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Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

Guenther Hears the Boogaloo Softly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Ticket to Ride

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

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

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

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

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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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The Ship Song

Posted in Video, tagged , on June 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »

On the road today, delivering the group of work for next week’s opening, June 10,  of my show at the Principle Gallery.  It’s always a relaxed drive, knowing that the work is done and now it goes out into the world.  Free running like the image shown here.

Continuing the nautical theme, which I also used in yesterday’s post, here’s a tune from the unique Nick Cave.  It’s The Ship Song.  Enjoy your day!

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Killing the Blues

Posted in Video, tagged , , on May 28, 2011| 1 Comment »

Still in the act of getting work ready for the show in a couple of weeks.  It’s going pretty smoothly which I suppose it should after the years of doing this same routine.  It’s pretty exciting to see the work, especially those on paper, transform from the raw image to a fully presented piece with matting and frame.  Unmatted, the paintings have the exposed  beginnings of where the gesso of the surface begins as well as the rough edges of the paper itself.   The mat and frame focuses the piece and there’s a real sense of transformation once the piece is complete as though it has suddenly blossomed fully. 

So, I’m off to continue the transformation.  I thought I’d play a tune today, a wondeful version of an old John Prine song, Killing the Blues.  It’s from the unlikely  duo of  of bluegrass/folk star Allison Krauss and formerLed Zep frontman Robert Plant.  Just a great take on a great song.

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Possum Trot

Posted in Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , , on May 18, 2011| 2 Comments »

Calvin Black, Folk Artist 1903-1972

There’s another terrific website out there called folkstreams.net which is an archive of films that describes itself in its site’s header as “ A National Preserve of Documentary Films about American Roots Culture.”  It is a treasure chest of great fims about roots music (Cajun, Delta Blues, etc.), lost American crafts and folk or outsider art.   Most relate to things that are fading fast in our culture, a sort of  expressive ephemera.  I could spend a day just browsing this site, which makes all of its films available for viewing online.

 
One of the first films I came across was Possum Trot, made by documentarians Allie Light and Irving Saraf back in 1977, which shows the work of Calvin Black.  Black and his wife, Ruby,  ran a rock shop in the Mojave Desert and in 1954 he began to create life-size female dolls as an added attraction for his shop as well as an outlet for eslf expression.  He created more than 80 dolls each with distinct features, costumes and personalities.  Some were crudely animated and performed in his Birdcage Theatre there, singing in voices recorded by Black himself.
 
Black died in 1972 and Ruby maintained the attraction for several years but eventually Possum Trot was abandoned and no longer exists today.  The dolls have been dispersed into the folk art collections of the world, one recently fetching about $80,000 at auction. 
 
There something kind of haunting in seeing this created world that no longer exists but for photos and a little film, as haunting as the dolls themself.  The full 28 minute film is available to see here on the folkstreams.net site.  Here’s a short trailer that gives a great overhead shot of the place when the film was shot in 1977 and has the voice of Calvin Black singing in falsetto as one of his dolls.  Interesting stuff…
 
 

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The Need for Solitude

Posted in Quote, Video, tagged on May 13, 2011| 4 Comments »

The artist must actively cultivate
that state which most people avoid:
the state of being alone.
-James Baldwin

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

I spoke with a drawing class from a local college yesterday.  I always feel like I could have done a much better job with these things and yesterday was no different.  I left thinking that I hadn’t fully expressed fully all the advice or warnings I might have wanted to offer.  I had sped over the idea of taking a  mindset for their work that makes it apparent that they view their work as important.  The idea here is that if you don’t take your work seriously, how can you expect others to  do the same?  I don’t think I got that fully across.

The one thing I did stay on was the value and need for solitiude in their work, how they must embrace being alone with their thoughts and work in order to take their work to its fullest potential.  They should be honest with themselves and if they are uneasy about being and working alone, this is not a path they should follow.  I told them that the solitude was actually the big attraction for me and that, even as I spoke with them, I was wishing I was back in the studio.  Alone.

Creation is most often done in solitude.  There have been successful artistic collaborations through the years but they seldom have the impact and power of the singular voice and vision.  And this is most often forged in solitude.

Maybe I’m biased towards this idea because of my cultivated  affinity for being alone.  I don’t know nor do I really care.  As the glorious Garbo said, ” I just want to be alone.”

 

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Thrice All American

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged , on May 12, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’m off to talk with professor Dave Higgins’  drawing class this morning at a local coffeehouse, something I have done in the past.  It’s always a challenge speaking to students, much different than speaking to a gallery audience of people who somewhat know your work.  There’s a bit of a wall to knock down with some of the students and sometimes its not an easy thing to accomplish.  All I can hope is that I come out with at least one or two thoughts that might prove useful to some of these kids somewhere down the line, some little tidbit that they might hold on to for more than five minutes.

I will probably talk about the focus and choice I mentioned in a post last week.  Making a choice and giving a fully invested effort is essential, be it in art or some other field.  But it’s also important to recognize that this choice can be an evolving, changing thing.  Where they headed for may not be their final destination.  But if they make that first conscious decision to head in a single direction they will at least be on some sort of path forward, one of their own choice.

We’ll see.

Anyway, here’s a little musical interlude for this lovely Thursday morning.  It’s a video that mixes two of my favorite things, the singing of Neko Case and beautiful old film and photos of the last century.  I find myself always moved by this kind of imagery, as though it is exposing our commonality as a people, our interconnectedness with one another.  Whatever the case, it’s a beautiful song that meshes very well with the video here.  Enjoy.

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The Art of Motion Control

Posted in Neat Stuff, Video, tagged on May 8, 2011| 1 Comment »

“Sisyphus” Bruce Shapiro

I stumbled across the video below quite by accident and at first simply wrote it off as some computer generated animation.  But I did a quick search on the man behind it, Bruce Shapiro, and found that it was genuine– real sand with a real steel ball rolling through it to create intricate patterns.  You see, Bruce Shapiro plies his craft in the art of motion control.  That is to say that he blends the scientific and industrial aspects of technology to create something beautiful, something artistic.

 
His sand installations are large tables filled with sand that move ever so slightly, guided by a computer program, so that the steel ball moves a wee bit at a time, leaving a ridge in the sand that creates the visible pattern.  His permanent installations do so endlessly, one pattern beginning atop the last finished pattern.  Hence, the name he has given them,  Sisyphus, after the mythic king who was punished by the gods for his deceitful ways by being forced to push a boulder up a hill each day for eternity, nearly making it to the top each time only to have it roll back to the bottom.  An endless labor.
 
There are two videos below, one showing a pattern in the making and the other showing Shapiro explaining the background of his work.  You can get more info at his site.
 
 

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Twyla Tharp and Choice

Posted in Influences, Neat Stuff, Video, tagged on May 7, 2011| 7 Comments »

I was talking to a younger friend last night at an opening of an exhibition.  I have known this person since she was quite young and have always admired her native talent in many disciplines that she has chosen to follow over the years.  She has shown great ability in painting and drawing but also craves to create in video, music and dance.  She said she wants to paint but feels that she wants to equally do all these other things as well.

We talked about whether it was possible to do everything and still reach the highest peak of your potential in any single endeavor.  I cited other artists I had known who had this immense talent and felt the need to go in several different directions with their creative energy.  As a result they never achieved maximum focus in any single creative area and, while the work was good, never felt like it reached as far as it might have with a more singularly focused effort. 

She said she had been thinking about just that thought, that just because you can do everything doesn’t mean you should do everything.  She spoke about Twyla Tharp, the famous choreographer whose 2003 book on creativity  is shown above, and how she had written that sometimes the artist must choose a single route even though they have wide talents in order to achieve the greatest focus.

I joked with her that I felt lucky to be so limited  in talent that I only wanted to paint.  But I wasn’t completely kidding.  I understood early on in this process that I had to choose and focus fully.   I somehow felt that if I went in too many directions my message, my expression of self, would go from being a focused and resonant single note to a cacophony of disparate notes.  That single, shining note would be lost in the chaos, never to be clearly heard. 

I got up this morning and thought about that conversation and about her words about Tharp.  I felt lucky that my choice was made and hope that thoise lucky talented folks, like my young friend, can someday find their own clear resonance.  I found this clip of an interview with Tharp and much of what she says here can be transferred to any endeavor of effort.  It’s worth a listen.

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