bar is cash only

I retrieved my painting from Greenville and my piece from LA came back this week as well. Ebb and flow, I suppose...though I could use a bit more flow. It's Halloween weekend, a grand time in the House of Rico. This is largely because my wife is a Theatre Professor, and because I have two daughters. Big stuff indeed.

I'm down with a killer cold, but still plugging along at work. I have sufficiently reached my people quotient for the day, -however, and must retreat for a few hours to be able to withstand the humanity of tomorrow's downtown festivities. (Who am I kidding? I can barely withstand humanity on a good day without the promise of alcohol at said day's end. I have a framed picture of Daria on my wall. I'm Mr. Freaking Sunshine).

In all seriousness, things are feeling positive. I have no basis for feeling this way, but I guess I am bored with my own cloudiness and need to load some ELO on the iPod and let the chips fall where they may. There are times when one must find the absurdity of it all amusing, lest one never get invited back to parties.

I'm hopeful about the proposed renovations to the studio and feel confident that somehow the capital for this small project will come through. I hope to play with some more video this weekend and later next week. Currently I'm watching a lot of artists video and learning mostly what NOT to do on camera. There are guests coming throughout the month and hopefully we'll have some documented studio visits and impromptu conversations and see if any of it is any good. Not that this question of quality or worth stops most YouTube users, but for me it matters.

Somehow, I will manage to work as well. I'm feeling some big paintings coming on. So that is exciting to me.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Halloween and Dia de los Muertos.

Illumination

video

Let's try this again. If you follow me on Twitter or get this as a feed, the first attempt was pretty bad. More to come, including a studio tour next month.

gawking

I know a part of the draw of this blog is when I show the studio shots. People love that "backstage" feeling I guess. I recently found this blog, Henri Art Magazine. If you like to see artists' studios and read what they mean to them and how they found them, then check it out. I will probably do a similar post in a few weeks myself.

I plan to do some renovations next month, which will change the character somewhat.

the fury of Sundays

I pulled out an abandoned painting from late 2008-early 2009 and played around Sunday morning. What I'm finding with the latest work is that it is far more effective if there is a real painting to begin with. That is to say, the works are actually completed paintings at each stage, but I keep going. There's implicit danger here, the most obvious is indulgence.

Over the past year or so, I've been using everything I can get my hands on to apply and manipulate paint. Bubble wrap, rags, my hands, masonry tools. The work seems very realistic to me, and by that I mean the reality of the painting itself as object. I'm no longer concerned with whether it is perceived as abstract or not. More and more I do not consider myself an abstract painter at all, because I'm not abstracting anything, I'm simply painting from an arbitrary beginning and following the work to its natural conclusion.

returning to work

eating soil and drinking bullets from a cup, (in progress)
oil on canvas, 40" x 30", Rico, 2010

when we were young and did not look into the abyss, (in progress)
oil on canvas, Rico, 2010

The shock of the....old

No. 12, 1949, oil on canvas, Mark Rothko

I visited the Walker Arts Center last week and checked out their "Benches and Binoculars" exhibit, a 19th Century salon-style hang of 20th century modern and contemporary art. In a word, terrific. The long answer? Problematic, but perhaps only to some.

There's a lot to like in this exhibition, not the least of which is the curatorial argument behind it. Can modern masterworks stand out in a crowd? How do we view art today, and is that practice worth re-examining?

For me personally, it was a treat to see some really signature works by Currin, Close, a late DeKooning, and a fabulous Neel.

Charlotte Willard, 1967
oil on canvas, 45 7/8 x 30 7/8"
Alice Neel

To the knowing, the hang makes little sense if the intent was to truly recreate a salon. Large pictures cling to the bottom of the wall, while still life and genre find themselves exalted "on high". It would have been fun to at least attempt to label some of our greatest abstract paintings by classification (genre, portrait, landscape, history) and to hang them accordingly, but admittedly I'm a purist at times.

Frankly, I enjoyed the occasional collective recoil of visitors entering into the gallery. Dogma seems to replace dogma, after all.

What struck me most was the fact that most of these works still stood as powerful and worthy of their status even in a decidedly non-modern proximity to their peers. While I think it could have been turned up a couple of notches, I appreciate the problems of trying to pull this off with an existing collection. The challenge, I feel, should go out to the big museums in general and New York in particular. I'd love to see this idea explored with the pooled collections of the big players and hung in the Met. We haven't seen a show like that in decades. Sadly, museum politics being what it is, we the public will likely never see this happen, and that is truly a loss.

I was impressed by the Walker's collection. I spent the night in St. Paul that evening and walked along Summit Avenue, with its amazing homes. Clearly, there is financial support for the arts in the twin cities.

Hope to go back next year.

and still I rise

I have decided to stay in the studio and attempt to hang on another year. This is made possible by the support and love of many people, and I thank them. After people asking for years, I will also hold my first open studio event in November of this year in conjunction with 2 of the businesses in our group of warehouses. I hope to start scrubbing floors and swinging a hammer in about 2 weeks, when I return from MN.

I'm going to create an inner studio; insulated, sheet-rocked and minimally heated to enable me to work through the winter. I'm also going to attempt a large painting along the lines of my current thread of work.

I won't be able to completely finish the inner studio, but hopefully one wall and a ceiling will serve as enough of a cold barrier to get me through. There's always the chance for a mild winter, not uncommon for SC.

In the process of getting ready to move about a dozen paintings back into the studio, showing my father-in-law the work from the past year or so and of course finding older work as I clean up, I've been afforded a perspective of my work through a period of about 5 years. This long view has brought about some realizations, many of them positive.

I know the commentary has been heavy as of late. I hope to get back to the mostly-photo format as this month moves forward.