Tag: Kevin Patrick

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Less Is Still More

Street kids sketches by Paul Dodd, oil on craft paper

Painting never gets any easier. Make that a big PERIOD at the end of that last sentence. Developments, realizations and even breakthroughs only open the door to a new set of problems. Last night I sat down in front a Crime Face painting that I recently considered done. It still had a problem with it and I tried a few things that only made the problem more obvious so I sat back down and thought, “Do I really enjoy the struggle?”

Without answering that question I carried on and found a familiar solution. White paint! I painted out the problem. Gone. It’s a funny thing how often the “less is more” method works in art or music. It can’t be any sort of modernist concept because it is too sturdy. And it only intensifies the remaining interactions or dialog.

I started a new painting project with some street kids from a local shelter. I took photos of them so my source material is considerably better than the tiny mugshots from the Crimestoppers page of the newspaper. I’m hoping to involve the kids with the whole project somehow but I haven’t figured out the details. I did these sketches the other night and may try some more tonight.

Duane Sherwood is guest posting to Kevin Patrick’s “Juke Box in the Sky” site and that can only mean vintage Jamaican music like this gem from Prince Buster.

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“Don’t Compromise Honey. That’s All You Got.”

Janis Joplin with Big Brother & the Holding Company at the Syracuse War Memorial in 1968. Photo by Kevin Patrick
Janis Joplin with Big Brother & the Holding Company at the Syracuse War Memorial in 1968. Photo by Kevin Patrick
Janis Joplin Syracuse War Memorial in 1968. Photo by Kevin Patrick
Janis Joplin at the Syracuse War Memorial in 1968. Photo by Kevin Patrick

Janis Joplin with Big Brother & The Holding Company at the Syracuse War Memorial in1968. Photo by Kevin Patrick. Click photo for another shot.

That quote is from the opening scene of  “Love Janis” at the Downstairs Cabaret. All the lines in the play are from Janis Joplin’s own words, her letters and interviews, and it takes two actresses to deliver them, sometimes at the same time. This works well because just as you’re not buying one, the other takes over. The band members tour as Big Brother now so the show rocked. First play I’ve been to where they pass out ear plugs.

Coincidentally Kevin Patrick primed the pump for us with his recent entry with these sensational photos of Janis.

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Zabadak

Big fallen tree in the woods by our house
Big fallen tree in the woods by our house

Rick Simpson came to our door to tell us that a big tree had fallen across our our path in the woods behind his house. We had to run right down there to check it out. You can only get a sense of how big this tree is by clicking the photo and spotting Peggi in the lower right hand corner. We had sixty mile an hour winds yesterday and there must have been some sort of micro burst in this one spot because four trees came down in a row.

We got a panicked call from Kevin Patrick on Christmas day about the audio player misbehaving on his blog. I had recommended the One Pixel Out player but it wasn’t set up right so he gave us access and we duked it out. I’m so glad we were able to help because I love this site and I love “Zabadak” by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. We didn’t hear this tree fall in the woods but I’m quite sure it went “Zabadak”.

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Sleeping With The TV On

We’ve had an ongoing short in the power supply for our old laptop and I wasn’t able to turn it on for the last two days so I took it to MacInTak on Clinton Avenue. They’re right across the street from the India House store in the same location where my grandfather had his grocery store. MacInTak is at the other end of the spectrum from the shiny Apple Store. They have about as many computers on display as the Apple Store does but in this case they are all vintage. Everything from the “toilet seat” G3 laptops to the G4 “Cube”, “bubble” I-Macs, G5 towers and every generation of I-Books. This place is family run just like my grandfather’s store was. But my grandfather never had a picture of Emperor Haile Selassie on the wall.

We sent “Blow Up” back to NetFlix today. Peggi and I had both seen it a long time ago but neither of remembered what it was all about. Now I know that’s because it was not about much and the characters are barely sympathetic but it was beautiful to look at. Someone took extra care in picking every shot in the movie with extraordinary attention to color and composition. It was a sensational mix of of old world Europe and swinging, mod London. Would that have been the director, Michelangelo Antonioni, or was there a cinematographer on the job? I’d like to thank that guy.

I feel asleep at some point and I was dreaming about the listening booths in the record store where Guy’s wife worked in Hitchcock’s “Strangers On A Train”. We saw that movie a few days ago. They had booths like that at Jay’s Record Ranch on Clinton Avenue in the sixties where you could check out the singles before plopping down your cash. The movie was still playing when I woke and the Yardbirds with a young Eric Clapton were playing at a party. I thought I was in Kevin Patrick’s blog where I had spent some time earlier in the day. I felt like I had just clicked on one of his mp3s and was now immersed in a whole new scene.

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