There were footprints in the fresh snow on the paths this morning so we weren’t the only ones out there. We didn’t see anyone though. It was only 5 degrees.
Tri color form paintings as sketches
I’ve been playing around with these bodily forms for a few weeks now. With acrylic paint on paper, solid colors straight from the tube or jar, I limited myself to three colors per piece. I settled on four drawings that worked and tweaked the curves for days. I swapped colors while they were hanging on the wall. I determined I didn’t need the negative space on the sheet of paper that I painted each one on and found some pieces of 1/8 inch plastic that will remain flat after I cut the forms out. The plastic sheets were bigger than my painting sketches so I photographed the sketches and projected the paintings on the plastic sheets.
Four forms drawings on cut plastic
I had seen a jig saw in Jared’s garage so I took the sheets down there and asked if I could cut them out. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be to follow my curves. Turns out Jared’s wife, Sue, is the jig saw expert. I came close to just asking her if she could cut my forms out but I eventually got a little better. Peggi tried her hand at it and together we completed the task. Jared’s garage is heated, ours is not, so I plan to file the edges down when it gets a little warmer and then paint them.
Detail of Nancy Topolski piece in pop-up show on Coolidge Road
Colleen Buzzard alerted us to a pop-up show in our neck of the woods so today’s walk started out in the direction of Durand Eastman. Up there I realized I had forgotten my mask so instead of crossing over to Culver we circled back to our house and picked up a mask before going the few blocks to Coolidge. Nancy was helping a friend clean out a house that he bought when it occurred to her that the white walls and wood floors would make an ideal gallery setting for her recent, mostly fabric based sculptures.
The crevice in the piece above was stuffed with dried “Devils Heads,” the seed pods of the invasive Asian water chestnut, that Nancy collected along the Hudson River bank. And below this piece, on the floor was a carefully arranged pile of the pods.
Fabric sculpture in Nancy Topolski pop up show on Coolidge
Nancy utilized the empty space in dramatic fashion by arranging her pieces in windows and on their sills, in the fireplace and on the hearth. Some hung from the ceiling while others sat on the floor. Right next door someone with Buffalo Bills posters and a campaign sign for Mike Carpinelli (Trump’s “favorite sheriff in New York State”) for Governor in 2222 and right across the street from the giant tree whose trunk has grown so big it no longer fits between the sidewalk and the street is this cute little one story, grey brick home slash gallery. This was a sweet location for an especially sweet show.
RoCo Members Show. My piece (top center) is in good company with Colleen Buzzard (center left) and Bill Keyser (center bottom).
With numbers rising again in Monroe County we decided to skip the opening of Rochester Contemporary’s Members Show. We stopped by today and enjoyed the luxury of an uncrowded gallery with lots of art. More than ever.
I’ve always liked this show. Un-curated, democratic, wildly varied. Each member gets to contribute one piece. Bill Keyser’s piece, sitting on the white pedestal on the first wall, caught my attention immediately. I shouldn’t have said “sitting on a pedestal,” it jumps out at you. Only then did I notice my entry on the wall behind it. Peggi noted that the quiet quality of my piece provided air for Bill’s work. And the coolest thing of all is how Colleen Buzzard’s 3D drawing (bottom left of my piece) comes off the wall to animate the space and open the door for Bill Keyser’s sculpture. Congratulations to whoever it was that hung the show.
Fine. Paint, sculpt. But good luck coming up with something as beautiful as this log nestled in the sand along Durand Eastman beach.
The beach was completely rearranged this morning by yesterday’s heavy rain and pounding waves. This log was nearly twelve feet long and it wasn’t there yesterday. It most likely came down the river out into the lake and then drifted eastward until washing ashore. If it is still there tomorrow it won’t be arranged like this.
I did a dozen or so abstract, acrylic paintings in the mid nineties and hung onto a few before moving on. I dusted (literally) this one off today and took a photo. I’m working on some flat color, organic form, almost figurative paintings now. Full of doubts and questions but coming up with enough answers to move forward.
Cathy Smith paint sticks installation at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio
Every visit to Colleen Buzzard’s studio is special. The shows Colleen curates and presents in the front room are top shelf. Every object in her backroom studio space is purposeful or unresolved. The line blurs as they are in the process of becoming an art piece. Your mind clears on entry. You begin to ask questions. You leave stimulated.
“Los Inmigrantes,” found drift wood, 15″h x 101″w by Paul Dodd 2021
I collected driftwood this summer, not every day, just when the conditions were right. The lakeshore rearranges itself daily. The waves sift and sort the tiny stones, the small stones, the shells, the seaweed and the sand, and it often presents the ingredients in an array at the edge of the lake. Plastic pieces only wash ashore under the right circumstances. We often see a woman collecting burnished pieces of glass.
Detail of “Los Inmigrantes,” found drift wood, 15″h x 101″w x 2″d by Paul Dodd 2021
These wooden pieces, mostly pieces of bark worn by tumbling, are strewn along the beach after a storm. I imagine them coming down the river and then eastward to Durand. They make me think of los inmigrantes who, fleeing North Africa in overcrowded boats, often wash ashore in southern Spain.
I had a hell of time photographing the piece. Facetimed with Duane for help. Nineteen of them mounted on a white wall. The beauty of the wood is the subtle, warm colors but that is not the hard part. I mounted the wood pieces with two finishing nails, one end backed into the rear of the wood pieces and the other into the wall. So the pieces are suspended about a half inch off the wall. I wanted to show that relief but in order to light the wood properly I wound up casting strong shadows that made the pieces look like they were vibrating. Duane solved that for me.
“Massacre of the Innocents” by Marcantonio Raimondi at Memorial Art Gallery show “Renaissance Impressions”
A show of Renaissance Prints. may not sound all that exciting but just imagine being alive in the early 1500s when images of the ancient myths and religious miracles were mostly in your imagination. The Judgement of Paris, The Massacre of the Innocents, and The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence , where Larry asks his tormentors to “Turn me over, I’m done on this side,” are just some of the fantastic stories depicted in the Memorial Art Gallery’s current exhibit of Renaissance Prints. The show is mind blowing.
MAG Curatorial Assistant Lauren Tagliaferro did a Zoom talk for MAG members the day the show opened and it is now up on YouTube. Peggi and I just watched it a second time. Lauren is a dynamo and she brings art history to life. How we created a beautiful Christ, even eroticized him and the saints to sell the concept, suffering in peace for eternal salvation. How we depict the old as ugly because we are afraid of dying. Tagliaferro is drawn to ugliness as much beauty and she admits a lot of her ideas come from “On Ugliness” by Umberto Eco. She is an adjunct professor at RIT. They should give her tenure now.
Anne Havens sculpture from “Sleeping Around” series 2007
With all the quarantining going on we only had one chance to spend time with Anne Havens before she left for her winter home. Over coffee, scones, dates and roasted Marcona almonds and surrounded by Anne Havens artwork, it could only be from her hand, hanging gallery style on white walls in her open plan home, we talked about art making, specifically how and why Anne has always made art. It has been a lifeline in turbulent waters. Magical art doesn’t come out of nowhere. We came home with a head from her “Sleeping Around” series.
Every three weeks or so we run into Ernie and his owner out for a walk. They live in the neighborhood and over the years polite talk has turned meatier subjects. He is a photographer and we often talk art. We learned he and his wife acquired some pieces, a print, a drawing and a small painting by my favorite artist in the world. I couldn’t wait to see them. And then the pandemic hit. Our self imposed restrictions have eased and we stopped by on our way home from a walk. I was blown away. On top of that we came home with two of Ernie’s owner’s photos. Warren Philips will work his magic on the frames.
Stephana McClure drawing based on George Cukor’s “Gaslight” at Bienvenu Steinberg & Partner in Tribeca
Before leaving for NYC we took an armload of collard greens from our garden down to our friends Helena and Jedi. They invited us to dinner but we we told them we were headed to NYC. They told us we must go see Hamilton. Their nephew, an Eastman graduate who plays Washington, arranged to get us discounted tickets. Our third full day in the city revolved around Broadway.
Duane’s place in Brooklyn is as comfortable as home so we hung around there for the morning and took the F train in after noon. We stopped in Tribeca where we carved out a three block chunk of galleries, below Canal with Church Street to the West and Broadway to the east, we went up and down both sides of Lispenard, Franklin and White Streets. The latter being where the Mudd Club was.
Artist Space had an installation of Milford Graves works, videos, hand painted records and even his drums. He was not only a drummer but a botanist, a professor at Bennington, a cardiac technician and a visual artist. We watched a full size stock-ticker scroll by in another gallery while listening to a celestial Greek soundtrack. We spent some serious time at Bienvenu Steinberg & Partner with a fabulous show called “I See You Seeing Me (Meeting the Female Gaze)” by Stephana McClure. The drawing above was done done in reverse. The artist projected George Cukor’s “Gaslight” on her monochromatic drawing and rubbed over the subtitles of each line of dialog. I was so enamored with this piece I asked how much it was. $8,000 did not seem so bad. In the necklace/wall hanging below she wove Italian twine and strung it with vintage axe heads wrapped in prose from Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking.”
Stephana McClure’s axe head necklace as wall hanging at Bienvenu Steinberg & Partner
The play was on 46th Street just off Times Square. NYC has one sixth the positivity rate of our area so the city felt safe except for Times Square. It is just an insane glimpse of our dystopian future. Street venders selling all sorts of crap, designer knock-off purses and watches, chain stores and fast food, blocks of buildings covered in LED monitors, each playing non stop commercials. A guy with a full head mask of Donald Trump stood in the middle of an intersection directing traffic.
With Hamilton I found it odd that the lead character, the guy the play is named after, feels like a minor character. We waited after the play to chat with Tamar. He stole the show but looked smaller off stage than he did as Washington. I said something about that and he said, “That’s because everyone else in the cast is so short.” He looked like his father but his voice needs to drop a few more octaves before he has the Barry White thing.
For our second day in the big city we planned to meet up with my brother at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to take in the Surrealism show. Peter Schjedahl, writing in last week’s New Yorker, described the Metropolitan Museum’s “Surrealism Beyond Borders” as a deliriously entertaining survey.
Statue in the Greek and Roman wing of the Metropolitan Museum
We were a little bit early so we wandered through the Greek and Roman wing. This is one of my favorite parts of the museum. It is curious to me how these two civilizations, both around the BC/AD cusp, were depicting people that feel so human today. The Greeks idealized the form while the Romans depicted the unglamorous as well as the mighty. Then it seems we didn’t come out of the Dark Ages until the Renaissance. I realize this is an uninformed abbreviation of art history but that is the way it strikes me. The Michael Rockefeller wing, where they keep the secrets of the Asmat, is right next door to this wing. They are renovating it and I’m anxiously awaiting its reopening.
“Jucambe” by Agustín Cárdenas at “Surrealism Beyond Borders” Metropolitan Museum
There were some photos in the Surrealism exhibit that really sent me, especially by the Colombian Cecilia Porras, along with a Agustín Cárdenas sculpture and the May Ray sewing machine wrapped in a wool blanket but Surrealism, especially the paintings, is not for me. This was made perfectly clear when we exited the show and came face to face with Max Beckmann’s “The Old Actress painting. And in the next room a series of gorgeous Rothko’s.
After the show we cleansed our palette with a stroll through Central Park.
Stanley Whitney painting at Lisson Gallery in Chelsea
As soon as we read that Stanley Whitney cranks Miles’ “Bitches Brew” each time he paints we knew Lisson Gallery would be our first stop in Chelsea. He puts a color down and responds to it with his next move, a call and response, similar to Miles Davis’s late sixties soundscapes. Needless to say, the show was a delight. These large paintings stop you dead in your tracks.
In a summer program at Skidmore College in 1968 Whitney became the favorite of his teacher Philip Guston. He credits Guston with teaching him how to put a painting together. Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo has a Stanley Whitney retrospective on its calendar for 2023.
Olga De Amara wall hanging at Lisson Gallery in New York
And once we were at Lisson we discovered the Columbian textile art, Olga de Amaral. A revelation. A block away Gilbert and George were showing their “New Normal Pictures.” We spent nearly an hour on a bench in a white room looking at a barely discernible yellow sphere by Helen Pashgian. Lucy Raven’s video installation, “Ready Mix,” at Dia Chelsea was stunning. Chelsea still has the goods.
Stewart Davis Self Portrait in “A Memorial Exhibition” at Rochester Contemporary
I didn’t know Stewart Davis when he was practicing law. I only met him when he hooked up with Anne Havens, our favorite local artist. He was a gentleman and I never would have took him as an artist. Apparently what he saw in Anne’s art was a vehicle for a whole lot of rich expression. He was eternally young and where most artists strive to paint as directly as they did as a child Stewart had no art baggage to shake. He painted in the garage of their home and he blossomed in retirement. His art was pure. We bought one of his abstracts from a RoCo Members Show and it is one of our favorites.
His self portrait (above) is from “Stewart Davis – A Memorial Exhibition,” on view now at Rochester Contemporary. We were marveling at the uninhibited, primitive work while Bill Keyser was studying the show. He described the work as being “sophisticated.” That is quite a range.
In the lab space at RoCo Anne Havens is showing drawings she made of Stewart when he was in Sarasota undergoing cancer treatment. This show is stunningly beautiful, a loving tribute to a great man.
Anne Havens drawing of Stewart Davis in “Sarasota 2003” show at Rochester Contemporary
Rochester’s Arena Group has a show at RoCo as well and I can’t say I saw the whole show. I like to look at the walls and then move in on what calls me. And when I’ve had an internal conversation with that piece I move to what attracts me. I love Peter Sucy’s 3D prints. He prints his file, a few times, swaps out the ink color and arranges the pieces. And then he chose the perfect frame!
Peter Sucy 3D printed tiles in Arena Artists Show at Rochester Contemporary
Evelyne Albanese has two beautiful watercolors in this show, both based on musicians. I had to look up Melody Gardot.
Evelyne Albanese “Melody Gardot” in Arena Artists Show at Rochester Contemporary
I knew this was a Barbara Fox from across the room.
Barbara Fox “History Of The World” in Arena Artists Show at Rochester Contemporary
On the forth floor of the Anderson Arts building Studio 402 has a show of new work by Gail and Jim Thomas. Gail has been been painting flowers for the last year, luscious pastel drawings, while Jim has been playing with space and form by revisiting the fallen oak in Genesee Valley Park, The Tree of Life. This was a fantastic show with both artists going in new directions. It has only reinforced my idea that the pandemic has been good for artists.
Jim Thomas “Tree Of Life Reborn” 2021 from Jim & Gail Thomas “Side by Side” paintings and pastel drawings Studio 402 Anderson Arts Building1 Comment
For Fritz (Ultra Blue), acrylic on paper, 18″w by 24″h, 2021 Paul Dodd
I have a few things I would to do before I die, projects that have been kicking around for a long time. I imagine I am far from alone on this. And when someone l know dies suddenly, my thoughts run to their unfinished business.
Leo Dodd and Fred Lipp in Advanced Painting class at the Creative Workshop in Rochester, New York
Fred Lipp and my father died just months apart in late 2016. Both discovered they had cancer and both went quickly. I took a painting class with them for twenty years before it crash landed. Fred was a great teacher and even a good teacher’s work is never done. You live with and by the advice. You practice it and you pass it on. It is unfinished by design. This teacher was also an artist, as good an artist as he was a teacher, and his art will also live forever. It is unfinished business.
It took Fred’s family a long time to reallocate his worldly goods. His studio, a retrofitted barn behind his home in Union Hill, was packed with his work. His daughter recently invited Peggi and me to come out and look at the leftovers. We spent the afternoon telling stories about Fred. He loved to laugh and his spirit was there with us.
I spotted a box of Bocour Magna Acrylic Resin artist paint, a brand I had never seen before. The tubes were still pliable so I brought them home. White metal section frames that Fred showed charcoal drawings in over the years were stacked against the wall. I took some of them as well.
I applied some of the paint to paper and found it had a really strong odor. The colors were rich though, purer and denser than any paint I had ever used. “Loaded” as they say. I tried cleaning my brushes with water but it wouldn’t touch it. Neither would walnut oil or turpentine. What was this acrylic resin stuff?
Online I learned Bocour was the first artist’s acrylic paint, used by Barnett Newman, Morris Louis, and Roy Lichtenstein. I took one of the tubes down to my neighbor’s. A former chemist at Kodak, he suggested thinning the paint with acetone. The smell of the paint stayed in my nose for hours and I wasn’t crazy about using the solvents to thin or clean up. But I was determined to do something in remembrance of Fred with his materials. I made big paint chips from the sixteen colors, each 1/3 of an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet, and went to Rochester Art Supply see if I could find modern equivalents to Fred’s colors.
Handmade paint chips of Fred Lipp’s Bocour paint
Mike, the owner, told me he remembered Leonard Bocour “coming in the store with a woman on each arm.” Mike pointed to the shelf where they kept the line of Bocour products. Golden Acrylics, today’s water based artist paint, has been having a hard time getting pigments from various parts of the world during the pandemic so I wasn’t able to get replacements.
I became enamored with the paint chips. How the color bled off three sides and stopped short of the bottom and how they fit the unfinished business concept. With a plastic trowel I covered sixteen large sheets of paper, paper that will fit nicely in the 20″ x 26″ white metal section frames that I brought home from Fred’s.
When Fred was in the army they called him Fred instead of his given name, Fritz. Fred always signed his artwork with the name Fritz. This piece is “For Fritz.” See all sixteen panels here.
For Fritz (Cadmium Red Deep), acrylic on paper, 18″w by 24″h, 2021 Paul Dodd
For Fritz (Cadmium Yellow Medium), acrylic on paper, 18″w by 24″h, 2021 Paul Dodd
For Fritz (Raw Sienna), acrylic on paper, 18″w by 24″h, 2021 Paul Dodd
Pete Monacelli is not afraid of these paints and he offered to buy them from me. Fat chance. I will give them to him the next time I see him. No piece is done until it is photographed and this took the better part of a week. Using 4 Lowel Toto lights that Duane gave me, I struggled to evenly light the work. Duane found photo bulbs online to replace my Home Depot bulbs and he helped me get the white balance. Over the phone from Brooklyn he found the ideal settings which I will record here for the record. Shutter speed at 1/125, Aperture at F8, ISO at 640 and a custom white balance (1). Once photographed Peggi, also a student of Fred’s, helped me color correct these online versions. See all sixteen panels here.
It is probably just luck that I have won the last four horseshoe matches but I would like to attribute it to something I’ve done. And it is something that has worked for me before but I had forgotten how to tap into it.
The crazy thing, like so many other things in life, is that I don’t really do anything at all. I just let it go. I throw the shoe toward the stake with just enough of a grip to keep the shoe in my hand and just enough effort to get it there. I step forward with my left foot while swinging my arm backward and then step forward with my right foot letting my arm and the shoe follow. That step is what propels the shoe toward the stake, my arm with the weight of the shoe just goes along and if I can get out of the way and gently let go of the shoe it does one graceful back flip before sliding into the stake with its arms wide open.
It occurred to me that this is how Hobie Billingsley, my teacher in the diving class I took at IU, taught me to do a back flip from the high platform. Billingsley was also the mens’ Olympic diving coach (the gold medal winner, Mark Spitz, was was in my class) and he taught us to trust him by instructing us to stand backward at the edge of the platform, 10 meters (32 feet) above the pool, keep our bodies stiff and simply let go. You naturally do a perfect 360 and cut smoothly through the water feet first.
I really am not obsessed with the Stations of the Cross. I recently posted a new version, fourteen acrylic paintings, and that led to revisiting my 1998 version. Back then I was envisioning a contemporary retelling of the crucifixion with the Passion Play unfolding on a route I took everyday by bicycle, from our home near East High to my graphic arts job downtown.
We loved living in that neighborhood but is hard to romanticize East Main Street. It was pretty dismal. These fourteen locations were pulled from the 36 photos I took in 1996 and some of them were used as locations for my Passion Play 1998. I hope to live long enough to do a third version.
April 28th used to be the feast day of Saint Paul of the Cross, the Italian mystic who believed God was most easily found in the Passion of Christ. I was named Paul because I was born on this day. Coincidentally, I have always been drawn to the Stations of the Cross. A close family friend, Father Bill Shannon, returned from a European trip with a relic of Saint Paul that he gave me when I was ten or so. I began work on this series during Lent this year and finished in time for my birthday, St. Paul’s birthday.
In 1969 Pope Paul VI moved the feast day of St. Paul to October 19th. Grrr. My birthday remains where it was. And then Pope John Paul II attempted to put a happy ending on the Stations of the Cross by adding a 15th station dedicated to the resurrection. I’m not buying it (or the miracle). I created fourteen Stations, each 14″ by 17″, acrylic paint on plastic panels.
– click images for enlargement
I. Jesus is condemned to death II. Jesus accepts his cross III. Jesus falls for the first time IV. Jesus meets his Mother V. Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the Cross VI. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus VII. Jesus falls for the second time VIII. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem IX. Jesus falls for the third time X. Jesus is stripped of his garments XI. Jesus is nailed to the cross XII. Jesus dies on the cross XIII. Jesus is taken down from the cross XIV. Jesus is laid in the tomb
We feel in love with Bill Traylor after seeing a show of his work at the American Folk Museum in New York. Kino is currently streaming a new documentary about him called “Chasing Ghosts.” The movie is good but there is too much back story, too many talking heads. You need to keep the remote in your hand so you can pause and study the work. It is sensational and it speaks for itself.
Bill Traylor was a master of placement of object on ground or substrate or laundry shirt cardboard or whatever he found to paint on. Perfectly placed to articulate and accentuate the gesture. His paintings are all essentially flat but animated to leap off the page. Bill Traylor can knock you out with a drawing of a bird. Direct like punk rock but right on like a master. He does not miss a beat.
Creek off Pine Valley Road in Durand Eastman, Rochester, New York
We spotted our neighbors, Jan and Jack, with a rake in the Fruticetum section of the park. Peggi jokingly asked if they didn’t have enough to do at their own place and they told us it was “Clean Up The Park” day. I said we clean up up the park everyday, a gross exaggeration but we do make a point of picking up bottles and cans and dropping them in one of the few trash cans. And today we made a special effort, going to of our way to pick up a 25 ounce Natty Daddy can, an 8% alcohol Anheuser Busch product, and something call Bud Light Seltzer, a fermented cane sugar drink with 5% alcohol. Also spotted a couple of dog bags full of you know what and carried them to a trash can.
Our dinner theme tight was “Springtime in Spain'” a special take-out menu from Atlas Eats. Ensalada de Cítricos, pan de aceite, shrimp a la plancha, tortilla española, romesco vegetables and Tarta de Almendras.
We are so lucky Peter Schjeldahl is still writing art criticism for The New Yorker. He enriches our lives with each column. I keep thinking eachwill be his last.
And how can it be that Roberta Smith, one of the sole art critic champions of Philip Guston’s late sixties work (at the time), can still be at the top of her game, writing for the New York Times. Alice Neel has been one of my favorite painters since I first laid eyes on her work. Neel is the subject of a retrospective and Ms. Smith knocks it out of the park with her review of the show.
“It is said that the future is female, and one can only hope. But it is important to remember that the past, through continuous excavation, is becoming more female all the time. The latest evidence is the gloriously relentless retrospective of Alice Neel (1900-1984), the radical realist painter of all things human.”
We saw a Alice Neel show in Chelsea at Zwirner in 2012 and a few paintings at the Met Breuer in 2016. And twenty years ago, at the last Neel retrospective at the Whitney, we ran into Chuck Close where he and the guy pushing his wheelchair were hogging our view of a Neel painting. I was getting upset at how long they were taking and then backed off when I realized it was Close.
The Eastman has a Maplethorpe portrait of Alice which they’ve pulled out a few times over the years. That is about as close as we can get to her in this town.
