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Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

Vade Mecum

Posted in Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , on June 6, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Vade MecumWell, it’s Saturday and I’m on the road to Virginia, Alexandria specifically, to deliver the body of work for my show that opens next Friday, June 12th.  It’s a trip I don’t mind making since it marks the end of a hectic period where there just doesn’t seem to be enough time to get everything done.  

My trip is relatively easy, as easy as any  day with ten or eleven hours of driving can be.  Traffic is usually very light on Saturday mornings, especially in the early hours in which prefer to leave, so it gives me a chance to just glide along and let my mind wander a bit.  

One piece that will be keeping me company on my ride is above, called Vade Mecum, which translates from the Latin as “Go with me” and is usually meant today as a reference manual or something that is carried to instruct one.  I liked either definition and felt that both the literal translation and the object that is carried with you fit this piece.  I really like the depth that goes into this picture and get the feeling that it speaks of a journey and those intangibles which we carry with us as we travel along.  Thus, vade mecum…

I’m gonna leave you with some classic Bob Dylan that was one of my favorite singles as a little kid growing up.  Thank god for my sister and the influence her musical choices had on a 7 or 8 old year kid.  I feel so fortunate that I was weaned on this kind of stuff and feel a little bad for today’s kids and the inane kid music that is everywhere– the Wiggles and such.  They may never know what they’re missing.  Anyway, here’s “Positively 4th Street”…

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In Spite of Ourselves

Posted in Video, tagged , , on June 3, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Let the World See... I’m pretty busy today, almost finished with the final touches on my show that opens next week at the Principle Gallery.  This has been a tough one to finish due to some chronic back problems that have slowed my pace as I move through my processes.  It makes me realize how precious the simple idea of movement is to my quality of life.  But it’s all part of the bargain so I slog on.

Thought I’d fill today with the piece shown here, Let the World See…, that is part of the show which opens next Friday, June 12, and a song from one of my favorites, John Prine.  This is a song titled In Spite of Ourselves and includes the distinctive voice of Iris Dement singing along.  It’s a catchy little ditty having Prine’s typical humor and wordplay and is a good listen.  

Have a great day and enjoy…

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Searchers Sunday Sad Song

Posted in Video, tagged , , on May 31, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Song of Searching Sunday.  Busy.  Reading the Sunday paper before starting work and there’s a short moment of sadness that enters from out of the blue.  Can’t place it. It’s just there.

As I sit and think about it I can only describe it as the kind of feeling that I got watching Ricky Gervais‘ Extras  television series, where each show, though often hilarious, ended with a truly bittersweet or downright sad moment, always punctuated by the song Tea For the Tillerman from Cat Stevens.  I often found myself laughing with tears in my eyes.

It’s that kind of feeling this morning.  Here’s the song to complete this episode,,,

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You Can’t Judge a Book…

Posted in Personal Mythology, Video, tagged , , , , , on May 26, 2009| 1 Comment »

FarmerI’ve just put the final details on a couple of paintings that will be part of my solo show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.  The show opens June 12th and I’m scheduled to deliver the work to the gallery a week before so I’m in the final stages of preparation.  This is my tenth one-man show at the gallery and before that I did two shows as part of a group of painters from the Corning , NY area that was dubbed the Finger Lakes School.  

I particularly remember one moment from the first show with that group.  There was a pretty good crowd and several of us from the group mingled, answering questions and such.  I had a small break in the conversation and I heard a female voice from behind ask her companion where we were from.  Her friend answered that we were from the Finger Lakes region in New York.  He  said it was a pretty rural area with a lot of wineries and farms.

“Well, you know, they do look like farmers,” she replied.

I think I did a spit take.  Over the years I often think back to that lady’s comment and sometimes laugh.  Maybe we shouldn’t have all worn our overalls and straw hats that night.  It just reminds me how people judge others by that initial glimpse and how often  they end up being wrong.  Actually, I’ve come to the conclusion that, in the end, I would prefer being mistaken for a farmer than an artist anyhow.  Offhand, I can think of more positive attributes for the farmer.   So, if you can make it to the opening look for the guy who looks like a farmer…

That brings me to a song, You Can’t Judge a Book, that was originally written by blues great Willie Dixon and made popular by Bo Diddley.  My favorite version was from Long John Baldry, one of the pioneers of the British blues/rock movement in the early 60’s and a guy who had real panache, but I couldn’t find a version online.  But while searching I came across an interesting jazzy version of the song from Ben Sidran.  Give a listen  and enjoy…

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The Shining

Posted in Video, tagged , on May 24, 2009| Leave a Comment »

National CemeteryIt’s  Sunday on the Memorial day weekend and I take a moment to just think about the people who have served and sacrificed for our country in the armed forces.  On a day like today you have to put aside your political views and remember the people who rest now beneath those shining white slabs in the  national cemeteries.  Forget disputes over whether this war or that war was justified.  Just remember those who have fallen, just a moment for those who have sacrificed in such a selfless manner.

So it’s pretty silent here and I think of a song from Badly Drawn Boy, The Shining.  It has a quiet feel and opens with the warm tones of a French horn.  Enjoy…

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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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Conscience

Posted in Video, tagged , , on May 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »

The Oxbow IncidentI don’t like crowds.

Maybe it’s just some sort of neuroses like agoraphobia or maybe it’s just having developed a sense of uneasiness from seeing how individual people could react differently after becoming part of a group.  It always confounded me from an early age how the dynamics of a group could change the behavior of a person, bringing out characteristics that might be undetected in one-to-one interactions.  It’s as though the protection of the group brings out extreme attitudes that would otherwise be stifled.  The whole moral compass is pushed further  from the center and the sense of conscience that is present becomes diluted.

I was reminded of this feeling when I saw a short film about the actor Henry Fonda that talked of the parallels of his character’s experience  in the movie The Oxbow Incident , where he was the lone voice of reason against a mob that lynches three men without evidence of their guilt, with his own as a young boy in Omaha, Nebraska.  He was 14 years old in 1919 when he witnessed a mob storm the courthouse that was located across the street from his father’s printing business.  They  were inflamed by allegations made by a white woman that she had been assaulted by a black man.  A suspect had been taken into custody and was in the courthouse.  The mob, whose size was estimated to be between 5000 and 15000 people, exchanged gunfire with police in which two of the mob were killed.  The mayor of Omaha tried to intervene  and was beaten and himself lynched before being saved.  The suspect was not so lucky.  

The accounts of this mob rule are horrific.  Fonda carried this memory with him for the rest of his life and it informed many of the roles he had over his career.   In The Oxbow Incident his character confronts the mob afterward in a bar and reads them a letter written by one of the hanged men to his wife.  I could go on and on but I think the clip says it all…

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Women in Art

Posted in Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , , on May 17, 2009| Leave a Comment »

WomenInArtA friend sent me a link to this video yesterday, called Women in Art.  It’s extraordinarily well known on YouTube, having something like 9 million views.  I, of course, had never heard of it.

It is a montage of famous portrait paintings of women through the centuries morphing from one to the next.  The creator of this video, Phillip Scott Johnson, did a great job of choosing and arranging the subjects, earning him an award for his creativity from YouTube. The accompanying Bach piece performed on the cello  by Yo-Yo Ma fits beautifully.  Makes for a nice Sunday morning viewing.

If you would like to identify any of the paintings used in the video, click on the group of six paintings above and you’ll be taken to a website that identifies each.  Enjoy…

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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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Penelope

Posted in Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , , on May 8, 2009| Leave a Comment »

PenelopeThis painting is titled Penelope after the wife of Ulysses who waited in Ithaca for his return, putting off suitors, in Homer’s The Odyssey.  Where I live in the Finger Lakes region of New York state, many of the small towns and villages are named from the classics.  There is Hector, Homer, Ovid, Ithaca, Sparta, Carthage, Romulus and so on.

When I was younger and became aware of the original places from which the names of these local towns were adopted, I always wondered about the people who settled these towns and decided what their new towns should be called.  What was the person like who decided that their new town would be Sparta and they would be the new Spartans?  In what trait in themselves did these people see a connection with the original Spartans?  Maybe it was a matter of dissuading other settlers from pushing into their newly claimed home.  You know- don’t screw with us, we’re Spartans.  It’s hard to see now, Sparta being a sleepy rural township above Cayuga Lake with hardly a sign of any carnage existing.

This painting is another going to my show at the Principle Gallery in June.  As I’ve written before, I am in the midst of preparations for this show , keeping me very busy.  I’ve got to run now but I wanted to leave a song from one of my favorites, Neko Case.  Her live CD, The Tiger’s Have Spoken, is a dynamic set that really showcases her powerful voice.  There’s a certain wistful quality there that I can’t put my finger on.  It’s definitely here in Maybe Sparrow…

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