Category: Art

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Before and After Sunday

BEFORE SUNDAY:
So I’ve been doing this online dating thing for a few years now. I’ve met, chatted with, and even befriended several men with partners, who insist that they are only looking to make friends. Despite this insistence, their ads often include anatomical measurements, preference for top or bottom, and include pictures of them naked or scantily clad.

Now, I’m thinking that these guys either don’t know that their relationships are headed for the rocks, or they are so deluded by their narcissism that they actually believe what they’ve told themselves and us about their motivations. Yes, a lot of them are open about “playing” outside of their relationships, and those aren’t the guys I’m talking about. I avoid them like fried chicken–delicious but toxic. Oh wait, except for Concubear 2, he’s just plain delicious.

Speaking of honesty in advertising: One of my ex-bachelors is now 8 years younger than when I met him 2 years ago.

I’m going to make my boyfriend so happy. That is, if we ever meet. I plan to smother him with so much affection, sex and baby talk that he’ll have neither time, energy, nor libido for anything or anybody after I’ve drained it all from his barely-standing but still-smiling person.

I’ve been chatting with one truly single guy. His pictures convey that he’s trying to be what he thinks we all want—practically naked, detached, confident and available. After chatting for about a week, he directed me last night to a video of him on YouTube that he made to advertise the theater where he is the artistic director. He playfully and charmingly engages the visitors to the theater and speaks delightedly about the productions and space–a very different person from the run-of-the-mill bear that I thought I was talking to online. He actually speaks my language. I’m really intrigued by these differences between projected and actual identity, and how they’re going to coalesce. We’re meeting Sunday night. I can tell that he’s talented and intelligent and has no idea that people might be attracted to that because he’s probably only had boyfriends who want his body–which is pretty nice I might add–and never experienced the kind of intellectual and physical melding that will define our relationship. That is, if we end up together for the rest of our lives. After tomorrow night I’ll know all about his past relationships, likes and dislikes, maybe I’ll be disappointed, maybe thrilled. Right now I can only fit him into the shoes of my fantasy husband and project all of my desires and expectations on his 100×100 pixel picture.

This morning I had coffee with a really great guy, also someone I met online. He’s very bright and well-read, with a kind of snappy humor that I associate with a higher intelligence. I had to bow out of a trip to the Japanese bath house with him due to an unfortunately situated stress-related dermatitis: first impressions do linger. He did take his shirt off for me, though, in an attempt to re-establish Hibernia Beach at 19th & Castro, causing a momentary traffic crisis.

BC swept me away at noonish to go a’gallerying. We saw a stellar little show of early Diane Arbus prints at Fraenkel. Photos of her familiar subjects are hung amidst dim photos of theater interiors–blurry people engaged in almost readable activity–and snaps of images from the screen; people kissing, a woman screaming… They’re photos that explore safely and from a distance–and in the dark–themes that she would later explore directly and openly.

AFTER SUNDAY:
So we went out Sunday, the single guy and I. First off, he’s the son of… well, his dad was one of the most famous San Franciscans ever. There are buildings named after him. There we were having dinner at Thai House and suddenly the light bulb went off–“Was your father blah blah?” Some things now made sense, but in a different way than I had fantasized. For instance, the distance that I felt between a real and projected identity I think was actually class related. Although he works among the bohemians, he’s of a different class, of a pivotal part of history. He was surprised that I didn’t say, “Oh, I’m sorry,” when he told me who his father was, but it had never occurred to me, as if the public had already come to terms with the events associated with his dad, and I couldn’t attach any personal sentiment to such a public figure. He’s charming, handsome, very easy to be with, but he’s Paris Hilton without the paparazzi, billions, or reality show. Some would ask, “…and??” but my porn movie stars a timid 40 year old hairy virgin chub librarian cinephile, my fantasy equivalent of what would be promised to terrorist martyrs in the afterlife.

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Life Munches On

Life munches on.

I spent last weekend at Dean & Doug’s Inverness pad. We picked huckleberries, which turned into a delicious ice cream topping, donned our netting and fed the bees. Dean did the best Queen Bee imitation. I brought up an apple pie that I made from apples that they had brought to my house the previous weekend. Apples, apples, apples–everywhere apples! I made about 3 pies with them and still have more! We spent the bulk of the weekend picking fruit and cooking and eating and drinking, like what people used to do before TV. They recently put up a deer fence, so they toss spent apples over the fence for the deer to nibble on. And nibble they do. It’s like putting out used furniture on 20th street in front of my house–gone in 15 minutes. Where are the deer when there are no apples for them to eat? How do they just suddenly appear? They are so adorable, I don’t see how people can shoot them, their swirling pink tongues and quivering little white tails and (real!) doe eyes.

We took a walk after dinner on Saturday night–an incredible vegetarian dinner involving artichokes, barley, cauliflower, corn, and love–a walk “around the block.” It was so dark from the dense canopy of trees that I could only make out a slightly less-dark trapezoid under my feet that was the road. Everything was blurry, like walking in a cartoon. I could hear the crunch of my feet on pavement, but couldn’t see my feet. I’d stick my hands out in front of me and they’d melt into the less-dark-ness of the road. Then I’d turn to the side and see trees disorientingly silhouetted against the night sky in remarkably sharp focus, and then look straight ahead again into the blurry abstraction of the road. It was thrilling. Sleeping was like that, too, pitch black and hallucinatory. I could hear every sound of the many creatures visiting the improvised feed lot outside my window–munching sounds and cracking twigs. Were I not surrounded by my dear hosts and dear deer, I would have thought I was in a horror film.

Caitlin Mitchell-Dayton had a show at Paule Anglim that was pretty dynamite last month–very large caricatured portraits of her contemporaries on scrolls of linen, big bold blobs of color. She’s my kind of painter–expressive and gestural. If Fat Albert had a painter friend in the ‘hood, it would be Caitlin, master portraitist of the new Cosby kids.

Nick Dong finally returned my Inter-Personal Masculinity Evaluator, so line up to be evaluated.

A crisp new version of Lang’s Scarlet Street came out a while back and I finally watched it, having seen it many times over the years as a fuzzy scratchy worn out print. It’s the story of my life, rich with gender ambiguities and frustrated attempts to love the person that you eventually have to kill. Chris Cross, played by Edward G. Robinson, is a meek clerk who, in his spare time and in the bathroom, paints naive portraits of “what he feels.” The film opens with Chris being feted for decades of service to the firm, with no hopes for advancement. He glances out the window to notice the boss’ beautiful mistress waiting in a limo outside. He says to his colleague, “I wonder what it’s like to be loved by a woman like that.” Not “I wonder what it’s like to LOVE a woman like that,” but “I wonder what it’s like to BE loved by a woman like that,” establishing his passivity. He finds out alright, and ends up homeless, unable to claim his identity as the painter of his own masterworks that were improperly (but with his blessing) attributed to the woman he desires most but kills; Kitty, who led him to his downfall, the love that he can never attain, but whose voice calling out to her lover–who gets blamed for her death and is fried in the electric chair–will haunt him for eternity. It’s a sublime masterpiece.

I’m getting into Top Chef. I developed a big crush on Joey, the chunky italian, who was asked to pack up his knives and hit the road last week. He breaks down and cries, it’s so heartbreaking. I’ve watched the last 10 minutes about 5 times already in reruns, and I cry each time, hoping that this time he’ll be spared, that it won’t be the last time I’ll see him. He even says, “This isn’t the last you’ll see of me,” but come on. The other hot chunky guy, Howie, is a thug, and while cute, he’s a thug, really, with no inter-personal relating skills. The other chef-testants cower in fear when they have to break up into groups, fearful that they’ll end up in his group and have to deal with his misanthropic dictatorial take on group dynamics. Still, I’d boink him. And eat his food, of course.

What else? Reese turned 14–Bob made a volcano cake that spewed lava. Many contestants on The Dating Game, but none worth mentioning. I drove D to Reno to visit his mom and discovered that everybody there is overweight and limps. No dates, though. I’m having dinner with Thomas Hardy tonight. I didn’t get ANY of the grants that I applied for. But you haven’t seen the last of me…

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Updated Show Proposal: Opening October 25

Okay, friends, I’ve been working. I spent about 3 months trying to make this one piece work, shooting and reshooting, and struggling over an 8-foot x 12-foot piece that is now 11-inches x 11-inches. I now feel–finally–like the design for my October show has come together in a way that I’m content with. I’ll be finished with the final printing in two weeks, about two months before my deadline, plenty of time to sit on the idea and see what else might happen. I’ve sought feedback from several of my contemporaries, but would really appreciate your critical input or reaction. I’m trying to make work that appeals visually and conceptually to a wide range of interests, so whatever you might want to add to the mix is really appreciated…

Here’s a link to my mockup of the show, called Garden. (Follow the link to “Garden.”)  It’s really about my obsession with a certain kind of body, trying to create a highly asetheticized environment out of it, repositioning this body as a force of nature as well as delight.

Let me know what you think. Thanks, gang!

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The Dating Game: My Big Fat Greek God, New Work by Campbell, and a Website Update

So remember a few weeks ago I mentioned this Greek deity who seemed mildly interested in flirting with my mortalness? Well, he sent me a note saying that he’d love to get together for a drink or dinner and see if there is any spark, a spark that he is afraid just isn’t there, but I seem appealing enough on some level that he’s willing to forgo chemistry and explore a different fit. This is the guy who likes older guys, way older than my 41. I had made the horrible mistake of wearing my Vans skate shoes and a little boy plaid shirt for our coffee and left a boyish impression that I am going to have to work hard to dispel. I’ve let my beard grow out a little, so that the gray is more apparent, and I’ve cultivated a slightly hunched back. In the right light, I can scrunch my eyes for crows feet that are sure to knock his socks off. Maybe I should act distracted or fall asleep at dinner?

See Jim Campbell’s show at Hosfelt. He’s created grids of hanging strands of leds, turned towards the wall, that project near abstractions of home movies. The effect is mesmerizing, just light on wall that suddenly coalesces into something like memory. Really beautiful work.

I’ve also added a new section to my website, documenting my show at Meridian last year. Check it out! Click on the link to Spring.

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Show Preview: Flower #2

I just got back the scanned film of my two “flowers” that will be in my show in October. This flower is based loosely on a rose. The component images are each 30″ square. The images are of my hands running through D’s chest hair. You can’t see the hair very clearly at this resolution, but the final images will be so big that when you get close you’ll see all the fuzzy stuff. (Keep in mind that the tonal range, contrast, and colors have not yet been corrected. You’ll have to come to the show in October and see the final piece!!)

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Judy!

Yesterday Minnette had a little brunch for Judy Dater, just returning from her honeymoon in Paris with her umpteenth husband. Judy’s this uber famous photographer, whose tender nude studies and shimmering gray scale influenced me as a budding photographer. I’ve since moved away from that tradition, but all of the other photographers in attendance were still shooting traditional nudes or street scenes, all talking dismissingly of digital photography and the scramble for replacing their no-longer-manufactured gelatin silver papers.

I was talking to Judy about our favorite Paris museums and what she was currently working on, just falling in love with how accessible and glowing she was, but ended up being drawn away by the most bitter of the bunch. This guy, wearing the hunting jacket and sun hat of the seeker of the “decisive moment,” was still upset about the shift caused by Szarkowski’s Arbus, Winogrand and Friedlander “New Documents” show—that was 40 years ago—even referring to Arbus as “that woman who killed herself.”

“So what do you do?” he finally asked me. “I photograph big hairy guys very closeup and put the images together in large abstract arrays, providing an intimate access to a body that we don’t generally look at very closely.” He didn’t know what to do. “What size are your prints?” So we chatted about process and papers, and I finally pulled myself away and ran to gather some lemons from Minnette’s tree. I came home and made lemonade.

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Garden Preview

My work towards my October show is moving along. The plum blossoms and roses are all printed and framed. Today I printed the final images for the two “Italian cypresses.” Next are the two “flowers,” which I’ll have ready to show you by the end of March.

Here’s a preview of one of the cypresses, about 95 inches by 31 inches when framed and installed.

It is a medium-sized evergreen tree, with a conic crown with level branches and variably pendulous branchlets. The foliage grows in dense sprays, dark green in colour. The male cones are 3-5 mm long, and release pollen in February-March. Erect branches form a narrow to very narrow crown often less than a tenth as wide as the tree is tall. The dark green ‘exclamation mark’ shape of these trees is a highly characteristic signature of contestants on Chris Komater’s Dating Game and Mediterranean village landscapes. Italian cypresses are grown for their very durable, scented wood, used most famously for the doors of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City, Rome.

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The Dating Game: Meanwhile, Back to My Mid-life Crisis…

I told Lucky Bachelor #13 that I’m not ready to date. Yes, that was me saying that, not my psychologically balanced twin. You see, he’s kind of perfect; good job, happy, open, smart, cute… I’ve felt a kind of pressure, an internal pressure, a little voice telling me that I need to spend a little more time alone before hopping into a serious relationship, and #13’s just not the kind of guy that I can date casually. He was amazing–attentive, accepting, empathetic, emphasizing the value of our friendship. We had just watched Baby Face at the CocoPlex, the juicy Barbara Stanwyck pre-Code masterpiece about an ambitious girl, Lily, who sleeps her way from office girl to mistress of the boss. She’s told by her Nietsche-quoting mentor to exploit herself and use men, “Use Men!” he screams at her. Her rise through the corporate gene pool is mirrored by the camera’s slow panning throughout the film from the ground floor to the penthouse, and in her increasingly more stylish attire. And her hair, which gets more and more marcelled. In the end, she finds real love, and loses everything else. But it’s true love that makes her happy.

I suppose I’m Lily at the beginning of the film, trying to make the best of what I’ve got but focused on living in that deco penthouse with the company president. And in bias-cut satin dresses! Do I continue to focus on trying to make a go with this art career when life is passing me by, or do I hop on the boat and participate in the moment? Can I do both?

I think that most people work, save money, watch tv, travel, retire, and die. That just hasn’t been part of my plan. The plan was to create, become part of a dialogue, see and do everything, die, and leave behind something about my experience that future generations can think about or enjoy. At 41, shifting my relation to my entire being and its purpose, the thought of just living and dying, is like trying to accept that my life has no meaning. I create art that means something to me, can I create a new me?

A baker’s dozen bachelors later, aren’t you people tired of my mid-life crisis yet? Well, my show’s in October. I plan to be a basket case until then, which thus far has been great for production. I really like this new work. It’s coming from a questioning of my own existence and passions, an attempt at constructing a garden of sensual and aesthetic meaning.

Ever attentive and thoughtful, #13 just called to check in. In the pre-release restored version of Baby Face, George Brent shoots himself after Lily rejects him a few moments before realizing that she really does love him more than the diamond baubles that she has chased after for the entire film. Fortunately he’s better at being handsome than aiming a gun. He survives, and Lily finds contentment in true love and bankruptcy. The guy has to almost kill himself before she gets it.