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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ornette Coleman CD placeholder at FYE in Market Place Mall
I rode out to the Apple Store with my father and the place was packed, I mean really packed, because school kids were off for the week. My father is working on a presentation in Keynote that he plans to project from his iPad to group at the Buckland House in Brighton and he had all sorts of questions for the geniuses. Matt and Kim were playing on the sound system. I checked out the new MacBooks and grabbed a cup of espresso from Starbucks. On the way out of the mall we walked through FYE in the last days of their going out of business sale. All these kids were picking through crap marked 90% off while my father and I were standing in the jazz section talking a Buddy Rich record he heard at a friend’s house when they were kids.
Duane Sherwood called to discuss building a Facebook business page. They can look a little different than your neice’s page but not much. He sent me a few links to developers tips. I joined Facebook in order to help a business client use it and I let my own page just sit there occasionally checking in or cross posting a blog entry. Every few months I cleaned out the photos that populated my profile page, photos that someone else had posted with me tagged in them. If you don’t construct your own page Facebook pretty much constructs one for you with the photos your friends put up. I decided to do something about this and posted a couple folders of photos from my iPhoto library. I am only slowly getting with the program so I am probably the last person to ask for advice about using your fb page to get new business.
I spent a few hours yesterday cleaning up my YouTube channel. Actually spent most of the time watching my favorites like The Squires of the Subterrain “Sweet”, Rich Stim’s “Major Pipe” and Ornette Colman’s “Made In America.”
Bill Jones asked for a little help moving his type making equipment around. The router, the band saw and every one of those big green woodworking machines are heavy. Bill makes wood type from oversized patterns. You can’t be around all this stuff without dreaming about type projects, signs or posters that you could put together with all these little wood pieces. I’m thinking about a letterpress cover for the upcoming Margaret Explosion single.
On the way over, a ten minute ride, I scanned the college radio band and found Matt & Kim’s “Silver Tiles” on WITR, Althea & Donna’s “Uptown Top Ranking” on WRUR and Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side” on WBER. I thought my iPod on shuffle was pretty good.
We walked to the library in last weekend’s snow and picked out a double sided dvd (Does anyone get books at the library anymore?)” We curled up last for the double feature.
I certainly admire people who do things.” Bruno said this to Guy as he sat down next to him on the train in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 movie, “Stranger On A Train.” Bruno, a mama’s boy, who was wealthy enough to not work hated his father and had hatched a plan to get rid of him. Guy was supposed to be the good guy but in the Hitchcock’s hands Bruno was more likable. Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley) wrote the novel and she makes a cameo in a record store. Hitchcock’s cameo has him hopping on a train with a stand up bass that is as big as he is. And Hitchcock’s daughter gives an sizzling performance. We watched both the Britsh and the American version last night. The British one supposedly had homosexual overtones that escaped the American style censorship but we didn’t spot the extra footage. Both were amazing.
My parents took us down to Nick’s for dinner last night and the conversation eventually turned to the old days. My father, who grew up on Burlington Avenue over on the west side said there were two bakeries near his house on Brooks Avenue and another around the corner on Thurston. My mom talked about the ones near her place on Rosewood Terrace and lamented how now all we have is Wegmans where everything tastes the same. I was thinking about the Vergennes Laundry, a bakery in Vermont with an artfully presented small selection of incredible breads and pastries, so good it is almost worth driving to for a loaf.
This article in this morning’s paper has researchers concluding “The more ‘friends’ people have on Facebook the more likely they are to be stressed out and anxious”, according to a new study and “the negative effects of using the site outweighed the benefits it offers in terms of staying in touch with friends and family.” I like how they put ‘friends’ in small quotes. I have no idea who most of my ‘friends’ are and if I used Facebook as more than just a lark I would probably get stressed out too.
The other tech story I found interesting was about how blogs are getting less popular as everyone moves to fb.
Margaret Explosion poster for Abilene Happy Hour gig
Somehow Margaret Explosion wound up with a long running Friday Happy Hour slot at the Bug Jar. This was back when Casey ran the place and Bug Jar Bob booked the bands and arranged the lighting and Steve Brown took care of the business and grudgingly stood behind the bar on Fridays. Rolling Rocks were a buck a piece and Casey brought in vegetarian Indian food.
Pete LaBonne named the band and played bass. Jack Schaefer played guitar and a parade of people sat in. We called our first cd “Happy Hour” and that vibe is an essential part of our sound. Rick Simpson played a song from that cd on hi WRUR show last night and it struck us how much the band has changed.
In 1998, before the band started one Friday, I took photos of everyone at the Bug Jar on one of those evenings, everyone who would let me take a photo of them that is, and I printed them out for a show of Mug Shots that went up a few weeks later.
Danny Deutsch invited us to play a Happy Hour at 6 tonight and Bob Martin has rounded up a batch of videos to project on the front wall of the upstairs lounge there. The Abilene site says there’s free munchies and there’s no cover. Sounds like fun.
Bunk Gardner and Don Preston at Abilene in Rochester, New York
In the second set at Abilene last night Don Preston looked up from his keyboard, quickly scanned the slim crowd, and asked “What is this? Is this a beer hall or is it somebody’s house? He didn’t wait for a reply or hear Bill Jones mutter, “It’s a gay bar” but he chuckled to himself as he and Bunk Gardner dug into “Holiday in Berlin.” It was such a treat to see these two old guys (they were old when they were in the Mothers) jump off the cover of The Mother’s 1968 album cover for “We’re Only In It For The Money” and come to life in 2011 in the paint-by-number room at Abilene. They sounded great as a sax/keyboards duo but Don kept turning on some pre-recorded drum tracks and they didn’t need them.
Between sets I told Bunk Gardner how Dave Mahoney and I returned to our little house while tripping to find someone had broken in and stolen our stereo with “Burnt Weeny Sandwich” still on the turntable. They left us the empty gatefold album to look at until we bought another copy. Bunk’s pictured in there but he didn’t seem too impressed by my story. I said, ‘You know. The one with ‘Little House I Used To Live In’ on it”.
It seems miraculous that the chipmunks are out. We watched them pack their small caves with nuts in the Fall and now they’re out darting around on the piles of snow. We hadn’t seen any deer in weeks and we were speculating that they too were hunkered down in the cold but today we watched a group of eight up move across a hillside. There was a pileated woodpecker up in one of the trees too but we couldn’t spot it. Sounded like a jackhammer. We interrupted a hawk who was devouring this squirrel right in the middle of our path. On the way back the squirrel was gone.
Pete LaBonne has a song called “Code Of The Great Outdoors” with the refrain, “better out, better out, better out than in.” It’s on his “High Time” release, same album as “Punk Rock Dressing Room” and only seven bucks for the download!
We approached Pete and Shelley’s mountain kingdom by sea on the Port Henry ferry that is temporarily replacing the Crown Point bridge which is currently being rebuilt. Lake Champlain separates the two states but there is a whole lot more at play. We spent some time looking at the New York mountains from the Vermont side and then the snow capped Vermont peaks from the New York side and we couldn’t quite put our finger on the difference in the two states. It is mostly perception but that is a lot.
There was so much snow up there we kept skiing into three feet of powder and getting so bogged down that we were tempted to take our skis off but we knew full well that would be the last anyone would see of us. We sat around the stove enough to learn what a condition called “Granny’s Tartan” is all about.
We came home without driving on the Northway or the New York State Thruway proving the adage that it is not the destination but the journey. We whizzed by a sign that read “Highway Hair Cuts”, hand painted in all caps. I pictured a brush cut with a flat top.
Rick Simpson played Pete LaBonne‘s “We Live Like Kings” on his radio show last week. I plan to request it this week.
Gary and Kathy come see Margaret Explosion quite a bit and they were telling us how much they like Vergennes. Gary called it “the smallest city in the US.” But the sign on the way into town read, “The Smallest City in Vermont.” All we knew about Vergennes was that Ted and Janet Williams used live in a museum there. They were the caretakers and Ted was the editor of the newspaper there, the oldest in the US until it folded. We asked around but couldn’t find the museum. We spotted a few posters for Chad and Jeremy who were playing that night at the Vergennes Opera House (which also doubles as the Vergennes Town Hall).
We had a delicious dinner at the Black Sheep Bistro. We couldn’t get in until eight at night because the place was booked. People drive down from Burlington to eat here and they are celebrating their tenth year so you know they are doing things right. The salads are incredibly crisp and distinctive. The walls are covered salon style with old drawings and prints. We sat near a Daumier. I had the vegetarian lasagna which had no pasta but held together like Mama Tacones.
The next morning we stopped in the Vergenes Laundry, a stylish bakery with white walls, steamy windows, rocket fuel espresso, wifi and some delicious bread. We drove up to Burlington and walked up and down the pedestrian friendly Church Street. Pretty idyllic up there overlooking Lake Champlain. They pipe soft classical music onto the street but this morning it was interrupted by some students cranking The Mothers’ “Trouble Coming Every Day.” It occurred to us that we had forgotten to feed the meter so we ran back to the car and got out of town.
When I catch myself bearing down on a painting I know I’m doomed. I will be trying to get a clunky part of the painting to look right and I’ll lose the whole when I think I have the part right. I wish I had the foresight to not go down that road again but I will. It is almost easier to start over but I don’t usually take the easy route and that is another paradox. “Painting is not supposed to be easy or everyone would do it.” That’s one of Fred Lipp’s quips.
Another curious observation is that my paintings look better up close when they were painted from afar. That is provided I like what I painted from afar. And conversely when I work up close and think it looks great, I step back and cringe. I’ve tried long handled brushes and painting at arms length. I’ve put the painting on the floor while painting standing up. These methods work but they are rather cumbersome. I’m convinced there is some sort of force field between me and the painting where all the problems lie and I know I’m better off to stay out of there.
Andy Warhol and DannyWilliams from “A Walk Into The Sea” at the Little Theater in Rochester New York
You can stream “A Walk Into The Sea” from Netflix but it was so much more fun to see it last night with a crowd in the Little Theater’s big venue “Theater 1.” Rochester Contemporary sponsored the event, an unusually arty documentary about Andy Warhol’s lover, Danny Williams, a film maker who disappeared and the following discussion. The beautiful black and white footage in the movie is all Danny’s except for a bit of “Chelsea Girls” and it was all edited in camera. Some great raw footage of the Velvet Underground and the Factory crowd all wrapped in a “who was using who?” who done it.
