Glen Helfand, our cute local critic is curating a 20th anniversary show for the LAB, and has invited me, and some 19 others who have had solo exhibitions there over the past 20 years to participate. I first showed there in 1992 (‘ish), a very large installation/gender spectacle/showdown called High Noon. Glen asked if I’d like to revisit the piece for the show, and I’m thinking of proposing something containing similar conflicts that I explored in High Noon, but starring the inhabitants of the new West, my furry West. The show opens in October. Mark your calendars, and stay tuned for details…
Tonight I dogsat for my neighbor Arnie. His dog’s name is Shimon, and I am in love. We ate burritos, drank a bottle of wine, and watched No Man’s Land and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning together. Arnie came home to us in a tangle of arms and paws on the living room floor. I had passed up a last-minute opportunity to have dinner with Toirac, a famous Cuban painter whom I met in Havana a few years ago and who’s in town, only because Bob has so unsettled me over the past few days that I didn’t think I could be around him without the evening quickly dissolving into Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe–well, it already had for starters. I needed a non-human companion for the evening, and Shimon didn’t mind having a soused Liz Taylor for company.
Muscrat Love, the song by Captain and Tennile, is buzzing in my head tonight. I haven’t heard it in years, and only chanced upon a brief snippet of it several months ago, so it’s a faded sort of memory of it that is serenading me, but Toni’s sincerity and lush voice, and that bizarre electronic muscrat sound toward the end have seized me in this iron vice of sugary pop innocence and nostalgia.