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See Something, Say Something

Amtrak 714 with Kodak Headquarters
Amtrak 714 with Kodak Headquarters

Rick Simpson came to the door at 7:45 with our two papers. We had arranged to have him bring us to the train station and you’d think we would have been the ones to be in a hurry but Rick said, “Let’s get cracking’.” Rick dropped us off at the train station before we had a chance to finish our coffee so it was an especially dreamy ride across along the Erie Canal and then down the Hudson into the city where we hooked up with our nephew Andrew who’s going to Columbia Law School.

We met at the Gagosian Gallery uptown on Madison Avenue near 77th where where they were showing five sensational paintings by the Russian Avant-garde Suprematist master, Kazmir Malevich. Andrew said he had done a paper on Malevich during his undergraduate days at Penn and had coincidentally finished the assignment in Rochester while visiting.

How does this business model work for Gagosian? Free admission to their gallery on three floors in a high rent district where none of the work is for sale? I’m guessing he represents some of the other artists in the show, “Malevich and the American Legacy”. Maybe Ellsworth Kelly or Richard Serra? Two beautiful black and white pieces by Kelly paid tribute to the master here as did work by Agnes Martin, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Ed Ruscha reinforcing how powerful the Malevich pieces are still one hundred years after they were created.

We watched a guy pick lint off his black jacket as he stood in front of a Dan Flavin black light piece.

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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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Staggered Entry

Witch-hazel near Durand Eastman Park in Rochester, New York 2011
Witch-hazel near Durand Eastman Park in Rochester, New York 2011

This Witch-hazel, along the road leading into Durand Eastman Park, is in full bloom now. Your nose detects it before your eyes but it but it is not as fragrant as the winter Witch-hazel which bloomed, like a miracle, up in the park in February. Still to come is the Witch-hazel that will blossom to much less fanfare in our back yard in the Fall. They remind me of Geri McCormick’s paintings.

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Just Askin’

Saint Patrick's Day ad at Shamrock Jack's in Rochester, New York
Saint Patrick’s Day ad at Shamrock Jack’s in Rochester, New York

It was perfect day for the boiling of the beef. Or for an intervention but that’s another story. I wish I had my camera. Nikon had me send the camera back at my expense to fix a lens cover that wouldn’t spring fully open and then told me the replacement part is on backorder! Grrr. If I had the camera I could have pryed the lens cover open to make a movie of our walk through the woods and then the funky little neighborhood of Bloomington style houses (one was for sale for $87,000- just askin’), down Culver Road past the bowling alley and Mastrella’s where we saw the short Elvis impersonator, by the New York Store where we saw new bicycles made in Queens in the window, by the barking dog in front a house with a beautiful view of the lake to Shamrock Jack’s for a sandwich and a pint.

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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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I Love My Country

PT Cruiser Messenger
PT Cruiser Messenger

Our car still sports an “Obama” sticker and we parked right next to this guy at the post office today. Politics is a rough business and we don’t have any guns so I guess this guy wins. Our car mechanic listens to Rush and our sticker still gets him all riled up. We had a repairman over here the other day and the first thing he said when we opened the door was, “So how’s Obama working out for you now?” Would it be less controversial if we had a McCain/Palin sticker? I guess most people keep their voting preferences private.

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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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Dig This

Hobblebush near Indian Lake in the Adirondack Mountains
Hobblebush near Indian Lake in the Adirondack Mountains

I was really taken by these demonstrative plants as we skied around them in the Adirondack Mountains. I kept stopping in the fridig weather to pull my camera out of my pocket and photograph different clusters. They were all expressive, like they were singing opera or something. We had seen them earlier in the winter at Pete and Shelley’s and Shelley told us what they were but we couldn’t remember. We tried looking it up in Shelley’s book but we couldn’t find it because Shelley had drawn it in bloom not in it’s naked winter state. I sent this photo to Shelley and she identified the plant as Hobblebush. Hail the Hobblebush!

I ordered an expresso at the Little last night but Bill told me their machine was still out for repair. In fact, he said the machine was unrepairable and they had a new one on order. He was hoping to have it in by next Wednesday when Margaret Explosion returns. The first set last night felt unfocused but things gelled in the second and the songs swirled around their target. Maybe it was the Sirius “Chill” channel they were playing in the Café during the break.

I was in charge of the car radio on the way home and we stumbled on to “Dig This” (perfect name) on WITR. I wish they wouldn’t call it “witter. The Maestro mixes jazz, funk & hip-hop) on Wednesday nights from 9-11 and he posts his set lists and shows as mp3s on DigThisRadio. Last night’s show was “Extra Jazzy” and featured Ahmad Jamal, Miles, Digable Planets and The Roots.

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As California Goes

Freeway Ends Sign on Route 590 North in Rochester, New Yo
Freeway Ends Sign on Route 590 North in Rochester, New Yo

In painting class tonight our teacher, Fred, was talking about how expensive oil paints are now. He was speculating that turpentine is now a “hazardous material” and it costs extra to transport things like that. He was saying you can’t even buy commercial oil paint anymore. It’s illegal in California and “as California goes, so goes the nation.” It’s all acrylic or water based enamel now. A tube of paint is thirty bucks or so.

I got the conversation going because I said I was going back to oils after this batch of paintings. I’ve been using kids’ tempera paint and I’m getting tired of how it acts when I try to rework an area. You kind of reactivate what’s below and it gets messy.

Whenever Peggi’s sister was in town visiting her mom she would ask us what freeway she takes to get from wherever to wherever. I’m the wrong one to ask because I’ve lived here so long I just follow my nose and I can’t keep the 490, 390, 590 thing straight. I remember Route 47 doing pretty much the same thing. Anyway, the point is there are no “freeways” in New York. California has freeways. We have expressways and a thruway. So what were they thinking when when they put up this new sign on 590 North where that highway peters out and leads into the four traffic circles?

I don’t really think of MX-80 Sound as a California band but they’ve been there for about thirty years, long enough for vocalist, Rich Stim, to reinvent himself as video king, “MXRICH”. I love his his newest, done for an Angel Corpus Christi instrumental track.

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Painting For Sale

Enrique Mora Painting at the Hungerford Building in Rochester New York
Enrique Mora Painting at the Hungerford Building in Rochester New York

The photo above is detail from a painting by Enrique Mora. You’ll have to click on the photo to see the whole painting. It was featured on the First Friday site about a year ago when it was for sale at the Philips Gallery on East Avenue. I tried to see it back then but the gallery had already closed for the evening by the time we got there. I caught a glimpse of it through the window and never thought I would see it again but I guess it didn’t sell because it was hanging in one of the many art spaces in the Hungerford Building on Friday night. I really like it.

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Collaboration Collision

Image from Heather Erwin and Duane Sherwood "Collaboration Collisions"
Image from Heather Erwin and Duane Sherwood “Collaboration Collisions”

First Friday in Rochester is happening. It’s so much fun to wander Chelsea style, from gallery to alternative space to open studio running into old friends while taking in art that can as Roberta Smith says “humble, broaden and energize you in significant ways.” Our favorite stop last night was Studio 215 on North Goodman. Duane Sherwood was up from NYC to hold court at the opening of “Collaboration Collisions”, photographic montages of photos he and Heather Erwin took around Rochester, new modern, Cubist montages that open in a psychedelic, Rorschach manner on a wide screen monitor.

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Lent Specials

Osteria Restaurant in Sea Breeze, New York
Osteria Restaurant in Sea Breeze, New York

“An Osteria is an Italian-style eating establishment, similar to a tavern, usually in the country, less formal than a ristorante or trattoria, where wine is served as the main attraction and tasty food is prepared to come along with it. The service is casual, wine is sold by the decanter rather than the bottle, prices are low, and the emphasis is on a steady clientele rather than on haute cuisine.

Clients become regulars at Osteria because their tastes and preferences become known, and they become part of the family. The food is modest but plentiful, mostly following regional and local recipes, often served by the owner or his family members on common tables, warm and personal.”

I copied all that from Wikipedia and pasted it here because it perfectly describes “Osteria Restaurant overlooking Lake Ontario on Culver Road in Rochester. We had the homemade Ricotta Raviolis last with a spicy calamari appetizer (two kinds of peppers and green and Calamata olives). Now that Peggi is on the cholesterol meds we plan to continue with our ongoing Italian Restaurant exploration.

The photo above (gotta click the photo above to see the full shot) is the last one I took with my brand new Nikon P7000. I packaged it up today and sent it back to Nikon. It’s two months old and I’ve had this intermittent problem since I got it. The lens covers doesn’t fully open when I turn it on so my photos look like they were taken with a Lomo. Not entirely bad but a Lomo would have been a lot cheaper. Turns out this is a pretty common problem. I contacted Nikon and they told me to send it in on my dime. I paid sixteen bucks to send a brand new camera back. Grrrr.

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Finding The IPod

Round Pond near Indian Lake in the Adirondacks
Round Pond near Indian Lake in the Adirondacks

I lost my iPod for about a week. I asked at Wegmans if they had found one and then last night I asked at the Little but no luck. It’s funny trying to retrace your steps from a few days back and when I had covered that ground I pushed back further and then it gets really spaced out. I checked all my clothes pockets. I was pretty sure I was playing music on it while painting on Thursday night but sometimes I just start painting and loose track of time and everything else. I remembered deciding not to bring it to the mountains but where was the iPod when I made that decision? I pictured myself walking around with it and a few other items and then setting it down while I something else.

Sure enough as soon as I stopped looking for it I found it. I knew that would happen. I set it down while filing away the “Burnt Weeny Sandwich” album.

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Squirrel Watch

Margaret Explosion poster, March, April and May 2011
Margaret Explosion poster, March, April and May 2011

Margaret Explosion makes a humble, triumphant return to the Little Theater Café tonight, the beginning of a three month, Wednesday night romp.

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Obsession

Hi-Way Haircuts sign in the North Country, New York
Hi-Way Haircuts sign in the North Country, New York

The second best thing about heading back up to the mountains for the weekend was knowing I would get another chance to photograph this sign. We kind of whizzed past it the first time and it’s beauty didn’t fully register until I was too far down the road to suggest turning around and driving back to photograph it. It haunted me for the last few weeks and I’m so happy that I had another shot at it. See more funky signs.

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Outdoor Church

Round Pond in Adirondack State Park
Round Pond in Adirondack State Park

We have enjoyed the best cross country skiing conditions of any year that I can remember and this weekend would been a good one if we had stuck around. We had talked with Jeff Munson about going somewhere out of town to ski this winter and time was running out. We considered Ottawa and Stillwater or Tug HIll and then Peggi found a place online that looked promising. She emailed the address and a women called us back on Thursday afternoon. She was calling from New Jersey but she said a caretaker would open up the cabin up near Indian Lake in the Adirondacks and she asked us to mail her a check, a check that she would not receive until we were back in Rochester. It was all knotty pine and perfect with a big fireplace. No cutesy stuff on wall just a sign that said “No Splitting Wood On The Hearth”. We brought enough food to feed an army. The firewood was plentiful. The rent was cheap. The cell phones wouldn’t work. The woods was sensational.

They had the same snowstorm as we did on Friday but the roads were pretty clear by the time we got going. We skied around a flow on Saturday and ate oranges deep in the woods. More snow on Saturday night freshened up the trails for Sunday and we headed out in the opposite direction.

On the way back we stopped for fuel and I gave Jeff a crisp hundred dollar bill to give to the cashier while I pumped the gas. I pumped twenty nine dollars worth of gas and went in to go to the bathroom. Jeff naturally assumed I was going for my change bit I had one thing on my mind. I found the gas station on a Google map and called the place. The drawer was over seventy dollars but Cassandra told me they couldn’t mail it it. They will hold it for me and I will have drive back to pick it. I asked to speak to her manager and she said Leslie will call me in the morning.

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Green Death Knell

Downtown Rochester snow storm
Downtown Rochester snow storm

Winter is getting away from us. The death knell is the Saint Patrick Day decorations that are going up all over. I took this photo while driving through downtown Rochester in Friday morning’s snowstorm. Most of that snow has already melted.

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