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Archive for November, 2011

Wicked Game

Posted in At the Movies, Current Events, Music, Video, tagged , on November 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I was going to write about an essay that I read in the magazine Foreign Affairs by George Packer titled The Broken Contract.  It’s a summary of the timeline for the growth of the wealth inequality in our country that has recently started coming to a head, focusing on congressional actions that have enabled this disparity.  I had some problems with some of his views but overall found the article to be very enlightening and downright depressing in the end.  So I decided to not go any further into it this morning except to say that the country has definitely lost sight of the  contract of social responsibility implied in Packer’s article. 

 According to Packer, if the world were represented by the movie It’s a Wonderful Life ( we are quickly heading into the holiday season, after all), the most egregious actions of the greedy Mr.Potter have become the accepted norm and are no longer subject to any sort of public shaming, as they had once been.  George Bailey would be even more helpless to the economic and legal machinations of Potter. 

That’s my analogy, not Packer’s. 

Anyway, that’s as far as I want to take it this morning.  Here’s a little music to fit the tone of this subject, at least in title.  It’s Wicked Game from Chris Isaak from back in 1989.  Hard to believe this song is that old.

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Seeking Rhythm

Posted in Painting, Technique/History, tagged , on November 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »

This is a new piece, a small painting about 7″ by 11″ on paper.  I still have no name for it.  I’ve been spending the last several days trying to refind my normal painting rhythm.  I use the term rhythm quite often in describing what I do and always struggle when trying to descrribe exactly what I mean when using it.  But this time it means the actual ebb and flow of the act of painting, the tempo of the creative process as an idea forms and takes shape before me on the surface. I normally fall easily into a pattern where one action of painting inspires another and so on, almost self-perpuating.  Color begets color and line begets line, each sparking a new idea, a new thought.  It’s a rhythm that I have depended on for most of the time I have painted.

When I’m away from painting as I have been lately, doing needed projects around the home and studio, I fall out of this rhythm.  I can tell during the day, an uneasy knot forming in my gut.  This rhythmic pattern has become vital to my well-being  and when it’s disrupted, I get antsy and out of sorts.  Usually, I am back into it within a day or two with little loss of momentum and this unease fades quickly into the paint and routine.  Some times, as is the case at the moment, it becomes more of a struggle to regain that rhythm, to find that groove in which to take hold.  Nothing starts nor finishes easily.  Color doesn’t sing on the surface, laying there with an uninspired flatness.  Lines are listless and forms dull.  One piece does not inspire the next.  In fact, it brings dread to the next piece.

 I find myself trashing piece after piece,  something I seldom do.  I normally can find something that I want to keep in a piece even if it is only for the lesson learned from its deficiencies.  But these failures seem dismal and dull.  Their very existence bothers me and they go in the trash.

But time has taught me not to panic when I am struggling to find footing.  I became more determined and go back to basics, working on small blocks of color, trying to find life and visual excitement in each little block.  At first, even this was a chore, like slogging in ankle deep creative mud.  But eventually, something broke loose and I find myself finding a stirring of life in the colors and forms and soon I am excited by what I am seeing.  The next move has been inspired and soon my mind is filled with possibilities and potentialities for several new pieces.  Rhythm seems almost at hand and the knot in my gut begins to subside, my mind settling into a familiar hum.  Like that red tree in the image above, looking out over its domain and feeling that, for the time being, all is right with that world.

 

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Dock Boggs- Lost and Found

Posted in Music, Video, tagged , , on November 6, 2011| 2 Comments »

Saw a PBS documentary on the history of the banjo in American music last night and qhile it wasn’t the greatest documentary I have ever seen there were a few stories that really stuck out for me, primarily the story of Dock Boggs, who lived in the minig region that straddles southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky, was born in 1898 and as a young man picked up the banjo and developed a distinctive style of playing.  In the late 1920’s he gained a bit of regional fame with his music and recorded 12 songs in two separate sessions.

Then his career died in the dust of the Great Depression and he pawned his banjo and headed back into the coal mines, his music put away for what he thought was forever.

Thirty years passed and folklorist/folk musician Mike Seeger, brother of folk icon Pete Seeger, was seeking out Appalachian music to document in 1963 and remembered the impact of those few songs from Dock Boggs’ past.  Boggs was surprised when Seeger sought him out because he thought nobody remembered those songs from so many years before.  Fortunately, Boggs had recently purchased a banjo and had been practicing for a few months.  Seeger convinced him to appear at a folk festival in Asheville, NC and after that his career was revitalized in the folk revival of the 1960’s.

He recorded three albums and toured, playing folk festivals including an appearnace at the Newport Folk Festival, until his death in 1971 at the age of 73.  He left this world knowing that the gift he was given had not been completely lost in the coal mines.  I think it’s a great tale of a life’s passion lost and found.  Could be the subject of one of his songs.

Here’s an older Dock Boggs playing one of his classics, Country Blues.  This version is a bit more sudbued and a little less ominous than the original, recorded when he was young and still living a hard-drinking, brawling life.  You can hear the original here.

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Willsea O’Brien Glass

Posted in Favorite Things, tagged , on November 5, 2011| 2 Comments »

Jade Crackle Pyramid Bowl- Willsea O'Brien Glass

I came across the glass creations, like the piece shown here,  from Willsea O’Brien Glass at the West End Gallery in Corning.   With Corning’s notoriety as one of the glass capitals of the country, the gallery carries a select few glass artists, all unique and extraordinarily talented.  When I saw the Willsea O’Brien pieces, I was immediately taken in by the beautiful, complex colors that ran through them, jades and ambers and golds.  The forms themselves had a classic architectural stability and solidness while still feeling light and graceful.  There was just a real sense of rightness in the work, a feeling that this was work that would be as vital anytime in the future as it was at that very moment that I was first looking at it. 

Timeless.

Over time, I discovered that we were mutual admirers of each other’s work and arranged for a visit yesterday to their home studio in a hollow in Naples, a gorgeous area nestled in the Finger Lakes.  When we arrived, the married team that makes up the company, Carol O’Brien and Paul Willsea, were in the midst of a piece.  They worked in an almost silent graceful dance, perfected in the twenty-some years they had been creative partners.  Working in the heat of the several  glory holes and kilns, the two took what  appeared as just a blob of glass when we walked in the door and transformed it within a short time into a version of the bowl shown above.

 I can’t describe in technical terms all the steps that they went through  but it was remarkable to see supremely talented people working their craft with such ease.  It’s one of those things, like watching carpenter Norm Abrams on This Old House.  They make it seem so simple with the sureness and economy of their movements that you begin to believe that you could do that too.  Then you try it and you realize that that ease that you saw was the result of thousands of hours spent at their craft and your appreciation for their talent only grows.

We had a great visit yesterday and were able to find out a but more about their history and how their work has evolved (and continues to evolve) since their early days as a team in Oakland, CA before returning with their children to New York, the original homes of both.   In their idyllic home setting, they have developed their own look and visual vocabulary in their work and have gained well deserved  renown across the countryfor their unique pieces. If you are looking for beautiful objects that are also timeless pieces of art, you could not do much better than the work of Carol and Paul.

Thanks to both for a wonderful visit.

www.willseaobrien.com

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Crybaby

Posted in Opinion on November 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Lately, I’ve been doing some maintenance around here, building some things and doing a little reroofing.  Nothing big but at day’s end I find myself beat and physically sore with aches and pains in most areas of my body.  I write it off to advancing age and a bit of  relative inactivity in recent years.  I whine about it and limp around until I begin to think myself a big crybaby.  At that point I begin to think about people from the past and all they faced physically and how my little aches would make them laugh.

I think about old Mike whose place, the Mule Farm,  I wrote about a couple of years back and remains firmly entrenched in my memory.  Mike had been a lumberman and a railroad worker in his life.  He told me about going out into the woods when he was seventeen, armed only with an axe and a crosscut saw.  He cut and split over two hundred cords of wood that year.  He said that the labor had made him appreciate a sharp saw and axe blade.  He also talked about shoveling railroad ballast onto trackbeds for months at a time.  Mike knew how to work and when we worked with him cutting logs with his buzzsaw, even when he was in his late 70’s, he could easily outwork any one of us much younger men and boys. 

Then I think of my great-grandfather who I have also written about here.  He also headed into the north woods as a young man and had his own crew at age 17, acquiring his first big lumber contract at age 18 in the early years of the Adirondack lumber business.  He worked his entire life   as a lumberman until he was 80 years old, always in a career that required immense physicality, especially at that time before the time of the chainsaw and the tractor.  He would surely have shown disdain for my crybabying.

Or I think of those people through history who made tremendous migrations by foot, often pulling their belongings behind them on a cart.  One example of these are the Mormon handcart expeditions of the 1850’s that covered about 1300 miles.  Families would put as much of their worldly possession as would fit on a 60-pound wooden handcart that was then pulled and pushed across the central part of the country from Illinois to Utah.  Mind you, this was a land devoid of graded roads.  They would slog through mud, up steeps slopes and through all sorts of bad weather.  I try to imagine pulling my garden cart to town going through fields and crossing creeks and my aches only intensify.  Many of these people did not finish the journey, dying from  exhaustion along the way.

So, now humbled, I stop whining about a sore back or aching knees.  While being thankful for living in a land where we do not have to endure such straining lives simply to survive, I can’t help but think that the labor that these people lived through gave them an attitude that believed that anything was possible, that any obstacle could be overcome.  No project  seemed too daunting, from clearing tracts of land for  farming to taking on the great public works projects that built this country.  I’m not sure that we have that same gritty will in us anymore. 

But I won’t whine about that or my aches anymore.  Today.

 

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Attaboy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on November 3, 2011| 1 Comment »

I thought today would be a good day for a little music and a chance to express my admiration for Yo Yo Ma.  There’s not much to dislike about Yo Yo Ma.  His virtuosity on the cello is evident.  His affability and down to earth nature shines through in interviews, as does his humor.  His ability to move easily in many forms of music, not just the sometimes remote world of classical music,  speaks to his creative inquisitiveness.  He has collaborated a number of times on projects with other world class musicians to create beautiful new music that is beyond the dead composers, though great they may be.

In short, he can do little wrong in my eyes.

He has a new collaboration out recently.  Called the Goat Rodeo Sessions, it combines his cello with the fiddling of Stuart Duncan, the upright bass of Edgar Meyer and the incredible mandolin playing of Chris Thile.  It’s a great fusion of these acoustic elements into a unique blend of Americana.  Just damn good stuff.

Here’s Attaboy.  There’s also a video of the bluegrass inspired Here and Heaven available. 

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Hitching with Kerouac

Posted in Biographical, Influences, Quote, tagged on November 2, 2011| 10 Comments »

“I’d go out to my snowfield and dig out my jar of purple Jello and look at the white moon through it. I could feel the world rolling toward the moon.”

-Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

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This line from the Jack Kerouac novel was sent to me yesterday by my friend Miescha who had thought of my paintings when she had come across it.  I really liked the association she found in those words and my work and especially the connection she found with it in Kerouac.  When I read the line I was immediately transported back in time to a trip I made with my brother when I was fourteen years old to the Adirondacks to hike around Mt. Marcy.  Kerouac’s On the Road was in my backpack.

It was in the midst of a very hot summer and we hitchhiked, first from the horse track in Canandaigua to Syracuse then from there up through the mountains.  It was a different time, obviously, to see a fourteen year old to be hitching with his older brother and not think it completely out of the ordinary. Probably not something many parents would even consider letting their kids today but for me it fostered a real sense of independence.

 I remember distinctly so much of that trip, especially the people who gave us rides.  The older guy who was commuting northward, drinking canned beer which he shared with my brother.  I politely turned him down when he offered me one.  Whenever we passed a female of any sort he would stick his arm out the window and pound the side of this car as he let out a wolf-like howl.  Then there were a couple of young gypsy housepainters from Lubbock, Texas who played an eight-track of the Doobie Brothers and offered us beer and pot, both of which I again declined.  After they let us out, my brother told me to take the beer and pot and simply hold it for him for later.

Then there was a couple of Italian tourists with their  son who was only a couple of years younger than me.  They didn’t offer any beer or drugs which was fine with me.  I remember the awe of the father as we climbed through a pass in the mountains where the highway had been carved through the stone, leaving shere walls of stone on either side of the wide road.  He spoke in Italian to his son as he pointed at the  stone in admiration.  I had the feeling he was some sort of engineer.

I also remember a long day coming out of the mountains and being at the Thruway entrance near Albany, trying to get a ride through to Syracuse on a Sunday evening, a tough get for a young man and a boy together.  We sat there for about six hours and I finally fell asleep in exhaustion, laying on the road shoulder against the guardrail until a kind soul gave us a ride all the way home, smoking pot with my brother as I slumbered in the back seat.  We walked the last few blocks in the early morning heat through  the streets and I remember a feeling of great contentedness.

The trip and the Kerouac novel’s depiction of the frantic pace of that early Beat generation made the idea of the open road seem irresistible in the mind of a young teenager, a feeling that haunted me for years until it finally faded into the past as my aspirations of being Dean Moriarty turned to the quieter. stabler reality of my current life.  I was never cut out to be that nomadic figure.  I know that now.  But the inspiration it provided those many years ago has remained with me and I still carry that memory of that feeling of being young and alive and on the road.

Funny how a few simple lines can bring back so much memory.  Thanks, Miescha.

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New Look

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on November 1, 2011| 6 Comments »

Now that it’s officially November, it’s that time of the year that time of the year when I reevaluate what I’m doing with my work, both from a creative aspect as well as from as the promotional end of things.  Part of that is how I represent my work here and in my website.  Even though I understand the importance of having an up to date and informative website,  I have to admit that I have not always been completely on top of mine. 

I’ve decided that I must get on the stick with my website.  To that end, I’ve started changing it.  I’ve changed the way it functions, added an acoustic guitar backing loop and am adding portfolios that present a fuller retrospective of my work.  For instance, I’ve added portfolios (with slideshows) that show fuller my Red Roof and Archaeology series.  Before, you could only see current works and shows.  I plan on adding more portfolios in the future to make this a much more informative and complete site.  There are still other tweaks such as reformatting the resume and statements as the new site reads them differently but bear with me as I slowly make these changes.

This promotional end of this business is never a lot of fun and I think a lot of artists let it slide in favor of  doing anything else.  I know I have many times before.  But artists are ultimately small business owners and have to take every aspect of their business seriously.  I know that I am probably as cognizant of this as any artist but sometimes I lose sight of my personal responsibility for my own career.  It takes these built in stops in the year to let me step back and measure  and critique my performance from this end of the business.  From there I can take steps to make necessary changes, such as the  new look on the website.  It probably won’t be the last change.

Time to get to it.  Have a great day.

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