We are experiencing a serious lack of snow so we’ve taken to the city streets where the animals are altogether different from the woods.
Elisabeth Moss is in everything. We’ve been chipping away at “The Top of the Lake” and loving it. And she co-stars in the “The Square” which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes last year and came to the little for one night only, a fundraiser for Rochester Contemporary. The place was packed so we sat in the second row off to the side and my neck is still sore. The movie, a send up of the art world and life in general since the art world is really only a microcosm of the big picture. And it was a big picture, too long by half an hour at least. I think everyone can guess what a gallery or museum director has to juggle, wooing wealthy patrons while trying to remain cutting edge, but this movie was full of surprises.
I used to toss stuff off for RoCo’s annual 6×6 show. Not really sure why. I think the limit was ten pieces in the old days, still twenty bucks a piece and 100 per cent of the proceeds go to RoCo. Maybe those factors had something to do with my attitude. I would do quick, sketch-like paintings and one year I think I put ink jet prints of paintings in the show.
I rethought my strategy a while back and put an effort into creating something I would like to take home with me, these colored blocks of wood. Two pieces of Adirondack sawmill, rough cut pine, glued together and painted with oils. All four sold and the variations I did on them the last two years sold as well. So this I considered going even more minimal, four blocks with the same two colors but each looks different based on the the allocation of of the two colors to either the small or bigger section and then the orientation.
Would I want to take one of these home with me? I have to say he warm grey that I used does not look as chocolate-like in my photo. And I don’t like the shine that the camera picked up. My experiment, pushing it with these serious constraints and waiting to see if they are still marketable, may only be interesting to me. Is that enough?
“Is Donald Trump a conceptual artist?” What a joy it was to read this article in the art section of this morning’s paper. Yes, there is a curved line between Malevich, Dada, abstract expressionism, minimalists like Ellsworth Kelly, Carmen Herrera, Robert Smithson, Donald Judd and the current occupant. Between art and absurdity.
The US government solicited eight prototypes which were built at a cost of $3.3 million in federal funds and unveiled last October along the United States border near San Diego. The eight companies who responded are each hoping to be the winning contractor when Trump builds his great wall. I cut out the pictures of the prototypes when the Times published them in early November. The pieces reminded me of the objects in my ongoing 6×6 project.
The cheekily named MAGA organization has started a brilliant campaign to designate the prototype display area as a national monument. Each of the eight wall sections were designed to United States Customs and Border Protection specifications, built to withstand a 30-minute assault from sledgehammers to acetylene torches, and to be difficult to scale or tunnel beneath. When viewed up close the walls have the undeniable majesty of minimalist sculpture.
Yes, I signed the MAGA petition and I encourage you to do so as well.
Looking across Eastman Lake out to Lake Ontario Winter
You know it is going to be a good party, and by extension a good year, when someone clears off the coffee table in the living room so people can take turns dancing on it. James Brown got the party started and his “Super Bad” drove it over the top. The band, with Bootsy Collins on bass and his brother Catfish on guitar, is just incredible. They wind it so tight, keeping you in crazy suspense until they reach the bridge, and then the sax solo, where James asks Robert McCollough to “Blow me some Trane” goes over the top. Prince ruled for a few songs, Grace Jones’ “I’m Not Perfect” was a knock out. I couldn’t find our seven inch of “Love To Love You” so I played part of the album version. And with the 45s all in a big pile we finished the night with the Stooges, “1969.”
There were more people skiing and snowshoeing in the park today than we have ever seen. Could be a combination of perfect conditions and a national holiday but I’d like to think more people are throwing off the digital shackles and getting out there.
We stood on this point on the edge of Eastman Lake trying to decide if the ice was frozen solid enough for us to ski across. We discussed what it would be like to fall in the water in 15 degree weather and then decided to stay on the path that runs along the shore.
The B section of our local paper keeps getting smaller even though it comes stock from USA Today. Just a few months ago it was reduced to six pages, one spread and an insert. Then it was knocked down to just the spread with entertainment gossip on the back page. And then that last page went all ads. I cut out Mesfin Fekadu’s “Top Ten Albums of 2017” from that section just to see what I’m missing. I hate feeling like the world is passing me by.
I had never heard of SZA but her “Ctrl” album was at number one. It’s easy going with a tasteful headphone ready mix. Lots of space and odd instrumentation. Very listenable, like something you’d hear in the Apple Store. Kendrick Lamar’s, “DAMN,” is Hollywood enough to include U2 but the tracks barely get off the ground. Daniel Caesar’s, “Freudian,” at number three, is way laid back R&B, almost detached make-out music.
Funny Mesfin Fekadu put Jay-Z’s, “4:44” at number 4. It really drew me in with its catchy lyrics, rhythms and samples. I’d put this one at number one. Taylor Swift sounds like she is completely lost on “reputation.” The generic big production swallows up her simple charm. I put Sam Smith’s, “The Thrill of It All,” on while we ate dinner and that was just about right. Soft, gospel tinged dinner music.
Number seven, St. Vincent’s, “MASSEDUCTION” isn’t as exotic as Bjork. I thought I was gonna like her but “Sugarboy” sounds like Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” on the wrong speed. Miguel’s, War & Leisure is old school R&B and various songs didn’t so much remind me of Smokey, the Chi-Lites, Funkadelic and Prince but made me want to hear them instead. “H.E.R.,” by Gabi Wilson under her stage name H.E.R., is more late night, make out chill stuff. And the number ten pick is Haim, “Something to Tell You,“ Three sisters who play pop songs like a lame eighties band.
I’m glad I liked Jay Z. I don’t feel so out of it.
We have forsythia bushes out front and in the back. Both are blossoming in December! And our red maple still has its leaves. Cold weather is on the way but the bits of color we have are hanging on. Reminds me of that Vanilla Fudge cover of a Supremes song. I saw them do that song in the Indiana University Fieldhouse. My college career was short but memorable.
Matthias Neumann “Double Bench” outside at Rochester Contemporary
Is it enough that the artist finds something interesting? I found myself pondering that question last night while talking to New York based artist, Matthias Neumann, at the opening reception for his “Double Bench.” We told him we stopped to study his sculpture on the way in and there was a woman sitting on it. He offered that he was interested in the juncture between non-objective and functional object. And he pointed out that he did call it a bench.
I was really struck by how beautiful the wood looked. His piece is made entirely of untreated 2x4s, held together with wood screws that are for the most part not visible. I roughed houses for a few years and built walls with 2x4s. We’d build them on the deck of the house. Plates, studs, corners and cripplers all built out of 2x4s. If it was an exterior wall we would sheet it, cut out the openings and then someone would yell, “Wall going up and we’d all help hoist it.” They were clearly walls, functional but beautiful.
Double Bench is part of an ongoing series of sculptural interventions that have been installed in public spaces throughout the US. It will on display all winter outside Rochester Contemporary.
Years ago our friend, Kim, sent us a copy of Jim Shaw’s “Thrift Store Paintings,” a book of exactly that, his favorite hand picked purchases. At the time I didn’t realize that he was also an artist who did his own work. The two are not so unrelated. We fell in love with the book and I think we may have bought a copy or two as gifts.
Around that time we were having dinner with the Gardner’s, some friends of Peggi’s parents. I remember a couple of things about that dinner. They were big on some sort of cut of beef and they broiled a whole tray of the stuff. It was inedible. In the living room they had Jim Shaw’s book on the coffee table. They were surprised that we liked it and told us that Shaw was her maiden name and Jim was her nephew.
Margaret Explosion plays the Little Theater Café tonight, last gig there this year. 7-9pm. Hope you can stop out.
Exterminating Angel poster in front of the Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan opera is about seven stories tall. The chandeliers are hoisted to the ceiling as the opera begins. And for The Exterminating Angel they were raised and lowered twice so the opening scene could play out two times like it does in Luis Buñuel’s movie. The theatrical production only deepened the surreal undertones. The cameras were rolling too as this Saturday afternoon production was being broadcast live in movie theaters across the country.
The lavish setting heightened the effectiveness of the minimal production. A large sculptural arch served as the abstract barrier that the guests could not penetrate. It spun slowly while the production unfolded and was dramatically lit in each scene.
The host of the bourgeois dinner party sings, “I’m delighted to see the spirit of improvisation” when it becomes clear his guests are not going to leave. And one of his guests sings “I adore anything that deviates from the norm.” The operatic voices only made the words from the film more absurd. I think Buñuel would have loved this over the top interpretation.
Bleu Cease, Rochester Contemporary’s director, characterized my obsession, what I call my “Models from Crime Page” series, as a “long running meditation on the mugshot.” I like that and I realized how accurate this description is when Peggi and I were making this video of the video. I created a slideshow of my source material, mugshots that I scanned from the Crimestoppers page of our local paper and exported the slideshow as a movie. I put the video on a dvd and RoCo played it continuously in the round video presentation room during the show.
Wikipedia says “the term meditation refers to a broad variety of practices that includes techniques designed to promote relaxation, build internal energy or life force and develop compassion, love, patience, generosity, and forgiveness. A particularly ambitious form of meditation aims at effortlessly sustained single-pointed concentration meant to enable its practitioner to enjoy an indestructible sense of well-being while engaging in any life activity.”
We spotted a buck out back and he saw us but it was only a glance. “Oh them.” We like to think they know us enough to realize we don’t present any danger. He was following his nose, inhaling through his nostrils as he swept the ground. We had just seen a doe come through, alone, which is not so unusual this time of year, and this guy was tracking her scent, retracing her steps exactly. He was headed across the road where the guy who lives there could be waiting with his bow.
Deer, in the number we have here, are a nuisance so I can’t get too upset about this ritual. We were talking to Steve, a neighbor, friend and outdoor enthusiast, about the bow hunting thing. I asked him if it was really a sport to wait for a deer to walk across your property and then let him have it? He felt that it was and told us he can only shoot an arrow accurately about fifty feet (or was it yards?). He pointed to a tree down the road. “Some guys can shoot twice that distance.”
I would guess it feels more like a sport when the weather is cold and the deer are actively running around, chasing the opposite sex. Steve knows we’re not hunters and wouldn’t eat deer meat but we collect sheds if we see them in the woods. He says we are “non-judgmental” and he doesn’t mind answering our silly questions. I remember a conversation with him about some gay deer sex he had witnessed. He likes to talk.
We occasionally see this pick-up sitting near the entrance to the park. He is probably out there walking a dog, we’ve never seen anyone getting in or out of the truck. Don’t know if anyone has seen “The Meyerowitz Stories” yet but there is a hilarious scene in there where the brothers, Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler, try to beat the shit out of a car with sticks and stones. It is not that easy. Anyway, I thought of that scene when I saw this truck.
Elizabeth Marvel plays their sister, Jean. Her character works at Xerox and lives in Rochester, New York. Dean & Britta do some of the music. Dean’s sister lives in Rochester.
Cat equipment on top of a pile in the middle of the old Inner Loop in Rochester, New York
I am still struck by this sight. What was once a wild idea, the movement took hold at the highest levels of city government and they filled half of the damn thing in. The moat that once surrounded the city suffocated the city. Just an idea and now a reality. “Death to the Inner Loop.” If only we could undo all the other urban renewal projects.
InkJet watercolors at Mercer Gallery Rochester New York
Colleen Buzzard, the thinking man’s artist, along with Karen Sardisco, has brought together twenty or so artists who explore the idea of mapping as thinking. The show, at MCC’s Mercer Gallery and six satellite locations, turns out to be whole lot of fun. We started with a three page handout that associated 61 artworks with the artists. There are some familiar names like Ann Havens, Scott McCarney and Jim Mott but many from other cities. A postcard for the show listed the six satellite locations but you might need a map to find them. Three are on the UR campus, one is at RIT, one at VSW and one opens sat RoCo in the Lab Space on October 6.
Ryan Boatright, from Paris France, deconstructed a failed email attachment and translated it into a score for music. The binhex code is printed on a stack of pages on the gallery floor and the music is looped on an iPod. Tate Shaw’s watercolors above, photos printed on watercolor paper and reworked with water, were stacked in an especially inviting way but accompanied by two little notes that read “Please do not touch.” By clicking on the photo you can see six beautiful works that we were allowed to look at. It’s a wildly interesting show including even a circuit board negative for an old MXR effects box.
There is a four foot high pile of US Geological Survey maps at the door of the gallery and we were invited to take a map home with us. Mine shows Santa Margarita Lake in California.
Our hike took us along the beach this afternoon and we were surprised to see the water level was still so high. Our garden and horseshoe pits are dry.
We ran into Hal, our jazz fest buddy, at the entrance to the park. He told us he had been geocaching and he had located three today. He wants to have a hundred by year’s end. Hal was wearing a Chelsea FC hat and he told us he has been following the Flash in their new North Carolina home. We asked if he was going to watch tonight’s US men’s World Cup qualification but he said he doesn’t have cable.
Hal likes to change topics so we talked about upcoming arboretum tours, Bop Shop shows and the Toronto Film Fest. He told us he was the first speaker at the City Hall hearing on the theater proposal for Parcel 5. He thinks the idea that the theater will bring business downtown is a sham. I don’t like that park idea either. I say sell the property to the highest bidder without incentives or tax breaks.
I should not be depressed at a birthday party. The room was crowded, a band playing and many people got up to perform. Some solo and at times there were six guitars on the stage. So what is my problem?
Let’s say you are in a position to go out to see a band. Maybe you would like to hear something creative, exciting, maybe something with an edge. What qualities do you look for? Maybe throw the dice and catch something wildly unexpected. If there was a room full of people and they were all around my age there would be a lot of water under the bridge. Just think where we came from with Motown and garage rock and straight up pop. Hendrix and psychedelia and jazz pushing frontiers. Punk offering a major correction. EDM for crying out loud.
Let’s say you play an instrument. What qualities would you be thinking about adding to this lexicon? Would you go out of your way to do a mediocre version of some roots, Americana thing?
We must be drawn to Monroe County. Peggi and I met while going to school in Bloomington, Indiana in Monroe County. We moved, Peggi to and me ‘back” to, Rochester in Monroe County. And we just finished slowing our way through Netflix’s “Bloodline,” the dysfunctional family drama set in the Keys, Monroe County, Florida.
Bloodline got in trouble early on. They killed off the best character, Ben Mendelsohn’s Danny, and the others had to fill the void. They couldn’t so Danny kept reappearing. Kyle Chandler as John Rayburn does the nightmare deed, killing his brother Danny, and his guilt drives the rest of the show. You’d think heavyweights like Sam Shepard and Sissy Spacek would have been given more to work with as the family matriarchs but Shepard dies early and Spacek never feels present. The second most dysfunctional sibling, Kevin, played by Norbert Leo Butz, almost gave Danny a run for his money but the writing completely fell apart.Jamie McShane and Chloë Sevigny, as Eric and Chelsea O’Bannon, were both great as support, so good they outshone the leftover leads. And latecomers like Beau Bridges and John Leguizamo helped bring some new life into the show but the whole thing crash landed when characters started explaining themselves and even each other.
Garth Fagan reading poetry at R1 Studio in Rochester, New York
“Poetry is an embarrassing affair. It is born too near the functions we call intimate.” That line is from Czeslaw Milosz‘s “Road-side Dog.” Milosz’s writing is not precious enough to be called poetry. It lies somewhere between poetry and prose. It is economical. He is not afraid to be simple or advance dumb ideas. And yet he effortlessly uncovers essential truths. His writing shares the properties of minimal art but it is also emotional.
Louise thought I would like his writing and I do. I was planning on returning her book when we met at a poetry reading on Friday night so I re-read most of it while we sat by the pool. It was too nice an evening to go in, that and she suspected the event, the last of a series of tie-ins with the Minimal Mostly show at R1, this one chosen poetry read by local luminaries, might just be “intolerable.” We were there for a half hour or so and it was delightful. But not even close to Milosz.
In a Landscape
In a landscape that is nearly totally urban, just by the freeway, a pond rushes, a wild duck, small trees. Those who pass on the road feel at that sight a kind of relief, though they would not be able to name it.
Czeslaw Milosz
Daily Mirror headline for Tate purchase of Carl Andre piece from Minimal Mostly lecture slideshow at Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York
Cathleen Chaffee, Senior Curator at Albright Knox Art Gallery, gave a lecture at the Memorial Art Gallery on Sunday afternoon on the topic of minimal art. Although the minimal aesthetic is easily applied to most art-making she concentrated on 1960 to the present, artists like Robert Ryman, Sol Lewitt, Agnes Martin and Dan Flavin. But she started back in the 1800s with a French woman who did illustrations of an all white painting, an all green painting and an all black painting. That joke about a blank canvas being a painting of a polar bear in a snowstorm has been around awhile.
1914 was to be a pivotal year with Marcel DuChamp the master, Kazimir Malevich making some of their strongest work. Ad Reinhardt and Rauschenberg did solid color paintings in the fifties as they fought their way out of Ab Ex. And John Cage’s silent “4:33” piece was a response to that. Art does not exist in a vacuum.
This lecture was in conjunction with Deborah Ronnen’s sensational “Minimal Mostly” show at R1 Studios on University Avenue. Her show features some of these same artists along with Ellsworth Kelly, Annie and Josef Albert, Carmen Herrera and Frank Stella. The pop-up show is up til the end of June so do yourself a favor and find some time to visit it.
Looking east from the northern end of the High Line in Manhattan
Duane was up before us this morning and had already left the apartment. I sat down to read one of his art books and he walked in with fresh bagels. We gabbed for another couple of hours and headed off on the F train.
From the train I could barely read the yellow sign pinned to the IDT Energy building in Newark. The tall building, right next to Audible.com, has very few windows and the top ten floors are covered with a huge American flag. Curious as to whether the yellow sign was also making a political statement I looked for a picture of it online. I found one. The sign reads, “America is too great for small dreams – Ronald Reagan.” What kind of bullshit is that?
We picked up our car at brother’s place and hit the road for Homer. The coffee shop there is half way and an oasis. We drove up the eastern shore of Skaneateles Lake and had a fish fry at Doug’s. As we crossed over a bridge near Montezuma’s Wildlife Refuge there was a large turtle in the middle of the road. We straddled it with our tires and and Peggi suggested going back. There were more cars behind us and we didn’t but I hope she/he made it.
