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Tonight and Tomorrow

Well, the jam is pretty tasty, but I think I heated it to too high a temperature. It’s a little too firm, but still well within acceptable parameters. It’s hard to reach that delicate balance between runny and firm that your grandmother seemed to be able to reach without a candy thermometer.

Big Chrissy and I watched the new Todd Solondz film Storytelling tonight, which I thought was great. Not as stellar as Happiness–bleaker, and more cynical. The characters weren’t given as much depth, too. I find that he often creates characters who are defined by a particular flaw or idiosyncrasy (and sometimes even named after them, like “Hope” in Happiness), but rather than be limited by their one-dimensionality, they’re surprisingly complex. So although these characters were interesting and given great dialog, they seemed a little thinly drawn. I really like his directorial style, though, particularly in how stilted all the acting is, which somehow isolates the actors and draws attention to their actions and words, and abstracts the emotional content.

Tomorrow the museum curator is coming over to visit my studio. I’m hoping to finish this piece that I’ve been toying with for the last few weeks, so that I’ll have three pieces from my Thundercrack! series to show her in addition to all of my other obsessive works. Keep your fingers crossed!

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Jam Up and Jelly Tight

I’ve just completed the annual plum jam session: 18 half-pint jars this year, and 3 one-pint jars. I totally forget what I do every year, but this time it’s in the blog–equal weight sugar and plums, 220 degrees. My plums were a little less ripe, so the jam has a sweet and sour bite that is going to be perfect with peanut butter. If you’re into plum jam, let me know and I’ll send you a jar (while supplies last…).

Sarah is in town, and came over last night to celebrate her birthday. She’s the author of Empathy, My American History, etc, and a play on Carson McCullers that got totally trashed in the New York Times last year but she says every performance sold out. Any review it seems is a good review. She brought with her a bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape (’95) that was out of this world. I’ve never had wine like that–bandaids and honey. Is there a term for that bandaid-type taste that seems to permeate expensive french wines? It had to be one of the most delicious wines I’ve ever had. We decided not to have the Russian River Pinot afterwards, even though we knew it was a good one, afraid that it would appear too brash after such a complex sensual experience. Sarah also brought everyone presents–she gave me a CD of the Original Broadway recording of Hair! Yipee!

Oops, there’s Carla–gotta go…

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Ashes, Ann Miller

I just got back from the movies, Wong Kar Wai’s Ashes of Time, which started an hour late due to a burned out bulb so I was late getting home to talk to BC, who hung up on me, so instead, I’ll snuggle up with my Dear Blog and update you on my evening with Ann Miller last night!

I drove down to Palo Alto this morning to pick up my new coffee table with Big Chrissy, which turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment (not original finish, no identifying marks, scuffed well beyond “great shape”), then on to the LAB’s board retreat with my house guest Carla, an experimental playwright with an association to the language poets, she’s married to one, who’s in town from Detroit for a residency at the LAB. I stopped in as a member of their advisory board to see what was up and say hi, and to have Carla talk to the board about her residency. The retreat was at Minnette’s, an old pal and photographer (her son is Michael, the film director). I was on the board for about 5 years, and last year left to serve in an advisory capacity. Elizabeth, the administrative director, greeted me with a pat on the stomach and “Chriiiiis, you’ve GROWN so muuuuuuuuch,” and Richard greeted me with “You’re so gray…” Have I gone downhill that fast? Anyway, Ashes of Time was great–almost incomprehensible but with fabulous fight scenes and deeply moving highly manipulative expressions of emotional intensity that just popped out of nowhere and left you crying before you could really figure out why.

Okay, so the evening with Ann Miller started out with a little reception for her, at the Castro Theater. She held court in the lobby, surrounded by drag queens and old movie buffs. I decided to go upstairs and grab a bite before introducing myself and telling her how much I totally worshiped her, but ran into Roberto from the BAR and had a few too many glasses of wine, so by the time I meandered back downstairs, she was gone! The pre-show entertainment was pretty swell, though, with a tap-dancing drag queen recreating Miller’s “Shaking the Blues Away” number and Connie Champagne doing a very believable Judy Garland. At one point, the drag Ann stepped up to the mike and said “I have some bad news–I’ve just been told that I’m not Ann Miller….” and then introduced the real McCoy, who was interviewed for about an hour by Jan Wahl, who asked fairly tame questions, but the crowd went wild whenever Ann said anything. After the interview, the drag queen in front of me pulled off his big hair, opened his suitcase, set a mirror on top, took off his makeup, slipped out of his leopard-skin dress and into a gray sweatshirt. During the screening of the film, Kiss Me Kate in 3D, he and his companion took numerous flash photographs of the film. Can’t wait to see those…

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Haircut on the Porn Set

I just go my hair cut for Ann Miller, at Louie’s, on Castro. My jolly red-haired beardresser undressed me with his eyes while I waited, and practically shaved the guy’s head that he was clipping to get to me before the other hairdressers. As soon as I sat down he rubbed my beard and said “Mmmmm, what a niiiice beard—oooh.” I turned beet red, as I typically do when anyone talks to me, so you could imagine the shade of purple I turned when he then said, “Oooh, yeah, I want all of your heads to turn red…” I was in a porn film, a bad one, at Louie’s Barbershop. Throughout the clipping, which lasted 15 minutes longer than it should have and the removal of most of my hair, his furry red flesh spilled over and into my chair, “Ooooh, yeaaaaah, uh huh… mmmmmm” whispered into my ear.

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Bill J

The photographer Bill J came over for dinner last night. He’s in town housesitting for some friends, and rethinking his relation to his work. Since the 1980’s, he’s been making blurry shadowy portraits that evoke the sense of loss and faded memory associated with the AIDS epidemic.

He’s such a nice guy, and amazingly down-to-earth for an international artstar, and he seems to know everybody, including people from my past that I don’t even remember, or want to remember, or have forgotten for some very good reason. He went off to meet an old college buddy of mine from the Art Institute, Jim. Jim photographed black men, exclusively, ala Mapplethorpe, but with more edge, if you could imagine. During our crit classes, there’d be his naked black guys, my naked old guys (I hadn’t discovered hair yet), and Jason’s naked young guys (or self, can’t remember or distinguish between the two), providing much lively discussion about the male form, obsession, and desire.

Tonight it’s Ann Miller!!!!

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Connie, Joyce, Su-Chen and the Miami Collector

I visited Connies studio today, a very dear friend. She’s been working on a wonderful series of paintings consisting of very rough surfaces, like three-dimensional topographical maps, that have been painted over and then dusted with colored glitter. Connie had cosmetic surgery around the time that she started this series, and there’s a clear connection between the paintings and her own changing image. A mutual friend, Joyce was there, as well as a big collector from Miami who summers in San Francisco and has been buying Connie’s crazy creations for years. Connie and Joyce were in the first show that I put together in 1990 for Secession, my former non-profit gallery without walls.

Connie, Joyce and I hopped over to the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts to visit Su-Chen (who was on the Secession Board back then), for a little reunion and to see Su-Chen’s piece that she created during her current residency. In one of the large empty halls, she’s stuck red-threaded needles in all of the walls, the thread trailing down the walls and moving delicately with the shifting air. In the center of the room, dangling magically from a light fixture on the ceiling, are more needles, bundled together and trailing red thread in a straight line down to the floor below. The thread spills out onto the floor in little spiral patterns that are contained within the boundary of an eight foot square space. Su-Chen’s installations are always stripped down to the most bare elegant visuals. She was my biggest influence when I began making installations. When I showed her my first proposed installation for Haines Gallery, she X’ed through all of my plans, except for one element, and said, “There, that’s what it’s about. You don’t need this other stuff–get rid of it.” It remains the best art advice I’ve ever received, and which I continue to heed.

Su-Chen introduced us to a fellow resident artist, from Taiwan, named Duck (“Like the chicken,” Su-Chen said). He makes installations in the countryside with duck feathers, lots of duck feathers. When asked about his background, he told me that he joined the air force so that he could fly in the air, and then quit to become an artist so that he could fly in his mind.

Look for Su-Chen’s work in the Bear Show next February.

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Curator visits, A Call From D

The chief photo curator at a local museum, is coming next Wednesday to see selections from my new Thundercrack! series. Maybe s/he’ll go for the Jack Radcliffe pics–wouldn’t it be great to see that shlong in a museum? I bought a Paul McCobb coffee table on eBay, that I really can’t afford right now. But it’s so beautiful. Boss at work got a botox treatment that eliminated all of the lines on his face. He looks 20 years younger. And like Frankenstein’s monster. A friend of his talked him into it. The friend also ordered some foreskin stretching device on the internet that bossman seemed very curious about. I was very quiet. Anyway, when are they going to create a drug that makes chest hair? I talked with D. tonight. Remember the guy who told me 6 months ago that he never wanted to hear from me again? Well, he’s baaaaaaaak. And only a month after the last phone call announcing that he never wanted to see me again. Well, this time he called to tell me that he’s discovered that he’s bipolar. Like, duh. I didn’t bother to remind him that he had already announced this to me 2 years ago, shortly after announcing that he had borderline personality disorder. Anyway, he’s on drugs now. Whether prescribed or self-medicated was a little unclear. I accepted his good will and wished him well. One less person to worry about spitting on me in the gutter.

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Lovely and Amazing and Doris and Rock

I’ve had a few days to settle back into San Francisco, and now back to the movies. Tonight I saw a little bit of Rock Hudson and Doris Day in Lover Come Back, not enough to get a complete take on the film, but enough to want to see more of it, and to revisit Pillow Talk and to think about Doris and Rock. They’re so much fun to watch, I think it’s because they present a humorous inversion of traditional sex roles. Doris is a total top, always in control, never duped–even with the soft focus close-ups, her femininity just seems so, well, manly. Rock is just dreamy, a big cream puff who is typically manipulative and charming, often at the same time and with his own vain interests in mind, and seems to always end up is some state of partial nudity. In the end, Rock’s seemingly misguided feminine antics win out over Doris’ masculine logic, in a unique perversion of film tradition. (Nick and Nora experience similar dynamics, but without the partial nudity.)

I also saw Lovely and Amazing tonight, a fine film with really solid acting and a good script. It was like a Todd Solondz film without the perverted edge–ordinary screwed up people, wasted lives and regrets, and bitter, angry women. And their adoped crack ho’ babies. And lots of laughs, liposuction, and inconsequential men.

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Vinalhaven

It’s foggy today, very foggy, like pea soup foggy. I’m on an island about an hour by ferry off the coast of Rockland, Maine, called Vinalhaven. I’ve been here since last Thursday with Bob and Reese, visiting our friend Elin.

Elin lives in a mid-nineteenth century farmhouse on a beautiful secluded part of the island called Crocket Cove. Elin met Bob years ago when she was a fellow student at the San Francisco Art Institute with Bob’s then boyfriend, Ed. (Bob has mined the Art Institute for at least three boyfriends over the years.) She influenced Bob’s interest in living a certain kind of life that includes being surrounded by fabulous and expensive objects and people. Reese calls her Princess Elin. She’ll casually mention this photo project with Katherine Hepburn, or that film her dad made with Kim Novak, or her dad’s involvement with the disappearance of Michael Rockefeller, or her mom’s martini on the top of the pyramid at Giza in her high heels and Audrey Hepburn hat.

Our time here consists of long walks through the salt marsh, swimming in the spring-fed pond, rowing around the cove, mackerel jigging, and planning and enjoying elaborate meals of lobster that we get from the local lobstermen, mussels and clams which we dig from the shore at the edge of Elin’s front lawn when the tide’s out, apples that fall from her trees, and greens that we pluck from her garden. There are only two other houses that are barely visible from Elin’s nook in the Cove. I’m in a movie where everybody wears linen suits and straw hats and they have languorous picnics on little islands that they row out to under parasols.

I’ve been pruning and shaping her apple and fruit trees for the past three years, most of which are 50 to 150 years old. They’ve been sadly neglected, but all have beautiful interior structures hidden beneath dead limbs and crisscrossing branches. Today I worked on the apple out near the cottage, which has a rotting trunk and propped-up limbs. It’s still full of energy and produces tons of apples, so I’m lightening up the limbs to reduce the weight, and opening the center to expose the complexly branching framework.

It’s cocktail time, so I must be going. I have to change into my cocktail clothes. Ta-ta!

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Boston, Mr. Wright, Massacio and Coffee Talk

Here I am in Beantown–don’t they call Boston that? I arrived yesterday afternoon, and spent the evening with my dealer, Bernie, and his lovely partner, Joe, who runs the local community-supported non-profit theater. I showed Bernie some of my new work over fabulous Greek food, including a truly stellar grilled octopus. We all ate too much, but drank just enough. He’s thinking of putting together a photo show later in the year with a few of his gallery artists, and would like to include a few images of Jack and Mack. We’re thinking of blowing them up even larger than the 28″ square that they are now. Bernie is one of those dealers that you dream of–accommodating, undemanding, gentle, gracious, smart… I have nothing but respect and admiration for him, and am excited to be part of the Boston art scene. I get the impression that they all think I’m this famous California artist out here. Somehow I project this illusion of fame. Remember that episode of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse where Miss Yvonne gives Reba the mail lady a makeover? When Reba complains that she’s not beautiful, Miss Yvonne gently scolds her with the words “If you feel beautiful, you are beautiful.” I really feel like a success out here.

So anyway, this morning I met with Les Wright, who couldn’t have been More Right as an art-viewing buddy. And he is as cute as a button–a shaved, squat, bearded one, with glasses and a big hoop earing. We ended up spending the whole day together, visiting the Museum of Fine Arts and the Gardner Museum, in between lots of coffee, coffee talk, theorist bashing, divulged secrets, art theory, bear theory (I have to giggle), boyfriend woes, girltalk, a bizarrely high number of common acquaintances, and just lots of fun. He’s just a swell fellow, and has written several books on the bear phenomenon, such as The Bear Book I and The Bear Book II. He’s working on a new tome about–you know, we talked for the longest time about it, and I can’t remember the way he put it, but it has something to do with long-term coping with trauma. Okay, so back to the Gardner museum… The Gardner contains the amazing private collection of Isabella Gardner. It includes a Masaccio (he died in his 20’s, produced very little, and was one of the most influential early Renaissance painters in northern Italy), a Giovanni Bellini (no identifying tag, but a gem of a painting of the Madonna and Child in a playful very tender display of affection), several Boticellis, a Rembrandt, she used to own a Vermeer, but it was stolen, a pretty fabulous portrait of herself by Sargent, a gorgeous Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach, and endless scraps of chapels, marble sculpture, monasteries, and venetian palazzi embedded in the walls and architecture of the museum, which used to be her home: home sweet classical medieval venetian renaissance baroque ashcan flemish fin de siecle home.