I am still digesting our recent art binge in NYC. One day in Tribeca, one in Chelsea and one at MoMA left me 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 there create dates span one century it is striking how similar they are. Less is still more.
Drop-off for the annual Members Show at RoCo was this past weekend. I was torn between submitting a photo from my “Portals and Planes” show or the abstract above. Interesting that it came down to those two. They are really very similar. Peggi helped me make the decision and the acrylic on paper has been entered.
Rochester Contemporary Director, Bleu Cease, with copy of Margaret Explosion’s new cd. Photo by Peggi Fournier.
While we were there we gave Bleu Cease a copy of the new Margaret Explosion cd, “Field Recordings.” Peggi was struck by the color scheme. I took the color out of East Avenue to heighten the matchy matchy.
We were out of town for the opening of “Queering Democracy,” the current show so we took the opportunity to take in the show. We felt comfortable hanging around because we had parked using the new Flowbird app. You type in your location and the meter starts. It stops charging when gps notes that you left the space. Turns out we never engaged it properly so we parked for free and didn’t get caught.
The double portrait above by Rochester artist, Unique Fair, was my favorite piece. We talked to Bleu again on the way out and I had an opportunity to pass on a comment that Anne Havens wanted me to share with the Director. It is somewhat bothersome to have art shows hinged to secondary concerns, secondary to the visual that is. The wall tags are getting bigger than the artwork.
Opening for Henry Taylor “no title” show at Hauser Wirth in Chelsea
The first stop on our art tour was the inaugural show at Marian Goodman Gallery, a collection of work by artists they represent. The Denzil Forrester “Two Islands, One World” show on Walker Street included a portrait of Lee Perry and funky scenes of music centered island culture. Robert Pokorny’s “Lost in a Dream” showed pop/surreal, mash-ups of Guston’s building blocks. Peter Kim’s reduced palette of simple organic, almost flat forms felt very familiar to me, like something I was fumbling to do years ago. The small oil paintings by Dorian Cohen on Henry Street reminded me of Holly’s paintings in Bloomington. The galleries are spread out here so we wandered and struck some gold before reaching the lowest portion of the lower east side where we had Basque food at Ernesto’s.
Friday was devoted to mining the galleries in Chelsea. On the train I looked to see what was at Hauser Wirth and learned they were closed until Saturday’s opening. But there are two Hauser Wirth’s in Chelsea so our first stop was 18th Street where they were showing new Henry Taylor paintings and prints, a show called “no title.” We fell in love withTaylor’s work at his Whitney show last year and here we were on opening day with his new work.
The four Henry Taylor paintings in the photo above each started with a print from an edition of his drawing of a young boy. Taylor’s paint handling is so full of life. It is luscious and rough and tumble at the same time. I loved how these four variations illustrate his mastery. The show had just been hung and the opening was that evening. One wall of the gallery was lined with Taylor’s etchings, all done in 2024 and each in an addition of 25. I started photographing them all but I stopped at the third. Something happened to me as I studied it. I was delirious. I asked a gallery attendant how much they were. He took our name and number and said it was ours when the show comes down.
In the book store I breezed through the new Chillida book (written by his daughter) and discovered it was full of pictures so we bought that. They gave us another cloth bag, this one egg yolk yellow. It looked so good on Peggi who was wearing all black. I was floating on air when we left but I kept thinking about how loose the purchase offer remained. Did we really buy it? We decided to go back to opening later that night. Maybe even meet the artist.
A block away I dismissed Kibong Rhea’s silvery landscapes as b&w photos printed on canvas but they were so beautiful we stayed in their company. We discovered they weren’t photos at all but multilayered acrylic and polyester fiber paintings, foggy day dreamscapes. A reminder to keep my mind open. I loved the large Carrie Mae Weems photos on canvas at Gladstone, shown with very little light on them, photos of wall panels surrounding construction sites that over time take on the look of abstract expressionist paintings.
We had dinner at an Italian place and returned to Hauser Wirth in time for the opening. We had a glass of champaign and were assured by Jonathan that our transaction was solid. We hung with the work and got into deep conversations about it with total strangers. We left before Henry showed up.
David Salle, “New Pastoral, Ballerinas,” 2024 at Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea
There are two David Salle shows in Chelsea . He is showing monotypes and paintings of cartoon-like characters at Pace Prints and AI assisted paintings at Gladstone. Salle himself walked into the room as I was photographing his painting above. I’m not particularly fond of his paintings but I really enjoyed his “How to See” book and there is no denying he is a great painter.
According to a New York Times article Salle jokes that he sent a program to art school, teaching it how a painting works by feeding it a balanced diet of his favorites — Arthur Dove for line, Edward Hopper for volume, De Chirico for space, Warhol for color — as well as his own “Pastorals,” before administering a final exam. He effectively reverse engineered David Salle paintings.
Funny thing is in my Photos library my photo (above) has one of those AI “Look up Artwork” icons on it and when I clicked on it it took me to “The Dinosaurs of Avignon” by Martin Davey, a hideous painting that I can only hope was generated with AI. An AI creation misidentified by AI as another AI painting.
Ikebana (Escapism)” 2024 by Alexandre da Cunha at James Cohan Gallery in Tribeca
Hardly have time to post down here, looking at all the new buildings and just looking at everything. The skinny black woman in the “RAW” t-shirt, just long enough to serve as a dress. The woman in black hijab garb with clean white sneakers and a pink head scarf. The Mexican with the pompadour, tortoiseshell sun glasses and glitter speckled sweater. The young couple sitting across from us on the F train. He with a “This Is Who You Worship Now” t-shirt and she with the white dress, blond hair, red lipstick, red purse, red phone and gold shoes. All this before we got to the gallery district in Tribeca.
Cover art working files for Margaret Explosion CD “Field Recordings”
When it came to creating an image for the front cover of the new Margaret Explosion cd my temptation was to select one of my photos. Maybe one that was in some way connected to the title, “Field Recordings,” so named because the seventeen songs were selected from recent recordings at the Little Theatre Café where the live mics capture the chatter and grind of the espresso machine. I showed Peggi a few of my selections and she felt it was too much like “Civilization.” She reminded me that “Skyhigh” was still the most graphic. Nothing leaves the Earring Records office without Peggi’s approval.
I went back to the well and found some jpegs of artwork I had downloaded over the years. One was a poster Jean Arp had designed. I borrowed his color palette and drew my own organic shapes. Creating the simple vector drawings in the new Photoshop was a nightmare but I already ranted. I’m done ranting about that. I used a photo of a farm tractor in a field, taken in Spain on the inside and a photo of a man sleeping on a train (also taken in Spain) for the back cover. The song titles float above his head like he is dreaming. The cd should be available by the second week in November. Here’s a pre-release sample of the first of seventeen new songs.
Margaret Explosion “Field Recording” CD on Earring Records (EAR 20) released in 2024
“Cloud Library” from Margaret Explosion cd “Field Recordings”Leave a comment
We were sitting with Jason Wilder on a blanket in the middle Parcel 5 on a magical Sun Ra Sunday when I took this photo. I spotted Jason’s name on the list of First Friday art shows so we made Fatty’s our first stop. A new building in a newly developed section of town, the atmosphere in Fatty’s is more cafeteria than bar. Kyle from WAYO’s “Up on the Roof” was spinning 45s. Fatty’s struck me as over lit but the section devoted to art is under lit.
Jason asked a writer/friend (identified as Emily) to write in any form about some of the found photographs in his collection. Emily improvised short pieces and coupled with the photos full of questions make magical pairings. I would suggest stopping by in the daytime when there is a little more light on the work
Up on the fourth floor of the Anderson Arts Building Diane Foley was showing her “Drawings from Memory.” Some of the figures were so detailed it was hard to believe she was not drawing from life and up close they did not look like drawings. I asked her about it. Diane said there was only one actual drawing in the show. They were indeed drawn from memory but she photographs her drawings and takes them into photoshop where she layers other scans and textures onto the drawing and then prints the work digitally.
Next door at Coleen’s four tattoo artists were showing their paintings in an exhibition by Art Collective Stanley DuBois: Who made the Potato Salad?! with Alexander Bost, Cedric Harris, Story and Sage Williams making it real. We got pretty comfortable at this show and discovered Story plays saxophone. He and Peggi talked shop and Story put the next Margaret Explosion gig on his calendar. Colleen, who grew up going to a Black church, explained the significance of the potato salad question but I didn’t follow it.
This was a powerful show and you have one day to catch it. R.G. Miller’s graphic paintings were on display at downtown’s RoCo gallery. We heard Miller’s lecture and we stopped by a few times during the run of this show. As tragic as the circumstances were, this is real art, real expression and I’m thankful RoCo showed this work..
“Along with hundreds of thousands of other Indigenous children across North America, R.G. Miller was forcibly removed from his family and community and put into an institution that Canadian officials proclaimed was intended to “kill the Indian in the child.” In the American version of these institutions the motto was “kill the Indian, save the man.” In addition to being deprived of his language, culture, security, nutrition, love, freedom, and community, Miller was subjected to chronic terror and abuse by the priests that administered the so-called ‘school.’ The exhibit includes large oil paintings, mixed media sketches, and collages created by Miller during 2003-2008. This project is intended to show the truth about these “death houses.”
“Be fearless. Don’t be afraid to put paint down. It will tell you if it’s right or wrong. You don’t have to know. You don’t have to think you know. Half the job of an artist is discovering when their accidents are better than what they know.” – R.G. Miller
Anne Havens Art Giveaway at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio
It was the best show ever at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio. So much Anne Havens’ work -it was arranged in stacks, leaning against walls and piled on tables. And it was all insanely priced. Attended by mostly artists, we heard, “She was so prolific,” at least five times. We had been to an event similar to this at Jim Thomas’s where we were instructed to pick a piece we liked from his life’s worth of work. It is a creepy feeling, while the artist is still alive, but then it is just as beautiful.
Anne, for a long time now, has been my favorite Rochester artist. Beyond prolific, she is free, wildly expressive, funny and mysterious. And what I like most about her work is that every piece – graphic, print, drawing, book, painting or sculpture – has her touch all over it. It belongs in an Anne Havens Museum but we don’t live in an ideal world.
Along with the “Funky Churches,” “Manly Arts” and “that’s Italian” sections the old Refrigerator website had a section with pictures of the walls in Rochester railroad underpasses. On Saturday we walked under the one on Culver Road for the first time since lived in the city. It was under here many years ago where I learned to never hold out a limp hand for a stray dog to sniff. This dog tried to swallow my hand and I shredded it as I tore it out of the dog’s mouth. Built in 1909 and fortified over the years the walls under here are still a wonder.
The photos below were taken in the early 2000’s and were formerly on the Refrigerator site.
Sign for Peter Monacelli’s Artist Talk in conjunction with his “We Are One” show at Richard Margolis Studio
We were at the Anderson Arts Building an hour early for Pete Monacelli’s talk. Plenty of time for a walk down Atlantic Avenue, under the railroad bridge on Culver and back up University Avenue (UR was originally located on this street). We even had time for a cup of coffee at Scratch Bakeshop.
Pete started his talk by reminding us we are all matter that can only be rearranged. He referenced the Nebula for Walt Whitman and Joni Mitchell’s “Stardust” and then the caves in Altamira, Spain that GK Chesterton wrote about in Everlasting Man. Those ancient drawings were with Casin, the same milk based paint that Pete used in the pieces in his show, “We Are One.”
He recapped his Renaissance Man bio. He studied to be a Chemical engineer. He worked as one meat cutter, an insurance agent and then a carpenter, a career he found to be as fulfilling as being an artist. He taught art classes at night at MCC for thirty years. Of course he is also a musician and one of our best friends.
He missed last spring, the lilacs, the whole thing. He went in the hospital for what he thought would be three days and didn’t come out for five months. He had a near death experience, “went into a crack where everyone was content.” He looked around and decided not to stay. He filled three books with drawings in his hospital bed. Art took away the pain.
Cynthia Hawkins “A Priori Map S6 2023 at Rochester Contemporary
I remember a Little League coach going out of his way to make sure everyone on the team got an equal amount of playing time. I wanted to win and I thought that approach was crazy. If Diego Simeone coached Atletico Madrid like that he would be fired. A community supported art gallery must be as inclusive as possible. Not all the shows are going to be winners. IMHP this one is.
Ronald Mario Gonzalez artwork at Rochester Contemporary
These two artists are featured in the main galleries. “David Cowles: Roc Stars” is in the Lab Space and a elekhlekha moving image on view in the multimedia room. Hope you can stop out.
The blue in the photo above is not the sky although it was a perfectly blue day when I took this photo. It is some sort of plastic paneling on the exterior of a building on South Avenue downtown. I have been drifting toward this sort of composition for a long time. I rounded up just over a hundred of my photos in this vein and put them in an album as source material for acrylic paintings that abstract them further.
Violet Dennison with her work in her studio. Photo by New York Times.
An article in NYT’s T Magazine on artists spaces in New York City included this picture of Violet Dennison’s work. I was immediately attracted to it but began to wonder whether the green tape, the strongest element in this diptych, was even part of the work. I looked her up online and didn’t find anything like this so I guess the tape was only a temporary mask. I guess it reminded me of some of my photos. The article describes Dennison as a conceptual artist. That covers a lot of ground and holds open the possibility that this is one of her works.
Paul Dodd “Untitled” acrylic on plastic panel 2024 (1 of 4 for RoCo 6×6)
Paul Dodd “Untitled” acrylic on plastic panel 2024 2 of 4 for RoCo 6×6
Paul Dodd “Untitled” acrylic on plastic panel 2024 (3 of 4 for RoCo 6×6)
Paul Dodd “Untitled” acrylic on plastic panel 2024 (4 of 4 for RoCo 6×6)
There is no such thing as leftovers in the studio. I had 20 of these small plastic panels, 12 inch square pieces, leftover from my “Arcadian Forms” and “Passion Play” series. I covered them in acrylic, flat organic shapes just two or three colors per panel and then tried to make them work as a whole – twenty tiles in one piece with the simple forms sometimes jumping from one panel to the next, sometimes changing color and other times staying the same. I rearranged and repainted the pieces many times before accepting the fact that it was a logistical mess.
Yesterday I cut a hole in a piece of white board and moved it around on top of the pieces until I found compositions that I liked. I took the panels out to the garage and used my table saw to cut out four 6 by 6’s for Rochester Contemporary’s upcoming show.
It seemed Steve could do anything. He was our hero when we lived together in Bloomington and he still is today in our minds. He did these drawings in my art pads and I hung onto them. We’d like to think we’re worldly while Steve is otherworldly.
Two drawings from Peter Monacelli’s “Aaron Manor” eBook
Scans always need some work. Straightening, cropping, color correction and scaling. And then the page layout required serious concentration and any automated trick I could come up with. It reminded me of the old days when we were coding pages in html. Tasks that required endless stick-to-itiveness. Carpal tunnel would set in. To scale a few hundred images I copy/pasted the desired width dimension, hit tab, tab to the X dimension, hit the zero key, tab to Y, hit zero again and then Return. I sounded like I was doing drum rudiments.
I asked for it by offering to create three eBooks from the drawings Pete did while in confinement, a six month stretch of hospital stays and then rehab. Through poking, proding and procedures, pain medications and torturous healing techniques Pete continued to draw (and I sound like I’m complaining). Confined to a bed, Pete filled three small sketch books before his triumphant release. The two drawings above were created just days apart. They are so animated they jump off the page. Please download Pete’s free “Aaron Manor” eBook here.
Colleen Buzzard Artist’s Talk at MCC Mercer Gallery
Colleen Buzzard has placed herself at the center of a creative hub in Rochester by being a magnanimous host for the curious. Her studio is a cabinet of curiosities that prompts questions and incubates ideas. She shares her thinking here and opens a portion of her space to other artists for shows of their work. Both feed off the dialog. She engages you and draws you in thereby creating a community of creatives.
Colleen Buzzard wire/shadow drawing at MCC Mercer Gallery
Colleen gave an artist’s talk last night at the opening of her new show at Mercer Gallery. The place was packed, a testimony to her influence. I was struck by how her piece, above, a wire/shadow, three dimensional drawing reminded me of Chillida. We had seen so much of his work during our month in Spain. And when Colleen talked of working between 2D and 3D she is talking Chillida’s language. This piece is but a small detail in her installation, Colleen has work on all six sides of the cube as well as outside the window. I hope you can spend some time here in the next month.
Ben Shahn’s “The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti” 1931-32 at Museo de Reina Sofia in Madrid
We are taking in as much of Centro Madrid as possible before moving on to San Sebastián. We walk in a different direction everyday, usually with an art exhibit in mind. We stop for coffee, pop in book stores, have a midday meal somewhere and stroll some more before stopping for a cerveza.
I went home with 60 Euros and some change four years ago, our last visit, and I brought it back with me this time. The smallest cafes, the Metro and even the holy card store take Apple Pay so I’m still hanging onto most of it. Years ago we would go from one Telebanco to the next.
The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres says “Even wars have rules.” How about, don’t start one? Which brings me to “Ben Shahn: De la no conformidad“ at Museo de Riena Sofia. This is a laugh out loud show. – if you take delight in Shahn’s skewering of the opposition. Shahn’s wit is fully employed in a series of paintings, photos, posters, book covers and murals. He steered clear of art movements and stayed true to the human heart as he championed the fight for a free world.
My father would have loved this show. He made sure I had a copy of Shahn’s 1957 book, “The Shape of Content,” a credo of nonconformity which he saw as a precondition for all significant artistic production and great social change.
His watercolors of the Dreyfus Affair, two paintings from the Sacco and Vanzetti series (his mural of Sacco and Vanzetti on Syracuse University’s campus is a must see), 15 gouaches on Tom Mooney, and a scathing caricature of Father Coughlin. It’s all here. He assisted Diego Rivera on his ill-fated Rockefeller Center fresco. Shahn is America’s Diego Rivera and he might just be a better artist.
Dos Margaritas in front of Jose Guerrero at Antonio Machón Gallery in Madrid
We are surrounded by churches in this old section of Madrid. Our place is on the fourth floor and we can see the tops of three churches, one basilica and one cathedral. We are quite happy with the place. It’s quiet at night, there are cafes nearby and grocery stores. When we step outside in the morning we hear tour guides pointing out the “oldest church in Madrid, San Nicolas.” We have not seen the inside of it yet, it always seems to be closed. We will head up to San Sebastián in a few days and eventually return to Madrid so we’ve been scoping out other neighborhoods. We walked up to Universidad, the college section, and then Malasaña, both felt really comfortable. We found too many young people in Chueca. Salesas and Justicia were low key and just right so we’ll look into renting a place there when we return.
Years ago we bought a Jose Guerrero print at Antonio Machón Gallery and we stop back whenever we are in town. Antonio recently passed and his wife, Margarita, is in the process of retiring. She was boxing up the artwork when we stopped in today. We chatted (Margarita y Margarita en Español while I watched the animation) for an hour or so and then she invited us to her art filled place for coffee and pastry and more conversation. In our last visit Margarita recommended the Abstract Art Museum in Cuenca and we loved that. We told her we were headed up to San Sebastián to see the Chillida Museum and she showed us her Chillida pieces and then gave us the catalog for Chillida’s last show (while he was still alive) which was in her gallery. She highly recommended the sculpture museum in Valladolid so that city has been added to our agenda.
Margarita told us Chillida was a goalie for a team in San Sebastián before turning to sculpture.
