diary1.htm

Broadcast, December 31 2005

Since I took this break from interviewing, I’ve been casually scheming on playing music and what it might be. I already told you how I wanted it to be discreet. The work load and responsibility of being hip was not the only reason.

I felt intimidated at KPSU when I first arrived there. My own small corner of the universe I could establish, because who knew (or cared) about art there. But music, that was another thing. It’s hard to give you one example of what went down, when I have a multitude. Same day I might though. To talk about music there was like a competitive sport.

But when I took over the previous hour to Artstar and began to play just music, my mind drifted. No one was listening. I began to conceive of all kinds of broadcasts, some music, but some maybe not. I thought of poems I wanted to read and stories I wanted to tell. I wonder is this is feasible? I read a couple of poems yesterday by Jean Arp that I would like to read aloud to you.

This coming Monday, the 2nd of January, I plan to focus on Young Marble Giants and their off-shoots: The Gist and Weekend. The sounds are all smooth yet subtly subversive. Plus, in name and in design, they paid tribute to Greek statuary (the Kouros in particular) - same time as Factory Records. I’ve also been enjoying the CD Anna Fidler gave me from her band, the Sensualists. I’ll start off the 4pm broadcast with cuts from that. Actually, there is a certain mood that all of these bands share.

Peter Saville, December 30 2005

Lately I have been watching, in small increments, 24 Hour Party People (ill-named in my book). Even for the indoctrinated, this film can be confusing. References to the Durutti Column could be lost on most ears. In a way it was deconstructing and destroying the Factory label myth, at least for me.

Thing is, I didn’t know I was ever entertaining a myth. It was all real. Real design, real starkness, real bow to beauty, mystery and the Dawn of a New Order (and I don’t mean the band). Factory provided this certain amount of militaristic restraint.

The record sleeves alone were total art and made old new again. They were highly anticipated. The genius of Peter Saville can not really be underestimated. If you google him, you can find a lot of info and philosophy behind why he does what he does, and I think any creative person should check him out. Because he is not just talking about design. He talks about how to articulate what living in your particular present is about.

A few years ago I came across an essay or interview with him that really hit home with me and some of my friends who were creating in the later 70s/early 80s. Basically, he spoke of how cheaply he worked and how cheap it was to provide icons for a generation. After all, no one wanted to pay him much for it! But as time went on, his style and ideas became so prevalent that no one needed to acknowledge or pay for the real thing, for the original. There were plenty of copies and wanna-bes just waiting for the job, at a fraction of the price.

Established style had replaced creativity. This happens over and over again, especially in terms of design. Earlier in this diary I wrote of Mackintosh. If any one person could be said to bring on the angular aims of Art Deco 30 years ahead of its time, it could be this man. He died a pauper, unnecessary.

I started this entry as a diatribe about a film and want to get back there. You might say that Peter Saville got in the way! I’ll bet it’s not the first time. This film actually gave me a Eureka! Moment, as regards art and the promotion of others, and I’ll get to it next time around.

Bed-ins for peace, December 28 2005

A few years back I saw TV ads (for what I believe were from priceline.com) where they imagine us going to Paris to stay at some posh hotel. Our very hip and international (and somehow very 70s) celebrity friends join us. We, by the way, are doing some kind of happening from a bed, with reporters and paparazzi all standing by.

What the happening was for was never detailed, but I guess Priceline assumed we all knew the source: the bed-ins for peace from John and Yoko. I paid attention as I have read many accounts of those events. Most people now agree that the bed-ins were truly the work of masterminds.

By now Lennon knows that his stuff, whatever it is, is product first and foremost. It's all going to be consumed and maybe misconstrued, becoming something else besides what it was meant to be. So he and Yoko exploit what is inevitable in their marriage, the headlines. Those headlines were not merely Beatle Marries – there was always that undeniable bit about a Honeymoon Bed-in for Peace.

Their product was peace and they wanted to advertise it, promote it. From what I have read, they camped out for 10 days in a hotel in Montreal and just about anyone had access to them there – as long as the subject on the table (or rather on the bed) was peace. Hundreds of people constantly piled into that room, in heavy rotation, to ask questions, to talk it over, to exchange ideas.

But also... who wouldn't like to spend more time in bed? As winter envelopes and causes me to get up later and later, I have my own bed-ins, camped up with the Times and novels and notebooks to write in. Others have expressed to me their own desire for bed-ins. And although the original bed-ins happened over thirty years ago, the demand for a dialogue about peace, made in ways that might grab the world’s attention, is as acute than ever.

Eric Kroll, December 24 2005

The first time I met Eric Kroll was at a shoot in NYC for a Junior Miss pageant. There was really nothing Junior Miss about it, right down to the model, but also as regards the three of us who worked her. The hairdresser was a savvy NY player and the last thing Eric was really known for is shooting beauty work. And of course I was the makeup artist, my profession for over a decade.

But he stood out as an interesting character. I recall he had a notebook on which he had collaged all these photos of Georgia O'Keeffe on the cover. He had perfectly arranged a young Georgia next to an ancient one and it worked very well. This was just some appointment book he had on him.

I had no idea at the time how famous Eric was known for a very specific genre, most of it fetish oriented: high, high killer heels, corsets and garter belts and seamed stockings, most of it is from the 50s. Betty Page was his Goddess long before her current, almost overdone popularity, and he had the largest collection of her photos.

Generally, I just did makeup, but as I got to work more and more for Eric, I did the hair too. He emulated the movie stars of the 40s and 50s and I made up a lot of Veronica Lakes and Rita Hayworth types (- well, if only), but mostly what he gravitated to was someone more like Page, harder and more working class.

Part of his work, the fulfillment of his particular fascination, was the acquisition of a special kind of gear. The clothes he had in his dressing room! Leather, patent leather, vinyl, masks and armor and the wildest shoe collection. The difference between what he had and what you can find in fetish shops around PDX was that a lot of his stuff was vintage and therefore it felt more naive but also authentic.

Not that I was so interested. It was mostly just work to me by this time and I wasn’t interested in playing dress-up myself. Having grown up in clothes from Salvation Army and developing Punk style later, I didn’t have as much invested in that style as might be imagined; especially by the time I was a big girl in New York. I had moved on to coveting Bergdorf’s and Chanel basically (can’t blame me there).

Sometimes Eric and I would go out in the city with the model, following her with camera and makeup, as she toured around in her outrageous get-ups. Mostly the images went to a magazine called Leg Show. Hey, it's a living. It was only later that I began to realize what a cult figure Eric was, well published in kinky art books. I’ve seen my work in books and it might also be in this Fetish Girls collection.

Like all artists, he is crazy and not so easy to work with. So I never did go to Arizona with him to film Cowgirls in Corsets or whatever it is he wanted to do. I'll bet that video is highly collectable though.

Waiting for the light, December 22 2005

As so the shortest day (and longest night) has come and gone. Those of us who are light addicts can start to breathe easier, just knowing the light is on its way.

If you’re a writer, you might invite the night. Darkness and wetness could aid your gig. Years ago I thought of Portland as a writer’s town, a place to sink in with words. Poets were (and are) profuse here. Darkness and drink and words go hand in hand.

But as a painter, I cannot say that I welcome the dark. My own work is about light and life. It’s hard to cook it all up in my basement right now, but I keep at it, waiting for the light.

And a way to pass the time is the word. Carolyn Zick told me she writes reams in Iceland, on an art residency. I could see how it could happen. Maybe she and I are actually writers who just happen to make art. Sometimes it feels that way.

photo by Andrew Kent

Real Rock Stars, December 21 2005

Recently a special viewing of Velvet Goldmine was held and TJ Norris remarked in his blog that not enough people were there. I observed the same when I originally saw it in a near empty theatre. This post is actually not so much about the movie, though I think the director got the feel and the style of those times. This is more an adoration, a gush of real rockstars and what it takes to be one. I mean those two greats in particular: Bowie and Iggy.

And that could really be saying something, as Ewan McGregor was hot in his own right. Just not as hot as Iggy pop, not by a long shot. The fellow who played the Bowie character pouted his way through the script, while anyone who saw David Bowie back in those days recalls a sheer force of alien nature. You could almost feel sorry for the actors because they were up against so much. It showed me how amazing the real thing was, for even good actors could not get close. So often actors glorify and beautify who they portray. They make a character more good looking and charismatic than he or she ever was. Not this time.

I practically fainted the first time I saw Bowie. I had to lay on the floor while much of the surrealist film Un Chien Andalou played. THAT was the opening act! It was the Station to Station tour (1976), a tour he says he doesn't even remember. That’s OK, I do. He was about 8 feet away and he was the Thin White Duke and had just filmed the Man who Fell to Earth. Unbelievably there were only a few hundred people there for this gig in Portland.

The gig with the Ig in London was more packed but still accessible. He came out in fishnet stockings, a black leotard and a leather jacket and ankle boots. I can’t tell you what a God he was. He tore the stage apart. I always felt that was his peak, too, right around the Idiot and Lust for Life. And Bowie was on stage with him, playing keyboard. Did I die and go to heaven?

Dead Dealer, December 20 2005

Five years ago a PDX rag had a full page obit on a character about town. The local hot film director called him the Falstaff of Portland. There were all kinds of quotes and tributes and how everybody cool from out of town wanted to stay with him. I said to my friend: c'mon, wasn't he just a wheezy, out of breath drug dealer? Oh but he was very well read, she said.

Yes, when Nico and the Smashing Pumpkins came thru town, they stayed at his place. Because he was so brilliant. Word was Nico had it in her contract that the junk and the works were there, awaiting her arrival.

(It was sad to see Nico as the junkie who made it to middle age, no soul left in her eyes, no teeth left in her head. I saw her in the late 70s, in both London and SF. That London gig in particular was very memorable: a small room filled with the birth of Goth, Siouxsie on one side of me and Dave Vanian on the other.)

The article rather jarred me as I knew people who just swarmed around him in such a glorification. I wonder how many people's demises he has seen? At 57, you'd think that kind of activity was behind him. I heard through a reliable source about someone who was with this character on the night of his death, trying to score and this someone was my age at the time, 44. Someday he may be found in a garbage can somewhere.

It just occurred to me that you may have thought I meant dead art dealer.

Egos, December 16 2005

The recent spat at PORT reminds me of a ceaseless theme, both yesterday and today, of small towns, especially this one. I mean in the broad sense but also in my personal life.

It's too easy to dis the people who spend a lot of their time helping others. The assumption is that these helpers are selfish egomaniacs, even though they carry this long list of all the people they’ve helped or are going to help (help = expose, show their work, write about it, talk about it, facilitate dreams, etc). Often these doers go into debt for what they do.

I don’t know why such people must come off as completely selfless saints, with no ego or agendas of their own. Only someone with both could keep at it or do it well. It is not something to despise and is in fact essential. Most public ventures still have remarkable, singular personalities behind them.

For some reason, people here can get their panties into a bunch over those who do things, as if we are all here to chill and those who do not are circumspect. They get petty in ways I never experienced in any other city. Even in my personal life, only in Portland have I had pals mad at me for hanging with certain other pals and attempting to control my social sphere. Pals in NYC have no time for this.

This reminds me of another form of contempt, what Jeff Jahn has called ‘entertaining hate mail.’ Save I’m not so sure of the entertainment value. Every time I get on the radar, almost without fail, someone has to write me and tell me how awful I am or that I need serious help. I’m not alone there. When I first met Russ Rymer, who was once Editor-in-Chief for Portland Monthly and is now with Mother Jones, he told me that that was when you knew you were really headed in the right direction, when you started getting those missives. What a strange sort of growing pain.

Movie, December 15 2005

It is a classic, but I did not see It's a Wonderful Life till I was in my early 30s, living in NY. So when I finally did see it, it didn't have all those warm and fuzzy nostalgic feelings that can come with past recollections. But ever since then, I’ve seen it most Decembers, spellbound.

And not for the story per se, which initially disappointed me and which I couldn’t help but deconstruct from the view of a frustrated artist. Was I the only one watching who was hoping that George Bailey could leave Bedford Falls, get out of dodge and make something of himself? I saw myself in him and me, I got out of town. When he got that big suitcase and wanted to take it all over the world, I was sad that he never got to. Everyone gets something out of him staying. No one is unaffected by it, as his guardian angel shows. But I still wondered what he could have done out in the world. When he came home on that final night and swept away all his architectural models and plans, all his dreams piling up for years, angry and frustrated, I really felt for the character. To have such hopes at twenty is invigorating, but maintaining them for decades is tricky.

What keeps me spellbound is the set design. Bedford Falls was created from scratch. There is no town quite as perfect as it is. Every frame is like a painting and they flow the way a painting can, which is a reality and very not real at the same time. I love especially the scene where he wrecks his car, walks over to the bridge through the falling snow and contemplates his own death.

I had a friend once who had all these great painting ideas but I never saw him do any. One ongoing subject for talk was painting all the major Life magazine covers, recreating that certain fulfillment that only black and white gives. I guess he had such kind of realism at his disposal, although I never even saw him draw once. But I imagine that the artist who could do Life magazine could also paint scenes from It’s a Wonderful Life. Especially that snow scene.

December 13 2005

Our house has a large made-over attic. Windows line up on one side to reveal a view of the river. I could sit at a long table we brought up for my collage work, but I rarely do. I stand when I create and I don’t mull things over. It is fast or not at all. But collages in general happen less frequently these days. These two are remnants from when I used to make a zillion simple collages for Christmas gifts every year. This year I made a few watercolors and that was all.

Heartfield, December 12 2005

In this public diary I’ve written quite a bit about my painting heroes, idea men like Malevich and Klein, but I haven’t spent much time on the artists who drove me when photomontage was paramount in my day to day art life. I realized this only yesterday when a friend of mine detailed a political art class she wanted to teach. She mentioned a couple of starting points, but I immediately chimed in with who is in my book, the ultimate heavyweight in outraged art: John Heartfield. Then in unison we gushed to our heart’s content.

He vividly demonstrated to me just what one person can do and against all odds. As an innovative artist and as a human being, he is way high on high. There are technical approaches and such searing imagery in Heartfield’s oeuvre that even today, few have topped.

Could it also be his time and place in history? No doubt. But all artists owe that to whatever they become.

His whole life is part and parcel of that power. I like the fact that he erased his German name and gave himself an English one, every step and gesture a symbol. I like the fact that he risked his life for his art. And I especially like the fact that even when old and firmly implanted in art history as the Dadaist who transformed what could be dismissed as nonsense into danger – true danger – he did not rest on any laurels. He stayed engaged and curious.

I know this because I had a friend who met Heartfield in the 60s. It was Tim Harvey, one of the founders of Northwest Artists’ Workshop in Portland. Tim was a mail artist himself and a Dadaist of sorts; he made all kinds of postcards and posters and magazines before they were called fanzines. It was Tim who encouraged me to try for a grant to make a rag myself. Of course the grant people did not get what I was doing, but I remember Tim telling me: someday, you watch, everyone will be making these, and actually getting money to make them. Tim encouraged me more than just about anyone in this town back then.

Anyway, as a young man in the 60s, he went on a trip behind the Iron Curtain. Someone told him that if he indeed was going to Czechoslovakia, he better go meet John Heartfield. Tim did not even know who he was, but was game. He brought with him an interpreter and had a meeting of a lifetime.

Heartfield was completely generous and gave Tim a load of postcards, posters and catalogues, all from current exhibitions. What was most impressive was how much this artist did not rest on the past but was full of questions about the now and the west. He wanted to know about the war the Americans were involved in, and he wanted to know what people at home were doing about it. As for Heartfield, he had updated some of his famous images, like Neimals Wieder! (Never Again!) to fit the current events. Heartfield died only months after this meeting.

It has been years since I talked to Tim Harvey and I would love to see him again. I recall the last time we spoke - it was on the phone and I might have still been in New York. He had completely left the art world and absolutely despised it. At that time, while still making art, I was not involved in the dance and basically on the fence. Whatever woes the art system brought me, I loved the art object too much to drop out completely.

The practice, December 9 2005

I used to work at Keep ‘Em Flying on NW 21^st, a vintage shop which sold much more than clothes. My boss ran across a lot of old gadgets at estate sales and we had our share of old cameras, radios, suitcases and the like. I sold quite a few old typewriters.

Turns out there is more than romance to the typewriter. One young fellow told me that the reason why he wanted a typewriter was not just because it looks cool and has its own slow and archaic charm. He said it actually helped him get out his ideas.

He had always worked on a word processor or computer, which has that ability for instant edit. That was becoming a problem for him. He couldn’t get on with the story in his head as he stayed too involved with the first few sentences or ideas. He also felt that it can be too easy to put down a word, any word, in any spelling, and it would all be fixed in a flash.

With a typewriter, he found he chose the words more carefully, even if it was just a first draft. Best of all, he could move on in the story, as of course there's just not a lot of choice unless you toss the sheet altogether. He might not make a final draft with the machine but it would make for a better start.

Later on I started comparing my own practice and realized that I was on the opposite end of that camp. I didn't use a keyboard of any sort till we got a computer, with the exception of school ages ago. Most of my writing was just for me, so I had no problem going full speed ahead and there was no need to edit. Sometimes I don't go back and look at something for years to come. Some days I don’t write in this online diary, but my paper diary might receive eight pages. This may not be great writing but practice, the practice of getting it out, it surely is.

The typewriter is by Robert Cottingham, whose work I like a lot.

It’s that time of year again (times two), December 6 2005

Recently Carolyn Zick wrote about being asked why she was not going to the various art fairs around the planet, which seem to not only multiply but grow daily in importance? She replied that it would indeed be difficult to do on a secretary’s salary.

- So there we were, at that time of year again. It could feel like a situation of the Haves and the Have-nots: who gets to go and who doesn’t. Ah well: we have some great coverage on the events. I loved the coverage provided by anaba and all of the images Franklin was so kind to post.

Another timely event to wax almost raw is the coming Oregon Biennial. Already the anticipation and remarks are coming in, expressing the sliding scale of expected returns. On the last call, I had a friend who said to me: “I’m sort of tired of the biennial mattering so much to me. I’m tired of feeling disappointed if I don’t get in.” She was cutting her emotional losses off at the pass. I think I understand. But every year I get an earful from bright hopefuls, enumerating their chances and take on it all, and how they see their confident time at the table, after having made art for five years.

Personally, I think it’s a bit of a crapshoot and I don’t mean that in any negative kind of way. A statement about a time and place is being made. You’re not necessarily a better artist for getting in, but one who can, at that time, fit a program, or a mood, a vision, a year. It’s a beautiful thing if you are part of that pronouncement – how can it not be? – but your life and art career carry on anyway, with or without it.

Having said that though, I can’t help but observe that artists who get in can be like stocks that went up overnight. One gallery in town seemed to only add artists every two years, just waiting for the biennial.

I had a long talk with Bob Kochs yesterday about it. He assured me that in the long run, the key elements to having any kind of real art career were in our own hands, not others. His words: keep making it, keep evolving and stay engaged. Plenty who got into biennials, once hotter than hot, still didn’t do that.

On the day to day level, I don’t always know what that is. I just know that no matter how I feel sometimes, I’ve got to keep at it. Chris Kelly and I talked about it yesterday. Sometimes there’s no logical explanation and it feels like there is no grand plan; there’s just the work. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. Cunning only goes so far.

Chris Kelly: It’s a Dry Dock for the Treasure Fleet

Chris Kelly, December 3 2005

This weekend I am working on my interview for Monday, which is with Chris Kelly. I am looking forward to this hour.

It’s possible we’re like-minded on a few levels, though they may not be all that obvious. Perhaps it starts and ends with the grid, I don’t know. His artist statements are straight forward and deep. They seem very much on the level - I’ve only met the artist a few times, but I have found him to be the same.

Plus the warmth of his work seems to fit the time of year somehow. Much of it is dark yet decorative in an emotive way that is not shallow. I think he’s painting a sort of icon and will ask him if I’m right. The image above is encaustic with gold leaf.

Suprematist Tree

" But the tree remains a tree even when an owl builds a nest in the hollow of it." - Kasimir Malevich, Suprematist Manifesto

December 3 2005

I’m not sure I know what all Malevich is referring to in this statement, taken from the Suprematist Manifesto. I just like it, alongside my holiday tree. This was the holiday I knew for years: barren, cold but elevated, singular, an insistence on something, anything, not commercial. Things have changed, but a thing like it you don't forget, nor maybe want to.

My Albers

Life palette, December 2 2005

Augen Gallery had a collection of prints by Joseph Albers, originally in a suite as a book but now separated and for sale individually. So I was able to acquire my own Homage to the Square. What is especially nice for me is that these images in particular express form and color integral to my own vision and influences, and it all boiled down to a certain location too: San Francisco.

It was in SF where I saw Albers the most. The old War Memorial building housed the museum at that time and as I’ve detailed here before, they had a whole room devoted to Albers and his square. It was an octagonal room and you could spin yourself around and always be looking at a descending square. I loved it.

The whole time I’m there in that town, I’m also absorbing and privately articulating a certain color palette: one of grey upon grey and blue, the suprematist blocks which comprise that town. I dressed in it, I had face paint in it, I painted bodies with it and of course I made many pieces of art in this palette and form. But none of it was as well articulated as it would be years later, right here in P-town.

I was also well aware of another kind of light in that city, a harsh, brittle yellow light. It is yellow and yet not really warm. The exploration of yellow with blue is something I am still doing today, as I just finished a piece called Early Evening Boat Ride, a portrait of water, sky and light.

More recent entries: November 2005