Guest Poet: Edward Grey

the eye the light


every shadow looks better than it might have
decade ago when life was more magical
but less fulfilling or maybe one might say
less untethered to the many expectations.
we age and the silver and the gray
all merge into a vision of living closer
to submerged elements brought forth
with pleasantly realized joy.
shadows persist where light goes
where images coalesce behind our eyes
but even as we creak about
groan in little bits of pain
there is surprising wonder
still to emerge
hearts and
minds 
life and life
surrounding
compounding every detail
front and center
into the break
the path
the
eye
the 
endless
light.

Dosso

I was fortunate to find an image of this painting by Dosso Dossi (from 1520) online. It was wedged inside my brain in some far-off corner of my decrepit memory. I had seen it at the National Gallery maybe 6 or 7 years ago, when I went to Washington with my gal to see a show of Venetian painting. The city had flooded right at the time we arrived. I remember going to the gallery and no sooner had we checked in our coats and umbrellas when an employee called out that we all had to scram because of flooding in an adjacent building. On our third day there the gallery re-opened and I visited the exhibition. This painting by Dossi reminded me so much of the work of my friend Ed Boccia.

Now Ed is gone and I am trying to write about his technique for a possible Catalogue Raisonne. It is never easy writing about Painting. So much of the magic is impenetrable, despite technical elements that might seem decipherable or explainable or familiar. Why does this work by Dossi remind me of Ed's paintings? Well, it is partly the way that the paint is brushed on. Partly, how the thing is structured, how elements of landscape, for example, are layered, foremost as shapes of a certain color and value, next to one another and closely attuned to the picture plane. The tension between different areas, forms, contours, lines. Also the palette and how it is balanced and unified throughout.

This work is from 1520 and yet it speaks to the universal truths that exist independent of historical time.
Its connection to paintings by Ed Boccia - who was thoroughly grounded and genetically connected to Italian painting of the period - is genuine and poetic and deep. Many in the art trade today have lost sight of the importance of these connections and of the relativity of "sophistication". Many are mired in novelty and aggrandizement and spectacle. I feel blessed to be able to bend backwards and forwards, unconvinced of the trajectory of Art History put forth in many centers of high culture.

St. Louis in 24 Hours

I left late morning on Saturday and left St. Louis late morning on Sunday - yesterday.

My trip was to see what is a memorial exhibit of paintings by my pal and mentor Ed Boccia, who passed away in September at 91 years of age. St. Louis University, which owns 100 of his paintings, put on the exhibit - lovingly and beautifully displayed.

At a wonderful dinner in a small, fine Italian restaurant Saturday evening, with Ed's daughter and son-in-law (in from LA) and his 91 year-old widow, Madeleine, we spoke about the show and Ed and the passing of time and art and career and much else. I was in a wistful, nostalgic mood.

Ed is not much known out of St. Louis because so many momentary prejudices in the Art world do not allow room for his kind of greatness: painters who understand the language of the discipline as it has passed onward over centuries and who are able to master the craft and wrestle it forward into a visual language that speaks to the personal present as well as all time. I know there are zillions of great artists out there who are fantastic at traditional mediums. But in my small universe, Ed is the best practitioner of the craft of painting that I know. I have been honored by his friendship and advice since having him as a professor at Washington University 500 years ago (so it seems...).

I do not flatter myself by comparing my work to Edward Boccia or anyone else. Yet I feel that in many ways I carry an invisible torch on into the future. I feel blessed to be able to see into Life and translate what I find into visual art. Ed compared Painting to Praying and I cannot disagree. He was fortunate to have a tenured position at a prestigious university that allowed summers off. I am fortunate to have the stubbornness to continue painting despite the lack of time and money and interest from New York galleries. I am just beginning to understand Painting after many decades of working it....the magic and mystery and illumination is still there to be discovered by those who venture into the known unknowable.

Hospital New Years

Children’s Hospital

is where

i have been

for most of

the past

two 

days.

my

daughter 

was hurting,

tests,

ultrasound showed

nothing,

catscan showed

an enlarged

appendix

plus

two

cysts.

surgery followed.

drugs galore.

a

grumpy 

daughter

in bed, in

need,

in some odd

space.

a wonderful

hospital

it is, but 

i must say

i am

overjoyed

to be

out

of 

there.

1.1.13

Half-Asleep Things

I usually wake up from sleep every night at least twice to make the old man's journey down the stairs. My dreams are as vivid, though probably more convoluted and complex, than ever, but I often can't get back to sleep right away. Sometimes I move to the couch and read for a while. Other times I lay there in bed and think about things, half-asleep.

This morning I went through an entire process of making a book about the friends and acquaintances I have in this neighborhood of Northside. I imagined a book with photos by Annie Leibowitz, featuring odd pairings of image and text, stories, self-defining quotes, shots of familiar places in the area. I know of no other neighborhood full of so many interesting people, often socially-involved, eccentric, caring, weird. So many non-traditional and same-sex pairings. Doctors and architects living next door to struggling artists and laborers. 

For almost an hour I reclined in the wee hours of our darkened bedroom fantasizing about this book. Black and white photographs. No bullshitting and no smiley-face setups.

Then, I think of the work involved. I remember how frustrated I've been for not having whole days for my own painting. I imagine trying to contact all of these people, coordinate the shoots and the interviews. I ponder the impossibility of getting Annie Leibowitz to even respond to the letter I send via some entity three times removed.

Yes, it ain't New York. So what? Even New York isn't New York anymore. I mean: Staples in Greenwich Village!? And the art scene there is dominated by Irony, with a capital 'I', stupid installation art propped up by pseudo-intellectual critical analysis. Where is Harold Rosenberg when you need him? I digress - Northside ain't New York City nor should it be. It is an anomaly within the ordinary.
Humans do their thing all over the world and culture often rises and falls inspired by the doings of the few rather than the many. I'm like so many other half-lazy slobs who dream of great things half-asleep in bed, in the wee small hours of the morning.

Further Menonaqua

this
rest, peaceful
solitude in such
sweet, breezy comfort,
in Menonaqua,
a cottage for all
times and 
everything we need
right now.
never mind what
wealth surrounds us,
we inhale
divine lake breezes,
we walk
these timeless sands,
we drink
the wine of life
and we
love
this
for always,
this place nestled so
perfectly on
Little Traverse Bay,
this shrine of 
peace
and
happiness.


8.21.12

Shh...

the Skipper had sage advice
for Gilligan,
as i have wise thoughts
to share with Curly:
you may have died,
but death can't stymie
ridiculousness.

as the anchor slips
through shallow waters,
we gather new scripts
based on old ideas,
modern as always,
locked into an eternal
struggle between
God and The Professor.

coconuts and striped
cabanas, Curly making
sand circles with his
body, this extended
mayhem endures,
not only for the
cameras, but up here
as well,
in the attic, silent,
stuffy, quiet.

shh...here comes
Ginger.



8.17.12

Lake House

sitting out here
at this lake house
i rented from friends,
the sun and sky
are glorious, the air
clear with wind
drenched by water,
the waves softly
whisper a restful
tone poem.

wealthy neighbors
won't know my
poverty and Doe's
new shiny car
will further conceal
my progressive tendencies.

this ruby red wine
in my glass
will also help
heal
some of the
inconsistencies 
of 
living.


8.12.12

Andromeda Coming

I rarely listen to the radio outside of my car.

Fridays on the way home from working there is always NPR's "Science Friday" with Ira Flatow.

Yesterday he was speaking with a science expert on the forthcoming collision between our galaxy - the Milky Way  - and our nearest large galaxy Andromeda. A spiral galaxy like our own, Andromeda is about 2.6 million light-years away. Andromeda also seems to be heading right towards us at 250,000 miles per hour. That's the distance to our moon covered in an hour.

There's obviously no avoiding this cataclysmic event. We're doomed.

The good news is that this will happen around 4.5 billion years from now.

Our sun will still be shining brightly in the earth sky, like it has for the last 6 billion years.

I have to wonder who or what will be inhabiting this planet then. How am I to wrap my feeble mind around this? It is so large, so grand, so far beyond the reach of this humble mind...that words don't quite match up to it. We think we're pretty big cheese, we humans, as we stride across the globe making friends and enemies, blowing things up and building things up, ranting and chanting and telling each other what to do. We make such beauty and such horror. I don't think we'll be around when the Andromeda Galaxy comes spinning into our territory, our tiny spit of territory that makes up the 5 or 6% of matter existing within all of this Dark Matter or Dark Energy or Dark Dark Dark.

But Something will be here. Something will be here under the same old sun.

Sunday Life

Now six weeks have gone by and no post from this old guy. I wonder and ask myself why. 

I get no answer.

Work has finally picked up with an entire house to work on....walls and more walls.

My client is three years younger than me and sold his business five years ago and retired.

Hmmm.

Today is Sunday. Memorial Day weekend. Three days off without guilt.

I do some real work then get at the easel. The paint works itself and I am with it.

No one else is home. Skip James playing on the mac.

In my old age I'm starting to find color. Some painters have it easily....color. Not me.

I no longer care what people think about my work. The world's too jammed up. Too much of everything. Too much really good painting out there, if one takes the time to look.

Things are up for grabs and I like what I'm doing.

This one is wet. Just moved away from it. Finished? Maybe.

It's blazing hot and humid outside and the window a/c is humming along.

Soon a glass of wine. The order of things is not pre-determined.

THE CITY: Part 2

Having not been in lower west side in 5 or 6 years, I have to say I was a tad surprised by all the new names floating around. I mean: Staples in Greenwich Village? 

I was happy to see the Blue Note still there. But it seemed like a lonely holdout in what some natives must feel is the malling of New York City. The Little Lebowski was closed - a bummer for this huge fan. Ground Zero was what it is - a mixture of emotions, politics, crowds, history, construction. The huge and compromised Freedom Tower spoke little to me. Rather, Doe and I were taken by the old Episcopal Church across the street. How - we wondered - did the trees surrounding the chapel and gravestone survive the tremendous destruction of the falling towers? We sat there for a while and as we walked out of there we saw a boy hugging his mother, his face buried in her chest. He was crying. 

THE CITY: Part 1

My partner and I went this weekend to Brooklyn. Not by ourselves. Her daughter and son-in-law were in a U-Haul truck not too far behind us with all of their stuff packed inside. They were moving to Brooklyn. We helped. Her son-in-law arranged for us to stay in the B&B he'd been living in the past few months, while he worked a new university job and looked for apartments. This BedandBreakfast was sweet, on a fine street in Flatbush. 
We arrived Sunday behind the truck, in spite of a car-crash right in front of us, at their new home - a large place with crazy, shaped shrubs and a giant inflated chick-in-an-easter-egg thing. Third floor walk-up. The neighborhood a nutty mix of odd houses and mad chrome-plated fences with bling appeal, alongside sad structures long ignored or homes added on to like brick and wood quilts.
Three of us huffed and puffed up and down the three flights while my gal watched over the truck. Finally, Brian and I attempted the couch. The handed-down old, long, wide couch. Two dinged-up walls later, we brought it outside and worked feverishly to remove the squat legs. Then, another attempt. Fruitless. Doe and I left and found out the next day that Brian spent 90 minutes taking the damn couch apart, armed only with a hammer and screwdriver, then tossed the pieces into the garbage.
Doe and I returned to our lovely accommodations and headed out later to find dinner. We found rain and grayness and streets crammed with ethnic grocery stores, a chain-store pizza joint, an odd Jewish cafeteria, an even stranger Russian restaurant with a sunken dance floor and DJ playing ear-splitting music. We finally fell into a Bangladeshi-Indian place lined with mirrors and no-one speaking English. A young rather cool kid behind the counter helped take our order and we sat and dried off and enjoyed extremely spicy but delicious food. 
Then "home" and to bed.

NOISE

We settle into bed early tonight, Sunday night. She has to get up really early. I'm reading as usual.


Suddenly, a sound like an ambulance siren on drugs comes wailing up the street outside the bedroom window. An otherwise quiet comfortable evening is invaded by the most annoying noise. It stops and starts and waivers this way and that and then there seems to be electronic drums and the siren noise now reveals itself as some kind of keyboard. Whatever it is - it's way too loud.


Why am I always the jerk who has to complain. Why, I wonder to myself as I have wondered for decades, why does everyone seem to put up with the one source of the disturbance. Hey, I don't live in suburbia and I don't expect manicured, military-style stillness.


This is really loud noise.


I get up and get clothes on, grab a jacket and head out into the night. A guy at the corner stands looking in the direction of the suspect house, smoking a cigarette. "Kind of loud," he says to me. "Yeah," I reply.
I move intently towards the source of the sound and see a third-floor room, illuminated with a reddish glow, the window raised up. I walk up to the porch of the offending place and knock on the storm door. The primary door is open. The place looks decent enough. A rather tough-looking dog appears and barks. A smallish man with a beard appears and opens the door. "Yes?" he asks me. He seems instantly like a nice guy. But I hide my kinder self and steel myself instead: "What's with the noise upstairs?" I say.


"That's my grandson and son," he answers.


"They need to quiet down or I'm calling the cops. We have to get up around 5," I say convincingly.


"OK". 


I walk home and feel rather stupid, mostly because the grandfather seemed like such a genuinely sweet guy. Again, I wonder to myself why I have to always be the ass who complains.


How would I ever survive in a place like Manhattan or L.A.? I don't know the answer to that.

Bill's Ace

Yeah, I know this ain't New York City. But even here in the Middle of the World we have characters who defy the age and modern places and remind us that order and reason aren't everything.


Now that I live in the area of town called Northside, a place completely quilted together with so many different types of human, persons of every stripe... high and low on the economic totem pole...mostly very liberal and socially invested but also the Taco Bell crowd and the lovers of the highbrow.....now that I live here again, I frequent the Ace Hardware in the business district.


A couple miles up the road is a fairly new Ace Hardware, all gleaming floors and clean, neatly arranged aisles, well-lit and comfortable to shop in. Brian the owner is a great guy.


But Ace Hardware in Northside is Bill's place and he's been here since the dawn of time. It used to be open at all hours but Bill is old now and in bad health. He can hardly walk and even with a cane it takes him an eternity to get to what ya need and back to the cash register. His store is crammed floor to ceiling with an unbelievable melange of hardware items, most of them stacked or seemingly tossed willy-nilly on top of one another. It is an amazing feast for the eyes this hoarding of hardware, bulging at the seams, jam-packed into the dilapidated old space.


But ask for something - ask for anything - and Bill knows exactly where it is. He takes yer money near the old television usually showing some grainy game show or soap opera. He smiles slightly and, after handing you your change, he says "Here, take one of my books," as he hands you an Ace Hardware flyer. The flyer is carefully designed, spiffy, clean, nicely organized. 


Nothing like old Bill's Ace.

Busy/Work

  


 I just scored my largest job ever. Big stone and brick house. Many rooms to do.
The clients at first told me....2 months till the walls are ready. Yesterday: "Fred says the walls should be ready in two weeks.". Fred is the builder.
No way. I'm busy. I'm working for my friend Sue on her large job that keeps getting delayed. Last week the lead painter fell down the single-story elevator shaft. He's OK but unable to work. We come in after the painters have finished.
I have to hire friends for parts of this job. Two weeks?? This is part of the age-old dilemma of the self-employed artisan.


Here's the other part: When I am really busy, all I can think about is having free time to do my own painting. When I have no work at all - and therefore loads of time to paint - I am usually riddled with anxiety about finances. Lack of money. Unpaid bills. 


Still,  this year the work keeps flowing in and it's OK. Yes, it's OK. I can pay the damned bills.

Camera Shy

Some of us love our faces plastered all over the web, on cellphone screens, in photographs.
My gal is camera shy.
I have to be sneaky.
Well, I dislike being photographed as well. I rarely like the results. Too old. Too short. Too pasty. Too...?


Some people are photogenic. My daughter for instance. It just is.


So camera shy - you and I - I'll catch ya when I can.

Sanctuary

The third floor of the new place.
Dormers and angled walls.
Quiet and views of roofs and trees.


I have a huge studio near downtown but here I am on the third floor working in a space the size of a small rug. I click in Mozart on the mac and it's all magic.


A painting I thought I had ruined comes back to life, a little tougher but better than before.


Like I said: it's all magic.

Paint On

How many years have I been doin' this??


Suddenly, it's all acrylic and fairly small. 
The same subject repeated with small variations on the theme.


Here they are. My private Idaho. 
To me they are a magic window. I know that the moment I put them out there...
the criticisms begin. The suggestions. The complaints. Like so many artists my age,
I've been in retreat.


But now I'm itchin' to get out there again........

Spicy Garlic Soup

My gal has a cold and I reach for a super weapon: my friend Sue's spicy garlic soup. Three heads of roasted garlic, fresh roasted and crushed cumin seeds, chipotle pepper.


It was sunny and almost fifty degrees this first Sunday in February. What a winter! Despite the sweet weather it was time for soup medicine.


I'm not much of a cook and this took all of my concentration. Garlic and onion: what a miracle. 


In the end not as spicy as Sue's but still homemade good with a kick and a hope that the head cold might be diminished somewhat. Soup made with love for love.

Settling In

The second month in the new place and it's starting to feel even more like a home. Settling in to things and having less to fix up or pick up or pack up. 


Sometimes I think that I could live almost anywhere. Especially with a sweet sweetheart and a teen teenager....such as I have. And two cats - one of 'em wonderfully nutty.


This becomes home and shelter. A fort to remember beauty and love in while watching the madness everywhere roll on as it always has.