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Archive for the ‘Current Events’ Category

Kung Fu Fighting

Posted in Current Events, Television, tagged , on July 31, 2011| Leave a Comment »

The current debt limit debate that’s currently taking place in our nations’s capital somehow brings to mind the TV series from the early 70’s, Kung Fu.  It featured the late David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine, a young man living in the mid-19th century whose father was an American and his mother Chinese.  Orphaned at an early age, he is trained as a Shaolin monk in both Eastern wisdom and martial arts.  When his spiritual mentor, Master Po (…take the pebble from my hand, Grasshopper…), is killed by the Emperor’s nephew, Caine exacts revenge and is forced to flee to America to find his half-brother. The show followed Caine as he traveled through the Old West trying to pass quietly yet always coming  face to face with hateful bullies who seem immune to the wisdom that Caine delivers in a cool and calm manner.

You probably see where this is going.  In our own scenario, I think President Obama has taken on the role of Kwai Chang Caine and has tried to deal with the situation with rational thought and actions.  He has remained cool and calm yet it has brought no response.  Like most bullies, logic makes little impression and a calm response is seen as weakness which only spurs on even more aggressive bullying behavior.

That’s where we are in our own episode.  Caine has faced the bullies, delivered some tidbits of Zen wisdom and is told by the bullies to get out the way because they were going to burn down the town and everyone in it, including Caine.  It is time for Caine to act.

Now, as much as I enjoyed the little spoonfuls of wisdom that Caine administered each week, I watched the show as teenager to see him ultimately beat the hell out the bullies, to dish out deserved social justice in a whoop-ass manner.  As much as I admire the calm rationale of  President Obama, he must now stand up to those bullies who have taken our system hostage, who have said that their way is the only way.  He must stop talking ,  bloody the bullies’ noses and take the club from their hands.  Exert power–that is what they understand, the only thing they respect and fear. 

Invoke the 14th and simply raise the debt limit.  Just do it.  You given us the aphorisms, we’ve heard the words.  But the bullies are still threatening to burn down the town and get rid of you in the process.  It’s the part of the show where you’re supposed to kick some asses and kick them hard. 

Do it.  This town needs to get back to work.

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Heatwave!

Posted in Current Events, Music, tagged , on July 22, 2011| 3 Comments »

Here in my part of the world we’re trapped in that same heat bubble that is covering a huge chunk of the country.  Yesterday we broke local records with a temperature of 104 degrees and the old thermometer on the side of my garage here at the studio was showing 114 at one point- in the shade.  In some places you expecty this heat- the deep south and southwest, for example. 

 But we’re not used to it here.  At least, I’m not.  This morning at 5:30 the temps are already over 80 with signs of another scorcher on the way.  I will probably spend my day in the basement — my studio is not air-conditioned which under normal circumstances is no problem– where it is cooler, stretching and prepping some large canvasses.  At least, I will feel as though the day is somewhat productive.  It seems a far cry from when I used to spend my summers working all day in the sun, shovelling and wheelbarrowing in the extreme heat.  Or even when I worked as a candy cook at the A&P plant,  when the temperatures in our cooking areas would approach 130 degrees in the summer.  I don’t think I could do those things for even a short time now and when I think of the roofers and pavers out there, I realize how easy I have it now.

But enough about the weather.  Here’s a nice version of  Heatwave, the old Martha Reeves and the Vandellas classic.  This one is from Joan Osborne from the documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown which tells of the great Funk Brothers band, playing on this track,  which backed most of those Motown hits that became our soundtrack for the 1960’s and 1970’s.  Joan Osborne became famous for her song One of Us   (What if God was one of us? / Just a slob like one of us / Just a stranger on the bus / Tryin’ to make his way home?) which was played into the ground.  I never paid much attention to her until I saw her in a show with the Chieftains at Carnegie Hall on St. Patrick’s Day a number of years back and was really impressed by her voice.  She does this classic number justice.

Anyway, enjoy and stay cool!

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Announcement: Coming in 2012

Posted in Current Events, Technique/History, tagged on July 13, 2011| 4 Comments »

If someone had told me as a child that someday I would be in a museum in Cooperstown, I would have keeled over from the prospect of being enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame there.  Well, that isn’t happening but this is actually just as exciting, and unexpected, a prospect for the older me.  In 2012, the  renowned Fenimore Art Museum will host an exhibit of my work that will hang from August 17 until December 31, 2012.

The Fenimore Art Museum is a wonderful facility and houses several great collections including one of the largest and most extensive collections of American Folk Art , the  spectacular Thaw Collection of American Indian Art and a great group of Hudson River School paintings.  Current shows there include an exhibit of work by Edward Hopper and another featuring other American Modernists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

So, needless to say, I am excited by this chance to show in such a prestigious facility.  If you have read this blog for a while, you will not be surprised when I say that with this excitement comes a certain level of anxiety.  But that is simply part of the deal,  a small price to pay for such a wonderful opportunity. 

There’s a part of me that is very satisfied with this, as a sort of reward for the consistency of my work through the years.  I also am really happy for those folks who have followed and collected my work over this time, seeing it as a validation of their belief in the work.  They have been very important to me as a source of inspiration and energy for many years and I see this as a small repayment on their trust in my work.

So, I guess I should get back to work.  Even though it’s over ayear away, there’s much to be done.

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Magic Numbers

Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, tagged on July 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I was attracted to the numbers of baseball when I was a kid.  Those magical statistics that defined the performance of my favorite players, numbers that made the case that my favorite  was better than your favorite or at least gave me a hint as to how my favorite stood up against the numbers of the legends.  For instance, Ty Cobb’s .367 batting average and Babe Ruth’s 714 homers has been deeply ingrained in my memory for well over forty years, a span in which I’ve forgotten many other numbers that were more significant in my life.  So when when Derek Jeter reached the magical 3000 career hit plateau yesterday, I paid attention.

3000 hits is a venerable number to baseball fans.  In the 130 or so years of major league baseball only 28 players have ever reached this milestone number.  28 out of the countless thousands who have strode to the plate, bat in hand,  with hopes of one day reaching that exalted number.  It is a number that denotes excellence and durability, both traits that Jeter possesses.

Another trait for Jeter is his flair for showing himself in the biggest moments, as the many accolades he has received will attest.  Many other players have struggled with the pressure of reaching this and other milestones and have went into slumps, making the tension on themself unbearable as the games pass.  But Jeter would have none of that.  Needing two hits to reach 3000, he flew by the number with a legendary performance going 5 for 5 (that’s 5 hits in five at-bats or chances  for non-baseball fans) including a long homerun for his 3000th hit, a feat only accomplished by only one other player. 

But for all the numbers he has amassed, for all the World Series titles and records he possesses, one has to watch Jeter on a day-byday basis to get the full impact of what a great player he is. and what he has meant to the game.  I know for myself, he brought me back to the game after many years of having lost that spark for the game.  I was never a Yankee fan and often considered myself a Yankee-hater as I grew up.  Oh, I liked certain players, Mickey Mantle for example,  and revered their legends such as Ruth and Gehrig ( I remember with great clarity as 9-year old staring at Ruth’s glove in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown as though it were the Holy Grail) but the team itself rubbed me the wrong way.  I loved the underdog and they were never the underdog at that time.  I just couldn’t like such a team.

But that changed with Jeter’s rise to stardom.  He ran out every ball, did small subtle things that often changed the course of games.  He did some things very well and on those things that he didn’t  do well, he worked hard to make himself better.  As a young player, his fielding was somewhat suspect but as the years have went on his fielding has gotten better and better and now, even though his range is somewhat diminished, he is one of the most surehanded shortstops in the game.  Watching him on a daily basis, I was hooked on the game once more by something more than his numbers.

Yes, for Jeter you must judge him by more than numbers, even though he has an excess of golden stats.  For me, it was his ability to put aside failure, to not dwell on the last at-bat or error.  You never see panic in his game.  You never see him play with anger.  Oh, it might be there but his game face will never betray it.  It was this attitude of total effort that won me over.  I have never seen him take a game lightly or give a half-hearted effort and that is saying a lot in a game that stretched through three seasons of the year. He has taken a talent that could esily be squandered in the hands of a less disciplined player and transformed it into a Hall of Fame career through his hard work and attitude.

So, congratulations to Derek Jeter.  And thanks, for bringing a game that I loved back to me and for turning a Yankee-hater into a fan.

 

 

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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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Ode to the Dying City

Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, Video, tagged , , , , on June 4, 2011| 1 Comment »

I saw a neat story on the evening news about one city’s response to being listed by Newsweek as one of America’s top ten dying cities.  The people of Grand Rapids, Michigan got together to create  a video promoting their fair city and created quite a stir with a terrific piece of film.  It’s one continuous 9 minute shot rolling through the city of Grand Rapids with over 5000 of the residents participating in different scenarios as they lipsync to a live version of  Don McLean’s American Pie.  There’s a little bit of everything here, from football players and firetrucks to fiery explosions and helicopters.  All accompanied by hundreds of guitar toting residents, all strumming along. 

This struck me first because I love continuous, uncut shots in movies.  Think of Henry Hill’s entrance into the nightclub in Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas or the amazing scene from the Dunkirk of WW II in Atonement.  These are incredibly intricate shots requiring a vast choreography in order to preserve the continuity of the scene.  It can take months of planning for a relatively short shot.  With this in mind, the Grand Rapids film is a pretty remarkable video,  given the fact that all of its performers were amateurs who completed the whole thing in about 3 1/2 hours.

But it also hit me because I have lived in and near a small dying city for my entire life.  We, too, were once part of that band of industry heavy cities that spanned the northeast and midwest.  Cities that saw their factories close or relocate, causing huge portions of the population to flee to seemingly greener pastures.  My city’s population is about half the size it was at its peak over 50 years and there are no signs of it ever recovering that loss.  It has left a huge hole in the area that goes beyond the sheer loss of people.  There is a loss of momentum, a loss of vibrancy and a loss of confidence.  The remaining folks start picking at the things that are lacking and forget the things about their home in which they take pride.  The entire area ends up with a feeling of general malaise. 

So to see the people of Grand Rapids exhibit their pride in their own battered hometown was a wonderful thing to see.  I think there’s lesson here somewhere.  Maybe it’s that making lemonade when all you have are lemons thing.  Sounds simple but we all too often forget to try to make the best of what we have, instead lamenting what we don’t have.  So kudos to you, Grand Rapids.  Your lemonade is tasty!

 

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Memorial Day

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, tagged on May 30, 2011| 2 Comments »

Like a great many of you out there, I have not had to experience the hardships of war firsthand.  It remains a sight to see from a distance, on the television or in movies.  Terrifying and deadly but always from afar.  From this remote view it becomes an easy thing to simply shrug it off after a while and turn back to our own personal endeavors, thinking that the spectre of war won’t affect us and can remain a distant afterthought.

But it doesn’t take much  to realize how close war has been to each of us and our families for generations.  I know for me,while doing some genealogy,  I found war after war through the ages where relatives  served, some dying and some being wounded.  Young and not so young men who rallied to the call and paid some sort of price for their efforts.  My genealogy is unremarkable in that aspect as the same could certainly be said for almost all of  families.

There is a lot to hate about war.  The death, devastation and destruction is enough, let alone the financial costs that sap the economies of the world.  But while war is, and should remain, a thing to be despised, we owe a huge sense of gratitude for those who have served and paid the ultimate price to preserve the things and ideals we take for granted nearly every day, all the time  thinking that these things will remain in place without any need for protection. 

So today, remember the price paid, the lives cuts short.  Hate war, yes.  But give these soldiers who have shed their blood our gratitude and respect, as well as our empathy for the other lives they were never able to realize. 

 

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Don’t They Know It’s the End of the World

Posted in Current Events, tagged on May 21, 2011| 2 Comments »

Well, once again we are at the End Of Days.  And just like every other time, and there have been many other times throughout history, we will get up tomorrow and slog forward as we wait for the next best guess as to when the world will end.  And there will be more guesses, more goofy calculations made from vague biblical dates and questionable interpretations of scripture telling us to prepare for the Rapture.  And there will always be a willing audience listening and hoping that this will be the real thing.

I never really understood why some folks were so eager for this event, how they could be so sure of their own righteousness.  I always had the feeling that if there really was a  rapture and the righteous among us were somehow sucked upward to meet Jesus  in the heavens above, or whatever these people believe, that there would be a lot of very disappointed people running around, screaming that a mistake had been made, that they had somehow been missed. 

I would not be one of them.  I have no illusions.  When the world is transformed into a lake of fire or whatever the hell they claim the world will become, I fully expect to be here.  Oh, I won’t be happy about it– I really can’t take the heat– but I will stick it out.  That’s the human urge and besides, I have things to do.

I’ve always felt more inclined to be in the school of thought that believes that the world will end not with a bang but with a whimper.  Maybe the end has already started, been advancing upon us for hundreds of years and we just can’t see its progress.  Oh, well…

Here’s a song, Skeeter Davis’ 1960’s hit, The End of the World.  In my memory of it, I always thought this was a better song but after seeing this version, I find myself ready for the world to end.  Surely that hairdo is one of the signs of the apocalypse!  See you tomorrow.  Hopefully.

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An End and a Beginning

Posted in Current Events on May 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’ve spent the last hour or so just trying to take in the events of the last day.  There are all sorts of conflicting emotions.  I feel somewhat embarassed to feel elation at the killing of anything or anyone but I can’t help but feel somewhat satisfied, even joyful,  in Bin Laden’s death.  Seeing the spontaneous reaction of the nation has been remarkable.   The singing of the national anthem by crowds in the street outside the White House.  The crowds cheering and chanting at the Mets/Phils game.  Images like the one above from NY Times photographer Michael Poppleton of NY firefighter gathered in Times Square.

I’m hoping that we are now somehow exorcised of the demons from September 11 and that new and better chapters lay ahead for us.  I’m eager to see how we move on from here.

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