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Archive for February, 2010

Finding Home– A Short Film

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, Video, tagged , , , on February 8, 2010| 6 Comments »

This is a short film that I put together one day last week.  It was a little project that I took on at the request of my friends at Lovetts Gallery in Tulsa, OK.  They, like many galleries around the country, have taken a hard look at how they interact with their clients and are making a real effort to provide more information about the artists they represent in their gallery.  To this end they are putting together a multimedia website that will give their clients a better look at the work and thoughts of their artists.

They asked that I provide them with some film of me working in the studio with some dialogue.  It was pretty difficult deciding what I wanted to say in the film.  I wanted to give an idea of what I see in my work and to tell a little of how I came to painting but I didn’t want to say too much.  Wanted the paintings to be the focus.

As I was putting it together and I was inserting narration a theme came around.  About the idea of finding one’s home.  It’s a concept that I’ve been seeing a lot in my work as of late and one that I think can be applied to most of the work through the years.  I think it fits.

The music is from the great acoustic guitarist Martin Simpson, a longtime favorite.  I had the chance to take lessons from him many years ago when he resided in Ithaca for a while, after coming to the States from England.  Carried the little classified ad from the Ithaca Times around in my wallet for the longest time but, like so many things in life, never got around to doing it.  I’m not big on regrets but I do wish I’d taken that opportunity.

Anyway, this is the film that I came up with.  I hope it works in some way…

To see the film in higher quality please click here to go the YouTube page.

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The New Face of Evil?

Posted in Biographical, Current Events, Opinion, tagged on February 7, 2010| 2 Comments »

This is Alexa Gonzalez.

She’s 12 years old and attends junior high school in Queens, NY.

She loves her friends, Abby and Faith.

Probably knows every show on the Disney Channel.

You probably wouldn’t guess that she’s a menace to society.  A threat to the very fabric of our civilization.

You see, this past week Alexa was arrested and taken from her school in handcuffs by police.

Drugs, you ask? Bullying?  One of those horrible videotaped girlfights?  Did she stab a teacher?

Worse.

She wrote on her desk.

Terrible things.

I love my friends Abby and Faith and worst of all, Lex was here 2/1/2010.

Then she punctuated the whole bit of obscenity with a lewd symbol– a smiley face.

Omigod!  Monster!

You know, when I heard this the first thing that came to mind is that I would be in prison today for almost anything I did  on a regular basis from the ages of 12 to 16.  Talking during class.  Running in the hallways.  Yelling during lunch.

Actually, I probably should have been in prison for some of the things I did that I won’t mention here but I’m trying to illustrate a point here.

Kids are still kids.  Kids will do goofy, rebellious things.  Our job is not to go insane, not to overreact.

I used to write little stories with illustrations on the tables of a study room a group of friends and I occupied during lunch hours at my school.  They were goofy tall tales of a character I called General Billy Bob Buckles. Not great stuff but they filled the time and satisfied a creative outlet.  Not obscene, although they were far more inflammatory than I love my friends.

But in the end, they were saying the same thing.  Like Lexa was here, I was saying I was here.  It’s that eternal need to be heard, especially when you’re a 12 year old child in a world where you often feel powerless and voiceless.

Now I knew at that time that if I had been caught by someone in authority  (particularly our principal who was very much irked by these stories and whose ire only served to make me want to write even more on the desks)  that I would have been in for trouble.  But the thought that I could have been hauled from the school in cuffs would have seemed ludicrous, beyond belief.  It would have seemed, even to a kid with limited life experience, to have been way out of scale for the crime, especially when so many far worse  crimes were occurring within walking distance.

It seems we have lost scale for we react to many things, this incident just being a highlight.  It feels as though we are teaching these children to be reactionary, to not step back and take measure with a calmer eye and common sense.

And where this lesson leads is far worse than a 12 year old girl writing I love my friends.

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Rockin’ Billy

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, Neat Stuff, tagged , , on February 6, 2010| 1 Comment »

I went to the Little Gems opening last night at the West End Gallery.  It was a really great crowd and I was able to see a lot of people I don’t get to see but a time or two a year.  A lot of good conversation.

One friend, guitarist Bill Groome, reminded me of a piece that I had given him back in 1999.  It was a little piece I had done years before that, before I ever thought of showing or selling my work.  It was done with crayons and was of a guitar player dancing to his own playing.  I called it Rockin’ Billy after rockabilly guitarist Billy Lee Riley, who distinctive, edge-of-wild studio playing rocked most of the early rockabilly recordings at Sun Records, including his own hits Red Hot ( …my gal is red hot, your gal ain’t doodley-squat…) and Flying Saucers Rock and Roll.   There was just something about the player in this little piece that felt liked he was moved by the spirit of that early music.

I didn’t have any images of the piece but when I got into the studio this morning, I found that Bill had emailed me a scan of Rockin’ Billy.   Thanks, Bill.  Even though it’s rough edged and maybe not a virtuoso piece in itself, I still really like this little guy a lot.  I can still hear Billy Lee’s guitar echoing in my memory…

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While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Posted in Favorite Things, Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , , on February 5, 2010| 1 Comment »

It’s Friday.  Time for a little respite from the week.

Here’s a great version of George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps performed by ukelele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro, a performer who has stretched the perception of what a uke can be.  Beautiful playing…

Enjoy your Friday and if you’re in the Corning area tonight, stop in at the opening for the Little Gems exhibit at the West End Gallery.  It’s always a lively crowd and there’s something for everyone in this show.

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Last Whistle

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, tagged , , on February 4, 2010| 10 Comments »

Yesterday, I received this photo in an e-mail from my friend, Bill Boland.  It’s a picture he snapped at 8 AM on Tuesday morning of the the steam whistle blowing for the last time at the south side location of the old Corning Glass Works plant in Corning, NY.  For over a hundred years, this whistle has bellowed out over this small city eight times a day, signaling the workers to the different times in the work day.  It was a sound that was part of the background of your life if you lived in any of the many factory towns throughout this country.

Corning has very much been a company town for the last century, and as Corning Glass Works grew so did the local workforce.  But the company, like any big company, evolved.  Corning Glass Works became Corning Inc and  they became part of the global community of high tech firms, opening plants and offices all over the world.

But with this change came the end of most of the local manufacturing, most of it moved to foreign shores.  Gone were many of the blue-collar jobs that supported the community for a century.  It’s a familiar story throughout the country.  The local company that anchors a community becomes larger and eventually finds greener pastures for their factories overseas or across borders, leaving behind a large portion of the locals to scramble  to find new jobs in this new global economy.

To be fair, Corning Inc  still dominates Corning  and has worked hard to uphold its paternal responsibility in the area.  It is still the largest employer in the area and still is responsible for much of the business that flows through all other local businesses.  It invests a  lot of effort in supporting this area and in keeping Corning a vibrant little city that is a fitting home for the headquarters of a global corporation.

But there’s something bittersweet in the last blast of this whistle that has sounded its shrill call over this city for over a century.  It has the feel of a symbolic end to an era that many people in this country remember with fond nostalgia,  especially those who are struggling to find a way to survive and prosper in a new globalized economy.

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Compromise?

Posted in Favorite Things, Painting, Technique/History, tagged on February 3, 2010| 2 Comments »

I came across this painting from seven or eight years back,  an 18″ by 26″ piece titled Call of Freedom.  It was quite a different look for my work at the time with its simple design of two two blocks of colors playing off one another.  It may not visible in this photo of the piece, but there was a hint of purple through the bottom block of color that really enhanced the piece for me.

The tree was put in at the last moment.  After I had completed the two blocks, I sat this aside for quite awhile, looking at it in the studio, trying to determine if it held together just as it was.  Was there enough there — color, texture, contrast– to hold my interest, to make me want to continue looking.

This was a tough one for me.  It met all my criteria.  It held my eye.  Had meaning for me.  But I still wasn’t sure it would hold for others.  So I hesitatingly put the tree in place, almost as a compromise.

The tree changed the dynamic somewhat, brought everything closer, but it still allowed the blocks to dominate.  To tell their part of story, so to speak.  It worked without altering my first impression of what I saw in the piece and created an “in” into the painting for others.

This might be considered a compromise.  I don’t know.  For me, it’s about coming across that space between the painting and the viewer and connecting in some way, communicating something I might not be able to define.  So long as it doesn’t alter the feeling or the message I get from the painting, it’s not a compromise but an opportunity for more engagement.  As a result, I often think of this piece as where I want my work to be in the long run.

Is it compromise?  I don’t know.  I don’t care.

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Becoming Van Gogh

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, tagged , on February 2, 2010| 6 Comments »

I’m battling a cold and don’t feel like I have much to share today but I did want to show this piece, Flower Beds, from Vincent Van Gogh.  It’s not one of his better known iconic pieces but whenever I come across it, it makes me stop and look.  It’s from early in his career and is painted in a more impressionistic fashion than his later, more signature works with their bold strokes of vivid color.  This piece seems to be a bridge between his influences and the style that he later adopted as his own, going from the darkness of the past as represented by the cottages to the new, colorful strokes that are the flower beds.

I like seeing that transition, almost can feel how Van Gogh was taking on his own voice at that time.  Seeing things with his own eyes for the first time.  Becoming the Van Gogh we know now.

I don’t know why I mention this piece today.  I was thinking that I don’t often mention Van Gogh as an influence even though I consider him a large one.  I think I try to avoid invoking his name simply because I hear so many painters list him as their primary influence and seldom see the energy or passion in their work.  His work had an incredible accessibility and drew such an  immediate  basal  reaction  that it makes him an easy, romantic choice as an influence for many.  I guess it’s a fear that if I come out and say it, that I’ll be lumped in with the posers when I would rather just have my work speak for itself, away from any comparison.

As it should be.

But how do you not like the guy’s work, not feel inspired by his need to constantly move forward in his desire to express the rhythm and feeling of the world around him?  How can a painter not want to capture the essence of his singular voice?

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Monday/ Rave On

Posted in Opinion, Video, tagged , on February 1, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Monday morning.

I guess I’m lucky in that Monday morning has no special significance for me.   It’s not the start of my work week since my work week never really ends- or starts, for that matter.  It doesn’t harken the reminder of having to be somewhere that I’d rather not be.

It just is.

Just another day.  Another chance, another opportunity to rise and do what I do.

An endless continuum of being and doing.

That’s one of the charms and curses of doing what I do, this lack of a defined barrier between what is and isn’t work.  For some, it could be an awful thing to be constantly trapped in your own world of work.  I understand that and there are days when the last thing I want to think about is my work.  But, fortunately,  those days are few and far between.

For the most part, I am happy to live an endless work week, rising early to rub paint on canvas and board.  To solitarily try to capture something I can’t quite see or describe.  To go to sleep with the rhythm of an image in my head and to wake, eager to try to find it once more in the new light.

So, it’s Monday, somewhere in my work week.

In the spirit of today, here’s a neat version of Buddy Holly‘s Rave On from M. Ward.  Enjoy your day…

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