11 days

In 11 days I'll be in NYC, attending the opening of the artist James Austin Murray.  The show is a culmination of a year's work; a site-specific installation cum painting exhibition.  I've watched the beginnings of this body or work through its evolution at the famous Bemis Center in Omaha, NE.  Murray's work is menacing, beautiful, epic and powerful; it combines brutal physicality with a masterful dance with light and illumination.  The deep grooves in his blacks bring associations of crowding around records in my teenage years; the ritual of taking in the album cover, the liner notes, the sleeve and the vinyl itself as visual and aesthetic experience.  They are both terrible and wonderful to behold; and that's through reproduction.

Facebook has been on fire over the weekend with a posting by the online curator Art Orbiter of artists' studios from around the world.  For me personally, to be included in any post with Miquel Barcelo, one of my major influences, is a tremendous honor and delight. It's so great to see all the different spaces in which artists practice. Before my current studio, I was reminded of the many studios I've had before; storage spaces, garage, extra bedroom, basement, subterranean tire warehouse, loft apartment. I stuck with it in the times between studios as well. Who is Art Orbiter? I may have a clue, but I'll never tell.

My own show opens next Thursday at Art & Light in Greenville.  I ran into one of the other artists, a well-known printmaker whose work my wife and I have collected for years, and we found out we're in the same venue, the Hub, at ArtFields.   

I submitted Jocasta to Carolina's Got Art this afternoon, so my potential reach in April extends far and wide across the Carolinas.  

Tonight I'll brave the cold and sit on our front porch and smoke a nice maduro with my Japanese scotch.  And still I rise.