bit of self

Wolff on youtube

Bird Fall

This week I decided to start right in again with paint--taking some of my birds from the freezer and doing multiple portraits. The top guy is a hummingbird that my friend, Indigo, sent me in the mail, its coffin a business envelope. The bottom one I found one day walking home from Chinatown. I saw it as I was going west and scooped it up into my purse without stopping. I admit to a certain chagrin at picking up dead bodies off the street.
Meanwhile my son and I went to see the second and third parts of The Human Condition. It is still in the front room of my brain. I would rate it three blades through the heart.

Kali Yuga dance

Here in the Kali Yuga epoch Shiva and Kali dance the dance of light. In spite of myself this painting has come out the way it has, dragging me behind it, oblivious to any attempt on my part to effect its trajectory. At one point I did try to assume some sort of control and modified the composition and content. I had to paint it all out. Towards the end it threatened to spin out of control and splash itself on the surrounding walls. It allowed me to nudge here and there: tailoring a skintight set of duds.
...you may click to enlarge

summer in the city

The dark shadows punched in the garden's green like wormholes, the light sliding off the leaves above these recesses, and the intricate tissue of flowers...
...and now after several days back in the city within a pool of molten air--last night my son and I trekked out to see the first part of The Human Condition, a three hour plus movie directed by Kobayashi and starring Tatsuya Nakadai. The walk to Film Forum was past groups of people who hovered like fish off their favorite coral reefs, bits of jewelry glinting as they shifted to and away from one another. Various eateries gave off red glows and murmurs.
The film was grueling but beautiful. We plan to see the other two parts in the next few days, which brings the entire running time to almost ten hours.
So it is to live in Gotham/Atlantis in the summer.

The Garden

Depraved Life

Since the summer heat has hit the clients have swept off to other locals. Thus I spend my days painting, watching episodes of Ashes to Ashes, and then more painting. I have two fans on and the fire escape door open. The heat sizzles across the asphalt as the afternoon sun hits my building and presses its greedy face against all the windows. Sometimes when my shoulders are tired from keeping the paintbrush moving I lie on the green floor and look up at the studio lights. Some of them have a sparkly pink backwash. Sometimes I sit on the trapeze and look at the painting from an elevated position. It can be useful.
I've always thought that that place (the place where the trapeze hangs in the middle of the space) is one of the best. Ultimate Fung Shui seating.
...so the summer goes...

important information from Brooklyn

According to my friend, Robert Morales, the best line in philosophy is:


Slippery when wet

Turner & waterfalls

Yesterday, before I went to see the waterfalls I went to the Met to see the Turner show. Room after room of paint slathered, scrubbed, glazed, slurred, and meticulously detailed against the magic of image (either eye or brain). An illusionist of great ability and also wonderful largess. Here is the exact line where the sleeve of that dead soldier is among the murk of dark red sienna, here is the intimate illumination of the wave's curve before it reaches the flat, scrumbled beach, and here is the barely described sea monster in the huge, paled immensity of an imagined sea. And so, then off to see water plummeting from metal scaffolds into the East River and the harbor of NYC:

Wolff & the Waterfalls

Downtown tonight.....to the South Street Seaport with its hordes of tourists, screaming black Jews for Jesus (I think that's what they were for), very loud rock and roll, and plenty of commerce I went with my son to take a boat tour of Olafur Eliasson's Waterfalls:












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dogs in Jamaica Plains

At my friend's house in Jamaica Plains live numerous birds and 2 dogs.
While visiting I got the chance to draw the canines...

Zillion:




and Pushkin:

tiny fur helicopeter attacked by tiny suede chopper

photo by: Larry Hedrick
metaphor assist by: American Fez

under trees, under umbrella

Out in Framingham, Massachusetts I walked with my father through a garden in the woods. It was raining so I carried a large umbrella that we both used. My Dad is in his mid 80's. He walks slowly and is curved over. The umbrella would pull against the lower branches and the spilled water would rattle on its cloth. We went down a hill amid the old woods and cultivated plants, around a lily pond and back up the hill. No one else was there. The leaves were shiny with rain. When I wanted to take a picture he would hold the umbrella for us.

Bees in Brooklyn

Out in Brooklyn Sally's garden is flourishing, her turtle is wandering, and the blooms are drawing in the tiny fur helicopters.
photos: Larry Hedrick

Fafhrd & The Gray Mouser

What I did upstate in between forays into the green jungle of my garden and various domestic intrigueries was read Fritz Leiber's sword and sorcery series. I have all of them and every time I go up I read through some more. I've read them many times, but each time they get better. The colors seem brighter, the humor funnier and the adventures more ridiculous and simultaneously more riveting. Much better than what most summer movies try to do. I love these two guys. They seem to be exaggerations of people I know. They have strange versions of relationships I've had, almost had, wanted to have. I can't imagine Harrison's Viriconium without Lankhmar, nor Gaiman's Sandman without Leiber's structural dance of Gods and interweaving worlds.