Category: Lopsided Observations

We sunk and hour’s worth of quarters in a parking meter downtown and stopped in to see Rochester Contemporary’s “Last Year on Earth” show. It is not intended to be entirely enjoyable but much of it was. Ong Siraphisut’s impressive “Tumeric and Charcoal” drawings fill the first wall, all portraits of virus victims. It sets the tone for the show.

Martha O’Conner created a big red book over the year and embroidered relevant haikus on its pages. We watched someone read every page and we did the same. Some of the work literally addressed the pandemic and some could only be construed as referencing the pandemic. I wanted to look at artwork so the premiss was bothersome. The pandemic has stolen enough time and energy. I checked the time.

Just enough left on the meter tossup into the video room in the back of the gallery where the mood changed entirely. “The Road We’re On,” a short film by Rochester Homeless Union and the NYS Poor Peoples Campaign, was an unlikely rocket ship of positive energy. Patrick Braswell eloquently expressed what he saw, how his perception changed and then, as the camera followed him addressing the needs of the homeless, exactly what can be done about it. Only later did I learn that Braswell had died suddenly in February. He lived an artful life. His artwork, a day in the life of the Rochester Homeless Union, stole the show at RoCo. Patrick Braswell is a saint in my book.

Celebrate the life and work of Patrick Braswell Sunday, March 21st  at 6pm via livestream on the Rochester Homeless Union Facebook or YouTube page

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I started this project a few years ago and it took a pandemic to finish it. From a box of aspiring model headshots (photos that were sent to us when we doing commercial art) I chose pairs and then swapped the top of one for the top of the other. If you like this sort of thing there are 47 pieces in the series and they can all be view as a slideshow here.

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I quit my carpentry job the week before we got married in 1976. My boss, a hard working Italian immigrant named Salvatore Caramana, couldn’t believe I would quit before getting married. “What are you gonna do?” he kept asking me. I didn’t know but I knew I didn’t want to work that hard for the rest of my life.

After our honeymoon I got my first graphic arts job. I was hired by the City of Rochester Police Department under a one year grant and worked on the fourth floor of the Public Safety building with the detectives in what was called the Crime Analysis Unit.

The grant covered any classes that were related to my work so I signed up for a couple of photo classes at the UofR. Bill Jenkins, who was curator of modern photography at the Eastman, taught the classes. I loved it. I had been an art major before dropping out and these classes got me back on the academic train. I eventually cobbled together a Fine Arts degree from SUNY Empire State.

I kept an envelope of prints from those days and determined I could improve them by editing, in this case by trimming the 8×10 prints into these square pieces. Click here to view the images in a slideshow format.

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Peggi made a cherry pie over the weekend with a can of cherries that was stamped “Best by March 2015.” That gave us pause but they smelled ok so we went with it. She also made another batch of applesauce with the bushel of 20 ounce apples we carried home from Aman’s. Because it is the end of the season they were only $2.99.

We walked up to the lake along Log Cabin Road. It seemed awfully quiet but we did see a few familiar faces, the really big guy who wears the Bills gear and the guy with the strange lawn. Strange in that it goes brown in the fall and only comes back when you think it never will, like the early days of Summer. It is always the same conversation with this guy. We say “hi, how ya doin'” and he says, “Can’t complain for a (insert day of the week.)” We always laugh at that after he has passed. What day can he complain on?

We’re looking forward to Derby Day on Sunday, not the Kentucky Derby but the day the two Madrid La Liga teams meet. Atlético, the number one team meets Real Madrid, the number two team. They are two of our three favorite teams and we can’t decide who to root for.

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Barcelona was tied 1-1 with Real Betis at the half when the phone rang. It was our friend, Danita, and her clinic had extra doses of the Moderna vaccine. She signed us up for Monday afternoon, a perfect birthday gift for Peggi’s birthday. We started calling friends, the ones in our age bracket anyway, to tell them about the extra doses. We interrupted the Super Bowl for most but found quite a few takers. And then we got back to our game. Like magic, Messi came off the bench and in dramatic fashion he put one in.

Since we had to get in the car to get our vaccine and because it was Peggi’s birthday we made a few other stops. Aman’s Farm Market first where we bought more apples, both eating and baking. 8 quart baskets of 20 ouncers are $3.99 and they are perfect for applesauce. The woman behind the counter asked if we kept our skins on or took them off. Second stop was the new bodega on Park Avenue where we picked up a few sandwiches and cappachino, Peggi got a mushroom, gouda and and egg sandwich. I had smoked salmon and cream cheese on a bagel. I picked my monitor and prize money at RoCo where my slideshow won an award in the Members Show. And finally out to Trillium Heath for the needle. The waiting room was filled with our friends. A super spreader event.

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Bob Martin gave us a key to his master vault of Personal Effects videos. This one was labeled RIT 10.06.84, a gig we did not remember. The song is a cover of Taana Gardners’s, “Heartbeat” and the video must have been done by Russ Lunn, a student there at the time. I’m posting it today because it is Peggi’s birthday.

The video shows we did two encores there and this was the second song of the second one. Two covers, “What Goes On” and “Heartbeat.” Heartbeat reminds me of all the parties and clubs where we danced back in the day. And I love the way Peggi does it.

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Two weeks ago we were walking along the beach in the sand. We’ve skied up to the lake most days for the last couple of weeks but we hadn’t crossed Lakeshore Boulevard until today. All of this happened while we were gone.

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With charcoal, ink and watercolor on the pages of a 1914 edition of Cassell’s Cyclopædia of Mechanics (mixed with the Oxford Dictionary) William Kentridge brings his book alive in this animated film. We watched the seven minute piece four times and if this pandemic wasn’t ongoing we would have stuck around for a few more viewings.

Alone in the dark viewing room with the big screen and Neo Muyanga’s South African funeral hymn Kentridge’s Second Hand Reading swept us away in some sort of unexplainable dream state. It is only on view til the end of the month so I would hurry over to the Eastman. And only if that is impossible would I recommend this bootlegged version.

We are so fortunate to have the Eastman here. Kentridge has already decided to donate the complete set of his films to the Museum and continues to astound.

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I follow the Bills on Siri. “Hey Siri, how are the Bills doing?” It’s much easier than watching the games. Buffalo is in their third playoff game today, this one with the Kansas City Chiefs, and if all goes well they’ll be in the Super Bowl. You can tell when its game day around here. It’s just in the air and noticeable in our football loving neighbors’ pattern.

I like European football. I realize that makes me a snob. I don’t like having to watch a commercial between every play. I like 45 minutes of non stop action and then a bathroom break. People who complain about the paucity of goals in soccer just don’t see the beauty in the game. And American football players are too big for the most part.

We watched Real Madrid win last night. They are in second place to their crosstown rivals but they look better to us with their masterly passing control. Their coach, Zinedine Zidane, is out with Covid. We recorded a couple of matches today. We’ll watch Atletico play later tonight and Barcelona tomorrow. Atletico’s last match had a first for us. Their opponent, Eibar, had their goalie take a penalty shot against Atletico’s goalie. He scored on the sensational ter Stegan but Atletico went on to win. In Barca’s last match we watched the great Messi lose it. He swatted an Athletic Bilbao defender out of frustration. He will be forced to sit on the bench tonight.

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January 23, deep into winter, and we finally got enough snow to ski on. It was nineteen degrees with no wind when we were out and the sun kept surprising us. Perfect conditions. You can see the so-called “lake-effect” in the distance. It brought us an additional inch before got back home.

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Not everyone goes to Florida in the winter especially when a pandemic is in full swing. If you are from here or have chosen to live here you must come to terms with the winter. Granted it is a limited palette but when that’s what you’ve been given you realize how much variety there is within it. And dashes of ordinary colors seem like a miracle.

“Lo Vas a Olvidar“

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It is cold but beautiful up on the North Coast. A huge grey cloud has lifted. I imagine they opened the windows in the White House on this Inauguration Day and let this fresh air in. We are all inhaling deeply.

I am sick of doom-scrolling. I don’t ever want to hear that “I’m proud to be an American because at least I know I’m free” song again. The orange guy took a lot out of me. It’s embarrassing. I want to move forward.

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How about the good things that have come from this horrible pandemic. The extra time outdoors for starters and all the virtual encounters. But then we watched Martin Scorsese’s “Pretend It’s A City” and could only long for those big city experiences.

A few months back I did a month’s worth of Instagram posts entitled “Missing Spain.” We had had planned to walk another Camino, this one the Primitivo. And of course there would be all the extra time in Madrid. But we have found ways to mitigate this longing.

I put “Spain” in my Apple News preferences. I track the temperature in Madrid and Barcelona on my watch. We’re following three La Liga teams and we watch the matches in Spanish with the extra exuberant commentators. Spain just had their worst snowstorm in fifty years. Atletico’s match with Athletic Club (Bilbao) was cancelled. Real Madrid was forced to play Osasuna (Pamplona) on a snow covered pitch.

We stream Rosalia playlists before dinner. The screensaver on our tv is a photo album from Spain. And tomorrow we plan to brave the Members Show at RoCo where my “Abstracting Spain” photo show is on an endless loop.

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The Veteran’s Bridge, finished in 1931, looks majestic in any season. I remember driving across it, from left to right, with my father in the passenger seat. I had asked to use the car after school so I drove him to work at Kodak. At that time there was a big traffic circle at Saint Paul just before the bridge. The circle had two lanes of traffic spinning around it and you had to work your way out to get off. I remember going around a few times before escaping while my father watched in horror.

This weekend only! Hauser Wirth is offering a free screening of “Philip Guston: A Life Lived” (1981) directed by Michael Blackwood. This is Guston himself, talking, thinking, painting, knocking you out. This is must see tv.

If you’re stuck for a unique gift, you may still be able to get an original painting by Eric Goulden delivered in time for the holidays. We bought an F chord.

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My father loved this place, Johnson Pond, across from the entrance to public beach at Durand. It has its own ecosystem. His photo of a few dozen turtles perched on a floating log here was the panorama photo in the D&C. Joe Biden was his guy and he would be so happy.

I am happy to say goodbye to the days we’ve spent trying to figure why so many people like the orange one. The morning hours spent going to his Twitter page to hear it from the horse’s mouth. All those NYT opinion pieces that never quite summed up the rage. The attention we paid to his ghastly look. His family. The time we spent translating the huge banner the guy at the end of Hoffman has hanging off his deck – “Trump 2020 No More Bullshit.” The army of sycophants. The ugliness.

Goodbye.

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I scheduled a dentist appointment for the first available slot. 8AM. But there were already three others in the small waiting room when I got there. I brought one of my N95s along, ones we bought at Home Depot before this whole thing started. I was trying to figure out why I was getting air in the sides when I realized I had it on upside down. They did a temperature check and gave my some mouth wash. The dentist had a portable Air Wash station next to the dental chair. I took off my mask and felt free.

Its almost like there is more at stake in this election than the selection of our next president.

The house on Peart Avenue that has the Raw Honey stand has always looked a little too funky to be buying produce from. Now they’ve put these signs in front of their stand just to scare away more customers. The first one is a little odd in that the team looks like they’ve put one over on us. And I have no idea what to make of the homemade one. “History will repeat itself in the time that it takes it’s people to forget what happened. Don’t forget what our Fore Fathers fought so hard for! Don’t forget the U. S. Constitution! Don’t forget we are the freest Country in the World Because of the U.S. Constition!!!”

“Only when it is dark enough can we see the stars.” – MLK

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We had a zoom chat with my brother and sister-in-law over the weekend. It was going to be a dinner zoom but we eat early and they eat late so we watched them eat. We got into politics pretty quickly and all pretty much agree so the conversation moved along to the finer points.

I yammered on about the electoral college and how it minimizes the importance of voting for the type of government we want and need. NYT just identified 20 counties scattered in six swing states that could determine the presidency. That’s like Cambridge Analytica identifying the handful of “persuadables” and targeting them to sway the election. Everybody else might as well stay home.

There was some discussion of whether Obama had done all he could or whether what he did, or maybe by just being who he is, stirred up this racist backlash. I don’t blame Obama and maybe because of my new found focus on age, I suggested it wasn’t that long ago, double my lifetime plus thirty years that someone like me could own another person to do my chores. The arc is long unfortunately.

In 1968, the year my father took the photo above, the in-your-face racist, George Wallace running as a third party candidate, won the electoral college votes from five states and took almost 14% of the popular vote. While in Bloomington to watch the soccer match, my father and brother stopped up to my dorm room. I had a McCarthy poster on the wall and The Pill Is A No No poster of Pope Paul VI. My father got a big laugh out of the pope poster. He missed Trump’s reign but he always liked Biden and he would be so happy to see him win on Tuesday.

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“Andy Warhol Portfolios: A Life in Pop” at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester features a broad range of the artist’s screen-printed imagery from 1964 to 1985. As I mentioned a few posts back, my brother, Mark, our friend Kim and Peggi and I pooled our money (Peggi and I took a loan out for $1800) and we bought 125/200 of the ten prints above. We bought them through the Ronald Feldman Gallery in 1980 before Warhol had made them. They became too expensive to insure so we sold them last year at Christies. They steal the show at the MAG.

Our good friend, Louise, has a piece in the premier edition of SUNY Oswego’s new literary art journal “Subnivian.” I have read “The German Crowd” a few times now and am struck by how it draws me in and sweeps me away, like a myth.

myth a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.

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It is so good to know there are still trails in Durand that we have not explored. We spotted one the other day and took it this morning. A rather steep path took us to a hilltop where we were imediatly challenged by a deer. I took it that way anyway. “What are you doing up here?”

I found a couple of those little pink flags, the ones mountain bikers use to mark a trail even though biking is not allowed on the trails. We stopped to admire a stand of white birch trees and found six or seven more deer sleeping in the brushwood. We had read that due to the lack of rain the deer won’t have enough to eat this winter. So protect your shrubs. The conditions are right for a good vintage of wine but the acorn count will be down.

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