Art I'm Seeing #50, VMFA 02

The art collection of the VMFA is the other good reason to visit the museum.

And here are some of my favorite works from today's visit.

I have long loved the works of Rockwell Kent, and this image from his visits to Greenland is really a powerful example of his paintings from and about a seminal artistic and personal time in his life.

Charles Burchfield, a regional watercolorist and long time favorite of mine has this excellent mid-career work on display. In an accompanying quote, Burchfield journals about his fascination with houses and the way they seem to always be watching you as you walk through a neighborhood.

From here enter the 21st Century galleries and WOW.

This Kehinde Wiley portrait is simply stunning. The regal, yet playful bearing of the subject cast against faux velvet background creates an act of resilient joy. From the first time I saw one of Wiley's portraits, I was a fan. And this work marks only my second encounter with one in the flesh and it's an experience. The canvas is monumental in its proportions accentuating the idea that you are standing before royalty.

My first introduction to the meticulous paintings of Julie Mehretu was at an exhibit dedicated to her at the Berkeley Museum of Art in California back in the summer of 2003. Her works are intricate "maps" of floating geometric and iconic shapes and images. In some ways they remind of Al Held only gone 3D!

A final delightful find is this painting by Heidi Trepanier. The beauty is not in the confusion, but in the way her use of detail creates organic meaning in the face of random or chaotic circumstances. It's a fascinating and beautiful abstract painting.

August Summer Sky

A gift for my friend, Dean!

Good Nutrition!

Remember: Always enjoy your fruits and vegetables every day! Five times a day, or so I've heard.... Happy, cheeky Wednesday!

What I'm Watching #247

Nothing like a pair of shorts to cleanse the palate.

Vanilla by Joseph Graham is the top bill on the DVD, but it fails to deliver even an inkling of what the cover blurbs describes. It's not horrible, but certainly forgettable.

The companion piece is A Little Comfort. In it's original french, Juste un Peu de Réconfort is placed on as a side B offering yet clearly is the superior movie. It is a sweet coming of age story about a gay teen who's friends are like teenagers everywhere. Not exactly a sympathetic crowd, but one with at least one surprise in it. It's a wonderful short film.

What I'm Watching #246

Okay in all fairness, I only watched the first 13 minutes of this film. It was all I could stomach. You name it, and it sucked. I bet I could grab a dozen strangers from the bus stop below my home and find more credible actors. And the dialogue!? Painful! This is exactly why there needs to be a GLBT theatre 3000 on the Logo Channel with campy puppets in drag to do commentary while the sound is off. This film is dying to enjoy such a treatment!

What I'm Watching #245

Just spent a delightful 2 hours being introduced to Indonesian cinema via the self-described satirical comedy, Arisan. As the title implies, the film is loosely set around an arisan, or social gathering of women who meet to have lunch and gossip. It is to one such group that Andien invites her friend Meimei who invites her male friend Sakti and from this trio we are tossed from one moment to the next picking up a host of well-played supporting characters all along the way. In the dervish of their lives, we discover, infidelity, adultery writ large, infertility, a closeted gay man, drug use, patience, loyalty, forgiveness, acceptance and the abiding bonds of friendship.

It's a sweet, endearing film, well acted, with solid production values. Add to that an interesting and attractive cast of actors, most notably Tora Sudiro in the roll of Sakti, and it really rounds out as a delightful feel-good movie.

As an aside, it also holds the honor of being the first Indonesian film to have an "openly gay kiss between two male leads" in 2003 -- don't hold your breath for it; however, I read this on the jacket cover after watching the DVD and honestly I don't remember where or when in the film that that happened! But hey, it's Indonesia, were even it's moderate more modernity driven Muslim masses, and Christian contingents have their fundamentalist fringes, too.

Good Fences....GREAT fences!

Today's Sermon #32

A new friend reminded me of this temple in T'aichung, T'aiwan that I visited back in the summer of 1981. I included this explanation in my description of it to him: "Just scoped this off of the internet. They've painted the old boy gold! He was grey weathered concrete back when I first encountered him, and he had a swallow's nest under his nose with bird guano running down his lip. It gave him the look of a crazy uncle who needed a kleenex!"

BUDDHA IN GLORY

Center of all centers, core of cores
almond self-enclosed and growing sweet
all this universe, to the furthest stars
and beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875 - 1926
translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell

Lego Research: Gas Station

When I build something with my legos, there's usually been a time of mental preparation and more often than not research. Sometimes a single building proves all of the inspiration I need to go forward with an idea, but usually it involves looking at lots of structures, a quest in which I try to imagine as many possibilities as I can.

My next project will be a gas station. I already own a couple decades worth of Lego gas station models. Models for Shell and for the faux Lego brand, Octane. In the end, the creation I make this time will go with Octane as it's corporate name, and that's just out of the practical consideration that present and future Lego® products will no doubt cater to this logo. And my thinking about it's design is to make it both vintage and modern at the same time. To create the look of a vintage structure that has been retro-fitted for the 21st century. So with that in mind I went in search of inspiration.

This little gem is found in the St. John's neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. I love the Art Deco elements.

The tile work on this "Gulf" station is awesome and I love the neon lights over the pumps, too! Remember: Gulf became BP (British Petroleum) -- They might do themselves a huge PR favor and return to that label as a reflection of their commitment to make right what their hubris and greed has made foul....but I digress! Great vintage station.

Magnolia was a new brand of gasoline to me. This station is in Shamrock, Texas, and it appears to be a southern company and clearly a subsidiary of Standard Oil, the oil company founded by the Rockefellers et. al. and based in Cleveland, Ohio. I love the standard oil pegasus symbol.

When you think about it, what's more ubiquitous on the landscape of buildings than gas stations? Churches? Fast food joints? Today gas stations favor the uniformity of fast food joints, but there was a time when they were more akin to the church house in their design. Oh sure, you know a church by it's steeple, and you knew a gas station by its pumps, but there was a freedom to move beyond that simple required element and explore the possible, incorporate the idiosyncratic zeitgeist of the time and place.

Perhaps no example that I found embodies this more than this teapot (dome) filling station in Zillah, Washington. Built in 1922, and still in use today, it claims to be the oldest continuously operating gas station in the United States. And don't you love the outhouse in the background! Created as a commentary on the Teapot Dome scandal of the Warren G. Harding administration, I seriously doubt if most people stopping by to filler up today would have an ounce of recognition as to it's ironic inception.

Along with photos, I also stumbled upon this set of architectural drawings. Way, way cool.

Now, to the mod- ern. And Shell really has some excep- tional ex- amples of this. For instance, this purple arches station in Canada.

But one of my favorite discoveries is this urban station in Hiroshima, Japan. Designed to "fit" a very limited space, the hoses dangle down from the canopy and the pumps are completely eliminated from the station. I presume transactions occur via the attendant or a computer credit card station conveniently located on the exterior of some portion of the wall. And look, it even has a car wash!

Let's finish my review of gas stations in Los Angeles. After all, it is the most notoriously car bound metropolis on the planet, and the home of a couple of very cutting edge gas stations.

Does any station featured in this post offer a more amazing subject for a work of art? And I know, it's not an easy question. But just look at this beautiful photograph.

Designed by the Kanner Architects and build in 2009, it's design is so evocative of the expressway it sits beside that you half expect an 18-wheeler to come flying off of the canopy!

Holy Frank Gehry, Batman! This BP station, also in Los Angeles (the corner of Olympic and Robertson) says so many things, and some are certainly unintended. Besides the homage to architect super star Frank Gehry, I get the feel of a transformer about to come to life and walk away! And the uber dominant billboard? What's up with that? But still it is a wonderful gas station.

Stay tuned to see where all of this leads me!

Ah, Spectral Image!

Me! Circa 1965 from what I can tell. And the thing is, I don't remember ever seeing this photo before, yet, it's been in a drawer full of photos that I put there (and have gone through many times since) back in 1994....

Shakespeare Saturday

PUCK. Thou speakest aright:
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon, and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal;
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And 'tailor' cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.

Art I'm Seeing #48

Art can be understood in so many ways. Broadly defined it still most likely fits objects found in traditional museums and picture frames that hang on our walls. While both of these expectations are true and reasonable, neither begins to encompass the definition of art that is to be found at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. And honestly, you'd be hard pressed to discover another museum like it in the world. Yes, that's what I said, THE WORLD.

From the moment you set foot on it's three building campus, you pretty much realize that you're in for a unique experience. And you won't be disappointed.

As the poster says: you're about to see some "Fantastic Art." It's art that the art establishment of traditional museums by and large has little interest in. It's art created by people who are driven to be creative both in spite of and because of their worst demons and their better angles. It's art that comes from a place in the human soul that obsesses, the human psyche that believes, and the human heart that desires.

The current special exhibition is entitled, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." Each year the museum chooses a theme and curates a major exhibition around various aspects of that theme. The blurb about this exhibition from the AVAM website really best describes this year's special exhibition: "The quest for human rights and the search for personal fulfillment, as proposed in the 1776 American Declaration of Independence, provide the starting point for this international exhibition. Works by the last surviving descendant of the Tsars of Russia, Iroquois Indians, French Revolutionaries, illegal immigrants, Algerian War veterans, Guantanamo Bay detainees, Holocaust survivors, incarcerated prisoners, African-American civil rights activists and Iraqi doctors are among the 86 visionary artists to be featured."

I found the simple drawings a Yemeni prisoner held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to be the most profoundly moving. The were simple geometric drawings with floral patterns. Around the edges were the crossed out red ink stamp prints that read "Top Secret". The man drew them as gifts to his lawyers for helping him seek his freedom.

Besides the special exhibition, there are several works from the relatively humble yet amazing permanent collection on display. The most well known of which is this model of the USS Lusitania made entirely of tooth picks....thousands and thousands of toothpicks. The artist is Chicagoan, Wayne Kusy and he made this in his apartment between 1993 and 1994. It really is a wonder to behold.

Besides the special exhibition and permanent collection, there are also single room or unique artist exhibitions. And for me, the centenary celebration of the paintings of Eugene Von Bruenchenhein was the standout event of my visit. Born in 1910, the bulk of the works presented here were created in the 1950's. They are paintings that suggest imagery, and made with tremendous technical prowess via the application of and then manipulation of paint upon a surface. They are simply amazing and like nothing I would have ever imagined were made in the 1950's.

My friend and I ended our visit with lunch at the re-opened top floor restaurant "Mr. Rain's Fun House". We shared an appetizer of Pho noodles with pheasant sausage. She had the Lamb burger with mint-mayo, and I went for the pulled pork sandwich. We both chose the mildly spicy side of Asian slaw. With tap water and ice teas the bill came to $35.

Once an amazing place from which to enjoy the inner harbor, the vista is now restricted by a phalanx of upscale condos, so the best view is that of Federal Hill itself.
And there is also the amazing Giant WhirliGig sculpture by Vollis Simpson to marvel at.

There are so many things to see when visiting Baltimore, but none of them is as completely unique as the American Visionary Art Museum.

Lego City Rehab

Here's my latest work. It's actually a building that I first constructed in December of 2008, and was over time terribly disappointed in.

In it's original form, it was built to fit a corner lot AND a 16 x 32 rectangular plate. At 3 stories tall, it was just too ambitious and always felt awkwardly thin and top heavy.

In redesigning it, I placed it on a more standard 32 x 32 peg plate, and I reduced it's depth by one brick. This was really key in making it a much more solid structure. The original dimensions included a even brick count width with an odd brick count depth. This difference really impacted the brick choices that I had to develop a pattern that would be both strong and versatile. The new configuration made standardizing the construction so much easier and gave the entire structure a much more secure and solid final outcome. With all my buildings, it is modular and can be separated into 4 parts including the roof. Stairs give access from one floor to another, and I will be finishing the street level with a pizzeria. The first and long sought after for my Lego City which already has an American Diner, a Chinese Restaurant, a French Cafe, an American Cafe, a Vegan Restaurant, and an ice cream parlor. I treat my little plastic people right!

What I'm Watching #244

Watched this 2007 film from the Philippines earlier today. It's made up of a series of interior monologue that lead to soft porn interludes all of which turn out to be only fantasies. through each interlude, we are shown a fleeting character who then becomes the subject of the next interior monologue and fantasy. Adolescent and prurient, I fast forwarded through most of it; why fiddle with vanilla porn, when the real thing is so ubiquitous? And if you have the money and materials to make a movie, why not make one that actually says something?

Honest Tea, NOT!

The other day in the midst of the heat I stopped by a local CVS pharmacy and bought a bottle of Honest Tea to quench my thirst. The very same innocuous looking bottle you now see to the right of this text. When I had occasion to touch it's bottom, imagine my surprise when I discovered that there wasn't one. The entire thing below the label is nothing but a thin loop of space creating the illusion (and very effectively, I might add) that the bottle is a normal top to bottom container when, in fact, it's quite hollow for quite a distance from the bottom up to and past some of the base of the label.
The label contains the phrase "Just a tad sweet". They might consider adding to it, "Just a tad honest," too!

Art I'm Seeing #47

The real reason for my visit to the National Gallery of Art on Monday was to tour the photo exhibition of Allen Ginsburg: Beat Memories.

I think of Ginsberg less as a poet than a witness. A voyeur of a movement, a fly on the wall as history surrounded him. And these photographs completely affirm that view of his significance. Allen lived a fairly long life and produced 2 or three noteworthy poems, ironic that his penchant with a little camera should so suddenly and complete trump his presence as a poet, but it does.

The images show us some of the major players of the beatnik movement. Iconoclastic figures in their full glory. Players like Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Neal Cassidy, Gregory Corzo, and Peter Orlovsky. Young bucks in the prime of their youth and virility.

There is another and more powerful aspect to the photos: They don't stop there. Ginsberg continued to snap away at his friends long after their "15 minutes" were over. Glory becomes what it will: grace, pathos, tragedy...those realities are all, also, here in these photos. And with each imagine there are Ginsberg's candid and interesting hand written notes, talk about poetry.

Like this one of a seemingly winded Jack Kerouac from 1964, a scant decade after his glory days, and only 5 years before his death in 1969. The caption reads: "Jack Kerouac the last time he visited my apartment 704 East 5th Street, N. Y. C., he looked by then like his late father, red-faced corpulent W. C. Fields shuddering with mortal horror, grimacing on G. M. T. I'd brought back from visiting Timothy Leary at Millbrook Psychedelic Community, Fall 1964."

Other pictures are even more intimate. Images of family members and familiar abodes, like this one.

The caption reads: "I sat for decades at morning breakfast tea looking out my kitchen window; one day recognized my own world the familiar backyard, a giant wet brick-walled under-sea Atlantis garden, waving oilanthus ("stinkweed") "Trees of Heaven," with chimney pots along avenue A topped by Stuyvesant Town apartments' upper floors two blocks distant on 14th street, I focus'd on the raindrops along the clothesline. "Things are symbols of themselves," said Chögyom Trungps, Rinpoche. New York City August 18, 1984"

Entering into this exhibition is no less entering into a shrine or cathedral. The ground feels holy. The images are of the saints that look down upon the living to offer us their blessings as we seek to make sense of life, too. The one difference? We walk in the shadows of their grace.

A Classic Pose

Mid-week Funny, perhaps....

The New Yorker has a caption-less cartoon at the back of each issue and invites readers to submit their ideas. I love this in principle, and spend a little time each issue trying to think of one, usually to no avail.

Here's the latest cartoon challenge, and I think I came up with a good one (I included my caption with the cartoon.)

They pick three from the gazillions that are submitted, and then the readers vote for a winner. You might want to visit them online and offer your own entree. And if mine is miraculously chosen, I'll definitely let you know!

Art I'm Seeing #46

Anyone who has ever visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. will surely recognize these works. What they probably wouldn't know is that they came to the gallery from the same bequeathed collection. The collection of Maud and Chester Dale truly forms the foundation of it's best known and loved French Impressionist paintings. Iconic works by others like Picasso, Braque and the Bellows below also belonged to this voracious duo of connoisseurs.

The exhibit closes this coming weekend, and the works will again be scattered through the museum.







La Mousmé (1888), Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890)







The Boating Party (1893/94), Mary Cassatt (1844 - 1926)






Blue Morning (1909), George Bellows (1882 - 1925)

Art I'm Seeing #45

Pre-War Pageant (1913), Marsden Hartley (1877-1943)

End of the Parade, Coatsville, Pa. (1920), Charles Demuth (1883-1935)


The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. has a very intimate and inspiring exhibition of 20 works in the genre of American Modernism from the collection of Deborah and Ed Shein on display in its East Wing through January 2, 2011. Included are nearly all of the turn of the century movers and shakers in the art world and the works are not one-offs by any means. The Hartley from his Pre-War series (which included his iconic homage to his unrequited love Karl von Freyburg), a sensual O'Keeffe of an uvula-esque interior of a black iris called "Dark Iris", and a nearly luminous work by Italian immigrant, Joseph Stella entitled, "A Child's Prayer" are all stand alone master works. If an innocent asked about American Modernism, one could not do better than to tour this collection with them. Gratitude in abundance to the Sheins for sharing it so generous with me.