Recent Sketches

California

Movement

Often I find that traveling from New York City is unnerving in its preparations and anxiety, but once actually moving away from and through some other space, bouyant and loosening. The lift of a plane or the rackety speed of a train flings the carapace of daily expectation beneath wheels, wings or feet. That being true--of course the run up to such freedom is a seemingly unending Cat-In-the Hat balancing trick of arrangements and timing. I remember as an art school student just taking off with a friend and hitch hiking to where ever--with just a small backpack and no sense of time.
Well I make better paintings now but am less fluid & spontaneous...perhaps all of that has gone into the pictures.

Birthday

For my birthday I was given this sculpture--which above is bravely sailing off over the Afghan war rug.
...and then below has alighted on the green shelves next to Virgil's cartwheel and Beth's cosmic nuclear dance.

Spring

The wanderer has returned with nothing worse than a bloody nose, bruises and a woozy head. The light you see above is spring light. It has a different quality from winter light, even if the temperature is still a bit razor-cringe.
And this is what is happening in a Brooklyn backyard:


photo: Larry Hedrick

Wandering

An old man leaves his building and decides to walk somewhere (his son's house, perhaps?). He is seen crossing the street unwisely in traffic. The police are called and he is returned to his building. Again he leaves and walks a fair way and falls. Again the police are called and take him to the hospital. I'm waiting to hear what has befallen him. My brother says he will call when he gets to the hospital.

March

photo: Larry Hedrick

Its the time of the fish. Its the time of contradictions, one day the sun's amorous kiss, the next a slap of bitter wind up from the harbor. Its the month of dire weather romance. A good time to bake a cake, paint another picture, and not take oneself too seriously. I, the oneself, have a history of too-serious-taking along with a sort of cavalier what-the-fuckness. Total Pisces.
I salute all the other popcorn brains out there! The finned hither and therers, the lookers for jewels in the ambient chaos.
Personally I run over my birthday on the 15, along with the ghost of Julius (et tu, Wolff?). Smack in the middle of winter and spring tongue tied in a wet, muddy embrace.

Aerial Video

from Above the Belt

Pisces Meelee

The snow and the stars---on fire escapes, sky and inside the studio on guitars and old, aluminum-covered blackboards....

talking art

When I was kid we use to catch fireflies. Once someone scraped one on the street. Although it died, its clear green-white light kept glowing in a brief angelic scrawl on the night asphalt.
This is how I think of painting when I'm not thinking of actual imagery. A cosmic, wordless one-liner drawn on purpose by mistake. That's the brush stroke. That's the beginning and the last movement.
Often places ask for an artist's statement. Its suppose to sum up your work like a Hollywood movie pitch, but with bigger words and less clarity.
I never know what to say. I can tell stories about individual pictures. I can describe dreams that have resulted in pictures. I can even build you a wedding cake of metaphors that actually tastes good.
But the light-song of the fireflies death is written on summer's blackboard.
That's why I paint.

events on Church Street

Britt Nhi Sarah



Carla Cantrelle reading



Charlotte




Kris Ollness

all photos: Jan Meissner

more from last night

all photos: Jan Meissner

Aerialists

Last night we had a performance/party here. Here is a photo (http://janmeissner.net) of myself and student, Charlotte, who has been working on the trapeze for almost 3 years. Note those perfectly pointed toes!
more to follow....

Morning Rigging

I have always loved rigging. It seems such heavy jewelry, and yet the lines are so thin against the largeness of normal supportive materiality. You know--the earth, the pavement, the seat in the subway. They are line drawings in the air that bodies will inhabit.
This is the rigging for my client this morning who will work in one hoop and then move to both, swinging , and yes, missing both walls and all of the paintings.

Adrenalin Junkies

Saw The Wrestler tonight. I have a long history of extreme physical things, from professional aerialist to martial artist. Not to mention all the tree climbing when I was a kid. I only don't do it now because my body would break. And because painting turns out to be just as exciting.
But watching the movie tonight I was struck by how much sense it made to me...even all the really bloody, tearing-the-flesh stuff. In the midst of all that comes a deep pathos for the guy, who truly is a one-trick pony. Of course Picasso was one of those and so was Proust, and I think that is the core of it. Purity of intent and practice, in whatever form, has a perfect shape. It fills in all the crevices of that life with the juice that is available.

The Naked Guitar

My friend, Craig, who custom makes guitars, brought this one over for me to paint. It is so innocent without its strings and certain parts masked. It will hang for a while and I will look at it.
Meanwhile my painting seems very happy hanging next to it...




At the other end of the space the amaryllis is slowly unfolding, its shimmery deep red petals exuding a certain velvety cat paw anemone thingness.




All else is normal. Trapeze, paintings & juggling balls carrying their weight in terms of color.
I seem to need a fair amount of it around me.

amaryllic protagonist

So here on the top of my green shelf is a sentence with the amaryllis as the active subject...it is blooming. The other characters are good words themselves and I think the cartwheel is pretty verby.
If you step back to include the cliff of books you're moving into novel territory, or at least a long story. Including the fish definitely adds a few chapters although I'm not sure where they'd go...before or after the blooming and the cartwheeling.
I like the tipped orange glass box as some sort of punctuation.

out the window

Across the street the trees are white in the midst of February grey as the snow comes down and down trying to adhere.
Later the sky has descended into the street and blurred the air:

Break and Find

So here is the painting so far, maybe finished, maybe tweakable. To talk much about it I would need a garbage bag of scrabble pieces upended in a pile on the floor, to form a similar melange of real and reflected illusion in real and gravitationally created words.


...meanwhile out the window this is what happens:

New Jewels

Today I went out to Brooklyn to visit Sally and string beads. She had also made chocolate (very) bread pudding which was deadly and delicious. On top of the two strands of beads I was already wearing I strung and added these. Aren't the orange ones yummy like marmalade or life savers? The magpie in me has never quite worn itself out. You see me eyeing some bit of sparkle on the sidewalk or in the shop window, head tilted and wings poised for the dart and snatch.
Yesterday I went to see the Bonnard show at the Met. Another guy who never got over the infatuation with color and prismatic happenings. The paintings are wonderful.