october2005

Tom Cramer, 31 October 2005

Today I interview Tom Cramer on the radio. If you miss the show, you can always check out the archives later.

This will be my third time with Tom and it’s always been fun. He’s a thinker – at no loss for words about anything. In fact I have a whole catalogue of Wise Words from Tom Cramer.

Like: “You don’t want to collect your own art.” Would that we could all be as successful of ridding ourselves of our work! Or: “Sometimes you have to know when to not make art.” -- When would that be for Tom? For he seems amazingly prolific.

He’s not afraid to be critical, to say some outrageous or political things and get into trouble. I’m convinced that when an artist is really popular and sells well, it is this part of them that any collector is interested in: the personality. It’s not just the art object.

For instance, the Oregonian mentioned how well the portraits of Moe sold and attributed it to the fine draftsmanship. I would say yes, that is a factor, but it is not the only factor. Moe is an enigma people want a piece of, like Cramer.

After the interview, I’m going to race home so I can be a witch for the approaching children. I don’t need much to do it, as I have the resources of a certain voice and cackle I have developed and fine-tuned over the years. It is actually related to the screech of a blue jay I make. This cackle, plus my black hat and makeup and nails, is all I need.

Trip, 30 October 2005

The Times had an intriguing article on buying up real estate in low-end countries like Croatia or Bulgaria. The idea is appealing for sure. In no time you’ll make a profit and you’ll be in an area of relatively little traffic, with a past seeped in the cold war.

In 1976 I went to Greece, by way of Yugoslavia. The Iron Curtain was still very much in place at this time but I didn’t really give it much thought -- until the train stopped at the border for many hours, with a conductor in possession of my passport. I recall how he walked the line of the endless train holding just one American passport, slapping it against his other hand, on his way to me with all his questions.

In Belgrade I got out of the train to change money, as I had nothing to eat on since Switzerland. As I left the train I saw it pull out, but people reassured me that it would be back.

It was, but it had changed. Full families had gotten on board, with their goats and chickens and everything else. Many migrant workers from Turkey who make their way to Germany every year crowded the train. I went the full length of the train and never found my luggage. Eventually I was approached by a man who spoke German and as I had one year thus far of German, he could help me out. I navigated the rest of time in this country in German. They were used to having them around and being an American didn’t help me out much in this instance.

We got off at his home town and he made calls to Belgrade, where they had my luggage. He helped me buy stale, hard-as-a-rock-bread, strange liverwurst and we sat down to a beer. The beer was that 12% stuff that really knocks you out. The bar was right on the train platform and was right out of WW2, I swear. Lots of girly calendars of that era, paint peeling on the walls, no technology; it’s like time stood still from the moment of the end of the war.

When I boarded a train for Belgrade, I was ‘assigned’ a woman who would travel with me to get my stuff. I sat with all the train workers in their car. What I recall the most vividly was how the woman was really treated like one of the guys, like a comrade, but that also they threw every single thing out the window. The landscape was a mess.

My luggage was a mess and things were taken. All the hot things too, I might add: like a pair of satin hot pants that I had just bought in London.

Lisa Radon with Tim DuRoche

Lisa Radon, 23 October 2005

I am so looking forward to my interview with Lisa Radon tomorrow on Artstar. Every time we have met casually, there’s been plenty to talk about.

First of all, she’s terribly smart. She’s got her history down, so she has perspective. She’s also an artist – a performance artist, writer and poet who loves the Dadaists and Futurists (my kind of girl).

So combine all that smarts and creativity with a passion for style and even fashion. It is how things should be but is too rarely, especially here. She takes a serious look at surface, understanding that of course the best of that is the window to substance.

The man, October 21 2005

Over the past few years I’ve interviewed more than one artist who claimed with a goofy grin that their work was influenced by ‘pop culture’. Jesus, can’t you come up with more than that? At least the detail about the cartoon or TV show which sent you round the bend? And as to ‘pop culture’, what isn’t these days? How is this some monumental statement? I should think you’d be interested in how to go beyond it somehow. Stay in your home all day long and you still could never escape it.

The work these artists make is often very hollow in some ways, like they are trying too hard and then in other ways, they are not trying hard enough. They need to look deeply into the Grandmaster of Popism if they want to play that game.

Andy got his chops down, way down, before he went into photo silk-screens. He studied at old-fashioned schools like Carnegie Tech and the Art Students League and learned how to draw – how to conceptualize. We all know his story. He was a highly successful illustrator (over 80 grand a year in the 1950s) before he reduced it all down to a coke bottle.

It shows. You can tell all of that in the silk-screens, in his films, in his magazine. For such a prolific artist, there are not a lot of low points. But that was not achieved through an interest in ‘pop culture’, but rather through an interest in art (and business).

Yamamoto

PDX, October 20 2005

I finally saw the new PDX space in the Pearl. They somehow managed to maintain the old feeling, which I liked.

That feeling has as much to do with the gallerist as much as the work. Jane Beebe ran an intimate space before, very hands on. And even though she has a lot more square footage now, that quiet and comfort is still there.

The inaugural exhibition plays a big part too – small, almost wayward photographs by Masao Yamamoto. They look old and appropriated, but there is no literature (that I saw) to indicate that they are. Lovely unframed squares and rectangles of the patina, hung pell-mell on the walls, as if it were someone’s bedroom (actually Anne Frank’s bedroom in Amsterdam comes to mind, though the pics there are of family members and movie stars).

You have to get close to the pictures, as close as you would have had to be in the old space. Then the table with the box full of photographs was another PDX touch – art as in artifact or document, something the gallerist has often done. I really liked that touch.

Authenticity, October 18 2005

The New York Times produced a magazine on beauty in which there is an interview with Tom Ford. Most of it is surface quibbling about what beauty products to use, but his closing remarks were based in something to interest me a lot lately: authenticity.

He talked about how he wanted to avoid a slick and sleek design for a perfume bottle and instead went for an older, sweeter route, as it felt more genuine. He spoke of how young people instinctively find items which seem to be not over-worked or over-designed or too cleverly marketed, in search of something ‘authentic’.

That word has come up several times for me lately in terms of art. It’s a conversation you could have around music too, if you were qualified, for the situation of cool wannabes vs. the real thing is alive and well. It’s just not that easy for me to discern. I feel it more than know it.

Recently I was hanging with an artist who has a very discerning eye for photography via her knowledge of its history. We were looking at some work I had been approached with and I was trying to figure out why I was just not convinced. “It seems like a record sleeve,” I said, and I did not mean the masterpieces like the Banana cover or the White Album, clearly committed ideas. It was well done and all but it seemed like edgy lifestyle marketing.

My friend said that while the work was ‘edgy’, it still had to appeal and did not want to offend. The chance to engage in meaningful ways was very limited. It did not feel authentic.

On a different note, another friend asked me why a certain artist was so popular, with his simple, almost naïve drawing style. She didn’t get it. I offered that it was his realness which made him so sought after. A natural with no grand ambitions produces something almost home-style in a very slick, overeducated art world, very conscience of itself and every move. He feels authentic, with an approach like what art history has been made of, doing what he wants or must do, as opposed to what he thinks will get him somewhere.

*, October 16 2005

Ellen George has a lovely exhibition up at the Archer Gallery in Vancouver. This show is called * and it is up through Oct. 23rd.

The opening, October 14 2005

Last night was a completely successful opening for both TJ Norris and Randy Moe. It was nonstop till way past the end time, with an unusual mix of lots of family members from all parts of the country mixed with older gay men and then some usual art world suspects. It felt warm – sort of unusual for art show. And because I had help, I could enjoy it. Plus those red dots just kept coming.

Steve Reade

Steve Reade offered to pour the wine. Plus I now have an intern named Zoë, a new girl in town and I’m hoping she can take some of the hours off my schedule.

Many of the subjects of Randy’s portraits were in attendance and I will create page of party pictures when I can, subjects with their portraits and installation views of Nucleo.

The only really uncomfortable moment for me was when several people ganged up on me and asked me why I did not purchase my own portrait, for yes, there was one. The thing is complex in my mind. One Eva in the house is enough. What’s going on in my head, I can see in my eyes of the portrait and hey, it’s not all easy-breezy.

Larry Shlim had nice things to say about it and he’s the one who bought it. I had remarked that I could see a B-movie actress quality to it, a high drama worthy of someone like Susan Hayward in I Want to Live! He immediately added: “Cindy Sherman.”

my own Berlin wall, October 13 2005

A post at Modern Kicks, taken from the blog at WFMU, reminded me of one of my favorite bands. I have a long (if private) relationship with the Buzzcocks. Even the day of that post at Modern Kicks, I had been listening to them.

Yea, you can say that the Pistols and the Clash were the more important bands, but it was the Buzzcocks that I played over and over and over again. I wasn’t alone. When Tim Kerr and Thor Lindsay opened up their record store and called it Singles Going Steady, that was no coincidence. They were crazy about that band too.

at Singles Going Steady, 1981

I made several portraits of Pete Shelley over the years (as above). As I worked in a record store where they made an appearance (Aquarius in SF), I was able to have him sign one of them. And all during the dance craze of the 80s when he made tunes like Homosapiens, I was still a big fan.

As the years drew on, my ears developed tinnitus and I rarely gave them an opportunity to ring for weeks. But in 1989 I saw that the Buzzcocks were playing and I made it a point to go. Strange venue too: the old Studio 54.

The whole thing was ominous. It was 1989 and the Berlin wall had just come down. Like the day before or something like that.

Videos were playing of the wall coming down, being torn apart. They were something between newsreels and theatre since it all had been so recent. The DJ played great favorites like Holidays in the Sun and the crowd went wild.

I remember feeling kind of confused when the first band came on. They were supposedly some hot band from Canada but all the long hair and dreadlocks really turned me off. Looking back, this was premonitions of Grunge, a movement that said it was into punk but did not want to work at style.

Then the Buzzcocks came on. They kicked that new bands ass so bad, I can’t tell you. Their guitars were better than ever and on top of that, they looked so hot. In their suits and cool haircuts.

(This was also the week my own Berlin Wall came down. I had orgasm via intercourse for the first time. The world changed. You may think: “Girl what took you so long?” but Dan Savage will tell you that only 25% of all women get off that way. ‘Tis true. So if you get every single woman off, they’re faking. Hate to break that news to you. I could give seminars. Stop watching sex scenes in movies made by men and stop pounding us.)

So yeah, back to that Berlin wall. It came down. I always imagined it happening to a Buzzcocks soundtrack.

with the Randies, 1980

October 11 2005

One time I posted a photograph from ‘the olden days’ and Carolyn Zick said: “We need to see more pictures like that.”

I don’t really have too many. But Randy gave me this one to scan the other day. I had mentioned before that he had the first punk band in town – so new they could not play. It was a fictional band really.

But eventually there really was a playing Randy and the Randies, made up of Jennifer LoBianco (the original guitarist for the NeoBoys), Phillip Zimmerman, Steve Reade and of course, Randy on drums.

What I’m doing here I don’t even remember. Looks like I’m reading some poetry with the band. It’s 1980 and definitely one of my best hairstyles – shaved on the sides like a helmet, half black and half white.

Randy and I cut a record with Bill Mscichowski maybe a year later for Trap records… we named ourselves Drum Bunny… I think it’s still available at the Wiper's website, as Greg Sage produced the record.

Right now Randy is also hoping to gather all the various recordings of the Randies into a CD, which I’ll definitely play on the radio when I can.

Promenade (Parquest) FG197 by Robert Yoder

Robert Yoder, October 7 2005

After the Affair, the wind was taken out of my sails. I still have a gallery to run and a radio show to do, so it’s not like I can go hide. But there is no way I can keep up on all of the great art stuff happening in Portland right now.

Still, I can make a short walk in my downtown neighborhood. And I was completely rewarded by the back rooms of Froelick, which held some incredible montages by Robert Yoder. I mean my admiration is profuse. I was knocked out.

The sharpness might not be for everyone, but I’m an art history girl and could see so many sources – and ones I like – in work that is still clearly original. Information on the website says the work refers to a house by Le Corbu, and I can see that.

But what I saw even more was El Lizzitsky. Maybe Rodchenko too; it was all very Russian to me. And that is no bad thing, especially if you can update it completely and make it your own.

It was not always clear to me what was maybe a found material and what was not. It almost looked like he made paintings and cut them up, that’s how much they were his own.

I was especially fond of this one pink piece, so inventive. I was told it was made from a Chanel ad. No wonder I liked it!

Tom Cramer by Randy Moe

TC, October 5 2005

This is sort of Tom Cramer month, who not only fills both rooms at the Mark Woolley Gallery, but fills another space, a new space, of Woolley’s across town.

You wonder if any artist could pull this off, especially one so exposed as Cramer has been over the years. I think for about twenty years he has been consistently showing here, highly visible. I’ve written before about what a small community it is here and how that can feel limiting.

Sky Poem by Tom Cramer

But Tom transcends it all by making work which continually surprises, yet builds and pushes his groove. I didn’t really expect anything particular when I walked in. I was just blown away by the hard work, the devotion, the glimmer and shine and yet no slickness, the terribly successful combination between wood and metal -- Wilhelm Reich would approve. Perhaps indeed Tom Cramer’s work functions as a sort of Orgone accumulator.

Colette, October 4 2005

I have a big hat, very large brim, circa 1915, which I will wear to the Tom Cramer party tonight. I’ve had it for over 25 years and always think of Colette when I wear it.

It's been awhile since I picked up a Colette novel and I'm not even sure if I have read them all. It is actually a small comfort to think there might be one or two works of hers waiting for me. For I love love love Colette.

In college I started with her and she is a dream for any young woman to read. Rather similar to Joni Mitchell in that she speaks of a wonderfully scandalous, sexy and creative life which she goes out on her own to explore.

Her novels came out originally under her husband's name but he could not keep the glory and the credit for too long. Colette was a great force to reckon with.

She became a dancehall star, was nude on the stage, a celebrity of the media and someone who wrote freely about bisexuality and love of all sorts. She wore a lot of kohl around her eyes, knew Chanel and every other French VIP, had lovers 30 years younger when she was old. And had lovers 30 years older when she was young.

Colette took a heroine from childhood through school and then marriage in the Claudine series, all my favorites. I learned a lot about Paris through Claudine and kept her in mind, even retraced her steps through the Rue Jacob, when I first went in 1977.

She covers just about every age, including the older woman dealing with the younger man. Or rather, just dealing . Ah Colette. Beautiful eyes, like the fox she often compared herself to.

And she wore all kinds of hats and costumes.

The Affair, October 3 2005

I have posted a page of some of the photographs I took on Saturday at the Affair. I hope I got everyone’s name right.

It ain’t over, October 1 2005

Last night was the opening of the Affair and I had such a wonderful time.

I wasn’t really counting on that. As sort of a rebel rouser, I sometimes enter places with my breath a little held back, not sure what is what. Plus I was really hoping that Augen Gallery would have one of my pieces in their room, but there were no guarantees on that at all.

But there it was, hung next to a group of Joseph Albers prints. Very soon I’m going to write a bit on Albers (as I have done before, in November 2004), as I am collecting one of those prints. But I hardly saw them in that room. I was just so thrilled to see my painting there.

Ta-Dah! By Zach Kircher

The conversation that went the furthest that night with me was with Zach Kircher, who showed not long ago at the now-closed Savage Art Resources and whose work I like a lot. I couldn’t canvas half of it now, but something to get me thinking was a statement he related made by a curator here, something to the effect of: “If you haven’t made it by 35, you’re not going to.”

This comes from a 29 year old who is seeing things from her here and now. And while there is no doubt that if you make it early, the rest is much easier and assured, I don’t think history has played out to her way of thinking at all – especially when it comes to women artists.

No one gave a shit about the 35 year old Louis Bourgeois, who is a beyond hot now. Same with the 35 year old Agnes Martin. And while I am not on anyone’s radar in NYC, I am on yours now, wherever you are – because you’re reading this -- and I’ll bet I was not at 35. In fact I’ve got the feeling that while I have shown art since the 70s, the best is yet to come. Sure, I could be the exception, but the art world is full of those.

This statement particularly struck me in light of news reported by the New York Times yesterday, which detailed how an artist who was ousted from a very important Pop Art show at the Guggenheim in the 60s (for making too risqué work using a naked Sal Mineo), was now bought back in at no small price.

Clearly the history of this artist is not over. In fact it ain’t over till it’s over and in this business, that’s never.

More recent entries: September 2005