Tag: #Painting

  • Artist Books

    Over Winter Break, our little family went to the Museum of Modern Art here in Manhattan. Part of the reason to go was to kill an afternoon, but also the kid really is loving her art class at school. They were studying Picasso before the break, and she remembered that MoMA has several of his very famous paintings, and was excited about seeing them. For the wife, she hadn’t been out in the City in a while, you know, to actually enjoy this place – so she was hip on going. Me; I love going to museums – any museum: historical, art, kid, whimsical, yarn, whatever…

    So, up on the top floor, MoMA is holding a retrospective on Edward Ruscha. I was vaguely aware of his work, especially the gas station stuff, but I didn’t know a whole lot about the guy. Let me say this, if you are available, you should go check it out. His work covers several different mediums, and is a very interesting digestion of Post War America, and the growing of Pax Americana.

    Out of all his works, the one I was most drawn to were his artist’s books, the first being “Twentysix Gasoline Stations.” There was something to the simplicity of the work in the book, and the efficacy of the design on the whole. Ruscha went on do many other artists books, all keeping with the same design theme. What these books reminded me of was two things; gallery books my uncle would make, and other artist’s sketchbooks.

    I am aware that Ruscha’s artist books were not sketchbooks, but a complete work unto itself, but I have been to other artist’s shows were they make a single sketchbook into a work. Some of the most interesting I have seen, sadly I have forgotten names, were books that had cut out pictures from magazines and newspapers, or were a combination of text ant drawings/paintings.

    And then there are the gallery books that my uncle used to make. He was a painter/artist who spent time in New York in the late 50’s and 60’s and then relocated to Houston. When he had a show in a gallery, books would be printed for the event, but my uncle took extra time making these limited-edition books individual and unique. Some of the books he would personally swipe paint across the cover, and I think one he would rip the corner off of the first page, to make each book feel “used.”

    And for the past week, in the back of my head, I have this “artist book” idea-thing kicking around in my head. Not sure what to do with it. About six months ago I started farting around with the idea of making a limited run “zine” that would feature crayon drawings and poems with my kid, but that never materialized. (I think my daughter was never on board with the idea.) But I like the idea that writers should adopt artists books as part of their medium to work with. This would be more than a chapbook, as it would incorporate more visuals and play with format and style. For a writer not only works with words, but also the form that books can take, right?

    I’m going to play around with this some more. Even though I might just be describing chapbooks…

  • Go to Work

    When I was in high school, I had a Humanities teacher tell me a story about Edward Hopper. Later in Hopper’s life he gave an interview, and the reporter asked if Hopper enjoyed the process of creating his work? To which Hopper answered; No, because it’s hard work. Hopper got kind’a cranky later in his life, but I liked how honest his response was. Sometimes hard work isn’t fun, and also, being creative isn’t a joy either. I am very glad that Dr. Tripp told me that story, as it has stuck with me for twenty-eight years.

    This also reminds me of the debate I would get into while in college studying theatre. There were two camps of thought in class; the planners and the improvers. You had to fit into one of them. If you were planning out things, then you weren’t in the moment, but if you were improving all the time, no one could plan on what you would do next which really pissed off the technicians and designers. And round and round it went. I found improvers to be selfish, they were people who didn’t want to be told what to do. But planners lacked a spontaneity in their work.

    The truth, I found out in the real world, is that you have to be a little of both.  

    Oh, I was a planner, in case anyone one was wondering.

    But it is about each person figuring out what their process is. Such as, the other night the wife and I were asking each other about our day, and I told her I was feeling frustrated that I haven’t been able to work in the way I feel I need. What this boils down to is that I’m not allowing myself dedicated time to work. I can journal, and I can blog, but I keep placing fiction last, and with the least dedicated time for it.

    And I have I mentioned that I’m not the best husband. I work at it, but I’m still not the best.

    What my wife suggested was that maybe I should try what our friend, who is a published writer, does which is write at the library. This is probably the third or fourth time my wife has suggested this to me in the past year in a half, and this time, it sunk in. She went on to say that I should schedule the time at the library, and then build the rest of my day around that.

    I did get very lucky in landing my wife.

    What she suggested doesn’t sound like fun, it’s work. And I think that’s what I need. I have to plan my creative time. I have to go to work.

  • Short Story Review: “The Hollow” by Greg Jackson

    (The shot story, “The Hollow” by Greg Jackson appeared in the November 29th, 2021 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Okay, no cutesy introduction here, I didn’t get this story, and I’m not sure whose fault it is. Greg Jackson? The New Yorker’s fiction editor? Is it me?

    Here’s the story: Jonah Valente is a college football player who quits the team and wants to become a painter. Jonah is so earnest about his new vocation, it takes on a level of ridicule from other classmates… Like Jack. Though Jack doesn’t think of Jonah often. Fast-forward several years, and Jack is married to Sophie, and they buy a home off in the county away from the city where they had been living. But then Jack loses his job, and Sophie leaves him. Alone in this old farm house, a college friend of Jack’s, Daniel, tells Jack that Jonah lives in the next county over. Jack reaches out to Jonah, and the two begin to hangout. Jonah lives with his mother, coaches a girl’s rugby team at a local high school, is still pursuing painting, and peppers all his conversations with stories about Van Gogh and Picasso. One of the days hanging out Jonah points out to Jack that his home has a hollow space in the middle of the house, which could be a hidden or sealed up room. On another evening, as Jonah tells another story about Picasso, and in a fit of frustration, Jack tells Jonah he will never make it as a painter. Jonah storms off, and then the two lose touch. Later, a letter shows up from Jonah telling Jack that after their fight, he got drunk and fell off a water tower he was trying to paint, and the reason he tells all those stories of Van Gogh and Picasso is because it makes him feel better. Jump some more years, and Jack and Sophie are back together, living in the farm house with a kid now. At a local fair, Jack runs into Jonah sitting at a booth with some awful paintings in it. Jonah claims the paintings aren’t his, and he is helping out a friend by watching his booth. Jack and Jonah share a laugh and never see each other again, and seriously, what the hell is this?

    First, 100% respect for Greg Jackson on getting a story in The New Yorker, because that is a goal of a great number of writers, and the majority, myself included, never attain it.

    But…

    I had so many issues with this story that all seem like very basic questions an editor should have asked. Such as; were Jack and Jonah friends in college? If yes, what was their relationship back then like? If not, then how does Jonah know who Jack is? The story starts off implying that Jonah was a person people at college knew of, but weren’t actually friends with, but when Jack contact Jonah, Jonah’s reaction is as if he knows who Jack is. Well… which one is it? Also, it feels like Jonah is the character that is imparting some sort of wisdom toward Jack, but the tone of the story, and Jack’s attitude, seem to make Jonah the butt of a joke. And if Jonah is not the protagonist of this story, then what is Jack’s heroic act? Then, why does Sophie come back? Did Jack change? Then there is the whole hollow thing. Is the metaphor really just the hidden part of ourselves that no one can access? Really? Following the Chekhov Rule, if it’s in the story, it has to have a purpose, so what was the purpose of the hollow? Being that the story drips a realistic tone, then I don’t believe that there is a modernist/surliest twist going on here. It has to have a meaning.

    As I began to puzzle these questions over and over again, I started to wonder, is the problem with me? Is this story executing some new theory when it comes to what a short story is? What if Jackson presented a story that feigned logic, when it was in fact disassembling what a story’s internal logic could be, thus making the reader question what was really necessary to tell a story.

    No. That’s not what was happening in this story.

    Sadly, it felt like the basic, but essential, work of laying the structure of the story’s internal logic was not fully formed, and thus left the central relationship between Jack and Jonah feeling incomplete, and half-baked. And I don’t think that was the, attempted, point of the story.

    If I’m wrong, then please, someone explain this story to me.

  • Personal Review: New Yorker Profile on Nicole Eisenman

    Do you know who Nicole Eisenman is? I didn’t until this weekend. I got another gift of a Sunday, and was able to do an hour of uninterrupted reading on the couch while listening to music. I chose to make my way through the March 1st issue of The New Yorker, and landed on a profile on the artist/painter/sculptor Nicole Eisenman. I do give a great deal of credit to the article’s writer, Ian Parker, for doing a great job of making visual art come to life through the written word. Not an easy task.

    There are many great parts to the piece, sharing how Eisenman works, and has survived and flourished as an artists in NYC. One part of the article that really struck me was Nicole speaking about how in college, after she came out to her parents, her father, who is a psychiatrist and believed that being gay was a mental disease, would write her long letters trying to dissuade her from being a lesbian, to “save her.” It struck as so depressing and heartbreaking. Her parents not accepting her for who she is bad enough, but to think when she would receive mail from her dad, it was just a dense letter to say how awful she was. I can’t imagine what that does to one’s self esteem, and how hard it must have been to move past that.

    The other thing that struck me about Nicole Eisenman, was how she moved between different forms of expression. Painting is clearly her main focus, but she is also a sculptor. Then if you pay attention and read between the lines, you learn that she was a DJ for a good bit of time, and blogged, and Nicole refers to many cartoons she has drawn in sketchbooks. She struck me as a person who is continually looking for ways to express, and share, and try new ideas. I admire her ability to stay in creative motion, which now I feel bad that I didn’t know of her before.

  • Creative Workout

    A long time ago, I read this profile on artist Chris Ofili in The New Yorker, way back in 2014. There is a lot of great stuff in it, but for some reason, I latched on to a paragraph where it describes how the artist does a sketch in 15 minutes every morning as a sort of warm up as he starts his day painting. That resonated with me, as I thought it showed an insight into how Ofili starts his process of being creative. It doesn’t just “happen” but has to be worked up to.

    I found it similar to a story I heard about John Steinbeck and his process. Somewhere between his second divorce and third marriage, when he was raising his two sons alone, he had a process of waking early, writing in his journal and composing letters, then getting his sons ready for school. Once the boys were off, he was ready to start working, until the boys came home.

    I have been thinking about these two artist lately, about their process, and how they “get started” each day. I have been trying to write a blog at the beginning of the day, or at least when the kid is in a remote class. I have even adopted doing a sketch, with the kid most days, to allow my head to think creatively, but in a different way. I sort of think of it as getting into shape; Training myself to think creatively. Since I cannot work on a project every day, I need to stretch creative muscles routinely.