One of the nicest things about my show at Colleen’s studio is having the chance to get to know Colleen. She once told me she wasn’t “particularly fond of painting” so this wasn’t a given. I am particularly fond of her artwork and I only found her comment intriguing. She invited Peggi and I over to see the garden that she her husband, Hucky, have created in their backyard. It is the garden of the gods! Every kind of plant, flower and tree seems happy here and some like the olive, orange and fig tree are only out for the summer so it was a thill to see it all at the peak of summer..
Statue on Exchange Street welcoming you to the Corn Hill neighborhood
“I am always trying to get home in dream.” The first breath of Louise’s new poem, published here in the Spanish press, drew me in. Our friend, Pete Monacelli has painted a few hundred paintings with the title, “Searching for Home.” We have a few here that we treasure but what’s with the longing for this mythical place. Isn’t it right here?
And this is what makes the world go ’round. I know the gist of the backstory for Louise’s poem, “Mother at Eighty.” It is unsettling. But that very same material shaped this beautiful poem. “that pale disc of sun on a white clouded day —.”
The accompanying photo, by Matthew Leonard. certainly caught my eye. Louise is standing in front my mugshot series of friends from the 1970’s.
Peggi got an email the other day from an Associate Professor of Geography at SUNY Geneseo. His letter started with “I see that you have observed pawpaw.” Peggi uses the iNaturalist app to identify trees we come across on our walks and he does too so he was able to contact Peggi through the app. He said he had recently published a paper on the distribution of pawpaw and hoped to compare our location with an existing database he has on pawpaw in Western NY.
In his paper he says even though Pawpaw is native to our area it is quite rare in NYS—earning it a threatened-species designation. He says, “Pawpaws produce the largest edible fruit of all native tree species in the United States—each custardy fruit can weigh up to a pound.” The exotic-tasting fruit is described as a mix of banana and mango flavors with a hint of pineapple.
We had forgotten where it was in the park so we followed the coordinates and found it this morning. We saw at least thirty small Pawpaw trees (along with some wild strawberries) growing below the big one. We re-identified it in the app and Peggi sent new pictures to the professor.
We do a monthly shop at the Co-Op, taking advantage one of our 10% member discount and stocking the shelves We usually combine that errand with a walk around downtown or along the river and then a stop at Pete and Gloria’s place. This week we walked along South Avenue to where it collides with 490, a most inhospitable exchange, and Peggi pointed out that this is where we took the Hi-Techs photo that was used on the cover of our first single.
I guess Hi-Techs were on our mind because we had a meeting scheduled with Joe Massaro from Paperface Magazine. He is doing a feature on Personal Effects in the next issue. He had done quite a bit of research, had all of the records and wanted to discuss the transition from Hi-Techs to Personal Effects to Margaret Explosion. He started by asking me why I left New Math. He called our “Die Trying” single “power pop royalty.”
He seemed to know all the answers to his questions beforehand but he was so much fun to talk to the conversation took long detours. He recorded the the whole thing and will have a lot to sift through but he is young. He told us he didn’t have the picture sleeve for “Screamin’ You Head” so I found one in the basement.
Hi-Techs “Screamin’ You Head,” A side of Archive Records 45rpm 1981.
Today is the feast day of Santiago, also known as Saint James (the Greater), Sante Jacob in Italy and Sao Tiago in Portugal. He is the patron saint of Galicia, Spain and Portugal. I got my box of holy cards out last night in preparation and found the I have ten of Santiago. My favorites are shown above. My favorite image of Saint James is this one by Guido Reni.
There were two apostles named James. The Greater is said to have brought the gospel to the Iberian peninsula. He returned to Israel and Herod the king had him beheaded, the first of the apostles to be martyred. His remains miraculously found their way back Spain and they are said to be kept in the cathedral of Santiago. During the reconquest, Saint James is said to have helped the Spaniards repel the Moors. In this grizzly role he is known as “Santiago Matamoros.”
We took a photo of the cards and sent it to my cousin, Maureen. She is, by far, the best Catholic in the family and I have two cousins who are or were nuns. We walked the Camino de Santiago with Maureen a few years back and have talked of doing it again.
I fired up a slideshow of our Spain photos (almost 4000 of them) on our tv this morning and it is still shuffling along. I set our LED kitchen lights to deep red. We had Spanish hors d’oeuvres, Quince paste on Manchego cheese, and roasted Marcona almonds with a bottle of Lan Reserva. Peggi made Gambas al Ajillo for dinner and Tarta de Santiago for dessert.
Heat impacts productivity. Without air conditioning we spend less time in front of our computers and more time on the screened in porch. We wear less clothing, drink more NA beer, spend more time watering the garden. We take more trips down to the pool and then one more before bed. We fall asleep to the white noise of the fan.
I‘m happy it wasn’t this hot last week for my opening. I wouldn’t have blamed anyone for staying in. On the day after the opening, with my studio walls so empty and white, I was anxious to dive into new projects. Nature had other plans.
In my last post I talked about the first of my two HPER classes at Indiana University. I mentioned that you were required to take two. My first choice was diving and my second was trampoline. Of course you pick things you like and feel you are pretty good at. I’ll have to ask Peggi what her second choice was. I know she took bowling and while in that class she developed a wicked hook and her game fell apart.
By second semester in freshman year my hair was starting to get long. I was headed to Woodstock that year. The teacher was really bothered by my appearance and continually mocked me in front of class. I shrugged it off at first so he continued to escalate his verbal abuse. Instead of just calling me “Pocahontas” he started using all sorts of homophobic slurs. I was as good as anyone in the class so I tried to ride it out but near the end of the course we were doing some really tricky flips and twists and the teacher arranged it so I only had two guys to spot me, two guys who laughed at all the teacher’s jokes and not nearly enough to keep me from cracking my head open if I fell off the trampoline. The guy gave me a ”D minus.” I tried to complain to higher ups but they said there was nothing they could do. Just a tiny taste of what discrimination feels like.
Later that year I was visiting a friend off campus. He wasn’t home so I walked a few blocks and sat on the stone wall that surrounded the IU Law School. A car with someone hanging out the window drove by and he screamed ”faggot.” I flipped him the bird. They came back around the block, the doors swung open and three guys, all wearing blue windbreakers with yellow Greek letters on the front, started swinging at me. I landed a few good punches but quickly got the sense they wanted to kill me. I came to with my face planted in the sidewalk, my glasses smashed, my nose and jaw broken and some ambulance guys standing over me. Another small taste.
Gym class was my favorite period in school. In fact, it was the only one I loved. And after school I would most likely be found on the playground or in a gym. When I got to Indiana University they had a requirement that you had to take two semesters of gym, except they didn’t call it gym, they called it “HPER.” There was a HPER building and a HPER program. The acronym stood for Health, Physical Education and Recreation. The two HPER classes I chose were Diving and Trampoline. The Diving class was taught by Hobie Billingsley, who at the time was the US Olympic diving coach. IU had a great swimming team as well. Doc Councilman was the coach and he also coached the US Olympic swimming team. Mark Spitz was in my class. He sold pot on the side.
Hobie Billingsley as pictured in his obituary.
Hobie’s obituary was in today’s paper along with this photo. As the obit stated, “Great trust and rapport is needed between diver and coach.” I tell this story all the time but it bears repeating today. On the very first day of class, just after he introduced himself, he asked us all to climb to the very top of the high platform and fall backwards into the pool below. The 10 meter platform is comparable to the top of a three-story building. My knees were trembling as I climbed the open stairs. He told us that we needed to trust him and if we did and followed his instructions we would not be hurt.
Once at the top we were to walk to the front of the platform and then turn around so that our heels were on the very edge. We were instructed to stand tall and stiff and then simply fall backwards. There were some sloppy and somewhat painful entries but if you followed his instructions you would do a complete 360 before your toes entered the water.
We were sitting with the drummer’s family in the front row at the Little Theatre Café. Pete’s wife was holding their granddaughter in her arms while the baby parents ate. Another grandson, Jacob, was sitting next to us drinking a Different Animal IPA while he was hunched over his phone. Peggi asked me what I thought of the paintings. There is a different show here every month. I said “I’ve been trying to find one I like. They all look a mess.” Peggi said, “I hope the artist isn’t nearby.” And Jacob quietly said, “I’m the artist.” We were startled at first but then laughed. We spent the rest of the evening chatting between songs. He was playing chess with someone online while the band played.
We told Jacob that the bass player in Margaret Explosion was a chess master. He asked, “What’s his name.” Apparently there is a database of chess players online with a ranking system that Jacob tried to explain to us but we didn’t follow. Our bass player, Ken, is right up there. We gave Jacob Ken’s contact and they plan to play in person.
Debbie had a friend sitting in on background vocals. The band was pretty relaxed, a quality that is right up there in my book. Debbie and her friend were singing the lyrics to the 1968 Delfonics song, “La-La (Means I Love You).” Sean was trying to find the chords. It lasted for five minutes or so and then they announced they would be taking a break. We loved it.
Peggi hanging “Passion Play” at Colleen Buzzard’s in Anderson Arts Building
Four hours seemed like a ridiculously long time for an opening but just as we turned the projector on people were walking through the door. Most of them were short of breath after climbing four flights of stairs. Gail and Jim Thomas took the elevator. They got off with masks on so we temporarily suited up. I was happy to see them but so surprised considering their recent heath issues. There was a steady flow throughout the evening with a nice lull around 7:30. A few windows were open to keep the Covid away and I’m hoping it did the trick.
I had pictured myself trying to hide from everybody but I was engaged in conversation non-stop, most of it about the work. Everybody had different favorites. Some the slideshow, others Los Inmigrantes, the color fields, the stations or the shapely Arcadian Forms. In fact they were surprisingly the favorites. This is just what I gathered. If they hated hated it all they didn’t tell me.
I talked with George Wegman the longest. Discovered we look the world the same way. George used to play guitar with The Hangmen back in the middle sixties. We bought one of his paintings a while back. Pete and Gloria watched the slideshow until it started repeating. I didn’t think that was possible. Jim Mott helped me move one of the paintings after I told him I wished it was lower and to the right a few inches. Scott McCarney wore a Personal Effects shirt that he designed. A cassette tape was pictured on the front labeled ”This Is It.” But the sweetest thing that happened all night was the call from Anne Havens just before the show.
Hanging Los Inmigrantes at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio in Anderson Arts Building
Before Peggi and I started hanging the Manifestation show in the Anderson Arts Building, Colleen took us in the back room to show her array of tools – everything in its place, laid out on a table like an art installation in itself. Picture a row of needle nose pliers from small to large, the nose of each pair between the handles of the next. They looked like they were going to have sex. She told us she shared a studio with Scott McCarney and learned the organizational feat from him.
She pointed to hammers in all sizes and called attention to one with a felt tip – “for tapping in push pins.” I had never heard of such a thing but days later I used the velvet hammer to hang some last minute additions to the show, six black and white photos taken in 1976.
Peggi and I decided to hang “Los Inmigrantes” first. I’ve had them hanging in my studio for about a year now. I drilled a couple of small holes in the back of each, corresponding holes in the wall and then backed a finishing nail into the holes in the wood pieces. This allowed me to push the piece toward the wall but not but not flat against it. I did this rather organically and started to take measurements of all the holes so I could transfer the piece downtown. Peggi suggested that I take a tracing of the holes, a brilliant idea that she said sprung from her sewing background. We laid the tracing paper out on the freshly painted wall and I drilled right though the paper.
Bench by John Dodd in the entrance way to our home.
We were so lucky to find a house that that had not been overly mucked with by previous owners and hapless contractors. There were a few real clunkers, the barn wood in the kitchen and the ornate, white wrought iron railing along the opening to our basement. Julio Sanchez Baños designed and installed the hand rail that you see coming at you in the photo above. The heavy red oak, matching our red oak floors (which were milled from trees growing where our house stands today), is supported by thin stainless steel rods and appear to float.
A few years back we found a metal frame in the trash while we were out walking. I carried it home and made a wood top for it. We used it as an outdoor table, under our overhang and near the fire when we sat around with friends during the pandemic. When our neighbor came over with muddy shoes and found nowhere to sit by our door we realized we need a bench there so we brought the table in and started using it as a bench. We use it everyday.
My brother, John, a woodworker/craftsman has made a number of pieces for us – a chair as a wedding present, a coffee table made out of redwood from our old deck and a utility table in our office. We asked him if he could make us a bench that worked with the red oak in our railing. He dropped it off a few weeks ago and we love it.
Paul Dodd with Fred (Fritz) Lipp at “3 Dodd’s” show at iSquare in 2014
It looks particularly good with the “For Fritz” paintings. I have sixteen of them and I was planning on hanging the six shown here at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio. The show opens on Friday and I’ve just decided to show a different batch there. This grouping will include the white one.
Post card for Paul Dodd “Manifestation” show at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio
I was looking for a title for this upcoming show and also kicking around ideas for an album title for some recent Margaret Explosion songs. I found both on two succeeding pages in Musa Meyer’s recent book, “Resilience.”
Writing about her father’s work in the early seventies she described how Philip Guston was dogged by questions about why his work had changed, from abstraction to figurative. One critic complained the “manifestation” was different. Guston answered, “That is our fate. Constant change.”
“You have to keep learning how to play in new ways all the time. It’s always good for the first time. There is a popular Italian song called “Per la Prima” – “For the First Time.” It’s about a love affair, but it’s the same thing. It’s always good for the first time, and somehow, that has to be recaptured, constantly.”
Margaret Explosion improvises. Each song we play is being played for the first time. When we do try to recreate a song it is never as good as it was the first time. “Per la Prima” will be the title of our upcoming lp.
This art show would more accurately be sub-titled “Paul Dodd | Recent Play.”
Opening Reception: Friday, July 15, 5-9pm First Friday Open Studio August 5, 5-9pm Margaret Explosion performance w/ slideshow Friday Aug. 12, 7-8pm Open by appointment July 15 through August 28, 2022
Anderson Arts Building, Studio 401 250 N. Goodman Street Rochester, NY 14607 (Enter behind Good Luck Restaurant)
Exhibit also includes “Brief History of the World” slideshow (detail shown below) ePub book format of “Brief History of the World” is available as a free download at www.popwars.com/artist-books
2 page spread from Paul Dodd “Brief History of the World” Volume I
The projector I plan to use during my show at Colleen Buzzard’s will only read a flash drive formatted on a pc and I only have a Mac. I had Dan, across the street, format mine. But then when I copied my files to the flash drive I found these tiny _files right next to each of my .jpg files and the projector trips over them before moving on. So I put my files in a Dropbox folder and had Dan put them on the flash drive for me.
The slideshow consists of about 500 screen captures from my ”Brief History of the World” series. Ideally I would like the duration of each side to be around 15 seconds so you can both see the images and read the captions but short of writing the slides to a movie file I’m stuck using the closest default setting which 10 seconds. As you might imagine, it is a long history. I’ve been working on this series for 21 years and I currently have 8 of the 21 volumes available as eBooks. At 10 seconds apiece the slideshow won’t start repeating again for an hour and a half.
The spread above is the very first one I did. I like the juxtaposition of the wooden sculpture by a German Expressionist with a musician from Nigeria. And below the Dali Lama and El Greco’s Saint James have the same gesture.
2 page spread from Paul Dodd “Brief History of the World” Volume X2 Comments
Years ago Duane Sherwood won 1st prize in an LA video festival sponsored by the American Film Institute and Sony with his entry of a song by our band, Personal Effects. Laurie Anderson was one of the judges. His prize included a trip to Hollywood for the awards ceremony and a brand new Sony 8mm video camera. A later video, for a Personal Effects song called “Heroes,” was played in rotation on MTV’s “120 Minutes.”
Duane’s video for an early Margaret Explosion song, “4AM,” was featured in the Brooklyn Film Festival and exactly ten years ago today Duane posted Margaret Explosion’s “Juggler” to YouTube. His Coney Island footage is a perfect fit with the music from our only 45.
“Clouds to Part” was recorded in April at the Little Theatre. It is particularly dark but just part of the Margaret Explosion palette. Duane picks up on that and you would have to be deaf and blind not to feel it in the air today. But clouds do part.
Peggi Fournier plays soprano sax, Phil Marshall plays guitar, Ken Frank plays the double bass and Paul Dodd plays drums.
2 page spread from Paul Dodd “Brief History of the World” Volume XXI
It has been a while since I prepared for a show – something like five years ago, when I showed a batch of my crime faces along with my father’s watercolors at Rochester Contemporary. It takes almost ad much work to prepare than it does to do the art.
My upcoming show at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio includes a slideshow, screen captures of the spreads in my eBooks, Volumes I, II, V, X, XVI, XIX, XX and XXI from the “Brief History of the World” series. I just put Volume XXI online as an eBook. It and seven other volumes are available as free ePub downloads here.
Book cover for Paul Dodd artist book “Brief History of the World • Vol XXI”
We were having dinner with Jeff and Mary Kaye last night while some of our photos from Spain played on the tv. We have an album from each trip and then one called “España” that has all of our Spain photos in one album. I was shuffling that one while we ate. Twenty seconds before a dissolve seems to work and the order was set to random.
One of these long shots came up, it wasn’t this one but similar, and I was struck with longing. The sensation of coming up over a hill and finding the path stretched out in front of you, a path that you have never taken before, leading to a town you have never been to before, with all of your belongings ( the things that really matter like a change of clothes, rain gear and a mobile device) on your back – you can’t beat that sensation.
Concrete “Tangible Objects” title type by John Dodd and Lorrie Frear
Clifton Springs is one of those towns that time forgot. Except this one is well preserved, suspiciously so. Where does the money come from? Main Street has a covered sidewalk and a hardware store, a book store, restaurants and a pastry shop. We came out here to see a show entitled “Tangible Objects” at Main Street Arts, the sweetest little gallery in upstate New York.
About halfway between here and Syracuse, Clifton Springs made its mark a century and half ago with the sulphur springs sanitarium. We drove out here with our morning cup of coffee and took long walk around town and right out to its limits. The big homes are well kept and the streets are quiet and dreamy. There’s sidewalks and hitching posts with big concrete steps for dismounting your horse.
Seven artists are featured in the current show. I particularly like Becca Barolli’s wire pieces and Christina Brinkman’s silver utensils but my favorite piece was the concrete title type, The letters T A N G I B L E O B J E C T S, all cast in subtle shades of concrete by John Dodd and Lorrie Freer. We couldn’t resist handling them when the staff wasn’t looking.
Brian Peterson studio door in the Hungerford Building
Brian lived in a big house on Alexander Street just a few doors down from where I lived when I was born. My parents place was just an apartment on the second floor and as my father used to tell it, my crib was in the hallway. Brian filled his house with books and art and eventually he rented a studio in the Hungerford Building to work on and display his assemblages.
We first met him at an early Macintosh users group meeting at East High. He was giving a presentation of how he used the photo software to display his digital photos, all commonplace now but this was Macintosh II days. Peggi and I were knocked out by his photos. We talked to him after the show and became lifelong friends. Sadly, his life ended but he was a Buddhist so he is not really dead.
A memorial was held for him in Record Archive’s back room last night and we met his daughter, Rae, who we found capable of carrying Brian’s spirit forward. Dick Storms was there and told us he first met Brian in 1965 at Kodak. Brian had all sorts of jobs. He was a garbage collector for the city and then a city inspector so of course he knew everybody. Some called him Charlie, others called him Brian.
His job included photographing code violations and he said that influenced how he saw the world. Before social media he sent a photo a day to anyone who asked to be on his mailing list.
Brian grew up in the Bay Area and met Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell. He gave us a Ferlinghetti book of poetry. He took still photos on an 8mm movie camera and his son put a few of them online.
We bought a big paella pan a few years ago and we’ve used it five or six times now. Our pan serves 8 and we’ve made the dish for 4, 6 and 8. We prepare the ingredients ahead of time and its a pretty casual way to hang out as the dish cooks slowly over an open fire. We’ve made seafood versions for pescatarians, chicken versions and vegetarian versions. We invited my siblings and they significant others over on Sunday and all but my brother and his wife in New Jersey accepted. That meant 11.
We needed two pans to hold it all and then a third for the vegetarian version. Keeping a slow burning, small fire under three pans at the same time was challenge. One was always too hot or not hot enough but we pulled it off and had a good time.
