Warhol Mug Shots at the Johnson Museum, Cornell University
“Nowadays if you’re a crook you can write books, go on TV, give interviews—you’re a big celebrity and nobody even looks down on you.”
from the The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
I have sort of a false memory of seeing Andy Warhol’s “Thirteen Most Wanted” at the New York State of the 1964 World’s Fair. I was there with my father and brother. We drove down and slept in the car in a parking lot in Queens. My father is big on architecture and I know we went in the Philip Johnson designed New York State Pavilion but Warhol had probably already painted over the mug shots.
I have my own mug shot piece, a watercolor, in the new show at the Lucy Burne Gallery at the Creative Workshop.
Matthew Delegat “War Monochromes” detail at the Johnson Museum at Cornell, Ithaca NY
At some point in every visit to Ithaca I think back to the time we drove home in a snowstorm that was so bad I had to open the car door to look down and make sure we were still on the road. And the time Personal Effects opened for Grandmaster Flash at the Haunt. Grandmaster performed their hit, “White Lines” (Don’t Do It), after doing it in the dressing room. And the first time we played there, outdoors in a meadow on Cornell’s campus, we walked down the huge hill into town and ate at the Moosewood Café.
This time we parked in town near the Commons and we walked up the huge hill to the Johnson Museum on Cornell’s campus where the “75 Years of the American Abstract Artists” show had just opened. Mondrian, Ad Reinhardt, Fernand Leger and contemporary artists like Matthew Delegat (photo above). I’m guessing his “War Monochromes” was painted right on the wall for this show as the date for the piece reads 2007-2011. Abstract paintings look so modern still yet seventy five years is a good chunk of time.
We watched “The Art of the Steal” last night, a documentary on the Barnes Foundation’s struggle to keep it’s art from the clutches of the greedy art forces. We were there a few years ago and the place was like heaven for an art lover. I expected the movie to present a better argument for moving these jewels to a more accessible location but the title pretty much says it all. A more sensational movie would examine how it is that one guy, Mr. Barnes, could have such incredible taste to go out there and buy work directly from artists like Modigliani and Matisse in “real time” as they say.
Yellow paint on trees near ponds in Durand Eastman Park.
I like graffiti but it certainly has it limits and that’s why they call it graffiti. Some idiot has marked a well traveled path around the ponds and through the park with these yellow markings. The yellow looks like Rust-oleum’s “Sunburst Yellow” and the little rectangles are sort of intriguing. Small touches of color take on monumental proportions in the grey/brown landscape. But this group marked the trail over and over again on straight-aways where there could be no confusion as to which way to go. All this so a bunch of idiots can follow each other through the park in some sort of race on paths that others take every day? Grrrr.
I know County Executive Maggie Brooks has her hands full reigning in the free spending, cigar smoking, strip club going public works employees but I bet somebody knows who did this. We could make a citizen’s arrest.
Chief Projectionist at the Dryden Theater of the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York
Jim Heally is a fountain of film knowledge and a great interviewer. He held his own with some of Hollywood’s biggest stars and I’m sorry he left the Eastman House. I trust he is on to greener pastures. Last night was Members Night (free admission) and the last night of the Dydren’s Rock ‘n Roll series. They showed a beautiful print with a newly re-mastered soundtrack of “The Last Waltz” and Kyle Westphal, Chief Projectionist, did a great job of introducing the movie. I think they have found a worthy replacement over there as Kyle delivered the goods without notes, sometimes with his eyes closed like a improvising musician.
The Last Waltz has aged well. In fact the further down the road we get from it’s making the better this thing looks but then The Band always seemed a band out of time. That Big Pink album knocked me out when it came out. Garth Hudson’s organ on “Chest Fever”, Richard Manual’s take on “Long Black Veil”, Levon Helm’s sensational drumming and singing on “The Weight”. It was impossible to pick a favorite song (or a favorite vocalist) on that lp just like it is in the movie.
Dylan pulls the plug on “Forever Young”, just to show his old back up band who the boss is. Joni Mitchell sings otherworldly back up to Neil Young on the Band’s version of “Helpless”. And then Joni with her beautiful buck teeth belting out “Coyote.” Van Morrison kicking out the jams, a sincere, often funny performance. Dr. John gets down in a hurry with wicked version of “Such a Night.” Muddy Waters does a killer performance of “I’m A Man.” Like Buddy Guy in Scorcese’s “Shine A Light”, Muddy Waters made The Band look like toy musicians. These performances are so good you want to holler and clap at the end like you would at a concert. My favorite song in the movie was “The Weight” with the Staple Singers but I could easily be swayed.
Birch trees on the ridge over looking Lake Ontario
On skis you can cover a lot more ground with the same amount of effort on foot. We wind up at the lake on most days. Sometimes you can’t find the horizon in the beautiful grey mist. Lately we stop and study the icebergs that form on the sand bars and eventually float free. This view, like the pages on the daily dog calendar that our neighbors have, is completely different every day.
Luka Romel commented on the tree shirt I talked about here. She designed the shirt for Matt & Kim and she ordered me to buy it. All she had to do was ask. I went to M&Ks merch store but that T was sold out. Speaking of fulfillment, we’re handling that department for PeteLaBonne.com and today we shipped our first $100 order for the complete “Gigunda” collection!
Lew Allen photo of Buddy Holly in Rochester, New York, January 1958
We were in the last row of the Dryden Theater to hear Graham Nash talk about the Rock ‘n Roll photo show that he curated at the Eastman House so we were the first ones out of the theater. We had planned on seeing the show again so headed over to the gallery where we were the first ones in the door. Peggi had to visit the ladies room so I was standing at the entrance when Mr. Nash walked in. He stopped to look at the photo above and I thought wow, what can I ask Graham Nash. Then that moment was gone as someone came up to say “I really enjoyed your talk.” He pointed to this photo and said, “I really like this photo.” It was taken by Lew Allen when Buddy Holly performed in Rochester in January of 1958.
I never put it together that the Hollies were named after Buddy Holly and I learned that Carrie Ann was written about Marianne Faithful. One of the audience members asked Graham who he would most like to play music with and he answered Dylan. He called Dylan the best poet, singer and musician of our lifetime. It was interesting to hear the sweet voiced Graham put the word “singer” in that short list. He told a story about David Crosby singing on a Dylan track and how Dylan wouldn’t tell Crosby what the song was until the tape was rolling.
‘We Live Like Kings,” “Somebody Must Praying For Me,” “Pajama Pants” (Baby, you know what I mean), “Let The Weeds Take Over,” “High Time” and “Supermarket Employee.” There so many Pete LaBonne songs stuck in my head. The songs are stored in a place where they are easily accessible and it doesn’t take much to trigger them. Pete has digitized twenty two cds worth and he’s giving away a track from each on his website.
I heard Rick Simpson tell a listener he’d play a Pete LaBonne tune next week on his Thursday afternoon radio WRUR show. Pretty soon you’ll be walking around with lines like “You’re the 5th line on the eye chart,” “What am I gonna do when they turn me into a verb?” and “You gotta treat your woman like a sack of potatoes” floating around your head. Lucky you!
Pete LaBonne “We Live Like Kings” cover
Arouse The Thunder
C
They call her Miss Divisive on the street.
She put the spit in hospitality
Strandy hair parted around the ears
under her sweater’s a purple chiffon brassiere
F G
She turns me on flips me off
E Am
she’s not a hag puts me in a vacuum cleaner bag
F E
whips it out plugs it in
F G G
hits the switch and I hear the roar
C G G7
she could surely arouse the thunder
C
of the mighty Thor.
The George Eastman House has a world famous collection of films in their vaults and they screened a rare print of Joe Boyd’s 1973 film “Jimi Hendrix” last night. Made just three years after Hendrix’s death there wasn’t time for revisionist history and the interviews with Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton still show signs of jealousy. Lou Reed pretty much gives it up for Jimi, about as much as he can. And in the film Jimi gives it up for Bob Dylan with an incredible performance of of “Like A Rollin Stone.”
I left Woodstock before Hendrix performed because Dave thought we were going to starve and I’ll never let him forget that decision even though he is dead. I did get to see Hendrix in Indianapolis in 1969 with Dave’s ex, Kim. I sort of remember losing my brown shoes in a cemetery before the show. And what I mostly remember from the show is Hendrix flipping the bird to the fat cops that stood with their arms crossed in front of the stage.
There is some jaw dropping performances in the film like 1967’s black and white performance of “Purple Haze” at London’s Marque Club and Jimi in a TV studio playing 12 string against a white seamless backdrop. You can see why there hasn’t been another Hendrix movie since. They could never outdo the real thing and this is as close as it gets. I was transfixed by Jimi’s longtime girlfriend, Fayne Pridgon. She has a major role in this film and she was so engaging I came home and googled her but didn’t come up with much. Guess I’ll have to rent the dvd for more.
Peggi’s almost done with Keith Richards’ book and then I’ll set down my Guston book to dive in. There is only one more film left in the Eastman’s “Rock n’ Roll” series, next Wednesday’s showing of the “The Last Waltz.”
Can’t remember how I first came across Milton Rogovin’s Buffalo photos. They really hit home with me and I painted a picture of Rogovin and his wife, Anne, in 2003. The Pyramid Art Gallery hosted a traveling show of his work around that time and I met him there and gave him a print of my painting. His wife had just died at that point and now Milton is dead at 101. There’s a nice slideshow of his photos on the Times’ site.
We took Sam Jones out to the Apple Store on Saturday before Steve Jobs announced his decision to step down for a bit. Sam was wearing his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt and his Buffalo Bills jacket. His iPad kept trying to restart while he was using it. The store was mobbed and we waited in line to make an appointment with a genius. Sam gave the woman in a blue shirt his email address and about five minutes later a friendly guy in a blue shirt came over to help us. He scrolled through Sam’s ten pages of game app icons and said, “This looks like it’s been dropped.” Sam said, “Oh yeah. I’ve dropped it a bunch of times.” I cringed but the Apple guy smiled and said. “Breakage isn’t covered in your warranty but I’ll see what I can do.” Sam walked out with a new iPad.
I’m definitely a long time Apple fanboy. When my father bought his Mac II in the late eighties we used to go over there to set type and we eventually bought our own Mac II. We’ve probably had one of almost every model they’ve made since. Well I guess we never had a “toilet seat” and we don’t have an Airbook and we don’t have an iPhone but I wouldn’t leave home without my iTouch. Just by looking at Steve Jobs I would say he has a lot to do with their elegantly designed products. I don’t get that confident feeling by looking at the other execs. I hope he gets well soon.
Nod doesn’t play out that often and I was bummed that we missed them on Saturday at Abilene.
Lake Ontario and Lakeshore Boulevard in Winter 2011
One of our neighbors down the street emailed us about some community pool business and she refered to “this awful cold weather” we’ve been having. We had just returned from a ski through the woods and down to the lake and we thought the weather was perfect. But then Mike Deming used to chide me that I’m a “Glass half full kind of guy” so I would see it that way. OK, it was fifteen degrees but the sun was out (click photo for full shot) and the snow was fresh and crisp. In fact it glistened.
There was an article in National Geographic about wolves mating with dogs and coyotes but it didn’t mention foxes. One of our neighbors took these shots with a surveillance camera he set up in the woods behind his house. I guess the camera takes a shot even in low light when it senses movement. There has been some debate as to whether this is a fox or a coyote. I did an Google image search for “fox” and this guy doesn’t look as good as any of them. Try it for yourself – “fox”. I’m going with coyote.
I’ve continued to adjust the sound of my tubs while they’re home for a few weeks. Tuning and dampening and listening. After all these years I’ve discovered that drums sound best at their lowest (loosest drum skin tension) position just before pitch falls apart. That is as low as you can go without the heads flopping about or having rattling unpleasantries attach themselves to the the way the drum rings when you strike it. There is a sweet spot right there and the drum rings with its fullest potential. You can imagine how big the drum is by the sound of it. You can just picture it. If you find that position on all the drums in your set they will undoubtedly be in tune with each other.
I play a Chinese kit made by Mapex with a snare, a 14 inch floor tom and a twenty inch kick. I hate their logo. Wrong font for the awkward space between the “A” and the “P.” When I bought the set I said I’ll take that maple set over their but put a different head on the front of the bass drum, one without that logo.”
I love the work of Robert Smithson. And he has so much beyond Spiral Jetty. I’m always on the lookout for earth art and I think I have come across a fair amount in the woods. I was marveling at this dead tree today while Peggi was taking a pee. It seemed to have grown in a spiral pattern and then shed all it’s bark.
We ski for about a mile before breaking out of the woods and onto the golf course. It is often a surreal experience but today we were in earth art territory. We watched this guy, undoubtably the same guy who taped the small flag to the tree that I talked about yesterday, walking in right angles to spell “USA” in the snow in giant letters. You get a good view of his work when you’re on top of the hill to the right so we skied up there.
Graffiti on construction site in downtown Rochester, NY
With about ten inches of fresh snow we followed a snowshoe trail through the woods and out to the park where we expected to find the Mayor and his buddies drinking beer at the top of the bobsled run. But it seemed we were the only ones in the park. There were no tracks from other skiers. Were we the only ones waiting for more snow?
We took a break at the top of the big hill and spotted a small American flag taped to a tree branch with the words “One World Under God” written in magic marker over the stripes. When we got back to the house there was a message from Rochester Contemporary reminding me to pick up the painting I had in the Members Show so I headed downtown and found this graffiti on the building next door to RoCo.
My newest camera weighs a ton. David Pogue described this model as feeling like “a brick in your pocket.” I carry at least three pens, a Swiss Army knife, a small flashlight and a drum key attached on my key chain and a pocket full of change on the other side so I’m sort of balanced. In the rear my wallet is bloated with notes and membership and credit cards and an iPod on the other side. I don’t have room for a phone if I had one.
I did lighten my load a bit by weeding out my keys. I couldn’t find any match for half of them. I had keys to Sparky’s shed and I gave them back to him. I’m quite sure one of these keys goes to our old house. I ran into Elizabeth a while back and she told me she reads this blog so Elizabeth, if you need an extra key I might have one. I’m putting them all in a jar out in the garage for future archeologists to sort out.
I come up for air from time to time and revisit my subject matter but I always find a compelling reason to dig deeper with these crime faces. It seems even the county is loosing interest in this subject matter. The Crimestoppers page that appears in our paper every three months or so recently cut back to a half page. This thing used to be it’s own four page supplement. I know because I save them all and have painted most of their faces.
Peggi’s mom used to say, “Why don’t you paint your beautiful wife instead of these people?” Good question! I have been obsessed with these guys since my first art job, graphic artist for the Rochester Police Department in 1977 but they are not the only thing I paint. And what I paint is not as important as how I paint.
Because the latest Crimestoppers was only a half page and the photos were tiny I followed the link to their pathetic site and downloaded the pdf. I was printing out blow ups of the photos to paint from as I often do and “Content Aware Scale” feature in the new Photoshop caught my eye. It’s intended to help you scale horizontal pictures to vertical or visa versa while “protecting” or not distorting the subject elements. Pretty amazing when used that way. When I select these little thumbnail portraits and let that feature fly the results are out of this world painterly. Click the photo above to see what it did to Angel Correa.
Bottle Can Drive Sign on Culver Road in Rochester, New York
I love the chocolate color of this sign and the white type against the snow. The confident, rough and tumble lettering sits in the space perfectly. The way they tucked the two “t”s together in the word bottle and the mixed usage of upper and lower case is masterful. More like this on on Funky Signs.
Instead of walking in the woods today we walked up to Wegmans and trudged home with some heavy items. Flour, a half gallon of milk, grapefruit, yogurt, corn meal and an extra quart of milk to replace what we borrowed from Rick and Monica this morning in order to make make blueberry pancakes. I stopped to take this dumb picture of a hand made sign and a guy came out waving his arms and shouting “Can I help you?”. I said no and he raised his voice a few notches. “Can I help you?”. I yelled, “No”. I was already thinking this sign isn’t good enough for my sign collection but I took the shot anyway just to to piss the guy off.
Big willow tree near golf course in Durand Eastman Park
Golf courses are prettier in the winter. This big old willow tree straddles the property line of Durand Eastman Park and a private home. Willow trees are soft wood and they’re messy but I love them. The guy who lives in this house has three “No Trespassing signs stuck up there to keep golfers off his lawn. I stepped on his lawn last summer to retrieve a couple of balls that were sitting out there and he came out on his porch and yelled, “Get off the lawn.” It was like something out of a movie. If I see him again I’m prepared to yell, “You’re lawns is an eyesore.”
Speaking of golf. My friend Angel posted a print I did a long time ago in a printmaking class. And she has a cool photo up there of the Chinaboise. Peggi and I were in this band for a few months before we moved here and long before they recorded this beautiful song.
Nobody stacks wood like Pete and Shelley but we try. Firewood needs to sit and we’ll have enough for a couple of years but we’re about due for something to drop out of the sky. As long as it doesn’t drop on our house. We covered this new stack with the original “Wood Hood.”
