Life imitates art (or something like that)

Click for closeup

Here's a snapshot of a couple of buds from my favorite rose. Since I don't know its name, I call it Carla's Rose after my neighbor across the street who has an enormous rosebush of it occupying most of her front stoop. One day when she was energetically pruning it back, I asked for a branch to try as a cutting. I stuck it in the ground with a sawed-off soda bottle for a cover and two years later, I had my very own Carla's Rose. It's the one I painted in 2007 which you can see on my website. And yes, it is fragrant.

The Baby in the Dumpster

I came across a small framed picture in the cellar of my aunt's house when we cleaned up after her death a few years ago. It had been rather informally framed in a cheap 1950s wooden frame and was mixed in with a whole bunch of miscellaneous old student work (her own and her students') that had been molding away down there for the past 50 or so years.

The picture seemed important enough that I did not pitch it into the dumpster along with the rest. I began to wonder if Alfonso Ossorio might not have left it with her. She got to know him when he was at the Portsmouth Priory School and at RISD, and they collaborated on the decoration of a church in the Philippines. So this was not the most unlikely assumption on my part.

Now, I have removed it from the frame and there appears to be an "AO" signature with an indication that it was done in the Philipine Islands in 1950. The irregular scrap of paper measures 11" in its longest length and 7.5" across its widest width. I've not seen a lot of Ossorios in person, but I know he did work in wax & watercolor about this time and that babies figured in some of this work. There is enough handwriting on the back that someone familiar with his autograph should be able to confirm the signature.


The painting has been returned to its frame, minus the corrosive old cardboard, and hangs on my wall. I am now forced to contemplate the fate of my own work after I leave this planet. T.'s father died the week before Christmas leaving an apartment full of stuff yet to be disposed of. I remember a news item during the bad old '80s about an artist in the West Village who died of AIDS and his entire studio went straight into the dumpster. My own work multiplies every time I get down to business and admit that I am an artist. In my entire career, until 3 years ago (which comprises nearly 40 years of wishing, hoping, dollars-down-the-drain, ass-kissing, licking wounds and hard, hard work), I had sold only 2 pieces. As fortune (nothing, but sheer dumb luck) would have it, I ended up with gallery representation in time to have one blockbuster (for me) year before the market crashed. So now what? To have come so far after nearly chucking the whole enterprise in favor of job security and a small check in my old age (if there's anything left of Social Security): WTF?

Do I start giving it all away? What about the 60" x 90" paintings? Who has room for all this crap? The materialness of it all is suffocating. But painting is material. More later when my thoughts cohere.

Am I a complete luddite?

I was up early this morning to let the cats out. It was warm and wet out on the roof. No sign of ice in any of the birdbaths. It stays so cold inside the house I was startled when I opened the door to the garden. My fingers and right forearm were stiff & tingling after 3 or so hours of image editing in 56°F. I have no heat in my studio; what heat I get trickles in from the rest of the house. I am updating my design portfolio with the idea of going out to look for a job. It's an idea which appalls me.



As much as I love designing things and as much as I miss the camaraderie of an office full of people, I don't think I have the stamina to weather the demands of this type of employment any more. Actually, any type of employment. I'm too old to be whipped around by the senseless & quixotic demands of clients who never seem to know what they want until you've done the whole thing over 5 or 6 times. But, as it becomes daily more apparent that I will not be selling any more paintings any time soon....

All summer long, I painted in a large, raw [dirty, it must be said] space with only the most basic amenities, and came away with more and better work than I've ever been able to do before. I had no internet. When I needed a distraction from painting, I did things like sew dresses on the old treadle machine that's up there, or string beads into necklaces or pull weeds in a soothing rhythm of large & fine motor activity. I am old enough that occupations like these don't seem to me an unusual way to spend time. But now I'm back in the city, and most activities are harnessed to the computer. I volunteer in an after-school gardening group and my kids are addicted to their electronic appliances. It's hard to get anyone to complete a series of manual tasks when they are texting furiously all the time.

I know, I know. Life used to be slower and whatever. Kids nowadays, etc etc. I realize I am on the verge of fogey-ism. And, of course, we could all be blasted back into the stone age if certain world leaders have their way. I am trying to stay calm in the face of unimaginable possiblilites for the near future. Too much Negroponte & Kurzweil is worrisome. Why? Am I a complete luddite? Probably not, but I am a late adopter. I agree that linear growth is not the model for our time. But technology for its own sake? Such as nanobots interacting with our neurons? 3-dimensional self-organizing molecular circuits? reverse-engineering of the human brain? augmented real-reality & artificial intelligence? Hey, this stuff is really cool! Let's give computers to everyone in the world and see what they come up with.

And of course, there are phenomenally complex problems to solve. The slush and mush of world chaos feeds the exponential growth of technology.

I understand the creative urge, but my father was one of the scientists on the Manhattan project and even though it could be argued that "they" would have gotten there first and it was a win for the forces of good, I learned early what a source of great sorrow it was for us all. Has the world even learned to deal with that Pandora's Box yet?

:::

Yoga is the answer! I do it everyday to keep my brains from travelling too far in any schizoid direction. And don't ever forget: War is the complete failure of civilization.

BiCoastal : BiPolar

The other day, I was in Chelsea because of some X-rays connected with getting a physical exam. So I wandered way west over on 23, 24 & 25 Streets in a neat S-shaped pattern with zig-zag crossings, hoping to keep it simple and easy on my aging bones. What I saw, with few exceptions, was disheartening. Aside from the sense of being shouted at from all sides, there was a lot of unattractive bodily function on display, the kind of frenetic, anxious masturbating that you see in frightened toddlers and mental patients.

Knowing that most artists (and there are a lot of them) come from circumstances of comfort & wealth, I wonder what is at the root of this anxiety. Are they afraid their portfolios are now worthless, or, are they afraid their brand has lost market share? Have they figured out which way the wind is blowing? And then I made the mistake of reading ArtForum reviews of the latest (last?) art parties and auctions. And I learned that it was a "bloodbath" and a "freefall", that the bubble had burst and that I am going to have to go out and get a second job again.

The Richard Prince was Oh so bo-o-o-ring. But there were a few things that caught my attention: a young Philadelphia photographer named Zoe Strauss, who shoots the underbelly and does it well and generously, despite a lot of lo-res funk in the image; an assemblage show at Zoubek of some dead guy, Salvatore Meo, whose work reminds me of T's, but the prognosis isn't good. You can't just make a lot of beautiful stuff in your lifetime and expect the world to recognize you after you're gone; and a couple of other surprises that I can't now recall.

So much of the work looks over-planned and eviscerated by technique. The technique of late seems to consist mainly of producing the ugliest possible digital pictures on any surface that will take them and then scratching them up with a few hand gestures.

:::

So "customer satisfaction" is the new gospel of the marketeers. Analytics tools! Quantitative data! Kick some major butt! They are putting people into this bucket and that bucket. And then...

"Customer-driven, even though it sounds so nice and politically correct, is another totally illogical concept of the past. At our company..., we trust in an insight of Henry Ford, who once said: 'If I had asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me they wanted a faster horse'."

[an unattributed quotation from the vast world wide web. -ed] 

Oy! you read too much of this stuff and you remember why you go under the radar for half the year. Most people don't get it that I'm completely off-line from May until I get back in the fall. A couple of years ago, I came back to the city looking for a freelance gig and when I said I hadn't touched a computer in 6 months, they said "Do you think you'll have the chops for the job?" It's better to lie.

:::

T. just called from Seal Beach and F. is not dying, not right away, at any rate. So now what?

And the nurse practicioner called to say that my good cholesterol was good enough to offset the bad cholesterol, so nothing is to be done.

This, from Peter Plagens: "...in desperate search of art with feeling rather than strategy at its core". Took the words right out of my mouth.

I am reading the LA Times (online, of course) because I have an unquenchable addiction to palm trees and I fantasize constantly about moving back. Although, I was back recently because of F's 90th, and when we drove down south, not only could we not get into the Getty because of the fires, we had to drive the 91 for hours under a thick blanket of brown sky which mercifully (because it took so friggin' long) turned dark as night fell.