NEWS FLASH—Upcoming Exhibition

I will be exhibiting one of my flower paintings in a group show at the Mills Pond House Gallery, Smithtown Township Arts Council on Long Island this May. The show is entitled: Of A Botanical Nature and, as you may surmise, it comprises work relating to plant life. There will be an opening reception on Saturday, May 1 from 2-4 pm. The show runs until May 28th.

Mills Pond House Gallery is located in the town of St. James on the North Shore (Suffolk County)--the perfect destination for an afternoon drive in this nice Spring weather.  If you'd like to go out and see the show, directions can be found on the google map at the bottom of this page: http://www.stacarts.org/.

Another Family Portrait

The snapshot was taken on the event of my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, in June of 1999. They are both still living, as are all the rest of us, a major miracle—I sometimes think—given the odds. We, the children, are arranged from youngest on the left to the oldest. Yours truly is second from the top:

And here is the sketchbook version (from memory):

And another, more characteristic grouping of the same gang:

I believe the overwhelming pressures of growing up in this chaos has made a profound impact on the art I make. It often feels as though I am perpetually untangling a big mess. It's not always clear what generates the imagery, although sometimes I am caught up short by the obviousness of a particular piece. 

One Word: Plastics

Well, I have hardly anything to say on this subject. I spent most of Saturday on my hands and knees picking bits of Styrofoam® out of the grasses at the edge of the harbor during the twice-a-year Salt Marsh Cleanup sponsored by the Friends of Liberty State Park. This garbage breaks down rapidly under exposure to UVs and the bits get smaller and smaller, so much so that they become impossible to remove from the environment and end up in the stomachs of birds and fish.


Not one of the items pictured above existed when I was growing up. Somehow we managed without them. There has got to be a better way!

click on pix to enlarge

Cubes & Spheres

click on pix to enlarge and see the cubes better

Holy Saturday, we went for a bike ride around the Kill van Kull & Newark Bay. The ship traffic was very heavy that morning. If you've ever wondered exactly how all that stuff gets from China and into your house, take a look at these container vessels. And if you want to know where exactly those vessels go after they pass under the Verrazano and disappear out to sea, you should check out this fascinating website. It is a live feed so you can actually identify and follow a boat you have seen. My mariner brother tells me:

Post 911 all ship of class size have to have a transponder on it, Big Brother u know. That includes large pleasure yachts.The system actually works real well cause theyre profile show's up on the radar screen while underway and tells u the ship, it's direction, size and flag of origin. This is very helpful when navigating in close quarters and need to hail some one on the radio, you at least know who your talking too.Unfortunately this system only work's when dealing with civilized countrys, It also help in the recovery of hijacked ships. It's kinda like LOJACK for the water.

Just think back to the days when Bon Papa [our grandfather] was carring a huge box camera in a balloon or plane to take plate photo's for the Belgian armymaps during the 1st war. Well sattellite has got looking into your back yard down to a science to the point where they could tell you what flowers you have growing in it.

This ship the Ludovica (below), had just made the turn from her berth into Newark Bay and was heading south toward the Kill van Kull.

We got on our bikes and rode down to the park at the bottom of Bayonne in time to see her passing under the Bayonne Bridge and into the Kill. A guy there told me that this ship is too big to go through Panama, that she can carry 6,000 containers and she plies the China trade via Suez. We managed to keep her in sight all the way out of the Harbor. There was still fog obscuring the towers of the Verrazzano as she headed into open water. 

Here's a screen shot of the Ludovica's passage. She's the green boat at the very bottom.

And now for something completely different: benzene tanks.

 HAPPY EASTER!