Sol Lewitt Wall Drawing going up at Memorial Art Gallery
Sol Lewitt’s art is more than the final piece. It is the plans, the installation and the temporary display on a wall. One of Sol LeWitt’s iconic “Wall Drawings,” has been generously gifted to MAG and it is being rendered directly on a wall in the Vanden Brul Pavilion by a representative of the LeWitt Estate and an artist from the Rochester community. The installation of “Wall Drawing #957: Form Derived from a Cube” can be seen after the holiday, starting November 26, when the gallery resumes its regular hours.
The new exhibition at MAG, “Striking Power: Iconoclasm in Ancient Egypt,” starts with the definition of “iconoclasm” which literally means “image breaking.” With statues and sculptures from ancient Egypt, all with body parts deliberately broken for religious or political reasons, it made for pretty interesting shows as it packed in a big dose of history.
The Memorial Art Gallery’s buildings sit on ground that formerly belonged to the Haudenosaunee tribe, part of the Seneca Nation. The three-channel video installation in the MAG’s video gallery, “Here you are before the trees”(2020) features his grandmother, Dolli Big John, and focuses on the Indigenous histories of upstate New York and the devastating consequences of the US colonization of Indigenous peoples. Beautiful, sad and powerful, it is an especially moving 12 minutes.
We had parked our car at the Poughkeepsie train station and took a Metro North train into the city. I was driving when we passed these teepees along the New York State Thruway so I couldn’t very well snap a shot. On the way back Peggi was behind the wheel and I was looking down at my iPad when she said, “There are those teepees again.” I fumbled for my camera and got this shot. They looked so beautiful.
When we returned I searched “Teepees Interstate 90” and discovered they are part of an art installation by members of the Oneida Indian Nation called “Passage of Peace,” ten teepees , some on each side of the thruway. The installation is ongoing through the holidays and if you drive by at night you will see them lit in different colors. Two are illuminated in orange, the color used by advocates to raise awareness around the impact of the forcible removal of Native children to attend residential boarding schools.
From their website – “Between 1869 and the late 1970s, hundreds of thousands of Native American children attended boarding schools far from their families and tribal communities. These schools sought to achieve assimilation through denial of Native culture and language.”
Anselm Keifer’s show at Gagosian, entitled “Exodus,” features extremely large paintings based on the Hebrew book of Exodus. I stood in front of the one above for the longest time, drawn in by the glass-filled walls on either side but then never really landing in the space before the back wall. I loved the disorientation. “The penumbra between life and death,” as Roger Cohen calls it in a recent article on the artist’s work.
Anselm Keiffer “Exodus” Gagosian Gallery Chelsea
We fell in love with Keifer’s work after spending an afternoon in the large warehouse/gallery devoted to him at Mass MoCa. There the paintings fill the walls, three high, salon style. Gagosian has given him an ultra luxurious amount of room. Enormous paintings on enormous subjects mounted in an enormous space. I am still wow struck by the experience of being in this space with these works.
Theaster Gates’ “Young Lords and their Traces” installation
An article in the paper just before we left got us to New York’s New Museum for the first time. Theaster Gates “Young Lords and their Traces” fills three floors with found, rescued and reworked objects of cultural significance. He calls it “generative care”— tending to the past by carrying its lessons into the future. In video he is shown working in clay, singing spirituals in another.
Theaster Gates’ “Young Lords and their Traces” installation
The title of the show nods to the 1969 Chicago based Puerto Rican organization, an important force in community organizing. Gates rose to fame by reviving a neighborhood in Chicago’s South Side, purchasing vacant and distressed properties and transforming them into artist studios, affordable housing, and performance and exhibition spaces.
Theaster Gates’ “Young Lords and their Traces” installation
Had this been a Saturday we would have had the opportunity to hear the Hammond B3 Organ that was wired to six wall-mounted speakers. I particularly loved the workaday materials and earthy palette of his work. So warm and deeply human in response to forces in our culture.
Alex Katz painting at Marlborough Gallery in Chelsea 2022
Alex Katz was right up there with Andy Warhol when I was in my twenties. We used to stay with Charlie Coco at his place on 43rd when we came down to New York back then. He took us over to see Moondog passing out sheet music on the corner and to Times Square in 1977 where Katz’s giant portraits were painted on the sides of building, back when the cigarette billboard puffed steam, before LEDs took all the visual space. I still have the article from the NYTs.
Alex Katz is on a short list of artist’s I have run into in New York (Chuck Close-twice, John Baldessari, Julian Schnabel and Annie Leibowitz). A full drum set was part of an installation at one of the Whitney Biennials. Visitors were welcome to play it. I sat down and made a two minute racket. When I stood up I was face to face with the smartly dressed Alex Katz.
The Alex Katz retrospective, “Gathering,” at the Guggenheim was on our agenda. Not that we had much of one. We seem to have the best return, a feast for the mind and eye, when we just stumble around the gallery districts of Tribeca and Chelsea as we did on Tuesday and Wednesday. Full days of absorption. And at Marlborough Gallery on 25th Street we found an Alex Katz spoiler on their second floor gallery. I was able to study, up close, the magic at the edges of Katz’s broad brush strokes that David Salle calls loving attention to in his book, “How to See.” After watching the Guggenheim video of the show and with the forecast for a few feet of snow upstate. we lopped a day of our NYC visit and took a train back.
The tall invasive weeds have died back enough for us to take the paths though the park that parallel the golf course. We’re still waiting for that tick vaccine. Yesterday it seemed they had closed the golf course too early. Today, that decision looks prescient.
I never get much reading in before falling asleep. And I know I’m getting tired when I don’t want to turn the page. Often I’ll realize I have no idea what I just read but sometimes I just don’t want to turn the page. What I have just read is just too good. I need to savor it and drift off with fresh ideas swirling in my head.
We woke up to snow this morning. The autumn that went on so long it exhausted our plants had finally produced a frost. The gorgeous fall palette will be drained of all but brown and grey. It is up to us to provide the color in these winter months. We can’t be lazy.
Carroll Dunham Woman Man painting on view in Chelsea 2015
If we are lucky we will see some Carroll Dunham paintings on our upcoming trip to NYC. I’ve been reading “Into Words – Selective Writings of Carroll Dunham” and really enjoying it, especially his probing interviews with artists. Since the 1990’s he has written for Art Forum, Bomb and various artist catalogs. According to Wikipedia Dunham came from great wealth, which he had squandered on a series of misguided investments. He is married to the artist Laurie Simmons and they have two daughters, actress-writer Lena and writer-activist Cyrus Grace
Carroll Dunham Wrestlers on view in Chelsea in 2018
We have come across two shows of paintings in Chelsea on previous visits and his images have stuck with me. David Pagel, in a Los Angeles Times review intended to be complimentary, described his paintings as “vulgar beyond belief…” They are graphic. Dunham describes “painting’s dual nature as a repository of capital and a facilitator of profound contemplation, a perfect storm of the crass, the sacred and the intimately personal.”
I am looking forward to reading the piece he wrote on Otto Dix. Here is a page from his book describing the work of Max Ernst.
All summer I swam with ear plugs. I forgot to bring them to Costa Rica and sure enough, I got water trapped behind the wax in my ear. I couldn’t hear out of my left ear at all. I went to my doctor when I returned but she was not able to flush it out. She recommended an ENT doctor and I made an appointment but in the meantime the water dried up and my hearing came back. I kept the appointment anyway but I had reservations.
The doctor has three locations and the first appointment was out in Greece. I don’t like Greece. Google maps plotted two routes, one on the expressway and the other along the lake. Both were 21 minutes. I chose the lake route and made it there in plenty of time.
Paul at Ear Nose and Throat doctor
I filled out a few forms and studied the watercolors on the wall, small landscapes in awkward frames. I was thinking they might have been done by someone who works there or maybe a relative. An older couple came in behind me. He was outfitted in LL Bean gear. The assistant took me back to an empty room and I sat there in this chair. At one point someone opened the door and went right to a cabinet to get something. I said hi but she didn’t say anything. I was hoping to god that she wouldn’t be the one attending to my ears.
Drawers at Ear Nose and Throat doctor
I sat there for about a half hour, long enough to study the room and take these photos. The same woman came back. Not interested in small talk, she barely heard me out and said “As long as you are here we might as well remove your wax.” She pulled a white plastic hose out of the drawer, stuck in my ear and turned on the vacuum. I squirmed as she worked the hose in and I pictured my eardrum popping if it went in any further. She acted annoyed and said, “Let’s try the other ear.” I squirmed again and she said, “I can’t do it if you keep moving. It’s too dangerous” and she put the equipment away. She walked out in a huff and said, “Have a nice day.”
We are having a most unusual autumn in New York. On the day we left for Costa Rica it was as warm here as it was down there. Social media posts confirmed that it was beautiful weather while we were gone and almost two weeks later it still is. We picked more tomatoes on our first day back, and a big bag of arugula, swiss chard and peppers. Our marigolds out front have more blossoms than they had all summer.
Every other year the maples have fallen first and then the oaks but this year the maple leaves are still up there, red and yellow, while the oak leaves are a foot deep. We did one rake before we left, just so the house didn’t look abandoned, and we’ve spent the better part of our three days back raking and chewing up the piles with our mower. My watch says I walked five and half miles today and I never left home.
During the flight down Peggi sat next to a talkative little guy with a “Pickleball Getaway” cap on. On our way back the woman sitting next to us asked me if I could open the 16 oz Pepsi bottle she had bought in San Jose. I couldn’t. It was sort of embarrassing. But then again I have a hard time opening those little plastic bags of pretzels that they give you.
We travelled with one small carry-on bag and one of the things that wasn’t in there was our earplugs. We spent a good bit of our days in the water and my left ear plugged up on the third day. As we descended into Newark it popped and I can hear again. I was sort of getting used to not being able to hear but I don’t need to slip away anymore than I already have.
What I think I’ll miss most about our stay in Costa Rica is the early morning dip in the plunge pool. I am in the habit of waking at sunrise, just a few minutes before Peggi, and I would push the button on the coffee maker and slowly slip into the pool, allowing each part of my body to experience the exhilaration. That magic doesn’t happen later in the day, only when you’re not fully awake. Secondly, I will miss the Arugula and Fennel Salad that we ordered three times.
We had no IPAs in CostaRica. I like it when most of the country drinks the same beer. You order a cerveza, you get an Imperial. We had plenty of fresh seafood, often caught the day before. We had fresh fruit every morning. We had time for yoga, everyday. We recharged our batteries. We fell in love with Costa Rica.
I can’t imagine how boring these last few entries would be to read. Nothing happens here, by design. There are big decisions being made behind the scenes. How long to hold the plank? Which way to walk down the beach in the morning, whether to have coffee before or after and where to take a dip in the ocean without being towed out to sea.
It is our last day here and we finally saw our first boat go by, out just beyond the big waves. I was beginning to think it was too rough even for fishermen. It is pretty fantastic for surfers. Michael Gribbroek has surfed here. Our nephew, Andrew, messaged us to find out if we had surfed yet. We sent him back this link to a story in the Washington Post.
Duane emailed us to to arrange details for our visit to NYC. Peggi and I started singing the Swollen Monkeys song, “On Vacation.” They were label mates of ours in the early Personal Effects days and they performed at our record release in NYC. The party was held on the roof of Danceteria and they played out in the crowd rather than on the stage.
We set the alarm the past few days to make sure we didn’t miss the sunrise. It’s not as dramatic as the sunsets. We’re on the western coast and the sun sinks into the ocean with a blaze of colors. The sunrises sneak up on you. And the color of the light keeps changing as the golden hour develops so its perfect for photos.
We’ve walked down the beach, in both directions, a couple of times now and our walks are not limited by distance, they are cut short by the intensity of the midday sun. So this morning we were on the beach at 5:30, the only ones on the beach, and we walked two and half mikes to this this big rock, Peñon. and then turned around. The surfers were out dodging the rocks between the black flags at high tide.
Our room came with a jar of Costa Rica’s ”Grano de Oro” and a ”Choreador,” cloth filter drip setup. The coffee, by the pool, tasted especially good when we got back.
Everything comes to you if you wait long enough. We were out front of our place, watching the sunset, the best one yet, when we heard barking coming from somewhere in the direction of next door. It wasn’t barking, it was seven howler monkeys right over our bungalow. They call them “Congos.”
Our necks were sore today from staring up at the monkeys for so long. Telling the waiter we saw monkeys yesterday is like telling someone you saw a squirrel back home. We did see a squirrel today, a giant red one with a long, bushy tail, in the big tree over our place. We laid flat on our backs and watched her build a nest.
We find ourselves in another one of those situations where the hospitality workers want to practice their English while Peggi would rather use her Spanish. And I like hearing Peggi speak Spanish. The woman behind a desk was telling us about a “chuttle” and we asked her to repeat it about three times before we realized she was offering us a shuttle. We have somehow latched onto Brian as our server at dinner and when he put the bread on the table he said, “This is the Bread House.” We laughed when he left the table, not at him but just visualizing it.
We’re here in the slow season, the rainy season, so there are very few people around. And it hasn’t rained yet. We can’t think of a really good reason to leave our place. Our waiter this morning, Manuel, recommended Montezuma. “More chill, more relaxed, not as many people.” Another of the workers recommended Montezuma as well and she described it as a “hippie town” with a beautiful beach. I’m wondering if we fit some sort of a profile.
We made a half-hearted attempt at catching up on the news and saw this headline from the Guardian. “Mondrian painting has been hanging upside down for 75 years.”
The only thing on the white walls of our open plan bungalow is a big round mirror, maybe ten feet in diameter. The design of this whole place is minimal, just the way we like it. Floor to ceiling windows slide open to completely remove any barrier between the room, the patio and plunge pool. The shower has a frosted glass door that swings open to an optional outdoor shower. We choose to skip the daily room cleaning in keeping with Costa Rica’s green push. There was one yoga mat in the closet so we asked for a second and Peggi led an early morning class of two followed by a plunge. We turned on the tv just long enough to determine what “smart tv” means. Not smart enough to let us stream content to the screen. So that will go unused for a week. We walked to a nearby grocery store and plan to watch the sunset and make a meal out of hummus, chips, a long loaf of bread, some Manchego cheese (from Costa Rica?) and Spanish wine.
There are two high tides here each day, of eight or nine feet. And as spectacular as the beach is, it is almost too dangerous for swimming. Big rock formations line the small bays. The waves are huge and loud enough to drown out the air conditioners at night. Wading is possible but I didn’t feel safe beyond my waist. The water is the same temperature as the air so it is tempting to push that. There is a plunge pool behind our bungalow with a view of the ocean and our place is completely surrounded by exotic vegetation so we spent most of the first day without any clothes on.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Other than NYC and Buffalo, we hadn’t been anywhere since Covid hit. A travel article we read in the depths of winter made this small hotel on the rather remote Pacific coast of Costa Rica sound like paradise. So we booked for late October never imagining the equator would only be a bit warmer than upstate New York. And can it possibly be any prettier?
We were originally scheduled to fly to Newark and then Dallas but United routed us through Chicago first. I hate the idea of traveling in the wrong direction. The sun was setting by the time we reached San Jose so instead of moving toward our destination we took a shuttle to a chain hotel near the airport. We asked the desk clerk where we could change money and get sim cards for our devices and she suggested Walmart next door. We stumbled through both transactions but the young Walmart workers could not have been more helpful or sweet.
We slept so soundly we missed the early bus to Puntarenas so we arranged an Uber. Instead of going through the small town,s he drove on a toll road with all his windows down. He told us he also worked from home for Amazon España and he want to practice his English so I came up with random topics. The temperature got hotter and hotter as we approached the coast.
At Puntarenas we bought tickets for the ferry, an hour’s ride to the peninsula where our place is. We were sitting on the top deck and I began to feel a bit seasick when we hit rougher water so we moved to the lower level. There was a bus down there (with all the cars) and the destination on the front read “Santa Teresa” so Peggi asked the driver if there was room for us. He told her there wasn’t.
On land we found a bus that would take us part way, to Cobano. We felt like we were in that Buñuel Mexican bus movie where someone gets on with a live chicken. There was no air conditioning, of course, and standing room only. We were crammed in the back, standing over a women with a board in her lap, displaying jewelry she had been trying to sell somewhere. Out the windows lots of almost outdoor living going on. Rusty metal roofs and tarps, shacks in the lush tropical jungle. One lane bridges and serious switchbacks, at one point the bus slowed to crawl as we rode in first gear up the side of a mountain, then views of the Pacific Ocean from Bahia Tambor. The bus stopped anytime someone was standing along the road. With a lower vantage point Peggi saw a monkey hanging from its tail in the tropical jungle.
En Cobano nosotros tomamos otro autobus. This one was like a Sea Breeze ride but without the seat belts. The driver had the doors wide open. One lane of the road was washed out in several spots and the brakes squealed so loud we had to plug our ears. Waterfalls and amazing flora along the way. Bob Marley on the driver’s radio. We were following his route on the phone and when he got to the coast he turned the wrong way. Peggi asked him if we should get off and told us he was going to come back to that spot and then continue to our place. We hung in there.
Leon Golub’s “Horsing Around III” 1983 at Reina Sofia Palacio de Velázquez, Parque del Retiro, Madrid 2011
Why did I have to go all the way to Madrid to discover Leon Golub, the tough as nails New York painter, husband of the tougher than nails painter, Nancy Spero? So American, Golub’s critical eye is on the page and his work was almost rude in Spain. It occurred to me that Golub is too distinctly American to be appreciated in the US.
Our 2011 tickets to the Reina Sofia, the contemporary art museum in Madrid, included admission to two satellite exhibitions in the park. Leon Golub at Palacio de Velázquez in Parque del Retiro was mind blowing. His work remains as fresh as the day he painted it. When we saw the show then I wrote, ” Golub’s scruffy tactile work holds its own with “Guérnica” from the Reina Sofia and Goya’s “The Third of May 1808” at the Prado!
Leon Golub’s “Viet Nam II” 1973 at Reina Sofia Palacio de Velázquez, Parque del Retiro, Madrid 2011
Marlon Brando’s memorable line in “Apocalypse Now,” “the horror,” is shown in this monumental canvas. Golub said his work “was an invitation to a place where nobody wanted to go.”
Leon Golub’s “Francisco Franco 1976 “at Reina Sofia Palacio de Velázquez, Parque del Retiro, Madrid 2011
I brought home the catalog to this show and never put it away. It has been at arm’s reach for eleven years. Included in the show were a series of portraits of Franco and this may be why Spain laid the royal carpet out for Golub. They are hysterical and devastating at the same time. Long live Golub!
Joe from Paperface Magazine brought Wreckless Eric to town last night for a show at Lux. I was surprised to see Steve Grieve there because I remember him getting caught up in a ruckus at Lovin” Cup when Eric and Amy were playing. It was so long ago I can’t remember the details but I think Steve was trying to get a group of people to shut up so he could hear the band when the owner threw him out!
People were loud as hell last night but it didn’t matter because all the crowd by the stage could hear or see was Eric. And the five dollar cover charge that the other ninety per cent of the crowd paid went right in Eric’s pocket. I was standing near the doorman and I could’t believe how many people filed in. It was such a nice night most probably wound up out back on the patio.
We have seen Eric ten times or so now and as much fun as those early shows were he is better than ever now. Not many people can hold the stage at a rock club with only a guitar and his voice. Not many performers let their work mature with them. The sound was perfect last night and Eric’s words are very descriptive, of place, people and emotions. His set was perfectly paced and once he had the crowd he created a ruckus with feedback and noise. He finished with his anthem which deserved the shot in the arm Expedia’s Super Bowl ad gave it.
Eric stayed next door with Rick so Peggi and I stopped by this morning to talk before he left town. We told him how much we liked the set and Peggi asked if he got a recording of the night. He went off on obsessive documentation and virtual experiences verses in person, in the moment, lived ones. It doesn’t take much to get Eric going. He was thrilled with the way the night went. He had a few recent gigs in NYC that went flat and he told us, “Rochester is full of surprises.”
Margaret Explosion performing at Joy Gallery August 2022. Photo by Domnika.
John Gilmore emailed after our Wednesday gig to tell us how much he enjoyed the night. We played with Melissa Davies, a cello player, and John thought she helped take us to “A different Universe!” I had announced that Jack Schaefer might be there with his bass clarinet but that didn’t work out. Last time I saw him was during Rosh Hashanah and he was busier than ever in the bagel shop. Now that Brownstein’s has closed we may never see him again.
Phil Marshall’s effects pedal board, late 2022
Phil Marshall’s effects pedal board is forever in flux. I took photo of it last night before we started. We were there early for a change and started on time. Some nights we come away with ten songs but were were able to get thirteen on Wednesday.
Pete and Gloria are always there, usually sitting at a table up front. Pete listens intently and he takes notes in his sketchbook. I asked for copy of his thoughts last month
“exotic turkish snake charming india soothing etherial
flipping the bird to all the 150 mph jazz tunes, with style, dignity, and grace
like a flower spurting from a crack in the earth and moving up to maturity; like a time laspe photograph“
And then, a copy of last night’s notes with the cello.
“Contemporary and primitive Middle Ages jazz Monastic jazz Meditation jazz Prophetic jazz Wayward jazz
A multitude of cultures A multitude of ethnicities“
