art affects

"Art for me is the science of freedom." - Joseph Beuys

a former lover

A Darkroom Diary

"Without ego there is no art."

I found myself uttering these words to a fellow artist.  It was the truest statement I've made in ages.  Since Sandy came barreling through infecting everyone with cabin fever, not much else has mattered. New York was beaten badly.  Her citizens have and continue to show a natural resilience when something larger than life strikes.  I've joined in, making visits to my parents on the Island, work, a park, Mamita's, another park, a donation drop-off, and a volunteer center, but I've still got the fever.  It's not about order or elections.  It's inside, debilitating ideas.  Barreling through my brain.  Clearly, there's breath enough to blog, but I worry whatever ego exists is too damaged for the good stuff and the rest ends up crystallized dust.

Collodion wet plate by Tomi Ni © 2012

If nothing, then Occupy!

Love Potion #25

Louis ~n~ Lucille 

Collage by Louis Armstrong

Flushing Town Hall

close the gap

back to work

a Degas love affair

No one could possibly understand women better than Degas.  Not in the late 19th century anyway.  Movement so wonderfully executed in every meticulous stroke.  Degas knew the burden a woman carried.  So much of her existence a performance, this predisposition to protect, and mostly, an overwhelming sense of herself - a quiet storm.  I may be romanticizing his intentions.  Maybe he loved horses more (worked on them with the same fervor).  I just don't think it matters as I wasn't in his Parisian studio to witness the process - rubbing in the blue pastels... trying to lay still... not moving even a stroke.

Sunday Secret

a thundering collision

of kandinsky

Becoming Bacon

Sometime in June, I lost my voice. I've been sore a dozen times, but this was different. I felt drowned in charcoal. Most of the week I tried not to speak. But the worst of it was not being able to sing. The steam from my morning showers drifted in to the very chord and nothing. No song. It's dramatic to say, but I didn't exist. When I saw this painting - the figure - it reminded me of June. Bacon is my June.

Rossetti Rising

It seems Dantes keep coming in and out of my lives every few hundred years. Happy Memorial Day, D, whenever you are.

lower east side

Below is part of an art exhibit my buddy, Bill, curated on Valentine's Day. The peeping tom snapshots of the photos are mine, but the text is all his. View and read at will.

A Relationship Left for Dead on the Lower East Side
Cuchifritos Gallery / Project Space

A few years back my old friend, Patrick Cunningham, handed me a photo album he'd found lying on the curb somewhere on the Lower East Side. He knew that I had a soft spot for "found photography" and figured I'd appreciate the anonymous trove.

I went home that day and spent a considerable amount of time pouring over the album. From what I can tell, it is the chronicle of a gay couple's relationship through a good number of years in the 90's. The pictures are intimate, personal, and, as one might expect, range from silly to sober. Haircuts evolve, fashions change, weight is gained and lost. A collection of tiny moments memorialized but nothing special, really, aside from the fact that this carefully constructed record of a relationship was left on a curb in the Lower East Side.

Revisiting the album after some time, I noticed something unique about it: The two men never appear in the same picture. They never sit next to nor hold one another. They never ask friends, relatives, or strangers to take a snapshot of them together. Each man simply poses for the other, the camera lens uniting them. These pictures tell a story of isolated admiration/adoration made manifest only through the architect of the album itself.

I often wonder if the couple is still together. I hope to meet them one day and, as difficult as it would be for me to part with it, return the album to one or both of them.

--Bill Previdi,
Independent Curator, NYC

Here's hoping what we find in this life is worth keeping a while. I'm off to make some images of my own. Overseas. Heading EAST.

Meet Munch

Never mind The Scream. This opulent painting I saw once in Brussels - or was it London - in the early 90s, when I was young and bemused and it was all I knew about love.

Pale Face

I took off from work to see my man, Gustav, and teared up some. There are only two other artists to make my eyes all watery, Pablo & Vincent. Sadly, there were not enough of Gustav's paintings, but still enough to gain inspiration from. Incredible pencil, sometimes charcoal, sketches of gorgeous, mysterious women. Portraits, too, of ghosts in the dim light. Oh, those women haunted me through the murky subway ride home. Harlots swimming in the lightweight, neutral, translucence of the beige backdrop. It made them more erotic if that's even possible. The one painted lady in all her golden glory, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, can be seen anytime. I think NYC is her home. But what was most stunning was another oil. Her name, Pale Face. I dare say she could make Mona Lisa blush with her wily smile.