Bloomington Indiana Crew 1969 including Larry Malman, Steve Hoy, Kenny Macher, Dave Jolly and Paul Dodd
We brought our plants in from the deck for the winter and found a plate from the Indiana University dorms under one of the the plants. I hadn’t thought about Indiana in a long time. I did notice that it is a swing state. It was pretty swinging back in the day.
Peggi and I sat down to watch a movie last night and I reached into our container of matches and pulled out some from the Indiana Memorial Union. You could still strike the match on the front and and the back had a list that included Bowling, Beauty Shop, Food Service, Guest Rooms and Post Office. I loved hanging around the Commons in that place. I hung around Indiana long enough to meet Peggi and then I came back to Rochester.
Another beautiful day in Western New York and I spent most of it in the basement, painting. Time flies down there. Sometimes my paintings go fast like one in a day but my average must be somewhere near one every ten days or so because I just counted my recent stack and I have done about 40 in the last year or so, all 18” by 24″ assuming the width comes before the height. I should know these things.
I did one yesterday that crashed on me. I should say “I crashed it”. It was nice, loose, expressive, colorful and fun but the chin looked awkward. I tried carving out the chin and in the process of trying to fix it I killed it. Not just the chin, the whole thing. I spun out of control, chasing bad spots that formerly looked fine until I managed to take the life out of the whole painting. Why would someone do that to their own painting? I set it aside and started another one today and I’m trying to drive carefully this time.
I got a glimpse of the continuum from painting with a bad photo as a source through still lifes and en plein air all the way to Philip Guston painting paintings about his duel with painting .
Ray Tierney III at dedication ceremony in Brighton, NY
My mom asked us to be over at the twelve corners in Brighton by 4 o’clock for the dedication ceremony to her brother, Ray Tierney Jr.. Ray owned and ran a super market here for many years. My mom and sister were cashiers. My brother Mark and I worked as stock boys. My uncle, who was also my godfather, caught me eating a whole banana cream pie in cooler. Brighton added Ray’s name to a plague in the small park in the middle of the twelve corners. His son, Ray III who is a Brighton politician and grocery store manager at Hegedorn’s gave a short speech and then invited us all down to Grinnell’s for drinks.
Tierney family mid nineteen fifties
Ray III and I were talking about how many cousins we have. It’s over thirty but we gave up trying to count them. Most of them are in this photo. My grandfather, Ray Sr., got the grocery thing going. He and his two brothers had the biggest grocery store in Rochester back in the thirties long before the Wegmans took over.
We met Anne Havens at Gallery 354 this morning and had a private tour of her show,” Desultory. Peggi took a few movies of the work and I took some still shots on a tripod. The show looked beautiful in the morning light.
We went across the street to the Public Market for lunch and found a comfortable turquoise table in the sun at Juan and Maria’s Empanada Shop. Cumbia music was playing and we felt like we were vacation. I guess we were. Juan gave us a “Vistas Hermosas” calendar for 2009.
We don’t usually have lunch. We usually just grab something from the kitchen and return to our desks where we eat whatever it was that we grabbed. It could be toast with peanut butter or an apple or leftovers. We’ve been helping John Gilmore with a project lately and he comes over a few times a week. He has gotten in the habit of stopping by Rubino’s on his way here so he shows up with olive salad, bread and Italian pastries. That makes a good lunch.
Last visit though, he came from Wegmans with a loaf of their fresh baked Tuscan bread (brushed with oil and herbs) and olives from their Mediterranean Olive Bar. John’s mixture included onionsand olives stuffed with almonds, blue cheese and peppers. I made three olive sandwiches (as shown) and gobbled them down. There was enough left for a midnight snack and more tomorrow.
Palermo’s on Culver still has the best olives but this sandwich is sensational.
And this just in from the desk of Martin Edic:
There is a new company offering bus service from Eastview mall to NYC (Penn Station), $9.00 each way starting Dec 4. They go to Toronto too for $10.
Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews of the Milwaukee Braves
I want one of those red hats with the “P” on front and the pull down flaps for your ears. A couple of the guys were wearing them in the Phillies dugout last night.
It was warmer in Rochester than it was in Philadelphia. And it wasn’t raining here. We got a fire going and Peggi made popcorn. We sat down to watch the Phillies clean Tampa Bay’s clock and then the weather got in the way. The postseason games push the season to almost November now and it seems way too cold to play baseball but I did notice a few local games going on under the lights at Cobbs Hill on Friday night so maybe it’s just me.
It seemed like the Phillies always finished near the bottom when I was kid so it has been a lot of fun to root for them this year. I always liked the National League better and the Milwaukee Braves were my favorite team back then. Eddie Mathews was my favorite player because he played third base like me. Hank Aaron was the best player on the team and he was in the stadium last night giving an award to someone. The game got so spaced out in the rain that that they called it. I just checked the weather in Philadelphia and there is a 100 per cent chance of rain. You never know, though.
I always wondered who got polled and now I know. Me. I just got off the phone with someone who polled me on who I was likely to vote for. They wanted to know my opinion, from “Very Favorable” to “Very Unfavorable”, of John McCain. That was easy. It is one week to the election so here is the official Popwars endorsement.
Clarence Meyer came to visit this morning. He planned on coming last week but he had some sort of issue with his heart and spent the weekend in the hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Clarence rode up here with his daughter and son-in-law and they pulled into our neighbor, Leo’s, driveway. Clarence will be 97 in a few weeks and he and Leo were neighbor’s from the forties to the eighties. Clarence lived in our house. He built our house in fact.
We had me him once before but were really excited to see him. We watched as he walked up our driveway and we went out to meet him. First thing he said was,”the house looks good”. Leo must have told him that we painted it this summer because it is pretty much the same color. And then he asked, “What’s going on with this area?, as he pointed to our pile of blue stone near the front door. We explained that that was our next project.
Inside we showed him what we had done since the last time he was here and he showed us some pictures he took when he was building the house. Peggi ran in the other room and scanned them. Clarence told us he made the floors with trees from our property and he pointed to some of the trees that he planted. And he said he and his wife pushed the architect, Don Hershey, to put a cathedral ceiling in the living room. Clarence even liked my paintings. Most peope look at them and turn away. Clarenece looked at the dark Crimestopper paintings on the way and said, “I really like your work”. Clarence is our hero.
Anne Havens has a show of new work at #354 in the Hungerford Building on Main Street. We got to the opening at the tail end last night and I really wanted to see the show before getting bogged down in conversation so I walked briskly to the back room and studied “Grace” as it wiggled to the evening’s vibe. Anne is one of my favorite artists and this show is sensational, as in exciting for all the senses. There is movement, lights, reflections and sound in the work.
Back out in the main room I poured a glass of red wine and grabbed a fig while talking to Anne. I fumbled the fig and then dropped the wine on the floor. Anne gave me a rag to mop up the mess. Anne’s husband, Stuart Davis, tried to make me feel better by telling me how he gestured with his arm at another opening and knocked a sculpture on the floor. And then today I read how Steve Winn, the Los Vegas casino czar, was showing Picasso’s “The Dream” to a prospective buyer for $139 million when he accidentally slammed his elbow though the painting. So now I feel a little better.
Today started with another robo call from “John at NSBA”. Most of the calls we get on our business line these days come from India and I hang up as soon as I hear the accent but John has a good old fashioned American studio voice. I have never listened to his prerecorded rap but we get this call at 9 o’clock most mornings.
After work we joined Bill and Geri out at Chuckie Cheese’s where they were celebrating their son, Sam’s birthday. Sam was wearing his Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup t-shirt for the occasion. This place is insane and that’s why kids love it. It is a sensory onslaught and the really young kids just run around like maniacs. Older kids pump tokens into the games and machines and the parents sit at tables and overeat. On the way out we overheard the hostess apologizing to the mother of an obese kid for the other kids roughhousing. We watched her give the kid a complimentary bag of blue cotton candy.
We followed a van home that had had a logo Suburban Propane on it. I was thinking that would be a good name for your band.
My ears are still ringing from rehearsal last night. We played for three hours but still didn’t get through the forty-five minute set we plan on doing at the Scorgie’s reunion. Peggi is playing her Farfisa and relearning the chords to the songs she wrote. And she ordered a new Electro Harmonix PolyChorus from Sound Source so she can do the crazy sax parts in “Low Riders” and “Love Never Thinks”. Rob at Sound Source told her they’re still making the box because Kurt Cobain loved it. It looks exactly like her old one.
We ‘re watching he World Series and rooting for the Phillies but they can’t seem to get anything going tonight. I really like the Lincoln MKS commercial with Cat Power doing Bowie’s “Space Oddity”.
I picked up a cup of coffee at Starry Nites on the way to painting class and I thought I would really make some progress but I must have been in some sort of funk because I barely accomplished anything. I spent most of the night trying different colors in this guy’s nostrils if you can believe that. The guy has a huge neck and he is looking up so there is a lot of description in those features.
I started the painting over the weekend and it developed quickly. It beginnings were so graphic and strong that it was almost done and yet I was just getting started. So if it was almost done, why did it take me all night to advance it? It is at a stage where every move has to be right on. I’ll take a photo of him and post it here when I get it right.
Maureen Outlaw announced that she was going down to the Anchor Inn to celebrate her birthday after painting class so when Peggi picked me up we headed down to the lake to meet her. She was sitting at the bar working on her second LaBatt’s Blue and a plate of chicken wings when we showed up. It was just the third day for the bartender, Amanda, who moved here from Indiana, but it seemed like a pretty comfortable scene.
It was kind of dark and dreary today but that did not get us down. In fact the woods looked more dramatic than usual when we took our walk so we embraced it.
It was beautiful weather this weekend for checking up on a multimillion dollar project that the Town of Irondequoit has undertaken. We walked down Hoffman Road to the Spring Valley area where about ten homes are. A creek call ONT-112 flows through this area and it overflows occaisionally. Some people around here think this area was always a wetland and the homeowners here should not expect the State to spend our money to protect their property. Other (some long time) residents say this area is used to be dry enough fo neighborhood gardens in the lowland.
But according to the press release posted on Senator Schumer’s website, the Town blew it when they approved the construction of a near-by housing development 15 years ago. That project allowed about a hundred houses to be built on a hillside with an inadequate drainage system. The runoff from this development overflows ONT-112 so the town proposed a mitigation project that called for realigning the stream, elevating roads, adding culverts and erosion barriers. After ten years of negotiations the project got Army Corps approval and taxpayer funding and is now in full swing. And the press release says “it needed it to be rushed due to New York State requirements that work on the project be completed by October 1, 2008 due to trout spawning in the stream.” It’s October 20th and we didn’t see any troat down there.
I did a post on this subject a while back called, “I’m Against It” and Pat Meredith from the Public Works Department asked me to contact him for all the facts. I may do that but for now it is more fun to speculate without the facts.
I had a hard time starting our chainsaw and I pulled the rope so many times that I broke it. I took the case apart and got at the spring where the rope is supposed to start. I was trying to thread what was left of the rope back into the tiny hole when our neighbor, Leo spotted me out front and stopped by to see what I was up to. He said he had some new rope so we went down to his basement to cut off a piece. I got all put back together and cranked away but still couldn’t start it. Rick from across was walking his dogs and he stopped by to say hi. He told me it might be the spark plug so I took the top off and removed the spark plug so I could sand the point. I was still trying to start the damn thing when Jared, our neighbor from down the street, walked by and got involved. He suggested that I clean the air filter and then spray some Quick Start fluid in there. We walked down to his house to get the spray can. Jared determined that it was flooded and I probably flooded the thing at the start by pumping that prime button too much. It finally started but my arm was sore as can be. I only had a few minutes to saw before John Gilmore and Bob Mahoney stopped by for dinner.
We all headed out later to see/hear the Varnish Cooks at Abilene. Too bad the bands have to play insde in this weather. It is almost impossible to hear the band or juke box when the small bar is as crowded as it was last night but it was still fun. Danny took us upstairs for a quick tour of the swanky lounge up there. I tried talking him in to letting Margaret Explosion play up there when we split the night with Nod on Thanksgivig weekend.
The phone rang at 8 this morning and I was awake but my voice wasn’t. I kind of shout/sang “Bring Out The Jazz” at rehearsal last night. It was our second practice for the Personal Effects reunion. It was Bruce O’Neill on the phone to say he was going to be here in a half hour to trim our trees. We barley got any work done today. It was more fun watching Bruce in the trees.
We spent some time talking to his helper, Tom, who had just taken a buyout from a pharmaceutical company where he worked as a salesman. He spent most of his time giving golf lessons to doctors who prescribed his company’s drugs.
I obsessed over the leak in our skylight for the last three days. It took me that long to pinpoint where the water is getting in. It’s a Velux window and it came with the house. They wrapped the wood frame with metal and had to bend it around the corners. They cut the top part to make the corner and stuck a tiny rubber gasket in there. Water rolls down the edge of the window, on top of the frame and when it hits that corner it builds up and finds its way through the rubber gasket into the window frame. And then rolls down the rafters out on to the ceiling where it turns the plaster mushy. It was a half-assed design held for a while and then gave out. If we get a warm spell I plan to take the window out and re-frame the opening. I’m hoping to find a better solution for the metal cladding than the one Velux came up with.
The deer around here are on a high protein diet gobbling up the acorns that are all over our lawn.
I wrote a piece this afternoon on the Hi-Techs and posted it on the Scorgies site. And I talked to Martin Edic on the phone about doing a song with us at the reunion. That conversation will be our rehearsal.
Paul Dodd painting entitled “Model from Crime Page” 2008
Our painting teacher, Fred Lipp, is really much more than a painting teacher. And I don’t say that because he is also an extraordinary artist. He is a fly fisherman too but I have no idea what his skills are in this area. He is more than a painting teacher because his methods for teaching painting can also be applied to living your life. Last night in class I heard Fred give advice to a woman who was painting near me. He said, “Paint it as a whole, from start to finish”.
Say you are heading out for a drive. You might have a destination and you might even use a map. But if you really want to enjoy the ride you may decide to take a detour or a side trip or forget about your destination altogether.
“What we’ve heard is so disturbing It takes time to settle in Our destination doesn’t matter This is it… life hereafter” – Personal Effects, “This Is It” LP, 1984
I’m trying to connect the dots here. I devoured an article on Elizabeth Peyton’s “Live Forever” show in Friday’s New York Times and then started a new crime face painting on Monday. I sketched a guy that sort of looked like a woman and in fact I switched the situation in my mind and thought I was sketching a woman that looked like a man. The people in class thought he was a man and Maureen Outlaw told said he looked like me. When Peggi saw the painting she said, “I like him”. I said, actually it’s a woman and I reached for the Crimestoppers page that I used for my source. His name turned out to be “Jeffery”. I had played up the lips like Elizabeth Peyton did in her portrait of Kurt Cobain and the clothing was loosely painted like her portrait of Piotr Uklanski. My crime guy was thin and more youthful than the source. He looked like a rock star.
We watched the “Life and Times of Frida Kahlo the other night and I was knocked out by how beautiful and exotic Frida Kahlo was. This documentary was so much richer and more interesting than the Frida movie. Frida Kahlo was her artwork. She lived her artwork and painted the whole from start to finish. I have no idea what Elizabeth Peyton is like but I love her work.
While I was applying paint to my sketch of this crime guy and developing his attitude, it suddenly became clear that each move was not helping so I stopped. I was painting the whole from start to finish and this was the finish but I didn’t recognize it at first. The finish could come at any time regardless of my plans. I should live my life this way and then painting would be a breeze.
I remember riding my bike in the city and some kid saying, “Take a picture. It’ll last longer”. I was ten or so and I must have been starring at him. I thought of that incident today when I was making beans and rice. Peggi said, “That looks nice”, so I took a photo.
It’s really just the recipe right of the can or at least it used to be on the can before Goya reworked the label. It was called “Cuban Rice and Beans”. If I remember it right it calls for sauteing garlic, onions and pepper (I used jalapenos from our garden) in a little bit of olive oil and then adding black beans out of the can along with some oregano, roasted peppers (I used a small jar of these) and a few teaspoons of vinegar. We made Basmati brown rice and served the beans over it. There’s enough left over for tomorrow.
Peggi Fournier of Personal Effects performing live Scorgie’s in Rochester, New York
The weekend zipped by and I never found time to paint so I’m thinking of taking Columbus Day off (just like the mail man) and getting some painting in then. I also want to fix the leak in our skylight if I can. It’s supposed to be warm again. It was almost eighty today but we spent most of the day down at the pool fixing the leak in our our pump.
Personal Effects was asked to play the Scorgies Reunion on Friday, November 21st at the German House in Rochester. We got our first rehearsal in last week and we dug up a bunch of old songs to teach Ken Frank (the newest PE bass player) and relearn ourselves. Most of the songs were fast! I found this slow one to try next week.
