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Archive for March, 2021

River Deep, Mountain High

Posted in Music, Painting, tagged , , , , , on March 21, 2021| 2 Comments »

If you can’t dig this, you got a hole in your soul– and that ain’t good.

–John Lee Hooker

On some Sunday mornings, the day I always choose a song to feature, it’s a struggle trying to find what i consider is the right song for that morning. I want it to reflect how I am feeling and maybe set the tone for the rest of the day. 

This morning I was in the studio at 5:30, wanting to get an early jump on my day of painting. I began looking for a song that I though might match with the painting above, River Angel. I thought of a couple of other songs with river in their titles but when this song clicked in my head, I knew it was the one.

River Deep, Mountain High as sung by Tina Turner in 1966, produced by Phil Spector. He was crazy and dangerously despicable but, man, he made some great records. Immortal recordings.

This is one of those.

It only takes about 30 seconds for Tina to reach full emotional intensity. And she never lets down from point on. It just roars and soars above the high mountaintops.

I just love this recording. My day feels like it off to the races already. Like the late great John Lee Hooker says at the top– If you can’t dig this, you got a hole in your soul– and that ain’t good.

Hope you dig it.

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Gershom

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Music, Quote, tagged , , , , , , , on March 20, 2021| 2 Comments »

 Stranger (In a Strange Land) -GC Myers, 2002

And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.

–Exodus 2:22

I was looking at the piece above early this morning. It’s been with me for a long time, since 2002. I sometimes take it for granted and don’t take the time to engage with it. But this morning I looked at it longer than I had in some time, reconnecting with what it has meant to me. Maybe it was because it’s near that time of the year when I get to indulge a guilty pleasure with my annual viewing of The Ten Commandments, the campy biblical epic from Cecil B. DeMille that always runs on ABC during the week before Easter. Or maybe it’s that the pronunciation of the Hebrew word ger which means stranger sounds the same as the shortened version of my name that my family often used for me growing up. I don’t really know but thought that it would be appropriate to share a post about it that has ran a couple of times during the many years this blog has been around.

I have been writing recently about some of the orphans, those paintings that make the rounds of the galleries and finally come back to me. The piece above is one of these orphans but it really isn’t. It’s mine alone, one of the rare pieces that I don’t think I would ever give up. Like many parents when looking at their children, I see much of myself in this painting.

Over the years I have periodically written about a group of paintings that were considered my Dark Work that were painted in the year or so after 9/11. The piece shown above is one of these paintings, painted sometime in early 2002. I very seldom consider a painting being for myself only but this one has always felt, from the very minute it was completed, as though it should stay with me.

It is titled  Stranger (In a Strange Land) which is derived from the title of Robert Heinlein’s famous sci-fi novel which in turn was derived from the words of Moses in Exodus 2:22, shown here at the top. The name Gershom is derived from the Hebrew words ger which means stranger or temporary resident and sham which means there. Together Gershom means a stranger there. It is defined now as either exile or sojourner.

The landscape in this piece has an eerie, alien feel to it under that ominous sky. When I look at it I am instantly reminded of the feeling of that sense of not belonging that I have often felt throughout my life, as though I was that stranger in that strange land. The rolling field rows in the foreground remind me just a bit of the Levite cloth that adorned Moses when he was discovered in the Nile as an infant, a symbol of origin and heritage that acts as a comforting element here, almost like a swaddling blanket for the stranger as he views the landscape before him.

As I said, it is one of those rare pieces that I feel is for me alone, that has only personal meaning, even though I am sure there are others who will recognize that same feeling in this. For me  this painting symbolizes so much that feeling of alienation that I have experienced for much of my life, that same feeling from which my other more optimistic and hopeful work sprung as a reaction to it. Perhaps this is where I saw myself as being and the more hopeful work was where I aspired to be.

Anyway, that’s enough for my five-cent psychology  lesson for today.  In short, this is a piece that I see as elemental to who I am and where I am going. This one stays put.

Here’s a little of the great (and I think underappreciated) Leon Russell from way back in 1971 singing, appropriately, Stranger in a Stranger Land…

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Looking at a Rest Stop

Posted in Favorite Things, Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , , on March 19, 2021| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Rest Stop sm

“Rest Stop” – Currently at the West End Gallery

A man must find time for himself. Time is what we spend our lives with. If we are not careful we find others spending it for us. . . . It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, ‘Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?’ . . . If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one’s time—the stuff of life

― Carl Sandburg

This painting, Rest Stop, which is at the West End Gallery in Corning, is a favorite of mine. It might be in the colors or textures, those elements that often reach out to me, but it’s more likely because it’s message speaks clearly to me.

We all need to periodically stop the busyness of our lives, if only for a few moments. A short spell to pause everything and appreciate where we are in the present, to ponder how we came to be there, and to imagine where the future will take us.

An interlude to see how the past, present and future exist within us.

That’s the message I get from this painting. Now, doing such a thing is another animal altogether. For many of us, just stopping everything seems an impossibility. Or many may think such a thing is simple foolishness with no real purpose. Or some might feel that the prospect of actually thinking about anything, especially anything to do with their own life, is too tall a task.

But for some of us, these moments of ponderance are a necessity. They simply make life bearable. They create reason and meaning in a world that often seems to lack both. Those are the moments that define purpose at times when we need to know there is indeed purpose.

I get all of this with a glance at this painting. And I think that’s why I place so much stock in this piece– it speaks volumes with a so little effort. That’s the opposite of my writing or any form of expression with words.

Even this short re-examination of this painting is a form of pausing, of reflecting on what is now, what was then and what will will be. And maybe that’s the purpose of this piece and of art, in general.

Got to think about that…

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Far Away Eyes

Posted in Music, Painting, Process, tagged , , , on March 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Far Away Eyes

Seems like a recurring theme lately with me starting most posts by saying that I am busy and eager to get to work. That’s actually a good thing for me. That eagerness to get to it is something that is not just there. It is cultivated, a result of previous actions. It usually means I am doing the right things (at least, for me) in my creative process.

So, while I wish I were willing to spend more time writing this morning’s post I am glad to want to get to my work.

But I wanted to share the painting above, Far Away Eyes, that is currently at the West End Gallery. I wrote about this piece last July and rereading that post reminded me of the struggle that I had with it. It was one of the first pieces I worked on during the early days of the pandemic. I had no momentum, no energy, little inspiration nor any eagerness to be at work. My mind was wholly distracted.

This piece though fought with me and made me work. Made me shut out the outer world for a time so that I could focus my mind on it, to become part of it.

To put it plainly, it didn’t come easy. That’s probably why this piece resonates so strongly with me. I think we all appreciate those things that make us struggle, that make us be at our best. We might be frustrated and demoralized during the battle but the result, the overcoming, makes us forget that. I know that the struggle in this piece had slipped my mind until I read the post that was written soon after this painting was completed, when the battle was still fresh in mind.

I now appreciate it for what it is, the force it possesses and not for what it provided in its creation.

As it should be.

The title for this song  was borrowed from an old Rolling Stones song from their 1978 Some Girls album. I didn’t mention it in the original post about the painting because I didn’t think the song itself fully lined up with the piece but its title did. But now, I’m not so sure.

Give a listen and you decide.

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St. Paddy’s Day/ Mary T.

Posted in Biographical, Music, Painting, tagged , , on March 17, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Ah, St. Patrick’s Day. I grew up not knowing our genealogy. My mother, who would have been 89 today, was from the O’Dell family so we assumed we had Irish blood. But years later I discovered that the O’Dell name in our line had transformed over the years from the Woddell name. We were English, not Irish.

But while doing this research on my father’s side, which we always thought of as German, I found that his grandmother, my great-grandmother (who drowned in a canal in Allentown, PA just days after my dad was born but that’s another story) was fully Irish. I found out quite a bit more about her family’s past here in America though little of the actual Irish roots. However, my DNA has me at about 1/3 Irish

A few years ago I painted a small series of paintings of ancestors that I called Icons. One was of my great-great grandmother, Mary Tobin. I am including a post, sort of tragic in an Irish way, from a few years ago about her along with a song, The Donegal Set, from those venerable Irish musicians, The Chieftains.

Have an enjoyable St. Patrick’s Day. Or just a nice Wednesday, if that appeals more to you.

From 2016:

One of the things I am trying to emphasize with this current Icon series is the fact that we are all flawed in some way, that we all have deficiencies and stumbles along the way. Yet, uncovering these faults in my research, I find myself holding affection for many of these ancestors that dot my family tree. Perhaps it is the simple fact that without them I would not be here or perhaps I see some of my own flaws in them.

I’m still working on that bit of psychology.

The 12″ by 12″ canvas shown here is titled Icon: Mary T. She is my great-great grandmother. Born Mary Anne Ryan of Irish immigrant parents in the Utica area she married Michael Tobin, an Irishman ( I believe he was from County Kerry but the research is still up in the air on this) who came to the States around 1850, right in the midst of the Great Irish Immigration.

Michael worked on the railroads being built throughout central New York in the late 1800’s. Following the progress of the railroads, the couple and their growing family worked their way down through the state towards Binghamton, NY where they eventually settled. Mary Anne eventually ended up as a housekeeper in a prominent home in the area. Michael died around 1890 although records are sketchy on this and Mary died at my great-grandmother’s home on Church Street in Elmira in 1914.

All told, they had seven daughters and three sons. Most worked in the then booming tobacco industry of that time and place. Most of her daughters worked as tobacco strippers and some worked as cigar rollers, as did her sons.

That’s the simple telling of the story. Looking into the back stories provide a little more depth which can sometimes change all perceptions.

None of her sons ever married and all were had desperate problems with alcohol. One son was listed in a newspaper report from some years later as having been arrested for public drunkenness around 40 times over the years, seven times in one year. He was also arrested for running a still more than once during the prohibition years. Two of her sons died in institutions where they had been placed for their alcoholism.

A Silk Spencer

A Silk Spencer

I came across a story in the local Binghamton newspapers about Mary and two of her daughters, who were also working as domestics with here in the prominent Binghamton home owned by a local attorney and nephew of the founder of Binghamton. In 1874, the story reports that a number  of items came up missing from her employer, including a “forty dollar silk spencer,” which is a sort of short garment like the one shown here at the right. Her neighbors informed the owner of the spencer that Mary had a number of the stolen items in her possession and a search warrant was sworn out.

Detectives came to the Tobin home and made a thorough search but turned up nothing. They then tore up the carpets which revealed a trap door that led to a small basement. There they found many of the stolen items but no spencer. But they did find a silk collar that had been attached to it.  

Mary and her two daughters were arrested.

Mary did finally claim to be the sole thief and her daughters were released. I have yet to find how this particular story ends and how Mary was punished but based on the futures of some of her children I can’t see it being a happy ending. 

Doing this painting, I was tempted to make my Mary a bit harsher, a lit more worn. But as I said, there’s some sort of strange ancestral affection at play even though I know she was obviously a flawed human. She’s smaller and more delicate looking in the painting than I imagine she was in reality. In the only photo we have of her daughter, my great grandmother, was sturdy looking lady. But maybe making her a bit less harsh is a little gift to my great-great grandmother for the information her story reveals about the future of my family.

This is a simple painting because, as I pointed out, this is a simple story at its surface. It’s the story of many, many families.

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I Misunderstood

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , on March 16, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Short on time this morning. Things are swinging along well in the studio and I feel like I need to be at it before that momentum says “see ya’ later” as it heads out the door. But I thought I’d share an old piece from around 1995 that I am pretty sure I haven’t shared here yet.

Not that it’s a great piece. It’s one of those pieces that never made it out of the studio, never even titled, so I obviously had determined at some point that I didn’t want to put it out there. I guess I am comfortable enough in what I am that I don’t figure it can hurt my reputation now by sharing it.

Actually, it’s a piece that I always stop on in order to take a better look. I always thought that it lacks something but there seems to be something in it, some intangible feeling to it, that I like. Maybe it’s just for me, in my own secret language that only I recognize.

I don’t know. But it felt good pondering it for a moment this morning.

Here’s Richard Thompson song, an acoustic take on his I Misunderstood. That might be what the guy standing in the doorway is thinking. 

Who knows?

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A Little Encouragement, Again

Posted in Biographical, Quote, tagged , , , on March 15, 2021| Leave a Comment »

“Home In Sight”– Now at the West End Gallery

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

— George Santayana

As St. Patrick’s Day approaches, which was also my mother’s birthday, I gave some thought to my parents this past weekend, thinking about how they influenced me early in my life. It reminded me of a post that ran many years back, in 2009.

It was a brief recollection of that time as a child when I had not idea what was or wasn’t possible in my life. Oh, I had an idea that I would never be roaming the outfield for the Yankees or taking one small step on the surface of the moon but for the most part, everything seemed in play.

To an 8 year old everything is still attainable, anything is possible. My parents never pushed me in any one direction or tell me what I should try to accomplish, mainly because they most likely because they themselves didn’t know what was possible. They simply didn’t have the knowledge needed to direct me in any way. At the time, it seemed frustrating because of the lack of direction given.

Kind of like being told that you should build a cabinet but you’re not given any materials or instructions. You had to figure it out for yourself. You had to design and build it on your own. Except it wasn’t a cabinet, it was your life.

But to their credit, my parents never discouraged me or imposed any limits on my imagination or aspirations. They gave me free rein to explore and a little help when the opportunity to do so arose. That was their form of encouragement. 

It worked out in the long run. It took a lot more trial and error but the independence gained in those early years got me through the difficult times. I overlook their flaws now and focus on the appreciation I have for the things they did try to do for me, knowing that they were grasping at straws in the dark. They didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what was possible. They just wanted to help. And I am forever grateful for that expression of their love.

Here is what I wrote back in 2009:

When I give gallery talks, generally there is a part at the beginning where I run through how I came to be a painter. I usually tell how I somehow came across the idea that I wanted to be a painter when I was a small child, maybe 7 or 8 years old. Don’t know what made me come to that idea.

My parents didn’t know how to foster this idea but they did react, buying me an oil painting set from the old Cardinal Paint store in Elmira, where they sold art supplies alongside their house paints. I remember standing on the street looking at the display of art supplies in the window of their store on Water Street. I think I was only there because it was next door to the S&H Green Stamp Redemption Center, the place where you traded in your books filled with those green stamps for household items. I guess S&H Green Stamps may have had something to do with me becoming a painter.

Of course, I didn’t have the first idea how to use the paints and the canvas panel ended up covered with a smear of a color that could best be described as looking like gray and brown puke smeared on a board. Unfortunately, that was not what I was hoping to see. Discouraged, I put the paints aside and moved on to other things. Many other things through the years.

Now, that might seem, at first blush, like a sad little story but it always touches me. My parents didn’t know how to go about helping me but they did what they could and never discouraged me from whatever avenue I chose to follow. I was never told I couldn’t be this or that I should be that. They didn’t know what was possible and never tried to put limits on my hopes.

In high school, I harbored dreams of being a writer and for Christmas one year they gave me a Remington Rand office typewriter. It was a reconditioned monster of a machine, must have weighed 75 pounds. I had it for years, hefting that monster from place to place, and when I did finally get rid of it, it was with great sadness. It remains one of the best gifts I’ve ever been given and is forever a symbol of my parents’ desire to encourage me. 

The point of this is that my parents allowed me the freedom to discover what was possible for me in my life. Did they always go about it in the best way or guide me in any way? Probably not but that didn’t seem as important as the freedom they gave me to search for what was possible for me.

And being able to find what was possible, as the saying above says, is the beginning of happiness…

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Time

Posted in Biographical, Current Events, Music, tagged , , on March 14, 2021| 11 Comments »

We sprung forward in time tonight. An hour just swept away which for me at this time of the year always gets me a little on edge, especially on this first morning. Actually, to be fair, anything that gets me out of my routine gets me a little on edge but losing time of any sort affects me the most. It’s one of those tics that seem to get more and more pronounced with each passing year.

Time!

Came in this morning an hour later and wanted to write the blog quickly to save a little of this precious stuff, this time. Of course, my computer is running oddly and my internet connection seems to be an hour behind still, it’s running so slow. So, my time-saving has gone awry as I reboot this and reboot that. 

Darn you, time!

This is still not going well, technology-wise. Everything is glitchy as I write this so instead of fighting it and getting even more frustrated, I am going to wrap it up and introduce this week’s song for Sunday morning. It is, of course, Time from Pink Floyd off of their classic Dark Side of the Moon album. I realized this morning that I never play anything off this album, as much as I like it, or from Pink Floyd at all.

It’s probably a deep reaction to how ubiquitous this music was in the 70’s and 80’s. You couldn’t go a half hour on any FM station that played rock music without hearing a song from Dark Side of the Moon— or Hotel California, Free Bird, or Stairway to Heaven.

After awhile, you develop an aversion to even those things you like when you are exposed to them all the time. It’s like I really enjoy hot fudge sundaes but I wouldn’t want to have that same thing every hour of the day. Bad example. I could totally eat hot fudge sundaes day in and day out. 

But now I am excited to hear these songs again since time– yes, time– has cleansed away that stench of ubiquity.

So, if you have time, give a listen. If not, get to it. You have time to make up.

I know I do. See ya’.

 

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What the beeple?

Posted in Current Events, tagged , , , , , on March 13, 2021| 13 Comments »

Beeple- “Everydays: The First 5000 Days”

“I’ve crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I’ve come to a place I never thought I’d have to come to. And I don’t know how I got here. It’s a strange place. It’s a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation.”

― Raymond Carver, Where I’m Calling From: New and Selected Stories

I don’t know about the death and annihilation part but somedays I wake up and feel as though I have stumbled into an alternate reality where there are things going on that baffle me completely, that don’t have any basis in the world from which I come.

Like I am a goat farmer from the late 1700’s who has suddenly been thrown through time and ends up in the middle of a Times Square with huge walls of lights flashing, cars whooshing by and jets thundering overhead. 

The place and everything associated with it  just doesn’t line up with anything I know or have ever seen. I am confused, to say the least. Maybe even a little scared because if I don’t know what the hell it is, I have no idea if it can hurt me.

That is exactly the feeling I had when I read that on Thursday a piece of digital art, an NFT— a non-fungible token— had sold in auction at Christie’s for $69 million. The artist’s is Mike Winkelman who goes by the name Beeple and he is a digital artist from Charleston, SC who until October of 2020 had never sold a print for more than $100.

Then came NFTs. Those cuddly non-fungible tokens.

Here’s where I fall through time and space.

I wish I could explain it to you but it feels like the translation of a language I’ve never heard of translated into a language that was just invented and is, yes, unknown to me.

The only thing I understand is the concept of attaching value to an object that is not contained in the value of the raw materials or labor that made it. That is the definition of art and most collectibles. For example, a painting is a token in that it has value attached to it.  But a painting that sells for $100 million dollars is not much different in real world terms from one that sells for $10,000.

The difference is that there is a higher value attached by the market– the potential buyers– that reflects its history, the artist’s reputation, its rarity and provenance and whatever the heck makes a painting worth $100 million. But even then, after the huge piles of cash have been exchanged, the buyer still has a tangible object in their hands.

Probably a closer analogy to NFTs is collectible cards like baseball cards. They are nothing more than a penny’s worth of cheap cardboard with an image printed on one side and some stats on the back. But value is somehow added to them to the point that some are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars while most end up propping up off level tables.

I still don’t know if I am explaining this well. Remember, I just got into this century from the 1788 with goat dung on my boots. Which makes the next part even more difficult to explain.

These NFTs are attached and sold via blockchain technology. Like cryptocurrency. Bitcoin. Ethereum. You know what I’m talking about, right?

I think Yogi Berra would be better equipped to explain this.

I tried at one point a couple of years ago to better understand cryptocurrency but I just couldn’t fully grasp it. It seemed so much like a giant pyramid scheme. But what made it even harder to grasp was that there are actually bitcoin mines.

Yeah, bitcoin mines.

I am standing here with goat stink still on me and I am trying to grasp the idea that bitcoins are mined — created, actually– by people around the world trying to solve the same mathematical puzzle using very large and powerful computers. About every 10 minutes, someone solves a puzzle and is rewarded with some bitcoins. Then, a new puzzle is generated, and the whole process starts over again. As more people become involved around the globe trying to solve this puzzle, it is made more difficult so that it is estimated that it will take ten minutes to come up with the new solution.

Every ten minutes. So, in order to be the first to solve this puzzle and get the bitcoins, one has to have computers that use enormous amounts of electricity. We are talking something on the order of 72 terawatts expended to create a single bitcoin. That is 72 trillion watts of electricity. Every ten minutes.

This first came to my attention when I learned that there was a proposal for a bitcoin mine to be built on nearly Seneca Lake. If I am not mistaken, it would use the water from the lake to run a hydroelectric generator to produce the huge amount of power needed for its computers. 

I still am in the dark on this and can’t even begin to explain blockchain technology. Remember, I am from a time when the Snickers Bar was still a 150 years from being developed and marketed. That’s a technology I can understand and maybe even explain.

So, here I am wondering how a digital file that anyone can download and display is somehow valued by its owner, a person who shelled out $69 million bucks. I really am confused and have all sorts of questions. 

Can this affect my own work? Might my work be stolen– this has happened to other artists– via these NFTs? What does this mean for the future of art? With all due respect to his talent, Beeple is now one of the most valuable artists in the history of art. I think that’s a statement even he would find laughable. Granted, its a lot easier to laugh with $69 mil in the bank. Or is it in cryptocurrency?

Good for Beeple. But the real question is: How do I do this?

The price for goat feed is a lot higher than it was in 1788.

I think I will go outside and bang my head against a tree. Now that I understand.

 

 

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Loco Amor

Posted in Music, Neat Stuff, tagged , , , , , on March 12, 2021| 4 Comments »

I am on the run this morning. Busy. That painting that I mentioned yesterday is still cooking on the easel and calling out for more. It’s a piece that will play a part in my annual June solo show— my 22nd there— at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. More details to come.

So, I need to get other stuff done as I am in the midst of prepping for that show. Plus I am a little giddy since I get my first dose (or only dose if it turns out to be the Johnson & Johnson shot) later today. It doesn’t seem like something like a shot should raise one’s spirits but it feels like it marks the coming end of the pandemic, at least in its severest and deadliest phases.

So, I am getting right to work this morning. But I wanted to share a song to go along with the old painting from back in 2001 — that seems a lifetime ago now, so many consequential thing having occurred– that runs alongside this post. I don’t paint as many pieces in this tall, skinny format as I once did. Might have to revisit it soon. Anyway, this one feels like it goes with the song.

The song is called Loco Amor and was featured in an episode of the The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the very funny series from Amazon about a burgeoning female stand-up comedian in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. If you haven’t seen it, it has great comedic writing and a terrific cast including Alex Borstein’s hilarious portrayal of Susie Meyerson, Mrs. Maisel’s agent. 

I didn’t know anything about the song when I decided to feature it so I looked up and found out a bit about it and Pedrito Martinez, the Cuban-born musician who does the modern version featured in the show. In doing so I also discovered that the Mrs. Maisel episode used the song in a way that directly mirrored, in a shot by shot way, its use in a a 1964 Spanish language film titled Soy Cuba. That film version was performed by Los Diablos Melodicos, a Cuban rock group of that era.

Cuban rock is not well known here, understandably, but group likes Los Diablos were heavily influenced by American rock and roll of the 1950’s that was popular in Cuba before Castro and the revolution took place. Rock music was banned there in the early 1960’s, though it survived via performance. The ban was eventually lifted but there was always a close watch on the lyrics and message of the music.

I am sharing both the modern version below from Pedrito Martinez and the original as it was performed in Soy Cuba by Los Diablos Melodicos.

Now, to work I go.

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