April 2006 Archives

made a whole series of drawings for the new record by "The Highway Sound," Jay Zasa's band. It took an entire wall of attempts and actually several weeks of trying until I finally started seeing work that was good enough for Jay and his band. I hope the record is going to be successful. Here is one of my favorite drawings of the entire set. (I am not posting more. More is going to be on the record when it comes out.) : ) The drawing is based on the engine of a 1919 Ford Model T.

the rain was rather heavy when we arrived at the house on 18th street. it was supposed to be a brunch of sorts, in an old house. the building was from before 1850 and there was only one bell at the door, promising a grand inside. and it was wonderful indeed. it was sweet and the people were incredibly nice and the food was rather relaxed and good and the conversations were witty and good. and it felt as if all the continents were there. and "googlability" was not an issue today. there were very beautiful flower pots filled with moss. they were destroyed in freezers. the painting over one of the mantels looked like a very sweet procession rendered in silver. elephants. riders. a temple. the children ate their food on benches in the living room. we gathered near the kitchen and looked at catalogues. it was a wonderful time. really. and it felt good to be there. very much so. and i hope we will return to the place. for more. the rain stopped. there were projections of the flowers onto the walls of the smaller room near the kitchen. like mary temple pieces. (oh, her work is so wonderful.) the moss was incredibly soft. what a day, what a day. and we were told that the houses here were built for three sisters. and i believe every word. i later was told that the owner of the house was the inventor of the brain drainage system I had touched by accident on one of the children I had worked with in 1995. really? was this the man who came up with the idea of putting these elaborate life saving devices into the skulls of the children i worked with? i want to ask more about it. amazing. and he also understood the bear. i think he did. that was a good moment. a good moment indeed. how nice it feels to have the feeling of being in the right place with the right people at the right time. wonderful. indeed. and i am currently working on some drawings for the new album by "the highway sound"... and i have almost all of them done now. and it took a while. and it took tens of bad drawings to get to the ones that work. for me at least. zodee is baking downstairs. the sun is gone west now. i will maybe think about that strange dream i had last night. what a series of moments in time. i think i will now freeze my flower pots.

something is really broken here, but maybe that's okay. who knows, maybe that's somehow closer to reality than the super slick digital images of things. maybe. broken, broken, broken. but maybe okay that way.

i think the film expired 2 years ago. and it almost feels as if the light meter on my minilux stopped working a while ago. oh well...

previously...

came home the other day to a squirrel wiping her behind on the window sill in the living room. a mourning dove almost knocked herself out flying against the glass this morning. the cardinals are near by, the girl is more courageous and i get to see her a lot. A lot more than the richelieu colored boy bird. (Though he has a rather powerful voice.) a house sparrow couple did it outside of my studio window a bunch of times the other day. there will be more birds in the neighborhood soon, just in time for the insects invading in the steamy hot weather of the coming months. fresh trash out of the ocean on coney island on saturday. took the giant wheel for two spins, in one of the non swinging cabs, as they go higher up and are a little more predictable. you seriously can see the city from up there. though one can see the woolworth building by just standing in the right spot and looking past the masses of very special afternoon tourists. the amusement portion of the place was not as crowded yet as it is soon going to be. the creme de la creme was there already however, the early birds in their amazingly flashy outfits, having giant piles of legendary fun. steamy, spinning, loud, blinking kind of fun. and it is funny how this place is just 20 minutes or so from my house. crazy crazy. in the new york aquarium the walrus couple had a very interesting afternoon in and around their little tank. the "boy" swam towards whatever even looked like a human and made some rather agressive knocking sounds against the glass, some blowing of air was also involved, some imposing inflation of blubber. there were no really embarrassing moments. just semi scary ones. the lady showed of her most private parts to all of the visitors who happened to pass by the outside part of their home. maybe this was the reason why the walrus boy was so upset with all of us? it was not the prettiest sight. walruses are very much mammals. blubbery pink giant mammals. a little deeper in the borough, inside of the brooklyn museum, there are still some rather puzzling arrangements of colors on the walls. filigrane egyptian jewelry displayed on pins stuck through a photo wallpaper, images of hills and the sky. descriptions of artwork falling off the strangely polished copper panels. oh, why do some of the very best pieces hang in a space that feels like an abandoned gym? hmm... this lovely brooklyn museum. oh dear oh dear. why does it have such awkward moments in its belly? oh why? the sky outside was beautiful. the park was just ripe for picking. it is spring again. fancy. beautiful. pollen. here we come.

that large space right in the center of MoMA is a bit annoying, to me. it is big and boxy and odd. as if the museum had just inhaled a gigantic breather of new york air. what would happen if it exhaled now. would the masses of german tourists trolling in its halls be blown out into the streets? i snuck out to take a walk in the galleries around lunch time. roughly lunch time, at least. in the szarkowski exhibition, front and center, a photograph i know quite well. it is the inside of a pick up cab, plasters with stickers, one of Vincent Borrelli's photographs. We have never met, Vincent Borrelli and I, but he is the person I trust most when it comes to art books. He just knows a lot. He really opened my eyes to a good group of excellent photographers. I had to write him right away. I mean, his work was right there, right in the center. I wanted to call him, but I had made a point of not carrying my phone on me. (Imagine, being disconnected. focussed. no phone, no camera, just reality. intoxicating.) On my way to the office, walking through the reading room at MoMA, I ran into Monika Sosnowska, the space altering artist from Warsaw, now here in preparation for an installation at MoMA this fall. She flew in from Warsaw. What could be the odds of just running into her like that? Hmm. It was a bit of an odd conversation we had in Polish. My polish is just getting worse and worse. or maybe that's just a lame excuse for me not having anything interesting to say. She told me about that new gallery I really want to visit now. Though I can't. I do not remember the name. It is supposed to be in an apartment space on 29th street? Hmm... how will I find out. German Curator? What is the name of that gallery? i still do not particularly like that void in the center of MoMA. but. as we gain more knowledge, and experience more, the circumference of our knowledge becomes larger and larger, making us realise that the more we know, the more there is we are aware of not knowing. i know that i know nothing is a bit of an expression of that. however, the more we know, the more likely it is that we will encounter particles of knowledge known to us, or related in some way to something known to us, thus creating a much better gravity for further knowledge? making new acquisition of knowledge easier. so the cloud grows (or should it be swiss cheese?) and it becomes apparent that there is much more to know, but at the same time it becomes easier to accumulate more, making the cheese (cloud) bigger. now take out the center of it all... and i am still not crazy about that atrium. i sometimes feel like all i have is some sort of center that is filled with a very strange gas like substance. weird.

once there was the understanding that the personality was of the addictive kind, one only had to make sure the addictions were to the right things. addiction to air, for example, was a good one. addiction to beauty? great as well. though he had to be careful to fall for the right kind of beauty. it should be the one that was tangible and could flow through him, not the one that was purely created by projections inside of him. made from foul things... maybe it was okay after all? as long as something turned out good. somewhere. flowing glowing throwing knowing. the steam pushes its way through the tiny openings of the vents on the silver radiators near the windows facing the front where dogs just had an argument about the order in which to cross the street while a honking car turned the corner onto 7th avenue. the birds are hungry today. and i have not slept enough to run out and get new food. i stood by the window this morning and looked for what seemed to be several minutes at the curious head of a young blue jay who would have loved to tear me into pieces, were i only a tiny bit smaller. than him. addictions can be good, as long as they are to the right things. walking is a good one, listening can be healthy too. addiction to drawing is fantastic, though is probably should not be replaced by addiction to drawings. addiction to creation can be really good, as things sometimes get better when done over and over and over again with some thought. addiction to thinking is good too? I think? I am not quite sure though. I think i went cold turkey on this one a little while ago. flow glow throw crow drowning thoughts is not a good idea, i guess. drawning drowings maybe is. not drowning drawings, of course. addiction to time. or maybe they are all not addictions, maybe they are just a healthy appetite. a petite pet ite. somebody is calling me at the back. i will need to run out after all. why is it always so late?

most of the plants are dead now. i killed them with too much of everything. i feel horrible about it. i am just a terrible gardener it seems. terrible. a piece of a jade just fell to the floor this morning. the stem was just filled with too much water. how do i dry these guys? maybe i will replant things today. many of them are now just sticks in the mud. damn. the botanical garden was packed with families from all the places that now make brooklyn. it was as if the united nations had a day at the park of the united nations of plants. some families were showing their freshly sprung babies to their just recently acquired digital cameras. the babies and the cameras were much tinier than one would expect them to be. some women speaking russian had their first day out in leopard spandex and the blondest dark hair can get. some of the ladies moving around the park slowly looked very much like gigantic exotic birds, their feathers still puffed up from the winter time. and then there were the gentlemen, the hunters, the gatherers of photographs. massive, long black lenses attached to various sizes of camera bodies were pointed gently at freshly opened flowers in the trees' various branches. zooming birds, these men airing out their very special camera equipment. not far from them there were children trying to grab fish in the water. a polish family was buying enough flowers and plants to create a new home... land. the bonsai museum was as incredible as ever. breathtaking somehow. trees, so gracious, so beautiful in their suffering. "water daily" said the little tag on a beautiful bonsai i saw in the store next door. hmm... i think i would just kill it. i probably would. slowly. hmm. a beautiful tree is blooming outside of my window right now. (without my intervention.) and the birds and squirrels are going crazy about the little gifts i give them so they take care of the insects once the time comes. such a beautiful little place right outside of my window. such an amazing place just a few blocks from my house, at the botanical garden. i wonder if my pictures of flowers on trees came out. (i used film, you know.)