Artists talks are not for the faint of heart. We bravely attended one at the new I-Square gallery last night where four artists talked about their work and so much more. It was exhilarating. Richard Harvey talked mostly of process but his is multifaceted and interesting. Wendy Menzie started making art after primal therapy in the 70′s. She quoted Philip Larken, “Your mom and dad fuck you up. They don’t mean to but they do” and spoke of her journey back to the child inside. Ed Buscemi stressed the importance of improvisation and relayed a dream he had thirty years ago where people were moving by him on a conveyor belt and he jumped on and tried to shake the people but he couldn’t bring them out of their trance. It seems to be his modus operandi. He is fond of asking “Are you kidding me?” in an animated fashion and he admitted to being hooked on conspiracy therories. Todd Beers discussed his breakthrough painting which is on view until tomorrow and told a beautiful story of his encounter with a dove on the fire escape he was sleeping on. He dimmed the lights and wowed us with his poetry. Harvey, Menzie and Buscemi all studied with Robert Marx who has his own opening tonight at Rochester Contemporary. He is featured in their Makers Mentors show.

We scurried downtown for the Ossia show at Kilbourn Hall but missed the opening toy piano number. We caught “I Can’t Concentrate” by the Brooklyn band, Zs, a mathematically challenging, post jazz, brutal-chamber piece. And then were blown away (again) by Ossia’s performance of Frederic Rzewski’s “Coming Together.” From the liner notes – “The work consists of a bass line accompanied by a series of instructions which can be realized by any group of instruments. With each performer acting as composer, the work allows for a variety of performance outcomes and is essentially an experiment in compositional anarchy.” A vocalist read a letter from Sam Melville-in prison in 1970 for series of radical bombings in Manhattan where no one was hurt-to his brother on top of the music. The twenty minute piece was trance-like and hallucinatory like a deep dream.

Whenever I catch a glimpse of myself while walking by a building with reflective glass I’m always taken aback by how bent over I look. And we were really slumped over yesterday as we climbed the big hill up to the Cornell campus in Ithaca.

The guard at the Johnson Museum yesterday was downright chatty. We were admiring Giacometti’s “Walking Man II (L’Homme qui marche II)” when he offered that this piece was the most expensive one in the collection, worth over a hundred million in fact. I said, “You better make sure no one walks into it and he said “Someone already did.” “A women backed into it while she was taking a photo.” He showed us a slight crack in one of the legs setting the alarm off as he pointed to it. I had just seen a sign that said “No Photos” so I asked if it was ok to take photos and said it was ok to photograph the permanent collection but not the work on loan or the work that is usually in storage but temporarily on display. I really wanted a photo of the Otto Dix etching called “Self Portrait with Cigarette” (also in MoMA collection) but that was off limits so I took one of Walking Man and got the Otto Dix print in the background.

After painting class last night the talk centered around critical thinking and the lack of it. I was trying to imagine any other kind of thinking.

My drawing above was characterized as “academic” and I would agree with that. Adequate but not particularly expressive. I set out to do some rather quick sketches on craft paper and realized that quick or not the same criteria applies to any piece. The effort must work as a whole so the focus is the same.

We always have a January thaw but this is ridiculous. We finally get a few inches of sow and now it’s 50 degrees and sunny, too messy to walk or ski in the woods so we headed off toward the bay. This house with the “Let It Snow” banner in the window expressed our sentiments exactly.

My aunt is in hospice and my father was thinking it would be nice to get someone up there to play some music for her. Of course we suggested Phil Marshall, a music therapist and genuine top shelf musician. My aunt is going to suggest a few songs and I’m certain it will be great.

Years back we did a “My Funeral“print version of the Refrigerator I remember thinking about a few songs that I would like to her at my own funeral and of course that doesn’t make any sense at all because I will be in a little can at that point. Peggi Lee “Is That All There Is?”, George Jones “He Stopped Loving Her Today”, Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game”, Eric Dolphy’s “Serene or maybe James Brown’s “Night Train.” I’m pretty sure no one would want to hear the long version of Sun Ra’s “Space Is The Place.”

When my brother’s father in law died the funeral home had his body in a closed cassket and they wheeled him into a room where we were all sitting and they played Sinatra’s “My Way” over the little speakers mounted in the ceiling without any introduction or set up and it was a very strange experience. He was a lot more fun than that. So there are a lot details to work out if you want pull off something like this. It has to be done in a party atmosphere for starters.

To protect his thrown King Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in Bethlehem when he heard that Jesus was born. Like most of the episodes in the bible it is highly unlikely that this ever happened but it makes a good story and the Catholic church put these stories, most of them borrowed from mythology, to good use in an effort to win converts, keep the converted and illustrate their moral superiority. These innocents were the first martyrs. There is no one more revered in the church than a martyr. Of course when times got tough the Catholic Inquisitors resorted to “Convert or Die” methods themselves.

I used to know most of these bible (new testament included) stories but they all got jumbled up with age. These days I only set foot in church for funerals or when I’m drawn into an ancient cathedral in Spain. But I’m thankful for all the heady times in Catholic school where they struggled to convince me of the most absurd dogmas (virgin birth, resurection). The experience was formative and I look back fondly on most of it. Thankfully the church used it’s money to hire the best artists in history to illustrate their myths so I have a deep appreciation of religious art, a lot of it Spanish from the golden age (Siglo de Oro).

Last night after dinner we were showed our Spain photos to my parents. Both my father and I called our digital photos “slides” when I brought them up on our tv. Kodak did that to us. When the stone carvings, above, on the Nativity side of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, came up Peggi and I speculated aloud on what was being depicted. I thought maybe it was an archangel protecting the babies but my father thought for a bit and correctly identified it as the “Massacre of the Innocents”. So I can’t blame age for not remembering this. It was really my bad study habits.

I had the best tofu I have ever had at Edibles on University Ave. It was marinated in a ginger sauce and grilled in some fashion that left it moist and soft on the inside but slightly charred on the outside with a caramelized sauce. We had dinner with our neighbors before heading down the street to the Baobab Cultural Center where noted Jazz authority, saxophonist, and RIT Professor, Dr. Carl Atkins and his group, “Culture Clash” gave a lecture lecture-performance. He was Co-Director, along with bassist Ron Carter, of the Thelonious Monk Institute. He led a very cool group of bass, drums and vibes and w would up with, “Epistrophy” and “Ruby, My Dear” and “Well, You Needn’t” swimming around in our heads. That led us to YouTube this morning where watched and listened to main ingredient. And then we dug up dvd copy of “Straight, No Chaser” that Jeff Munson gave us. That’s now number one in our queue.

Remember the Chevy Nova? Peggi had an orange one when I first met her. We drove it all the way to the bottom of Mexico. Terrible name for a car in a Spanish speaking country. “No go!” “El Glop” is not the best name for attracting English speaking people to your restaurant and maybe that was the whole idea. We had coffee there and some tortilla and then returned for dinner. The place was fantastic.

We’ve been savoring our Barcelona hangover, pouring over photos, having our big meal early like they do in Spain, getting up late and buying Spanish products at Wegmans like Manchego and Valdeon cheese, caramelized pecans and chocolate covered figs. We’re almost as bad as the kid in “Breaking Away” who though he was Italian. Peggi’s reading the Spanish version of Architectural Digest that we bought at the airport as I write this. A good snowstorm would snap us out of this but I don’t think this winter has it in it.

Last night we made fish with a mushroom and fig sauce, something we had twice in Barcelona, each time with cod and then hake. And the other night we made a batch of Espinacas con Garbanzos, something we went looking for in Spain because we fallen in love with it. Spinach, chick peas, paprika, saffron and cumin, it almost tastes Indian or maybe Moroccan. We found a recipe online.

Our iPad has become an essential kitchen appliance. I loved Thomas Friedman’s column the other day on how a tablet at the table of restaurants will allow you put your order through to the kitchen, list ingredients with photos, tally your calories and pay your bill without a waiter. He left out the part about how your food gets to the table but it will take a big bite out of the service industry which has become the backbone of our economy. Our friend, Kevin Vicalvi, used to say, “In the future we’ll all be delivering pizzas to one another” but that was a long time ago.

I not sure but I think this is a bootleg bench chained to a tree at the top of the luge hill in Durand Eastman Park. Not as brazen an act as Anthony Pilato driving a bulldozer through the undeveloped part of the park so he could ride his horses up there but still pretty bold. The bench doesn’t look like any of the others in the park. It’s the kind you could buy at Home Depot and it’s in the same spot as the makeshift bench that was placed here when the luge fans were out last year (and then hidden behind a tree when they went home).

There is a metal plaque nailed to the bench that reads, “In Loving Memory of Elizabeth Salathiel 1921-2009 From The USA Luge Team.” I looked her up. She’s for real or was for 87 years. This is the same hill where we used to see the man child, nick-named “Mayor of Durand.” He’d sit at the top and drink Genny’s from the can between occasional sled runs. Haven’t seen him in a few years but there is quite a crew here when the weather is right and plenty of regulars who we say hi to as we ski by. I’ve seen some of them videoing their ride and I found this clip online.

Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby have taken a liking to Rochester. They’ve been here four times in the last few years and came up tonight to play a benefit for Tom Kohn and the Bop Shop. Amy told the crowd that when they decided to move from France they considered considered moving to Rochester but Eric interjected “it would have been a good choice if it wasn’t for the weather and it’s proximity to Canada and the the fact that it is so far away from everything else.” “It’s better than France” Amy insisted.

They played a fantastic set. They are perfect as a duo, with piano, guitars, bass and harmonies. Thoroughly seasoned performers they somehow manage to sound like the first band your friends put together. If only they would fire that drummer, the drum machine on Eric’s laptop that flattens the songs they use it on. They finished with a beautiful version of Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone.

Chandler Travis opened the show before driving to Trumansburg outside of Ithaca for another gig tonight. He brought the house down with a version of Pete LaBonne‘s “Turning The Page.” Amy told the the crowd she felt like she was tripping when Chandler and his bandmates came out into the crowd to perform this gem a cappella.

Pete LaBonne – Turning The Page
Pete LaBonne “Turning The Page”