Our Little Bit of Scotland

The above dramatization occurred at work one day while describing to a co-worker how I will never retire. I maintain I will simply be found collapsed and deceased on the job. He captured the moment for posterity*.
A month or so ago, Bob and I began toying with the notion of visiting Scotland, as the ticket prices advertised by Norwegian Airlines from our local airport were very enticing. We haven't been on a significant trip- or even out of the country- in a very long time and our passports are up to date and why not Scotland? We looked at videos of perky travelers exploring the offerings of Edinburgh and the Scottish countryside, sampling haggis and whisky. We viewed hotel accommodations...
But wait! It came to me at work (perhaps while demonstrating "dying in my traces" like Boxer in "Animal Farm") that we should spend our money and time concentrating on that which would have a lasting, life-long effect. We should spend our time and money traveling to New York as we both truly wish to make a mark, leave our stamp upon the Art World!
So, newly reinvigorated and inspired, we sped off to NYC on Saturday and spent the day perusing galleries and the requisite ten million faces. (I mean, New York is nothing if not full of faces.) We saw the good, the bad and (dare I say it?) the less than sublime. But we went! And we saw! And it was (as always) oddly transfixing and transformative and exhausting. We're tired today.
However, the Lower East Side is (and has been for a few years) the new-er area to see art. It smells a bit like fish (occasionally) as this is Chinatown before Art Land, but who cares when culture (Kulture!) calls?
We had several "on trend" moments when it became apparent that scumbled, pealed back paper eroded "archeological" pieces were favored. And painting. Yes, painting is still "having a (big) moment". And space men? It's a decent season for the artist that pixel-ates or likes space alien/robot heads. (A few were actually okay.) What else... drawings that were very detailed and had a fantasy element seemed worth looking at. Some want to call this "outsider" but hell: what's an insider artist? And then we met a woman running a gallery that (I swear) was like eight feet square, featuring an obsessive artist coloring in plywood carved anal sculptures. Heavens help us...
And then we celebrated Bob's birthday ( five months late) at an Indian restaurant. Not just any one! It is a restaurant that we've been going to for years. I swear they save us a front row table, under the most amazing strobe-lit disco ball, with ever-lower red hot pepper themed Xmas lights- what a treat! The food was wonderful, the company exclusive and charming... we had a really good time.
And now we're tired but happy. I feel really good about our decision to "stay put" and go to NYC more frequently. We need to get that art career train rolling...

photo credit: Antony Corso

The Whiteness of the Whale of a Snow Storm

Yuk yuk yuk! Bet you thought I'd put up a couple of pictures of snow, like everyone else? That's further down the page! For now, you have to be content with a peculiar computer drawing I did during the blizzard.
Our friend Nemo did not disappoint. We had a good (bad?) two feet of snow, but we hear Trumbull and points south had almost 40 inches... that's a whole lot of snow. Bob and I spent most of the day shoveling, an endeavour that I suppose almost everyone we know enjoyed today. The driveway is still virgin driftiness.
No, I take that back. We were finally plowed and then it became clear that the snowplow man was reneging on his agreed price; 50 shades of extortion. He took our check and then got loads more money from our neighbors- we were supposed to be splitting the cost. Needless to say, many phone calls have flown back and forth and we have yet to resolve this satisfactorily! I'm sympathetic that there is a lot of snow (A LOT OF SNOW) but you can't just change an agreed upon price. The perfidy of plowmen!
Here are some requisite photos. I know; they're redundant as we ALL have too much snow.

Or then there's this stunning shot of the truck:

I'm certain this does nothing to improve our humor. We also shoveled the path all the way down to Bob's studio. That's no mean feat as his studio is way past the barn. No pictures of that! We did manage to emerge from our crystalline squalor and go to the supermarket and secure things like milk and eggs. People were parked rather randomly in the parking lot; a scene of snow-induced psychosis. We are very tired now!

The Just the Wrong Amount of Right...

I started a drawing again a few days ago. My fingers were itching and I had that unsettled feeling that I get when something just wants to come out. And drawing is such a physical art act for me; way more so than collage and much chunkier than sewing. (Fabric work is tactile in a much more silky kind of way.)
Anyway, I began to mess around with pencils and a bit of added collage and then I glued on- and ripped off- other papers, leaving scabby, redrawn-on ghosts. I stenciled letters and then erased them. In short, I had a ball. Then it occurred to me that there was a odd skull shape looking up at me, which, if you think of it, is not all that strange as I must have made thirty plus skulls in the past few years. (They were made from all kinds of crumpled magazines and packing tape).
Above is the third drawing in this series, because inevitably, all my work is from a series, whether new or old. Oh, and the phrase... that's from this weird series of ads for a hotel chain. I think they're trying to appeal to a younger, hipper sensibility. But boy, is a chunk of jargon like that up my alley. Just what are they- and I by extension- trying to say?
And of course, this exercise got me mulling over the twisted way that things like skulls permeate our culture. Not really a source of revulsion and fear or a blunt reminder of our certain mortality, skulls have gone the way of owls, mushrooms, dinosaurs, zombies and many other kitsch-ified societal shorthands. Think about it: dinosaurs were known for tromping around the planet, chewing up smaller dinosaurs and consuming entire palm trees and generally wrecking havoc on a magnificent scale. Not cute, by any means! Even owls are predators, devouring voles and shrews in a single swallow and regurgitating bones and beaks after the fact. And mushrooms are frequently poisonous but they have long been used as decorative devices with fairies sleeping beneath their deathly gills. They have all been rendered safe, cozy and cute. So I can't figure out which side (or hopefully both! I love ambiguity!) my skulls come down on.
On the other hand- embracing that ambiguity- I can honestly say my sorta skull drawing isn't an ultra representational skull . It's more of an implied skull or a suggestion of skull. That leaves room for you to see something entirely different. Or, to see just the right amount of wrong.

Visual Interlude #1 (and Hallucinatory Story #1)

(I've decided that I need some sort of creative outlet while my eye heals. I can't really focus close up (or far away!) so maybe drawing on the computer is the answer. So here's offering #1. (I think I was influenced by that Tommy Bahama shower curtain we have, featured in a previos blog post).
Anyway, some fortunate combination of eye drops, pills, pain killers and anesthesia gases has prompted some very deep sleeps and some very odd "dreams". It started with the dream that looked like an early sixties French film...
I was at the beach, but in France in the early sixties. Somehow I was both watching this dream, and in it at the same time. Many people were walking on the boardwalk, all dressed in very stylish knee skimming skirts with large polka dots and lots of giant Jackie-O sunglasses with chiffon scraves in ice cream colors. Handbags on short strpas draped over forearms but with those elbow length gloves that ladies used to wear. The men were wearing fedoras and suits (remember: we're at the beach) with slim legged suit pants and their lapels were edged in contrasting colors. In brief, ebveryone was dressed to the nines. Large cars with fins were gliding past. There was an odd slowness to the way people were moving, sort of like we were all moving through a kind of medium, like the air was made of vaseline or jello. (Could be I'm seeing blurry...)
And then there was a man who somehow stopped time. He made a gesture or blinked his eyes and everyone was frozen in place except for him... and me. I somehow saw him and what he was doing. He wasn't aware of me observing him so he created miniature disasters, like knocking people's drinks over so they spilled on their perfectly confected clothes. He took several eggs and scrambled them together slightly and poured them on a woman's table so that her arm was coated in yolk. He kept performing tiny destuctive acts and then the affected people would wake up to these small transgressions, utterly unsure of what had happened and how. I guess I was like an overarching conscience, observing but not judging. The dream just looked great: so classically stylish and modern, in the best sense of the word.