Six Courses

Six courses laid. Clear pine boxframe milled from reclaimed wood; to lend a better sense of scale, the frame's face is about 3/4" wide.

Tools & Materials

I'm doing a series of small stoneworks, and documenting process for promotional materials. Postcards, greeting cards and affordable prints of Tools & Materials are available at Redbubble.

Hurt

                                                                                                photo: Wikipedia

Pain is the first teacher: My poem 'Hurt' at The Blue Hour.

Hemingray Number 45

For me, one of the most enjoyable aspects of trading in antiques, collectibles etc is photographing them. This is a Hemingray Number 45 glass insulator.  Millions were produced for long distance telephone lines from 1938-1960.  They're not highly sought after, or worth a great deal; collectibility is often about rarity, and too many were made. 

Form not only served function beautifully in this design, but held its own in a way we'd consider indulgent, wasteful now.  I wonder how many of today's similarly utilitarian components, packaging products etc will survive this long, be considered lovely art objects one day.     

Postcards, greeting cards, and matted prints of this photograph are available at Redbubble. Prices start under $3.

Charm Of A Ratdog

On the way out of town I pulled into the rundown Phillips at the top of the hill and filled the tank and bought a shrinkwrapped hoagie. The chocolate chip cookies in the case looked good but when the clerk dropped one in a bag it rang like a stone. I said you got coffee? He shrugged. He was a skinny kid with the charm of a ratdog and weak whiteboy dreads. Wide strips of pale scalp stretched tight and painful looking. I said can you nod? His eyes got smaller. What? I said nevermind. The pot was a third full. It smelled like last week’s but it’d do to dunk the cookie. I said you got napkins? He was reading the Times. He didn’t look up. Under the hotdogs. I took more than I needed. You never have too many. He’d been reading the help wanteds. He said you got thirty? I said yeah. He made change. It wasn’t much. I shouldered the door open holding my coffee so it wouldn’t spill and went out. A semi blew by, jake brake bellowing. Gearing down late for the hill.

What Are The Odds

A couple years ago someone at Fictionaut interviewed me about my lit & arts quarterly Ramshackle Review. One of her questions was what’s the best concert you’ve ever seen? That's easy: Ted Nugent and Van Halen, Binghamton, New York, 1978. We went to see Ted, and Van Halen opened.  Their first record hadn’t broken on the east coast yet, none of us knew who they were, and they blew the roof off the Broome County Arena. Within a few months, every kid with a guitar was trying to learn Eddie Van Halen's groundbreaking Eruption licks, and the rest is rock and roll history.  
 
A few weeks ago I got an email from Greg Renoff, a writer who’s working on a book about Van Halen’s early years. He asked for any info I could provide on that Binghamton show, and said that it seems a lost date of sorts. He’d found only two online mentions: My Fictionaut interview; and a cached copy of a defunct myspace page, with this photo.

Long story short: The guy in the lower left corner, striped longsleeve tee, black headband, fist pump? 
‒ Yeah.  That’s me. 

They make you wonder, these kinds of improbable, seemingly random connections.  Not so much how they happen as why.  Probably no reason; probably their only worth is the wondering, the simple joy of their weirdness.  But even in this age of internet connectedness we couldn’t have imagined in 1978, you have to shake your head, and laugh, and say what are the odds of that.

Van Halen live in Fresno, January 1978.

Build Again

"The world is many.  None easy, none sure.  A thousand secret histories, might-have-beens, never-weres.  Sift you through rubble of your own night's fallen walls, find what you may, build again."
      
        –  from An Architect of Dreams: The Life of Thomas Dain, Thomas Dain Estate, publisher. Used by permission.     

Torn-Out Pages

We had a place on Erie Avenue, two rooms full of records, mixtapes, books. Dominique’s baby grand she’d found at a house sale, the Martin flattop I played on No True Names. I kept it under my bed in a hardcase.  You don’t take a guitar like that on the road.  We were out that summer with Concrete Blonde, we'd just played South by Southwest when my cousin called, said Dee’s piano was down on the sidewalk. Our stuff piled around it, people taking what they wanted. No eviction notice, nothing.  Or maybe there was and it just got by us. A lotta shit got by us, those years.  He called friends, found a truck, but by the time they got there anything we cared about was gone. You've just played the biggest show of your life, you come offstage, and somebody says uh, listen. I hate to tell you this, but… 

Dee said for her the worst part was her notebooks. She always kept one with her, she was always writing‒ She told Rolling Stone writing through shit was how she dealt with life.  She had 'em back to junior high, all her journals, poems, songs, sketches‒ I remember one notebook, it was all just titles.  Somebody’s got ‘em‒ You can still go on eBay, find torn-out pages: Her sketches for the No True Names cover, her See-Through Smile lyrics.  You know she wrote that when she was fifteen?  You believe that? 

I got an email from a girl who said she saw us nine times that summer, we stayed at her house once.  She's a lawyer now.  She wants to go after 'em, whoever's sellin' off Dee's notebooks.  I said nah.  Dee's gone, she doesn't care.  She asked if I remembered her.  The lawyer, I mean.  I said sure. 

Taughannock Falls 2013

Taughannock Falls, photographed after a summer storm. For those who've never visited, Taughannock Falls State Park is a few miles north of Ithaca, New York, along the west shore of Cayuga Lake. The falls' height is 215 feet. Giclee prints are available here.

Stormy Day Drawing

A stormy afternoon, and a new drawing. I use General's 6B Charcoal pencils a lot. Great darks, easy to soften, blend, revise. Using a grade this soft as I like to requires lots of sharpening.  Worthwhile, though.  There's a little graphite pencil in here, too.  A good start.

Beebe Lake

Beebe Lake, Cornell University, May 2013.

Stop Trying Again

At the close of this session, elements above and below the little wood seem better integrated, and I like the height and flow of the columns at left.  I eliminated a stand-alone column I couldn’t make work in the last session, and deepened the darks in that area to feature a new outcropping topped with an evergreen.

Whether I can make a given element work is another indicator whose worth I weigh.  I liked that stand-alone colum, but no shape I tried seemed satisfying.  Each successive stage of a drawing is another draft,  and I revise a lot.  But sometimes, when nothing I try makes an element work, I need to discard it.  Usually when I recognize that, reach for the Big Eraser, whatever I’ve given opportunity to happen instead comes much more easily, and complements its context better.

I haven’t kept track of time spent on this drawing, but the last two scans represent about twelve hours’ work.

Knowing When To Stop

A cold gray day, and a six-hour afternoon session. Separating larger masses- the stone columns, wooded slope- into individual outcroppings, ledges, trees. Looking to make each the best I can, while keeping its values and impact in line with the whole.  Leaning back, viewing the drawing at distance makes needed adjustments apparent: Too-darks that need lightening, and vice versa. As always, half the trick's knowing when to stop.

Small Choices

A late evening session, only a couple hours at the end of the day: You work when you can, and often those times are as productive as any. Tonight, no big decisions, but many small choices, developing detail along the benches and below, adjusting values. I'm happy with their cumulative effect, how the components I worked with tonight are evolving, beginning to separate, assert their own character, reveal what they'll contribute to the whole.   

Trusting Fun

Here’s a stitched jpeg- from four 8 ½” x 11” scans- of tonight’s session. No more waterlines for this drawing. I liked this place as an island or promontory, but not the resulting shape or composition- And just as importantly, neither of the waterlines I tried were fun.  Had I paid more attention to that the first time, I might have made better use of the time I spent trying the second. 

Fun is underrated.  The kinds of depth, detail, effects, surfaces etc I want to achieve are work.  I don’t mind; at its most patience-stretching it’s still work I love, and the result is usually satisfying, worth the time and effort invested.   But sometimes I forget the importance, at least in an element’s developmental stages, of simply enjoying, having fun drawing this.  Fun is an indicator  I need to trust more.  If I’m not having enough, maybe I should be trying something else.  Tonight’s session was big fun.  I’m excited about what this place has become, and looking forward to whatever happens next.

Cornell's Beebe Lake Overlook & Sackett Footbridge

The Beebe Lake Overlook and Sackett Footbridge comprise one of the most beautiful places on Cornell University's campus. I've taken many photographs here; this is 2013's first. Postcards, prints, and posters available at Redbubble.  More Postcards from Cornell.  

New Year's Day

Much respect to Otoliths editor Mark Young for continuing to demonstrate how to publish a great journal, and how much can be achieved on a free platform like Blogger. Thanks, Mark, for including my little piece 'New Year's Day' in the new issue- and for making it better, as well.

Our Failings Are Our Strengths

Looking at more compositional possibilities: Rotating the image a couple degrees clockwise to lessen the empty space at bottom left, and roughing in a new waterline.

I'd planned on refining the stand of trees, adding detail, shadows, etc. But this may be one of those times when the first take is as nearly as good as it's gonna get, or needs to. Doesn't happen often. As I've mentioned many times, I nearly always think I can make this or that element just that little bit better. And usually I can.  But sometimes I do the drawing much more harm than good. The trick, as always, is knowing when to leave well enough alone. Why's that so hard. But hey. Our failings are our strengths.

If I worked digitally I'd just add another layer, experiment in that, and so on.  At worst, no harm done.  Good thing I don't. Endless possibilities, no risk of pushing the paper too far- I'd probably never finish anything. 

Small Mysteries

Back at this one after several days away.  I try to work at least some whenever I can, but I also try to recognize those times when I lack the necessary energy and clarity to make good decisions.  When I'll likely only waste time, and I may fuck up a perfectly good drawing. 

The waterline I tried seemed forced, a pat response, unsatisfying resolution to the shapes above. Happily charcoal and graphite are forgiving. I like the way the stone forms emerge from this stand of trees.  How the trees soften, obscure, make me want to see further into those openings.

For me, these kinds of places are small mysteries.  I'm not looking for explanations, resolution: Mysteries resolved are no longer mysteries, and what fun is that.  I want the work to offer- to me, and to viewers- opportunity to wonder, imagine. As a friend said, "to find our own stories." So when I want to see more and can't, that's a good thing.

Increments of Regret

"In this dream one typically struggles to review the distance between intent and achievement."  Read my poem Increments of Regret at litbomb.