sink or swim

for the past three weeks, my personal output of art has been nill. i have been working on commissioned works and just have not had any ideas for my own pieces. money has been short which of course leads to stress. then there are days like today.

angela and i went to st. louis to sell some of her bags to a local green store, home eco. on the way to the city, we stopped at our local cafe for a quick coffee. while there, the cafe received a phone call from a person who had met me there nearly two years ago, inquiring about my contact info. strange, since i haven't worked there for so long, but she knew that i still frequent the shop and was using some investigative skills to track me down. i just happened to be there when she called so they just gave me the phone. this person, moira, has always seemed to take an interest in my art, ever since my first show at picasso's two years ago. she had invited me to participate in a contest that i dropped the ball on, and so i assumed she thought i was flaky. which i guess i am sometimes, so no feelings hurt. then, nearly two years later, i am talking to her about an upcoming bike race, tour de winghaven.

she is offering me the opportunity to design the poster for the event. this may not sound like much, but it is huge. she wants me to paint a picture that will then be used for promotions for this race, which is on it's way to becoming quite a large event, entering into the arena of international cycling events. posters, wine labels, print ads are just part of what this image will be used for. on top of that, i get paid for the job and am allowed to keep the original. this is amazing. now, i am not a cyclist, so why the excitement?

well, it is simple. every person i know that is a cycle enthusiast claims to feel a transcendental experience at one time or another on a bike. it is a form of meditation. in fact, everyone i know who cycles seems to become some sort of junkie for it. which is something i know a little about. so, on this level i can connect to cycling. it is much like painting. a solo effort that challenges not just the body but the mind and spirit of a person. at any rate i am excited for this job. i already started working on a large scale piece that will develop into something that i will consider for the job.

the other great thing about this is, i get to have a sort of art show in conjunction with the race. there will be literally thousands of people at this event and it's surrounding events, most of whom will be interested to see what the artist who designed the poster is up to. this is a great chance to introduce my work to a whole different group of people than have ever seen what i do.

i also met a great opportunity while in the city. across the street from home eco, in south city saint louis, there is a great corner building that is for rent. the location and size is perfect for a gallery. so i ent to an ajjoining italian imports grocery store that is ran by the same man who owns the space. i spoke to him briefly about the possibility of a gallery and he seemed sincerely interested. he also makes the best meatball sandwich i have ever had from any restaurant. turns out he is the president of the neighborhood business association and they are looking for artists to bring into the neighborhood. it is nice to know that people are starting to see the benefits of having local artists. we bring business and a sense of self, of culture, wherever we are.

historically speaking, anytime a large group of artists move into an affordable area, the neighborhood is quickly transformed into a hotspot. look at the bowery in new york, chelsea, lower east side, northeast portland. all of these areas were once rundown and thus affordable for artists to live and work. no they are some of the most prized real estate in the country. well, apparently people are getting the hint that art is a necessary and vital part of life, and not just for artists. so i am going to work hard at making this work out and this time next year i may be running my own gallery.

i also scored one more commission for some coffee bag paintings for a local minister. what a strange day. here is an example of a coffee bag painting. painted on recycled burlap coffee bags. this one is a portrait of a dear friend, kevin francis xavier callahan.

margaret kilgallen

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.
-gilda radner



i came across an, apparently old, episode of art:21 tonight. this was a clip on two artists whom i had never heard of and decided to watch. barry mcgee and margaret kilgallen, two san francisco based artists, who i later learned were married. both have a sense of folk art, and claim this to be their greatest influence, though from two different times. margaret is heavily moved by traditional folk art. art that doesn't know itself as such. hand painted signs, typography, advertisements. barry is a graffiti artist. the modern folk art. i call it folk art because it serves the purpose of public viewing. sure, it is seen as an eyesore to most people, and is illegal in all fifty states, but it is still the most vibrant art form alive today. there is no payment for it's work, there are stiff penalties for it's implication, and modern ad agencies exploit the shit out of it as a way to reach the youth of today.

entrepreneur

criminal



so to the point of this spillage of thought: margaret kilgallen.
she is brilliant in the video, skilled with ingenuity. she is clearly going to become a great artist someday. she is dead. she died a couple of weeks after the birth of her daughter, from complications of breast cancer. this fucked me up.

now, death is something i have come to know intimately in my life. a lot of my friends and family have died, some of "natural" deaths and some of drug overdoses or violence. i accept death and in fact herald it as a beautiful part of life. i usually don't mourn in the traditional since but celebrate the life. then i read that a woman i do not even know, would never have known, died so young and it fucked me up. she just seemed so alive in the video. so maybe the thing fucking me up is that she is so vibrant, and now dead, and there are so many who are alive and will be alive for a very long time that never grace upon that level of living. i question myself and my own life. am i living it.

here i am at 2 am, typing a fucking blog entry with a studio full of paint and canvas and i am here, typing. not that this isn't somehow a creative endeavor, but seriously, i am staring at pixels, watching a life on youtube, and there goes another rubber tree plant.

concerning the spiritual in art - kandinsky

kandinsky's respondeo ut the world of art, in his time, to the past, and for the future of art is widely considered one of the greatest documents on art by an artist. sure, i'll accept that. however, i believe this is more of an assault on the condition of the human spirit than a treatise on the state of art.

kandinsky reiterates, many times, his disgust for the broad acceptance of and reverence towards "stagnate art". as an artist himself, he is quite aware of the vast differences between what the critics and buyers are going in for, and what the artists are doing. he lays out, quite brutally, his own foundation of the future of art. making claims that, the future will hold an art that is un-seeable to the eye, but glaring to the soul. it will have to consist then, of images from within, not without the human field of perception. he is calling for the abandonment of the recognizable, often cliche materialism that academic art of his time heralded as high.

there is nothing lower than a bland reproduction of a bland person in a bland setting. according to kandinsky. this was 191o, and was thus the manual for abstraction that would spawn an art movement that has shaken everything the art world made for thousands of years before it, to it's very core.


kandinsky battles the dominant paradigm of art theory that art should reflect nature, thereby being a discourse with our natural life and thus the voice of divinity. he argues that only true art, free from external form, can be divined and relate to the world, in fact more than that, help the world to progress into a truly spiritual world. he sites many contemporary poets, painters and philosophers, including mme. blavastky philosophy, though she merely developed an idea based upon , credited by hitler as the mother of the aryanhindu teachings she picked while in india. kandisnky is clearly a very well educated and passionate man, albeit angry as all hell.

he seems to, at times, get lost in his own poetic symbolism and dive off of cliffs that are too hard to climb back to. (how was that for poetic irony) he has a chapter called the movement of the triangle, in which he forms a triangle based upon levels of spiritual growth. what is it with metaphysical writers that makes them use obscure geometric charts to illustrate an idea. see ken wilbur if you are not sure what i mean. the chapter wraps up nicely and he makes some very clear points, but the beginning is very slow going and clogged with imagery too complex for his simple implication. he seems to focus on the art that is not spiritual, trying to show by absence the art that is. he sites many styles and trends in art at the time that seem to portray stillborn representations of human life. art, in his and my eye, is to relate the human condition to the future generations that they may understand where we lived. this book is just shy of one hundred years old, and still it is valid in modern conversation.


where wassily had impressionists, we have pop, where he had vase on table with fruit, we have a fucking dead tiger shark in formaldehyde. does the art of today really reflect our universal subconscious. will a fifty million dollar, diamond encrusted skull save the soul of anyone tomorrow, or today for that matter, and still this is what we know as our contemporaries. sure we have our jenny savilles,who is a mind staggering painter, and let us not overlook them, god forbid we let another van gogh slip away. but the damien hirsts are killing me. now, just today i hear about marla olmstead, the four year old abstract expressionist prodigy, whose work is compared to pollock, and dekooning.

marla is all the buzz right now. a four year old whose father is paints, has the spotlight as genius of painting. is this art? is it commodity? nit sch? what do i know. i do know some of the stuff of hers is very cool, and most likely, if seen by unwitting eyes, would be hailed as great work by one who truly suffered and now understands life with color. not sure what i think about that, just an interesting topic right now. what would wassily say? i am sure a part of him would see the beauty and innocence and then the spiritual side of her pictures. but the purist in him would denounce her "work" as simply the play thing of a child, which it is.


all in all, the book really is refreshing in that is a statement of sincerity about art. it is rare that we read a book about art theory that as actually written by an artist. most are like parenting books written by childless doctors. this, however is the real deal. kandinsky is one of the most famous artists of the 20th century, also one of the most prolific writers on art. the book is not finely tuned, but it's rawness is it's energy.

farbstudie quadrate - wassily kandinsky
note kandisnky's influence on contemporaries such as chuck close, who is famed for super-realism, or photo-realism, which completely disembarks from the course set by kandinsky himself. oh the ways we dig our graves and how we praise the soil!



side-note: i will not link damien hirst's name in my blog. if you are curious what his work is like, go to a shopping mall and ask an old woman to kick you in the genitals, you will get more out of that experience, i am sure of this.

zeitgeist

one of the most important, informative and horrific films i have ever seen. go to www.zeitgeistmovie.com for more information.

the sky position - tom blood

"Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality."
james joyce


I received this book by Tom Blood, former portland poetic comrade of mine, about a year ago, for the purpose of doing a review. Okay, I realize that a year seems like a long time, especially considering the size of the book, coming in at 80 pages in quarter-book size. So I must apologize to Marriage Records, and ask that they take a moment to hear my case.

I first heard Tom Blood read in portland at a reading that I hosted called the subterranean beat revival. it was a basement bar reading, clouded with smoke and the poets were mostly ex slam gone beat poets, performing with the backing of live jazz. it was not an any way predictable, but after it's honeymoon, it was just another reading, with just some more poets. then Tom Blood came in.

he took the stage in an awkward manner, spoke in stuttered phrasing, moved in a robotic fashion, stepping around the stage as if in some sort of line dance induced haze and spouted the most provocative and surreal poetry that i have ever heard. he was captivating, from all points. performance, voice, and he was reading what i can only describe as true poetry. no pandering. no cliche. just simple, fucked up truth. i was amazed, and still am to this day. i asked Tom for a book, and he gave me a short stack of papers clipped together with an industrial paper clip. the cover had two green velvet dots on it. no words. i asked him what the title was and he looked at me sincerely and said..."two dots". okay.

the book was passed from friend to friend for months and every person exclaimed the founding of a portland genius. then tom seemingly disappeared. i never heard much from him. then, about two years later i find that tom blood has a new book, the sky position, published by marriage records. there is a call for reviews so i contact marriage, with much excitement, in hopes of reviewing this book. they send me a copy of the book with it's cdr companion, and this is where a journey began. here it is in short:

i began reading dylan thomas when i was roughly 12 years old. the film dead poets society was my introduction and the darkness of do not go gentle into that good night grabbed my chubby ass like priest during lent. beyond that poem, though, thomas left me lost, clamoring for understanding in a sea of thick metaphor. of course i would quote him and pretend i knew what poetry was, but truly i only knew the words. then, 15 years later, i am reading through a collected thomas edition, and it clicks. i stand up and grab angela exclaiming, "I GET IT, I GET DYLAN THOMAS!" here is a lifetime worth of work, why then it would take me any less than 16 years to get it. james joyce said of finnegan's wake, "it took me twelve years to write it, it should take you twelve years to read it." exactly jimmy. so now here i am holding tom blood's new book. an expert on dylan thomas, wink wink, i should understand any poetry at first read.

no.

again, no no no.

this book has plagued me for a year now, looming over my bookshelf as a constant reminder of my poetic inadequacies. it is my raven, repeating "you're a moron" in lieu of "nevermore". i had tried to listen to the cd, in my home, alone, no distractions, and still nothing. a lot of people would have written it off and moved on, but i am not a lot of people, no, i am a compulsive asshole who will not be bullied by any literature. bring it on "the cantos of ezra pound", you wordy prick, i am ready for you!

so today i decide to break from my studio and take a walk to the cafe. cafes make me think of portland so i go to grab a poetry book, because poetry also makes me think of portland, and there it is, louder than ever "YOU'RE A MORON, YOU'RE A MORON!" tom blood's sky position is challenging me. so i grab it and decide too to take the cd in my walkman. i step out and press play and begin the best walk i have taken in years.

this is true poetry, and i get it. my "short passage through the mechanical universe" is in motion. blood, a traveller, frequent pedestrian, is really just taking notes as he moves through the day. it makes sense now. i swear, it made me feel that i have been walking with my eyes closed for a very long time when i heard him reading these words. i used to see like this daily. it used to be my life, to observe, and beyond observe, test the waters of daily life. take note of the telephone poles and their obesity. so i reread the book in a very short time when i got to the cafe. the poems are powerful in that they assume no authority, the assume no power over life. it is simply tom's way of saying, "i am watching, and fucking closely, and i am telling everyone, world!"

i would recommend to any lover of poetry and/or challenges, to order a copy today. order two and gift one to somebody in need of a reminder that the world exists outside of text messages and myspace. tom blood has put together a grand mystery and i have unriddled his tongue. you can order a copy here.

bob dylan: iconoclast h. christ

so i went to pearly gates and found the bolts rusted. seeing bob dylan is an experience, sure, but i am not sure what was learned. let me put this into context.
a friend of angela and myself gave us two tickets to see elvis costello and bob dylan at the fox theater in st. louis on monday night. fucking rad! i wanted to see this show but the tickets were a little pricey and the show sold out very quickly. but, the cosmos looked out and gave us admission. great. so we arrive at the theater, which is breathtakingly gorgeous, about ten minutes before the show starts which allowed for a cigarette and a little people watching. i was curious who would be there and if you could see a split in the fan base. not that costello and dylan have vast differences in fan population, but i was looking out for the mods there for elvis, and the poli-lits there for dylan. it was strange, the crowd was overwhelmingly normal looking. like christmas shoppers, or people at an airport. kids, parents, grandparents. all there for the same thing. granted it was a pretty caucasian audience, but this is middle america right? what can i expect.

we find our seats, with help from a geriatric usher who looks as if they could have built this fucking theater, and squeeze in to our seats. amos lee was on stage and i as happy to see he was opening because i had never heard him before but had heard good things. his group was phenomenal. folk, blues, soul, country, it was all there being lead by this jeff buckley meets curtis mayfield in a fistfight with joe cocker. it was perfect. he played for about 45 minutes and i was very impressed. very. then the stage was cleared and out comes a rack of five acoustic guitars and a small practice amp. seriously the amp was maybe 100 watts. i turn to angela and ask where the piano is. no piano. expecting elvis costello, solo, to be mostly balladeerish renditions of his pop catalogue, and possibly some of his jazz songs he recorded a few years back, actually he topped the jazz charts, the pop charts and the indie charts at the same time that year, a feat not achieved since miles davis. but here it was, just guitars. okay. then the man walked out. classic black suit, and the signature buddy hollies. it was on. he was placing solo, on an acoustic, but i swear he had an invisible british soul band behind him and he was wailing a gretsch. pure rock and roll energy. you could tell he truly loved being there that night. he loves music, the crowd loves music, he loves the crowd. it was a good performance, full of bows and jokes and political commentary. people seem to forget or overlook just how much politics is masked within his music. it seems like snotty pop rock but the lyrics are angry and desperate. he reminded me of that fact. then with a gracious bow and wave, he was gone.
then comes dylan. full band, three guitars, bass, drums, keyboards, and more leather than a gay bar in 77. the first song rocks into a slightly recognizable riff, but it is a little off. the sound is bad and the musicians aren't tight. who cares though, it's dylan. then he begins to sing...well, let me rephrase, he speaks the lyrics over the music. the problem was, you couldn't understand a thing he said. the reason i love dylan is the lyrics, and they are gone, fallen into the mash of bad country music. so if the lyrics are gone, and the music is bad, why are people cheering?

it is simple. dylan is an icon, says the man next to me. well, sure, but an icon of music, and this is horrible. it just seems like he doesn't care. if not, then why do it. he doesn't need the money. is he trying to kill his image. possibly, but these people won't let it die. they clap like fucking seals for fish after every song. he is either laughing to himself or crying. i can't decide.

will work to avoid working

push play on this video and listen while you read this post

ding dong the wac is dead. yes, after exactly one year of being in the "warehouse" i am now moved out. in fact, all of us are moved out. thursday night, we received notice that we had 24 hours to vacate the premises, everything that remained would be thrown into dumpsters. this was at 9 pm and quite unexpected, being that i had not been to the warehouse in a few weeks. it was just dumb luck that i was there that night, working on a show smithey and i are collaborating on this week.
apparently, the lease holder of the warehouse had notice for months to be out of the space, and being the case, decided to no longer pay rent, nor inform the artists whose belongings took up about 3000 sq ft, and still he remained, his belongings untouched. either defiant or apathetic, he takes the cake in the realm of poor business ethics.

we, the wac artists, came together though, in a rough and tumble night, not so different from any other night at the wac when an event is at hand, and pulled together to "save the good silverware" if you will. it was nice to be in the warehouse with a majority of the artists at one time again. we had moments of nostalgia, fueled by the adrenaline of the imposing hand of doom that periodically spanked our melancholic asses into gear. we shared a lot in that space, as artists, as friends, as people. i found it quite apropos that we started with a fury and ended in similar fashion. maybe this is what artists really need today, a sense of urgency.

we need to feel that pressing force around us, telling us it cannot work, and we need vindication. we are a group of odd kids, most whose childhood was not so full of innocent endeavors, and this art world is a world that heralds the innocence of color. the joy that centers itself around the playful tendencies of creation. we bask in that glow and we are suddenly okay. we seem to forget that, i think. at least i do. i forget when i am puzzling over brush size and metaphor that i am simply fucking painting. i am doing what third graders do every day between recess and show and tell. i am allowed to play here. that is why i don't clock in. that is why i no longer carry a resume around with me. it is because i can play. and i am damn good at playing when i want to be. it is not always this way though.

most days i sit in my studio, chain smoke marlboro 27's, listen to curtis mayfield or the refused, and ask myself if anyone gives a shit, or if they should. my only consolation is that i give a shit, and my family gives a shit, and my daughter says it is "bootifull daddy" and if that is the case then there must be others out there who feel that too. right? if it is sincere, then people will connect. in fact, i would wager that the only time people can truly connect is when they find the sincerity. it is tough to be sincere when you feel that your voice is a forgery, but you have to know sometimes it doesn't feel that way, and that is what i do this for. because sometimes, i am dancing in that studio and i am singing out loud, and sometimes it just feels right.

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.