2 Views

Outside on Church Street they are doing a fashion shoot, having the models pretend to walk across the street over and over.....





Inside I have been working on the new painting, pretending that Shiva and Kali are dancing on the wall together forever and forever...

Performance at Church Street Studio

Last night we had a performance of my aerial students.

Emma:



Jan Meissner

Jan Meissner



Jan Meissner



Jan Meissner


Charlotte:


Jan Meissner

Larry Hedrick




Jan Meissner


Jan Meissner



Britt Nhi Sarah:



Jan Meissner

Jan Meissner
Jan Meissner

Larry Hedrick


Larry Hedrick






Jan Meissner


Jan Meissner

Brooklyn Garden Guru

Out in Brooklyn my friend, Sally, has been creating a garden for several years. One of the first things she made was a small pond. She told a friend that she had read that if your pond is just right the frogs will come. He scoffed. She got fish for her pond and adopted a turtle. All flourished. Recently she began to hear, well, frog noises. People doubted. They, again, scoffed.
But out in Brooklyn the frog has come to Sally's pond. And a bullfrog at that!

Fire Escape Views

After the the green free form of my garden and the tangle of spring upstate the grey linears of NYC are especially strong in the overcast shroud...
peering off the fire escape along with the pigeons I view my Friday morning geometries:



...looking north is more narrow and darker. Being in New York involves a lot of outdoor living, but the change from in to out is always dramatic, unlike less urban places where the transition is softer. One's nest away from the street usually has a strong individual aura that sets it apart from the overwhelming mass persona on the street. The morning's emptier streets are such a delight--one becomes lighter and physically expanded as your psyche relaxes to interplay with space, leaving off the usual dance of constant interweaving and pin--ball sensitivity.

Green

...upstate sitting in the garden watching the bits of tree fluff float in lazy parabolas...I find myself dreamily melted into the gold green...



I wander between garden and studio in between bouts of wild grass hacking and weed pulling...




the magic window aperture between the two:

...in the studio

I started the under drawing on the new painting (click to enlarge):



...and then worked on it again the next day:




looking in the other direction...out the window in the late afternoon light:

Hero(ines) & poets on the Hudson

Looking south by southwest past a blue lantern you can just see the Statue of Liberty holding her post in the harbor:


Looking at New Jersey:



Ulysses standing guard on the edge of Manhattan:






Seamus Heaney's poem: Death of a Naturalist inscribed on the rim of a pool:

starting again

So now I've got another blank surface to work on. I always love the empty space before I begin to mark it up with lines and color. It has all of my fantastic head pictures and none of my hesitancy or imperfect lapse with the brush. Here it is, having mute conversations with those around it already full of themselves.