My ears are still ringing from rehearsal last night. We played for three hours but still didn’t get through the forty-five minute set we plan on doing at the Scorgie’s reunion. Peggi is playing her Farfisa and relearning the chords to the songs she wrote. And she ordered a new Electro Harmonix PolyChorus from Sound Source so she can do the crazy sax parts in “Low Riders” and “Love Never Thinks”. Rob at Sound Source told her they’re still making the box because Kurt Cobain loved it. It looks exactly like her old one.
We ‘re watching he World Series and rooting for the Phillies but they can’t seem to get anything going tonight. I really like the Lincoln MKS commercial with Cat Power doing Bowie’s “Space Oddity”.
I picked up a cup of coffee at Starry Nites on the way to painting class and I thought I would really make some progress but I must have been in some sort of funk because I barely accomplished anything. I spent most of the night trying different colors in this guy’s nostrils if you can believe that. The guy has a huge neck and he is looking up so there is a lot of description in those features.
I started the painting over the weekend and it developed quickly. It beginnings were so graphic and strong that it was almost done and yet I was just getting started. So if it was almost done, why did it take me all night to advance it? It is at a stage where every move has to be right on. I’ll take a photo of him and post it here when I get it right.
Maureen Outlaw announced that she was going down to the Anchor Inn to celebrate her birthday after painting class so when Peggi picked me up we headed down to the lake to meet her. She was sitting at the bar working on her second LaBatt’s Blue and a plate of chicken wings when we showed up. It was just the third day for the bartender, Amanda, who moved here from Indiana, but it seemed like a pretty comfortable scene.
It was kind of dark and dreary today but that did not get us down. In fact the woods looked more dramatic than usual when we took our walk so we embraced it.
It was beautiful weather this weekend for checking up on a multimillion dollar project that the Town of Irondequoit has undertaken. We walked down Hoffman Road to the Spring Valley area where about ten homes are. A creek call ONT-112 flows through this area and it overflows occaisionally. Some people around here think this area was always a wetland and the homeowners here should not expect the State to spend our money to protect their property. Other (some long time) residents say this area is used to be dry enough fo neighborhood gardens in the lowland.
But according to the press release posted on Senator Schumer’s website, the Town blew it when they approved the construction of a near-by housing development 15 years ago. That project allowed about a hundred houses to be built on a hillside with an inadequate drainage system. The runoff from this development overflows ONT-112 so the town proposed a mitigation project that called for realigning the stream, elevating roads, adding culverts and erosion barriers. After ten years of negotiations the project got Army Corps approval and taxpayer funding and is now in full swing. And the press release says “it needed it to be rushed due to New York State requirements that work on the project be completed by October 1, 2008 due to trout spawning in the stream.” It’s October 20th and we didn’t see any troat down there.
I did a post on this subject a while back called, “I’m Against It” and Pat Meredith from the Public Works Department asked me to contact him for all the facts. I may do that but for now it is more fun to speculate without the facts.
I had a hard time starting our chainsaw and I pulled the rope so many times that I broke it. I took the case apart and got at the spring where the rope is supposed to start. I was trying to thread what was left of the rope back into the tiny hole when our neighbor, Leo spotted me out front and stopped by to see what I was up to. He said he had some new rope so we went down to his basement to cut off a piece. I got all put back together and cranked away but still couldn’t start it. Rick from across was walking his dogs and he stopped by to say hi. He told me it might be the spark plug so I took the top off and removed the spark plug so I could sand the point. I was still trying to start the damn thing when Jared, our neighbor from down the street, walked by and got involved. He suggested that I clean the air filter and then spray some Quick Start fluid in there. We walked down to his house to get the spray can. Jared determined that it was flooded and I probably flooded the thing at the start by pumping that prime button too much. It finally started but my arm was sore as can be. I only had a few minutes to saw before John Gilmore and Bob Mahoney stopped by for dinner.
We all headed out later to see/hear the Varnish Cooks at Abilene. Too bad the bands have to play insde in this weather. It is almost impossible to hear the band or juke box when the small bar is as crowded as it was last night but it was still fun. Danny took us upstairs for a quick tour of the swanky lounge up there. I tried talking him in to letting Margaret Explosion play up there when we split the night with Nod on Thanksgivig weekend.
The phone rang at 8 this morning and I was awake but my voice wasn’t. I kind of shout/sang “Bring Out The Jazz” at rehearsal last night. It was our second practice for the Personal Effects reunion. It was Bruce O’Neill on the phone to say he was going to be here in a half hour to trim our trees. We barley got any work done today. It was more fun watching Bruce in the trees.
We spent some time talking to his helper, Tom, who had just taken a buyout from a pharmaceutical company where he worked as a salesman. He spent most of his time giving golf lessons to doctors who prescribed his company’s drugs.
I obsessed over the leak in our skylight for the last three days. It took me that long to pinpoint where the water is getting in. It’s a Velux window and it came with the house. They wrapped the wood frame with metal and had to bend it around the corners. They cut the top part to make the corner and stuck a tiny rubber gasket in there. Water rolls down the edge of the window, on top of the frame and when it hits that corner it builds up and finds its way through the rubber gasket into the window frame. And then rolls down the rafters out on to the ceiling where it turns the plaster mushy. It was a half-assed design held for a while and then gave out. If we get a warm spell I plan to take the window out and re-frame the opening. I’m hoping to find a better solution for the metal cladding than the one Velux came up with.
The deer around here are on a high protein diet gobbling up the acorns that are all over our lawn.
I wrote a piece this afternoon on the Hi-Techs and posted it on the Scorgies site. And I talked to Martin Edic on the phone about doing a song with us at the reunion. That conversation will be our rehearsal.
Paul Dodd painting entitled “Model from Crime Page” 2008
Our painting teacher, Fred Lipp, is really much more than a painting teacher. And I don’t say that because he is also an extraordinary artist. He is a fly fisherman too but I have no idea what his skills are in this area. He is more than a painting teacher because his methods for teaching painting can also be applied to living your life. Last night in class I heard Fred give advice to a woman who was painting near me. He said, “Paint it as a whole, from start to finish”.
Say you are heading out for a drive. You might have a destination and you might even use a map. But if you really want to enjoy the ride you may decide to take a detour or a side trip or forget about your destination altogether.
“What we’ve heard is so disturbing It takes time to settle in Our destination doesn’t matter This is it… life hereafter” – Personal Effects, “This Is It” LP, 1984
I’m trying to connect the dots here. I devoured an article on Elizabeth Peyton’s “Live Forever” show in Friday’s New York Times and then started a new crime face painting on Monday. I sketched a guy that sort of looked like a woman and in fact I switched the situation in my mind and thought I was sketching a woman that looked like a man. The people in class thought he was a man and Maureen Outlaw told said he looked like me. When Peggi saw the painting she said, “I like him”. I said, actually it’s a woman and I reached for the Crimestoppers page that I used for my source. His name turned out to be “Jeffery”. I had played up the lips like Elizabeth Peyton did in her portrait of Kurt Cobain and the clothing was loosely painted like her portrait of Piotr Uklanski. My crime guy was thin and more youthful than the source. He looked like a rock star.
We watched the “Life and Times of Frida Kahlo the other night and I was knocked out by how beautiful and exotic Frida Kahlo was. This documentary was so much richer and more interesting than the Frida movie. Frida Kahlo was her artwork. She lived her artwork and painted the whole from start to finish. I have no idea what Elizabeth Peyton is like but I love her work.
While I was applying paint to my sketch of this crime guy and developing his attitude, it suddenly became clear that each move was not helping so I stopped. I was painting the whole from start to finish and this was the finish but I didn’t recognize it at first. The finish could come at any time regardless of my plans. I should live my life this way and then painting would be a breeze.
I remember riding my bike in the city and some kid saying, “Take a picture. It’ll last longer”. I was ten or so and I must have been starring at him. I thought of that incident today when I was making beans and rice. Peggi said, “That looks nice”, so I took a photo.
It’s really just the recipe right of the can or at least it used to be on the can before Goya reworked the label. It was called “Cuban Rice and Beans”. If I remember it right it calls for sauteing garlic, onions and pepper (I used jalapenos from our garden) in a little bit of olive oil and then adding black beans out of the can along with some oregano, roasted peppers (I used a small jar of these) and a few teaspoons of vinegar. We made Basmati brown rice and served the beans over it. There’s enough left over for tomorrow.
Peggi Fournier of Personal Effects performing live Scorgie’s in Rochester, New York
The weekend zipped by and I never found time to paint so I’m thinking of taking Columbus Day off (just like the mail man) and getting some painting in then. I also want to fix the leak in our skylight if I can. It’s supposed to be warm again. It was almost eighty today but we spent most of the day down at the pool fixing the leak in our our pump.
Personal Effects was asked to play the Scorgies Reunion on Friday, November 21st at the German House in Rochester. We got our first rehearsal in last week and we dug up a bunch of old songs to teach Ken Frank (the newest PE bass player) and relearn ourselves. Most of the songs were fast! I found this slow one to try next week.
The water temperature in the neighborhood pool was down in the fifties so we decided to close the pool this weekend. As current presidents we made the call and emailed our neighbors to be down at the pool at 9:30 this morning. We took the diving board off and put it in the pump house. We threw some Algaecide in the water and put the cover on. We put the chairs and tables in a pile and covered them with a tarp and then drained the pump.
We were basically done and I was ready to go back home at 10:30 and have some breakfast but Jared was itching to get going on a project that we said we would do in the fall. Next thing you know I was swinging a sledgehammer at the sidewalk so we could repair a leak in the hose that ran back to the pipe. We took about ten trips back to the house pick up tools and Peggi, Jared and I drove to Home Depot to pick up some concrete and plastic plumbing parts. We stuck the parts together and had to come to clean up in time be out at Alice and Julio’s for dinner at six.
Each year Earl Carsorla comes home with his dad for the Jewish holidays and we get together at Maureen’s house to watch his tapes from the last Burning Man thing. I thought it was pretty funny that someone torched the man early last year but Earl and his buddies were kind of upset with that. This seems like the kind of event Dave Mahoney would like, lots of sun, young, healthy hippy type, girls/women and some nudity. I went to Woodstock with Dave and Earl’s footage had me thinking of Dave. I can only handle so much of the Mad Max, covered in sand, voyeurism and then I want go do something but I like hang out in Maureen’s kitchen or check in with my blog in her computer room.
Amy Rigby and Wreckless Eric in Rochester New York
Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby were about a half hour late showing up for their gig at the atrium in Village Gate. It seems the shows usually start mercilessly on time at this venue so we were happy to be on the same schedule as Eric. And it was Eric were here to see. Our friends and neighbors, Rick and Monica, were here too but it was Amy Rigby who got them out of the house. It was funny to see the folky/singer/songwriter crowd mixing with the punky/oddball crowd. And these guys pulled it off.
Eric wanted to be home and who can blame him. They live in the south of France. They started with an anthemic call to “Keep driving until the wheels fall off”. These two are clearly in love so one of the lines was, “When we’re driving together, at least we’re a little closer to home”.
Eric was most entertaining between songs when he just ran away at the mouth. They had played in Canada the night before and he told the crowd, “Canadians are the most unvulgar people I have met in my life. You people, on the other hand, look quite vulgar to me”. Matt, who records most shows for the Bob Shop, had his black mannequin head with binaural mics set up down front and Eric thanked the head for showing up. They had been in San Francisco and Chris Wilson from the Flaming Groovies came out to see them and told Eric that Cyril Jordan was a fan of Eric’s. He was quite blown away by this.
Amy is Eric’s biggest fan and she laughed heartily at all his nonsense. She sang some great songs as well like the one with the refrain, “Last night I was dancing with Joey Ramone”. I played drums for a while with another couple, Mary and Jon (Gary), and Amy reminded Peggi and me of Mary.
Eric and Amy rocked fine without drums and certainly didn’t need the cheesy little drum machine they used on a couple songs. They tore it up on “Kilbourn Road”, “Take The Cash K.A.S.H.” and “Whole Wide World”. They played for over two hours and seemed to be having a ball. Amy said this had been the best crowd of their tour.
Brian Peterson sends out a photo a day (almost) to those on his mailing list. I love this one. I’ve cropped it here but you can click on it and see the whole thing. It’s really beautiful.
Speaking of beautiful. I have have fallen in love with another painter’s work. Her name is Mary Heilmann and I had never heard of her until the article in this Sunday’s paper. Peggi read it aloud to me while I was driving back from the mountains and I couldn’t wait toget home to just look at the pictures for a while. There is a slide show that goes along with the article. Now I’m looking for a slot to drive down to New York to see her show at the New Museum.
I’ve been chasing down a tiny little leak in our roof for the last few years. It is somewhere near our skylight and I have dabbed black roof cement everywhere up there. It is headed into the seventies this week so I’m thinking of getting up on the roof this afternoon and going at it again so that the stuff melts and seals this thing. These sorts of projects are more fun than web work these days.
As presidents of the neighborhood pool, we scheduled a pool closing get together for Saturday. Peggi sent out an email blast to the street and so far three households say they can’t make it. Why would anyone want to be president? In our case it is a rotating obligation but what is compelling Obama and McCain to do this? McCain wants to be Commander in Chief and I’m not sure why Obama is in this race but I am routing for him. I’m thinking of leaving painting class early so I can catch the action in tonight’s so called debate.
Who came up with this bogus format anyway? The hall is full of undecided voters and they get to ask the questions. Why should we care what anyone who has not been able to pick between these two yet thinks? I know that sounds kind of elitist. Giuliani threw out huge slabs of red meat to the crowd at the GOP convention. How about they pass out tomatoes and we decide which candidate to throw the stuff at? That’s not elitist.
Our next door neighbor, Leo, put this wood splitter together. It is a Heathkit like the stereo systems that early hobbyists built. Peggi’s dad was one of those. He put their first amplifier together in the fifties. My college roommate’s father, Harmon Hoy, built one too and his son, Steve, brought it to school with him. One of the first things Steve said to me was, “Mind if I put one of these stereo speakers on your desk?” I had been gearing up to study in college because I never did that in high school and that question and it’s implications pretty much put an end to that effort.
I borrowed the wood splitter this morning to work on the wood we pulled up from behind our neighbors house when a few trees blew over. I only got through a few pieces when a bolt broke on the handle that drives the shaft and wood toward the blade. I bought a new bolt but we will have find someone to weld the piece fitting on the end of the new bolt. I’m thinkin of giving Sparky a call tomorrow.
Peggi made dinner with the grilled vegetables and pasta recipe from this morning’s paper and it was sensational. We have a Netflix double header of “I Walk With A Zombie” and “The Body Snatcher” for after painting.
We spent the weekend in what some people are now calling New York’s Tech Valley“. The area stretches from Montreal to New York City and there we were equidistant from the two cities in the middle of a dead zone. That means no cell towers, no cable, no wifi and where we were, no land lines for phones.
Getting off the grid is exhilarating. I brought some old newspapers but they are out of reach here as well except for the an old issue of the El Paso Times that came in a box as wrapping for some framing that Shelley had ordered for her stick pictures. I was thinking how how cool it would be to be able to get a subscription to a variety pack of newspapers so that one day you would receive a newspaper from Tennessee and the next day it might be from Los Angeles or El Paso instead of Rochester’s Democrat & Chronicle everyday. I had a paper route for five years and developed a newspaper fix that I have never been able to shake. This may not seem as exciting an idea to most people as it it does to me.
We missed Mike Allen and his brother Lou at Mez this weekend. Mike was the lead singer for a bands in high school and I remember his brother being a great drummer. I was looking forward to hearing them do jazz standards.
On the way back into town we stopped in to say hi to Peggi’s mom. She had the Bills game on and they were losing. She tried calling her friend, Alice, to see if she wanted to join her in the dining room for dinner but she dialed Alice’s phone number on the tv remote and I watched as the channel changed to every station in Alice’s phone number.
Shelley Valachovic opening at LORAC in Glens Falls New York
We took a leisurely, leaf peeping drive through the Adirondacks to Pete and Shelley’s place near Crown Point. The color was amazing. We lost track of time. Peggi thought she saw snow but it may have been a white cloud in front of one of the high peaks. We stayed too long at Cabin Fever in Star Lake, talking to Irene Baurschmidt’s husband. He was telling us that he used to do “set up” for the Invictas and he was going to do it again for them at an upcoming gig at RIT.
We were going to hook up with Pete and Shelley and drive down to her opening in Glens Falls but we were about an hour late. They were pulling out when we pulled in and we passed each other and then both turned around and then passed each other the second time. We didn’t even see them the second time and we weren’t sure that they had seen us the first time so drove on trying to catch up with them but we never did. We were right on time for the opening and Pete and Shelley showed up about a half hour later.
Shelley’s work is beautiful and we met a lot of their friends and neighbors that we have only heard about until now. We made dinner out of the little egg salad sandwiches. We were happy to that Glens Falls has a minor resurgence going on with a lot of transplanted New Yorkers settleing down here. On the Northway heading back up to Pete and Shelley place we tuned in Toronto’s “Friday Night Bandstand” on AM 740. This is a real radio show with a dj playing obscure singles and b sides along with the old familiar stuff. We only recognized about every other song or so and we were there in the first place.
Just like the Soccer Moms and Joe Sixpacks, we were really looking forward to the debate tonight and it sort of disappointed. The bar had been lowered so far that Sarah won by not completely blowing it. And when you think about Dick Cheney, Palin did look pretty vice presidential. I have a pretty good track record of picking the losing limbo dancer and I hope I’m wrong this time.
How do you go about drawing in a cornfield at this scale? The articles say it took the farmer eight hours to mow his corn field in this Palin pattern but how do they work on this huge scale? Does someone project an image on the field? I might want to do some big crime faces.
Sometimes its easier to find a site with Google even when you know the domain name. And then there are always the diversions. I found the Korean Pop Wars and just added this Popwar “Word Beanie” to my wish list all on the way to my blog.
Monica emailed me from the Memorial Art Gallery today. She needs the Marlene Dumas books back that I borrowed. Excellent timing because “Measuring Your Own Grave”, the Marlene Dumas book from her upcoming MOMA retrospective, just showed up from B&N online.
A bird flew into our kitchen window this morning while I was having coffee. It’s lying upside down on our deck. I have to get out there and give it a proper burial. I promise not to photograph it. I never got around selling my 3 mega pixel Kodak when I bought the 5 megapixel Sony that I had until I bought my new little Nikon so I gave it to Pete and Shelley when they were here last. They sent a photo of a mouse that they caught in a trap. I probably won’t post that either but I wanted to acknowledge receipt of it. It’s nice to know they are using the camera. It all happens with solar power up where they are.
I brought this painting into class tonight for a show that our class is having in the gallery down at the Workshop but while in class I addressed some problems on a different painting and then decided to leave that one there for the show. My father takes this painting class with me and his neighbor teaches a watercolor class at the Workshop. This neighbor/teacher was telling my father that he does a demonstration in every class and the people love it. My father said he told the neighbor that Fred has never done a demonstration in class the the whole time he has been there. He is just not that kind of teacher.
But Fred may have overheard this conversation because one of the first things he did tonight was say, “May I have attention for a few minutes?”. He went on to say, I see a lot of you are working from a photograph and I just wanted to say that there is a misconception out there about photography. People feel that photos don’t lie and of course they do. Photos haven’t been sorted out unless they were taken by a really good photographer, someone who made decisions about what to leave in and what to take out. And if it is a really good photo that you are working from, all the decisions have already been made for you. It is already done. And why would you want to repeat what you already know? You need to get at the reason you were attracted to the photo in the first place.
To do a good painting you need to be stimulated. You need to solve problems. You need to try things to see what works and what doesn’t. The fun part is the hard part. It is a bit masochistic. This is pretty much what Fred said and it was a pretty dramatic demonstration.
I, on the other hand, am attracted to and work from really bad photos, mugshots from the newspaper as of late, but this applies directly to my process. I am just starting to learn that just because some dude has a neck or two ears or two same size eyes or whatever, I don’t have to paint everything that is in the photo the way it is in the photo. I used to try to reproduce the bad photo and I found this hard and frustrating. Making decisions on what to paint and what not to is not any easier but it is less like beating your head against a wall.
