I Before E Except In Budweiser

Budweiser and Pussywillows on Hoffman Road

Most of this snow is gone. I took this photo a few days ago. We were down there again today and found more giant Bud cans and we picked some Pussy-willows while we were at it. Those are 24 ounce cans. Luckily we found an old bag to put them in. A school bus passed us as we were heading back with an armload of cans today. We waved. This Budweiser guy is remarkably consistent not only in the brand he drinks but in exactly where he throws his empties. A compulsive drunk.

I spent most of the day redrawing a three dimensional wagon wheel-like graphic for a client. It was probably generated in PowerPoint but they wanted to use it at poster size so I redrew it in Illustrator. Type on a curve, a million callouts, one of those crazy organizational charts that make your eyes glaze over.

Yogi tea bag fortune read “Empty your self and let the universe fill you.” I like that one. Most of them are annoying. I roughed up a painting in class and my teacher commented, “That guy is looking a lot more casual”. Made me realize what an important quality that is.

1 Comment

I’m Your Puppet

Paul Klee "Gespenst eines Genies [Ghost of a Genius]" 1922
Paul Klee “Gespenst eines Genies [Ghost of a Genius]” 1922

Used to be we had two painting sessions, “Fall” and “Spring” for lack of better descriptors. And then the Creative Workshop of the Memorial Art Gallery divided the Spring session in two which I guess you could call pre Easter and post Easter. They keep dropping weeks too so the Fall session starts later and finishes earlier and the Spring session doesn’t start until mid January and of course the price keeps inching up. But I try to block all that out.

I show up to confront painting issues and our painting teacher, Fred Lipp, is always ready to ratchet it up a notch. I know that I am a better painter than I was ten years ago and I know I have a long way to go. If I felt that Fred was not able to help me get better I would not be taking his class each week. The situation is pretty clear for me and the price is worth it. The interesting thing about all this is how Fred is always there like Sly Stone to take you higher.

2 Comments

You Can’t Complain

Peggi dreamed she was a contestant on “Dancing With The Stars” and then woke up to “Reality 4D“. We have been behind in couple of big jobs and we can’t seem to put them behind us. You can’t really complain when you don’t have to set the alarm or drive to work but every once in a while you get roped into doing a job that wasn’t defined properly in the beginning. So the scope of the job grows while you’re doing it and the client feels entitled to unlimited rounds of revisions while you’re stuck with the price you quoted. Like I said, you can’t complain.

I starred at a reproduction of a Luc Tuymans painting last night for about twenty minutes. It’s called “Lamproom” and it is deceptively simple looking but rich in wonder. I would love to see the painting in person at SFMOMA where Tuymans has a retrospective but I don’t think I’ll be out there before May 2nd. I only have the book which I ordered from Amazon and I finally had a chance to spend some time with it last night. I flipped through the whole book and can’t say I like all of his work. In fact I only liked about ten percent of it but the paintings I like just knock me out. So maybe I will warm up to the rest and maybe I won’t. Some artists only hit home runs like 300 . . . I started to use a baseball analogy but I’m confused. When a hitter has a batting average of 300 that means he gets on 30 percent of the time, right? So why do they call it 300 and not 30? Anyway, if the guy has a 300 average he probably only hits a home run 3 percent of the time? And that’s considered really good. So Luc Tuymans is a great artist. It’s not easy to paint like he does even though his paintings can look tossed off.

We celebrated my father’s birthday tonight. I picked up some Nino’s pizza and Peggi’s mom and we sat around my parents table for most of the evening. My brother, who works for Xerox, argued that “print is not dead”. I told him I like paying my bills online. I can’t imagine printing another photo because they look so good on my monitor. We plan to order an iPad on March 12th when they start taking orders and I’m looking forward to canceling a few magazine subscriptions. But I still like art books.

3 Comments

This Is A Series

Paul Dodd painting submissions to Lucy Burne Show at MAG 2010
Paul Dodd painting submissions to Lucy Burne Show at MAG 2010

Philip Guston is quoted as saying, “I imagine wanting to paint as a cave man would. . . I should like to paint like a man who has never seen a painting.” Sort of like Sandra Bernhard in King of Comedy which played on the big screen last night at the Dryden Theater. Her character, Masha, wanted to be black.

I submitted the paintings shown above to a show in the Lucy Burne Gallery at the MAG. The upcoming show is called, “This is a Series” so it is right up my alley since I have stuck in a rut.

Last night I was thinking about how I would like to paint and I had this mental picture of a head that had so much volume in it that I wanted to kick it like soccer ball. Duane from Lowel has been pushing me to use a back lighting technique on my subjects to illuminate the edges and provide 3d relief against a dark background.I am ready for a breakthrough.

3 Comments

Too Many Things In The World

Margaret Explosion "Snowshoes" featuring Jack Schaefer
Margaret Explosion “Snowshoes” featuring Jack Schaefer

I have been getting into production of a modern version of the 45rpm record and I’m talking about the American version with the big hole not the English version with that contraption in the middle. The new versions are iPod ready complete with cover art and minimal info in the tags. I’ve been going with “psychedelic jazz” in the “Genre” section of iTunes. I’ve done about twenty of these things and we’ll eventually get them up on the Margaret Explosion page for downloads. We will probably record tonight and maybe come home with new single.

The conceptual artist, Tino Sehgal, who believes “there are too many things in the world” has a show at the Guggenheim in New York that I would love see. If only we had that high speed train that the politicians bee talking about. I read about the show here. Conceptual art is smart and the smarter it is the better it is. Plus it must be easier than painting.

We had take out Chinese with Peggi’s mom the other night and her fortune read, “Failures are opportunities”. Coincidentally, I have decided to make an effort to learn from my mistakes.

It might be out of boredom or maybe it’s my risk taking appetite for adventure but I don’t make things easy. Instead of buckling down and making considered moves in an orderly direction I have a tendency to throw too many things on my plate forcing a hand full of distractions and problems of my own making. There is a method, as laid out by my painting intstructor, Fred Lpp, and I cannot argue with it. Start with a plan but be ready to chuck it. Evaluate what you have down after every move. Always address the worst first and when there are no problems, you’re done. It could be so easy. Boldly proceed with caution.

2 Comments

Crime Face Attraction

Crime face from Crimestopper’s page in Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

This mornings paper had an article about how Arthur Shawcross died of neglect while serving his life sentence. Sounds like someone found a way to trim the New York State budget. The article described Shawcross one of New York’s worst serial killer (I was trying to recall the best). And it reminded readers that noted crime author, Jack Olsen, wrote a book about him. Peggi reads true crime and thought that was a particularly good book.

I guess we share some sort of fascination with crime. I worked as a graphic artist for the Rochester Police, pulling mug shots for a memorable year, and I usually use that as my excuse. I’ve been painting mug shots from the paper on and off for many years now and I keep going through phases where I question why I paint these people. It doesn’t really help their plight and most people would rather not look at the paintings so what is the point? – That sort of questioning. I find these faces a lot more interesting than happy smily people, more interesting than good looking models, more interesting than poseurs although many of these people may be just that. It’s meaty material and there is probably no more to it than a preference for either C.S.I. or that Charlie Sheen show.

The last Crimestoppers page in our paper was in December and I just got around to scanning it. The photos are only thumbnail size in the paper and I discovered it helps to have a little bit bigger source so I print them out a larger size. Most of these people rather unattractive but every once and a while there is a looker like this 22 year old wanted for Grand Larceny.

3 Comments

I H-art Ida!

Batik curtains (with water damage) by Peggi hanging in our basement window.

Temperatures near 40 for the last week have put a real damper on cross country skiing. We did some yard work yesterday and even had our wheelbarrow out. But I spent most of the day in the basement working on a few paintings. I know I got way out ahead of myself on this recent batch. Even if I know the bast procedure I can’t help but throw a monkey wrench in.

Weekend paper had an article about Ida Applebroog who has a sensational new show opening tomorrow night at Hauser & Wirth in New York. I wish I could be there. I spent quite a bit of time at her website and fell in love with her work. Hint, hint, hint.

2 Comments

It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This

New Year Card 2009/2010

Our nephew sent us a postcard from Marfa Texas. The card is a color polaroid glued to a piece of cardboard, a shot he took of a building there with a sign on it that read “Sun Ra Building.” The note on the back was typed (with a typewriter). He is decidedly “old school” and I am jealous. Maybe it’s just a y2kX reaction.

Roberta Smith had a great article in Friday’s NY Times Weekend Arts section, entitled “Time, the Infinite Storyteller“, encouraging New Year’s readers to “take refuge in art.” She more or less suggested wandering in the Met and letting the works of art mark the old and formulate the new. She started with works created in 1353 BC and finished by talking about painting. It “is also good for exploring all-too-real forms of psychic time, as in Philip Guston’s aptly titled “Stationary Figure” of 1973. It shows said figure in bed, prostrate — paralyzed really — with a bad case of night sweats or racing thoughts: wide awake, he smokes and stares, at the clock, the bare light bulb, the black sky visible through his window.”

Ken brought his big bass to the Little on Wednesday and it sounded amazing. I fully expected Pete LaBonne to surprise us and show up at the gig even though he emailed that it was too cold in the mountains to leave. The place was packed and the band sounded good as a foursome. Jeanne Perri was there with Trish from the LDR. They brought us a a bottle of a Caravella that Jeanne said was the rage in Italy. It was in a bag that lit up so we displayed it on Peggi’s amp.

I stacked the iTunes deck for New Year’s Eve with Pete LaBonne and Dreamland Faces but it was almost too loud to hear the stereo. The kids kept telling me to turn it up so I cranked it and some guests went in the the other room to escape. I had a separate list ready for when people started dancing and I may have switched to that prematurely. Chris Schepp asked me if I had any music by white guys? I put on Marvin Gaye’s “A Funky Space Reincarnation.” John, Maureen’s friend, told me he had “a perfect palette” and I was trying to imagine what that meant. Someone brought “Blue Moon” beer and I didn’t even get the connection until today. We had more beer left over after the party than when we started. I found two double A batteries in our compost and we had ten empty quart bottles of seltzer when we were done. George Jones’ “Once You’ve Had The Best” came on about three o’clock and Brian Williams shouted “It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This.”

4 Comments

NYC Hangover

Chelsea Gallery Hallway
Chelsea Gallery Hallway

Not that type of hangover, more like the way you feel after a really long walk. Renewed yet sluggish. And that’s probably why they say, “Great place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.”

Wandering in and out of galleries in Chelsea on Saturday alters your perception of everything. You start by just looking at the art, some great and some dreadful. There are so many galleries in this five or six block area that after a while you lose track of whether the art is on the walls or behind the desks where the gallery attendants sit with Apple monitors or in gallery goers themselves or out on the sidewalk or in the halls of a warehouse where you are desperately trying to find a bathroom.

Leave a comment

Martian Art

Martian with her painting "Memories of Home 2" at High Falls Gallery
Martian with her painting “Memories of Home 2” at High Falls Gallery

At the same time Peggi and i were dodging Bleu Cease’s camera at the RoCo Members Show opening last Friday we heard this woman this women ask Bleu if he would take a picture of her in front of her painting. Of course the gallery director obliged. We ran into this same woman on Sunday when we stopped in at the “Upside Down” show at the High Falls Gallery in downtown Rochester. The director, Sally Wood Winslow, introduced me to her when I told Sally that I liked her painting.

The woman uses the name Martian and she took me out in the hall, away from Sally, Peggi and her mom, and she told me a story about how she first became aware of art. Her dad was looking at a magazine that had a feature on Andy Warhol’s soup cans. She said she remembered him ranting about how dumb those people were. “Those people?” I sort of asked. “White people” she said. And I spun out thinking about this.

Leave a comment

Beautiful Thug

"Oracle" By Lee Hoag At RoCo Members Show
“Oracle” By Lee Hoag At RoCo Members Show

I dropped off a “Crime Face” painting at RoCo, one of over two hundred and fifty entries to their annual Members Show. We stopped in the opening on Friday night and wandered about. It’s always fun to follow your eyes in such a crowded show, spotting friend’s art and brand new gems. I wasn’t crazy about the yellow dot voting thing. This show is open to all members and should be above the curator or pedestrian curator evaluation. What was percentage of blue sky that people voted for in that over the couch painting contest? Was that a pre-internet factoid? I liked Lee Hoag’s little tv in the round room. I can’t remember what it was saying.

We stopped by Abilene after the show to wish Danny and Al a happy birthday. It was good to see/hear “The Balloon Buffoon” behind the board again. I asked Richard Edic if he had a piece in the show and he said that he did. We missed that so we shall return. The show will look completely different without the crowds and the ticky tock music.

I lost my Guston book. The one with the big head on the cover. I checked under the bead and even under the covers. bought it over at the MAG’s gift shop and I’ve been reading (looking at it) at night. I know it will turn up but its been two days. I spent some time at the Ornette Coleman site, playing harmolodically on the home page.

1 Comment

Flesh Made Paint

Grafitti Tanks at Cobbs Hill in Fall 2009
Grafitti Tanks at Cobbs Hill in Fall 2009

We stopped back to see “Paint Made Flesh”, the sensational painting show at the Memorial Art Gallery. Last time we were here was for the opening and that is no time to see a show. This one, especially, requires some time with each of the all-star artist’s works. At the opening I was trying to survey the room between conversations and stack one painting against another from my vantage point. A much richer experience unfolds when you move from one to the next ignoring the damn placards on the wall and the audio tour and just letting the paintings talk to you one by one.

There are some absolutely beautiful paintings here like Picasso’s “The Artist and his Model“, Eric Fischl’s “Frailty Is a Moment of Self Reflection”, Richard Diebenkorn’s “Woman by a Window”, and Jenny Saville’s “Hyphen“. And then there are some tough, challenging paintings here like Guston’s “The Web“, Tony Bevan’s “Self Portrait”, Frank Auerbach’s “Head of David Landau”, Susan Rothenberg’s “Crying“, Lucian Freud’s “Standing by the Rags” and Alice Neel’s “Randall in Extremis“. I found these to be the most rewarding.

And hey, Francis Bacon, Francesco Clemente, George Baselitz, A.R. Penck, David Park, John Currin and the film director, Julian Schnabel are all in the house. The show is up until January 3rd. You gotta get over there.

I was just getting ready to pop a picture of Picasso’s painting when the guard said, “No photos.” We left the gallery and headed over to Cobbs Hill where we walked up the hill and around the empty reservoir and then into the woods to the graffiti tanks at Washington Park. From high brow to Low Brow, there are no rules up there.

3 Comments

Playing By The Rules

I admit I waste a lot of time. Last night in painting class I just couldn’t seem to get going. I toyed with walking over to Starry Nites for a cup of coffee but never did. I had this small painting in front of me that I just kept picking at and I knew I wasn’t following Fred Lipp’s rules for procedure. “You always address the worst first.” I know this and here I was over developing one section without bringing another even onto the playing field. Fred checked up on me a number of times and finally couldn’t help himself. He said, “I keep waiting for you to get the the rest of the painting and I don’t see anything happening. You’re wasting your time.” I think I knew that. I was in a funk.

I had a short stack of paintings that did I had worked on at home and I showed them to Fred. I had addressed problems on them that he had called my attention to the week before. And sure enough, Fred now moved past those areas and found more more small problems. And so it goes. If I proceed by the rules things do get better. But it takes an effort.

2 Comments

Artist Statement

We sent our next Margaret Explosion cd off for duplication and I submitted the new tunes to CDDB through iTunes. I had to pick a category for the type of music it is before it would allow me to submit so I chose “Jazz” from the short list. In the iTunes application however you have a much longer list and you can even make up your own categories. I don’t usually think about describing our music until I’m in situations like this. I found a category in there called “Psychedelic Jazz” and pretty much works. I didn’t know there was such a thing.

There is a student show up over at the Creative Workshop and the director asked us to write a short blurb about what it is that inspired us to paint whatever it is we painted. Most art types balk at describing their work because the work is supposed to do the talking. Some people, though, love “Artist’s Statements” and long descriptions or histories of the artists. At many shows these days the placards next to the painting severely detract from the work.

That being said, I did spend some time thinking about why I paint what I do. And I came up with a succinct, two word statement of my inspiration. “Human Nature”. I am interested in exploring why I am drawn to the subject matter of my choice. I am interested in creating a dialog about this subject through the work and then I’m interested in how people around me react to what I put down.

They didn’t use my artist statement and that’s fine.

Here’s Pete LaBonne’s track “Artist Statement” from his Earring Records cd entitled “Glob”.

3 Comments

Existential Circles

Paul laying on the stage at MUCCC
Paul laying on the stage at MUCCC

I wiki’d “existentialism” because I was quite sure I was having an existential crisis. Kierkegaard maintained that the individual solely has the responsibilities of giving one’s own life meaning and living that life passionately and sincerely, in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions including despair, angst, absurdity, alienation, and boredom.

I painted all day yesterday and went around in circles. The world does not need another painting, I don’t need another painting but I want to do a painting that works. I would get a kick out of that.

Today, we stopped in at Deb Jones’ 40th Birthday Mexican Brunch and talked to Steve Grills about a funky little place out on 441 called Cary Lake. 1940’s style, combination party house and bar, f-u-N-k-y. He payed there with his band and loved it. Iggy Pop’s new album was on. It didn’t sound so adventurous. Iggy can do what ever he wants. I thought it was going to be wilder.

Then headed over get to MuCCC to play a set at a memorial event for Steve Letkauskas, a friend of Bob’s. Steve’s brother, Tom, said, “Time showed kindness and grace when it ushered Steve into the the warm embrace of eternity.”I bought my djembe and played that and we did some pretty cool dirges. Peggi took this photo after the event.

6 Comments

It’s Only Paint

Paul Dodd paintings of Homeless Kids on the back porch

I met a group of kids at a Rochester shelter for the homeless and photographed them while we shared pizza. I did a series of paintings of the kids and was asked to display them at a charity auction last night at Monroe Golf Club. The paintings were still wet when I photographed them on our back porch yesterday. They were arranged on easels at the entrance to the party room last night and looked completely out of place in the country club setting.

We sampled wine from a local liquor store, ate olives from the party tray and listened to The Greg Clark Four play a set of original cocktail jazz. Peggi and I were the only ones who clapped at the end of their songs. I had my eye on an autographed Abby Wambach soccer ball that was in the silent auction and was happy to see it go out my range.

We packed up the paintings and headed over to the Memorial Art Gallery for the opening of “Paint Made Flesh“. Ran into Lorraine, Geri, John, Maureen and Susan from my painting class along with our teacher, Fred. The opening is not the time to see the paintings but a perfect time to celebrate them. This was a pretty good turnout for what is apparently a tough show for a lot of people. Who would have guessed that this morning’s paper would use “Disturbing”, “Harrowing” and “Anguish” in lead ins and headlines for their coverage of this show. It’s only paint for crying out loud. I plan to visit this show a few times in the next month.

Leave a comment

Head On

Philip Guston "Web" 1975 on view at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY in "Paint Made Flesh" show.
Philip Guston “Web” 1975 on view at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY in “Paint Made Flesh” show.

Paint Made Flesh” originated at the Frist Center in Nashville and then stopped at the Philips Collection in DC before arriving at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester. It features an all star lineup of top-shelf, painter’s work from 1952 to 2006. I was asked to make some short comments on the painting of my choice. The MAG sent me the tiniest jpegs of the collection and I spotted Philip Guston’s “Web” painting in there so I claimed it. I had seen this painting at the Modern when they had their sensational Guston retrospective a few years back. I was given a brief opportunity to preview this show at the MAG (It opens this Saturday) and it will be an overwhelming treat for painters.

I used my smoothest delivery to record these comments for their audio tour. It can be accessed at the show with your cell phone.

I’m Paul Dodd and I’m happy to say a few words about Philip Guston’s painting entitled “Web”.

After a very successful run as a painter of gorgeous abstracts, Philip Guston decided that he wanted to “tell stories” and he returned to the figure. These late paintings are blunt, humorous and dark. Here he depicts himself face down on the ground, his monstrous, bloodshot eye has looked too much or seen too much yet he is still looking, eye wide open. He poured his entire life into painting and and he confronted it head on. He recognized the absurdity of it all and had the graphic skills to express it, often painting about the act of painting itself.

You have to move back a bit to take in the scope of this landscape, the dramatic advance of the spiders capitalizing on the artist’s inertia and the blood pool that stops abruptly and floats in transparent space while his wife, Musa, his life-affirming source, pops up at his side.

I find Guston’s late work to be heroic in its openness and thrilling in its directness. I hope you enjoy it.

Now if I had a cell phone I could hear it back.

2 Comments

Considering The Space

Considering the space as your first move
Considering the space as your first move

In painting class last week our teacher, Fred Lipp, was discussing his painting that was recently on display in the faculty show. It is a tour de force and it was a pleasure to hear him discuss it. He talked about his approach to creating this work and coincidentally it overlapped with the way he teaches us to think about our work.

Fred guides us by constantly reminding us to address the worst first and the whole trick is to be able to identify the “the worst.”. And if you don’t start a piece by throwing down a whole lot of “worst” you will have a lot less headaches. It is important to consider the space, the white rectangle, the whole, right from the onset.

Fred strives to achieve maximum results from minimal information so that very first mark must work with the space. “Always address the whole”. Fred says he knows what he is after but he doesn’t know how he will do it. That is the adventure. And he has the confidence to know he can pull it off. He thrives on improvisation and each move is a dialog with the whole.

The Little Theater has a promo display of free New Yorker magazines and I grabbed one between sets at last night’s Margaret Explosion gig. Peter Schjeldahl reviewed a retrospective of the Flemish artist, Luc Tuymans, on display in Columbus, Ohio. Although I had never hear of him, Schjeldahl described him as “the most challenging painter in the recent history of the art.” Tuymans was quoted as saying, “untill I get to the middle of the process — its horific. It’s like I don’t know what I’m doing but I know how to do it, and it’s very strange.” Schjeldahl says this, “— uncertain ends, confident means is as good a general definition of creativity as I know.

2 Comments

Out There

Fritz (Fred) Lipp "Out There" Watercolor 2009
Fritz (Fred) Lipp “Out There” Watercolor 2009


Detail of Fred Lipp Watercolor “Out There” 2009

My snapshot does not do this beautiful painting justice. It is a watercolor by Fred Lipp entitled “Out There” and it is on display in the Lucy Byrne Gallery in the Memorial Art Gallery. I suggest you stop by and see it. This painting does so much with space that it almost becomes sculptural. And it shares its name with one of my favorite Eric Dolphy songs.

1 Comment

In Ovo

Illa Loeb In Ovo at Nazareth Art Center in Rochester, NY
Illa Loeb “In Ovo” on display at Nazareth College Art Center

In egg. In embryo. “In Ovo“, a show by local artist, Illa Loeb, may still be up at Nazareth’s Margaret Colacino Gallery. The show officially ended yesterday but the student run space is still accessible. We saw the show with Peggi’s mom and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Peggi wheeled her mom from piece to piece while providing a running, descriptive commentary. The heroic commentary was intended to engage her mom while her defenses are down. Peggi’s mom loves art and we love art but the art that we love hardly ever overlaps. We have seen a lot of art together and difficult, non literal art heightens the experience for both of us.

Illa Loeb, a former student of Fred Lipp, creates luscious, painterly, three dimensional art. Her work has an intensely physical hands on feel. You want to touch her work and she does exactly that. She photographs herself wearing her pieces like clothing or aprons. She created “An Alphabet” of with charcoal and vaseline on her mouth and transferred the look of the letters on her lips to paper. Photos of this process are on view on a monitor but you have to ask the student attendee to turn it on.

1 Comment