japanese post-rock divination...

I have been meaning to catch MONO for years now...  their music is a la Godspeed and Mogwai, quiet/loud, soft/hard, epic sadness that builds slowly but powerfully into varied emotional crescendos.  Having seen these other two bands years ago, I was more than ready to finally catch this Japanese quartet's version of this specific brand of instrumental music.  

Aaaand?  Impressed is not the word - full-on enveloping - the audience bathed in an almost spiritual sadness.  Melancholy, as the old worlds' know it, in its utmost purity and, again, near-sacredness.  Their stage presence was also very dynamic, but I wasn't getting too much into that aspect of the show.  I was too busy, eyes wide shut, opening myself up and up and upward... A very sublime performance.  Well worth the underpriced $13 admission cost...

"Seasonal Inspirations"

So, having mentioned the change of season - warmer weather, frivolity, et al. - I've got to mention, in the same breath, some recent shows that have truly inspired.  Surprise these were - didn't really give them much thought.  But, now, I realize that they beckon in, as per usual, a summer of new sweaty sound-sensing.  Live music never "gets old," as old as I get.  It elicits states of mind that still bewilder and states of mind that still seem as fresh as they did 10 or 15 years ago...  NICE NICE (Portland, OR), Holy Fuck, and the Sun Ra Arkestra - lead by the sage-seer, 86 year old Marshall Allen

I am pleasantly awed to have been so wowed by electronic-based music via these first two bands mentioned (shit, Holy Fuck, you made me sorry to have not brought my glow sticks).  I was caught by surprise... as I was by the Arkestra.  Those old dudes played for 3-4 hours and r n' b wrecked the place, turning it - and us all - into some firey, freaky, funky... outer space.

It has been awhile...

After taking a trip to Texas and getting back to Philly, I seemed almost drowned in the flow of daily life.  The weather's finally warmer, which means more outdoor frivolity & less indoor industriousness... which, therefore, meant much less blogging...

... but - before I resume, I just want to post some pics of Texas - mostly western Texas, where the sky reads endless and the austerity of the landscape force - even if only the slightest - existential reckoning at each and every turn of the road... I am in love with this landscape and hope to never have it leave the solitary corners of my mind.

ERIC EATON - The Land of Love And No Fear

Today marks the closing of my friend Eric's first solo show.  I should have posted something of it earlier, but photos which could truly represent the epic, so strongly-thematic, and powerful force of this exhibition were naught to initially be found.  The photos below will hopefully give the show full justice - or at least a halfway justice of some sort.  These new works are best seen in person, since it was planned & executed as a gallery installation.  And, although it saddens me to know it is leaving its home at Pure Gold Gallery in Philly today, I do have full hope that it will travel somewhere else soon enough... and reveal to many more a person its awareness of the light and of love within us all,

 even as surrounded and complicated by the doom and humorous tragedy of our existence here on earth ...  

(ack!  i am currently having trouble uploading more pics from this wonderful exhibit (not to mention the layout sucks) - my apologies:  justice has NOT been done...)

Remedios Varo, Spanish-American Surrealist, 1908-1963

I recall seeing an exhibit of Remedios Varo's work in Chicago years ago - probably upwards of 7 or so (yes, I am that old).  At the time, I had never seen a surrealism quite like hers, and...so much of it!  so much work and so many pieces!!  This still holds true today, as does her function as a continual inspiration and exasperating example of cryptic, magical aesthetic combination...

Remedios Varo, Spanish-American Surrealist, 1908-1963

... not to mention, as an example of an incredible understanding and manipulation of the mysteries of interior vs. exterior - and the delicate, danceful intertwining of the two.  and this is meant in all ways: metaphorically and literally, psychic interior and psychic exterior, spacial "inside" and spacial "outside"

Getting Tattooed...

I had the luck to get tattooed today.  By a friend - great image: a polynesian/samoan man with face tattoos, but "civilized" with bowler hat, feather, fancy stache, and rose.  Traditional style.  I like the idea: modern savage, one primal but caught - happily or not - in the trappings of civilization.  Today was just outline and shading, but I am stoked to get it all finished.  Am trying a new healing method: wrapping it with A&D the first two nights.  I am assuming this helps healing via bedtime vitamin infusion.  So, we'll see how goes...

The west, the desert, and Native American images continue to enthrall me.  I must make it a point to read up on my history of such things, in addition to enjoying the wonderful visual vocabulary associated with this time & place.  And, on a similar note, I will be planning out a larger rib-tattoo for myself - a bucking horse with or without rider.  We are thinking of perhaps a chief or warrior with hatchet, but who knows what the final image will indeed embody.

Regardless, this image below (culled from another's blog) is both inspiring and captivating:

Robert Ryan

http://www.chunksaah.com/sanitaryelectric/tattoo.html

The magical world of Robert Ryan... there are not enough words, so I'll leave it at that - his work will speak for itself.  This man is a tattooer as well, but his images - as tattoos or not - function on there own as an art infinite and idiosyncratic, deserving of adoration and all the joys of religious ritual and psychedelic expanse.  

He is out in Bradley Beach, N.J., a good ol' shore-town which is a skip or two from famed Asbury Park.  Another one on my list of those to get tattooed bye... or perhaps purchase a painting or five.  If I could open up a mutual fund solely in order to create a Robert Ryan collection of my own, oh fer' surely I would.

and more panel painting from the Getty...

--------------------- THE GETTY, LA. HANGIN' WITH THE OL' TIMERS ---------------------------------

While visiting my good friend in Los Angeles this past September, I spent an entire morning & afternoon happily treading along the sunny unconfined confines of the Getty Museum.  I say 'un' because this museum's ability to have its interior and exterior (inside - where the art is and outside - where nature's art is) interact and flow is quite successful and enjoyable.  It reminds me of the museums of Southern Europe: hillside semi-tropical locales where sky and window merge and outdoor/natural light acts as a key player in the drama of the artworks.  This is as opposed to many, say Northeast U.S. museums (save parts of the MET and some other spaces), where the spaces are dark and cavernous and infused with artificial everything.  There are appeals to this kind of set-up, but there seem to be even more appeals to something like the Getty - especially on a wonderfully bright warm, but not too hot kinda L.A. day...

But, I digress: let's talk about panel painting.  This stuff was never a big fave amongst my college art history teachers.  It was always kinda blown past en route to the High Rennaisance with its Teenage Mutant Ninja turtle names, but, nowadays I find its sense of the decorative, its flatness, and its naivete infinitely endearing.  Ornament weaves through strange, abstracted spaces and framing devices create worlds within worlds within worlds.  I don't care about the (Biblical) themes, to be honest - but the formal devices investigated during this time period - their folky magic - hypnotize me.  Although, I do suppose the religious themes do instigate this "magic" - the angels, the bolts of lightning from above, the halo's and gold-leafed auras.  The frames and their folded out/citied structures make these pieces less paintings and moreover ritual devices.  This, i am immensely interested in... and some of the attention to decorative detail - check out that cloth pattern in the last pic of my first post!!  Total wowsertown...

Italian Early-Pre Renaissance panel painting at the Getty, LA, CA

This blog is still a'-gettin' started... much more to come...

Bailey Hunter Robinson...

http://copperbeehive.wordpress.com/

I cannot get enough of this artist/tattooer.  And, to be honest, I am almost hesitant to share his work with the greater, well, whatever.  I want to keep him a secret, like a good thrift store or an antique shop in a small town that has not yet been picked over.  Not that I need to worry, though - people travel the world over to brooklyn to get a lil' ink from the good gentleman Bailey.  I found out his art via my friend Eric, another artist and tattooer whose work will also soon enough be posted about on this blog.

But, first, of Mr. Robinson - here is an Americana sensibility that precedes Sailor Jerry and most forms of traditional tattooing we are all familiar with.  Here is the lure and lore of folk-art, of tattoo flash based on an exquisite lack of drawing skill, of simplicity that strikes via a terseness and old-fashioned childishness.  Images become flat pattern, like Indian Mughal paintings and Tibetan art.  But, it is truly American - "Americana", akin to early Carnival and Circus art or folksy quilt patterns or advertising graphics from the 1800s.  Landscapes of cowgirls and Indian heads and lucky horses and gypsies and the old west.  A color scheme of subdued earth colors found only in the dirt of a bootlegging bordertown...

The work speaks for itself... and, I am already scheming my next piece.  As you should yours...

His other interests/collecting also dovetails perfectly into his tattooing/arting, making for a seamless world of olden times, rust, and saddle.

A new blog, a new decade

this blog is not only attempt to get back into art-making, but to highlight artwatching.  off all sorts.  i will be posting as much as possible on friends, family, and strangers who continually inspire.  this is philadelphia-based, but without geographical boundary.  i hope it amounts to something interesting amongst the sea of other wonderful blogs swimming and surfing and hanging tens...