Three varieties of witch hazel on Wisner near the entrance to Durand Eastman Park
At a distance the witch hazel can look like Forsythia but it is too early for that. At the end of Wisner there are bunch of witch hazel trees growing near the road and in this spot you can see three different varieties. Into the park and up the hill on Zoo Road is another variety, one that blossoms earlier, like February. It is still in bloom and very fragrant.
Carl used to run a saxophone repair shop on East Avenue. The place was called Shuffle Music and his cliental was mostly Eastman students. He’s retired now but he does some work out of his house. Peggi put her soprano in her backpack and we walked over there today along the lake. We made a loop out of the trip by coming back through the far side of the park where the sewage treatment plant is.
We missed yoga last week because we were at Big Ears. I’m looking forward to to tonight.
Dan Eaton had a sweet gig with RNews for many years. In a few minutes he talked you through a gourmet recipe and convinced you that a regular guy could do this. He delivered the goods at Rooney’s and Good Luck and Rochester’s finest. He holds court in Hammondsport now, at the bottom of Kueka Lake and will soon be offering a “Chef’s Menu.”
We had dinner there on Saturday and ordered from the menu. We were just digging in to our roasted Brussels sprouts appetizer when the waitress told us Chef Dan would like to cook for you if you agree. We agreed and were blown away. We were were celebrating Jeff’s birthday so booked a room upstairs and shared a bottle of Mescal that he had brought back from Mexico.
I know girlie magazines is the first thing anyone thinks of when you say World Wide News but they used to be the only place in town where you could buy the English weeklies, Melody Maker, Sounds and NME, the Spanish daily newspapers and any obscure art magazine you could think of. Last time I was in there it was more like a corner store.
It was a beautiful day for a walk around the city. We had lunch at Fifth Frame and a late afternoon beer at Swiftwater. I’m thinking about painting the horseshoes for the new season.
Spring Break is over. The UT college kids are coming back. We spotted Tim Berne waiting for a ride out of town and then a little further down Gay Street was Ken Burns in a bus wrapped with an ad for his upcoming PBS Country Music documentary. Knoxville is returning to normal.
I’m going to miss the Big Ears app. This festival unfolded so well and our schedule was continually in flux we that depended on the app for everything. To listen to sound samples from the artist’s sites, to get from one venue to the next, and most of all to get continuous stream of updates about surprise appearances and clubs reaching capacity. But most of all I’m going to miss Big Ears, the festival, an astounding collection of great music.
Art Ensemble of Chicago at Big Ears Festival in Knoxville Tennessee 2019
People were walking toward us this morning with pillows under their arms. We were headed to The Standard where a twelve hour drone was just finishing up. It took a while for our eyes to adjust to the darkness. Bodies were scattered about, some cross legged with their eyes closed, others completely sprawled out or asleep. A different musician or set of musicians took over the drone every half hour. We listened with our full body for fifteen minutes or so and headed over to the Knoxville Art Museum to check out Tim Story’s Roedelius Cells, fragments from old Cluster recordings played through sixteen speakers, eight times stereo. We stopped in a panel discussion with Nate Wooley. He talked about listening, the importance of silence and playing with but not mimicking external sounds.
A century after the WW1 armistice, Richard Thompson performed KIA with a string ensemble. His songs are based on letters, diaries and verbatim extracts from people directly involved. Peggi counted 10 violins, 4 violas, 4 cellos and two basses.
Ever the optimist, Roscoe Mitchell, in the center of a panel surrounded by three current members of the Art Ensemble, said, “It seems like the sixties all over again.” He talked about composing in the moment and how he was trying to do the past members, those who have passed on, proud. “You either have a ticket to ride or you don’t go.” We we’re thrilled to see that Tomeka Reid, the cellist we liked so much in Artifacts, is now a member of the Art Ensemble.
Bill Frisell’s Harmony with Petra Haden singing as he plays guitar along with cellist, Hank Roberts and Luke Bergman on baritone guitar sounded right at home in Tennessee. The old timeyness in a lot of Frisell’s playing in hi many settings is fully fleshed out here.
At the Spanish/Moorish Tennessee Theater the amazing Art Ensemble of Chicago, celebrating fifty years of great black music, closed out the festival like a rocket ship leaving earth with the very best elements of our culture. With only two of the formible five left they had added twelve members and a conductor. Their set and encore were so musically rich our ears indeed got bigger.
Absînt with David Torn, Tim Berne, Aurora Nealand and Bill Frisell performing at Big Ears in Knoxville, Tennessee 2019
We started our day with a few minutes worth of Dead Souls, the eight hour movie by Wang Bing, at the UT Gallery and then headed down to the Bijou Theater for Joan La Barbara again, this time with Alvin Lucier and the Ever Present Orchestra. It was transcendent.
Larry Grenadier’s recent ECM release is a solo bass recording called “The Gleaners.” He performed songs from it and mixed Coltrane, Gershwin and Hindemith in with his own songs. He makes the bass sound extraordinarily rich.
Harold Budd opened with a gong piece a Methodist church. The church bells chimed in the middle of his loosely conducted set. Shai Meistro’s trio was amazing. They finished with a cinematic song worthy of an Oscar winning movie.
Absînt with accordionist, Aurora Nealand, Tim Berne, Bill Frisell, and David Torn, performed for the first time together at the Standard, a standing room only venue. It was kind of messy so we ducked out to see Spiritualized. And we finished the night with a brilliant performance by Meredith Monk of her “Cellular Songs,” something she premiered last year at BAM.
We drove past Saint Patrick’s Cemetery on the way in into town and parked right in front of the Aurora Inn. We were here for a special Portuguese dinner pairing of Portuguese food with wine from that country but first we took a walk around town. The wind was blowing hard, off the lake, so at Saint Patrick’s Church we headed up Dublin Hill Road. There is a historical marker at the corner marking the 1793 Patrick Tavern, the towns original courthouse. We checked out an art show on Wells College’s campus and headed back for dinner.
We were seated with three other couples at a round table overlooking Cayuga Lake, a mother and her grown son who drove over from Syracuse, a couple from Philly, who come up here regularly, and a couple from Brighton who were celebrating a birthday. The Brighton guy, a bond trader, and the Merck salesman from Philly monopolized the conversation. Not that we wanted to jump in on their conversations about money, taxes, vacations, cooking steak and money, just that we could hardly have our own with all that. A wine salesman and Chef Patrick, dressed in black and wearing a pair of black Crocs, saved the day by talking to the crowd between each serving.
Green door being Rochester Contemporary Art Center in winter.
All this sun, the blue skies and temperatures poking above 0 (Centigrade) signal the end of our cross country skiing season. There were a few grassy patches out there this morning and a lot of people with dogs. I stopped at a juncture between paths and a big brown dog ran toward me. I turned away from it and it jumped up on my back. Its front legs were on my shoulders as I pleaded with the owner to either call your dog or put it on a leash like the park sign says.
I know I sound like a cranky old man and I don’t particularly like this part of me. But I was up for an hour or so before Peggi, working on my computer, as the dog across the street, trapped in the front yard while surrounded by pink flags marking his electrified perimeter, the so-called invisible fence, barked at least once for every breath I took.
The dog is almost a year old now and the owners never walk it. I would be miserable too. They are inside with a big tv on in every room. Oblivious. The guy has a gun and most people on the street are afraid to talk to them. There must be a creative solution to this.
There were rumors about Brother Heathwood when I was going to school at Bishop Kearney. I had a friend who was in plays there and I remember him laughing about how Heathwood , the drama teacher, chased after the girls. There is nothing funny about sexual abuse so severe that it robbed a former student of the ability to conceive. I lasted two years at Kearney and find it telling that my favorite memory of the place was when Dave Vercolen stood up in class and punched the abusive Brother Levy right in the face. Heathwood’s order, the Irish Christian Brothers whose local members lived on the top floor of the high school, went bankrupt paying off victims who successfully sued. Yet the Catholic Church is still above water.
We were having dinner with my sister at Vic & Irv’s (aka Lakeside Hots) and I heard the the guy sitting next to us tell the waitress, “The only reason I come in here is to read the paper and listen to the music.” There is always a newspaper on the counter there, just like a Spanish place, and that day’s had a picture of a smiling John Laurence Heathwood along with an article about the abusive Sister Janice Nadeau (“Hawk”) from St. Margaret Mary where my cousin went.
Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” came on the sound system. We had just read the reviews of “Leaving Neverland,” which was being aired on HBO that night, and as much as I love that song I didn’t want to hear it.
Peter Monacelli “These Are My Rivers” at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio
“I have revisited the ages of my life. These are my rivers.” – Giuseppe Ungaretti
Giuseppe Ungaretti, 1888-1970, was an Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic and academic. Peter Monacelli is an Italian modernist poet, artist, musician, critic and academic. He had a second opening on Friday for his mini retrospective, “These Are My Rivers,” at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio. It takes at least two visits to take this show in. This time I was blown away by this cluster of nine exquisite pieces. Pete’s wall tag was the recipe and icing on the cake.
“These are my Rivers. A symphony in three movements.
1st Movement: Searching For Home For that place we knew before we were affected by the world, before we gave up our innocence too cheaply.
2nd Movement: Escaping Extinction Religions promise of an afterlife: Informed by 1950s sci-fi movies.
3rd Movement: The River The river is a symbol for Gloria. After the rain.”
Funny how my eye doesn’t pick up the color shift but the camera does. I feel as though I’m flooding the work area with incandescent light but the daylight from the southern exposure window to the left brings shifts the temperature.
I watched these two in person. She was pacing with her phone and he was talking to someone else on his device, using the free library wifi. She was strung out. He looked like he could give a shit. Next thing you know their mugshots were in the news. Today I surrounded them with garden foliage. I’m doing them as Adam and Eve and hope to begin painting tomorrow.
“Badlands” by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre Café on 11.08.17. Peggi Fournier – sax, Ken Frank – bass, Phil Marshall – guitar, Paul Dodd – drums.
Red ice-fishing tent on Durand Lake in Rochester, New York
These lakes in Durand Eastman are so small. I can’t imagine what kind of fish people pull out of them in the dead of winter. There must be something else to this ice fishing sport. I picture some incredible homemade soup and black coffee from a Stanley steel thermos. Maybe the guy in this red tent is reading the morning paper.
When Peggi’s parents came up here for six weeks one summer we bought them a temporary subscription to the Democrat & Chronicle. At the time we were subscribing to the afternoon paper, the Times Union, but we picked the D&C for them because it leaned to the right. Well, they found it too left wing so that did’t work out. And the golf course in Bristol, near where they were staying, was closed most of the summer because it was the rainiest on record. The Times Union disappeared and I don’t want to see the same fate for the D&C.
Did anybody see David Andreatta’s column on the former Monroe County Supervisor? I know print is dead for most people but we can’t just tune out. I worry that many of my neighbors already have. Why else would we have paid Maggie Brooks for 23 years at the public trough? How about Steve Orr’s reporting on the abuse and coverup at McQuaid? While newsprint slips away the local team here is working harder than ever in hopes that enough people care enough to pay a few pennies a day for online access to keep them informed. Don’t be a dumb ass. Give it up.
Leo Dodd watercolor Statue of Abraham Lincoln in Washington Square Park, Rochester, New York
Historic Brighton celebrated their 20th year by serving cake and punch at the conclusion of their annual meeting. My siblings and I were invited because they were presenting an award in my father’s name. He was one of the founding members and he would have been thrilled with the turnout on Sunday. This year’s Leo Dodd Award went to Betsy Breyer, who had a fatal heart attack on the way to last year’s meeting. She was a longtime editor of the newsletter and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her book on George Eastman.
Michael Lasser, host of WXXI’s Fascinating Rhythm, was scheduled to give a talk entitled, “The Songs of the Suburbs,” but he had to cancel. Grant Holcomb, the former director of the Memorial Art Gallery filled his slot with a presentation on “The Image of Lincoln in American Art.” It started with traditional, historical paintings of Lincoln in action, signing the Emancipation Proclamation, and then wandered into fanciful portrayals of the young Lincoln and Lincoln pennies. Grant could have stopped at Leonard Volk’s life mask of Lincoln. What a face!
I was thrilled to see a couple of Horace Pippin paintings with Lincoln in them but when we approached modern times, Grant sort of went off the rails. David Salle’s painting from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with a miniature Lincoln medallion floating above a woman’s breast, got lot of screen time and we did’t get to see Dali’s tour de force.
Frederick Douglass plastic statue in front of his former home on South Avenue in Rochester, New York
We were out walking and Peggi had to go to the bathroom. There was a library across the street so we ducked in there, the Frederick Douglas Community Library. They had a big display of books for Black History Month and I picked up “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” and read a few pages detailing a slave master’s demeanor while dispensing a whipping. I think I have a digital copy of this and I keep meaning to get to it.
While we were in the library my watch gave me a news alert that the NFL had reached some sort of settlement with Colin Kaepernick. Maybe they’ll make him Commissioner.
Next door I noticed School Number 12 is now called Anna Murray Douglass Academy after Frederick Douglass’s wife. And just a few steps more down South Avenue stands a historical marker, planted in 1984, Rochester’s 150th Anniversary year, that reads “DOUGLASS HOME Frederick Douglas, abolitionist and editor of the the North Star hid many fugitive slaves at his home on this site.” The plastic replica of the statue in Highland Park (above), one of many around town marking the 200th anniversary of his birth, was standing near the sidewalk . His birthday is celebrated on February 14th, yesterday.
The temperatures had dropped below freezing and the sidewalks were a mess but we soldiered on and walked around Highland Park where the real statue of Frederick Douglas, overlooking the bowl, looked magnificent.
A low scoring soccer match can have you on the edge of your seat with non stop action. Just saying. There was only a few minutes left in the big football game when my brother’s LG TV threatened to shut down. This happened a few years back and because he had rearranged all his furniture to accommodate the family he couldn’t find the remote for five minutes or so.
It wasn’t just the game that lacked excitement. No one took the knee and the halftime show looked like a Trump rally. I did like the CBS ad with the animated double eye logo mimicking old CBS shows. Bud Light body slammed Coors by calling attention to the corn syrup they put in their product. And the vintage Warhol “EatLikeAndy” Burger King ad was so ordinary it was startling.
My brother is a gourmet barbecuer and I would pick him as the Super Bowl MVP.
Hill in Durand Eastman on a beautiful February day
Peggi’s sister called from LA during the cold snap and Steve Hoy called from Charleston, making sure we were ok. Both times we had just returned from skiing. We had to get out early today, before the temperatures warmed. All this snow will be gone tomorrow.
Todd McGrain and Fola Akinola’s video “Eclipsing the Sun/A Biological Storm at Rochester Contemporary Art Center is amazing. I won’t spoil it for you.
Peter Monacelli’s show, “These Are My Rivers” opened last night at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio. Curated by Anne Havens and Colleen Buzzard it is a tour de force of paintings, drawings, collages and sketch books pulled from a lifetime of art making. Pete’s work is graphic, tangible abstractions of meaningful elements of his experience. He presents you with gifts that come straight from these influences.
I love this art space. Like the loft jazz, performance spaces in the seventies it is an old fashioned, DIY scene. Conversation is up a few notches here. And since Colleen’s studio is just behind the gallery you have the big bonus of peeking in on her endeavors. Pieces in all stages of development spring from every nook and cranny of her studio. It is an idea factory.
Paul and Peggi doing triangle pose against the wall in yoga class. Photo by Jeffery Young.
We had just a touch of fresh snow last night but it was enough to bring some crisp traction back to the ski paths. And at sixteen degrees the trails were crunchy. A wind was coming off the lake as we skied toward it and just as I said, “There’s no one out today,” we saw our first fellow skier. He smiled as we passed each other and said, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”
X Country ski trail groomers at Durand Eastman Park
The vulture capitalists have already taken a big bite out of our local Gannet paper. I’m reporting this because I know full well that no one reads the print version of the paper anymore so you wouldn’t know this. I have been a faithful reader since my pre-teen paper route days.
The paper got smaller at first. That is the sheet size shrank. And then the B section, what used to be local news, went national. The articles were plopped in from USA Today. And the C section, what used to carry arts and entertainment articles, now might have a piece on craft beer, if you’re lucky. There is no one left at the paper to cover the arts scene.
The letters to the editor were dropped on weekdays, a community forum that required only an editor to open the mail. The nationally syndicated columnists were gone too. This week they cut out the B and C sections entirely. The paper is just two sections, A and D. If you go to the Democrat & Chronicle’s website you will be assaulted with full screen pop-up ads and tiny articles.
Local Eagle Scouts are in jail for threatening to blowup Islamberg, a rural New York hamlet. The President wants a powerful wall. There is a lot going on out there and Will Cleveland cannot cover it all.
Nathan Lyons photos in “In Pursuit Of Magic” show at George Eastman Museum
When you look at a photo do you respond to the content of the photo or the decisions the photographer has made in presenting this representation of the subject matter to you? Nathan Lyons lets you have it both ways in equal measure. And on top of that he arranges playful pairings, note-perfect in composition, improvisation, texture and subject matter. Furthermore he sequences his photos so the narrative carries forward.
Nathan Lyon’s show, “In Pursuit of Magic,” opened tonight at George Eastman Museum. Lyons was a director there a half century ago and he had a show there called “Riding First Class On The Titanic” in the first part of this century. We bought the book and lent it to someone. Can’t remember who so I may have to buy it again. I remember the photos in the book were bigger than the 5×7 prints in the show. His black and white prints are super rich and when he switched to color, late in his career, they are still small but only got richer.
Underside of the Susan B. Anthony Frederick Douglass Bridge in Rochester, New York
Am I the only one who misses the early html days? When websites were fun, both to design/program and visit. Before php, css3, html5, responsive coding and social media. I accept that the answer to my initial question is yes so let’s move on.
While standing under the Freddy Sue Bridge I was thinking about this piece I did on the Refrigerator back in the day. I couldn’t even find it online. There were no links to it but it is still out there floating around like a whole lot of other content must be. I managed to find “Click On A BridgeTo Go Under” only by looking at the local copy on my computer and surmising what the url might be. Digital photography was brand new when I did it and that was probably the only reason the photos looked interesting to me at the time. They were only one half or one gig photos and from a camera that was terrible in low light.
In 2001 I did a piece for the “Hide & Seek” show at Pyramid Art Center. It was a digital installation and it ran on a pc at the gallery during the show. It was sort of a digital maze. I visit it every once in a while thinking that it might have totally fallen apart but it has held up pretty well. I’m afraid to look at it on a mobile device. – Check it out.
