We’ve been sleeping with our windows open for the past week or so, falling asleep to the sound of toads singing in the creek down below. I love that sound, so primal, like a native ceremony happening in the next village. In most cases it is many toads singing at once but yesterday we witnessed a solo performance by this guy in our neighbor’s pond.
The female toads, who are usually larger than the males, answer the call. The way Jared explains it the male hops onboard, the females let a string of tiny black eggs loose in the water, the male excretes his milky sperm and in a few weeks the pond is full of tadpoles. His pond was like some kind of sex club. Toads splashing around on the floating plants in twosomes, threesomes and even foursomes. The females, having answered the siren call, seem to be trying get away, to shake the male on their back. We watched this one pair climb out of the pond and up the waterfall where they ran into a frog.
One frog and two toads mating in Jared’s pond1 Comment
You won’t find Edmunds Woods on a map of Rochester. This tiny, mostly overlooked wooded area was once part of the Edmunds farm property on Westfall Road. The woods is nestled between highway cloverleaves, medical buildings and Brighton recreation fields. My father fell in love with this place while unearthing Brighton’s neglected history and he gave it the name, “Edmunds Woods.” Right now, before the trees shown in the photo above fill in, the forest floor here is full of wildflowers. It is a privilege to recall visiting the woods with him.
I imagine my father would be all over the AI chatbot technology. He was always excited about what was coming down the road and usually was ahead of tech curve. He had a Mac II before us. We set type on his computer before getting our own, machines that revolutionized our lives.
As people worry that the AI chatbot technology could flood Facebook groups with disinformation, degrade critical thinking and erode the factual foundation of modern society, Cade Metz from NYT says “Think of the chatbots as jazz musicians. They can digest huge amounts of information – like, say, every song that has ever been written – and then riff on the results. They have the ability to stitch together ideas in surprising and creative ways. But they also play wrong notes with absolute confidence.” And why shouldn’t they. Miles already told us, “There is no such thing as a wrong note.”
Slide at Memorial Art Gallery talk by Yale’s John Hogan on the artwork of Sol LeWitt
John Hogan, a long time Sol LeWitt business partner and friend, spoke at the Memorial Art Gallery last night in conjunction with the recently installed “Wall Drawing #957, Form derived from a cube.” He explained how LeWitt’s thinking evolved as an artist, how he thought of himself as a composer and how he came to the realization that the idea is the art, not the execution.
His first wall drawing was installed at Paul Cooper’s gallery in New York in 1968 as a benefit for the Students Mobilization Committee to End the War in Viet Nam. He sold the concept without a maquette. The buyer received paperwork like the one shown above (the title to Wall Drawing #957) and then hired craftspeople to produce the drawing on a wall as the MAG did.
We have seen many of LeWitt’s drawings over the years and I am always stuck by the way the isometric rendition of the forms plays with my senses. His forms don’t recede to any diminishing point. I came home with action points. Look up “Sol LeWitt – Sentences on Conceptual Art,” “Download Sol LeWitt app from the App Store.”
In this weekend’s NYT in an article entitled “35 Ways Real People Are Using A.I. Right Now” an entry by the artist Amy Goodchild called, “Draw like Sol LeWitt,” she described feeding Sol LetWitt’s instructions to various chatbots. “On a wall surface, any continuous stretch of wall, using a hard pencil, place 50 points at random. The points should be evenly distributed over the area of the wall. All of the points should be connected by straight lines.” With OpenAI’s older model, GPT-3, it was mostly a flop but GPT-4 did OK. Imagine if LeWitt was alive for this.
Pete Monacelli “Rock of Ages” sculpture on storage room floor. Piece including base is approximately 4″w, 6″h, 4″d
We helped Pete hang his recent show at the Little Theatre. The show was a mini retrospective and it included large paintings from the 60’s and 70’s so Peggi and I helped him move the lot. We left one item behind, a plaque given to Pete in honor of his work in creating the space that is now the café. Pete’s Renaissance Man resume includes rehabbing half the city as owner of Monacelli Construction. Pete’s sculptures line the shelves of his storage space and “Rock of Ages” (above) caught my eye.
Arpad at the controls recording Margaret Explosion “Civilization.” Paul Dood, Jack Schaefer and Peggi Fournier listening. 2016
For the last Margaret Explosion record (a cd) Arpad set up a work station in our home and we piled up the tracks. This time, like most of the other ME cds, we are simply compiling songs that were recorded during our live performances. But this one is being released on vinyl only so the tracks need to be mastered. And that’s where Arpad comes in.
Peggi playing Farfisa on “Civilization,” Arpad recording. 2016
Arpad’s home studio is mostly analog. He is toying with writing our recordings to tape with his tube amp and then bringing them back to digital. He would be happy if the whole world was in mono. He has suggested that we just hang one mic over the band the next time we play. We might just do that.
Claus Oldenburg vs. Damien Hirst from Rick Hock “Artist vs. Artist” drawings at Rochester Contemporary
A sure way to for me to get sucked down a rabbit hole is to dig into my photo library for something. Today, searching for something else, I came across photos of the drawings Rick Hock did, from a show at Rochester Contemporary in 2015, just after Rick passed. They drew me in all over again. Louise Bourgeois whomping Cindy Sherman. Claus Oldenberg with a Damien Hirsch doll. Hysterical and biting, caricatures so good they hardly need labels. William Kendrick scolding Ed Ruscha. But who is beating up Julian Schnabel? Walton Ford? Rick liked Walton Ford?
I wished I had photographed every piece in the show so I went to Google to see more. I found a picture of Rick, from PopWars (I hate it when that happens) and my post from 2015. I discovered I had already written what I was about to enter here today (I’ve copy-pasted that post below.) But I was delighted to find a listing for a $10 VSW book of Rick’s drawings (published after he passed) and this fantastic little movie by Matt Ehlers, “Driving Around Rochester With Rick.”
Rick Hock, Visual Studies Workshop Director, 2011
SEPTEMBER 6, 2015 We got to know Rick Hock a little at a time. Steve the mailman would talk about him as “another music nut,” someone we should know. Rick lived the next block over, on Barry Street. My cousin lived on that street too and we never saw her. Steve used our bathroom because we worked out of the house. He’d bring us cookies that the ladies at Elite Bakery would give him when he delivered their mail and he always had the new Neil Young record on the day it came out because he was friends with Kim at the House of Guitars. And then he would let Rick borrow it. Steve kept telling us “we had to meet this guy.”
We met Rick’s wife first and she offered us a kitten, one born to a scraggily white cat that lived under their house. Stella, who is solid white like her mother, is seventeen now and a real sweetheart. Every time we saw Rick we’d tell him, “we still have that cat.” We’d see Rick when we went out running Peggi remembers Rick looking at us and asking “Why?”
Rick was someone you wanted to get to know. He was intriguing and opened himself slowly so that each encounter was an adventure. He played guitar and jammed with Peggi and me in our neighbors’ (Willie and Ethylene’s) driveway while they were having a garage sale. Rick was an artist, he converted the attic in his house into his studio. He worked at the Eastman House and curated some of our favorite shows there.
Rick was dark and sweet at the same time. He was very bitter about the Vietnam Nam war and it didn’t take much to get him going on politics. He was frustrated about a lot of things but always looking for an opening or a way to express the madness. The last few times we saw him were heartbreaking as we learned he had cancer. He died when he was on a roll.
His drawings, on display now in the small gallery at RoCo, are explosive. I hear these are some of the last things he did so the show was put together without Rick’s guidance. The large drawings portray pairs of artists locked in battles. Joseph Bueys beating up on Warhol etc. RoCo has made these pairs out to be winners and losers, favorite artists putting posers in their place, but I like to think they just portray the struggle, to make art, to create, to be successful in the market or true to the creative gods. Artists vs. art.
There are ten of them here, even one that Rick didn’t title which RoCo has turned into a contest to identify. I cast my vote and am pretty sure I have the answer.
Bruce Nauman, Kara Walker, Anselm Kiefer, Francis Bacon, Joseph Beuys, Walton Ford, Claes Oldenburg, William Kentridge, Louise Bourgeois, Andres Serrano Tracey Emin, Jeff Koons, Elizabeth Peyton, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Julian Schnabel, Damien Hirst, Ed Ruscha and Cindy Sherman are all there. Don’t miss this show.
Here’s the Meredith Davenport’ statement that accompanies the show: “Drawing was a fluid way for Rick McKee Hock to metabolize ideas and to connect with people, whether he was sketching his frustrations out in a meeting or sharing complex feelings through the loving marks on a birthday card, it was the process of drawing that was a primary connection to the world around him. His fascination with the mark and to visual language combined with his intellectual complexity would move him towards the photographic images he is so well respected for.
But the drawings are essential. They are artifacts of the conversations he was having with the world- sometimes profound, occasionally banal and most times they were very funny. A few times they were also terrifyingly prescient. He struggled with the limitations of his drawings. Were these “cartoons”, truncated one-liners that could not transcend into the deeper things he felt and observed and tried to express? How could he imbue these marks with more? It was a constant struggle for him because he loved the mark and the paper and the pen even more than the silver image.
Like many artists before him, Rick located himself in the creative cosmos through the artists he admired and he made reference to them in his work. Maybe it was a way for him to commune with their ideas or to pay homage to the impact they had on him? He made an early set of small engravings of photographers he respected and his polaroid works reference writers like Ezra Pound and William S. Burroughs. In these drawings, he was into deeper questions about contemporary art through narratives he created via the artists he admired and hated. The marks and humor were a way for him to think about and distill their work and their careers. They are a beautiful expression of his own labor to resolve the tension between his big brain and his skilled and intuitive hand.
For me these drawings are also a love letter. When he made them, I was in New York City taking two‐week drawing course at the Studio School. Each night, after eight hours of classical figure drawing, I would receive a photograph on my cell phone of one of these drawings that he made during the day. It was his way to be with me. He knew that I also battle with similar questions in the contemporary art dialog. He worked with artists I admired like Louise Bourgeois and Bruce Nauman. In his drawings their authenticity always defeated the charlatans. We were somehow all in this fight together!” – Meredith Davenport
The trail along Durand Lake was especially beautiful this morning. We scared a beaver and didn’t see another soul in the park. Maybe because they were forecasting thunderstorms and the sky was already rumbling. We watched a swan glide across the lake without creating a ripple. Durand Lake drains into Lake Ontario, just beyond Lakeshore Boulevard, and there were more white caps on the big lake than we had seen in awhile. It is just a few inches above its longterm average but the waves made the beach impassible.
The Magnolia blossoms are just getting ready to pop. The wooly buds are starting to shed their outer skins and bright white is just below the surface. The Park people had put a new bench in, overlooking the Magnolias and it didn’t look level to us. Peggi used the level app on her phone and confirmed that it was.
When you photograph someone you go for a picture of how you like seeing them. Parents tell kids where to stand, what to wear and when to smile. And then they capture their idyllic image.
One of the old newspapers we read after returning from Mexico had a familiar Larry Sultan image in it along with an article about his series, “Pictures from Home (1983–92).” Some of the images are currently on view in Chelsea and a play based on the dialog in his book of the same name is running on Broadway. The back story was so interesting to us we bought tickets and plan to travel to NYC soon. Sultan turned the tables on his parents and returned home to photograph them. He collaborated with his parents on this project capturing candid shots and staging others as a way to break down the barriers between reality and fiction. Sultan talked about “”Pictures from Home” when the photos were shown at SFMoMA.
The Museo de la Cancion Yucateca in Merida was as magical and gentle as the Yucatan people. Peggi started making this video before we had even paid our 50 peso entry donation. The temperature was in the upper nineties but like most places in Merida the huge open doors, high ceilings and open air courtyard drew the warm air out of the building.
This courtyard was surrounded by rooms that featured different chapters in the history of Yucatan’s unique music. The papel picado (perforated paper or pecked paper) was plastic in this case and it made the prettiest sound as it flapped in the breeze. Shadows from the papel danced on the floor of the courtyard.
Our neighbor, Dan, took in our mail while we were in Mexico. That and the newspapers filled an Amazon box. In the pile were two small boxes, 45 mailers. I was expecting the one. Our copy of “Is That All There Is?” skipped and I don’t want to live without that record. The MX-80 single was surprise. Guitarist, Bruce Anderson, left the planet but not before the band recorded this gem. Produced by Steve Albini, “When Tully Flew the Coop” is a vintage MX pile driver. We fell in love with the slower, moodier b-side, “Snowing in Amsterdam.” The brilliant Rich Stim lyrics put it on the same shelf as the Peggy Lee classic.
“When she starts to daydream Her mind turns to the dead Go back to bed instead She wants something But doesn’t know what it is
There’s a place in the ocean Where my father’s shoes lay Malevolent tides No warning sign His judgement day And while his life was slowing It was snowing in Amsterdam”
Margaret Explosion plays the Little Theatre Café tonight.
Fernando García Ponce art in Merida Contemporary Museum
Culture is art and in Merida you don’t have to go far to find it. Museos, galerías, mercados and even the government buildings all feature it. Fernando García Ponce was born in Merida. The Yucatan people are so proud of their heritage they have turned the city into somewhat of a gastronomical paradise. In fact, we had dinner in a restaurant called Museo de la Gastronomía Yucateca, an open air courtyard with full grown trees in an ancient building. It lived up to its moniker. Bands performing traditional Mexican music played every night of the week in a rotating parque schedule. The churches are still active. The Spanish made an impression.
Three crosses near the back door of the Cathedral in Merida
I’ve not checked in with PopWars since we returned. It wasn’t jet lag or anything, it was getting back in the swing. We had a backlog of La Liga matches and we couldn’t wait to get to El Clásico so we watched a match a night. And last night’s El Clásico was fantastic! We have a Margaret Explosion gig coming up so Peggi and I have carved out a slot to play each day. There were no hills in Mexico so we had work a little harder on our walks. And with the leftover time I have been plowing through my photos. The street is where I found most of the art.
Alex and Luci’s wedding at a hacienda outside Merida
My sister-in-law told us she played with AI for suggestions on what she might say when she took the mic the night before her son’s wedding. This was day three of festivities and most of the 150 guests had arrived in town. This event was being held in an old food processing plant, now a complex that included the restaurant, a bar, an art gallery, a dance hall, a movie theater and a lounge. The AI was a bust for her and from what I could hear of her talk it could only have been generated by the groom’s proud mom.
The wedding itself took place at a hacienda outside of Merida. The guests gathered in Parque Santa Lucia and boarded two full size tour buses for the forty minute ride. The setting was gorgeous and the ceremony was wildly perfect. Our neighbor can legally marry people. I’m not sure what the term is for those that can officiate a non religious ceremony, but this one was a friend and he did a great job. Although I couldn’t help thinking about AI during his talk. We’ve known our nephew his whole life and his vows were so sweet and tender. I thought, “take that AI!” It was my favorite part of the four days.
Now that it has 43k views on YouTube, someone, I forget who, is re-releasing New Math’s “Die Trying” on an lp. This will be the fourth time. It has already been released on Reliable, CBS and Archive Records. Since I was only in the band long enough to record it and the B side, “Angela,” they asked if I could write a few sentences for the liner notes.
So it’s 95 degrees here, I’m sitting in an open air courtyard with a Negra Modelo and I came up with this. “I loved how Gary and Kevin arranged Die Trying. I can still see Kevin air drumming my parts.” I don’t think I ever really got what he heard.
Our daily Merida pattern has shifted gears and now centers on the main attraction, our nephew’s wedding. He and his wife to be are chefs in Miami where one of their two restaurants has earned a Michelin star. They love Merida and the food here is an inspiration to them for good reason. Approximently 150 people are gathering here from all parts of the world for their destination wedding.
We checked out of our hotel yesterday and are now staying in an Airbnb with Peggi’s sister, another nephew, his partner and their daughter. We met the groom to be for dinner last night and a much bigger group of early arrivers met for lunch today. Tonight after dinner we’re joining an even bigger group at a rooftop bar. Each of these establishments have been carefully selected by the chefs. All easy going and top notch.
We still found time for yoga this morning and and then a walk around town. We stopped at a sweet little church where a mass was going on and I grabbed this photo of N. Señora del Segrado Corazón.
The Mayans developed the concept of zero. Bow down.
I don’t think we were even living together yet when we decided to go to Mexico for the first time. It must have been in the summer because Peggi was still going to school. I remember saving money for the trip in a little box and the total wasn’t more than a few hundred dollars. We were living in southern Indiana and we drove Peggi’s orange Vega to Oaxaca and Salina Cruz at the southern tip of Mexico and back to Indiana.
Our first stop, in Paducah Kentucky, was almost as memorable as Mexico. We spent the night in a campground and someone there told us about a carnival down the road. It was one of those really creepy affairs where you pay to get into small attractions where all sorts of strange curiosities were on display. I will never forget the animals with extra legs.
In Mexico we continued to sleep in the back of the Vega until we learned that hotels were just a dollar or two a night. We are still astounded at how cheaply you can eat and entertain yourselves in Mexico. We took a bus to Progreso, on the coast about 30 miles north of Merida and the round trip for two was 4 dollars. We walked on the beach and swam in the warm turquoise waves before stopping for a Negra Modelo.
Merida is an architectural details freak’s paradise. Buildings from a few different centuries, the really old, the contemporary and the long neglected, sit side by side sporting fanciful wrought iron, eye popping tile patterns and ornate woodwork. Old stonework and masonry anchors the structures and looks as attractive today as it did a few centuries ago. The surfaces are layered in tropical colors and adorned with signage and typography that is distinctly Mexican, a combination of Aztec, Mayan and Spanish influences.
Mayan head in Museo de Antropología e Historia, Merida
Our hotel is named after a saint and the rooms all have Mayan names. Our room is “Kabah,” named after the Mayan city that sat where Merida is today.. Our hotel took its name from the old church next door. And just a few blocks from it sits the oldest cathedral in the Americas, from the 1500s. As if that’s a big deal. The Mayans had an advanced civilization here well before the Spanish arrived.
I’ve added to my holy card collection since we arrived and we’ve been in and out of the old churches but we’ve also been to the Museo de Antropología e Historia and the Palacio del Gobierno del Estado de Yucatán with its magnificent but gruesome murals depicting the conquest with firearms, horses and the cross. The beautiful old stone “false idols” are destroyed and with their auto-da-fé’ the conquerors forced the Mayans to worship Christ. Even the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Ateneo de Yucatán threw these ugly truths in your face. Merida today is a wildly friendly and safe place but we carry a load of guilt around with us.
Catrin is a lively spot. There was a dj playing songs from a laptop in the front of the restaurant and the tables in the open air courtyard were all taken or reserved. We sat in the front room under a silent tv with the PSG vs Brestois game on. We had not seen a match since we left Rochester so we were thrilled.
We are in the habit of of making a meal out of sharing one appetizer and one entree and skip dessert. In Merida even that is too much. The tortilla chips were on the house and they were served with four distinctly different dips, all manner of hot sauce. The shrimp tacos were sensational and the catch of the day came with a fresh salad and a pile of cilantro. We tried anther local IPA, this one called “Mastache,” and we were very happy with it. The score was 1-1 in the sixty fifth minute when someone at the controls, switched the channel to Los Tigres, a Mexican team.
On the way back to our place we came across a guy singing traditional Mexican music in the park. Peggi had our swimming ear plugs in her pocket so we put those on for a few songs, not for the music but for the volume. We walked by a vegan restaurant with a Cumbia band playing. We could see and hear the band from the sidewalk so we stood there for a while. A four piece, the bass player sang and played in a dub style. Someone was playing congas and another guy a cowbell. A trombone player carried the melody.
Three flights sounded like a nightmare but they all went smoothly and we were poolside at a lovely little hotel in Mérida, Mexico by 2 pm. We found a restaurant with great reviews just 800 ft away but found they weren’t serving until seven. We chose another two blocks away but on the way to that one we found the intriguing Museo de La Gastronomía Yucateca, an open courtyard in the center of an old building with huge doors, the kind you would see in a Vincent Price movie.
They started us with two ice cream sized scoops of whipped beans con salsa verde. We each ordered a Cerveza Patito IPA and we split a bowl of Sopa de Lima. We shared a serving of Pollo Pibil, baked in banana leaves and didn’t have room to pick the bones. We ate like kings and the bill was not even thirty US dollars. Quizás, Quizás, Quizás by Celia Cruz on the sound system topped it off.
Four “Untitled” entries to Rochester Contemporary 6×6 Show, carved pine, Paul Dodd 2023
Rochester Contemporary’s annual 6×6 Show provides an opportunity to revisit the small format. So many of the show’s parameters are fixed, the size (36 square inches), the $20 price, the 100 per cent take by RoCo (a donation) and yet there are so many possibilities. I particularly like working in multiples, letting my four submissions play off each other. And beyond that I enjoy competing with or complimenting my pieces from earlier 6×6 shows. Win/Win and all that.
