Friends, December 30 2004

Here's a good lesson I got from a writer friend, something I sort of vaguely knew all along: in her view, you don't have to like someone's art to like them and vice versa.  

When someone is really secure in their art, they don't necessarily need your approval. Mind, I'm sure she wants her editors’ approval, and that's what those people are for, but some of the people who love her work, she says they are real freaks.

Some creative people are looking for your approval; they want to know "what you think about the work". I’ve got one painter friend here who is always asking me that and it can make me feel really nervous, as I can like someone, need them as a friend but not particularly like the work at all. But I’ve figured out that I don’t have to.

As an artist, you're on your own crazy path. You need certain things, visions, ideas to feed that path. But lord knows they may not be coming from your friends. In fact they may come from distant or disparate sources.

And just because you like someone's work or ideas, doesn't mean you're going to like them. I found this out the hard way, seeing an exhibition and not knowing the artist, cold calling them, asking them to be on the radio show and then finding out I’m dealing with a real asshole. This didn’t really change the work though.

I have also asked people on whose work I wasn’t all that thrilled with but I thought they would be fun on the air. Some have even said “well I’m glad you like the work” and they assume way too much, because I never said that.

But every now and then I am converted, you might say, by an artist and what they have to say. They convince me when their images could not. I’ve gone in with my own doubts, not that they knew of them, but they did turn me around. It pays to have an open mind.

As to my writer friend, I was so relieved when she told me that her friends didn’t have to love her work, as I never was able to finish her novel! This makes her no less a great writer and certainly changes nothing as a friend.

Trust, December 29 2004

I’ve been thinking more about the situation in which you (shudder) do it yourself.

It really works for some of us and should be nothing to feel bad about. But in a way the press – art press too --- try to make you feel just that, while they herald your bravery and balls.

It runs like a cycle for me. Maybe it is one I’ll never leave. When it comes time for someone else to hang it and create the press release, I actually quake in distrust. Seems like every time it is up to them, they bail.

It’s not easy doing the whole thing. I don’t mean just hanging but hanging around --- sitting at your own show. That’s one little bit you don’t hear much about.

They say that being brave is when you feel the fear and do it anyway. In which case then I’m not brave ‘cause I’ve never been scared about sitting at my own show. I’m actually more scared about big galleries ‘taking care’ of me and what they will do or somehow forget to do. However grand the gallery who might show me, they still have big shoes to fill, because at least at Lovelake, I could trust that situation. I could trust myself.

"The world stands aside for the boldly hatted." --- Napoleon

Formidable, December 29 2004

Some may measure the coming year by what they experienced on New Year’s Eve. I stopped doing that once I was stuck in traffic in a cab somewhere in the East Village between parties. ‘Tis then I realized that one could in fact try too hard.

Or one might measure the coming year in how they fared at Thomas Lauderdale’s annual X bash, which happened the other night. This was the 3^rd year I have been and somehow each year has appeared like some kind of measuring stick. In years past, I left having met new people and reveled in the expansion, but this time, I entered and parted with some trepidation.

I wasn’t in a great mood to begin with, under the weather and reading a novel in bed. Once dressed, I was cheered a bit. In my Chanel velvet tunic and big fur hat, the waters might part.

But we also know that many do not unilaterally love the fabulous and you might want to tuck a bullet-proof vest under your velvet.

“Aren’t you hot in that hat, Eva?” quips Michael X King, looking kind of hot himself in a suit and tie. I’m wondering if what he really means is don’t you think you’re hot Eva.

A line from the novel I had been reading was still funneling into my brain. As the character assessed her get-up for the evening she thought: “Oh dear, I might be formidable as opposed to feminine.” I know from experience that it is easier on you to be the latter.

But it’s not really me. And pity that even though this novel is about 50 years old (Barbara Pym again, her Jane and Prudence), we are still in so many ways of the mind that formidable and feminine are irreconcilable. Damn.

the Hand of the Artist, December 27 2004

Yesterday’s Times had a short piece on a Byzantine show at the Met this past year. I remember I lusted after that show when I read about it at the time.

It said there was a big surprise expressed all around that the show did so well. It was a sleeper. Over 300 thousand people visited and not just your academic types.

The article gave several reasons for the success: partly it was due to a show which happened at the Met in 1997. A fan base had been built already so to speak --- and you could include me in that fan base.

Of course all of that gold and detail on detail --- it’s the kind of show you could revisit countless times and not see everything. In fact one single piece could give you satiation for years.

The article went on to answer the mystery of why so many went: something like good promotion and so on. But I think they missed the real reason why people came in droves to view this work.

We live in cynical times, especially in the art world. Much is based on being clever, slick and a little cold. Sometimes it would even appear that the hand of the artist is the last thing we want to see. And if you can do it without commitment, in quick time and even advertise the fact, so much the better.

Well, Byzantine art is in the opposite universe on all points. The viewer can bask in that commitment of the artist and of the times, it’s as simple as that. The quiet effort of one individual can give us great pause these days and it’s all OK, since it happened hundreds of years ago.

For those who can no longer trust religion or any kind of ‘faith,’ well, we still have these icons, these books and other remnants of devotion.

But more than faith, what strikes me most is just the time and skill element of it all. I’m very aware that my time and skill, so necessary to the images I make, is only valued by some and scorned or mocked by just as many, or simply not seen at all. Not so with this work. We can openly worship and drink deep. That’s why so many people went to that show.

Finds, December 24 2004

When you study ancient art you rather lose the cult of the personality, so important in Modern art. Ancient art is anonymous for the most part and the who is replaced by the who found it and the how and where it was found.

So I became interested in archaeology. My professor wrote me recommendations and I was accepted at two 2 different digs, one in Italy and one in York, England. I went to York (in 1976).

It is a walled Roman city but there is really just about every kind of site: medieval, Viking even. I started at an ongoing medieval site but wasn't wild about digging. When you dig, you know about one very small plot of land but can have no idea what is happening to the area as a whole.

When I could help with the finds, I would. Of course the finds are the booty!

Eventually a new site opened up, Roman. I went over for a variety of reasons. The new supervisor was a woman which I (unfortunately) found made a big difference back then. And also, the older the better for me. But best of all, when a new venture opens up like that, there are so many more opportunities and I got to be head of the finds.

I had my own trailer! Every single thing that came out of that site I touched, washed, catalogued. Bigwigs from the local museum came through once a week or so and I chatted with them all. At age 19, this is the kind of experience I could have no other way.

We had to go through a medieval nunnery to get to the roman villa, complete with the kind of marvelous mosaic floors you see in Pompeii and of which the Met is blessed with. We knew what we were looking for as a floor had been found in the previous century but there was no technology to lift it at that time, so we were sort of backtracking via vague records. --- Anyway, that nunnery had a graveyard and I spent about a week washing 15th century skulls of nuns and various bones.

We did find that floor. Or rather they did --- because I just cheer leaded from the sidelines, or rather from my trailer, working with my booty: pottery shards, tiles, mosaic pieces, coins, skulls....

I received room, dorm-style and that was it. There were many regular working class English kids who just did this for a regular job straight out of high school. It was tough work with not a lot of pay. If they had a holiday, they went to Brighton. I remember thinking that it seemed a shame...you know Paris is not, to my mind anyway, much farther…. just cross that channel!

York is a beautiful town. I still have the precious streets in my head and the pubs at night and our raucous walks home.

That summer I was the only American there who's daddy or grandparents didn't send them. Mostly the yanks were East Coasters pleasing their Grandparents who provided the ample slushfund. 

My Museum, December 23 204

There has been so much ink spilt on the MOMA, I feel like I must put in my effort. I am not in New York right now and so I can’t speak of what it means now. But I can write of what it meant in general to me, and what it competes with.

I remember my first time. Sounds like sex, right? Actually going to the MOMA was  better than my first time, way better! I was with David Polonoff, writer for the East Village Eye and more, who was amused at my response at seeing all these major heavyweights in the flesh, after years of book reading or slide reviews.

Nonetheless I was aware that there are certain areas of Modern art that the Whitney did better – the Stieglitz circle or Hopper for example. And as far as any tight, long term relationship goes, nothing, including the MOMA, got as close to me as the Met . As they say, nobody does it better.

The Metropolitan was my church of sorts. For my first year in NYC, I went once a week. I crossed Central Park from west 56^th every Sunday. And as the years went on, there were many art destinations that were no longer mine, but the Met kept drawing me back.

My move coincided with my growing interest in early American art. I spent a lot of time in the American wing: Tiffany stained glass, the Frank Lloyd Wright room, the paintings by John Peto and Martin Harnett. And the Whistlers and Chases and Robert Henris and Winslow Homers. I was especially interested in some of those latter artists as they all had a history with the Art Students League, where I was going.

I love Albert Pinkham Ryder and the Met has about 5 or 6 of them.

Rare are Vermeers but the Met must have several of them. And fantastic El Grecos and Goyas.

My area way back when in my art history studies was ancient art, so I’m like a pig in shit at the Met. The BM was the only other museum which made me as happy. The Temple of Dendur, loads of mummies, walls of hieroglyphs and urns and sarcophagi. That hallway of frescos from Pompeii I’ll never forget, all the red and the black. You can’t get more modern than that!

By heart I know the smell and the hush. For me it was very comfortable. I know there are people who hate all that stuff and don't feel comfortable in a museum, especially with ancient artifacts. I spent most of my time alone there, week after week.

I have the Christmas tree from the Met above because I visited that tree for eleven years and after awhile, single girl, no family and all, that tree I regarded as “my tree.” I wonder how many other people felt the same?

Fierce, December 22 2004

Another big influence on my own art is Wilhelm Reich. The idea of every single thing being alive and transmitting this to art comes out of his theories on life energy, which he called the Orgone.

He was a student of Freud's and like another student, Carl Jung, he went his own way and developed his own ideas.

Orgone doesn't just come from the organic --- it mainly comes from the word orgasm. Reich believed we all have a basic life energy which streams through us and he saw it as a tension/release situation.. He even wrote a book called the Function of the Orgasm. Stuff like primal scream and gestalt therapy all come out of Reich.

That tension/release is all over what I’m doing.

I guess he had a big resurgence in the 60s, when the hippies embraced his ideas as a pass to free love, but that is a rather broad interpretation.

I related to his ideas in a visual way, as nothing I ever saw stood still. For years I've attempted to paint life energy and what I’m doing now is as close as I’ve ever gotten to it.

Some of you may be familiar with Patti Smith's song Birdland. This is about Reich and his son Peter. Peter Reich wrote a great book called Book of Dreams, based on living with a visionary and the price one pays for that. Reich had the idea that the aliens were coming for him, communicating with him.

Reich died in prison, jailed during the McCarthy era, seen as a communist and one who did not believe in censorship. He believed he was about to be murdered in prison too and several days later, the man was dead.

During my punk days when I was in bands, several of our songs were based on Reich, with song titles from books like Listen Little Man and the Murder of Christ. I think lots of punks were into him actually. I mention this because the dumbed-down version a la the Ramones or Sid Vicious is one I really get tired of.

Maybe the problem is the difficulty in conveying him without getting all dry. I feel like I’ve been dry here and that's a great pity, for he was not dry at all. An incredibly passionate, intelligent, fierce man.

      Suprematist Tree

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

Legacy, December 20 2004

When all is said and done, Kasimir Malevich is my man, though he’s not someone I ponder on a day to day basis anymore. I loved his Suprematist Manifesto. The total way of life – and death --- is quite convincing. The man even had himself buried in a Suprematist coffin, shaped like a Maltese cross. The totality of it all is what strikes me – a commitment to one’s beliefs.

The square in the above piece was cut from a Malevich catalogue of some sort over 20 years ago. So it’s just a shoddy newspaper square but to my mind it still reeks with the hand of the genius!

It doesn’t bother me one bit that his heirs are asking for so many works back from the major museums. What did being a Malevich ever do for them anyway? Their starry relative left little but they knew that those canvases of squares were worth millions. The art market, on a certain level, is a merry-go-round of profit and most of it not for an artist or any of their heirs.

They probably ran into the fascinated art historian from time to time who says: ‘Your name is Malevich? Can you be ---?” -- with stars in their eyes. The heir would nod his sorry head yes.

The Stedelijk owns about 30 works. The story goes that Mal visited in the 20s but knew that his time of artistic freedom in the Soviet Union was coming to an end. He left the work behind and it lingered in a basement for years. Then they were "sold".

That painting they won back from the MOMA became a symbol for the family and the artist himself. The man who influenced generations of artists and architects, graphic designers and photographers, had lived and died in poverty, unknown in his own country. People might think oh the heirs are now greedy little fuckers for wanting more, but I can see reasons beyond the monetary here. Someone else besides an art dealer or a collector gets to be a player, someone connected to the artist.

60s/ 80s, December 17 2004

In my mind I had a painting, based on Marimenko and Yves St. Laurent colors… pink, orange and red. It wasn’t a done deal; pink was not my thing as regards painting. I don’t know that I’ve ever made a successful one.

I never did reach to a real pink. It sort of became purple: another color I really don’t work with, or didn’t till then. This painting was the turn-around. Unfortunately this scan and the slide itself don’t capture the real sense of the color, as the real painting has this strange purple.

What does it look like? Dresses my mother wore in the 60s. I saw the patterns and the colors. And then it all came around again about 2 decades later.

Actually, for me, sooner. By 1980 I was back to miniskirts, sweater dresses, geometric patterns. This was how I was able to nab gear by Rudi Gernreich in the 70s: nobody wanted it and so I found it for 2 bucks in the PDX thrift stores, I kid you not.

(Mind, the dress below is not made of these colors but was all red, white and black and reminded me of the Russian Avant Garde.)

    with Bill Gaglione, Bay Area Dadaist, at my first show Photomontage Etc in 1980 at the Goodman Building in SF

By 1984 I worked in a salon as a makeup artist, surrounded by hairdressers very fashion forward and serious about it. Maybe too serious… they were always applying a label, a marketing tool, to everything.  It wasn’t just “60s,” this desire to wear pink and orange together. It was 60/80s.

You heard it all the time, that’s so 60s/80s. I worked on photo-shoots and makeup jobs that were 60s/80s. After awhile someone finally said Enough!  -- of 60s/80s.

That’s about the time you started seeing everyone wearing it.

I mention all of this because I know how history gets spelled out. It’s not always written as you saw it. I’m putting in my 2 cents worth in my own way with this painting.

Monty Cantsin, December 15 2004

I often wondered what happened to my friend and wild performance artist Monty Cantsin. I was very happy to see that he is still very much at it.

I met him right here in PDX in 1980. Smegma, the original art-noise band of these parts, hooked us up. We kept in contact for years and when he performed in SF, I wrote about him for the Bay Guardian.

Monty, also known as Istvar Kantor (and he’s actually from Hungary) always had a thing for blood. In fact he asked me to draw his blood naked when he performed.

The first I could not do as he needed a licensed nurse (something he somehow tracked down in every city he toured to, on his “Blood and Gold” tours). The second was actually not the original, revolutionary request so many male artists thought it was.

As the 80s and early 90s rolled along, I wondered how his requests for blood in his art were going down. Anything to do with blood got pretty squeamish as AIDS bulldozed through our lives during that time. I used to ask myself if Monty, inventor of Neoism and Extra-terrestrial spy, was indeed still hawking his blood.  

Only tonight I was finally getting to the arts section of the NYTimes (I read the Week In Review and news first) and I’m thinking now that has to be Monty. I’m so proud of him. A maniac still. 

Quartet in Autumn, December 14 2004

Carolyn Zick is an artist in Seattle who keeps a website and artblog. In this blog, she wrote recently of Philip Larkin and his poetry. 

Larkin I know of in only one way – the man who resurrected the career of Barbara Pym, British postwar novelist, someone I have read and reread. He claimed that Pym was the most underrated novelist of the 20th century a few years before she died. That claim gave a big boost to her readership and let her leave (in 1980) in not-quite-total-obscurity.

She writes of lonely people, most of them women, who find they don't have to be lonely, maybe. Emphasis on the maybe; her books are subtle, open-ended and encourage you to fill in the blanks. Not a lot happens and much of it is internal. I find her way with people fascinating. No bells or whistles, very straight ahead. This is someone who has looked and listened a lot, and also spent a lot of time with just herself.

My favorite is Quartet in Autumn, considered by many to be a masterpiece, in which she follows 4 people who work together and are all on the verge of retirement, facing the dimming of life. I haven’t come across a lot of art out there which pulls you into the story of the aged.

We all know someone, maybe ourselves, who is lonely but will not admit it. Someone who would rather cross a park than have to say hello to another in their loneliness -- just to keep their independence, just to keep appearances. That's their dignity and the thing they've got left. Revel in the independence and don't show concern, which might reveal that you've got too much time on your hands.

The story could be about anybody, not just the aged, those who feel like they just don’t have a lot of choices. Nobody wants to get too involved, let on that independence can be a real drag! --- So you hold on fiercely to your dignity and it just isolates everything more.

You don't have to be old to live like that. A lot of younger, single people have the same thing down, live the same way. I know something about it. Maybe that's why the book just really impressed me. It made me wonder about the writer herself. ‘Suppose she was a spinster, suppose she was a bit like some of these women she wrote about.

Then I realized that Quartet in Autumn was written not long before she died. In this book, one character has her act together; the other is ill and losing it, mind and body. Of course you see Ms. Pym as the together one -- I did through the whole book. Then recently I read how Pym she died of cancer, the illness of the lost one in the book.

I had become so attached to this writer that I broke out in tears when I read that. For the pain in this character, the sense of loss in both identity and body, was acute and yet unspoken, and the deterioration an art piece in words. 

She came out with this novel in 1977, living in London at the time. So was I and I was thinking of how wild it was to share the same space and same city with someone like this, yet to be so untouched at the time. Sort of like when I realized I lived in London same time as Francis Bacon and never tracked him down. Silly thoughts there, that's all.

Art Star, December 13 2004

Being a living, visual artist can be an isolating experience just in how it is understood. Most people you meet have a lot of media contact with other art forms...music, films, books... but that isn't necessarily so with contemporary art.

Ask anyone about favorite films or bands. They all have some kind of educated opinion. But ask them about contemporary art and often you get brushed off or even some hostility!

I used to visit a forum when I first went online which had loads of nasty comments about Yoko Ono. She is hated for supposedly many reasons but the one that irked me the most was that she is a "failed artist."

It occurred to me that she may be the only living female artist these people even knew of. Finally I posted the question: "Well, what kind of art do you like? Who is your favorite living artist and why? Who would be a ‘successful’ artist to you?"

As you can imagine, no response.

People tend to attack art but have no basis for their remarks. They have no idea at all, even a personal one, as to what constitutes "failed" or successful art. It's like saying some band is terrible when you don't ever listen to music.

Jasper Johns (probably the most "successful" artist alive now, or surely in the running) could walk into the room and no one would register anything. I mean the art or the artist.

Who might be an artist to turn people’s heads? Some might recognize Cindy Sherman but even so, it’s not like she’s going to create hysteria when she walks into the room.

That’s another thing I liked about Andy. Now he could have walked into Burger King and someone would probably say: “Isn’t that Andy Warhol?!”  A true art star.

Untitled Holiday, December 11, 2004

Though 48 years of age, I only started making some kind of Thanksgiving meal a couple of years ago. Even so, it’s not a turkey. I’ve read that your typical Thanksgiving bird cannot even fuck, it is so messed up. Years of breeding for a big breast have created a turkey that cannot walk nor mount. For some reason this really disturbs me.

“Family” over the years became a crowd of friends that changed with the city and the times. The holidays of the 80s especially were shared with those no longer with us, all gone from the plague of AIDS.

Retail completely distorts whatever this time of year could mean for you. The one time I ever went home for Christmas (forget Thanksgiving --- the biggest shopping day is after) was 1989 and I lost my job because of it.

Thanksgiving was the break before the madness. Sure, people offer to take you in and you could even stay the night, but shit you've got to be back the next day, ready for madness. I rarely went anywhere.

There is one artist I met about a year ago, who I've taken to. She's past 50, not painted long, a survivor of cancer. I offered for her to come to our place but she said oh no, I don't do that holiday. I just hang and make my art. And I can understand. You don't need to share that separation and isolation.

Sometimes I ate absolutely nothing on Thanksgiving, while living in New York. After awhile I started delivering meals through a church, to shut-ins, just trying to make sense of all the consuming. I thought they might be happy to chat, but they were actually like me, staying close to their isolation. Thanked me for the meal through a doorway and that was it. Perhaps they wondered, looking into my face, just why I wasn't with some family on Thanksgiving.

Christmas retail is hell. The music and the lights and all the rest of it, none of it is for you, the slug that sells the shit. Once a date tried to drag me up 57th, where I went everyday, and I said: “Where the hell are we going?” “To go see the lights…" What, was he crazy? I started crying!

But I am now reforming (or healing) by making my own version of the holidays. It has very little to do with shopping and I’m making it up as I go along.

Why we wear all Black, December 10, 2004

Yesterday the paper had a fashion layout on black. They so missed the point, the true understanding of the color.

It shouldn’t surprise me though. Ages ago I tried to submit a piece on Rudi Gernreich to the fashion editor and she didn’t even know who he was. I don’t expect you to know who he was (inventor of the miniskirt, along with Mary Quant, for starters), but this editor, I do.

Then at a Thomas Lauderdale party she once told me how she came to the role of fashion editor for the paper. She had once written with a partner and they did investigative news. Deep stuff. Then they happened to need a fashion editor one day, took a look at her --- hey, she was female, right? – and told her this would be her new territory.

She was no fashion diva and it shows in her writing. It’s a pity too because fashion has its own implications in society and can be a part of an intelligent conversation on what goes down. The right mind can make fashion reporting essential --- look at Diana Vreeland.

So they have a lame fashion department but lost perhaps a good news reporter. Her partner went on to win Pulitzers. That’s gotta hurt.

But without further ado, let’s do a short list on why we wear black.

1: If you're a busy, happening person, nothing will take you through life as easily. You can leave home at 6am and get home past midnight and black will take you through the day. It just always works.

2: If you tend to be a careless slob, black won't show it. Try wearing all white all day. Myself, I love the all white look of the Mods and wear it every summer but boy does it look tawdry at the end of the day.

3: Money is an issue. Bill Blass once said: "Rich women don't wear black. They wear color." Yeah, trying getting a cheap red dress to look good. But a red 4000 dollar Valentino suit probably works just fine! I've found lots of cheap black numbers that look great but the lime green version just didn't work out.

3: Some say it's slimming. It definitely looks sleek. Seals look really good in their all-black wetsuit. And they look like they have fun in life, don't they?

4: If you're traveling you can just throw it on and get on with life. And no one will think you're some goofy American.

Imagine, December 8 2004

As a way to remember this day, I join the 2 circles of his eyeglass frames which will then make an 8, the date he was killed in front of the Dakota, his home.

I was home in Northwest Portland that evening. Greg Sage of the Wipers walked in and told me what happened. We then walked along 23^rd, a barren street dotted with bars and thrift stores back then. I recall a song blaring from a car radio I read the news today oh boy.

And I had just been getting back into his music. No, not Double Fantasy (and in fact I’ve never checked that out). The old stuff like Revolver or Rubber Soul. It was sort of a punk backlash thing; some of us were tired of the "no more Elvis, Beatles or Stones” stance. Looking back, it was the edge of the New Romantic era.

Right after his death Imagine went to number one. It only went to number 38 when he released it previously. Kind of what Wilhelm Reich calls the Murder of Christ. His solo career was not full of smash hits, though I am very fond of it. If you type the word Imagine into a search engine, he comes up right away. He owns that word.

      1981

Record Store, December 7 2004

What a fun job. Listen to music all day long... loud, if you want it. Get stoned with your boss. Free passes to any gig in town. Meet the rockstars of your dreams.

Outside of working in my mom's gallery (as a child), my first job was in a record store. Though I must confess it was really a headshop and I sold a lot more pipes and rolling papers than records.

Eventually I worked in Singles Going Steady in Portland, Oregon, owned by the same partners who created Tim Kerr Records... they also brought us Nirvana, recordings of William Burroughs and Everclear. But their first venture was Singles and I was their first employee. One whole wall (as you see here) was nothing but 7" singles.

Can you recognize any of the sleeves? There's a Human League single on one side of me and a Teardrop Explodes on the other. This jpg is from a color xerox, not a photo and to give you an idea of mutation of image, I wasn’t a brunette. The hair was purple.

From there I went to Aquarius Records in San Francisco. They said there was no job but I kept persisting. Eventually someone was to go away for 6 weeks and I could temporarily replace him. By the time he got back I not only was permanent but had the import buying job.

That was not an easy job as there are no returns on imports. You don't sell them, you eat it. So you have to live and breathe new music and almost buy psychically. Labels, producers, even the artist who designed the sleeve---anything can be an indicator that a record will sell or not. But I did, of course, bring some of the first U2 or Joy Div or Bauhaus records into this country.

It occurred to me that it's very little pay for what you gotta know. People don't just come in asking for music. They want meaning in their lives. You've got to know who is playing tonight and where and why anyone should go and this was not like today, where ‘alternative culture’ is the norm, is common knowledge. I read every British music paper and was hounded by many local bands who wanted their stuff either bought or played.

Production Line, December 5 2004

Over the years I have made cards for the holidays. They are varied in style and medium. Some were collaged in red and green and hard-edged abstract style. Some were traditional watercolors like the house you see here.

While maintaining a Working Woman of the World role in NYC, I knew many people who had no idea I was an artist. Making some kind of sharable image for X was a way to sadly vent.

People would sometimes watch me draw while I worked at some store and then say: “What are you doing behind this counter?”

How do you even begin to answer that?

As to watercolors, I would set up a production line: all Prussian blue washes one day, then layering on the lines. And while it was fine for a few days, I would never want to make a living like that. I had bigger art dreams, those kinds of dreams where basically you get to please yourself. With your own grand mad schemes. I am so grateful that this is how my life works now.

Cruelty-free, December 4 2004

It blows me away how people can calm all their fears of cruelty to animals by choosing products 'not tested on animals.' It solves nothing but allows the user to feel less guilty.

I recently heard someone telling a worried soul that all she has to do use Origins and all will be well. Well let me tell you --- Origins is owned by Estee Lauder, who would have no trouble testing on her Grandmother if she needed to. Follow the money – Origins is connected to some of the creepiest people in the business.

I worked at Bergdorf Goodman when that line first began. I knew the manager of the counter for Origins at BG. She said they had yet to recycle a damn thing, even though that was a big selling point of their product and they told every single customer that they did that. Oh, they would figure that out later.

Cosmetics is a big, big money mill and they will do what they can to get you to buy their product over another. 

As to testing on animals, no company can use any thing which has not met certain standards set by the FDA. If you are using Bodyshop, let’s say, you are using ingredients that have been tested by someone on someone else at sometime. More than likely they are using a group of materials that Revlon or Max Factor has already done extensive research on. There is no way around that; they are still a part of that system.

And let’s say you’ve had a funny reaction to a product and you’re not the only one. Stuff happens. That product will have to be checked out. No, they won’t test it on animals. They’ll simply pay someone else to do it. They can rattle on about how disgusting those companies are but they pay them to do that dirty work.

When I go into the Bodyshop, I see a bunch of people who have driven into town from their gluthouses in their glutmobiles and they are wearing clothes made in sweatshops from overseas and they are now insisting…. that their makeup is cruelty-free?

Yes, Bodyshop lets them feel better about their own choices, completely disconnected from what is happening out there in the world.

     Swingeing London, Richard Hamilton, 1968

A Pop Art Production, December 2 2004

Tonight is the opening of two group shows with the same theme: Sintax, a Pop Art Production. The 2 galleries participating are Gallery 500 and Belinki and Duprey.

I was a little puzzled at first by ‘a Pop Art production.’ Gee isn’t just about all clever art these days Pop art? It felt like that sometimes. “My work addresses pop culture.” I heard that like a mantra for years.

I recall an essay in Art Forum by Jeff Wall where he says there are 2 different kinds of art these days; some is old fashioned and some is about pop culture basically. He talks about Warhol and how he started it all. What Andy did was real, was from the heart and the work was great. But all these other wanna-bes is getting on our nerves.

That seemed about right to me. And my heart sort of sunk when I realized that I definitely chose a path, well, not ‘about’ pop culture. In fact the more I examined my motives the more it seemed like the big challenge would be to rise above it. It is after all sort of inescapable.

When I first looked at the card for the shows my friend Timothy Scott Dalbow was around and I started rambling about Warhol. “No, Eva,” he said, “I think this is not about art history but about pop art in Portland.” Hmm. I came across the press release and lo and behold, a quote from Richard Hamilton in the 1950s. Na na na.

I liked seeing that. Richard Hamilton was my Pop artist of choice for years. I got into him in high school, same time as Andy, but there was this intellectual, more obscure thing about Hamilton that appealed to me. And I loved his Swingeing London with Mick Jagger.

You know in a way this is like having an Impressionism show in the 1950s.

Save there’s something about Pop Art that pervaded --- invaded? --- everything, in a way Impressionism did not. Andy is probably the most important artist of the second half of the 2oth century (I’d say Alfred Stieglitz was The Man for the first half).

More recent entries:  November 2004

                                       October 2004

                                       September 2004

                                       August 2004

                                       July 2004

                                       June 2004

                                       May 2004

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