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Archive for the ‘Favorite Things’ Category

That Breton Painting

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Influences, tagged , , , , on June 17, 2009| 4 Comments »

Jules Breton "Le Soir"My first real exposure to genuine art came when I was a kid in the early 70’s, going to school at Ernie Davis Junior High on Elmira’s east side.  My father worked at the Sheriff’s Department which was just several blocks away so after school I would walk down there to ride home with him.  It beat the school bus ride which could be a real drag because I was the first kid picked up in the morning and one of the last dropped off at night, an hour or so each way.

So after school I would head downtown where I often ended up at the Newberry’s store that had an old pinball machine tucked away in the corner of it’s basement, hidden among the knick knacks and housewares.  Great machine.  Only a dime a play.  Spent too much time there.  More often though I ended up at the old Steele Memorial Library, a beautiful old Carnegie endowed structure that was like a treasure chest.  I spent hundreds of hours there, reading and exploring the stacks behind the reception desk that you entered by climbing a tight cast iron stairway.  What a great atmosphere.

But the other place downtown that caught my attention was the Arnot Art Museum.  It was located in an old mansion and was free to the public at the time.  They had ( and have) a wonderful permanent collection of paintings, a real surprise for a small city like Elmira, and I was mesmerized by the group in the main parlor.  The piece that caught me was the Jules Breton painting above, Le Soir.  It glowed on the wall there and the beauty of the surface and the sense of place and time were palpable.  For a 14 year old, it was heady stuff and often I would head into the Arnot to just spend a few minutes with the Breton and some of my other favorites there.  The Brueghel.  The Millet.  There was a great sense of calmness there and to this very day whenever I enter that place I am taken back to those days as a shaggy haired kid dragging my denim gym bag through the doors to see that Breton painting.

Below are a couple of other Bretons, not at my Arnot Museum…Breton song of the larkJules Breton the weeders

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Brueghel

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, tagged , , , , on May 28, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Pieter Bruegel- Tower of BabelI am totally in awe of the work of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, the patriarch of the great Flemish family of painters.  There are so many paintings of his that I could show that would be equal to those I chose for this post but I find these particular pieces striking.  There is great richness and depth as well as a tremendous warmth in his colors.  I always feel enveloped in his paintings as though they wrap around me like a blanket, particularly his peasant pieces.brueghel_hunters in the snow

This piece above  depicting the Tower of Babel has always excited my imagination beyond the actual biblical story.  I’m always reminded of the Gormenghast Trilogy from Mervyn Peake when I see this image and wonder if it had any influence when he was formulating the story for his novels.  The scale of the building and the way it dominates the composition is breathtaking.
The Fall of the Rebel Angels

His earlier allegorical works seem to have been heavily influenced by Hieronymous Bosch and have incredible energy.  He had an ability to take multitudes of forms and scenarios and bring them together in a way that had great rhythm, lending almost an abstract quality to the overall scene.  I find these paintings quite beautiful despite their sometimes jolting imagery.Pieter_Brueghel_The_Triumpf_of_Death

I could look at his work for hours and even writing this short post is taking a long time because I just want to stop and look at his work.  I find it truly inspiring and wonder how it will find its way into my own work someday.  Somehow.  Maybe…brueghel fall of icarus

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In Flanders Fields

Posted in Favorite Things on May 25, 2009| 1 Comment »

997-339 A Little Night Music

 

In Flanders fields poppies grow

Between the crosses row on row

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.


We are the Dead.  Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.


Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch;  be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.


-Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae (1872-1918)

Canadian Army, WW I


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Once

Posted in At the Movies, Favorite Things, Video, tagged , , on May 22, 2009| 2 Comments »

OnceYesterday I wrote about a personal commitment in my work.  It actually set off a bit of a word association when the other night I saw a few minutes of a film I hadn’t seen in many years , The Commitments, the story of an Irish band that plays old school rhythm and blues.  It’s a nice film with a lot of humor but the part that caught my eye was seeing the band’s guitarist and realizing it was Glen Hansard who starred in and wrote most of the music for the Irish film, Once, a couple of years ago. He won an Oscar for his songwriting on the film.  Even though it isn’t a film I would necessarily urge everyone to see there was something about Once that I really found engaging even though I can’t really define it.  Maybe it’s just the affability of the characters.  I found myself really rooting for the two main characters and liking the music as well.

 Now the word association comes with the following clip from the film where the two main characters have rented a recording studio to record a demo with a back up band assembled  from street musicians .  The technician at the studio hasn’t much interest in them as they start.  They play the song, When Your Mind’s Made Up, building layers of sound and tempo with each refrain.  What I like about this scene is the technician’s recognition as they play that this was something real, something authentic built on their commitment to the music.  I’ve seen that look when someone has underestimated you then realizes there is more than meets the eye.  

Anyway, take a look and give a listen…

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The Catlin Gallery

Posted in Favorite Things, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 20, 2009| 6 Comments »

Renwick Museum Catlin GalleryThis is a shot from the George Catlin Gallery which was contained in the Renwick Gallery, a branch of the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.  It was one of my favorite exhibits in a tremendous space and always fills me with a new inspiration to create when I think of it.  It was primarily filled with portraits of Plains Indians by George Catlin  and the sheer number of the pieces and the scale of the room was overwhelming when you first entered.renwick-gallery

These photos don’t really capture the scale or feel of the room.  Although it seems at first immense, there’s a very comfortable atmosphere there, one that beckons you to sit on the benches there and just ponder.

For me, I think about the lives of those in the paintings, their day to day existence as well as the plight of their people.  I think about Catlin painting this huge group of work over the years and the passion and drive it must have taken to complete such a task. I think about basking in such a great space and feel quieted, although deep inside it makes me itch to have a brush in my hand.

If you’re in DC sometime, look up the Renwick Gallery. There’s a new exhibit featuring selections from their American collection.  You’ll be glad you did.

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Early Effort

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Video, tagged , , , on May 14, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Fausts GuitarOne of the first times I sold something I had created myself  was when I screenprinted T-shirts and sold them through the back pages of various magazines (the rock magazine Circus primarily although I also sold an anti-Reaganomics shirt in the New Republic) back in the early 1980’s.  They surely weren’t works of art.  I knew little about screenprinting and taught myself by reading a few basic manuals and by studying product catalogs, trying to discern what I needed to get the job done.  The shirts were a little rough around the edges but I actually found myself liking that aspect.

.  It was a different world then and if someone wanted your product they couldn’t simply go online to see and order it.  They had to write a letter and send a check or money order then wait several weeks for the shirt to arrive.  It was a pretty cumbersome process so as a result, of course, I never sold vast numbers of my shirts or even made a profit.  I wrote it off as a lesson learned.  The best part of the whole endeavor was hearing from those who did go to the trouble of ordering.

I had a guy from Manchester, England who wrote this great note in this mad scrawl who wanted to trade bootleg concerts tapes for shirts.  Another fellow from Georgia reordered after getting his first and wrote how much he loved the shirt.  And there’s my now longtime friend Tom from Northern Ireland who ordered a couple of the shirts.  We have stayed in touch over these now more than 25 years, exchanging music and keeping up to date on the changes in each of lives.  He sent me music from many British and Irish band that I knew little of.   Many years ago he sent me a tape of traditional Celtic music from the Boys of the Lough that became one of my favorite driving tapes back then.  It was fiddle and drum driven and at certain points I found myself flying along at 90 MPH due to the churning fast pace of the music. 

Here’s a small sample of the fiddling from the band courtesy of their Aly Bain…

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If a Tree Falls In the Forest…

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, tagged on May 10, 2009| 3 Comments »

Fallen TreeLast night Cheri and I were out in the yard of my studio when we heard what sounded like firecrackers going off from what we first thought might be our neighbors.  The rapid fire popping was suddenly followed by a roar and the crashing sound of what must have been a large tree falling, smashing through the limbs and trunks of its neighbors.

I trotted over towards where the sound seemed to originate, first making sure it hadn’t fallen on our home or outbuildings since the sound came from that direction.  I headed into the woods but saw no new downed trees so kept moving until at last there it was at the edge of our property, a large oak tree.

It was on its side with the trunk left in huge chunks and splinters, showing the evidence of a large hollow that had weakened its support.  Its huge limbs lifted it several feet off the ground and the trees around it were pushed over from the massive weight being exerted. The smell of broken wood and damp earth where the broken trunk had gouged the ground when it flipped over filled the air and I wondered at its age.

Over the years I have had the honor of hearing and sometimes seeing many trees fall in our woods.  I say honor because it seems a rare thing to be able to see something that has lived for many decades or even centuries, as in the case of the oak, come to an end.  There’s a certain feeling of being attached to the earth that comes with being there at the very moment when something that seems somehow eternal ceases to be.   There’s a bit of sadness that accompanies the witnessing of such a thing and I can only think of how the outer world has changed in the life of these trees.  As I am a witness to the end of their lives, they have witnessed the vast changes that have taken place in our lives, many of us falling as well.  They have seen the land around them evolve from thick forests to cleared farmland and back to thick forests.  They have witnessed the explosion of sound that has accompanied our technological advances.  They have seen us come and go.

So today the sound of that tree crashing back to the earth rings in my ears.  And the world keeps turning…

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Ozymandias

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, tagged , , , , , on May 3, 2009| 2 Comments »

Archaeology: A New WindI was going through some old books that I hadn’t looked over in some time and came across a thin paperback I had bought when I was in the third grade.  It was a Scholastic Book and the mere sight of it brought back memories of those days when the boxes of books we had ordered weeks before were delivered to the classroom.  There was a mix of excitement and anticipation until the teacher, white-haired Mrs. Rogers in this case, would finally open the box and hand out books to those who had ordered.  The smell and feel of the new books as they were came into my hands is as vivid now as it was so many years ago.

This was a book of poetry selections and across the cover was a photo of a group of British soldiers of an earlier times, astride horses in a desert setting.  It was depicting the doomed soldiers of Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade, one of the included verses.  Inside, going past my crude scrawled signature on the title page, there were poems from Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Langston Hughes, Poe and others.  Looking at it now made me realize what a great influence this slim volume printed on rough paper had on my youth.

Turning the pages I came across a poem that still remains a favorite and whose theme has always resonated in my work, particularly in my Archaeology series.  It deals with time and the ephemeral nature of our existence,  how we cannot control our place in the future despite all the wealth and fame we may acquire now.  This sonnet from Percy Shelley still has legs today…
 Ozymandias of Egypt 
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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Demuth’s Paintings

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, tagged , , , on April 28, 2009| 8 Comments »

I Saw the Figure 5 in GoldI’ve been a fan of Charles Demuth since the first time I saw his work.  He was considered a part of the Precisionist movement of the 20’s, along with painters such as Charles Sheeler and Joseph Stella among many others, with his paintings of  buildings and poster-like graphics such as this painting, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold.  He was also one of the prominent watercolorists of his time and while they are beautiful and deserve praise in their own right, it’s his buildings that draw me in.

Demuth’s work has a tight graphic quality but still feels painterly to me.  There’s still the feel of the artist’s hand in his work which to me is a great quality.  There are photorealist painters out there whose craftsmanship I can really admire but who are so precise that they lose thatdemuth-my-egypt feel of having the artist’s hand in the work.  I like seeing the imperfection of the artist.  The first time I saw one of the Ocean Park paintings from artist Richard Diebenkorn, it wasn’t the composition or color that excited me.  It was the sight of several bristles from his brush embedded in the surface.  To me, that was a thrill, seeing  a part of the process.  The imperfect hand of the artist.  I get that feeling from Demuth.

He also had a great sense of color and the harmony and interplay of colors.  His colors are often soft yet strong, a result of his work with watercolors.  His whites are never fully white and there are subtle shades everywhere, all contributing to the overall feel of the piece.  His work always seems to achieve that sense of rightness I often mention.Buildings, Lancaster 1930

His works, especially his paintings of buildings, have a very signature look, marked by a repeated viewpoint  where he views the buildings above him.  His paintings are usually fragments of the building’s upper reaches.  There’s a sense of formality in this view, almost reverence.  I don’t really know if he was merely entranced by the forms of industrial buildings or if he was making social commentary.

Whatever the case, do yourself a favor and take a look at the work of Charles Demuth.  It’s plain and simple good stuff…

demuth-from-the-garden-of-the-chateaudemuth-after-all

demuth_charles_aucassiu_and_nicolette_1921

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The Bats

Posted in Favorite Things, tagged , on April 26, 2009| 2 Comments »

batsI was walking to my studio this morning just as the sky was brightening.  As I neared the sidewalk leading around to my backdoor I noticed a group of three bats looping in the air above me.  They made several dives toward the chimney at this end of the studio, attempting to land under the lip of the fascia.  Eventually, one by one, they landed and disappeared under the board, between it and the chimney.

I was thrilled to see them and glad that they had taken refuge in that part of my studio.  My home and studio are located at the bottom of a small hill, more of a rise, and, as a result, our property catches much of the runoff.  With the heavy clay soil here it makes the property fairly wet which is a boon for mosquitoes and other flying pests.  Without these bats the mosquitoes would make going outside a real ordeal.  The bats feast on the mosquitoes and keep their levels low enough that we can live outside in the summer with only a bite or two, here and there.  If only the bats could control the deerflies and horseflies. 

But this made me think of how many people still fear and despise bats, keeping ancient myths alive despite scientific fact to the contrary.  The things people believe.  Bats will get tangled in your hair.  Bats crave your blood.  Bats will give you rabies- well, they can carry rabies but so can a host of other animals.  Like any wild animal, care must be taken when coming in close contact with them.

We fear and hate many things based on ancient prejudice.  Even after the myths are dispelled these prejudices live on, having become almost part of our fabric.  I still get uneasy when the bats swoop overhead until reason kicks back in and I am free to admire them and be appreciative for their service in getting rid of our mosquitoes.  But for that first moment, there is that primal response, that instinctual fear.  Makes me wonder how other aspects of my life are affected by these same sorts of ingrained prejudices, not having yet been recognized and replaced with logic.  

I’ve still got some work to do…

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