Teresita Fernandez‘s Seattle Cloud Cover at the Olympic Sculpture Park
Tony Oursler on the escalator at the Seattle Public Library
Ivar’s on Northlake Way, under 1-5
Archives for August 2009
Anthony Discenza – street sign (horrors)
Bladerunner, continued
Alfred Leslie – the everything artist
Born in 1927, Alfred Leslie was a multidisciplinary artist by his late teens. Abstract painter, portrait painter, improvising sculptor; filmmaker (Pull My Daisy
with Robert Frank, 1959), photographer, novelist and graphic novelist,
he rejected the idea that he needed one style and a single point of
view. In 1988, he made a terrific series of road trip drawings while driving.
Leslie began the drawings for what is now Attacked by the Heart in the early 1960s, some of which were published in Artforum in 1962, and all of which were destroyed by a fire in 1966. In 1991, he redid and enlarged upon them.
Attacked by the Heart is one of 15 Leslie books available here,
most of which can be clicked through and read online. It opens with a
fine young man walking down a New York street carrying groceries a sack, like
John Travolta carrying a paint can as the opener of Saturday Night
Fever. Unlike Travolta, Leslie’s character is immediately felled by a
big pain in his chest.
The bread rolls film canisters he’s carrying turn into wheels that roll away to lie in the street (agile scale shifts) as giant golden coins, lost to him.
Excellent Art in America interview with Judith E. Stein from January here.
Clouds indoors: the Joe Btfspik effect
From the Li’l Abner Family Album:
Joe Btfspik:
Q. Why is he shunned and
feared?
A. He’s the world’s worst
jinx.
He
carried his bad luck with him wherever he went, with an inescapable
gray cloud over his head. Indoors and out, his personal weather was
always raining.
carried his bad luck with him wherever he went, with an inescapable
gray cloud over his head. Indoors and out, his personal weather was
always raining.
The idea of indoor clouds is rarely credited to America’s best Calvinist comic strip.
John Grade, Seep of Winter, 2008
Tara Donovan, Untitled, 2003
Philippe Parreno, 2009
Top 10 fears from the worrywart’s bible
Tight, tiny handwriting bordered by smudged fingerprints: Jennifer Zwick came up with 100 answers to the old question, What MIght Go Wrong, and turned them into small intaglio prints. They’re anxiety’s answer to the false cheer of a fortune cookie.
From her 100, here’s a sample of 10 guaranteed to take the jaunty down a peg.
Alfred Leslie – road signs in fog
Road trip watercolors here, including, below, Bridge from Mill Creek, Youngstown, Ohio, 1988.
Shawn Wolfe & George Carlin: stuff
Finding Michael Dailey’s obituary insufficient…
Painter Robert Jessup contributed his own better one as a comment.
I think that I met Mike Dailey in 1972 when I took my first Beginning Drawing class from him at the University of Washington. I took many more classes from him, and he became my unofficial guidance counselor during my undergraduate voyage to my BFA in painting.
I went to the University of Iowa for my MFA because of Mike. (Mike introduced me to the work of Pierre Bonnard!) Actually, all the things I really learned about painting, all the things that I came to value as an artist and hold close to my painter’s heart, I learned from Mike. He was not only my mentor, but my role model as an artist, teacher, friend, and human being. He was the example I could point to, the touchstone, the way one should be. I have never known anyone as generous with himself as was Mike. Or as loyal. Or as wise.
[Read more…] about Finding Michael Dailey’s obituary insufficient…
Bob Dylan arrested for looking…
Police officer Craig Spencer said: ‘Residents called to complain there was an old scruffy man acting suspiciously.
‘It was an odd request because it was mid-afternoon, but it’s an ethnic Latin area and the residents felt the man didn’t fit in. Lets just say he looked eccentric.
At 68, Dylan tends to look as if he doesn’t have a dime. No facials for him, no teeth whitener, no Barney’s.
From Jan Herman:
Living in a Police State is OK:
I know, because I live in one, and I’m doing fine. I haven’t been arrested for jaywalking, littering, loitering, begging, or sleeping under a bridge. I haven’t been arrested for sleeping in a homeless shelter when there’s an outstanding warrant against me for sleeping on a suburban sidewalk. I haven’t been arrested for being someone who looks to a reasonable person like I belong on public assistance. I haven’t been arrested for eating food someone gave me in a park. I haven’t been arrested for not being white, wearing a wrong-color T-shirt in a wrong-color neighborhood, or looking overly anxious in an airport. I haven’t been arrested for being late for school or without ID in public housing. And those are just some of the things I haven’t been arrested for. The reason I haven’t been arrested is not because I’m white and haven’t committed any of these crimes — let’s face it, I’ve jaywalked, littered, and loitered, which makes me a triple threat — it’s because I’m not poor. If I were, living in my police state would not be OK, as Barbara Ehrenreich points out today in her must-read NY Times op-ed on “the viciousness of the official animus toward the indigent.”
News reports of the incident stress the humor of a 22-year-old police woman who didn’t recognize Dylan. None discuss why it’s ok to cuff somebody for looking odd, eccentric, out of place, indigent.
Even if he weren’t a celebrity, Johnny Depp could dress as shabbily as he wants. He’s protected by the beauty bubble.
Those with no money and no allure are advised to step lively in the street, with purpose and benign good will. Poor, ugly, weak and grim? Be sure to have a public defender on speed dial.
Here’s to the odd.
