Cobalt blue, Prussian blue, cerulean, ultramarine oh so deep and phthalo.
Blue eyes, blue skies, bluebottle flies, grandma’s blueberry pies.
Great blue herons, blue jays, eastern bluebirds, black-throated blue warblers, indigo buntings and blue-winged teals.
Twelve-bar blues. Suede shoes and jeans.
Spruces, hydrangeas and hyacinths. Bluebells. Blue balls. Movies and laws.
Blue blood. Icebergs. Bluefish. Whales.
Morphos. Cheese and seas.
A lovely blue planet.
Oh, the possibilities of color.
How do the personal identities of past and present remain contiguous?
It was summer 1982, and I’d just moved to Manhattan from Canada — a teen determined to make it on my own in the big city. Terrified and excited and alone, trying to scour clean the one place I could find to live — that being an SRO (Single Room Occupancy a.k.a. Welfare Hotel). . . I arrive donning my best clothes, and enter the building’s fragrant elevator that had just been emptied of the feces-encrusted baseboards ripped from the apartment of a previous tenant, a testament to the departed Saviour of over 100 cats.
“Will the hassles never end in this city? Will I ever finally kill the LAST cockroach? Will New York ever feel like home?” I look over photographs for some assurance that I do have a past, however brief. People somewhere do know I exist. There’s a knock on my door and I answer it to find welcoming strangers: Two handsome men proffering a pint of Haagen Dazs. “ICE CREAM LADIES!” they chime in unison.
Moving forward on an unknown path, a bit of RD Laing articulated my conundrum well enough that I wrote it down as I closed out the journal that marked my transition from the Great White North to NYC:
Sometimes I come
sometimes I go
but which is which
I don’t know
Sometimes I am
sometimes I’m not
but which is which
I forgot
And the journey back moves me to look up Laing again, his decades-old words seeming startlingly contemporary:
“The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”
“We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.”
The cost of pursuing a creative career without a trust fund has meant living in some of the city’s sketchier neighborhoods over the years–Washington Heights in the heyday of crack, f’rinstance.
Retroblogging from June 22, 1989:
…A couple of weeks ago, cops raided 1060 St. Nik - bust down the door, but did not get their man, who lived on the third floor - a dealer who had shot his girlfriend in the head, then fled. Left behind dope galore, over $1200 cash (who knows really how much more), 15-20 guns, 3 VCRs, dozens of lawbooks, and a toilet seat with his name, “Mickey,” on it.
I ran into the maintenance man Joe, who said I should take the furniture if I needed it, and anything else I wanted. As we moved furniture over the roof to my place, we discovered a false bottom to one drawer - $260, mostly in very old bills. Also an arrow, several pairs of expensive new men’s socks, and a piece of 1/2″ thick plate glass (covered with coke at the time, but very useful for painting). So, my indirect thanks to the lousy heroin/coke-dealing bum. Good riddance.
The super, a few days later, slaps a bag of pot into my hand after calling me to his door. A dime-bag which he won’t let me pay for - tells me it’s a $15 bag and wants favours from me instead. No shit. This guy is too old to be my father. Seems he and Joe have targeted me somewhat - so I put a firm end to any ideas he was entertaining and only hope that he doesn’t get crazy or spiteful. I doubt it, but one never knows with people how they will react. I tried to handle it carefully and respectfully, but strong.
Bruce Bailey was brutally murdered last week. A shock too great for me, after all the hours spent with him over the 109th St case in housing court. It seems it was probably related to his pressuring the landlords of a building around the corner from me on 164th Street to get crack out of the building. No need to describe it here. I already have enough fuel for nightmares. But now, after such a murder, who will have the courage to help others fight and organize? Who will have even the courage to fight for themselves? The dealers & the landlords are one and the same, knowing only greed, breeding avarice, which nourishes itself with death and depravity…
What co
uld be more pleasing than such an invitation? I paid a visit to David Byrne’s installation “Playing the Building.” If you don’t already know, he has set up an organ in the cavernous and semi-decayed Battery Maritime Building on the southern shore of Manhattan. Playing the organ triggers various sounds from the building’s elements - thrumming fans, whistling pipes, knocking radiators and more - producing an eerie, haunting, and thoroughly delightful symphony! The playful enticement above is stenciled on the floor in front of the magical instrument.
If the thought of contemporary art has begun to make you cringe, becoming synonymous with pretension, cynicism, and consumerism, then you can thank Mr. Byrne for the antidote. This imaginative, musical interaction with a classic New York space is a gift to all who care to partake, and it’s FREE (until it closes, August 10th). Anyone can have a turn. The only merch in sight is a large, beautiful poster depicting the installation - yours for the whopping price of one American dollar. I assume Damien Hirst is thinking, “What a fuckwit that David Byrne is!”
After that, you can wander over to the stunning gardens in Battery Park, where you can visit Zelda, and there are outdoor musical devices you and your friends can play with your legs and feet. FREE! FREE! FREE!
But even if you don’t get down to South Ferry anytime soon, do yourself and everyone else around you a favor, and fer god’s sake, please play.
Alice, one of my youngest friends, taught me a bundle when she showed me her new desk yesterday. A sharp kid, she identified what’s important and in what proportion, and she’d labeled her three drawers wisely. The two on top are “Art” and “Me”, and appropriately, the GIANT one is reserved for “Fun.”
Thanks, Alice, for reminding me that it’s not all work, especially if one doesn’t see it that way.
I’m sure Jesse Helms leaves behind some people somewhere, who will mourn his passing. But to those of us with open minds and hearts, who abhor racism and discrimination, we who cherish equality, liberty, freedom of expression, and yes, ART in all its forms, his death is one reminder why human mortality is, after all, a good thing for the world.
The man who almost singlehandedly eviscerated the National Endowment for the Arts is done and gone. And gone still is funding for individual visual artists.
Here are some highlights from his ignominious life history (from Helm’s obit in today’s NY Times):
“The self-proclaimed, self-anointed art experts would scoff and say, ‘Oooh, terrible,’ but I like beautiful things, not modern art,” he told The New York Times in 1989, during a pitched battle over federal subsidies to the arts. “I can’t even figure out that sculpture in the Hart Building.” He was referring to an Alexander Calder mobile.
In the 1980’s he took on the National Endowment for the Arts for subsidizing art that he found offensive, chiefly that of the homosexual photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and of the artist Andres Serrano over his depiction of a crucifix submerged in urine. He later led an ill-fated attempt to take over CBS, exhorting conservatives to buy up stock in order to stop what he saw as a liberal bias in its news reporting.
He fought bitterly against Federal aid for AIDS research and treatment, saying the disease resulted from “unnatural” and “disgusting” homosexual behavior.
Trailing in a tough re-election fight in 1990 against a black opponent, Harvey Gantt, the former mayor of Charlotte, Mr. Helms unveiled a nakedly racial campaign ad in which a pair of hands belonging to a white job-seeker crumpled a rejection slip as an announcer explained that the job had been given to an unqualified member of a minority. Mr. Helms went on to victory.
“Look carefully into the faces of the people participating,” he said in a 1968 editorial against anti-Vietnam war protests. “What you will see, for the most part, are dirty, unshaven, often crude young men and stringy-haired awkward young women who cannot attract attention any other way.”
On this country’s birthday, maybe there’s hope that we can collectively learn a lesson, name that kind of thinking for what it really is, and actively refuse to tolerate it in our government and our lives.
[Above: It's for You, Jesse, ©Sky Pape, 1990, oilstick, pastel and graphite on paper. Private Collection, Brooklyn, NY]
[More examples of Helms' unabashed bigotry.]
“…Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist’s life: in understanding as in creating.
There is here no measuring with time, no year matters and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide. I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful: patience is everything!”
[Rediscovered journal entry from March 1984, quoting from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 3, dated April 23, 1903, Viareggio (near Pisa), Italy. Drat. I wish I had noted who did the translation.]
[Portrait of Rilke by Paul Modersohn-Becker, painted in 1900. More on the relationship between Rilke & Modersohn-Becker.]
Regardless of my opinion about what I see, it’s not hard for me to connect with visual art. It’s a language I’ve always understood. Yet theatre is more of a challenge, and theatricality, the over-exaggerated gestures and dialogue, often leave me unimpressed. Call me a Philistine if you wish, but often I just don’t get it. It’s Entertainment versus Art, and Art seldom has a chance because of the sheer cost of getting a production to the stage.
However, with a two-person cast, sublime acting and direction, and marvelous, spare sets by Christine Jones, I was treated to one of those rarest of rare experiences — the Off-Broadway Show as a work of art.
“The Occupant,” a post-mortem interview-style play by Edward Albee on the life of Louise Nevelson (a friend of the artist for over two decades), hands the two actors, Mercedes Ruehl and Larry Bryggman, tremendous material with which to work. And no doubt they worked their tails off, in concert with director Pam MacKinnon. The result is a show that soars. With an intensity of character portrayal that simply must be experienced, Ruehl delivers all the complexities of an artist’s journey: the sacrifices, the endurance, the selfishness, the self-possession, the outrageousness, the determination, the risks, the alienation, the calculation, the impulsiveness, and all the contradictions and magnificence of a very individual and creative path.
I’ve always respected Louise Nevelson the artist as a trailblazer of sorts, and her work for its integrity and powerful presence. Although I’ve been aware of both since I was young, truthfully, neither has figured at the forefront of my thoughts about my art-world predecessors. This outstanding play at the Signature Theatre may change that for good.
[On the eyes being windows to the soul: "They call a lot of attention to themselves, the eyes, if you have two sets of sable eyelashes."] Uh oh. I have a long neck and have been seen from time to time in a feather boa. What does that mean?
The show is extended until July 13th. Don’t miss the opportunity to see it if you can.
But don’t take my word for it. More descriptive reviews:
I found this with some notes for an artist’s statement I was working on last century. Vintage blogging:
In the words of poet Czeslaw Milosz, “Each of us is so ashamed of his own helplessness and ignorance that he considers it appropriate to communicate only what he thinks others will understand. There are, however, times when somehow we slowly divest ourselves of that shame and begin to speak openly about all the things we do not understand.”
Art is an open door that beckons us to overcome the human susceptibility to confusion and denial in order to understand and react to our world with greater depth and insight.
As part of the Uptown Arts Stroll, I’ll be having an open studio, as will a bunch of other artists in Inwood and Washington Heights tomorrow afternoon (Sunday, 6/22). Think of it as the visual arts equivalent of a backstage tour. Come and check out beautiful “Upstate Manhattan” and see for yourself why artists, writers, musicians, performers, and creative types of all sorts love to call this area home. [Locations posted at the Uptown Arts Stroll website.]
You can visit The Cloisters, and grab a gourmet bite of primarily local, seasonal, and organic food at the New Leaf Cafe, which turns profits towards restoring run-down parks like Swindlers Cove, thanks to the vision of super-diva Bette Midler, who founded NY Restoration Project. Walk by Houdini’s house (67 Payson), and that famous intersection (I kid you not) of Seaman and Cumming! Visit Inwood Hill Park, the site where we essentially stole Manhattan from the Native Americans. Food! History! Entertainment! Oh, and don’t forget …ART!
FREE Shuttle Buses! ¡Transportación GRATIS!
Look out for the robin egg blue ARC Ft. Washington Senior Center Shuttle bus at the following shuttle stops (North/South):
Busca el autobus azul de ARC Ft. Washington Senior Center en las siguientes paradas (norte/sur):
Isham St and Broadway
Isham St and Sherman Ave.
Broadway & 204th St
Broadway & Academy St.
Academy St & Sharman Ave.
10th Ave & 202 St
Nagle Ave and Ellwood St
Broadway & 187 St.
Ft. Washington Ave & 190 St.
Ft. Washington Ave & 187 St.
Ft. Washington Ave & 185 St.
Ft. Washington Ave & 181 St.
Ft. Washington Ave & 177 St.
Ft. Washington Ave & 170 St.
Ft. Washington Ave & 162 St.
Broadway & 165th St.
