Word for word, April 30 2006
Like last term I am still studying 19th century art. The Prof has such a marvelous way with language that I try, as much as I can, to quote him word for word in my notes. Then I look around, with aching arm and hand, and see that many students are just sitting there, writing nothing.
They trust their minds will recall the facts and some minds certainly have an easy time with that. But who can remember, at the drop of a hat, eloquent language? I figure I can stare at the image on the wall later, but the phraseology is a one-time deal. Just to write it down will make you a better writer (and thinker), I am convinced of that.
Cheap foreign shit, April 29 2006
Yesterday I bought myself a new boom box for my studio. The one I had before was skipping over CDs like crazy, though it’s not that old.
It bothers me how short those kinds of things lives are. I suppose the fact that they are made elsewhere (China) by someone who makes peanuts has everything to do with it, and that the person who makes the thing does not use it. There’s a kind of detachment/ division going on.
My first record player lasted my entire childhood. Built in the USA (and probably by a union worker who made a living wage), wherever it is now, I wouldn’t be surprised if the thing still worked.
Even when I first started buying boom boxes in the 80s (for tapes), they lasted for years. But now it’s like it is expected to be a cheap, a throwaway product. I think this is translating into everything we used to make but no longer do: especially clothing, but everything else. Pretty soon we won’t be making cars at all and most people think nothing of this, as they drive around in their KIAs (Killed in Action). But the ramifications are vast, for within that industry was the successful struggle for a living wage and benefits, and that is disappearing now. When I buy cheap foreign shit, I can’t help but think of that.
It’s not that I’m against the foreign: hardly, with my Ferragamo shoes. But they were made by someone who can own a home.
It’s spring, April 28 2006
Around 1981 I made a collage for every season. I have only tracked down summer and spring and may have lost/ gave away the others. Of course the nude is of a famous photographer but I can’t recall if it’s Steichen or someone else.
Once these paintings are finished for the August show, I am going to cut up a bunch of paper. I keep promising myself that I will do it and my mate even gave me a new paper cutter last year. But the move to this house was traumatic, as I lost my stash-bag of prized images. I’ve never really recovered from that and tend to labor over one piece just every now and then. But when you’re painting like the blazes, I guess you’ve got some excuse.
"I am not a number - I am a free man," April 27 2006
Some of us remember the Prisoner, played by Patrick McGoohan. A Brit TV show of the 60s, very mod with lots of white and minimalist design (and maybe minimalist plot too). He was called Number six by a voice who called himself Number Two. But the Prisoner declared himself no number.
He’s not all I have planned for the next agenda. The entire collection of music is dated from 1982 and has a bit of the new pop sound, like the Bongos and B Movie. With the exception of Peter and the Test Tube Babies anthem: Banned by the Pubs. Not a good place to be!
I get up to dance anytime I hear Nowhere Girl. Music to dance to is an important part of my painting routine. I get tight (in my body) when I paint. It can hurt. So throughout the session I leave the painting and dance.
UFO sightings in PDX, April 25 2006
Another prize from Lex Loeb I discovered at the gallery was a collection of posters of his UFO sightings. All suitable for framing.
When I first met Lex (maybe 10 years ago), it was through visiting a UFO Museum that he ran right here in Portland. You walked into a small room downtown filled with the found and the collected and the strange. You had to pay for admission, a dollar or two – but for this, you received postcards with images like what I show you here. I’ve kept every single postcard.
And so during the course of our interview on the 10th, I asked him about them and specifically about his collage techniques. Being an artist, I like to get into the nitty-gritty of art making. But Lex was adamant that these were no collages, but actual UFO sightings here in PDX.
Not me, April 23 2006
A friend invited me to a NARAL house party. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to give up precious weekend time with my mate, but I figured an hour at an angry hen party might do me good.
The rooms were filled with a lot of graying hair, which worried me, and on top of that, I encountered, upon entry, a matriarch telling tales of times gone by, stories for inspiration, mostly focused on what major activists accomplished decades ago.
Not that I don’t have extreme respect for all who stood against great odds. Stories came from around the room. Like most of the room, I recall the time before Roe vs. Wade. I too knew people with horrendous tales, like someone very close to me who, when pregnant in the 1950s, asked a doctor for an abortion: he told that no, he would not do it, but he that would marry her instead!
The big issue is not the past but the future. I think such rights as we have are taken for granted and that in general, both young men and young women have been force-fed our terribly politically incorrect past ad nauseum. They know what they need to know. Next. And if anything, they run to opposite camps for relief, like dates at pussy-gyrating strip bars. Gee isn’t that romantic? Must make a girl feel real special.
I met some interesting people there. I told one of them that they should have a radio show. After all, we’ve certainly got plenty of males from the Right on air and they seem to be doing quite well at gathering audience for their opinion.
One young woman, having heard of my background, told me that she helped organize the International Women’s Day and that every year, the ‘Women’s Art’ show was problematic for them. Could I help? Well, I said, first of all, I am not a Woman Artist. And I’ll never curate a ‘women’s art’ show. She was surprised but eager to hear why. We opened up a big can of worms there.
I’ve been put in that camp already and no doubt the world would feel comfortable if I stayed there, but the pay is just lousy, you know? If I don’t dig myself (and whoever I could bring along) out of the mire, who will?
“-Not to say that you still couldn’t have a good art show,” I said at the end of my rant. But please not that angle.
April 22 2006
I have a new finished painting called Warmer.
Strange Times, April 22 2006
The Chameleons UK made many albums, but the only one I ever had any real exposure to was Strange Times. I played it over and over again in the late 80s. Dave Allen, who actually lives here now, produced it. I will play a portion of Strange Times on the next agenda.
security system, April 21 2006
When you come to our doorstep, you must first pass by the guardians: a prickly cactus so dangerous he can practically shoot his prickles, and a gargoyle from since pulled-down Pittock real estate. Between the two of them, hopefully all suspicious intent is checked at the door.
a KMart cat by Lex Loeb
A Class Act, April 20 2006
I have a hard time using the word ‘class’ in a description of someone, as in: “She’s got class.” – For we all do - it’s just upper, middle or lower (or my favorite and onging: working. I really don't mind being a working class hero, however correct Lennon is about all of it). But there are some people who really are a Class Act. Knowing who they are and being so, graciousness and generosity. I’m big on the latter especially.
Today I went into Chambers for a bit of business and found that Lex Loeb had left a gift of art for me. He’s known for many things and cats are just the tip of his talents. But now, after our interview on the radio (April 10th), I now own a work of Lex Loeb.
For the most part, I find it is artists who have been through a lot and still survive, making their way and doing well, who know how to give. They give me pamphlets, books, music, even art. They don’t assume anything or take things for granted.
Some have questioned the Clement Greenberg Collection as payola after the fact (the review). Whatever the case, the artist is assured of a very appreciative audience.
Hatshepsut and Westwood, April 18 2006
More than once I’ve written here how the Met in New York rules for me. No other museum came close. Over the years I lived in that town, I collected pamphlets, books, postcards and other beautiful evidence of living with the best of the best, and a place which honored artists enough to allow them to pay whatever they wished.
I’ve seen big shows of Goya, Zurbaran and the Sienna masters there, all to change my life. And so even while I cannot make NYC a destination while running what I’ve got going in PDX, I can’t help but hanker for the brilliant shows which are destined for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Like the life and art of the reign of Hatshepsut. A woman so bold and so after her own, she depicted herself with a beard to get the point across. The beautiful visage of Hatshepsut is one thing, but we also owe remarkable architecture in the living rock thanks to her. Yeah, I’d like to see that show.
On the other end of the spectrum, I see that the Met will open a show on British Designers, emphasis on Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm Mclaren and the revolution they began via Clothes for Heroes, Seditionairies and finally, it was just called Sex. I was there during different names but same assaulting message.
I was lucky enough to not have to buy that (rather pricey) gear but actually receive it in the mail, all the way from London to Southern Oregon (imagine!), when enquiring about a job in Glitterbest, the company who basically ran the Pistols. They told me straight out there were few jobs of any sort on England at the time, but were happy to send me clothes for my interest. I had shirts often later copied. Eventually, from BOY, a hot shop on the King’s Road, I acquired bondage trousers. Sometimes I took out the usual black straps and replaced them with florescent pink, orange and green.
I can’t stress enough the novelty of bondage and straight jackets as everyday wear back in those times. After all, I came back home to fern bars, Frye boots and hair like Peter Frampton (on both the girls and the guys).
Back home in Oregon, of course there was a small pack of weirdoes. But in general we derived our gear from thrift stores, so the familiarity was a done deal, no matter how we mixed it. What I adored about the original gear of Punk was the total novelty. I understood very well the straight jacket, but I never got to see people wearing until then and of course, totally turning around the function. I loved ditching my 30s/40s/50s style and embracing something that was totally new and our own and would just shut up a room when you entered it.
Sally Cleveland Self
Portrait - Broken Window, 2003, courtesy of Augen Gallery
Sally Cleveland, April 17 2006
Baby Smith was just asking me if my opinion of an artist changed right during the interview. Sure, and it goes both ways: you can begin in adoration and leave less than impressed. But many times I book interviews which I know are important to have, but I don’t really know all of the reasons why. I learn those in the hour I have with them.
Sally Cleveland is an artist I knew to be successful (and who shows where I show). As I live longer, I have actually not become more cynical: I am more open to what success can mean and where it comes from and I hold on to the belief that people can be special, authentic - even known and it’s OK.
I had to look at her paintings for some time, absorbing through some intuitive process what lurks behind such great representation. As someone who painted ‘place’ for years myself, I saw what she left out as well as what she left in. But it was not until I saw a couple of self-portraits of the artist that I became really curious and knew that I was in for something good and way deep. She objectified herself but left the soul in and the brains in too. Her intelligence was clear and it was in the self-portrait that I began to feel confident about a conversation I could have with her.
in progress, 36 inches square
Ice age blanket, April 16 2006
Sometime in this diary – back in September 2005 (the 22nd)– I wrote about how I felt I could do something with black and white which would first of all, silence all references to Riley, but also demonstrate how within black and white falls the spectrum of color within the right hands.
The above painting gave me an opportunity to explore just where I might lead black and white. I guess I said from the start that they would not be really 'black and white' and I was right. Because it was dull.
I tried to use the grays I had accumulated, mostly via Gamblim and their famous Portland Grays. But it all never gave the glow I need, the intimation of life within the painting itself. Something was missing and I found it immediately when I retraced to an old favorite: Ice Blue by Shiva - not an expensive paint and from what I've scanned via the internet, still available (I stocked up from Pearl years ago). The transition from it to a mix of Prussian with black was black and white enough for me.
You can tell from this casual digital pic in the studio that the paint is still wet. But that sort of icy wetness this paint tends to keep. I initially discovered it when I painted architecture and needed a nice industrial grey. So many were not telling my story of life in buildings, but this Ice Blue did that. It just glows.
The painting somehow reminds me of igloos and Eskimos and this all probably has to do with my ice-association. What of course many people see is a weave, a tapestry, the kind of irregular geometria that manifests in hand-woven fabric.
Not that it was really some goal of mine, but I wonder about it. There are many examples in hundreds of years of art history where artists make tapestries or rugs in adoration (and competition) with painting. But how many paintings are falling consciously in line and referencing the woven, the rug, the blanket?
Cale, April 15 2006
Someone who seems rather forgotten to me, considering the general oeuvre and output, is John Cale. He was a member of the Velvet Underground but had an interesting solo career in his own right, collaborating with some hot ones ( like Eno and Chris Spedding for this particular LP).
I couldn’t say what was the best LP of his repertoire, but in even ‘unfinished works,’ I found something of interest in every work, including Helen of Troy. In the upcoming agenda, I plan on playing a portion of Helen of Troy and my copy does have the Sharon Tate version of Leaving it up to You.
Cale played PDX at Labambas in either ‘80 or ’81, and I met him then. No embracing reception and looking back, I don’t blame him, for who was I? I don’t hold it against him.
Saturation, April 12 2006
I’ve been waiting for someone else to post on this, but I can’t hold my tongue much longer. The next issue of Portland Modern is theme-based: Saturation. And I was saturated enough to be curated in.
Maybe a little digression on P Modern in general is appropriate here. Mark Brandau had an idea: make calls for emerging and unrepresented artists (which this town is stuffed to the gills with), put them in shows around town and publish an accompanying color catalogue, plus a fairly extensive website.
I had him on the radio once and we talked all about it. I recall that he was not so much critical of how galleries responded to the new or unknown here, so much as just observant that the current pack just couldn’t keep up with the influx and exhale of talent here.
The project has been successful. For instance, several artists P Modern featured in past issues were curated into this year’s Oregon Biennial. In fact, Chambers is doing two shows, back to back, which feature artists I found via Portland Modern (Don Olsen currently and Guy Martelet, who shows this coming May/June).
This upcoming issue was different in that you did not have to be an unrepresented artist to apply. You just had to consider the theme. In my case, I had even been in a show called Saturated in 2004 at PSU (though I did not remind the curators of that) and felt that my work could fit in.
Here’s the line-up:
Co-curators:
Matthew Stadler & Kristan Kennedy
Artists: Roberta Aylward,
Amber Bell, Michael Boyle, David Corbett, Alex Felton, Anna Fidler, Caleb Freese
& Justin Gorman, Sarah Gottesdiener, Liz Haley, Levi Hanes, Mary Henry, Philip
Iosca, Eva Lake, Jonathan Leach, Isaac Lin , Marne Lucas , Rae Mahaffey, Jeannie
Manville, Chelsea Mosher, Daniel Peterson, Shawn Records, Spirit Quest (Khaela
Maricich & Melissa Dyne), Amy Steel, and Casey Watson.
I’m only familiar with about half of the artists, but there are a few which send my heart soaring in hopes of showing with them. I’ll say it right now: it would be such an honor if I could show with Mary Henry. I will save a post just on her for a later date. Rae Mahaffey is another artist I admire a lot.
Thank you Kristan Kennedy and Matthew Stadler. And Mark Brandau.
Visual Codec, April 11 2006
One day m of Visual Codec came in with Alice Wheeler and we then talked for probably an hour. m told me how she was starting a new online mag for art, focusing on the tri-cities of the Pacific NW: PDX, Seattle and Vancouver. Weird, this was not so long ago, but already so much has passed since then.
Well, there have now been a couple issues of VC and it has been a worthwhile read of words and images and humor. I get the feeling that m has other ideas in store and the magazine will keep evolving and changing; is still on the tip of an iceberg.
I was already on the Vancouver-Seattle-PDX trail, taking trips and checking out art scenes. My few days in either city save my home hardly provided any conclusive view, save I wanted MORE.
The recognition of a unified field is notable. Ever since the election and way before (during the days when Ecotopia was written), I have harbored an idea of succession –and if not in a political sense, then in an art movement sense. I thought of it a lot after the last election and the consideration of a country divided into blue or red (with a heck of a lot of blue in our cities). It was also part and parcel of an area with still a bit of a pioneering spirit and a land to either keep or lose.
The dBs, April 9 2006
These days you need labels for music. You file them by genre. It’s a job in itself at KPSU in which you must write what the band sounds like. It’s always another band of the 90s and onward, which is not quite how I learned to define music, so I’m no good at it. But I guess I would call the dBs post punk power pop. I played Stands for Decibels (recorded in 1979, released later) constantly and still enjoy it. It’s part of my next agenda.
It’s spring, April 9 2006
As I am ill, about all I can do is look out the window. I saw a beautiful moment of love in the wild today. Two morning doves mated, after lots of foreplay. They literally necked for a long time, beaks burrowed in each other necks and various parts of their bodies, truly making out. Sometimes they groomed themselves, as if conscious of their need for beauty. Then the female would tug at his neck, telling him she was hot and bothered. This went on for a long time and I note this because the actual act was maybe a 2 second job. He fluffs himself out and lands upon her and then it’s all over. But they kept making out afterwards and I am sure there was another round. They are monogamous and have a subtle variety of color in their plumage. Up close I am able to see the incredibly bright aqua which encircles their eyes.
60s/80s
60s/ 80s at OHSU, April 7 2006
Recently Portland Public Art had an extensive post on art at OHSU. Well, my good news is that I have joined that club. OHSU purchased 60/80s, a favorite piece of JL at Modern Kicks (and me too).
This is a beautiful thing for me. OHSU used to be my health care provider (and more importantly, my husband’s) and Jesus, have I clocked in some hours there. Of course I looked at what was on the walls, wall after wall, as I went from building to building. It is a sprawling complex and I can actually walk there from where I live: straight up a steep hill. I go through a Veterans’ Hospital to get there, which is sad to me but I don’t shun it. A long walkway of a glass bridge joins the two hospitals.
While I left OHSU, it is never far from me and actually the Doctor I had there was someone I trusted. I hope he finds my work amongst the maze and recognizes me.
We had a wild night at Chambers and hopefully I will post some pictures soon.
UNTITLED #6 (LACE
PATTERN) 2004 silver gelatin print 24 X 20 inches
Augen, Todd Johnson and more, April 4 2006
The past three days and more have been filled with installation concerns about the next exhibition at my job. Some shows can seem to take 3 hours to put together and some can take 3 days. It is what it is.
All the while, I have been putting Artstar into a comeback alignment, starting with Lex Loeb, which will be a great show. One artist I am interested in having on was Todd Johnson, but he is a shy type and will let his work speak of itself. I figure it still couldn’t hurt to post an image here anyway (see above). This artist is smart and has this something special in his being. I first became acquainted with his work in that first show at the Haze Gallery, a show of curators who were also artists. For the most part, that show was either slagged or ignored, but it's interesting to look back and see how many good artists were there and have been of consequence since that show.
And it pleased me that Augen Gallery was the place to show his new work.
Chris Kelly, who also shows there, told me that Augen was like a family to be a part of, something that was slowly sinking in with me and made me carefully happy. I sensed this as I came in, time and time again. I’m proud to show with both Kelly and Johnson and this is as good a time as any to announce that I will be showing my new blast-off paintings there this coming August. Thank you, Bob Kochs (and Joan and Tamara).
No agenda, Dude, April 2 2006
When in Seattle, I met up with a friend I had not seen in over 20 years. In those days I was working at Aquarius Records in San Francisco and he bought music from me (as well as played in a band). It was wonderful to see him.
We rambled on music for quite some time in our reunion and then he reminded me of Mott the Hoople. Everything stood still for a moment. I knew Mott long before this friend and the bond is deep, high school deep. Mott sunk in around the same time as Bowie and T. Rex. And so I thought I would play the major anthem of Mott way back when, which was actually written by David Bowie: All the Young Dudes.
It’s kinda funny, as Dude is a word you hear all the time, applied liberally to anyone, male or female. When I asked SWI how I could respond to a confusing email, he said you might try: “Hey I thought you were a cool dude and sorry I bummed you out. Have a nice weekend.” It’s a response so not natural to me, but maybe perfection in a way.
From what I understand, the first one to use the term ‘Dude’ is Oscar Wilde and he is not talking about straight boys. It’s amazing what a century can do to transform a word. But I think Mott was still holding on to a bit of the old interpretation, as it was recorded in gender-bending times and written by the best of the gender-benders. I added it on to my playlist for Monday.
More recent entries: March 2006
For a list of Diary Topics, read here
For information about the diary, read here