march2006

Wild night, March 30 2006

My last night in Seattle was spent with great company at The Hideout (I loved this place). I was joined by Carolyn Zick of Dangerous chunky, Steven Vroom of Vroom Journal, m of Visual Codec, Jim Demetre of artdish, plus two artists, M. A .Ricciardi and Joseph Gray. It was a great mix of art and word people and I was so grateful to everyone who came out that night.

One young artist was frustrated with certain facts of the art world (join the club), but I could not tell if it was exclusively a Seattle thing or more universal. He felt shut out from the galleries. I then asked the group if indeed there was available real estate like what I did with Lovelake: little space and little expense, but with the right curating, big bang for your buck. I saw a lot of shrugs.

He then went on to express that he felt shut out specifically by the Baby Boomers, who had the spaces, but were not looking at his generation, and were not giving him enough. I thought a lot about this after wards.

First of all, I think we gave you a lot. I still meet 30 year olds who feel the best music came out of 76 – 83 or so (and the fanzines and haircuts and style to go along with it), my tail end of the boom. They like the authenticity as at least during that time, it was not commodified or made into a genre. (It was a later generation who did that, but they did not reinvent it into anything as shockingly remarkable as that initial movement.)

But furthermore, why do we owe you anything? I sure don’t remember the ‘Greatest Generation’ who came before me - urging me along to be an artist - or curating me into one goddamn show when I arrived in NYC at the age of 29, and yeah, they had the real estate. In fact for the most part, they did their best to keep me out. It was only my contemporaries in the dumps of the East Village who had any interest.

Then when I came back here 9 years ago, I actually looked to younger people with more casual spaces to show me (as I felt shut out); I went to the Everett Station Lofts and the like and was rejected. At 44, I started all over again with my own space to show my own work (amongst others).

So I’m not up for sob stories really. Open your own shop, if only for night, make things happen, and don’t resent those who have earned their interesting war stories and wish to share them with those who have them as well.

I’m not saying I only look at the work of older artists. Hardly. I am actually showing two young men in April. But they’re gracious and they’re not looking for shortcuts. Great art is the most important part – but good attitude can seal the deal.

Dive, March 29 2006

The sun slowly appeared, as it has every single time I have been here. What a beautiful city. I have a view of the water from my room, close to the galleries. The sound is of the seagulls, which I have always loved.

I met Francis Celentano and his wife Rebecca at the very same café where my husband and I did a stake-out of Davidson Galleries last September (the 15th). Francis Celentano is a remarkable painter and they both had lots to say (I had a painting with me). Fact I didn’t know: they are both art historians and Francis was a student of (the original) Janson!

Then on to the new Davidson Contemporary. The curator is generous with his time and has a comment I truly relish (very loosely quoted here): “Some artists do their work as a sort of therapy and you can read that into certain kinds of repetition. You get the feeling they are working something out of themselves. But I feel like you are not depressed and are having fun and it shows.”

Thank you for that. In the space I create, I am not following Mark Rothko (zero interest).

I say that because when I specifically spoke about making a dark painting of purple and blue, several went straight to Rothko. I do not condemn at all his luscious yet stoic results, but me, I’m not ready to end my life (and personally believe that it will never end anyway). Deep Dive (above) was hardly a suicide note.

As when Yves Klein Leaps into the Void, there is no hint of an end. It is this kind of adventurous space that I treasure and it has endless possibilities.

Target/ Mission

To Seattle, March 27 2006

My road trip to Ashland was a sort of preparation for a road trip to Seattle. Just to see how it felt to be hours on the road in my little puddle jumper. I leave tomorrow.

My ultimate goal is to show there someday, though I swear it looks like it will take me as long to get a show in Seattle as it took me to get Augen Gallery (five years!) If anything, I will see some art, meet people and party like I did last visit, with a small but great group of writers and artists. I’ve never had a bad time in Seattle.

March 26 2006

It’s been nice to have some time off from interviewing, though playing two hours of music is not really a holiday per se. In the end I decided to play some stuff tomorrow that you’ve heard before or about but don’t hear much on the radio. Obviously everyone has Roxy Music, but not everyone has Etron Fou. Or DAF: Deutsch Amerikanische Freundshaft. Their big hit was Dance the Mussolini, very stark and tough.

Good reads, March 24 2006

At present the two blogs I read everyday and get the most out of are: PaintersNYC and Anonymous Female Artist. There is always a great discussion going on at either.

In the case of PaintersNYC, it can be very instructive to read how varied the responses to the same image can be. Sure, there are also a lot of cheap shots, but this seems to come with the territory of notes allowed on websites. I still like the dialogue, mostly coming from people who paint or look at paintings in NYC.

The Anonymous Female Artist (a term that could apply to way too many of us) has its own focus and it might not be your thing. I for one am fascinated. We’re ghettoized and she’s writing about the ghetto.

The artist, the diary and the practice, March 23 2006

When the class left their finals, we were then handed our papers. Outside, several students were huddled, stomping, smoking, in a general malcontent state of mind. Many (pas moi) were not happy with their grades. What I heard the most of was how boring the diaries of Delacroix were (!) and how they were not pertinent at all to the assignment.

Whoa, were we even reading the same book?

It occurred to me later that as a painter (and a colorist too), a loner, a lover and a diarist, I could embrace all of the pages of the book and read in between the lines. But I think I know what they mean when they say ‘boring’ and it actually has to do with the process of paint - not the philosophy or elevated musings and lifestyle, but just the bump and grind of getting the work out.

When Delacroix is not girl crazy or being a natural, passionate music critic, he just thinks about a painting: one after another. He has numerous entries that deal with nothing but the details of the struggles of a studio practice – almost mundane, save to a painter.

Should it be darker, smoother, bigger? Should she be higher, heavier, should the hands be different? I could see how certain eyes might glaze over.

But I could understand because I’ve made similar entries, especially at one juncture in my life, when I got laid off from work and was able to do nothing but paint. OMG! – I thought, this is it. What we’ve all been waiting for: to just make art. Well, what happens, as you do nothing but come and go from the studio, is that the diary gets full of these kind of taxing decisions and debates about how dark the green should be. It can make for a dull read.

Thankfully, in Delacroix’s case, he knows all the hot people of Paris like Chopin and Sand and we are rarely lulled by the painting process for long.

As for me, I realized during that time painting was great but not all for me. It wasn’t for Eugene either. He had to write, he had to define his times in more than one way. There are many ways to communicate. And that all makes for a good diary read.

The grove, March 20 2006

Tomorrow I leave for Ashland, just for a night. As I am a new driver, I’m just trying to get some drive time in.

But I am also going back to the place I grew up. My Grandparents lived in Ashland, my Mom had a gallery in Jacksonville and our house was out in the middle of nowhere, on a road called Dark Hollow Road. We lived just right by the Hollow. I’m going to drive all those roads.

Ashland means a million different things to me, all of them good. I wouldn't even know where to start, but I think you could safely say that Lithia Park set the stage for many major milestones. Mom used to show her art in that park and I spent blissful, long summer days off on my own, when not surrounded by artists. Of course major theatre was there, which meant sophisticated people from the outside were there. First love took place there. But I also think of a special grove of trees in that park as my place of potential healing. And you know, perception is everything.

I already recounted here once that I was really sick 1990 - 92; jobless sick, 25 doctors sick, a nightmare and the worst of times. So I looked to a place of the best of times, in search of answers. I left NYC for two months, stayed with my Granddad and walked to the grove everyday. I sang there, I cried there; I still had no answers at this time but I was looking at ways of escape.

The perfect symmetry of the grove reassured me. The fact that I grew up with that grove also reassured me, a fact yet still of mystery and possibility. It was constant but still growing. Things change. And so could I.

Years later, around 2000, in better health (and grateful for it), I took my husband to the grove and we shot these photographs. I am looking forward to seeing the trees again.

Waiting for a Miracle/ Comsat Angels

musique, March 20 2006

Here is the playlist for today, if you’re online and need some tunes. Someday soon I will play the entire LP of Waiting for a Miracle….

Julie Bernard, March 19 2006

Over the weekend there was a party for Julie Bernard’s 80^th birthday. I was only there briefly, but was happy to see a large turnout with people from all over the country.

For those who don’t live here in Portland, Julie is the woman behind Art Focus, an interview show at KBOO every Thursday at 10:30am. You see, I’m far from alone in Artstar. Julie has made this show happen for 22 years.

She tends to have a wide focus on the whole community: curators, the museum, crafts, critics - whereas I pretty much focus on just the artist. But Julie and I love to trade war stories and she has been nothing but supportive to me.

One journalist called me up awhile back, quizzing me on Julie’s efforts, contrasted with my own. I wasn’t sure where he wanted to go with it, but I made it clear that singing praises was all I had time for.

I mentioned how generous she was and the journalist said: “What? What do you mean by that?” I guess generosity, in many people’s minds, has to do with things. But let’s look at the work, at the time and at the twenty-two years of giving people a platform and air time all about art. Volunteer, mind you. I’d call that incredibly generous.

please yourself, March 18 2006

In my class, Prof. Colbert can get provocative and ask us what we think of the artists, having already established an antagonistic situation or analysis. At this time, we were speaking of the Juste Milieu, a view of compromise, eclecticism and steering to the middle course: a little bit of this and a little bit of that and it's all good and equal - a sort of a ditching of adamant style and vigor.

But before he let any of us embrace the intensity of the committed and crazed view (he contrasted Sardanapalus of Delacroix , above - next to some Young Princes by Delaroche), he reminded us of a downside of the Romantic view, in that it led to a justification of Fascist dogma in an upcoming century.

Well, what do you prefer, he asked, the art-and-life-is-one track, the art which has total self-determined aims, or the easy going and hey, nicely executed products of the Juste Milieu?

It was interesting to see how people in an art history class - an area which can only be pushed forward by obsession - fell for the ‘gather all views’ and ‘look at all sides’ philosophy. Perhaps a pure art historian and not an artist might go that route.

My views are three-fold on the subject: first of all, many of the greats led to diluted, dreary versions of the Original. You can't blame the innovators. The list is endless. Even the last hovering, dominant genius, Warhol, has led many into making a hollow, purposeless and often downright lazy art. I don’t blame the Romantics for the horrors of the 20^th century.

Next thing: as a viewer, perhaps we can indeed see all kinds of sides to the story. Maybe a nice, easy going combo of many recognized styles is OK in our living room. Even I possess art you can just walk by and ignore if you wish, but warms and comforts a room.

But as an artist I want nothing to do with that. I completely side with the crazed yet crystal clear commitment Delacroix must have had to go where he went with this painting. Meaning: going where no one has gone before (including your loved ones – you can’t take them along) - having his way and his say, making a future. As a painter, it is completely uninteresting to me to make works you can stroll by and ignore.

One distinction the Prof made was regarding ‘pleasing,’ which sort of goes back to what you want in your living room. The Juste Milieu could please, and after all of the past upheaval in French history, this was something to consider.

Who is the artist pleasing? The public or themselves? How lovely if our aims and loves could coincide! At this stage of the game, I please myself - and anyone spending all that time in a studio, being there instead of elsewhere and whatever else goes along with being an artist, you better be pleasing yourself.

Just a thought (I never forget), March 16 2006

There has been quite a debate over a review Jerry Saltz wrote over a female painter.

I would never just jump in and label her a ‘female painter’ if Saltz had not done so – pointedly done so – from practically the start of the piece. The seed is planted. Do you ever forget it for a moment?

Everything he says is right (I guess), which makes it even more frustrating to me. When I look at the images, I think I like the paintings, but that can hardly be the point by then, can it?

Personally and universally, I’m tired of us being the object, sometimes even for a moment. Why cannot we instead purely address the objects we make?

Bird update, March 16 2006

Motel has a nice show up right now of works by Amy Ross (see above). Birds spring subtly from mushrooms. The work is careful (in the right way) and the artist has spent a lot of time looking.

I spend a lot of time looking at birds too. The ‘scape is changing as spring struggles – truly struggles! – to arrive. Red house finches showed up; Morning Doves are now back and the rusty Rufous hummingbird arrived. I’ve already seen one wonderful aerial courtship display. Up, up, up they go like a helicopter.

But the biggy was a sighting of a Pileated Woodpecker in the neighbor’s yard. These birds aren’t urban, but there he was, hacking away at a tree. Huge bark parts fell to the ground as he used his massive beak. It was my husband who alerted me: “Honey, there is a big bird out here and he is not a crow.” His brilliant red head, shaped like a Mohawk, told me.

the industrial, March 15 2006

Sometime in the late 80s I made a painting of a red train wrapping itself around a mountain. My friend, who furnished her entire flat off stuff she found on the street, saw it. On one evening in her rambles she found a big stack of Trains magazines and brought them to me. She thought I could do something with them - and I did, around 1990.

I used to fantasize about making huge siren-colored paintings of the trains, faces almost as big as the things themselves. In the end I produced the prototypes in only black charcoal, but I made about 50 of them. So you see but a few here. They were all on my wall, one right next to another, like a small billboard. They never showed anywhere.

These days I revel in color and not so much in line, but those days were days for the line. The human figure or face didn’t interest me as I was a makeup artist in my day job and had had my fill of people, but I would draw just about anything else.

In my 19^th c art class we hear a lot about the industrial revolution, and in certain paintings of Turner, the train makes its first appearance. That was what made me remember these.

stalkers/ availability, March 14 2006

I respond immediately to a lot of stuff, and if it's positive I don't hold back, knowing how much artists need it. This can get you in a lot of trouble, but not how you might imagine.

Years ago I was nice to a talented poet, obviously in need of any kind of positive reinforcement. He started sending me entire notebooks full of stuff. Not all so nice and way too personal. Then the phone calls came. Eventually, even after I moved to San Francisco, he found me at my workplace. None of my (all male) workmates at Aquarius Records believed any of it till they picked up the phone and heard for themselves how he was going to cut open my brain, detailing all of his utensils, and fuck it.

Through this site he found me 23 years later. I had to get a private eye and get the police involved to get that guy to back off.

Then recently I had another letter detailing how they met me in 1975 and all the stages in between – year after year - and whether he approved or not, almost like grading me. It was around this time I wondered about having an email address here at all. You might think all light and breezy, but I am sensitive and feel enough on all kinds of levels already, OK. I’m trying to balance availability and being a target.

The Original, March 12 2006

Last night I was out at Gotham, a place with good food and good wood encircling, but unfortunately a rather posturing staff. I asked if Dave Allen might DJ, as I had read somewhere that he spun tunes from his special collection and I sure would have liked to have heard it.

The waiter claimed his disinterest and claimed electronica as his bag. I said yeah but that all comes out of the era Allen might spin (Kraftwerk par example). The waiter would concede to such, but preferred a ‘more contemporary’ sound.

Well, for those of you who still like the Original, I will play two hours of Brian Eno tomorrow. The playlist is here.

Make history, March 10 2006

As art history texts are revised, there has been an ongoing discussion as regards how much revision there needs to be. The post that made the most sense to me was at Modern Kicks.

I’m someone who can see both sides of the story: as a young woman studying art and art history in the 1970s, I did not see myself in there often, or anyone like me. This is why someone like Georgia could be such a monolith as late as the 20^th century, even when the actual work could sometimes be uneven. I repeat here the quote, originated at Artnet, which sounded familiar, as I am back in art history classes today:

Today, professors say, Art History 101 is a popular class, filled with students, mostly female, who think that newer media, outsider art and their own cultures are underrepresented in their texts. These students tend to know less about history and classical mythology than the students of Jansen’s era, and they are telling their professors that they feel completely overwhelmed by the amount of material they have to memorize.

Well, girl, they didn’t call it HIStory for nothing.

The biggest confusion here is thinking that indeed 1500 should look like 2000 because you wish it so. If you’re angry about how your gender fared in the past, I don’t blame you one bit. I’m mad as hell. The way to fix it is get off your ass and make some very good work. Don’t rework and redefine what you do not know about yet, i.e., the past. Please do not attempt to rewrite the classics or think that you can just write them off. Learn about it and see what you can take/ steal/ whatever to make your own history.

Yes, the lists throughout the centuries are, for 99.9% of the time, made of male names. But it doesn’t depress me nearly as much as looking at auction records of the living artists of today. Look at who is getting what. That’s why you’ve got to stop squabbling about how hard art history is; just learn it, understand what makes a great work of art and then go out and make some yourself. Topple those damn auction records. Change things, like the present.

Francis Bacon, March 7 2006

As I have a paper due on Delacroix in a week, he is on my mind constantly. I enjoy the immersion and indulgence. I have books by my bed and then at my computer and elsewhere in the house. Like any artist, I see can myself in him, and like I said before, the fact that he was an adamant diarist only aids in the fantasy.

The only other artist I have enjoyed so much in investigating and writing about for school was Francis Bacon. Any book on Bacon that crosses my path, I read. And in this case, let me be clear: like Delacroix, it is not so much about the art – though I like it well enough! – it is the life of the artist I find so fascinating.

Bacon: talk about a complex character. A self-made artist in every way, fearless, a gambler, who set all the terms of his life (on the surface). Living so much of the moment that it’s maybe too much. He painted like no other, even when he went over Velasquez, time and time again (which Delacroix did as well), stealing and making a new way to look at power, whether it was the Pope or the Nuremberg Trials.

And he had style (again, like Delacroix). I have a zip-up, collarless leather jacket and every time I put it on, I think of the man who made it a fashion statement - in the 1950s, no less: Bacon.

And what a sly fox: finding a thief in his studio and telling him straight out: “Well now. And what should we do with you?” The thief became his lover for years. His model, his source - and his crisis during a major retrospective in Paris when the lover/ thief kills himself. Talk about a drama a novelist could not create.

(The story of how his gallery manipulated and screwed him is one I leave to another time.)

All along, paintings which take the perfect figure where it has not been and all with such articulance and then, the virtuoso slash, a master of the slash, in brilliant orange and red.

The best book is the Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon, which reveals the pain this artist insisted on living with. He was an emotional sadist, but in private pleasures, loved the pain. He said more than once that you could put any spin you wanted into his work; pain was personal and paramount to his life and not just some existential jargon.

Of course he maintained one of the most famous studios ever recorded: for its filth and chaos. It gives me comfort actually – I have no nice studio and neither did he, even after he started making the big bucks. He kept the very same space for decades. The whole thing was picked up and accounted for by archaeologists who shipped it to Ireland.

Elise Wagner

Elise and more, March 5 2006

This is, first of all, a reminder that this next interview on Monday will be my last till sometime in April. My guest will be Elise Wagner, who just opened an extensive exhibition at Butters the other night. She is also someone who develops special encaustic paints. We’re going to hear all about it.

The photo is one of several I shot that night and the next, and so a new art personalities page is up as well.

While I may not interview, radio goes on and so I show up and just play music. One thing I have not discussed in any great detail is no agenda, the hour before Artstar Radio, where I play music, much of it from the a bygone but best era. Before 5pm, we are not on the radio signal and the show is only available online and is considered volunteer work for the station.

I called it no agenda because as soon as word got out that I would play music, I received emails telling me what it ought to be. Soon my one volunteer hour was looking like 3 or 4, for good DJing is not a slip of the wrist. I wondered if they thought they had an Artstar version on the music order. (And also, what makes these fellows think I can’t come up with my own ideas?) So I called it no agenda to just fucking cut everyone off at the pass.

But, it turned out, the more I played music, well of course I had an agenda. Like my two hours of nothing but Bowie on his birthday. I’m doing two hours of Brian Eno here soon. But I’ve also played collections I acquired from my record store days, singles which never made it into albums and yeah, I think I captured a part of a Golden Era (1977 – 1983 or so).

I’ve thought about creating a play-list page for this site as regards this show, but am not sure it warrants the attention or work. This is, after all, an online only broadcast.

Upstairs at Augen, March 3 2006

Last night in my short journeys I stopped by Augen, my gallery. I like to say that: my gallery. Not the one I run, but the one I show at. Tamara told me to go upstairs and look at the new hang. How marvelous it was to see two of my works, right out there with the Big Boys. It was the highlight of my night.

with the camera, March 2 2006

I was out on First Wednesday with my camera and may go out again tonight. I like to take pics for my site, but often when I go out with the camera, I can question the whole activity. You've got to have a bit of a thick skin to be a photog.

People can have strange reactions to the camera itself, as if it makes some comment on me personally. Mine was a gift from 1987 and I have used no other since. I’ve never felt like it was some kind of specific fashion accessory which could tell tales, but I’ve discovered that cameras can function like that for some people.

It’s this thing I am still learning how to use, giving sometimes unpredictable results. I enjoy that. The image is produced almost mysteriously and I don’t have a lot of control over it.

I always enjoyed going to Artnet and seeing Out with Mary and once upon a time, I could recognize many characters from when I lived in New York. Some people use the camera to be a part of things, yet still maintain a wall – you can be a link to all of the action and still be nobody. I liked taking pictures so I could meet people and also, to document the times in my life.

I’ve had some highly decorated, outrageously outfitted times which were never recorded. We were either too proud to be photographed or too stupid. Similarly, I’ve had way too many small shows which were never documented, postcards never kept or even made. So my camera, which has from time to time been totally fallow, was brought out to record some of these times. It is in a way an extension of Artstar Radio and other ventures I put under the heading of “The Other.” My stats tell me you look at the pictures. So why the panic when I pull the thing out? Contrary to what the Indians believed, I don't think it steals your soul.

Charlie Finch, March 1 2006

There has been such a tirade, from one blog to another, over the way Charlie Finch writes about female artists. I thought I would put in my 2 cents worth and it is not as predictable as you might think.

I remember Charlie. He was at every opening, never said a word, always on the outskirts, like someone with his nose pressed against the window pane. I know what that looks like ‘cause I’ve been there. Even in my last trip to NYC almost one year ago, there he was at an opening at Ronald Feldman, not acting all that differently to years ago.

I can confirm the hierarchy as Paul H-O even said in his interview on Artstar last year: “Yeah, I was in there in the trenches, getting nowhere, a C-list artist at best, along with people like Charlie Finch.”

Me, I know what it’s like to not even be a C-list artist because after all, there is the word ‘artist’ attached to that phrase - and I was more like décor, meat, sexual opportunity at almost every turn in the NYC art world. To this day I can’t think of the curator who expressed interest in my work without the fuckability factor attached (with one exception as he was gay).

So in my mind Charlie Finch is holding up a mirror to the art world. I have no idea what his real personal interest is in all of this, but I know for a fact that he reveals certain truths that do exist within that system, and if he’s licking his lips, he’s not alone, not by a long shot and he’s probably doing it in parody. You can tell me how much the world has changed since the 80s, but I would say very little indeed.

March 1 2006

Ted Katz was kind of enough to send me the proper quote I was writing about yesterday. "I do not seek, I find." I guess he’s not telling you what to do; he’s just saying what works for him. Works for me too: finding gives a freedom that searching cannot.

More recent entries: February 2006