There is a lot of money in Traverse City. I couldn’t even have told you what state Traverse City was in before this trip. It sounds like a dusty old town in a cowboy movie. Torch Lake, somewhere near the size of the largest Finger Lake, is lined with big “cottages.” Half a million dollar places, the average cost, that are mostly used only in summer. The lake frontage average cost is $5000 a foot. I can’t help but think of this chart as I watch the boats go by.
I’m not complaining. The setting, though, does heighten the surreal nature of the news, epitomized for me in this statement from the president’s evangelical advisor. (As if those last three words weren’t surreal enough.)
“When it comes to how we should deal with evildoers, the Bible, in the book of Romans, is very clear: God has endowed rulers full power to use whatever means necessary — including war — to stop evil. In the case of North Korea, God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong Un.”
I should have bought that Tigers hat at the airport. I was swimming off the end of the dock when Jack suggested we ride down to the Dockside and get a little something to eat. So there I was in the back of his party boat in the blazing sun. All the docks were full there so we cruised down the Clam River a ways and Jack filled up the gas tank at a place called the Clam Shack. I looked at some Bell’s Two Hearted IPA in the cooler but I didn’t have my wallet so I let it go.
It’s beautiful here at Torch Lake in northern Michigan. Not Upper Michigan but at the top of the mitt. Eminem has a place here and Michael Moore had a place before his divorce.
There was a slip open when we came back up the river and Jack told me to grab the starboard side rope and hop out. I swung one of the rope around a post on the dock so the front end was under control but the wind took the back end out into the channel. Another boat was right behind us and the guy behind the wheel started hollering at us. If I had acted quickly enough I could have secured the front end and then pulled the back end in but that is only hindsight. Peggi and her sister were on the boat but could only watch as we sideswiped another boat. Jack handled it all like a gentleman but I felt responsible.
Dead tree just beyond green lake and trees in Durand Eastman Park
There is a point in every summer where there has been so much rain and it is so humid that everything turns green. Invasive weeds encroach on the paths in the woods. The trees are at their fullest and the woods is at its darkest. It is lush and beautiful. We are peaking.
Citlali Fabian Pop Up Show at Culver and Merchants Road
I was surprised how many people were in the Cineplex Theater Friday afternoon. We had reserved seats for Detroit and in retrospect it was probably a little silly to be excited about seeing a movie about a rebellion. Peggi grew up outside of Detroit and remembers the curfew. Rochester had its own so called “riot” three summers earlier in 1964.
I really liked Kathryn Bigelow’s “Near Dark” and then she got all big budget. We had just seen Jacob Lawrence’s “Migration” series in New York and it was trivialized in her opening scenes. (One reviewer, apparently without knowing where the illustrations came from, called it a children’s book animation.)
The movie weaved a relevant storyline, for someone who came in from the cold, but considering how little things have changed in fifty years, Detroit’s retelling should have had a lot more meat on its bones. It was a big letdown for me.
Our First Friday gallery trot was short but sweet. A pop-up gallery in the North East Triangle, the area of the city that got trendy when we left, featured Mexican photographer, Citlali Fabian. She slowly leafed through her gorgeous, square format, black and white prints, all taken in her small home town outside Oaxaca. She told us a neighbor offered to shoo the dog away in the photo above but of course that would have ruined the entire composition.
Me and Bleu Cease in my studio preparing for the RoCo’s October Biennial
I had this date on my calendar for a long time. In fact I had a 3 page document on my iPad with notes for the meeting. But mostly I’ve been working on a batch of new drawings for this show – the subject of our meeting – the Rochester Biennial. MAG used to host the show with six upstate artists featured but they have given the concept and name to RoCo, Visual Studies Worksop and R Gallery. Each of those three places will feature two artists and RoCo picked one living and one dead, me and my father, Leo Dodd. On the surface the work is very different but the impulses are the same. The contrast is a quality.
I had just finished photographing twenty new drawings before our meeting. I had Duane’s light gear out, four Totas, and my tripod. I found the display on the back of my camera is easily twice as bright when its plugged in. It was so readable I kept finding that I would spot problems while viewing my drawings at that tiny scale. I know some people use a reducing lens for that.
Bleu, the gallery director, wants to show Leo’s Rochester paintings and he wants to show an overview of my ongoing “Models from Crime Page” project (Rochester faces). I showed him my Bug Jar Mugshots and he liked them so I’ll show ten of those. Bleu pulled these oil paintings out of a pile and chose a few triptychs as possibilities. I’m most excited about some new paintings that I’m working on.
The summer weather has been a little spotty. I’m not one to complain about the weather but I will agree to that.
We met some friends down at the pool and when the sun moved beyond the chaise lounges I called in a pizza. There is really only one real pizza joint and they don’t deliver. Matthew offered to drive and we headed down Culver. It’s such a nice ride I told him about my Culver Road video.
I told the women who made these doll dresses that I really liked them. I wasn’t familiar with the type of doll. My sister played with Barbies and Peggi still has her 2nd generation Barbie tucked away somewhere. The dolls above are almost actual size, on second thought, more like half size. The woman told us they are sold at some store I’ve never heard of but she said it like it was a really common store and she said they were reasonably priced. Peggi pointed to one of the dresses (not shown in the blow-up of this photo) and told the woman how much she liked it. I asked if she made clothes to human scale and she said, “People ask me that all the time but I don’t”
We had to move our car down the street tonight because our next door neighbor is having another house concert. One of those singer/song writer affairs. I get nervous in those sit-down, rapt attention situations so we usually skip them. But we did go to his first house concert about six years ago. It was Eric Taylor and Eric is back again tonight. So we might pop in somewhere after the break and check out a few songs.
We heard my new favorite band last night in the most unlikely setting. I already wrote about them when we last heard them in February so I’ll just copy paste that description here.
“Vocalist Debbie Kendrick has all the laid back confidence in the world and she backs that up with a voice that commands your attention in the most understated manner. The material is top-shelf gospel-tinged, soul and blues tunes like “John the Revelator.” She has the perfect band with Sean Pfeifer playing rythmic, percussive guitar. Bassist, Mike Patric, is as solid as a rock and drummer Pete Monacelli swings like crazy on one drum, a snare, that he massages with a pair of the most well seasoned, plastic brushes I have ever seen. This band in amazing.”
Marine Billboard near Record Archive in Rochester, New York
IMHO Jefferson Airplane peaked with “Crown of Creation” but they still had some magic when I saw them in the old football/then soccer stadium at Indiana University. My brother was in town, we had our drugs lined up and we sat on the lawn about a hundred feet from the stage. The draft lottery had not yet been instituted. We both had college deferments. Neither one of us were going to volunteer for Viet Nam duty.
Mountain opened with their cowbell thing. Loud as hell, so we had to clear out for a bit. The Airplane were touring with “Volunteers,” their followup to “Crown of Creation.” I heard Marty Balin was busted in his hotel room the night before so he didn’t perform. The sixties had turned its final corner. Nearly everything now had dark overtones. Which is what gave the seventies its edge.
Lions at entrance to subdivision Williamstown, Massachusetts
I recently advised my friend, John, to call Apple for advice on migrating from his old eMac to a new iMac. That recommendation was mostly for time-saving, selfish reasons but John has spent hours with his new friends at Apple and recently thanked us for the recommendation. He stopped by the other night to borrow an old operating system so he can reformat his old machine before putting it out to pasture and he wanted to bring a few things to our attention, things he had learned from hours spent in his “library.”
He had book-marked pages in the recent “Genius” issue of National Geographic and he read those passages aloud to us. “The aha moment, the flash of clarity that arises at unexpected times—in a dream, in the shower, on a walk—often emerges after a period of contemplation.” His experience in stewing over a problem has found this to be true. And, although I didn’t say anything, I have found the same. I’d spend hours knocking out logo designs under a deadline and then hop in the shower to have the winning entry reveal itself. So, us common folk can at least recognize the concept. There’s also an “Age and Achievement” graph in the issue that charts peak output of a dozen geniuses and makes it pretty clear that in most cases that point is around thirty or forty. But what about Philip Guston?
Next passage, read aloud, voice of John: “This may help explain the astounding performances of jazz pianist Keith Jarrett. Jarrett, who improvises concerts that last for as long as two hours. When he sits down in front of audiences, he purposefully pushes notes out of his mind, moving his hands to keys he had no intention of playing. ‘I’m bypassing the brain completely,’ he tells me. ‘I am being pulled by a force that I can only be thankful for.’ Jarrett specifically remembers one concert in Munich, where he felt as if he had disappeared into the high notes of the keyboard. His creative artistry, nurtured by decades of listening, learning, and practicing melodies, emerges when he is least in control. ‘It’s a vast space in which I trust there will be music,’ he says.”
Esperanza Spalding, a professor at Harvard University, where she teaches composition and performance, plans to record her next album in a 72 hour live stream. She tells students that in order to speak honestly in your own voice, you have to control the urge to plan everything out. “Only play in response to what you just played — and if you lose your focus, then only play in response to that. This helps them focus on a conversational flow, maintaining contact with the energy of the moment rather than wandering through some calculated narrative. They get in touch with what they already have going on. Which is a lot.”
“I foresee that creating before a live audience will add excitement and extra inspiration energy. Knowing someone is watching and listening to what you’re making seems to conjure up a sort of ‘can’t fail’ energy. The necessity to keep going because it’s live draws up another depth of creative facility that can’t be reached when you know you can try again tomorrow. Having such limited time to write and record 10 songs will also force us to rely on improvisation and first instinct. Not allowing us time to judge, second guess, question, or alter the initial hits of inspiration that drive the creation of each song.”
The Clark in Williamstown, just down the road from Mass MoCA, is a jewel of a museum. We spent the night nearby after touring Mass MoCA and we thought we’d visit the place before heading home. We weren’t prepared for how substantial the collection was or how beautiful the grounds and buildings are. What is this place doing in the middle of the Berkshire Mountains?
The featured exhibition here is “Picasso: Encounters,” thirty-five Picasso prints and three paintings, including the Clark’s rare impression of The Frugal Repast (1904) and Ecce Homo, after Rembrandt (1970), made just three years before his death.
One of the coolest pieces in their collection is up on a hill outside the museum buildings. You can get to Thomas Schütte’s “Crystal” by taking a path through the woods from the building that is currently housing Helen Frankenthaler’s beautiful large abstracts. Once inside the Crystal I starting thinking of Tommy James, not his real name, and this song.
Sol LeWitt would kick ass if one of his wall drawings was executed here. We set the alarm and took off early for the Berkshires. They happen pretty quickly after Troy so we had most of the day to wander around Mass MoCA. We walked through the Nick Cave installation and started our tour proper with nine of James Turrell’s pieces. Not really light art, as he says, but art about perception. We had reservations for a view of his “Perfectly Clear.” I could have stayed in there all day but we were only allowed nine minutes.
Sol LeWitt has three floors of wall drawings in one of the giant industrial buildings, buildings that used to house Arnold Print Works, a company that specialized in printing cloth. They supplied uniforms to the Union soldiers during the Civil War. You don’t just look at Sol Lewitt pieces. You digest the concept that led to its creation. We spent hours here but didn’t have time for it all.
We saved the last hour of the day for Anselm Kiefer, on view here through 2028. His monumental nautical paintings, “Velimir Khlebnikov,” take up a whole building and we were the only ones, other than the guard, in it. Like DIA Beacon this old industrial complex makes an ideal setting for viewing art. The experience will change you.
I should not be depressed at a birthday party. The room was crowded, a band playing and many people got up to perform. Some solo and at times there were six guitars on the stage. So what is my problem?
Let’s say you are in a position to go out to see a band. Maybe you would like to hear something creative, exciting, maybe something with an edge. What qualities do you look for? Maybe throw the dice and catch something wildly unexpected. If there was a room full of people and they were all around my age there would be a lot of water under the bridge. Just think where we came from with Motown and garage rock and straight up pop. Hendrix and psychedelia and jazz pushing frontiers. Punk offering a major correction. EDM for crying out loud.
Let’s say you play an instrument. What qualities would you be thinking about adding to this lexicon? Would you go out of your way to do a mediocre version of some roots, Americana thing?
My ears are still ringing from Saturday night’s Big Ditch/Nod double billing at the Firehouse Saloon. That’s a great place for rock n’ roll. Mostly an empty room with very few clunky chairs and a great sound system. Big Ditch was tight as a drum and Nod was loose as a goose, at one point stopping a song because something was out of whack. I hadn’t seen a band do that in years. In fact I thought that was one of the rules of rock & roll. You never stop a song. Anyway, I loved both bands.
The place is loud as hell. You can’t distinguish one word of the vocals. I’m thinking next time I’ll bring my Home Depot ear muffs and it will be perfect.
We have been spending an unhealthy amount of time following the antics of the US royal family. I’m getting tired of the mind-blowing. House of Cards is much better. We just wrapped up season 5. The show got off to a great start early on but got bogged down with complications in the the 3rd and 4th season. And I was really worried about the Trumpster upstaging season 5.
I’m happy to say he could not. The House of Cards players are better looking. They’re smarter. Trump is a pretty good actor but the HoC actors are much better and therefore much more engaging.
Figurines on counter at Captain Jim’s in Rochester, New York
I’m happy to report our old neighborhood is really coming up. Not that there is anywhere to go. Beechwood is mostly single family, four-square homes built in the early part of the last century. When we moved there in ’78 it even had its own post office on Culver near Main. We identified the triangle between Main, Merchants and Winton as affordable and stable and looked at only a handful of houses there before making an offer on Hall Street. Our realtor, my uncle, suggested we go in at $20,000, two thousand below the asking price, and they accepted it.
We stopped in Captain Jim’s on Friday and picked up a fish fry to go. That place is exactly the same. Jim’s mom still lurks in the dining room. I took this photo there. This Moby Dick-like drama was playing out on the counter while we waited for our order. Coincidentally, our neighbor on Hall Street looks just like one of these guys.
It only took forty years or so but there’s now many more restaurants, bars, a barbecue joint and a micro brewery. Of course, there were plenty of places to get a fish fry back then. This has always been Rochester. Club Soda, at the corner of Hall Street and Main, was called My Brother’s Place back then and they had a pretty good one. Carroll’s Irish bar had one. Fleckenstein’s Meat Market turned into a Greek fish store and people lined up for their fish fry and that was when Captain Jim’s opened.
He put the others right out of business. He runs a tight ship. His coleslaw is top notch and the secret with the fish is – you gotta eat it when it’s hot and after the first few bites you’re best off picking the fish out of the breading.
Kid jumping logs on bike at the end of our street in Rochester, New York
Are we really going to be going back down to New York for the fourth time before July is out? NYT had an article a couple of weeks ago about Alan Vega and his artwork. I really liked the portrait they pictured, one of his last paintings, and Invisible-Exports, a gallery on the Lower East Side, has a show on now of those portraits. The article mentioned that Jeffery Deitch will also have a show in his SoHo gallery “that will feature drawings and assemblages from Vega’s earliest days to his last, as well as a larger-than-life projection of Suicide in concert that, he promises, will make people “feel as if they’re there.”
I sent a link to the article to Duane and sure enough the live Suicide video is the footage that he and Howard Thompson shot in that same gallery (from a Suicide performance that took place in that same space if I am not mistaken.)
25 million posted “Dream Baby Dream” from the old Midnight Special show and it has crossed the one million views mark. Duane is, with approval from Vega’s wife, assembling the compilation video for Deitch. Let’s hope his footage is rendered in time for the opening.
We did get to see Suicide a few times and I know I’ve told this story before. But here goes. After their first album came out we drove down after work to hear them at Max’s on a Friday night. It was during the gas crunch and we were unable to find a gas station that was open. We finally ran out and spent the night in the car, parked in front of a gas tank in New Jersey. Let’s hope Trump doesn’t trigger something.
Chairs on back deck at Rocco’s in Rochester, New York
The dining room at Rocco was full when we arrived so we sat on the back deck in a light rain. We knew nothing about the wines on the list so we asked the server for a full-bodied, dry red. Mark, the owner and chef, stopped by the table and we asked how his father was doing. Rocco is named after our old dentist. We were told Rocco passed around Christmas.
I’d like to recommend:
Polpo Alla Griglia $12
grilled octopus, gigante beans, green sauce
Insalata Caesar Cardini $9
romaine, garlic-anchovy dressing, pecorino
Orange flowers with yellow centers at Bob and Liz’s mid-century modern place in Rochester, New York
I have been to Chicago a few times. Our soccer team at IU played Northwestern and one of the other forwards, a little guy, a foreign student like most of the team, took us all to a Turkish restaurant in the city. His name was Attila. We had a tiny cup of Turkish coffee.
And then Dave Mahoney and I hitchhiked up there from Bloomington. Can’t remember why we went up there but I remember staying at the Y downtown and getting chased by some guy after we got out of the shower. And I went up there with Steve Hoy in ’69 to hear the Stones. Peggi was at that show too but we weren’t together. Terry Reid and Chuck Berry opened.
Peggi and I went there together in 2001 to see the Van Gogh/Gaugin show at the Art Institute. It was weeks after 9/11 and there were rumors that the Sears Tower was next. We took the train and walked everywhere once we got there. It seemed very friendly.
Bob Martin left town today behind the wheel of a big U-Haul. He’s headed for Chicago where he bought a house. There is a magnet out there. His grandson. We stopped over to return a hard drive and say goodbye again. We will miss him in so many ways.
We played music together for thirty-five years. That’s how we met. That conversation will end. Bob is an expert on all things technical. Software, hardware, recording. We turned to him all the time for advice. He is a good friend. It is all kinda sad but I guess that is why they invented Facebook. Except I’m not gonna join in those political rants even if I agree with Bob. But I will miss Liz Valentine’s eloquent letters to the editor in our local paper.
We were headed up to Wegman’s on our bikes. We needed just about everything so I had three bags in my basket. There were garage sales on every side street and we turned down one that had a sign pointing to a “Monster Garage Sale.” I was kind of intrigued by this graphic poster but we moved along without buying anything.
Peggi had pointed out the book, “Blogging For Dummies,” and I’m wondering now what kind of advice it would have offered.
I think the hardest part is just doing it. Like meditation you have to stop what you’re doing and collect yourself for a few moments. To make that act more tolerable I just try to amuse myself by what I write. If I don’t have anything to say I just start typing and it is fun to see where it goes. For me, my photos are an aide. They get the ball rolling even if they have nothing to do with the content of my post. And often the photo is far more interesting than what I write. That’s ok with me. I get a sense of release when I hit “Publish” and then I get on with my day. It is ridiculously selfish.
Catalytic converter cover found on Wisner Road in Rochester, New York
We were out riding our bikes and Peggi spotted this catalytic-convertor cover on Wisner Road. I collected them for years but I don’t even see them anymore. Early spring before the city sweeps the streets is the best time to find them. And of course you need to be on your bike to even see them. They get run over until they are as flat as a pancake. I had this Road Mask piece in Tap and Mallet when they opened. No idea where it is today.
My camera card has been acting funny. I think I mentioned this a while back. Sometimes I can’t change the names of the jpegs on it unless I copy the files onto my hard drive. And sometimes I can’t drag the files I don’t want to the trash. I am not allowed.
This morning I put the card in my computer and things were working fine. I had five really nice photos on there and I was allowed to rename the ones I wanted to keep. There were three photos of clouds from yesterday, really dramatic looking cumulus clouds set against a dark black cloud with brilliant blue sky behind it all. We had just finished dinner with my sister at Vic’s Place and she was having a cigarette in the parking lot. I saved three of the cloud photos, real beauties. There was one of a tiny baby rabbit on the lawn in front of Writers and Books. And a shot from the forth floor stairwell leading up to Colleen Buzzard’s studio in the Anderson Building. I was looking at a row of turn-of-the-last-century buildings with saw-tooth rooftops which used to allow natural light in for the factory workers before electricity came along. That shot was just at dusk in low light.
It occurred to me that I was renaming the files on the card and my next thought was, “I wonder if I can drag them to the trash?” I could and I did and I dumped it.
Pig roasting on the beach July 4th at Durand Eastman Park in Rochester, New York
“A relaxed mind is a creative mind.” So my Yogi tea bag read tonight. I don’t know about that. When I’m relaxed I don’t seem to get anything done. But instead of dismissing this fortune I plan to take it for a spin.
I’ve been preparing for an art show and I’ve been pushing it. I’ve been preparing the coffee maker before we go to bed so all I have to do is push the button in the morning. I’m down there drawing before I am awake. And I stop only when I’m nearly exhausted. I’m going to start relaxing and I will report back.
