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Archive for October, 2010

Twistin’ the Night Away

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged on October 21, 2010| 2 Comments »

Sam Cooke

We were in the car the other day and I flipped on the radio.  It was on a goofy local channel that plays an odd hodgepodge of music–oldies, big band, 70’s pop and so on.  I flip it on periodically and call out a song beforehand to see if I can guess what might be on at that moment.  This started years ago when I was humming a tune and decided to turn on the radio and there was the same song playing.  So I keep trying to match that coincidence.  I get close sometimes but haven’t hit again.

Anyway, on this day Sam Cooke‘s Twisting the Night Away came on.  It’s one of those wakeup moments when something you haven’t thought of for a long time reappears .  At tha point  you realize how wonderful it was and wonder how it had slid from your attention over the years.  That’s how I felt after hearing this old Sam Cooke song. 

I always loved his voice and the smooth coolness of his music.  You Send Me.  Bring It on Home to Me.  Chain Gang.  Another Saturday Night. Wonderful World and more.  Growing up, we had a copy of his version of Frankie and Johnnie that I played over and over, trying to catch all the little nuances in his voice as the song’s tempo and emotion built.  It remains my favorite version of that song.

But over the years, many of songs are well remembered but his presence has faded, probably due to fact of his early death at age 33 in 1964 in a bizarre  shooting in an L.A. motel.  One of his greatest songs, A Change is Gonna Come, was released after his death and what other great music may have emerged from him will always be merely but a question. 

Here’s a great piece of film of him from the Jerry Lewis Show in 1963.  I love the opening of the show with the emcee annoucing the guests.  Senor Wences (if you’re old enough, you’ll laugh at the mere mention of the name), the Marquis Chimps and a special appearance by Cassius Clay.  Now, that is a variety show of the sort you will not see today.  But Sam Cooke was  terrific, as he always was and will always be.

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Product of the Past

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged on October 20, 2010| 3 Comments »

This is a new painting, just finished yesterday.  It’s an 18″ by 18″ canvas that is a very simple tonal composition, letting the atmosphere created between the sky and the burnt orange field that runs to the horizon create the impact of the painting.  It has a very clear air about it that gives it the sense of being a very distinct moment in time.

It has a bittersweet feel, at least in the way I see it.  The openness of the landscape and the stream that runs to a far horizon indicates a hopeful, forward looking quality.  Optimistic.   But the colors in the sky and the field have tinges of darkness that hint at an underlying deeper and less optimistic quality.  Perhaps the shaded thinking that comes with experience.

The tree itself, for me, has the hallmarks of these same traits.  It is bright and upward moving yet it is bent and twisted from factors that have influenced its growth over its life on that little mound next to a small stream.  The hardships of its past are written in its appearance.  Yet  it remains upward moving, pulled toward light. 

From the last brushstroke that touched the canvas, this is how I saw this piece– as a product of its past, determined by how it weathered its experience. 

It is bent.  It is twisted.  Yet it stands tall and hopeful, open to a new day.

Well, that’s how I see it.  Maybe its just a twisty tree on an orange mound.

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On the Cover of the Rolling Stone

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Neat Stuff, tagged on October 19, 2010| 2 Comments »

Last week, I picked up Rolling Stone: Cover to Cover, a set that includes a book on the history of the magazine and a digital archive that includes every issue from 1967-2007.  When it arrived I installed the viewer on my computer and within a few minutes was knee deep in an issue from the 70’s. 

I haven’t read Rolling Stone for many, many years now except for the random article or interview that I pick up online.  It’s just a little too slick and polished now, at least in my perception.  But looking back at these old issues brought back what I saw in the magazine as a young man.  The issue I was viewing was from 1971 and has the frantic, ink splattered drawings of Ralph Steadman illustrating a serialization of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a book that I used to read every year or so with great glee.  If you’ve read the book, you know how perfectly the drawings mesh with the story.

 Leafing through on the computer screen, I could almost feel the rough newsprint of the paper. 

Inside, it came back immediately.  The ads for Marantz tuners and Ovation guitars.  The classifieds at the end of the magazine with multiple ads for rolling papers of all sorts.  Ads hailing new albums from bands long gone and sometimes barely remembered.  An ad offering any 2 Rolling Stone albums free with a subscription to the magazine.   It was like dropping back into a time, as from a time machine of sorts. 

Dr. Hook Finally on the Cover of the Rolling Stone

But the thing that struck me most was the amount of print on the pages.  It was jammed with page after page of print.  Oh, there were ads and pictures.  But it was primarily the written word.  I had forgotten how long their articles were then, how the interviews sometimes went on for 12 or more pages and were truly in depth. It was wonderful to see all those words and sentences and paragraphs. 

 It made me wish I still had an attention span.

Perhaps in the dead of this winter, when the snow is piled up and I feel like idling away a few hours, I will be able to muster up a remnant of my existing attention span and read more of those pages.  But for now, I just jump in here and there when I have a minute and browse, taking in the artifacts of our culture and my youth. 

And hum along to Dr. Hook’s refrain that’s playing in my head—-Gonna get my picture on the cover, gonna buy five copies for my mother…

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Solitary Confines

Posted in Biographical, Quote on October 18, 2010| 4 Comments »

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

—-Francis Bacon, Sr,

******************

Monday morning and I’m here in the studio, wondering why I continue to do this blog, to get up each day and struggle to say something new.   In some ways  it comes between me and the precious solitude I have set up for myself here.  It brings in the outside world and exposes my weaknesses and flaws to them.  It frustrates me at times.  It takes away time better spent. 

At least, I think the time might be better spent.

But I do it. 

From the first few days of doing this, I viewed it as a form of art.  I would try to be consistent, try to keep to a certain standard that I felt inside, just as I do with my painting.  I would just put it out there so that the world, if interested, could see it and react. Like painting.

But it is different from painting.  It takes from my solitude whereas my painting adds to it, and that is a big factor for me.  I understand the quote above.  I have often felt the wild beast, the feral dog that exists just outside the human world, sometimes venturing in when the need arises but always retreating to my solitary confines.  A beast, not a god.

And I’m comfortable with that.

But sometimes, some days, there are moments when I feeel that this very act of writing this blog takes away my cover, my solitary den.  Today is such a day.  But I will retreat and hover for a while on the periphery and come back again tomorrow.

Maybe.

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Rally Tidbits and Media Fetish

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, tagged on October 17, 2010| 4 Comments »

Some interesting things on the upcoming Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Keep Fear Alive, taking place October 30 on the Mall in Washington, DC have been coming up lately.

Over 200,000 people have signed on as attendees on the Rally’s Facebook page.  The Huffington Post has agreed to provide free transportation to and from the rally from NYC and already has over 10,000 riders signed on.  Many news organizations– NPR, the Washington Post, the NY Times, ABC, CBS and others- have forbade their employees from attending, citing this as a political rally of the Glenn Beck/Tea Party sort. 

I suppose this restriction is customary for political rallies athough I am not sure this qualifies as a completely partisan gathering.  The very idea behind this rally is to put aside partisanship and get the wider population reengaged in the political system so that the more extreme and vocal fringe groups don’t dictate our national conversation. 

 Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post has a good article on these restrictions and how the media will cover the rally.  In it he talks about how the media is almost proud of the way in which they “fetishize the stupidity” of these most extreme groups, giving them coverage without ever questioning their content.  When was the last time you ever heard a news reporter ask a probing question (and is so, get an answer) of one of these candidates who make grand statements about how they would change Washington but only offer vague references as to how they would accomplish it?

That term. fetishize the stupidity, has stuck with me over the last couple of days.  It says so much about how we have come to value the  absurd rather than the sane, about how we are all more attracted to the side show than the mundane.  Unfortunately, solutions are usually of the mundane variety, requiring work and sacrifice and a unity of will.  And until the media realizes that, they will always fetishize the stupid, wallow in ignorance and make arbitrary restrictions on their employees, fearful that they might find some sanity.

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Bits and Pieces

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged on October 16, 2010| 4 Comments »

It’s Saturday morning and I’m a bit tired and still a little wired from the Yankees’ comeback win last night so I think I’ll just put up a song so I can get to work. 

 I came across a nice video of The Dave Clark Five and was reminded of their impressive string of hits in the mid-1960’s.  Bits and Pieces,  Glad All Over,  Catch Us If You Can, I Like It Like That and several more.  They were always put up as rivals to the early Beatles, being the second of the British Invasion bands to play Ed Sullivan.   Fan magazines always pitted them against one another on their covers.  To me, they were always a bit too squeaky clean and fratboy-like when compared to the other British  bands suchs as the Beatles or the Stones or the Kinks but they had a great sound for their time and occupy a distinct moment in evolution of pop music. 

DC5, as they were called, never really evolved beyond their initial burst and disbanded in 1970 and so, like a movie star that dies young, they are preserved in the pop culture collective memory as they were in their matching outfits and well-coiffed hair.  But they had  a great sound and catchy tunes. They remain a guilty pleasure for me.

I remember the above album cover well. My sister had this record and it was well played in our house.  I have her copy now and it shows the wear of kids holding and looking at it as the songs played on the hi-fi.  A bit worn like memory.

Here’s Bits and Pieces.  Have a great Saturday.

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Wow!

Posted in Favorite Things, Neat Stuff, tagged , , on October 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I went to an opening last night at the West End Gallery for a memorial exhibition of paintings by the late Tom Buechner and an accompanying display of work by the many, many artists who painted with or studied under him.  It was a great show and was heavily attended.  A fitting tribute to Buechner, whose influence in this area has been immense.

At the opening a friend, Brian Hart, who is a great talent of a painter, told me I should stop over to a local arts center, 171 Cedar Arts, to see an exhibit by artist Dave Higgins.  It was a show of illustrated pages and Brian said it was incredible.  After a short while at the West End, Cheri and I snuck out and headed over to 171.

I have mentioned Dave Higgins before in this blog in a post about his Yellow House painting, which he has painted over a hundred times.  He is incredibly talented and creative with a slightly skewed sense of the world that often shows through in his work. We share a love of goofy pop culture, such as Hee Haw .

 I remember sitting in for the owners of the West End many years ago and selling one of his paintings to an older couple .  It was a dark night scene of the city of Corning as seen from a neighboring hilltop.  In the sky above the city was the perfectly rendered head of a red demon with tongue extended.  It could have been awful in the wrong hands but in Dave’s care it became a wonderful painting, with beautiful color and feel. The couple that bought it were an elderly couple who were just swept away by the piece.

This show, David Higgins: My Book 1987-2010, features pages much like the one shown above from the show’s postcard.  Dave started doing at least one of these pages per month back in 1987 and over the years has amassed a treasure trove of these pages.  They are remarkable.  Each page is so different from the next and each shows multiple styles and influences that boggle the mind of someone like me.  Some are purely in black and white while others have rich color.  There are little stories and narratives on some pages and wonderful wordplay throughout.  One of my favorites was a page with the headding that read “Lester, Said Hester, Let’s Pester Sylvester“.   There are references to pop culture and literature, with much of the work influenced by one of three things– children’s books, the Head Comics of the 1960’s and 70’s and the Beauty Books of early 1900’s, which were produced to illustrate the quality of a publisher’s printing process.

I came out of there in complete awe of his creativity and talent.  It is always daunting to look upon a grand expression of talent obsessed.  I wish I had more sheets to show because I know my words lack the impact of the work itself.  If you’re in Corning before the show ends on Novemebr 12, do yourself a favor and stop in at 171 Cedar Arts.  I’m hoping that Dave publishes these as a group soon so that the rest of the world can discover this work that we are so fortunate to experience.

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Calming Presence

Posted in Opinion, Recent Paintings on October 14, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I was going to write about the Delaware Senatorial debate that took place last night but I decided I needed something that would sooth rather than inflame myself  this morning.  I’m sorry to say that I did watch part of the awful spectacle between Christine O’Donnell (still not a witch at this point although the day is young) and Chris Coons but had to switch channels after about  a half-hour in.  My head was on the verge of exploding.

The idea that this person, this media darling, this spewer of factless platitudes,  could possibly be a United States Senator was too much to bear.  This is the best we can put forth?  Really? If so, we are in for a world of hurt.

So, instead I will focus on another recently completed tryptych, something that calms.  It’s on paper and consists of three small squares, each measuring 3″ by 3″.  It had a very gem-like quality with the interplay between the colors in the foreground and the clearand transparent greenish color that makes the sky glow.  It has a very peaceful feel, as though the central tree is exerting a calming presence over the houses that are scattered about it.  In fact, I just decided this moment that Calming Presence will be the title of this painting.

I like the symetry of the balanced tryptych and the colors here enhance and carry that  balance across the entire piece.  There is real brightness and clarity in this piece that brings whatever it is truly saying into sharp and immediate focus.  It says what it says quickly and easily. 

I can’t fully explain what I mean by that but I know that I like it.

Anyway, with this painting I have something that is truly a calming presence for me.  Not like the prospect of some of our candidates in the upcoming elections.

Vote.

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Good News

Posted in Current Events, tagged on October 13, 2010| 3 Comments »

It has been interesting in watching the coverage of the rescue of the Chilean miners, the first emerging from the ground in a tube-like capsule reminiscent of some early NASA  experiment to test the ability of astronauts to withstand claustrophobia.  At this point, 9 miners have made it to the top and it appears that it will take the better part of today, perhaps into tomorrow, before the last men are brought to the surface.

It’s nice to finally have a story dominating our 24 hour news cycle that is, at this point, good news.  It’s refreshing to feel good after watching a story  being covered to the nth degree, having every possible aspect examined until the viewer just stops hearing words and focuses on the images before them.  I’m just glad that everyone is focused on a story of rescue and the coming together of people rather than watching stories  with morbid curiosity about the personal horror stories of others.  This is a story that is about the better parts of us.

Probably the biggest danger for the miners who have made it to the surface thus far is having to deal with the clamor over this whole thing without the comfort of their mining companions.  After hearing psychologists speaking about the mental challenges that face these men once they are freed  then seeing how well these fellows have survived thus far, I found myself believing that these guys were going to be fine after this because of the camaraderie they experienced with one another.  I have a feeling that it will be tougher going for them out of the mines. 

 Together, they were a group that came together to survive an ordeal unlike anything  else.  Above ground, they will be without that support system for the most part.  I will be interested in seeing how many of them return to the mines and how quickly.  My bet is that many will be down below again sooner than one might think.

But it is good news.  It’s good to see a celebration of joy for once.  Let’s relish this until the next horror story takes over the newscycle.

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Disparity

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, Quote, tagged on October 12, 2010| 2 Comments »

In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.
——Henry Miller

*****************

       I have written here in the past about the growing imbalance in income and wealth between the haves and the have-nots of this country, about how unhealthy it is for us as a nation to have so many people living below the poverty line.  One in seven, a little over 14%,  of us lives below the poverty line and for children it’s an even worse one in five, 20%.  For a country so full of itself in proclaiming ourselves the best at everything  (even when the numbers don’t bear it out) these are atrocious figures.

But I thought of an equally alarming disparity in our country, and the world,  when I came across the quote above from author Henry Miller.  We have a definite gap in education and knowledge in this country that runs pretty much through the same groups as the poverty line.   We are quickly becoming a more ignorant society, placing less and less emphasis on knowledge and wisdom.  In fact, we have become a country that is suspicious of anyone displaying a modicum of either, labeling them as elitists.

 We are at a point in human existence when we have more knowledge at our fingertips than at any time in prior history yet we have all the same problems that we have had for millenia.

Ethnic wars.  Racial intolerance.  Religious intolerance.  Subjugation.  Ignorance and poverty.  Famine and disease.

For all our knowledge of how we might best survive this world, these things continue and at exponentially higher levels.  Yes, we live in a time of wonder on many levels, with breakthroughs in medicine and technology.  But until we can make our knowledge accessible to everyone, at every social strata, we are doomed to be mired in the problems that have haunted us forever.

Do I have an answer?  Of course not.  In fact, I’m not even sure I’ve addressed the real problem with these few words.   But I am worried about these gaps between us.  In an increasingly more densely populated world, it makes for a volatile and dangerous situation.

 And that is not in anyone’s best interest.

 

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