dolores

Spanish for pain.
There's been a lot of it since the last time I wrote.
It could be the climate here, perhaps the fact that i might have pushed myself too hard. I dunno.
A pinched nerve? Sciatica? Arthritis?
I have a left hand that now has a real hard time zipping up zippers. Carving wood has turned into a contest of sorts, with the wood usually winning.
My legs ache a lot and getting up some nights and mornings has been murderous, the pain shooting up the back down the leg and then doing another relay. Several times it has almost brought me to the floor. Thank goodness for this old pencil post bed-something I can hold onto wincing and trying not to cry out for fear of waking Laura…
This all came on me sometime in September /October. The hand problem had been building and I was aware of it, but all of sudden, the pain seemed to get a green light and it just blossomed (or would a more appropriate word be exploded?). But the back/leg thing seemed to come on strong while I was still working at the Horse Shelter-I thought it was the mucking that did me in. After all, my math skills tell me that between Sarah and myself, there was about 3000 pounds of manure being shoveled, lifted and dumped every day. Sure, I only worked two days-but I s'pose it brought on something else.
After all, in NJ I lifted some pretty serious weight daily at my last job…
I go to see a physical therapist in a few days, but I've little faith that they will help at all. Almost every day, the little cracks I've develop in my good hand (winter, dryness, age?) hinder me even further. The right hand is almost as useless as the left. I take little comfort that this lasts only through the winter months.
Well, I just wanted to cry on somebody's shoulder.
Here's a story and a quote I heard today from The Writer's Almanac:

Writer and comedian Sam Levenson grew up in a Jewish section of Brooklyn and later said, "It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.'"

Ok…
Here's a sculpture I'm (almost) finished with (yet untitled) that serves as an homage to writer Bruno Schultz and his drawings of Undula.

Lou Reed

Lou Reed pushed against everything.

I was a bit suspicious of him and the Velvet Underground, what being backed by Warhol and all, but their music was strange and somehow appealing-the lyrics not only fresh, but way different than what I'd been hearing...You have to credit Andy with his backing of the VU and Basquiat, among others. Strange to think of Warhol as an arts backer, but he certainly loved his stars...when Reed came out with Songs for Drella, I realized the depth of their connection.

I never saw Lou Reed in Blairstown, NJ (where I moved to after my time in NYC) but understood that he lived there for a while. Strange for anyone to land there from NYC, but it "worked for me" and I guess for Reed-for a time, anyway.

I got to see the German chanteuse Nico at the Mudd Club. She was ornery and quite large -playing her fiddle, she refused to go on unless the crowd "stopped making all that fucking noise" (she screamed in that heavy accent)...and give her a modicum of respect. The now-fat and aging singer got neither-she passed a few years after that.

Thief!!!

"Good composers borrow,  great ones steal" Igor Stravinsky

Much like old-school students who copy the old masters paintings, yours truly has put this same strategy to use ostensibly to help kick-start my on-again, off-again interest in painting.
I used this "method" aways back, trying my damnedest to modify the work so that I could claim it as my own. It's still stolen: I long to be as talented as the artist I've "borrowed" from, but no dice, it just ain't happenin'. I keep hoping that painting the genius that I see before me will instill something-maybe a smidgeon or a trace- of what I admire and maybe cause some sort of spontaneous combustion of painting talent. Uh-uh...at least so far. Nose to grindstone, I'll keep the copying going.
Maybe something will eventually flake off.

Darker thoughts

Here’s my thought for the day, and a dark one it is.

The next, upcoming generation does not see art the same way we –meaning my generation-does. The stuff I make is permanent and substantial (think solid as opposed to thinking of that word as a value). What the art or amusement of the young looks like is much more transient- computer images, like Utube and all those throwaway funny pictures-images used once and then disposed.  The fact of the matter is, there is SO much visual stimulation out there, why stick with one thing? As William Burroughs wrote in Nova Express, “Images. Millions of images. That's what I eat.”

Why stay monogamous, when there is so much out there to sate your taste? We have those picture “frames” that move through your snapshot collection (ain't it nice to cuddle and coo over the relatives without the use of your hands?) and monster TVs that dominate a wall with an ever-changing, multi-media show. Even the news mags/rags carry a plethora of images far more interesting and emotionally moving than a static thing you hang on your wall. After all, the thing does not move, does not speak and it needs occasional cleaning. Why be married to a dinosaur?

As for my older audience, rapidly marching to communal homes in which to spend their final years-they all seem to be downsizing-moving to much smaller quarters…

And for those those in between, so many now are in danger of losing their jobs, once thought permanent (a word that is rapidly losing its value). If owning a home is risky, then what possessions can you count as keepsakes? A keepsake or anything sentimental means nothing when forced to become nomads for survival.

I don't know that traditional art that has substance will ever disappear, but the art museums will become similar to libraries. Who needs reference books when you can get all the information you need from your smartphone? And novels? Simply visit the internet, pay your money, and download whatever to your e-reader.

For me this is scary stuff-but it is the present and not what is to come. I can't imagine what's around the corner, considering how fast things are moving day-to-day. I s'pose it's great to be a witness to it all, but there's a point when I'd like to know that there are brakes-but there are no brakes.

Exclusion

Dunno if it’s just a sense of tribalism, or perhaps it’s my skewed misperception, but I feel excluded from the local crowd.  Last night at the kick-off for the open studio tour, both Laura and I compared our “notes” after the “doo” and found that we both felt  overdressed for the event. And certainly out of place, even though it seems easy to individually relate to many of the souls there. I can’t imagine that we are too old for the thing, as there are plenty of folks our age in attendance. We seem to need more “grunge” in our attire when in town. It does not help that the main center of all activity in the tiny town is a huge bar/roadhouse. Speaking for myself, bars are places I’ve never felt very comfortable in –I cant help feelings of disdain whenever I see one or two individuals inevitably “holding court” in these joints.

All that being said, Laura phrased the main event there perfectly: the auction seemed a bit like high-school, with the “popular’ folk getting higher bids. Truth be told, I found much of the work to be sub-par and the remainder simply adequate. The auctioneer’s helper pronounced one artists’ work as pretty good, but anything done by this artist, he said,  (a female who hung from a set of chains in a recent acrobatic performance) was terrific. ‘Nuff said?

I plan to skip this event next year unless my sales are better than expected (and I expect next to nothing). I prefer to stick to self-promotion rather than try and gain favor with this crew.

It seems as though Sarah, who I worked with at the Horse Shelter, said it all-if you don’t hang out and drink at this townie bar, you ain’t nobody. We are feeling the effects of small town life. Yet I never felt this in Blairstown-maybe cause I never really ventured forth with my work? Dunno, but we will test this out in the upcoming time to come.

This is the piece I donated to the benefit auction-"Seernore".

An Allowance

I'll assume that no one is reading this.
I just looked at some of my older work -I had to put it on disks, as there is simply no better way to store it-it is hard to believe that I've done all that I've done. sure, I came across a few "dogs" (pardon me, Johnny, Sharkie, Chopper, Delilah , Rhonda), but I can't even remember so much of what I've done!
There are simply too many sculptures. To think that this all started when I left NYC, which is now a few years back. I wonder what I would have accumulated if I hadn't spent all those years there spinning my wheels (actually, I still have some of that work-I did all these lil' topographic models painted with WWII camouflage...).
I'll go back to being modest real soon, but seeing all these forgotten pieces (and I only looked at 3 disks) impressed the hell out of me. And here's the thing:  I want to do so much more-I'm still thinking that I'll always know that I had a good life if I die having loads of projects waiting to be done...al out of this brain-or wherever the stuff comes from.

Just a couple of pieces here, maybe bad photos, but still all from this hand...

Thinking about painting and painting surfaces

In the last missive, I spoke about a recent painted piece. 

I used a partially finished wooden head to paint on and realized (then and now) that this was a device to make it easier to start the painting-that is, the act of picking up a brush, unscrewing the top from the tube of oil paint and applying the color-there was no other more complex forethought or planned design preceding the pigment to surface.
Although first happy with the painting, I now know I was really more happy with the act of painting and using the color and brush. I now think the painting mediocre-or maybe the notion that, in combination with the sculptural "crutch", it is all the more interesting...

S'pose I need a good healthy "starter" in order to paint-although I love the idea of the big stretched canvas, I seem to be allergic to all that white stuff AND the vast stretch of open space it holds. Painting it all with a tint or even black helps, but not all that much.
I'll digress and try to draw an analogy here: when I was a child and MUCH more shy and withdrawn than I am today, I used to occasionally sit on the porch of my family's suburban house in NJ. If I heard someone approaching (a concrete sidewalk told all) from down the block, I'd go around to the back of the house and get out of sight. This shyness also took over when a car passed by-I'd find some excuse to look down or away during the second or two it took the vehicle to pass. So here's the analogue: big, white open spaces = fear for the exposed me. Maybe it's too far to reach, but since I've battled with painting all my life, no rock remains unturned. I realize that doing a painting exercise every day (read, facing that big  white surface daily) would get me over this problem, but I'm far too impatient for this-and, there is a lot of 3D work to get done.

Yesterday,in the studio, I hunted for another "crutch" surface on which to paint. It brought to mind my father, who had the problem of never starting his work-when cleaning out the family house after his death, I found tons of "practice" painting and carving-the most worthless scrap would serve as a staging area for him-yet he left behind -untouched- so much in the way of usable paper and canvas surfaces and carvable pieces of wood. There was a certain sadness in seeing just how tentative/insecure he was, but this is another story.

To a certain degree, I see myself looking for "partially started" surfaces-that is, combining my father's idea of permitting himself to use the "worthless" or the throw away on which to work- and trying to get something that is already marked up- an almost started canvas or bit of wood surface-ideally something that "nature" or circumstances has "worked" on in order to continue that work with my own hand.

I suppose that this is not unlike some of my sculptural work, which incorporates time-worn bits from the world with my own carvings and scribblings.

Something new?

I've been running up a few new sculptures on my Facebook page, but this one is still in the formative stage-or, should I say, it's an older pc that I felt never hit quite right.
Two days ago, I thought of covering the pc in tin, but I resisted and slathered it with modeling paste. Then yesterday, I dragged out oil paint and this was the result. I don't love it, but I don't hate it either. I hope that I can say that there is more coming and really mean it. The surface was really hard to start painting onto-my thoughts at the moment was that I was going to leave the studio unhappy (to have messed up a potentially decent sculpture with a covering of stuff that would have to dry before I could do anything to change it.  How locked in I am with making stuff that works...that is crowd-pleasing---there's no way I can call myself brave or self-challenging-but in this instance I feel like I made a momentary break-away.
Starting with a black base (it was white-modeling paste-hours before I started this pc), I added and swept bits of paint across, trying to keep my mind fairly blank-or, more to the point concentrating ONLY on the paint and the action of my brush. I added white liberally and rubbed out some areas back to black where I felt the paint was becoming a field. Later, I scraped away both paint and base to uncover the white undersurface. I was conscious of "doodling" with the brush- almost as if i were on the phone and scribbling away. Anyhow, the experience was pretty energizing. My thoughts for the future is to make up a "different" surface (i.e., not a canvas or rectangle shape) on which to do some more "doodling"...

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Hands

Guess I'm showing my age and that age is affecting my work. I have been reducing the amount of carving I'm doing lately-I love to carve wood, but the truth be told, it hurts my hands like crazy.
S'pose it's the arthritis factor (I thought arthritis did not exist here in the SouthWest-seems as if anything, It's gotten much worse out here) that has made me turn to modeling.
I've been using modeling paste with pretty favorable results and have combined this in turning to an old medium that I've always battled: oil paint.
Strange to now have an answer for folks that ask me about the move out here to New Mexico.
"So how do you think it has affected your work?"
Eventually, I feel that I'll get a little bolder with both the paint and the paste. When I first started making armatures, I made one that was pretty wild-using nylon twine and loose wire on a wooden base (in order to have something to nail/staple to)...I'm still looking at that one, almost in awe of its rawness. Today, I actually filled in some of the bigger holes on the thing. But it is still pretty wild and way out of character for lil' ol' me. Most of my other armatures have been your basic head shape, with nuances created more by the medium and the fact that I can't control it too rigidly...
I'm loathe to think about painting this thing that I s'pose is a head-thing is, I don't want to "tame" it-there is no need to recreate it unless I do something that is just as spontaneous. Of course, by definition, it woludn't/couldn't be the same.
The modeling paste heads I've created in the aftermath of this first piece certainly have a touch that is different from my carved heads, but they are certainly much less under control. How to retain that degree of spontaneity and still know WTF you are doing...or not doing...
Here is the first one-the crazy one-a "work in progress"...and a more finished head, painted with oil (also a work in progress)...

Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied. (Henry George)

And so it is with yours truly. 

The feeling of stagnation and some kind of a depression have crept over me. I can attribute some of this to the fact that I've been so out of touch with other artists or at least with discussions about art (and the dissatisfaction-read, the constant struggle- it brings to me)...

Looking around my studio, only a few pieces stand out for me as those not coming from the hands of a hack.

Don't get me wrong-at the same time, I find very little work by others "out there" that shows me work or hard, true thought...and, of course, those I consider to be worthy peers are creating wonderful masterpieces next to the trash that issues from my hand.

Guston wrote "Sometimes I scrape off a lot. You have on the floor, like cow dung in the field, this big glob of paint... and it's just a lot of inert matter, inert paint. Then I look back at the canvas, and it's not inert - it's active, moving and living. "

I'm missing this-I need that stuff that gets left on the canvas-all that I've got is the cow dung. Am I not working hard enough? Or am I just going through the motions, working being like breathing-or worse, like sleeping? Just because those arms and legs are moving (and making things) does not mean that any sort of good work is present...or that I am actually engaged and/or thinking. Some days it seems as though my ability to run on automatic is, well, automatic.

All this dissatisfaction can act like a springboard, but I am becoming suspicious of these sorts of knee-jerk reactions in that they may only keep the machine going, leaving the mind behind (perhaps to deal with the to-do items or the grocery list).

How do I ensure use of all my facilities/faculties?

How do I keep thinking (really thinking)?

I have a great ability to re-channel my (abstract) thinking into the practical and in this process, there is loss...I almost want to say that when two and two stop adding up to four(when the real risky stuff might start) , I (automatically) switch back to easier thought. Like all those folks out there who choose the light and happy over anything requiring real contemplation...("I don't want a Holiday in the sun...")

Perhaps I don't have the capacity to take things further. I've always had the desire to be several things other than what I am-for instance, a good painter (I can't get past the three-dimensional) and a good thinker (I see myself as only two or three baby steps past "duh").

Signed,
I'm not satisfied

Showtime

I have always been here before....

I did my stint today at the Horse Shelter and must say that I'm older: the work I'm do there is physically exhausting and I'm not so sure I'm getting any sort of satisfaction out of it.
The horses are generally a pleasure to be around, but there is too little time to enjoy them-it's always a rush to get stuff done in order to get onto the next task. This is one reason to stay a volunteer-no pressure, you know?
The heat and the sun are also pretty damn hard on me...it is a pleasure to go back inside into the cool darkness after a bout of mucking and watering and feeding.
After  four hours spent at the Shelter, I went over to my studio and kept the doors open until 5- as usual, not a single visitor. Not that any of those visitors would generally be worth having the doors open for- oops, do I sound a bit bitter?
After finishing the show at Cherry Creek last weekend (and going through the usual, "Why am I here?", "Why do I subject myself to the public-to these people who are looking at me and my work as pure entertainment?") and leaving the show feeling pretty beaten down, this week has been a real challenge to recovery. This week makes me think that I'm becoming less elastic, less able to laugh off the commentary at these events, of hearing how much my work reminds people of Tim Burton or how cute they find my work: "oh, thank you-I needed a good laugh".
It's good to be out of the spotlight and back into the cool darkness.
Anonymity ain't such a bad thing.

After a long hiatus...

This is the first posting I've made since moving here to New Mexico.
The family we have here now consists of myself, Laura, Dogs Johnny(who has been with us a while now) and Sharkie and our latest additions, Claudette and Bridget-two Donkeys from the rescue in Edgewood, NM. Laura and I were married since being out here. Both of us have looked for part time work since we've been here to little avail-I presently work two days a week, caring for horses and old dogs, at minimal salary...and I'm damn lucky to have that!

It's hot out here, which I guess is news to no one. The middle of June started with a bang in that temperatures rarely have been below the 90s. We expect a little relief in July, but I'm still holding on to hear what "little" means. We will look into a whole house add-on unit to air-condition the house. So far, we put solar blinds (an immense help) to block some of the sun's rays. This was a necessity, even though we thought it was a bit extravagant at the time. The air-conditioning is the same deal: we need it if this is the flavor of the summers out here.
More coming....