it's not every day

i went, today, to the foundry arts centre in saint charles to see and review two shows. first being the quilt national show, which i could not view as it cost $6 to enter, and i did not have $6. secondly to further see don draper's show in the smaller gallery, named the ameristar gallery after ameristar casino donated funding to the arts center in a bid to clean up the name of ameristar as being one of the most evil places in missouri. no politics in this post though.

don's show, called every day ware, is a wonderful example of the true craftsman. don, a student at lindenwood university, has been an artist of some sort for years. he instructs students in the photography department and the clay department of lindenwood, is a full time member of the clay co-op at the foundry, a member of the w.a.c. and a free lance wedding photographer. the man is busy.
every day ware consists of items that one would use in their homes as a functional tool, plates, tea bowls, vases. they make no bold statement at first view. no commentary on the struggles of humanity. at first view. however, if you consider what the artist has done, as far as pricing, use of space, and sacrifice of time, there is a great statement, a proclamation in fact, to the art world , to get over yourself. don has chosen to pull in the reigns on conceptual work, and create useful products at a price that most can afford. he is returning to the roots of earthenware. the functional purpose of pottery, while still managing to show a great deal of artistic flare in his execution. pieces with names like plate 1 and plate 2, bottle neck vase, and tea bowls, leave no room for pompous interjection. they are called what they are. however, when looking into the subtleties of bottle neck vase, and moving your eye across the pocked, cracked skin, into the color changes of glazes, i found myself moved. here i am looking at an unassuming vase, and my mind is racing through my personal history. looking deeper into the cracked veneer of this clay pot, i was humbled. the subtle brushstrokes that show in dark amber vase, another piece in the show, beg your eyes for further inspection. the quirkiness of square orange vase, the prejudiced imperfections of the sake bottles, relating themselves to scars and age, the kanji-esque glaze on plates 1 and 2, allowing for a familiarity, even though i do not speak japanese, all elements that made me wish i didn't see a thousand red dots on every wall. i did not count the number of pieces sold, but i know it was greater than the number that didn't sell.

don draper has succeeded. he has created a product that is infinitely more compelling than most standard dishware, and less self aware than most "artistic" pottery. he has returned to his lineage of potters for purpose, not for profit. he has truly succeeded.

as soon as i get my hands on a camera, i will be posting pics of all of these pieces, but in the meantime, if you live in missouri, you have until the 26th of october to get to the foundry arts centre, in saint charles, to see this show. do it.

"poetry about poetry is conterfeit poetry" - ferlinghetti

so i just picked up ferlinghetti's latest book, poetry as insurgent art 2007 New Directions clothbound, at left bank books. the price was low, 12.95 for a first pressing hardback poetry book, and the size is in line with ferlinghetti's pocket poets collection he publishes under city lights. i am not sure what i was expecting, as i am never sure what to expect with ferlinghetti's work. he has made it all. poems, plays, journals, paintings, drawings, novels, and i have consumed most with the fervor of a fat kid at an eating contest. this book turned out to be in the same realm, only a little different. let me explain.

it comes in at just under 100 pages, and written in ferlinghetti's signature short line/long breath fashion. consumable. however this seems to be a re-iteration of the definition of poetry, not so much a poem. i say that tenderly as i respect ferlinghetti for his life long pursuit in writing this still unfinished book, but all respect has a level of questioning involved. is this a reminder to the slam filled, safe poetry that has come to light as of late in the mass mind that poetry simply is a suggestion to live. it is not in the face of death as a polite conversation, it is a verbal assault at death's breakfast nook. he (ferlinghetti) seems to announce and renounce his own beliefs,in a whitmanesque yawp, "do i contradict myself? very well, i contradict myself". he reminds us to listen to our own brains and from the sounds that jumble in them, create a song. if there is no sound, buddistically pronounce a grand ohm to the rhythm of the running toilets of our collective conscience. just create a sound.
basil bunting professed that "all poetry is a sound". ferlinghetti says sing. i say buy it from a local bookstore and deduce for yourself. i was quite happy to have populist manifesto in print once again, both #1 and #2 side by side for, what i believe is the first time. it is well worth the 13 bucks.
it takes me back to the time, about four years ago, that i packed up a bag of notebooks, chapbooks of friends' infinite prayers, an old hat and a can of tuna, had angela drop me at the rest stop outside of portland oregon and headed down to san francisco with the intention of meeting ferlinghetti. there is a great telling of the story on a blog of a friend i made on that hitch-hiking excursion, here. i succeeded and to this day, when i am feeling a little lost, i turn off and picture his eyes looking at me, like two marbles in a mudpuddle, rolling in the ecstatic glee that is poetry, telling me that this life is enough for any one man to go mad. just decide if you are angry mad, or crazy mad, and know that while anger is a gift, crazy is a weapon.

say goodbye to freedom fries

it has been a few days since my last post. this is for a few reasons, first being the internet connection i am "borrowing" from the hospital has been down, second being the death that i caught in my lungs this weekend. having been sick this weekend i have had time to reflect on a few thoughts in between coughs and secret nosewipes under the cushion of my couch. i got to spend some time with my friend and family member damien hugo on saturday evening. now, damien is french, not in the way every white kid was irish after house of pain came out, but french french. born and raised in france. he has good incite on working america versus france and even more specifically in the business sector. damien works a desk job, dealing with computers, what, i do not know, but that is enough of a background to know that he sits in a cubicle for 8-10 hours a day, listening to gibberish from bosses and complaints from co-workers. he likes his job, though. maybe not his work environment, but he likes what he does. he has a laundry list of comparisons to the american work ethic versus that in france. he says though, that it is becoming a rapidly decreasing distance betwixt the two. and not so much towards the better side.

one thing damien said to me was in concern to health care and how he never feared getting sick in france, if even unemployed or underemployed, he had health care no questions asked. now here i sit, unemployed, a block away from a hospital that unwittingly gives me wifi, and sick as a motherfuck. meaning i can't properly take care of my kids or even play with them. i can't go to my garage to paint, or work on getting any commissioned jobs. i can't even allow my wife time to work on her craft, which is also a form of income for our family. all for the cost of a few pills, i could be working and functioning at a regular rate, but because of our system, i am here, on my porch, hacking out lung pieces while this crazy frenchman tells me how fucked up it is that i am doing this. it got me thinking about my father.

my father has been an undereducated, overworked steelworker for all of his life. since the age of fifteen he has work for huge companies that have repeatedly sold out to foreign companies to save on labour, to dodge environmental policies, etc. he has no real job security but the loyalty of a house slave. "look boss, OUR house is burning!" he recently had a heart attack which, of course, left him out of work. he works, and has worked for fifteen years, for a company called rebsco, inc. rebsco recently cut insurance for all full time employees without proper notification. so my father was fucked. for six weeks he worried over whether or not he could even go back to work in his condition, but with no insurance, he could not afford the proper medication to help him recover. suffice to say, when the doctor gave his omniscient nod for my father to return to work, he went right back to rebsco. why?

why do we continue to place ourselves into the position to be fucked by these multibillionaires? starbucks puts local coffee shops out of business, so we keep going to starbucks. walmart hires thousands of employees at minimum wage, puts locally owned businesses on the skids, and still we flock there. my father still works for the same company that undoubtedly led to his heart failure at age 57 and still he clocks in every day, six days a week, not earning enough to withhold savings in case of a medical emergency. america, you have whored out your children long enough. they are slipping into alleyways of destitution and your casinos sell promise of escape, on arm pull at a time. where have all the ginsbergs gone? where is our chomsky? our che? our fidel? i need a lozenge america, you have run my throat dry.

thoughts on style

so yesterday was unproductive, artistically. i did have a meeting last night with stella perkins and zack smithey, two saint charles artists with whom i share a great ambition to become better artists. stella's greatest work, in my opinion, is her ability to convey femininity without a hint of the weakness that society has tended to place upon it. she excels, especially, in woodcuts. she can show the strength of being a women without the appearance of being a victim of a male-dominated culture, while at the same time allowing her figures to have grace and beauty.
zack seems to be a budding renaissance man, running the gambit from sculptural to textural and painting, crossing borders and never seeming to adhere to a particular style for too long. both artists have great ideas and we have decided to collaborate on work for a while, doing group shows and working on an installation that, if achieved, will be a full experience for the viewers but more-so for us as artists. i would like to touch on style for a moment and it's place in contemporary art.
style is both a doorway and a trapdoor at the same time, especially in a consumerist society that seems to be more impressed by logos and branding than by process or product. an artist gains notoriety for having a particular style, or a unique spin on the current trends in art and culture, but after a period of time, that style becomes passe and spent, and the work is said to repeat itself. now, there have been artists whose entire career was used on this notion. warhol for example used repetition and plagiarism as a form of art, which, in his time, was a valid commentary on the art world. he seemed to have been playing a joke on high society. the punchline was a bullet from a radical protege and popularity that led to a patriarch with warhol himself on the throne. am i saying that at a point warhol ceased to create art and started creating product? yes and no. yes he created product, but in a product based society, wouldn't the creation and mass reproduction of a product be art. is art a reflection of it's surroundings or is it the maker of it's own bed?

another example that comes to mind is motherwell, i.e. elegies to the spanish republic. for forty some years, motherwell used the same motif, more or less, and created 170 plus pictures with the title "elegy to the spanish republic. did he get locked in a movement of his own hand that led to this repitition? maybe he felt he never quite achieved the perfect composition. relying partially on chance, by use of large expressive brush strokes, allowing the drip to be used, and left to the mercy of his media, motherwell exhausted himself on the idea of large black formations, similar in aesthetics to sumi art of the orient. i don't think i have ever heard or read in any criticism that motherwell was a has-been for repainting the same picture. however, that seems to be a buzz word in contemporary circles.

as an unknown artist, still struggling to develop a voice of my own, i am constantly at battle over whether or not the current picture resembles too much of the later work. i seem to hinder my own output by questioning the brushstrokes. i hate this part of the process. i want to be able to simply create without the worries of self critique. argumentatively, i need to be working to build a portfolio so as to achieve higher accolades thereby allowing me the freedom to create more. a constant struggle of ethics, ego, and necessity.

francis bacon, willem de kooning, robert rauschenberg, picasso, diego rivera, all had distinct style to their work. i happen to love their work. why then am i afraid of style?

the shame of inspiration

so, many artists i know, or at least talk to, have torn judgements on the appearance of an artist's direct influences. some despise the give-in comparison of their work to a former master, be it picasso, basquiat, matisse, de kooning, while at the same time show no remorse in the blatant use of the tools these artists have given them. fuck that. to deny your history is to have no future.

if one were to view my work, they would instantly see my inheritances. i study the work of the aforementioned artists in depth, and by matter of course, their influence is directly noted. is there a musician alive today that has not heard the beatles? coltrane? dolly parton? doubted. and because they write a pop song in C, are they then merely a knock-off of some unattainable original sound? no.

as an artist, it is my job to connect to an idea and convey that idea to the best of my ability. i will make use of wildly popular images as well as extremely personal ones to convey a feeling that i have pertaining to that subject. this is what we do as humans, we co-opt ideas. we use colors to portray objects, just like every other artist. we use lines to define objects, but matisse is the master of line right? so it is done, move on. rothko mastered color, right, no more color. picasso mastered ego, so please start hating yourself. pollock popularized the chaos of drips, so watch your brushes! absurd.

there are art students who spend thousands of dollars and countless hours studying vermeer, only to graduate with a student show of mock outsider art. why? why should we study a technique only to abandon it completely in the name of originality? now is when you say, "well to break the rules, you have to know them". what rules, whose rules, when rules? i will say that the only rule is, metallica fucking rules! the rest of it is for jealousy and judgment. i hope this spell check is working.

you can see by my face that i look like my mother and my father, just as well, you can see in my work that i learned from my predecessors. i do not study michelangelo, i have no interest. the door he opened lead to picasso, matisse, and de kooning, who then opened doors for rauschenberg, johns, and basquiat, who in turn opened doors for me. i am not ashamed to say that the first person i recognized as a poet is jim morrison,(come on you lit fags, jump my shit about that), but it is truth. just as the first painter i connected with on a visceral level was basquiat. i will not out-grow these loves. i hope to one day develop a voice that is clear and inspirational, but i refuse to deny my father(s).

somebody blew up america

amiri baraka (leroi jones) reads Somebody Blew Up America. this is one of the most controversial poems in the last fifty years, possibly since Ginsberg's Howl. Baraka was the recipient of the honor of poet laureate of new jersey until this poem caused a stir over four lines that infer that israel may have had something to do with the 9/11 bombings. baraka, a socialist/communist, was viewed as an anti-semite. now i ask you, is being questioning and critical of a world power inherently anti-semetic just because the people of that nation state are jews? he does not once blame jewish people or culture, in fact he blames no one but poses questions that were on the minds of many people at the time following the "attack". is it possible that an outspoken black nationalist, communist, and leader of working class people has been targeted by media in a plan to discredit him? well, it worked. the governor of new jersey asked for baraka's resignation. when baraka denied this request, the gov then tried to have baraka dis-honored. meaning he would strip baraka of the title. this having no precedence, he was unable to dethrone baraka, he decided to disband the poet laureate program altogether, leaving new jersey as the only u.s. state without a poet laureate.
i spoke to baraka recently, and asked him of the charges of anti-semitism. he told me that he does not have any disdain or hatred of jews, that this claim is ridiculous but expected from those in power. whether or not you believe him to anti-semitic, the poem is great and raises a lot of valid feelings. ezra pound, largely considered america's greatest poet, was a self proclaimed anti-semite, and still we teach him in our schools and herald his poetry to be of the greatest verse penned in the english language. i wonder if we would feel the same if pound were black.

book review: DeKooning: An American Master

de Kooning is the epitome of the american artist. an immigrant to this country, he went on from poverty and anonymity to become the 20th century american master. his influence is felt in nearly every media of art today, from painting to sculpture, he is often called the american matisse. the book follows de kooning from life to death, hitting on all key parts of his life.
the great thing is the amount of background you receive, not just on de kooning but on gorky, rothko, pollock, and other artists of the abstract expressionist movement. stevens and swan leave no holes in the history. i became so attached to the characters that i found myself crying at their sometimes tragic deaths and rejoicing with their achievements.
the book is a good read in length, and large enough in size to make you look fucking smart. harry potter ain't got shit on me, so take that you fifth grade bastard, i can read big books too.
the price is a little steep but being that it garnered so many awards, every library in the country has access to it.
while reading it, i became part of a hap hazard book club, by this i mean that two other friends, who are also artists, were drawn to read the book. we would call each other at pivotal moments, asking first what page the other is on, not spoil anything, and discuss, sometimes at length, what is happening in the story. there have been few books that i have read that have gotten the attention of my friends as much as this one. it changed the way we paint, the way we think about art, view art, critique and interact with one another as artists. it laid a bit of the groundwork for the now defunct WAC. after finishing the book, i made the decision to become what could be called a career artist. this simply means that i define myself as an artist AND act on that definition. working on jobs that i don't always enjoy but do so because they are artistic ventures and any day getting paid to paint is better than a day at the office, or factory for that matter. i can feel the burden that i think a lot of artists have felt. two kids, a wife, bills, and no steady source of income. but if perseverance pays off at all, then the outcrop is well worth the harvest.

new piece

i found this fence in the alley behind my garage.
freedom for wolves - spraypaint, latex, ink and gesso
on found object. approx. 6' x 9' amen.

blah blah blah and a cha cha

myself and a bunch of jazz dudes at the bowery poetry club in NY.
the reading was at a buffalo poets gathering they do once a month.
MOOSE!

the garage

so i moved recently from a 14,000 sq. ft. open space, to a small garage in my back yard. this move has changed not only the way i work, but the also the way in which i conduct the process. let me explain.
when i had the warehouse, i could move freely about, leaving in my wake a mess of materials. this lent to having multiple projects left unfinished and a veritable ocean of trash in my studio. now i have a garage just large enough to work on one piece at a time, and many times in the process of that piece i find myself cleaning. cleaning is a good thing.

in the fifteen minutes i take to clean and smoke, i can clear my brain of all of the bullshit that clogs it up while i work on a particular piece. are the lines strong? does this make sense? is it sell-able? is that a nipple? you know, garbage. i find that my newer stuff s really quite a bit more clear. less influenced by immediate surroundings (being that there are no surroundings). now if i can conquer the personal demons of my own art history, i might be able to produce something sincere.

on the breath of death

well i guess it is becoming official. i am now an artist alone. i recently started an art collective with a group of other artists in the saint charles missouri area, that seems to have died at birth. so i moved into my garage. not a new story. artists of all types that i have encountered, be they musicians, poets or painters, all have a knack for self destruction. why? are we ingrained with a hatred of individualism that is so deep that it of course lends to self hatred? is it jealousy that develops amongst artists that causes us to separate into knitting circle fashion and destroy all threads of our common fabric? are we just not ready for socialism and all that it offers and costs? whatever it is, it is nothing new, and that is also what it allows. nothing new.