faces at our garage sale. I even cleaned off my big plywood drawing table and gave it a new coat of white paint.
But the real turning point came on Wednesday morning while sitting on the porch. Peggi had the B Section and said, “There’s a new Crimestoppers page.” I always read the B section but somehow I never got to it and it wound leaving in Thursday’s trash pick up. I’ve saved every Crimestoppers since 1995 and painted most of them but I’m turning the page. I’m on the precipice.
“Model From Crime Page” 2010, watercolor by Paul Dodd currently on view in the Finger Lakes Show at Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York
There seems to be no limit to the supply of fresh faces to paint. This one and another are currently in the biennial Finger Lakes Show at the Memorial Art Gallery. They asked me to record a brief statement about my work and you can hear it by calling 585 627-4132 and then 8 when they ask for the “stop number.” Click the photo above to view the whole piece.
I just listened to it and I can’t believe how dry it sounds. Geez! And I can see myself reading the statement from my notebook. I hate those typewritten artist’s statements and don’t read them unless I’m totally taken by the piece. Somehow I thought these recorded notes would be different and they are but mine doesn’t add much to the work. For kicks you can call back and push random stop numbers for some disjointed artist’s statements.
Jennifer Hecher’s “Martyr Dress #2” in Finger Lakes Show at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY
I guess my favorite piece in the Finger Lakes Show, which opened last night at the Memorial Art Gallery, was Jennifer Hecher’s “Martyr Dress #2”. It was the most intriguing and quite beautiful, made mostly with broken white and brown egg shells (click photo for enlargement). Just what did she do with all those eggs? Her cholesterol could be sky high.
It’s a bigger show than the last few with quite bit of variety and unevenness. I have some watercolors near the exit, a perfect location, but my two pieces are hug too close together. A revved-up Krypton 88 with Jim Via on guitar, Jenna Weintraub on pipes and left handed Dana Gregory on drums made it a party in the ballroom.
Redeem Your Empties sign at Southtown Beverages in Rochester, NY
We made a point to visit the street pool today. That’s what it takes. We had only been down there once this summer. I brought my Guston book to read and finally put it down when I got to this line. “I’m not so involved with what the other guy does. You want to upset your own applecart.” Good thing I did or I’d be sunburnt.
Back in the late nineties when Margaret Explosion was was playing Friday Happy Hour at the Bug Jar Casey told about Southtown Beverage and we’ve been going there since. We only get out there a few times a year but it is always an enjoyable experience. It’s the only worthwhile establishment in Henrietta (suburb of Rochester with one of every chain restaurant or store in the world).
You drive through the building entering from the back. You open your trunk and someone takes your empties out. It helps if they’re in bags of twelve or the cases the bottles come in but they will take anything with a NY deposit. That goes for empty seltzer bottles from Wegmans and the 24 ounce Budweiser cans I find when we walk. They have have great prices on beer and “blow out’ specials on outdated beer. I picked up a case of Estrella, brewed and bottled in Barcelona with an expiration date of 5/11, for $16.99. You can stay in your car for this whole trip but I usually pull forward and park out front so I can walk back in and savor the experience with the two brothers who run the place.
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