December 31, 2004 (Friday)
 Carolyn at Dangerous Chunky has been frustrated in her note-taking efforts in museums. Electronic devices are viewed with suspicion and pens of any kind are banned. Pencils are allowed almost everywhere.
I had a similar experience a couple of years ago at the Legion of Honor (I was using a pen,) with the difference that the friendly guards at the Legion of Honor keep a hand-full of golf pencils in their pockets, and they just handed me one.
You're right it makes no sense. (Couldn't a determined nut do just as much damage with a pencil as a pen? Not to mention the fact that if you were planning to damage the floor, the art, the walls, wouldn't you keep your tools hidden?) But then, when do these kinds of rules ever make much sense? The good news is that the work-arounds are easy.
Buy a cheap plastic clickable pencil, topped with (and this is the most essential item) a big white, exposed eraser. As you scribble in your notebook, the eraser waves a white-flag signal to the guards that you're harmless. Only once since then, in hundreds of visits, has a guard asked me, "Is that a pencil? Oh, OK."
Of course, I still like my electronic devices, namely my retro microcassette recorder and my digital camera. They are both handy memory aids. The solution here is to wear my favorite baggy cotton jacket with big pockets, and look both ways before taking them out. (BTW, both the Legion and the deYoung allow non-flash photography in the permanent collections.)
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December 30, 2004 (Thursday)
 It's still raining out there. I'm not complaining, exactly. I realize I'm lucky that I'm not dealing with tidal waves, earthquakes, landslides or freezing temperatures. And no one is shooting at me. Still. There's not enough light. I had to rig an extra lamp by the window. It's supposed to be a "daylight" bulb, but it casts a magenta light. A friend came by the studio yesterday to eat lunch with me, and she pointed out that the client will not be viewing this painting in perfectly balanced neutral light. Quite true. This made me relax for about five minutes. Still. There's not enough light.
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December 29, 2004 (Wednesday)
 I've been thinking about artists and the prejudiced view. Maybe that isn't the right term for it. What I mean is a tendency to see the world in glowing blocks of color, or fuzzy shades of dark and light, or overwhelming bits of minutia, or bare elemental forms, or... you get the point. Most visual artists, if they've been at it for awhile, see the world in some peculiar way.
I know a few painters who who were nearsighted as children, and every one of them tells a similar story of having the problem corrected after a few years of grade school, and how this is the reason they paint the way they do. They all paint very differently, but none of them paints sharp-edged realism. Anne Truitt tells this story in her journal, "Daybook:"
I do think that my marked nearsightedness has a lot to do with my abstraction of what's around me. It was not discovered until I was in fifth grade that I was nearsighted... When I got my glasses, I was astounded by detail. Leaves were particularly surprising, so distinct and so separate. I was catapulted into a wholly new world, as if I had been reborn. I remember going around and looking, checking out to see in the new way what I knew the old way.
This story always makes me feel a little odd, because it's my story too. It was fifth grade when I got my first pair of glasses. And it was seeing the leaves on the trees that impressed me the most on my way home from the eye clinic. But it never occurred to me that it had anything to do with the way I paint (hard edges, lots of detail.)
There are a whole lot of nearsighted people in this world, and they don't all become abstract painters. Has anyone ever done a survey of painters to see how many were nearsighted as children? I guess it doesn't matter. It's the story you tell yourself that constructs your world.
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December 28, 2004 (Tuesday)
I'm painting this week... won't be going to any shows, doing any interviews, or fooling around too much on the computer. It's crunch time. I have a big commission that has to be done by the end of this week, and it's going to take days of paint-paint-paint to get it done. Not only is it big, but it's a tough one. I've been at it for a few weeks now, and my back hurts, my eyes hurt, and my right wrist is getting sore. Did you know that you can get a repetitive stress injury from painting? I just discovered that fact a couple of years ago when I was doing a series of big canvases that each had large areas of tiny vertical lines. I had to start icing my wrist a couple times a day, and now it's happening again, but for a different reason. This time the 64" x 40" canvas requires zillions of tiny little circular motions with a #00 bristle brush. At least the painting is past that awkward "teenage" stage.
 Every painting goes through these stages:
Conception - The best part, or at least the most fun. I get an idea and noodge it around in my head for awhile. Maybe sketch it out now and then, take some photos, and do a lot of staring off into space. This can take weeks, months, or years to complete. However, since I do this more or less constantly, whenever I'm not occupied with some critical task, I have a huge back-log of ideas and will probably not complete them all in this lifetime.
Infancy - Preparing the canvas or other support, laying out the image, putting down the undercoats and basic structure of the image. This is easy. I was nervous the first few times, but now I could do it in my sleep. It would be boring if it didn't have a strangely comforting feel to it. Problems can develop here, but rarely do.
Childhood - Kind of fun - slap on the paint, block in the main colors. The painting seems to make great progress very quickly at this stage. If there's going to be a big problem it usually starts to show up here, but it's not a cause for great concern, yet. There's still plenty of time and space for adjustments.
Teenage phase - Oh my god, what happened... this looks like hell, whatever made me think this was a good idea? Can this painting be saved? Jeeze, I'd rather be doing anything but this. Much moaning, teeth grinding.... the main thing that keeps me going is the knowlege that I've been here many times before, and it has usually worked out. Just gotta keep at it....
Maturity - Ahhh, yes, now we're on track. This is looking pretty good. It may not be exactly what I had in mind, way back at the beginning, but it has strength, integrity, direction... just needs a little tweaking and polishing.
Completion - It's done. It might be perfect, it might not, but it's done. I have nothing else to give here, and I'm ready to move on. Hopefully the painting moves on to a new life with someone who loves it.
Those are the usual stages in my relationship with a painting. Occasionally, though, a painting will experience
Resurrection - It's been hanging around my studio (or in the racks) way too long and it's getting on my nerves. One day I suddenly get an idea for a new direction, or new look for this painting. And it's back to the easel for this puppy. The success rate for these "makeovers" is not encouraging. "Out of sight, out of mind" is a better tactic for paintings I'm done with. This is why I recently had a painting rack built in my basement.
And now (I've procrastinated enough) it's time for more Motrin and back to painting...
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December 27, 2004 (Monday)
 This morning's New York Times is running a Reuter's story by Marcel Michelson about Vermeer's studio. An art restorer, Daan Hartmann says he has been working in this small, off-the-street building for twenty years, and just recently discovered that it was Vermeer's studio. (There's a photo of the place at the Reuters link - it looks like a garden shack.) Hartmann was researching the authenticity of ``Young Woman Seated at the Virginals" (which was sold in July for $30 million) when he found the records showing that Vermeer had rented the building. The studio has three large windows that are seen in several of his paintings. And the studio is just next to the little alleyway painted in Vermeer's ``The Little Street.''
 At first the likeness with ``The Little Street'' is not obvious. Both buildings in the painting have been renovated and cars are parked outside where children played. But on closer inspection, the dimensions and position of doors and windows and the outlines of houses in the distance show similarities with the masterpiece.
Hartmann says the girl playing in the street in the painting is the same daughter, probably Elisabeth, who is depicted in ``The Girl with A Pearl Earring'' -- not the maid Griet who the novel and film suggested was in love with Vermeer. At close scrutiny both girls have a small hunchback. ``An artist, especially a detail-conscious one like Vermeer, cannot paint a daughter differently than she is. He can obscure a handicap but not make it disappear because then it would no longer be a painting of his daughter,'' Hartmann said.
From "Dutch Discover Vermeer Studio in Delft Garden" by Marcel Michelson.
Thanks to Pasadena artist Roy Williams, for this page of all of the paintings of Vermeer.
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December 24, 2004 (Friday)
Amalia Mesa-Bains (installation artist):
"When I showed an aptitude for drawing, people facilitated it. At an early age I had this habit of sitting on the bus quietly tracing around people with my finger. In order that people would not think that I was a peculiar little girl - because I also used to spin and dance and jump around - my mother had a little pad and pencil that she would whip out. When I was seven or eight, I got an easel, which they kept on the back porch. The washing machine, the dog's bed, and my studio were all on the same little porch, and I would be able to go splash around and paint." From book, "State of the Arts, California Artists Talk About Their Work," by Barbara Isenberg, ©2000, William Morrow, ISBN 0-380-81072-7
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December 23, 2004 (Thursday)
Yesterday was Winter Solstice - the shortest day of the year. In San Francisco we had about 9.5 hours of sunlight, from 7:22 AM to 4:55 PM. Here's what it looked like at sunrise from my studio window, midday at the Cliffhouse, and at sunset from Sunset Blvd:
  
The Chumash of coastal California painted this about the return of the sun:
R. Robert Robbins of the University of Texas Astronomy Department at Austin suggests that the Tonkawa and the Jumano (then later the Apache, Kiowa, and Commanche) were constructing and making use of seasonal markers that exhibit a higher degree of calendrical skills than has generally been attributed to them. Here's a rock painting in central Texas during the winter solstice:
According to China Kongzi an old chinese custom is to hang an unfinished painting (before the winter Solstice) which contains a plum tree with 81 flowers. Starting on the day of the Winter Solstice, one flower is painted red every day. At the end of the ninth "nine days", 81 cheerful red blossoms brighten the room, welcoming spring's return.
Turner did this watercolor of Stonehenge:
 I looked around for some contemporary winter solstice art, but couldn't find any... unless you count inflatable reindeer, flashing electric candy canes, and the like.
Marja Leena has more info on the solstice - check it out.
Also, here's a cool image of a winter solstice rainbow at Newgrange.
I'm raising a glass of nog to all of you, and looking forward to more light.
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December 22, 2004 (Wednesday)
 
Robert Irwin: left - Part I: Prologue: X 183, 1998. View of mixed-media installation; right - "Untitled", 1968–69. Acrylic lacquer on formed acrylic plastic, 54 in. diameter (images from the International Sculpture Center)
Robert Irwin (painting, sculpture and installation artist):
"Artists in California have a sense of humor, a little levity about what we do. Artists in New York do not. There's this whole idea that art grows out of angst and that was the only way that weighty things have been brought on. I think the biggest thing that bothered New Yorkers, and still bothers New Yorkers about me, is that I had a happy childhood. The beauty of growing up in California at this moment in time is that you have very little dead weight. All the things that New Yorkers would say to me was wrong with California - the lack of culture, place, sense of the city and all that - is exactly why I was here. It is very possible to entertain the future here.
The risk you run... is you could easily reinvent the cotton gin, which of course would be a day late and a dollar short. But what I realized later is that when I first went (to New York) I expected a kind of dialog. I was looking forward to that. I really needed it. But instead of conversation, I got confrontation. Everybody had positions, and everybody was extremely sophisticated and able to defend those positions and make arguments for them. But it was not nourishing in the sense that I needed it, and I realized that for good or bad, I was probably going to have to live out here, which I have continuously.
We put structures in the world to live in and through. In other words, all information is contextually bound and all understanding is understanding within a frame of reference. Without it, information just floats around - we can't make sense of it. So we have these structures that we set in motion as a way of organizing, collecting, and understanding the information that we're getting or gathering for our efforts.
Californians approach the world differently. Other people in New York and places like that assume everything there is to know is either known or eminently available. Growing up on the West Coast, you start out with the assumption that everything there is to know is to be found out. It's not about answers, it's about questions, and the key is establishing quality questions so that the answers in a sense become inevitable."
From book, "State of the Arts, California Artists Talk About Their Work," by Barbara Isenberg, ©2000, William Morrow, ISBN 0-380-81072-7
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December 21, 2004 (Tuesday)
 I saw the Wayne Thiebaud show, "People, Places and Things" recently, at the Paul Thiebaud Gallery. This is a small, friendly, comfortable gallery - they even have a bench in the middle of the room. This show was mostly current, smaller works, although my favorite piece, "Travelers", was a few years old. About half the work was more of the familiar candy colored images of food and three-objects-in-a-row ("Sports Hats," 2003, at right.) Most of the rest were Southern California beach scenes, which I had never seen before ("Beach Dogs,"2003, above left.) These beach paintings may have been studies for larger works, and they had a spark and life that were very appealing. The "Eats" series of beach shacks included two small oil sketches and one large developed painting. In art magazine ads, I was attracted the bigger painting, but once I was standing in the gallery, the bigger painting seemed too still and careful, while the little shack paintings vibrated with juicy, hungry energy. The way he handled the sand in these beach scenes is a beautiful example of the love of paint. And it's one of the things I liked so much in the older painting, "Travelers", 1997 (below.) Although I have to admit that the narrative really hooked me.
It's a larger horizontal landscape in subdued tones, a flat featureless plain leading to a flat horizon, with a scattered group of vehicles all moving away from the viewer, and toward a single point on the horizon. It reminded me of the old "Mad Max" movies. The thick brush strokes in the ground sculpted straight tracks across the desert, with some horizontal strokes here and there to help maintain the composition. It's just right.
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December 20, 2004 (Monday)
 Construction Updates: The copper skin on the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum tower is almost complete. The 800-car parking garage is being built under the Music Concourse, between the de Young and the California Academy of Sciences. Deep trenches are being reinforced all around the music concourse, but there isn't any visible activity in the concourse itself, which is already well below road level. I'm unclear on whether the garage is going to ring the concourse or go way, way down below it. But I've heard that the band shell and those weird pollarded trees will not be disturbed. I'm disturbed by the Rec and Park proposal to widen the the Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way entrance from its current two lanes to four to accommodate the expected garage traffic. It's already a congested intersection and this sounds like it will kill foot traffic and bicycle access, not to mention take out a lot of great old trees. On the other hand, 800 cars idling in traffic as they inch their way to the garage, doesn't do much for the neighborhood ambiance.
 More than half of the Academy of Sciences is gone, torn down and carted off. But one of the newer wings is still standing, partly covered with white plastic. A dome is visible on the portion that's still standing - I wonder if that's the old planetarium? Schiller and Goethe watch the construction, at left. I was wondering what happened to Beethoven - he used to overlook the concourse from the west side of the Academy, but he disappeared when the wrecking balls moved in. Saturday morning I discovered him, hiding out with Thomas Starr King, Robert Emmet and a few other bronzed dudes over by the Eighth Avenue entrance (click detail at right for bigger scene. More here and here of his former location.) Cervantes wasn't there, but his old spot is obscured by a mountain of dirt. Hope he's not buried.
The Cliff House is hopping, with all three restaurants open. The construction trailers are finally gone and the sidewalk is opened up again. They were planting the hillside and painting the Camera Obscura Saturday morning, so it looks like the walkways and view decks will open soon. Everything is way more expensive than before the renovations. I used to eat there once or twice a month and I often stopped in at the pub for a Guinness, but those days are over. Unless some rich patron wants to take me out to lunch.
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December 17, 2004 (Friday)
 I managed to get over to the Charles Campbell Gallery just before the end of John Battenberg's show, "One Hundred Heads." The work consists of 100 bronze portrait sculptures of famous (and not so famous) people, most from the Bay Area, many from the art world. The artist has been working on a big commission for the last five years. It's a pair of huge bronze gates, with twelve panels showing a narrative involving hundreds of people and animals. The artist used friends and acquaintances as models for the gates, and they are the 'heads' in this show. Each sculpture is about 1" - 3" high. Some of them wear military hats and/or animal masks/skins. They're loose and animated, but individuals are easily recognizable. The gallery will be participating in the SF International Art Expo in a few weeks (Jan 14 - 17), so you may have a chance to see them there. (Heads in photo above left are, from left to right: Diebenkorn, Campbell, Thiebaud, Battenberg, Neri, Ghiberti.)
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December 16, 2004 (Thursday)
 I've been spending the last few days out around town, scouting locations for my next shoot (photos of models for a series of narrative paintings.) Took this one (at left) from the roof of the police station in North Beach. Later, walking into City Lights book store, I literally bumped into Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who was standing in the entranceway with the staff, using a tape measure to see how much room there was between the cash register and the opposite wall (not much - it's a small place.) While there, I picked up the latest copy of Artforum, with all the "top 10" lists.... which reminded me of Tyler Green's list challenge, so here's my top 10 art subjects likely to become memories associated with 2004:
10. The Barnes thing was finally resolved - it's moving.
9. Iconic images of Abu Ghraib used in paintings and drawings by many artists, including Trek Kelly, Guy Colwell, Clinton Fein, 25 Iraqi artists, and many more I'm sure...
8. The return of content, intent and expression is picking up speed.
7. Paintings and drawings are getting smaller.
6. A resurgence of drawing.
5. Art Spiegelman's book, "The Shadow of No Towers."
4. Pipilotti Rist's video installation "Stir Heart, Rinse Heart."
3. Lee Bontecou - especially the drawings.
2. Robert Schwartz's long over-due retrospective.
1. Art blogs - I've been at it for one year now, and when I started there were almost none. Now there are so many I can get picky about which ones to read. And more are coming online every week.
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December 15, 2004 (Wednesday)
A Rough Timeline of Paint, compiled from sources too numerous to mention:
30,000-10,000 B/C: Painting on mud and rock cave walls. Animal fat mixed with black and yellow manganese, red and yellow ocher and red clay with bone and charcoal soot black. A hollow reed was used to blow the pigment on the walls, and fingers were used to manipulate the pigment.
5000 - 3000 B/C: Painting on papyrus, wood, and stone. Potash glass frit was made with copper. This was a solid cyan pigment that could be mixed with wax, sandracca (sandarac), egg, casein or mastic, a color in direct competition with India's indigo.
2700 B/C: Walls and paintings are done in either wax and ammonia, wax and mastic or lime fresco.
1500 B/C: Paint making as an art became quite widely established in Crete and Greece with the Egyptians passing their skills to the Romans.
1000 B/C: Development of paints and varnishes based on the gum of the acacia tree (better known today as gum arabic) had been developed.
500 B/C: Wax painting was common through out the civilized world. Umbers, ochers and blacks were readily obtainable. For bright blue, red, yellow and green, semi-precious stones (lapis lazuli, cinnabar, orpiment and malachite) had to be obtained. China was using alcohol based paint (lacquer.) It was the major medium from the Far East Coast to Mesopotamia. New colours were also discovered - the first was 'Egyptian Blue'; 'Naples Yellow' also dates from around 500 BC.
200 A/D: Vitruvius describes production of white lead and verdigris
547 A/D: Mosaics are incorporated in buildings, deep greens, gold, vermilion, blue's with cobalt and lapis, whites of tin, blacks of iron and manganese. Greek and Byzantine changing from Late Antiquity to Early Middle Ages.
700 A/D: Egg tempera and gold leaf on illuminated manuscripts or wood panels.
1200 A/D: England was protecting wood with oil paint - this is the first noted use of linseed oil.
1400 A/D: Paintings were on leather and wood.
1500 A/D: Oil and tempera were combined on canvas. Easier ways were discovered to extract the intense warm blue of lapis lazuli (ultramarine). Cobalt blue glass offered a brilliant sky blue, though this had to be scattered on wet paint or varnish to get the full effect. Pigments like 'Dutch Pink' and 'Crimson Lake' derived from certain berries and tree barks, were discovered in the New World. Cochineal red (Carmine) was also discovered, produced by the Aztecs. Indigo was obtainable from dye works. The principal source of manmade white lead was Venice.
1600's: The Dutch greatly increased availability of white lead. All white lead paints included chalk in their undercoats, reserving purer white lead for finish coats. Later in the century, 'vermilion', a manmade type of cinnabar, was developed, as was 'King's Yellow', a manmade type of orpiment.
1700's: The discovery of Prussian Blue provided a much needed intense deep blue, readily available after 1724. There was still no pigment resembling Spectrum Yellow and consequently no brilliant green other than that produced from arsenic. In 1778, a much less poisonous green was invented, 'Scheele's Green'. A break-through came in 1781 with Turner's Patent Yellow, though this still required varnish to preserve the colour.
1818: Discovery of water-resistant Chrome Yellow. Heating it produced 'Chinese Red' - the basis of Pillar Box Red. Mixtures of Prussian Blue and Chrome Yellow produced the well-known 'Brunswick Greens'. 'Cerulean', an aquamarine blue, and Gmelin's manmade ultramarine were discovered between 1821 and 1840, as was Alazarin Crimson.
1829 - Cadmium colors were introduced in oil paints.
1840 - Oil paints became available in lead tubes. Boar hair and red sable brushes and pre-stretched canvases and paint in tubes were now pre-made and available in art stores throughout Paris.
1856 - The first real synthetic dye was discovered by Henry Perkins - it was a violet.
1870 - Using cast-iron paint mills and zinc-based pigments, industrialists produced the first washable paint marketed as 'Charlton White'. They also produced emulsions based on similar formulae, marketed as 'oil bound distempers'.
1880 - The new paints were readily available in tins, in a wide range of colours, and came to be exported all over the World.
1900 - Synthetic (acrylic) paints were born in Germany.
1946 - Acrylic paints were made by Sam Golden (at Bocour, in New York) for Helen Frankenthaler, Jules Olitski, Roy Lichtenstein and other professional artists.
1955 - The first commercially available water-based acrylic paint was developed by Liquitex ("liquid texture"). Encaustic revival was led by Jasper Johns.
1970 - First machine for testing lightfastness of paint was developed. Oil paint in stick form became commercially available.
Anything I should add? Email it to me.
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December 14, 2004 (Tuesday)
 While poking around in one of the local used book stores, I found an uncorrected galley proof of an interesting new book - "In Passionate Pursuit" by art historian Alessandra Comini (published by George Braziller, 2004, ISBN 0-8076-1523-4.)
It's a slim book, 219 pages, with just a few, low quality, black and white photos. The author began life as a refugee from Franco's Spain, then Mussolini's Italy, landing in Texas for her school years, but traveling the world during her college years and ever since, as a musician and an art scholar. She's had an adventurous and art-filled life, but the most interesting part of the book is very beginning, when she writes about discovering Egon Schiele's Austrian prison cell. Schiele spent three and a half weeks there in 1912 for painting "immoral" works. But while he was there, he  did another 13 watercolors and copious pencil sketches. He drew himself, his cell, and the hall outside his damp basement quarters. In 1963, when Ms. Comini sneaked into the Neulengbach courthouse and then downstairs to the old prison, it was not the Egon Schiele Museum. In fact, the basement was being used to store government papers, and firewood. She was easily able to recognize Schiele's cell because she was so familiar with his work from this period. Apparently the place hadn't changed much. About ten years later, she published a book (Schiele In Prison) about Schiele's prison diary and paintings, and finally ten years after that, in 1983, Neulengbach turned the cell into a little museum. The photo reproductions in my copy were pretty poor, but here's a scan of page 21 from Comini's "In Passionate Pursuit", showing a couple of Schiele's sketches and the corresponding photos:
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December 13, 2004 (Monday)
It's the dark time of the year. The days are short and the new moon was the night before last. It's harder to paint this time of year. But it's a good time for conjuring new projects. And finishing or burning the old ones.... maybe a little fresh air and sunshine would help.
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December 10, 2004 (Friday)
 A few days ago, I mentioned Mark Grim's show at the Soularch Gallery. I finally got a chance to interview him yesterday. We met at the Corner Cup coffee shop, and were already talking before I dug out my tape recorder. We finished the interview down at his studio, a few blocks from the ocean, in the outer Sunset district. I put the full interview on its own page, because it was too big for this page (at least on dial-up.) A few quotes are below, the rest is here.
I see the term "abstract" as exclusive. It doesn't really encompass what I'm interested in. It doesn't really tell people anything about what you do. It almost sounds adversarial in terms of realism, and I don't buy that. To me, all the kinds of mark-making, building surface, creating light, comes from my experience of painting realistically. Yet, I'm interested in applying that to other things. Taking all of those ways of creating surface, form and depth and explore with it, from the subconscious.
One of the things about painting now, is that color has fallen out of favor. A lot of the art magazines devalue it these days. It's a fashion thing. Obviously I like color, but it's just an aspect of my work. I do like "sweet and sour" color combinations. I don't mind if a painting's little bit over the top, a little out there, in terms of saturation, as long as it works, as long as it's cohesive.
I question why it always has to be about beauty. In northern California, there's a huge emphasis on beauty, because of the wealth here. It comes from the French school, mostly. Germanic painting, for example, which is like reading Tolstoy or something, is about the horrors and trials of hard life. It's not accepted here because people are so full of their beauty... but I think it's OK to do things that are ungainly and strange. Pull it back from the brink and try to make something of it. My motto is, "Clash the particles, then go in and edit the debris."
San Francisco painter, Mark Grim - full interview HERE
December 9, 2004 (Thursday)
 A friend of mine, an abstract painter, told me I should see the John McCormick show at the Elins Eagles-smith Gallery. So I did. The work is nice, it's good, but it doesn't excite me all that much. Lots of very attractive landscapes in warm, glowing colors. Very painterly - actually, this work is more abstract than you'd realize from the reproductions. They're obviously imaginary landscapes, but inspired by the local (SF Bay area) scenery. A few of them (including this one at left - "Lands End", 36" x 36") had some odd little collage elements along the bottom of the canvas. I was having trouble making sense of these, until the gallery owner said that they were pages from a book on rivers & water flow. Which is interesting but doesn't seem to contribute anything to the image visually. While looking up info on the artist, I came across a fun web site that documents tours of artists studios (including John McCormick's studio.)
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December 8, 2004 (Wednesday)
 I headed downtown yesterday, in the break between rainstorms, to the Cartoon Art Museum to see "Contemporary Literary Comics: Selections from McSweeney's #13". It's a group show which "showcases 25 of the most progressive and provocative talents in modern comics." The show is up through May 22, 2005, and I highly recommend it, especially if you like works on paper, ink drawing, and of course, comics. I'm not sure which came first, here - the show or the book. They're both terrific, and each stands on its own, but I consider myself lucky to live near enough to visit the exhibit before, during and after reading the book.
Most of the art in the exhibit is reproduced in the book, plus the book is a work of art in itself. The first thing I noticed on entering the gallery was a few big panels by Chris Ware (guest editor for this issue of McSweeny's.) With his teeny, tiny (hand-drawn) text, I was wondering how this work could possibly be reduced to a size small enough to publish in the 6.5" x 9.5" book pages. I got the answer later in the museum bookstore: they published these panels on papers the size of the Sunday funnies,  then folded them make jacket cover for the book. Tucked inside was two little chapbooks - "King-Cat" by John Porcellino and "Girls Against Pain" by Ronald J. Rege, Jr. This could be considered gilding the lily, as the book is the one of the most beautifully designed and crafted books I've seen. The gilded binding, the illustrated covers, the comic design end papers with book plate; the smooth thick pages; the sharp, high quality color reproduction.... OK, OK, I like books and this is a beauty, but back to the exhibit...
I'm always impressed by the talent of the cartoonists at this museum. And I'm talking about control of the materials (mostly ink, pencil, watercolor.) When reading the strips in published form, I tend to focus primarily on the story, but when I'm standing in front of the originals, it's the line and the wash that grab my attention. This the work of people who have put in many, many hours/days/years at their craft and the results are awe-inspiring. And then I think, besides the drawing, they have to come up with a decent story!
This museum always has some historical works to give a little context to the current show. The book covers some of this territory as well. 264 pages... almost all of them illustrations! I give up - I'm have to go make a cup of tea and start reading this....
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December 7, 2004 (Tuesday)
This argument has legs.
The magazine, "Physics Today," ran a little story about the Hockney-inspired debate over optics in early art.
Walter Liedtke, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, says"for the vast majority of art history, it's a footnote. These questions are irrelevant, trivial, for art historians." Moreover, he adds, the optics claims "depend on very narrow measurements. It all seems so unnecessary. By the time an artist had it all set up, he could have knocked it off freehand. [The optics claims] underestimate the skill of the artists." Referring to a 1420s painting by Robert Campin, for which Hockney and Falco claim optical aids were used in painting latticework on the back of a bench, he adds, "Why don't they step back and think, Why is the bench there anyway? An artist would say it makes a framing device for an important head. Can't people just appreciate the painting?"
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December 4, 2004 (Weekend)
On November 29th, while waiting for the bus, a sticker on a lamp-post caught my eye - it said, "buy toasty, fun, affordable art online! www.ArtToaster.com." I came home and looked it up... and surprise - it's a guy I know, Steve Dehlinger. So I asked him about his new art promotion...
(art work by Steve Dehlinger)
 ALC: I just saw one of your art toaster stickers, and took a look at the site - and it looks like a great marketing plan....What inspired you to do this?
SD: I felt like I was not getting my foot in many art gallery doors, and when I did, they weren't as professional as I imagined. Perhaps they were either too new as a gallery or are a "lower tier" gallery compared with the big names downtown. Showing with Sunset Artists has been good, but the show sales vary widely. Open Studios, though, has been a shining example of consistent sales growth year after year. This pattern led me to realize that my best bet may be selling straight to the public. So, I decided, in September, to create a catchy, easy-to-remember web address like ArtToaster.com , since my name may be hard to remember the correct spelling of at SteveDehlinger.com. I wanted to make it a simple to maintain storefront for my paintings and imprinted promotional items. The idea was an affordable art store online with price categories to fit different budgets. I also chose to publicize it cheaply such as with stickers used in a "guerilla/underground" style by putting them up where people naturally paused and looked around in their normal lives in The City; and free or cheap ads in local papers and online.
Oh, and wearing the logo everywhere I go !
 ALC: How long have you been using this new marketing plan?
SD: I've just started ramping up during November 2004. Stickers now, with ads coming over the next several months.
ALC: Is it working?
SD: I've heard from a few people that they've seen the visual promos (stickers,shirts) and like the logos/catch-phrase: "Buy toasty, fun, affordable art online!"
ALC: Would you advise other artists to try this, or do you think it works better with certain kinds of work and not others?
SD: It does depend on an artist's style or media, but varying the approach slightly and fitting the style of promotion to the artist's persona and image should make it viable for most artists, I think. I'm using a Paypal "click and buy now" type of setup that is simple HTML that I feel comfortable maintaining from anywhere, but others may prefer to sell original art in their studios and may only sell prints/posters this way. Others may setup a more complex storefront. I have seen many artists use Ebay to sell their own work, while others use online galleries to sell for them. It all depends on the technology they prefer to use or maintain. I don't see a high percentage of bidding happening on Ebay, so I decided to not pursue that space early on. Since domains are so cheap to register these days and there are a large number of free or cheap web hosts available, my method made sense for me to try right now.
ALC: Good luck - the timing is certainly right (holiday shopping, etc.)
SD: Thanks, I'll keep you posted after the ads are all out for ArtToaster.com and a bit of time has passed.
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December 3, 2004 (Friday)
Yesterday I received this email from a photographer I know:
Hey Y'all, can you believe the audacity of this snake of a soul praying on us foolish, gullible, brain dead artists?
I would love to sell them SOMETHING.
peace,
michael-patrick
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: PURCHASE OF ARTWORKS
From: "nicole fraser" <nicole_fraser@yalla.com>
Date: Thu, December 02, 2004 12:46 am
To: ...............@hotmail.com
DEAR SIR/MADAM,
I JUST WON A CONTRACT TO RE-DECORATE THE APARTMENTS OF THE SENATORS OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA.
SO I WILL LIKE TO PURCHASE $300,000 WORTH OF PAINTINGS FROM YOU.I WILL LIKE YOU TO SEND ME YOUR BANK INFORMATIONS WHICH YOU COULD BE A VIRGIN ACCOUNT SO THAT I CAN START ARRANGING FOR THE TRANSFER OF THE MONEY TO YOUR ACCOUNT.
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AS ASSURED ME THAT ONCE I GET AN ARTIST TO BUY ARTWORKS FROM THEY WILL TRANSFER THE FUNDS DIRECTLY TO THE ARTIST SO THAT I CAN BEGIN TO EXECUTE MY CONTRACT.
PLS ONCE THE TRANSFER IS THROUGH I WILL LIKE YOU TO SEND ME THE PAINTINGS IMMEDIATELY SO THAT I CAN START WORK ON MY CONTRACT.
I TRUST YOU TO MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICES OF PAINTINGS FOR ME,I WILL LIKE AS MANY AS MY MONEY IS WORTH $300,000.
SO IF YOU ARE INTRESTED AND CAN HANDLE SUGE A HUGE CONTRACT PLEASE GET BACK TO ME URGENTLY BECAUSE I AM CONSIDERING TRAVELLING TO AMSTERDAM TO LOOK FOR AN ARTIST TO PURCHASE FROM.
SO PLS GET BACK TO ME IMMEDIATELY.
THANKS AND HOPE TO HEAR FROM YOU.
NICOLE FRASER
=====================================================
YALLA FREE Internet Number inside Egypt : 0777 4444
Visit YALLA Site www.yalla.com
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December 2, 2004 (Thursday)
The November issue of local magazine, "7x7 SF" has an article called, "Art Addicts Anonymous - Four Urban Collectors Confess Their Compulsion for Canvas," written by Chloe Harris with photos by Chris Mitchell.
"The Modernist," Yuri Psinakis, has nearly 200 pieces in his SoMa loft.
"Psinakis' quest for personally meaningful art has resulted in an avant-garde collection of intrepid works. Vintage pieces, like a Japanese painting, picked up at a flea market, cohabit with an easily recognizable Yositomo Nara. Opposite a hanging sculpture made of oxidized computer monitors, an enormous sketch of a woman masturbating dominates the living room wall."
From the November issue of 7x7SF
"The Romantic," Lisa Mummert, is filling her China Basin loft with commissions (a mural and a portrait) and big graphical works by David DeRosa and Shepard Fairey.
"Great art does amazing things for the social atmosphere of a person's home, "Mummert says. It stimulates the mind."
From the November issue of 7x7SF
"The Rebel," Lee Gregory, has been collecting since junior high, and has filled her Lone Mountain apartment with an eclectic mix of well-known and unknown artists.
"She only buys 'what talks too me' - like a vibrant red cross composed entirely of red glitter by Marin native Micol Hebron, and a toilet paper roll made of rationed toothpaste tubes by Cuban artist Rene Francisco Rodriguez."
From the November issue of 7x7SF
"The Hipster," Steve Brindmore, calls himself "an art pack rat" and a compulsive collector of emerging art.
"A black and white John Meyer diptych shares wall space with works on paper by Jim Gaylord, and the more serious art - such as a Cravaggio-inspired painting by Odd Nerdrum - seems strangely at home next to a $25 collage , which Brindmore spotted on the walls of Boogaloos while having breakfast."
From the November issue of 7x7SF
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December 1, 2004 (Wednesday)
J.T. Kirkland at Thinking About Art runs short essays from artists - mine is today. Kirkland asked me to write about "community" and what it means in my art.
(He's still accepting submissions - click here if you're an artist and you're interested in participating.)
From DC Art News, an open letter from artist and art critic J. W. Mahoney about Art-O-Matic (an unjuried art event similar to San Francisco's Open Studios.):
"What final virtue exists in a circus like Art-o-matic? Art is made in order to make concrete the deep abstraction that is the self. Each artist here, regardless of the depths of their relation to the discourse of art history, has a story and a unique identity that emerges on these walls. In enormous vulnerability. To be able to stand alongside the occasionally talentless courage, manic generosity, and raw eccentricity of my fellow artists is a real honor. Because what art is about isn't safe."
Iconoduel discusses death as a career move for artists (example Ed Paschke):
On the positive side, I suppose it's an ultimate sign of relevance when news outlets use your death as an opportunity to speculate coldly on its material benefits. Ed, you've arrived: transcending death in the late-capitalist mode.
"Committed abstractionists are finding themselves irresistibly drawn to the figure," according to Deidre Stein Greben at ARTnews Online :
"Philip Guston began by working in his rough, cartoonish style in the evenings, while continuing in his abstract mode by day, according to art historian Martin Hentschel. ...
Less known is that Dan Flavin, who never actually abandoned abstraction, indulged a passion for the Hudson River School, painting and drawing landscapes and sailing pictures while making his neon sculptures. ...
Today, deciding to paint figuratively or abstractly, artists and curators agree, is no longer considered a problem. 'My own sense is that it is now a false distinction,' says Robert Rosenblum, a professor at New York University and a curator at the Guggenheim. Rosenblum singles out Gerhard Richter, an artist who has oscillated between realism and abstraction since the mid-1980s, as having made that abundantly clear. 'The issue is why paint at all versus whether what you paint is representational or not,' adds Ferguson. 'If you are going to paint, paint what you want.' "
For Bill Viola fans (and I count myself among that number) there are at least two mentions out there today... Tyler Green writes about a Bill Viola OPERA project and Roberta Fallon sees an oldie but goodie, "The Greeting." Charles T. Downey at ionarts weighs in on the opera connection, as well.
November 30, 2004 (Tuesday)
 "Real Symbols for Virtual People"
paintings by Mark Grim
at Soularch Gallery
4033-A Judah @ 46th Ave.
Mon - Fri: 10am-5pm
Sat: 12-5pm
This little gallery is in my neighborhood, in fact I walk by it on my way to the beach. It's one of those narrow, old-fashioned, little store front places with a window in the front and back. This one is between a Thai restaurant and a dog-washing outfit. It's actually an architect's office, but the office space only takes up the back third of the space, so the architect has kindly converted the front to a gallery.
 I first met Mark Grim a few months ago when he came to one of my shows. He said he painted in acrylics and he had studied with Robert Bechtle, although he wasn't doing representational work any more. This show at Soularch was the first time I'd seen his work. Mark's a fun painter to talk with, so I asked him if I could do an interview with him sometime, and I think we're going to do that next month. Here's a review of his previous show in this space.
Mark's work is painterly, and very appealing (to my realist eyes.) It's absolutely abstract, but I keep getting the sensation that I'm seeing something representational out of the corner of my eye... but then, when I focus on that area, whatever it was vanishes. I took a lot of photos, which I'll post with the interview - soon, I hope.
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