11/24 The sky in Cleveland thanks to its proximity to Lake Erie is very high and bright. Suddenly I’m out of the low ceiling of the old context and overwhelmed in Great Lakes light again. Witnessing April’s incredible total eclipse of the sun here added much more. How fragile this refracted reflected light below the clouds and circling spheres. The small mixed media works on paper that have resulted are attempted fugues (flights) into this strange expanse. Naturally most crash and are discarded. Some might soar >>>
10/23 Remodeling projects ensue on new house and studio.
9/23 Moved to Gates Mill, Ohio.
1/20/2023 Immediately after posting a Bigcartel.com web shop on this site >>> a trusted friend and design collaborator bought this drawing from his hospital bed. Nobody, even him, knew he was so sick. He died a week later. Miss you Dave.
1/17/22 Esteemed friend, Alan Halm, sent this today re the virtual propositions shown here– “As per our recent conversations, the “imagined” exhibits are in line with the quantum wave idea of the work’s life line. There IS a Platonic essence of some kind involved. The original work fans out in all directions and manifests in “random” or “pre-determined” expressions. They DO reside in Portugal and Paris, and will do so a great many times more in many other places during the life span of these works.”
(1/2/22) Authenticity is paramount. 30 years of making art in the Madison, WI area has been ridiculous. My abundant enthusiasms have worn thin. Rather than retreat I worked harder. After moving just beyond urban confines to a woodland moraine, no surprise, the paintings, and especially the drawings, changed. Imperatives of land stewardship took hold. The invasive tree clearing, weed pulling, and pile burning forced figures into a thicket. Lurking, they became branches, roots, and vice versa. When not dissolved in muck, any distinct demarcation was necessarily (chain saw) brutal and deafening. Its disastrous when paint aspires to nothing more than its natural state of sludge and natural phenomenon conquers an artist. Yet art, like science and religion, insists its parallel status. Gradually sunlight found the forest floor and some authentic rights in the “woodland” experience appeared. Like a long dormant indigenous plant emerging I realized a tangle of media, academics, technology, travels, art world immersion, and design work, had obscured my path. I had even almost forgotten where I came from. Requirements of life cause most adults on the north shore of Lake Superior to put some distance between themselves and the most grand, most deep, most merciless and magnetic of lakes. Their kids however refuse. Winter/summer we thrived on its particular latitude, running full risk daily, through everything till darkness, the air, forests, beaches, cliffs, and rivers, absorbing unawares the matchless reflected light of its southern exposure.
(12/14/21) Drawing resists the pride that so easily thrives on painting’s pretense. Throughout the early 2000s I mined imagery from dozens of drawing books for large paintings. Nostalgia aside, here are some quick memories from that time- –One September morning, after finding my room scattered with drawings, an alarmed housekeeper at Friedrichshafen’s Buchhorner Hofwas so disturbed by the work that she made a point of confronting me out in the hall warning that if I wasn’t careful I could “lose my soul”. –I was glad to pay for professional counsel during those years as long as i was asked straight away how the artwork was going. The therapist upon announcing her retirement a few years later asked for a showing of some of the works made under her watch. On review she often moaned sometimes gasping saying, “oh no…” Laughing I asked, “Do they look bad?” She replied, “How would I know?” –I told a veteran painter friend I was trying to remove design from the work. Emphatically he warned, “It’s not healthy.” –9 Springs studio fortunately allowed large works. Among others hanging there was a 12′ x 12′ painting (below) made specifically for a visit by MMoCA‘s director. On showing he enthusiastically stooped paying well received long attentions to the dog. Pointing to the painting, I interrupted, “I made this just for your visit”. In one motion he straightened, looked up, shrugged, muttered “eh..”, and turned away.
(11/27/21) I arrived at a residency at the Kansas City Art Institute in the late fall of 2000, riding a life raft of design and its “useful” service function. Still traumatized from a divorce and after years of exhibition design projects, I was deliriously focused on uniting art with design. The KCAIprint studio contained a diverse collection of chairs with the word PRINT spray stenciled on each backrest. I saw no difference between those chairs and any print coming off a press and would not shut up about it. With much ceremony I added a stenciled Karim Rashid Oh chair to the lot. As this high on design about art state fueled production of a series of “fake paintings” in the wood shop, I heard that a young woman who worked downtown as an art gallery receptionist was found dead on a nearby sidewalk, a victim of a late night drive-by shooting while out walking her dog. Reflecting on this terrible act crashed my raft ashore and soon I was spitting sand. Straight away I started making drawings about it and in many ways haven’t stopped since. Design serves intellect all too well. Repeat- She was outside her apartment late at night and was randomly murdered while walking her dog. Whatever small import that existed in my attempts at reason and synthesis.. it drained out. Art like life is unthinkable.
(11/25/21)2009 was a great drawing year. So many drawings…. In most of these small works the linear aspect was completed somewhere throughout the day knowing a gouache layer might finish them late at night in a small Deutsch hotel room. A year later the work shifted away from figure narrative.
(11/22/21) Winter of 2020/21, due to encouragement of painter Guzzo Pinc, I set out inserting images of paintings within mostly found photographs. It reminded me of when a father offered “some kind of life employment” at the family hardware store to his folk musician inclined son. Art resists viability, but in case you cant imagine a contemporary painting on display anywhere >>> psd inserts
(11/19/21) The Vahid Series production served as a 6 month (summer 2021) studio meditation adhering to protocols of craft, design, method, scale, and number. The assemblage process employed is, as anyone familiar with collage knows, the surest way to surprise outcomes. Another aspect of this work is a returning to former attempts at catharsis (Studio 214B) using Suprematist processes that address painting as cliche and institutional currency. As much as an artist may wish for assured viability, this is a vain imagination. Our current context of prostitution of the arts and the exile of the artist to at best- professionalism, aesthetics, design, academics, and agenda, and at worst- narcissist fool, demands further distinction. I appreciate that a friend yesterday called these Vahids (unities or uniques) “a kind of Scandi Punk” yet they might also serve as placeholders in case any future actual art should appear to take their place. In fulfilling this role perhaps they might absorb all false attributions, and be even more than what they await by proxy!
(11/13/21) Thanks to encouragement from friends and family, this site starts now >>>
