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03/01/2005: "NYC 2"
February 18, noon:
Finally rolled out of bed an hour ago and made it over to Steve’s to work on the net. Last night I got to meet a bunch of people at the Mark Bar. One was Tal Shpantzer, a really good photographer from Israel living in New York. She’s got an amazing ability to capture people because she makes them feel so comfortable in front of her lens. I have begun to understand why, she’s just very comfortable to be around. She’s shown in Prague and had a number of images published internationally in both Prague and Israel. She has a great web site. Below is a link to her site.
http://www.talfoto.com 
February 19, 6 p.m.
I’ve been working on an entry for the McCormick 1st Amendment Museum at the Chicago Tribune. Finally got my presentation sent this afternoon well in advance of the deadline. Lindsay, our new studio mate, was also working on the same competition as it turns out. The art world is a small town it seems. We decided not to discuss it until we both sent our entries in. Tonight I got to see hers and was very impressed. Can’t really discuss it until the jury makes its decisions. Lindsay is a freelance artist who has worked in Chicago and now New York. She’s a designer, graphic artist and sculptor and quite good at what she does. She’s also been working with a group called Madagascar here in the city. Madagascar is a group doing events and happenings in the tradition of the Merry Pranksters kind of a performance art troupe. Since we are the newest members of the studio and neither of us have a full time job we’ve had time during the day to talk and get to know each other. So far the roomies have all been great. Everyone does their own thing for the most part, but we all chip in on essential items like buying toilet paper and doing the dishes or taking out the trash in the common kitchen and bath. Lindsay and her friend Purdy have cooked dinner several times already and invited me to join them. It’s great not having to think about cooking all the time. Purdy is a carpenter with a linguistics background from Boston. Great guy. Plays a mean game of pool.
February 23, 11 p.m.
My wife arrived at La Guardia late due to weather. Left a message when I’d just stepped out to buy cigarettes, caught a cab and forgot to tell them the address was in Brooklyn. She showed up about 3 hours late at the studio. I was in a panic wondering what could have happened to her. She’d just gotten a tour of Manhattan and a $40 cab bill. But all’s well that ends well.
Feb. 24, midnight
Am sitting at the Mark Bar talking with new friends. I’ve met so many people here, mostly artists, poets, writers, musician - tonight I spoke with an Architecture student from Serbia, a poet from Cincinatti Ohio, a painter from Uganda - Greenpoint is a virtual haven of the arts right now. Many of them are young, in their twenties, although I’ve met a few who have been around for a while. Some are already working in their given field, especially those in the more commercial end of the arts, designers and architects, the poet and writer I’ve been speaking with both teach as adjuncts at local colleges. Some seem to be slipping away into whatever job they do to pay their bills. But it all still seems hopeful for many that they will at least carve out a career of some sort and so they keep doing it.
My wife is asleep after her eventful arrival. Tomorrow is a big day and she’ll need all the rest she can get. Me? I’m a vampire. I stay up all night and all day sometimes. She doesn’t know it yet but she’s my model while she’s here. I have a big painting in the works and I need to do some sketches from life before I can take it to the next stage.
Feb. 25, 10 a.m.
Yesterday we walked all over Williamsburg and Greenpoint so Tami could get her bearings. She’s only here for 5 days and I wanted to hit a few good restaurants like Thai CafÈ and Fada’s. We also hit the Ale House for a quick beer on the way back to the studio. It’s cold and a little windy and every so often you just gotta get out of the wind. Well - I’ll make any excuse to grab a beer. I got a bit of a chance to sketch.
Before we took off to see the neighborhood. I’m working on some new ideas and also in an old/new medium - Acrylics. I used to do illustrations in acrylics years ago but never really cared much for them. But since I was a little concerned about fumes in a shared work space (I’m used to working with oils and spray paints when doing my stencil images) I decided to give acrylics another chance. The first piece I did was dismal. Too dark. Couldn’t get the hang of how acrylics dry. They darken terribly which makes it hard to know what key you are really working in. And color harmonies also become a complete surprise. But after a little putzing around I managed to lighten up the key and block in big broad areas before trying to deal with close relationships of value or intensity. Once I had to large areas established working back in for color relationships or detail isn’t so bad.
I’m not using stencils on these paintings. Instead I’m repeating images by copy machine and pasting them down, drawing back into the space between in charcoal then painting behind the patterned figures. I’m using the Promesas, the little miracle icons I bought in Cordoba as my repeated motif. At first glance they look like ‘Day of the Dead’ figures. But the metaphor suggested is quite different. The larger image painted behind the curtain of Promesas is a bit more mundane, figures in rooms in enigmatic situations. At least that is what has gotten me started at this moment in time. We’ll see where they go as things develop.
Took a harbor cruise this afternoon with Tami before heading through the park to see the gates.
February 27, 8:30 p.m.
Visited Tim Whidden and Michael Sarf two former students who have been in New York now for 13 and 11 years respectively. The two have been collaborating for a number of years on some very conceptual and often humorous interactive web based art. A few years ago they were included in the Whitney’s first interactive on-line exhibition with a piece called ‘The 99 Steps.’ This was a very ironic piece of interactive ( or actually it was a virtually interactive piece in that maybe no one did any more than read through it) conceptual art in which one is given a ‘how too’ to make a piece of conceptual art one step at a time. A kind of template for a conceptual work that I chuckled at when I read through. I chuckled because as it explained that first you find a space, maybe your bed room or whatever and then make certain marks on the wall, marks that are specific yet subjectively yours. Then on to step two etc.. Really it was the first conceptual coloring book. Great stuff! You can see some of their more recent work at:
http://www.mteww.com 
After visiting with Mike and Tim Tami and I hopped the ‘L’ train heading for the Bowery and the Continental bar. There was a tsunami benefit with a number of bands playing. The best two bands we saw were the Hungry March Band and Bitch Fu. Hungry March Band is kinda Mardi Gras, Halftime, Middle-Eastern Jazz with attitude. They came complete with about a million horns (well really only about dozen or so) saxes, trombones and trumpets and what might have been a small tuba of some sort, drums, dancers and all in absurdist costumes. The marched around the bar at the end of their set getting into everyone elses space. It was great fun.
Bitch Fu was a hot chick band with a really original sound but some jerk got carried away and started a fight before it all over with. I think he was the boyfriend of one of Bitch Fu’s roadies. They’re all really hot. But the bouncer never even made it in to break things up. Eventually it fizzled into nothing.
Anyway my wife and I had a couple turns around the dance floor once the commotion was over.
February 28th, 6:27 p.m.
Tami was supposed to fly home today but her flight was cancelled due to bad weather. So we get one more night together in Brooklyn.
