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Archive for June, 2011

Goodbye, Big Man

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on June 20, 2011| 2 Comments »

Clarence Clemons passed away this weekend after recently suffering a stroke.  He was 69 years old.  His name might not be a household one but to fans of Bruce Springsteen he truly lived up to his moniker, the Big Man.  He played saxophone for Springsteen’s E Streeters since the the very beginning back in the early 70’s.  He was Springsteen’s dancing partner on stage and his tenor sax’s wail defined the band’s sound through the earliest years including the classic 1975 album, Born to Run.  His solo on that album’s Jungleland is revered among fans.

Good bye, Big Man.  You will be missed.

Here’s a fave from long ago that features the Big Man at the forefront of a live version of an early Springsteen song, Paradise by the C.  That’s how I will remember the Big Man.

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Father’s Day

Posted in Uncategorized on June 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

 

My father carries around the picture of the kid who came with his wallet.

***

I remember the time I was kidnapped and they sent a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof.

–Rodney Dangerfield

The Father’s Day cards I saw this year were awful, nothing but pull-my-finger jokes and blubbering sentimentality.  So I thought that free beer and a Rodney Dangerfield line would fit the bill for my dad better than anything I saw.

Anyway, Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

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Keeping the Boogie Alive

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 18, 2011| 4 Comments »

In my post yesterday I wrote of a small painting with a scenario where boogie woogie music transforms the life of a WWII German soldier.  I had a piece at the end by boogie woogie pianist Albert Ammons that showcased  the style.  But afterward I wondered about the legacy of that musical style, this boogie woogie, and had to do some research.  After doing a little digging, I was going to write about the irony that  the boogie woogie sound is largely kept alive by Europeans now with people such as Axel Zwingenberger and Silvan Zingg, a  pianist known as the Ambassador of Boogie Woogie  who hosts a boogie woogie festival in his native Switzerland each year.

But in doing my search I came across a name that was my first real intro to boogie woogie many years back.  It was George Frayne, who is better known as Commander Cody of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen fame who emerged in 1971 with the hit Hot Rod Lincoln.  Their first album, Lost in the Ozone, was classic that mixed country and rock and the counter-culture of the time into a meaty syew that was sometimes funny and always enagaging.  It had songs with titles like Down to Seeds and Stems Again and Wine Do Yer Stuff, all great numbers, but my favorite was and is their cover of the Andrews Sisters’ Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar.  I have been singing along to it for nearly forty years now and still gett revved up by Frayne’s rumbling left hand on the keyboard every time.

Unfortunately, the band’s followup albums never reached the promise of  Lost in the Ozone.  But the Commander has always been entertaining throughout the years and that’s enough.

Frayne is an interesting guy.  Despite his somewhat haggard appearance through the years, he is a pretty accomplished painter, having graduated as an art major from the Univ. of Michigan.  He has a real distinct style, often painting musical legends  such as the portrait of Billie Holliday shown here.  He shows some of his work on sites that art painted by rock stars but his best work is much better than that.

Anyway, he was one of the keepers of boogie woogie’s flame and my first introduction to the swinging sound.  Here’s his Beat Me Daddy:

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Guenther Hears the Boogaloo Softly

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Video, tagged on June 17, 2011| 3 Comments »

I came across this little piece that I had painted long ago, before I ever showed my work to anyone.  It’s a small little thing, barely 2″ by 3″ in size, but it’s a painting that I consider one of my favorites.  It’s not because of anything in the painting itself, although I do like the way it works visually.  Actually, it’s because I see an entire narrative in this piece and it always comes back as soon as I see it, even after many years.

I call this Guenther Hears the Boogaloo Softly.  The story I see here is a German soldier on patrol in the second World War, in a wintry forest,  perhaps in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge.  He is separated from his group and as he is alone in the forest he suddenly hears a sound from deep in the woods, echoing softly through the frozen trees.  It is a piano and it is like nothing he has heard before.  It has a loping bassline that churns and pops and over it is a tap dance of notes that bounce and roll on the rhythm.  It’s American boogie woogie.  Somewhere unseen in the forest a piano is rolling out boogie woogie.

Guenther is transfixed and holds his breath to better hear the music that enchants him. A siren’s song.  He loses all thought of his mission and his duty.  He is engrossed by the music. 

I don’t go any further with this scenario in my mind.  There are obvious directions the story could take.  Guenther might allow the music to transfix him to the point he doesn’t hear the American patrol coming upon him.  Or he might throw down his weapon and flee.  But most likely, he would return to his patrol and  if he were lucky enough to survive the war, the memory of that music would haunt him for years, sending him on a search to recapture the sound of that moment in the forest.

I see it simply as a being about the transformative power of music and art, about how they unify humans despite our differences.  When we hear or see something, we don’t do so as a German or an American, as a democrat or a republican, as a Christian or a Muslim.  We react as a human to our individual perceptions.  Sometimes we cannot shake these other labels we carry with us but there are moments when our reaction is pure.  Which is what I see in this little bit of paint and paper, in Guenther’s reaction to the piano. 

Such a little bit of paint yet such a lot to say…

Here’s a little taste from one of the kings of boogie woogie from the 30’s and 40’s, Albert Ammons.

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Gulliver Under Fuji

Posted in Neat Stuff, tagged , , on June 16, 2011| 6 Comments »

I stumbled across this image while looking for something else and had to come back to it.  It’s from an abandoned amusement park resting in the shadow of Japan’s Mt. Fuji that celebrates Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.  I don’t know what connection to Gulliver made someone want to spend a lot of money building a theme park in this part of Japan but it makes for an interesting juxtaposition between the iconic mountain and this sad, abandoned park.

According to WebUrbanist.com, who has a wonderful post on this park with lots of info and many more photos, Gulliver’s Kingdom, as it was called,  was opened in 1997 and closed in 2001.  For several years after its closing it was a mecca for the curious who climbed over the nearly 150′ long Gulliver, many leaving bits of graffitti on the poor tethered giant.  Nothing remains of this ill-conceived theme park today after it was demolished in 2007.

There were apparently several reasons for the park’s closing.  It was never able to shake its proximity to the location of the Aum Shinrikyo headquarters.  Aum Shinrikyo was a doomsday cult who produced Sarin nerve gas (at a location near the park which was under construction) then launched  attacks, including one  on the Tokyo subways, killing 19 people.  A massive force stormed the nearby headquarters to end the cult’s run.   

If the  the smell of chemicals used to make Sarin that still lingered for years after the Aum Shinrikyo attacks  wasn’t enough to kill enthusiasm for this tourist trap,its proximity to Aokigahara probably didn’t help make things better.   Aokigahara  is considered Japan’s “suicide forest“, a dense woodland that is considered the 2nd most popular place on earth (behind the Golden Gate Bridge) to commit suicide.  Putting Sarin gas and suicide together does not spell success for any venture designed to attract tourists to the area.

There’s something in seeing these photos of this lost place.  Maybe it’s the ridiculous absurdity of it.  Maybe it’s the reminder of human failings, a tribute to our follies.  Or maybe it’s the idea of a place that no longer exists, as though one were looking at a ghost from the past. Maybe there’s even symbolic in the huge figure of Gulliver trapped in this ill-fated shadow of the beautiful Fuji.  I don’t know.  It just seems to be compelling for some reason to me.

However, don’t be sad.  You can still get into that Jonathan Swift state of mind–there are a couple of Gulliver-inspired theme parks in England.

 

 

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No Funk Zone

Posted in Personal Mythology, Recent Paintings, tagged on June 15, 2011| 1 Comment »

I’m officially declaring this a No Funk Zone.

In the past, I’ve written here of a sort of letdown, a sort of glumness or funk that occurs in the aftermath of even highly successful shows.  It’s no stranger to me and I’ve talked to other artists who describe the same thing happening to them.  It most likely results from working so hard to meet the deadline for a show, having everything so geared up for a specific moment so that when it has passed a void is left.  A new purpose and immediacy must be found quickly to fill the vacuum left.

However, I’m finding that this hasn’t been the case after this most recent show at the Principle Gallery.  Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I am already deeply immersed in my next project, my annual show at the West End Gallery.  That gives me a sense of purpose and a target at which to shoot.  It leaves little time to mope around.

But I’ve had this same show after the Principle show every year for eleven years now and I have fallen into a funk several times after the first show.  But this time I ‘m back in the studio with a renewed vigor, eager to work and feeling oddly upbeat.  It feels good but worries me a bit– I’m not used to finding myself in this territory.

I have no good explanation for this mild elation except that perhaps this last show has made me feel somewhat more confident in the direction the work is heading.  I often speak about validation of ones work and perhaps that is what I’m feeling.  I have often lost confidence at certain points over the years, as was the case for a period of time coming into this show.  It’s a self-doubt that creeps in and nags incessantly, making me question every move I make as well as the validity of my work.  So when people respond in a way that you hoped they might, seeing the work as you wished them to see it, it validates what you yourself see there.  The self-doubts turn to self-assurance, which is energizing.

That’s the best rationale I can offer.  I’m trying to not overthink this.  I just want to enjoy this moment and take full advantage of the energy it supplies because I know all too well how quickly it can be gone, replaced by those questions and doubts.

So for now, welcome to the No Funk Zone.

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A Giant in a Small World

Posted in Current Events, Neat Stuff, tagged on June 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I came across an obituary in the Washington Post the other day for Maynard Hill, who passed away at the age of 85. It’s not a name that will mean anything to many of us but in his field he was a true legend.  You see, he was a model airplane enthusiast who made his hobby his vocation and the focus of his life.  In the process he pushed the boundaries of  possibility, creating miniature planes that flew further, faster and higher than anyone had before imagined.  His work led to the  high tech drones that our military use today to surveil enemy forces.

His greatest achievement came in 2003, when a plane that he designed and built (over five years with a team of like-minded experts that he had assembled) made its way from Newfoundland to Ireland, a distance of 1882 miles.  The plane, weighing less than 11 pounds and carrying a single gallon of fuel, covered the distance in just under 39 hours.  A truly remarkable feat when you think about those model airplanes buzzing around the park.  To those in the know, such as other model airplane enthusiasts, the feat rivalled our 1969 moon landing in importance.  Nobody had ever flown a radio controlled plane even a third of the distance that Mr. Hill’s plane covered in it’s crossing of the Atlantic.

I mention this today not because  I knew of Mr. Hill or know even the slightest thing about model airplanes, drones or aeronautics. I am just interested in those people who find a passion in their life and unfalteringly follow it.  It’s a rare occurrence to find that one thing that jibes with one’s thought process and innate talents, to take that spark and willingly pursue it. 

Maynard Hill was obviously one of those people and, like him, we should all strive to fly further in our pursuits, to create new horizons to seek.  It doesn’t matter what we do.  It’s that we strive to do what we do as well as we can.

 

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Show Report

Posted in Current Events, Painting, tagged on June 13, 2011| 6 Comments »

Well, I’m back home in the studio after my show Friday night at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, safe and sound. 

 And cool. 

 It’s wonderful to feel shivers from the cold this morning after being slow roasted with temperatures that were hitting 104 degrees in traffic that had come to a standstill on the beltway around DC.  We were a bit concerned that the heat would keep folks away from the show but  many shows in the past there have had very high temperatures along with severe thunderstorms and neither had noticeably decreased the crowd size.  This year’s show was no different.

It was a great crowd and a really nice night all the way around.  I saw many folks that I knew from past shows as well as many new faces.  As always, there is never enough time to spend a sufficient amount with everyone and I ended up only saying hello and good-bye to some of my favorite folks that come every year.  Although they understand the constraints of time at such an event, I always feel bad that I wasn’t able to get to them.  The fact that they came out is a big deal to me and I at least want to thank them.  Plus I always enjoy talking with them. 

I met several people who had pieces of mine who told me wonderful stories of how the work inspired them.  A psychologist who has a number of my paintings in his office told me about the wide range of emotional reactions the pieces brought from his clients, something I always find interesting.  I also met several longtime collectors for the first time which is always good if only so that I can express my gratitude in person.  I’ve done 28 or 29 solo exhibitions such as this over the past 11 years and I still view the fact that people show up at these events, let alone buy the work, as a miracle of sorts.  I do not take it for granted in any way and want to take the opportunity at such times to say thank you.

So, if I spoke to you at the opening, I say , “Thank you.”  If I didn’t get a chance to speak with you there I also say, “Thank you.”  Thank you for your time and your appreciation of my work.  It means a lot to me and always gives me new life in the studio when I return.

Shows like this are always inspiring to me, giving me a real sense of validation for the work.  There are points, as I have noted here before, where I begin to doubt if the work will speak to anyone but me, especially after spending so much time alone with it.  So when people do come out and respond, it gives me a greater sense of confidence in the path the work is following.

So, thank you for giving me that.  It is, as always, most appreciated.  Thanks for everyone who came out to the show.  Thanks to everyone at the Principle Gallery who have always treated me so well over the years and have long championed my work. Thanks to Dave and Ted for the wonderful conversation prior to the show.  Thanks to Erin and Noah for still coming to the show, if only via the phone and through the eyes of Denny.  Thanks to Stephanie, Tom and Henry for coming out if only to say hello and good-bye.

Just thanks for a great show.

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

PS–  For those of you who couldn’t make it to the show, the Principle has asked that I do a gallery talk in September.  More details will follow in the future…

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Show Night

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged on June 10, 2011| 5 Comments »

Well, tonight’s my annual show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.  Called Now and Then, this is my 12th solo show here which has given me a real sense of how things normally go, which really provides a certain level of comfort as I wait for the show to open.  I’ve documented this over the past few years here on this blog. 

 While I do get a little antsy,  I always look forward to seeing some of the many, many people I’ve met here over the years.  I maintain that I have the best group of collectors anywhere and it’s always great to get to speak to people who see something in my work, to both listen and to express my appreciation.  I only wish I had more time to do so.

So, if you’re in the Alexandria/ DC area, feel free to stop in tonight at the Principle Gallery.  The opening runs from 6:30 to 9 PM.

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Ticket to Ride

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged , on June 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I wrote yesterday that the future is never as bad as we fear and that the past is never as good as we remember.  Well. there are exceptions, of course.  The Beatles, for instance, fall into the as good as we remember category.  Actually, I sometimes think they were better than our memories will allow us to believe. 

 However, their cartoon show was every bit as bad as I remember.  Bad animation and amateurish writing to get to the featured song in each cartoon made these hard to watch.  But the strength of the Beatles’ music kept this show on the air for four years.

We’re on our way to Alexandria for tomorrow night’s opening for my show at the Principle Gallery and I thought this cartoon choice would be a good one for a little travelling music.  I get to feel a bit like Ed Sullivan here. So without further ado:  Ladies and gentleman– the Beatles!

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