Ma and Pa Tierney celebrated their fiftieth anniversary at their house at 208 Lyndhurst Street in 1920.
Top row from left: Maime Tierney, Maney Moynihen, Raymond J. Tierney Sr., Mary Weitz, Andy Moynihen, Eleanor Nell (Tierney) Craddock, Emma Moynihen Foster
Middle Row: Walter L. Tierney, Loretta Weitz, Lucille Weitz, Clare and Clive Lansing, Nell Lansing, Bernard Weitz, Ed’s wife with Winifred, Gus Weitz, Edward J. Tierney Jr., Edmund Weitz, Mr. Foster, Joseph Bernard Tierney
Front row: Arthur John Tierney, wife Anna Tierney, Winifred Lansing, two young girls are Rita Tierney and Elizabeth Lansing, Ma and Pa (Edward J. Tierney and Winifred Maloney) Tierney, Elizabeth M.”Betsy” Tierney, Mary Tierney, Jane Lansing., Margaret Tierney, two boys in white are Bob and Dick Lansing, Gerritt Lansing.
Suzanne Tierney, Art Tierney’s daughter, provided identification.
This house, a block behind the World of Inquiry School No. 58 has been torn down. My grandfather grew up here with ten siblings. He and two of his brothers opened a store, Tierney Market, at the intersection of North Street and Hudson Avenue. My grandfather would walk to work. I am so happy they gathered in front of their house to pose for a photographer on their parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. Could they have imagined we’d still be looking at this photo today?
The stories we heard of Pa’s drinking and abusive behavior don’t exactly jive with this photo. The couple reached the half century mark! My mom, Mary Tierney, wasn’t even born when this picture was taken but her oldest sister, Rita is shown in the lower left. She was the first child of my grandfather, Raymond Tierney, top left, and his first wife who died in childbirth. My grandfather rather quickly married my grandmother, upper left and by all evidence they had a wonderful marriage unlike Ma and Pa. I still remember my grandmother in her 90’s saying “I miss Ray.” I miss him too.
“The Way These Painters Lived From his window across a courtyard, Frank could watch the painter Willem de Kooning as he paced in his studio and contemplated his canvas. “I think that the people that influenced me most were the abstractionist painters I met; and what influenced me strongly was the way these painters lived, Frank said of his time embedded in New York City’s vibrant arts community. They were people who really believed in what they did. So it reinforced my belief that you could really follow your intuition… You could photograph what you felt like.” – wall tag quote from Robert Frank MoMA exhibition 2024
When Robert Frank was still alive he worked with Gerhard Steidl to produce a series of dreamy photo books. All in the twenty dollar range, they are gorgeous beyond words. We have five but not “Park/Sleep.” I was looking at the Amazon listing for that one as we shopped for Duane and I came across these two customer reviews:
Verified Purchase “The book is about his life I guess and it IS ROBERT FRANK so I wonder why he thinks it’s important for us to see. If you are a photographer, as I am, you probably have similar pictures that you made. They will never be published because you are not HIM.” 2 people found this helpful
Verified Purchase “Just an intractable artist, not the Robert Frank from The Americans, the great photographer we all loved. I don’t like this explicit despair.” 3 people found this helpful
We saw the recent/fantastic Robert Frank shows at MoMA with Duane a few weeks ago and Peggi photographed a Steidl book in the bookstore that was about the making of these Steidl books. We ordered that one for Duane and we sent him this small sculpture (above.) Duane’s package to us was the catalog from the MoMA show. Peggi and I spent Christmas morning with it and it was real gift to see the show again.
My brother, Mark, and his wife, Amy, came up from New York for Christmas and Hanukkah and gave us a book they bought at the Jewish Museum for their current show, “Draw Them In Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Confronts Philip Guston.” My first thought was “No Contest” but we gave it a chance and fell in love with it. With essays by the artist and conversation with Art Spiegelman, Hancock’s paintings came to life. We plan to see the show in person when we visit New York in February.
Margaret Explosion performing “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”
Melissa and Phil were both out of town last Friday so Margaret Explosion played with Bernie Heveron on guitar. Bernie is shown here playing keyboards, some twenty years ago, sitting in with Margaret Explosion at one of the holiday shows at the old Bop Shop. Phil Marshall, who joined the band about six years ago, is playing guitar on this minor key holiday song.
Years ago we decided to strap ice cleats on a pair of worn out walking shoes and just leave them on the shoes for days like today, Christmas, with a thin layer of fresh snow on top of icy streets. At the bottom of the steep hill on Hoffman we ran into Daminika. She rolled down hr window to say hi. She was wearing a headband that looked like a Christmas wreath. Peggi said, “”I like your headband” at the same time as I said, “I like your halo” so Daminika said, “What.” We laughed and pointed to her head. She said, “I hate Christmas. I’d rather be out skiing.”
Eduardo Chillida’s “El Peine Del Viento” in San Sebastián Spain
We sent out holiday cards this year, first time in years, and when we saw Kathy at the Margaret Explosion gig on Friday she told us our card looked just like one of the photos we had taken in Spain. Kathy is a craftswoman, a hands-on sort and creative. I said, “it is one of my photos.” I didn’t want to read too much into it but it was clear Kathy didn’t know we had the cards made. That fact would have been obvious if we hadn’t cut the cards in half before mailing them out.
I did commercial art my whole working life and I remember how much pressure was relieved when websites came along. If you made a mistake on a project you could just hop online and fix it unlike a print job where you had to eat 10,000 catalogs with the wrong phone number printed on it. Well, we did the mechanical files for our Christmas card, a 7″w x 10″h piece that folds horizontally to 7″w x 5″h, and uploaded it in a flash. Only when the box of cards arrived did I discover we had backed the card up wrong. When we opened the card Eduardo Chillida’s quote, (“Isn’t planning a way to steal the present’s greatest mission?”) was upside down. Considering that quote was so fitting to our lack of planning we debated whether to send them out that way and hope someone got the joke or, as we decided, to cut the cards in half so the image was on the front and quote on the back.
We did receive another comment on the card. John Gilmore emailed us. “Thanks for the card. Perplexing I must say.”
When I first met Rich I couldn’t get over how he could ever have gotten through high school without a grounding in rock n roll. All my other friendships were formed over passionate responses to rock music. How exotic could Wantaugh, Long Island be that you could grow up without Mitch Ryder and the Stones? I found out when I visited him at his parent’s home. Later it was Rich who turned me on to Bitches Brew.
Rich was a guest dj on Howard Thompson’s WPKN “Pure” show yesterday. His theme-centered show looked at sisters, brothers and brothers & sisters who make music together. You know, Van Halen and the Ramones. I should have shared this link before the show but it will be archived here for the next two weeks. Rich has such a great radio voice. I told him so and he shared a few of his secrets. He used two vocal effects, plus a de-esser and he sped it up 5%. He sounded so smooth, like Adrienne Barbeau in John Carpenter’s Fog.
Madison, a young woman who has been coming to ME for the last six months or so asked me what I was listening to. I told her mostly 45s and she asked if I could share a playlist of them on Spotify. I have a short stack of 7 inchers, ones we’ve played recently, sitting next to the turntable so I limited myself to those. I found most on Spotify but I couldn’t find the single version of “Black & Tan Fantasy” so I had to skip that gem. And because I’m not a subscriber I can’t order the Spotify playlist so I’d recommend shuffling it.
If you can’t make it to the Nam June Paik show at the Memorial Art Gallery you owe it to yourself to watch “Edited for Television,” a 1975 glimpse into the artist’s life at the height of his creative output. But then you would miss his works on paper dedicated to John Cage. You have until May 4, 2025 to see the show. The video looks a lot better over there too.
Speaking of winter, Margaret Explosion will celebrate the solstice on Friday night at the Little theatre Café. The holidays can take care of themselves. The solstice deserves top billing. We played on this same date last year with a different lineup. It is probably a good thing that the whole Margaret Explosion band doesn’t seem to ever show up at once but this week we learned that cellist, Melissa, will be out of town with family, Phil, guitarist, will be in New Orleans with his son and Jack, bass clarinetist, has work duties.
2024
Margaret Explosion plays the Little Theatre Café on Friday December 20th 7-9pm
2023
Margaret Explosion Solstice gig from 2023
We have played as a trio a few times and resigned ourselves to do that again. Bob Martin, in fact, had already requested we send him a copy of the trio date so he could play along with it in Chicago. But then we thought we could try something new so we invited Chris Zajkowski to play piano. Chris was ready to do it until he heard the weather forecast calling for snow. He has snow-removal customers that take precedence. Bernie Heveron was on our mind because we had just finished the reissue of Bob Martin’s remixed Personal Effects “This Is It” album. So we contacted him via Facebook and he will join us on guitar.
Less than 1% of the white-tailed deer population has a genetic mutation that causes varying amounts of white hair in its coat. They’re called piebald deer and this one has settled down in our neighborhood. We brought what will probably be our last load of greens back from the garden. We did two plantings of Mache lettuce this year. The hardy plants grows close to the ground and I found it really tedious to pick until I realized I could just uproot the whole plant and break the tiny roots off at home before rinsing it. It is delicious and miraculously, it seems to be multiplying just as the ground freezes for winter.
Station 7 from “Passion Play” by Paul Dodd, 24″ x 30″ inkjet print 1998
So, Jim Callan has passed away and Rochester should by all rights have its first saint and someday our patron saint. Forget the miracles. The wonders of everyday life are enough.
That’s Jim, above on the right, dispensing Communion. The faces across the top are from the local Crimestoppers page. I got interested in them while working as a graphic artist for the Rochester Police Department. Jim welcomed all and set up special ministries to assist the needy. Mark, the sketch in the middle, was the only homeless guy I knew at the time. He was a dj on WRUR and would fill in for others. Rumor had it he fell asleep on air one night. As the note in the bottom says, I was baptized in this church but that was long before Jim took over. This image is my first draft for the seventh station of the cross. All fourteen were shown in the 1999 Finger Lakes Show.
The Spiritus Christi community rose from temporal Corpus Christi (body of Christ) . My parents had a second floor apartment around the corner on Alexander Street, a place so small, I have heard, that my crib was out in the hall. Jim Callan and my parents were part of an early group of breakaway Catholics that eventually became the Servant of God Community. In Jim Callan’s 2001 book, “Studentbaker Corporation” he tells the now familiar story of his early priesthood.
He was assigned to Saint Ambrose’ parish. They had just spent a fortune on new facilities and Jim had taken a vow of poverty. He refused the opulence and for his obstinance he was reassigned to Corpus Christi, a parish long past its glory days with a dwindling congregation. With ideals borrowed from Jesus he turned the place around with little regard to church orthodoxy. He shared communion with non Catholics, he welcomed gays and he allowed women to take their rightful place at the alter. A 1998 a New York Times article stated the Mass attendance went from 200 to 3,000 under Callan. He filled the pews and after twenty two years the church hierarchy, God’s Rottweiler himself, Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI gave him the boot. They renamed their community, Spiritus Christi, and under the direction of Mary Braverman made it the largest breakaway Catholic group in the country.
Sonja Livingston, in her fabulous memoir, “Ghostbread,” writes lovingly about the role Father Jim played in her life. Other than taking his vow of poverty seriously, all Father Jim Callan had to do to get excommunicated was let women say mass, bless same sex marriages and welcome anyone to break bread (receive communion) in church. That’s like crossing the street.
“Cloud Library” by Margaret Explosion from 2024 CD “Field Recordings”
I like the idea of having all my stuff in the cloud, accessible from my iPad wherever I am. One of my favorite psychedelic trips was at IU in 1969. I think I might have been flying solo. I remember getting off in the student union and going out back where I laid down and looked up at the clouds. The ever shifting formations were so intricate and fascinating I felt like I was there at the creation. I thought of that trip when we watched Janet Planet the other night. The little girl liked to lay down and space out.
Self Portrait With Cloud 1970
Bob Martin created two new videos for the Personal Effects “This Is It – Remix 2024” release. He masterfully synced old footage of the band performing live to his new mixes of the album tracks. When Peggi and I told him how much we loved them he told us how he overlapped footage on two tracks in iMovie. I didn’t realize you could do two video layers, I had always relied on long cross-dissolves, so I tried it for this video of the first song from the new Margaret Explosion cd, “Field Recordings.” I laid my iPad on the table out back and captured some time lapses of clouds. I grabbed some footage of the band performing a completely different song, stripped the audio and didn’t even try to sync it up to the song. I sent a link to Bob after I posted it. Bob used to be in the band before he moved to Chicago and I thought it was really big of him to be so generous with his compliments:
“That is wonderful at every level. Literally has my heart beating a little harder. Not only is the song great, not only is the image shifting and blending painted beautifully, but the band visual adds an imagined polyrhythmic layer that becomes part of the music. What you see isn’t what you physically hear, but I felt myself “hearing” the aural aspect of the video in perfect sympathy with the audio performance. Sorry, I am usually a little more succinct. Great stuff.”
“Fascinating Game” from Personal Effects album “This Is It – Remix 2024
Not only did Bob Martin remix 1984’s Personal Effects album from the original eight track tapes. He synced his new mix of “Fascinating Game” to old footage of Personal Effects performing live. He did this without using AI. He’s saving that for the 80th anniversary reissue. “This Is It – Remix 2024” is available now on all the streaming platforms.
Judy Gohringer “Going to the Rapids” painting in RoCo Members Show 2024
Fifty degrees tomorrow, just about right for mid December in upside down world. We plan to pick the remainder of our lettuce and arugula and then pull the stakes out of the garden in preparation for the new year. We turned our outside faucets off for the winter and brought in some more firewood. The elephant ears are tucked away for the winter but I would like to cover the ceramic pots so they don’t collect water, freeze and crack. I’m making this list here so I don’t forget anything. The combination of perception and age is accelerating the pace as days and whole weeks fly by.
I particularly liked this Judy Gohringer painting in Rochester Contemporary’s Members show. My pick for best of show if anyone is asking. I love the construction. It’s fun. It makes me feel like I’m riding in the car, in the front seat, not driving. The road is right in front of me and I’m just spacing out as we wind our way through the Adirondacks. And it makes the painting I entered look stuffy and formal.
Charles Burchfield drawing “Winter Moonlight” at MAG show “Drawing Is Discovery”
“An artist must paint not what he sees in nature, but what is there. To do so he must invent symbols, which, If properly used, make his work seem even more real than what is in front of him.”
Well, no wonder no one else paints like Charles Burchfield. The Memorial Art Gallery still has some surprises and the current show there is a big one. For “Drawing as Discovery” they painted their walls a warm, rich black and brought out rarely seen treasures from their collection – drawings and works on paper that can only handle so many strenuous museum hours. This could be their best show yet. Certainly worthy of a catalog yet I couldn’t even find a list of artists. So you will just have to get over there and spend some time looking.
Burchfield moved to Buffalo In 1921 to work as a wallpaper designer. He gained national recognition in 1930 when the newly formed Museum of Modern Art organized an exhibition of his early work. “Winter Moonlight” was purchased by MAG director Gertrude Herdle in 1953 from an exhibition at The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy (now the Buffalo AKG Art Museum).
Goya “Artemisia” in “Drawing Is Discovery” show at MAG
From wall tag: “Goya emphasizes the most dramatic episode in the life of Artemisia, an ancient queen of Caria in Asia Minor (present-day Turkey). After her husband King Mausolus’s death in 353 BCE, Artemisia mixes her late husband’s ashes with spices and water, and prepares to drink the bitter brew in an ultimate tribute to his memory. This drawing was a gift to the gallery from James H. Lockhart in 1978.”
Auguste Rodin “Seated Nude” in “Drawing Is Discovery” show at MAG
Everyone loves Rodin’s sculptures. They are magnificent. When Fred Lipp suggested I look at Rodin’s watercolors it took me a while to get around to it. I pictured Rodin as the manliest of men. Rodin watercolors? I came across one in the Johnson Museum at Cornell and eventually bought a book of his watercolors. The gallery purchased this beauty in 1956.
Leo Dodd “Brighton Brick Yard” watercolor by Leo Dodd
You know how a retiree’s calendar can have big blocks of emptiness and then everything at once? Thursday was one of those days. It’s a First Friday now and we are staying in. We have the red lights on for an Atletico Madrid Copa del Rey match.
Years ago my father spearheaded a movement to save an old farmhouse in Brighton. He and a small group of residents formed an organization called Historic Brighton and Leo Dodd was elected as their first president. Peggi and I did the logo and the website in the early years. My sister, Amy, is now the president of the ever-growing group and they held a special event on Thursday in the now restored Buckland House where eight of Leo’s paintings of old Brighton will be on permanent display. Of course nothing is permanent as my father discovered.
Ray Tierney found donors to pay for the framing and I hung the eight paintings before the unveiling. It was fun to spend some time with them again. All were painted during a twenty year period when my father and I were in Fred Lipp’s class at the MAG. We students all worked on paintings at home and met once a week for feedback. No painting was done before Fred said it was “Done.” And it was often before you wanted it to be done. “Painting is not the execution of a plan” Fred would say.
The mayor, other Brighton dignitaries and members of Leo’s family were there for the opening of “Leo Dodd Paintings at the Buckland Farmhouse.” Leo would have been so proud.
Peggi Fournier and her lyrics to “X-Melody” from Personal Effects “This Is It” album 1984
Forty years ago Personal Effects released “This Is It,” our first full length lp on Earring Records.” X-Melody was and still is my favorite track on the album. Guitarist, Bob Martin made digital copies of the original half inch, 8 track tapes and he re-mixed the lp along with with three Bonus Tracks from those sessions. You can read Bob’s notes on this project here. “This Is It – Remix 2024” is available to stream today!
Personal Effects “This Is It – Remix 2024” Available now on streaming services platforms now.
Margaret Explosion playing in the Bug Jar at Happy Hour in 1998
The original dimension of the photo above was 1152 x 864 pixels. I enlarged it slightly (with Photoshop’s AI feature) to 1620 pixels wide, my current standard for the photos I post. The photo was taken in 1998 with my Kodak DC210 digital camera. The DC210 was released that year and is a significant model in the evolution of digital photography, one of the first cameras to feature a compact flash card for storage, a 2x optical zoom and a 1-megapixel sensor. My father worked at Kodak and he and I followed the birth of digital photography closely. Here is one of his early spreadsheets. He got me into the Kodak Camera Store on Lake Avenue and I bought this camera when it came out. I’m guessing Shelley took this photo in a moment when she wasn’t playing maracas.
City Newspaper ad for Bug Jar in 1998 featuring Margaret Explosion
This ad from City Newspaper helps date the band. Margaret Explosion started playing a regular Friday evening Happy Hour at the Bug Jar in late 1997. Twenty-seven years later on Wednesday, November 27 at the Little Theatre Café we celebrate the release of our newest CD, “Field Recordings.”
Peggi tracing outline of projection of new Margaret Explosion cd for poster for CD Release Party Wednesday November 27 at Little Theatre Café. Margaret Explosion CD “Field Recordings” in stores and available for streaming platforms now.
Still finding more uses for the unused billboards I got from Dave Mahoney’s father back in the eighties. The front sides make good collage material and the paper is heavy enough to support paint on the blank backside. I projected an image of the cd cover on the wall in our basement and we painted the shapes and lettering, an extra large facsimile of our new cd..
Peggi painting Margaret Explosion poster for CD Release Party Wednesday November 27 at Little Theatre Café. Margaret Explosion CD “Field Recordings” in stores and available for streaming platforms now.
I was looking at Jean Arp when I came up with the design. I started with a few layouts using photos and Peggi pushed me to do something catchier like our earlier cd, “Skyhigh” That one was named after the place Peggi’s only relative, Zimmy, lived with her life partner, Stevie, in the Smoky Mountains and it featured a flat white cloud.
Promoting a show at the Little makes for a noisy crowd. And with no mics on the bass and drums it is hard for the band to rise above the din. The espresso machine and the sound of chairs dragging across the floor are all part of our sound but we don’t do solos and there is a no room for the crowd to solo either.
“Hello paul, Could you help us source for the product we need kindly contact me directly for more detail Waiting for your timely reply Best Regards Dr. Alfred”
I spend a few minutes each morning sifting through the junk email. I add rules for the constant offenders but just swipe to delete most with hardly a glance. Some though, still draw me in. Chris Gratin (below) “stormed onto” some of my works. He looks forward to reading from me.
Subject: Wedding Anniversary Gift Aloha… I am Chris from Chester Springs, Pennsylvania. have been on the lookout for some artworks lately in regards to I and my wife’s anniversary which is just around the corner. I stormed on to some of your works which I found quite impressive and intriguing. I must admit you’re doing quite an impressive job. You are undoubtedly good at what you do.
With that being said, I would like to purchase some of your as a surprise gift to my wife in honor of our upcoming wedding anniversary. It would be of help if you could send some pictures of your piece of works, with their respective prices and sizes, which are ready for immediate (or close to immediate) sales. My budget for this is within the price range of $1000 to $8000.
I look forward to reading from you in a view to knowing more about your pieces of inventory. As a matter of importance, I would also to know if you accept a check as a means of payment.
Regards. Chris Gartlin
And this text spam looked pretty funny on my watch.
I am still digesting our recent art binge in NYC. One day in Tribeca, one in Chelsea and one at MoMA left me with a hundred new photos in my library. That’s not exactly true. At MoMA I studied and then photographed some of the same paintings from their collection that I’ve photographed before. So some are only sort of new. And now, after studying my photos I find it interesting that I was attracted to the same thing a few years back. I had photographed two of the three pieces above before. The newer photos are better and that is only because I am better equipped to color correct the white walls in PS.
As exciting as the new art in lower Manhattan was (and I felt like we had struck gold there) these three pieces from MoMA stand out. Despite the fact that their create dates span one century, it is striking how similar they are. Less is still more.
