Gareth Fitzgerald Barry at Axom Gallery in Rochester, New York
Marion Winik described our friends, Pete and Shelley, as the perfect house guests. Amazing company and an exceptionally light footprint. Over coffee this morning Steve Black outdid Pete and Shelley by suggesting that we do a project. We picked one from our ever shrinking summer job list and spent the afternoon between showers setting patio stones in concrete. Our favorite First Friday stop was Axom Gallery’s show of Gareth Fitzgerald Barry’s sculpture. We finished the night with a small screen showing of “The Source Family.” Everything you imagined a commune to be, sort of interesting but not worth linking to.
I’ve got to thank Rick Simpson for dislodging you know what from my brain ears when he played Lee Michaels’ “You Know What I Mean” on his Gumbo Variations radio show.
I know wedding photographers don’t like it when they set up a shot and you glom on but if you’re gonna get married in Central Park on a Saturday afternoon there really are no rules.
We met Steve Black at the bus station this morning at 7AM. His bus got in at 4:30 or so but he insisted we let him roam around downtown Rochester for a few hours before picking him up. Still felt like we were getting up in the middle of the night. Steve splits his time between Bali and Singapore and hadn’t been in Rochester since he shot the video for “Trophy Bowler.” Back at the house we ate a lumberjack’s breakfast and hopped in the back of Jared’s pickup to finish picking up the locust tree that fell in our neighbor’s yard. That has to be the heaviest wood we have ever come across. I don’t think it would even float.
Cross as seen through construction peep hole in Chelsea, New York
It never fails to happen. We’ll dart in and out of galleries in Chelsea just as most folks do, carrying on conversations while taking the art in, and the lines between the art, the people and the gallery setting all get blurred. Maybe it’s just the act of discerning the good from the bad that alters your perception skills but I always come back home with some pretty cool photos that I shot between galleries.
Back at Duane‘s in Brooklyn I insisted on listening to the entire “On The Beach.” Phrases connected to insidious melodies were lodged in my head and I thought I might be able to shake them by feeding my fix. The title song is killer but “Ambulance Blues” had its hooks in me big time. At first it was “Walk On” and then “Motion Pictures.” Back home it’s been the line, “It doesn’t matter,” from “For The Turnstiles” so I decided to fight fire with fire and buy a remastered digital copy from iTunes. I’ll report back.
Bill Traylor was a master of placement of object on ground or substrate or laundry shirt cardboard or whatever he found to paint on. Perfectly placed to articulate and accentuate the gesture.
“Bill Traylor: Drawings from the Collections of the High Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts” at the American Folk Art Museum was the pinnacle of our New York jaunt. Apologies to Robert Irwin’s minimal effort at the Whitney and James Turrel’s maximal effort at the Guggenheim. Bill Traylor can knock you out with a drawing of a bird. Direct like punk rock but right on like a master, the 63 drawings and paintings in this show were all sensational. He does not miss a beat.
Painted from memories of his slave days or from observations of his free retirement years they are mostly “Untitled” but have been assigned names like “Man with Hatchet Chasing Pointing Man” or “Couple Arguing” or “Truncated Blue Man with Pipe.” They are all essentially flat but animated to leap off the page. I didn’t want to leave the show so I studied the books in the gift shop and then ordered one from Amazon.
The title, “Scrim veil—Black rectangle—Natural light (1977)” pretty much sums up the parts of Robert Irwin’s masterpiece which has been reinstalled at the Whitney Museum of Modern Art for their last go around before their facilities are swallowed up by the Metropolitan. Roberta Smith put all the parts together in her review of the show in Friday’s paper.
I’m thinking Robert Irwin must be about my height because the black line that forms the rectangle, which surrounds the room, lines up with the bottom, black border of the giant scrim so that you really don’t see it on the far wall. This served to disorient you with the simplest of means. Irwin maximizes the drama of the essentially empty room by animating the window from which the scrim departs.
James Turrell installation at the New York Guggenheim 2013
The line in front of the Guggenheim was not moving and the sun was beating down but as soon as we adjusted to the scene on the sidewalk they let us all in. James Turrell has taken over the entire atrium and reworked the spiral center as undulating lopsided concentric circles of LED light. Bo Poulin told us we “must lie down” so of course we did and it was a better perspective. Your perception of depth gets lost and you are not sure what you looking at. A virtual drug experience for a clean and sober generation.
Turrel had work throughout the museum but what exactly was the work? In many cases there was only intense light, carefully projected onto walls or into corners so you felt as though you were seeing three dimensional forms or the reverse, portals to another world. I was blown away with a series of aquatint prints that Turrell had in one of the side galleries on the second floor. The white shapes in the drawings appeared to be backlit and three dimensional.
We rode down to Naples with with my parents and stopped in to see my brother, hard at work on some furniture for a church in Fairport. He showed us this maquette that he proposed for the church’s tabernacle. That’s the little house where they keep the consecrated hosts and the blessed wine in the gold chalice. It is one of the high points of mass when the priest reaches in there but our group of lapsed catholics couldn’t remember if they keep things in there over night or just during the service. We speculated that the priest blesses a certain number of hosts and they pass out so many at communion and then he might store the leftover consecrated hosts in there. I’m pretty sure the priest finishes the wine at the service.
I’m making a distinction between the consecrated (“body of Christ”) hosts and the unblessed ones. We used to eat the unblessed ones out of the bag before serving mass in the priest’s dressing room. I know they have another name for that room and I don’t think it’s the sacristy but all those details are fuzzy now. Back in the day the nuns made the hosts and packaged them in clear plastic bags. One at a time they were incredibly dry. They had the ability to suck every bit of moisture from your mouth making it difficult to even swallow but in a handful they were sort of tasty. The “consecrated” hosts were something only the priest could touch and even he could only touch them with certain fingers.
We used to make our own hosts at home when we played mass. We rolled white bread with a glass until it was flat as can be and then we’d stamp out the hosts with the rim of the glass. Our family ate Bond bread, not Wonder, and that made a good host.
My favorite part of a baseball game is when they play a refrain from the Ramones or the White Stripes. And my favorite part of a bullfight is the ragtag band that sits in the stands near where they let the bulls out. These two guys, a father and son team sitting in the top row of Sahlen Stadium, are giving Abby Wambach and the Flash and a run for their money.
We had our first tomato sandwiches today. First with tomatoes from the garden that is. Jalepenos are coming in at a nice pace, the spinach and cilantro are done. Eggplant a ways off. And we have given up trying to keep up with the zucchini. It got the best of us.
We were meeting in the Refrigerator’s attic studio near East High to start work on a new print edition when Chuck Cuminale brought up a stack of Duplex Planet magazines, a model of sub culture fanzines if ever there was one. That was our introduction to David Greenberger’s world but our paths were destined to cross.
When Pete LaBonne sent us a copy of the compilation cd, “Meditation Garden“, that Sonic Trout released of his music we spotted David Greenberger’s name attached to the art credits. The font Margaret Explosion chose for our cd “Live Dive” came from the Buffalo type foundry, P 22, and turned out to be a font based on the handwriting of Ed Rogers, a self taught artist Greenberger discovered in the Duplex Nursing home. David was on a return trip from one of his projects in Wisconsin when his car broke down on the NYS Thruway and was towed to the repair shop next door to the Little Theater Cafe on a Wednesday night where Margaret Explosion were playing. He and his wife saw both sets and when David returned to pick up the car he stayed at our house. Plans were hatched to collaborate somehow.
Our friend’s and neighbor’s, Rick and Monica, hosted Amy Rigby and Wreckless Eric at a house concert and then attended a house concert at Eric and Amy’s where they met David. Monica facilitated the collaboration by suggesting the combo to her employers at the MAG. A photo of David standing in our kitchen came up on our screensavor slideshow this weekend and a moment later David Greenberger called to hatch plans for a Fall performance.
“I feel strangely on.” That would be my favorite line from Noah Baumbach’s brilliant “Greenberg.” The guy lew it with Frances Ha but this one is right on in my little book. Ben Stiller, a New Yorker fresh from a stint in a mental institution, housesits at his brother’s place in Los Angeles, the perfect setting for this darkly funny love story. Here’s Roger Ebert’s take.
I’m pretty familiar with brush cuts. My father used to line the five boys in our family up and buzz the lot of us in one session when we were growing up. My father had a brush cut too but I think he went to a barber. I have an electric clipper from Sears and I do my own buzz cut today.
So I was taken by this sign on Culver Road and stopped to take a photo of it. The homemade sandwich sign was on the City owned sidewalk in front of the shop and I was standing on the same sidewalk. (I’m trying to be clear on the details because I know my legal counsel will ask.) Well, the owner happened to be outside and he told me I couldn’t take a photo of his sign. He came right up to me like a bouncer in night club and he took my camera before I knew what happened. He asked me how you delete photos and I told him he couldn’t do that. But he found the function and deleted my carefully composed shot. I took the camera back and turned quickly to take this shot before jumping in the car and taking off. The guy threw something at our car as we drove off. You thought my Funky Signs site was all fun and games!
Our cat has taken to sprawling out on the linoleum tile. Ninety degrees are too many for furry little things. But man does Neil Young’s “On THe Beach” sound good in this weather. I never had this lp but Neil called it one of his favorite in his autobiography so I picked up a used copy at the Bop Shop. It has John Lundquist’s name on it so I have to thank him for trading it in.
On The Beach has knockout cover art, (the inside of the lp jacket is printed to match the upholstery on the front cover) and the sound is so languid it completely swept me away, that is until I had to get up, blow the dust ball off the needle and flip the record over. To the beach.
Terry Adams of NRBQ performing at the Geaorge Eastman House in Rochester, New York
Terry Adams, with his new band, sounded better than ever last night at the George Eastman House garden. He is the Thelonious Monk of rock n’ roll. If fact he puts more roll in rock than anyone out there. Bernie Hirsch turned me on to them in his dorm room in 1969 and we’ve seen them a dozen times since and we always get as close to the band as possible, behind the PA, and always on Terry’s side.
NRBQ plays without a set list and covers ground from a Tijuana Brass song they had heard on the radio on the way to the gig to George Jones’ White Lightning and Tonight You Belong to Me. Last night they did a Chuck Berry meets Herman’s Hermits version of Something Tells Me I’m In To Something Good and a rousing Cielito Lindo. They’re own material is just as rich, Flat Foot Floozie and Howard Johnson from their second lp and Drivin’ In My Car.
Terry cannot sit still. He darts from one keyboard to the next even reaching over one from behind to play it upside down but he would prefer his antics not be documented. He told me to “document it in my mind” when I took this shot. Great advice. Long live Terry Adams!
Deja Vu Party House on Ridge Road East in Rochester, New York
We drove out El Rincon in Sodus but they were closed. The website said they were open on Tuesdays but the place was dark and we were starved by the time we got there. Opened by the wife of what they used to call a migrant worker this place in the middle of miles of fruit orchards on the southern shore of Lake Ontario still has the best Mexican food around. Muy Tipico! The ride back did give me the opportunity to photograph this dreamy sign.
Speaking of dreams I awoke from one last night and scratched my head. I thought I felt what I imagined to be a deer tick, all bloated and engorged in my scalp. I didn’t want to wake Peggi so I put a piece of masking tape on the spot so that I would remember to have her take a look at it in the morning. Turned out to be just another mosquito bite but I couldn’t get the masking tape out of my hair so I left it in there. I had to take the car into Jeromes for new brakes and Mike, the mechanic, was showing me the corrosion on the parts he was going to have to remove when he interrupted his presentation to tell me I had a piece of tape in my hair. I told him I knew that but I was having a hard time getting it out. I tried swimming but that didn’t seem to loosen it so I just took a pair of scissors to it.
I’ve kind of gone off the deep end with August Sander’s portraits. I’d like to buy every book available of his photos or maybe just download every photo I find by him from Google image searches. The Nazis put the kabash on his social commentary tainted portraits so he switched to landscapes under their noses. I love the portraits, the brick laborer, the piano teacher, the dwarfs, the couple, another couple, the chef, the artist and the man women.
Couldn’t decide which picture from the Public Market to put up here – the live chickens or the conga players. We missed the Smokin’ Dopes somehow. I would have bought some of their cajun smoked salmon.
We were on pothole duty this morning. Most of the people on the street met at the corner at ten AM and we swept out 53 potholes that one of our neighbors (let’s call him the foreman) had identified. Then we dumped twelve bags of asphalt in the holes, tamped it down and sprinkled some stone grit on the spots so it wouldn’t stick to the bottom of car tires. We were done by eleven and it actually kind of fun. Nobody told us that we owned the road when we bought this place. It was only after we were moved in that someone someone told us it was a private road. Sounds kinda swanky but I have tar on my arms.
People often comment on my bike saying things like, “Wow, that’s an old one.” Actually it’s not all that old and all sorts of retro bikes are back on the street. What these people might mean is that this thing has been through the ringer. It’s a fat tire, one speed, back pedal brake, city cruiser but I put a sprocket with less teeth than the standard issue on the back wheel so the bike is in like sixth or seventh gear on a ten speed.
I used to ride to work downtown in rain, snow or shine to work. Use to pass Arthur Shawcross on his bike as he was headed to work at G&G Foods on East Main. The bike had a fair amount of rust on it and it was hard to tell what color it was. So I took a wire brush to it and Peggi buffed the rims with some steel wool. Today I painted the frame Rust-oleum Sunburst Yellow. I’m thinking safety after what happened to our friend.
Last time I painted a bike was back in Bloomington where I went to school for a few semesters. I used some brown, lead-based paint that we bought at the dollar store on Kirkwood. I was living in a trailer and mowing lawns for the University. My boss smoked Lucky Strikes and had mouth cancer. His jaw was deformed and he had open sores on his lips. First time I ever saw what cancer looks like.
Bucking the trend as the Stone Age entered the Bronze Age during the third millennium BC the advanced civilization in Cypress, Greece was producing these masterpiece sculptures of idols. This one is in the Louvre in Paris and you can take a tour around the female head at this link on their site.
I was not familiar with Cycladic Art until the Times” Roberta Smith referenced it in a review of the Bill Traylor show at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. Now I just type “Cycladic Art” in a google search and while away hours looking at the forms, every bit as exciting as modern contemporary art. I am a bit of a Roberta Smith groupie and would follow her anywhere.
My father maintains his website with iWeb. Apple stopped supporting the program years ago but it still does a great job with drag and drop html page construction. I help him with some sections and I just put a new batch of his paintings up. I was with him while he worked on quite a few of these but I never get tired of looking at them. They are so much fun. My current favorite is the one up top. I just love how dynamic the white is.
A thunderstorm passed while we were eating dinner on the porch. It never rained here but it couldn’t have been more than a mile a way. That makes it one of the few days this summer that it hash’t rained. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying it’s green around here. Our tomato plants need more that one stake to keep them out of the mud.
We stopped in to Abilene over the weekend to hear JD McPherson. The Goner’s bass player, Brian Williams, recommended them saying “they are really well thought out,” the exact opposite of Margaret Explosion. They did sound good but the place was too crowded to get a glimpse. It was great to hear sax and piano featured in a timeless R&R setting.
