Offering Ten to the New Museum

     As the rain clouds roll in over Jersey City now, eventually, those bluish-gray clouds will pass.  Perhaps it will sympolize something for someone, somewhere, but, remember, they will pass, and the sun will once again appear, shedding its light on the immediate communites around us.  So let us move forward, working together and working apart, but always doing what we can to sustain individuality and community in this long, ongoing, sometimes very challenging and difficult process.
     At Princeton University, one very wise and knowledgeable professor, a Mr. Cornel West, who's lecture I regretfully missed when he spoke not too long ago at Hudson County Community College here in Jersey City, frequently talks about such matters.  And he is so right when he suggests that democracy does matter.
     What might matters of democracy suggest in art?  Sometimes it's extremely difficult to say, though the results are always diverse, to be sure, yet, if anyone were to ask me, I'd suggest we'd have to wait calmly and see how the New Museum may respond to the January 5 suggestion by the collaborative list devised by Paddy Johnson and Jerry Saltz, two brilliant critics who devoted time and thought in offering up their own list of 10 upcoming artists to be exhibited for solo shows in that building on the Bowery.
     The New Museum, we can only hope, will be flexible enough to honor the writers' collaborative efforts.  Unless others know something I do not (and they do because I surely do not know everything), then, for now, we can only wait and see how that Manhattan museum responds.  May that cultural institution listen to their words.

A Tee Shirt & Soup

     This morning, through the window from this apartment in Jersey City, where one's sight may notice a wedge of a shape from conjoining rooftops of buildings across the street, a bright and creamy yellow light begins to reveal itself.  Hints of a rising sun, a radiant, golden orb in the arcing sky.  Some days, it looks brighter and closer than others; other days, more distant, though, it should be mentioned here, one should never look directly into it for it will damage the eyes, burn the retina.
     For artists in the tri-state area, this rising sun (without question a strange source of energy one astronomical unit away from this earth) ought to be at least one of several things we should always acknowledge, not only because it provides us with warmth during the summer months, a sense of it during the winter months, but, just as importantly, it allows us to see with our eyes by providing us with shape, color and form to the eye.
     Once one steps out into the immediate surroundings, the shapes, colors, forms, smells begin to change, alter, transform, re-shape, re-form the way we respond to certain things our own liking.  We may think we're able to see more clearly with the sun's presence, and, perhaps we can, but this may not always be the case.  So the sun is not everything we must pay attention to.
     Then, there is the moon, just as it appeared last night, circular, big and bright, in the night sky, like a beautifully pockmarked porcelain dish.  Tom Waits once poetically and musically sang about it as a "grapefruit moon."  My first thought on seeing last night's moon in the March night sky was through a recollection of a reproduction of a painted picture by Albert Pinkham Ryder, yet, aside from my recollection of seeing a reproduced painting in a book, there was no better example I can now recall than the very thing itself which I saw last night -- sublime, glowing, eerie, mysterious, high and low, in the night sky.  Yes, the night scares me, too.
     But as it has always been, and just as it is now, and as it will be in the future, my pencil will be in hand, just like it was on Friday afternoon, when, faced with the thought of having to file for unemployment for the first time in my working history, I made a point to return to a gallery at 620 Greenwich in lower Manhattan, enjoy some hot soup, and purchase a tee shirt displaying a very provocative slogan in black letters on white cloth, a material suggested by the tag inside the neck to be made of "100% Combed Cotton."  
     "Gotta dry it first before you can wear it," I was politely told.  Then, later on, I introduced myself by name, and, probably awkwardly, I left it at that.  The soup?  Two bowls of spicey pumpkin.  Delicious, flavorful, and, most importantly, filling, despite what I was told was a full stable.  The tee shirt?  Screen-printed, and ready-made though it was when I purchased it, now, after having followed instructions, it is ready to wear. 
     Yes, the spring weather on Friday was grand and magnificent.  And moving about in the spring weather as I was able to do Friday afternoon had been a long lost rite for me, as I had done from '93 through '03 when I worked nights for an advertising research firm and had my days free.  The problem for me then was that I didn't have any works of art that satisfied me enough to offer anyone else.  So I never said anything about it.  So on Friday, as I strolled around the city, it felt very refreshing to ease my way into trying to reclaim something I felt I lost. 

The Swimmer & Crafty Witch

     Yesterday, during that time of day when one can either say "late afternoon" or "early evening"; that period of time in the day we refer to as dusk, and it briefly settles in on a city and it dispenses with the sunlight only to quickly surrender to the night, this author moved quietly along 11th Avenue and entered the Waterfront New York Tunnel pinned with an address of 269 where a Mr. E. Winkleman's Moving Image Art Fair was set up for public examination.
     Having entered that building, and having passed many strangers seated in chairs, milling about, some reading quietly, others talking, etcetera; once inside that enormous, spacious building, there appeared a series of video screens arranged for strolling visitors to view.  And although this author felt tired, out of breath, exhausted, sleepy, ha! -- downright fatigued from a day of expression-less activity -- this author did manage to view three videos presented for public viewing and scrutiny.  Note taking was not on this author's list of activities, however, three videos were viewed, one of which I shall mention shortly.
     Interestingly enough, the randomly selected videos, situated not far from a coffee shop that could go by an alternative name like, for example, crafty witch, were quite compelling, odd, fantastic, surreal and graceful.  Specifically, one video, according to the wall-mounted label, by Janet Biggs, featured the preparation and gestures of a female swimmer set to cello music.
     The swimmer's movements were gracefully magical and strange, and the video camera was quite obviously recording her movements underwater from an upside-down orientation.  Oriented, as it was in this way, deliberately made the swimmer appear as if she had no legs, or, thought of in another way, somehow had her legs anchored by some weird block of gelatin.  Jello to cello. 
     Should any readers get an opportunity to visit the Moving Image Art Fair today or tomorrow, then by all means do so.  You will be enthralled.