Because the Night

by Gregg Chadwick


Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Because The Night
 Greensboro - March 19, 2012


The first Bruce Springsteen concert I attended was a revelation, almost a rock n' roll revival. But there was also an undercurrent of pain and empathy. Two songs stood out for me that night. The first was Springsteen's haunting, solo piano version of The Promise which became a sound that I tried to get into my paintings from that day forward. The second was Bruce and the E Street Band's electrifying version of Because the Night. I knew that Springsteen had penned the song and then given the not quite finished work to Patti Smith to complete and record. I took that song on as my romantic talisman. Somewhere down the line I knew I would find a partner who would feel the passion from those haunting lines and that searing music just as I did. My wife, MarySue, and I found each other in 2003 and  our friend, the singer/songwriter Kelly Colbert performed a scorchingly hot version of Because the Night at our wedding on 7/7/07.

Gregg Chadwick
Endless Blue
40"x30" oil on linen 2012 (in process)

Celebrate St. Patrick's Day at the Santa Monica Airport Artwalk March 17, 2012

Gregg Chadwick
Nightwalk
8"x6" oil on linen 2012*

Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with Art, Workshops, Music & Food

at the Santa Monica Airport Artwalk 2012

Saturday, March 17, 12-5pm

 


Each year the city of Santa Monica sponsors an Art Walk at the Santa Monica Airport. At the airport a  community of artists works quietly alongside the hum of rotor blades and the roar of jet engines. Hidden from the world at large on most days, on March 17th 2012 the artists that call the airport home will once again open their studio doors and let the public into their creative process. I am fortunate to have an intelligent, talented and caring group of artists and gallerists around me. When the news of the world threatens to throttle our creative souls, a shared artistic community can help keep us on the path.

I enjoy this day greatly. The crowd of visitors is convivial and eclectic and represents the diversity that I love in Los Angeles. Children and friends of all ages are welcome.

My studio is located at the Santa Monica Art Studios Hangar
Studio #15
3026 AirportAvenue
Santa Monica, CA 90405

The event runs from 12pm to 5pm. Hope to see you on March 17, 2012!

Santa Monica Airport Artwalk 2012
Saturday, March 17 from 12:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Santa Monica Airport, Airport Avenue between 23rd and Bundy
Free Admission, Free parking

More Info Below:

The Santa Monica Airport and Cultural Affairs Divisions invite you to discover Santa Monica Airport. Explore open studios, watch artful demonstrations, try your hand at an art workshop, and enjoy live Irish jigs, food trucks and family friendly activities all in one of LA County’s oldest operating airfields. Santa Monica Airport has a rich background as the former home of the Douglas Aircraft Company and the birthplace of the DC-3. 

Director Sergio Sanchez Suarez in Gregg Chadwick's Studio
#15 at the Santa Monica Art Studios

The airport has developed over time into an arts incubator, and is home to a number of creative venues housed in converted airplane hangars. More than 60 local artists and performers will have their private studios and works on view. Painting, sculpture, ceramics, and mixed media will be represented and many artists will be selling work from their studios and offering refreshments. 


 HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:  
* SANTA MONICA ART STUDIOS - Silent Auction of original 6"x8" artworks by studio artists - bids starting at $75

Producer Daniela Uriza and Director Sergio Sanchez Suarez
visit Gregg Chadwick's Studio #15
at the Santa Monica Art Studios

 ARENA 1 GALLERY - Pacific Standard Time exhibit BREAKING IN TWO: PROVACATIVE VISIONS OF MOTHERHOOD


 SANTA MONICA COLLEGE ART MENTOR PROGRAM - Works from a group of gifted SMC Art Department Students


 SANTA MONICA COLLEGE CERAMIC ARTS - Pottery throwing and Raku firing demonstrations


 RUSKIN GROUP THEATRE - Performances of its popular L.A. Café Plays and  theater and art workshops for children


 THE MUSEUM OF FLYING - Tours of the newly opened museum every half hour between 1:30-4:30pm 


 CLIFF WAGNER & OLD #7 - A lively mix of bluegrass, blues and country music with a few Irish jigs 


 RESTAURANTS - Typhoon and Spitfire Grill serve delicious meals including  green St. Patrick's Day specials


 FOOD TRUCKS - Border Grill serves modern Mexian food and Waffles de Liege  serves authentic sweet Liege waffles


 The ArtWalk is part of Buy Local Santa Monica Expo 2012, a free community event 
dedicated to showcasing local businesses and the importance of buying local.  

Looking Closer at Van Eyck: Rediscovering the Ghent Altarpiece

by Gregg Chadwick

The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb known informally as The Ghent Altarpiece was painted by the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck with the assistance of his brother Hubert in the 15th Century.  The multi paneled artwork has been a school to artists since it was unveiled at the Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent in 1432. The series of paintings that form the altarpiece evoke a harmonious universe of beauty and glowing light. 

Jan van Eyck lived and worked in Bruges, Belgium from at least the unveiling of The Ghent Altarpiece in 1432 until his death in 1441. By then the city of Bruges had become one of the most important artistic centers in Europe. Painters traveled from all over the continent to study, collaborate and create in Bruge's fervent environment. Jan van Eyck himself was a transplant, having been born around 1390 in the village of Maaseik, just outside the city of Maastricht which is now part of The Netherlands. 

Amazingly, the breathtaking Ghent Altarpiece is the first agreed upon work in Jan van Eyck's canon. An inscription on the frame indicates that the altarpiece was begun by Jan's brother Hubert and completed on May 6, 1432 by Jan van Eyck. Twelve monumental paintings on wood form the altarpiece which depicts a theological compendium of the Christian faith. 

Recently, the Getty Museum helped fund a program with the Flemish government to clean and analyze the massive artwork with high tech tools. During the process, curators had each panel of the altarpiece digitally photographed. A website has been created that allows viewers to access these panels and to zoom in on details that would otherwise be difficult to perceive. The Getty Museum explains, "the website allows users to zoom in on individual sections of the altarpiece and take a virtual peek under the paint surface by means of infrared reflectography (IRR) and x-radiography, examining the altarpiece in ways never before possible."

I have posted a series of screen shots of details from The Ghent Altarpiece as a sort of visual essay on van Eyck's luminous paintings. I suggest that you visit the website Closer to Van Eyck: Rediscovering the Ghent Altarpiece and create your own journey through this amazing artwork.

More At:
Closer to Van Eyck: Rediscovering the Ghent Altarpiece
The Ghent Altarpiece As Never Seen Before

Springsteen and the E street Band Live Video from the Apollo Theater, New York

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band  Perform Smokey Robinson's
"The Way You Do the Things You Do"

Live at the Apollo Theater in New York City

March 9, 2012

Bruce Springsteen Sings "Waiting On a Sunny Day"
 with Jake Clemons on Saxophone at the Apollo Theater
in New York City on March 9, 2012

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band  Perform "We Take Care of Our Own"

Live at the Apollo Theater in New York City

March 9, 2012

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band  Perform "Death to My Hometown"

Live at the Apollo Theater in New York City

March 9, 2012

Something Like a Preface to My Review of the Songs on Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball

by Gregg Chadwick

"Wrecking Ball sounds like it's quite possibly Bruce’s best album in a quarter century, for what my opinion's worth. It's bracing and subversive and furious and sonically fearless. It's going to give voice to a generation. Certainly to an era. In that regard I'd put it shoulder to shoulder with Born to Run, Highway 61 Revisited, Exile on Main Street, London Calling, and American Idiot. Indelible. I hate hyperbole, but I've got to say I stand in awe of Bruce's ability to make music this angry and relevant and authentic at any stage of his career, never mind 40 years on. Thank God for him."

-Novelist Dennis Lehane

Bruce Springsteen's new album, Wrecking Ball (Listen to the full album streaming here), was officially released in Europe and Australia today and will make its debut in the U.S.tomorrow - March 6, 2012. Over the past two weeks I have been writing song by song reviews of the album and have found that readers from Italy, the Netherlands, France and the United States have linked to my essays. Thanks for the thoughts and comments from Bonzo at the Italian Springsteen forum Loose Ends, Human Touch at the French Springsteen forum Land of Hope and Dreams, Happy Cat at the Swedish Springsteen forum Springsteen.se, TeeVee at the Finnish Springsteen forum This Hard Land, No Surrender81 at the Springsteen fan site Backstreets,  Judge Brown at the Springsteen tribute page Greasy Lake, and the Dutch writer Glory Cookie in her post De Gospel van Springsteen and as Kari-Anne Fygi at Be True - The International Magazine voor Springsteen Fans.

I also want to thank my brother Kent for the years of Springsteen related discussions and concerts. Our Springsteen connection goes way back - though I must say that I am the only son born in New Jersey. (My brother is a native Virginian.) We spent many of our summers visiting my grandparents in Montclair, Garwood, or Toms River. And we often searched in vain for the houses that my parents grew up in Newark. But it was our trips to the Jersey Shore that hold some of the most vivid memories. Aunt Jeanne lived in a small apartment in Asbury Park which we would visit at least once each summer, before we hit the creosote and saltwater taffy perfumed magic at the boardwalk. My brother and his friends would play Skee-Ball while I would gamble at the record arcades trying to win LP's. I was heavily into funk in those days as well as 60's soul and then added Bruce Springsteen to my playlist as soon as I heard the newly released single, Born to Run, as I  drove my first car around the suburbs and into Washington DC to visit the museums, and attend classes at the Corcoran School of Art.

Gregg Chadwick
Under the El
30"x20" oil on linen 2012 

A couple of years later, in the summer of 1978, I steeped myself in John Steinbeck novels and the paintings of Edward Hopper. My soundtrack was Bruce Springsteen's fourth album Darkness on the Edge of Town, which to me sounded like a distillation of Steinbeck, Hopper and Woody Guthrie. 

I had just finished my freshman year at UCLA and  this was my first summer on the Monterey Bay in central California. The pace of life was so much slower than Los Angeles or Washington DC and I found time for study and reflection in the hours after my temp job finished. I would go for a run through Point Lobos after work to clear my head and then would sit with East of Eden or The Grapes of Wrath until the sun went down. I would paint late into the night trying to get these new inspirations onto canvas. I had a lot to learn but I was dogged and I let my failures lead me onto new paths.

Gregg Chadwick
Study for a Portrait of Woody Guthrie
16"x12" oil on linen 2012

The highways around Monterey were wide open in the late 1970's and the gas crisis wouldn't hit until after the fall of the Shah in Iran in 1979. Like a character in a Springsteen song I would drive to find out where I was going. Images that still need to be painted flooded in:

Early morning light on farm workers in the fields outside Salinas.

The crumbling docks of Cannery Row seemingly melting in the sea air.

Rows of US soldiers waiting their turn on the target line at Fort Ord.

On the 1st of July, I took Highway 101 up from the bay to Berkeley. I met my brother and a group of his friends at the edge of the UC campus and we wandered until we found the Berkeley Community Theater. Throughout my high school years in the suburbs of DC, my older brother Kent was studying at UC Davis and I cherished the moments we had together. Each time we reunited seemed like an epiphany. We talked and argued about life, art, politics, poetry, spirituality and music. We had seen a few concerts together on the east coast starting with a J Geils gig in Asbury Park. But neither one of us had seen Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play live. Until that night in Berkeley. 

The concert was a revelation, almost a rock n' roll revival. But there was also an undercurrent of pain and empathy. Two songs stood out for me that night. The first was Springsteen's haunting, solo piano version of The Promise which became a sound that I tried to get into my paintings from that day forward. The second was Bruce and the E Street Band's electrifying version of Because the Night. I knew that Springsteen had penned the song and then given the not quite finished work to Patti Smith to complete and record. I took that song on as my romantic talisman. Somewhere down the line I knew I would find a partner who would feel the passion from those haunting lines and that searing music just as I did. My wife, MarySue, and I found each other in 2003 and  our friend, the singer/songwriter Kelly Colbert performed a scorchingly hot version of Because the Night at our wedding on 7/7/07.

MarySue Greets Our Dear Friend Julian Murillo at Our Wedding  7/7/07
photo by Sabine Pearlman

So, please put on Wrecking Ball, turn it up loud and wander through my thoughts on the songs:

Song by Song Reviews of Wrecking Ball on Speed of Life:

1. We Take Care of Our Own

2. Easy Money

3. Shackled and Drawn

4. Jack of All Trades

5. Death to My Hometown

6. This Depression

7. Wrecking Ball

8. You've Got It

9. Rocky Ground

10. Land of Hope and Dreams

11. We Are Alive

Lady Gaga ‏ @ladygaga

•  Reply 
 
•  Retweet 
 
•  Favorite 
 
• · Open
 

Did ANYONE see SPRINGSTEEN on Fallon last night!!! Buy his new album. It is so genius its hard to even believe. Just mind-blowing passion.

Retweeted by brucespringsteen.net

jimmy fallon ‏ @jimmyfallon

•  Reply 
 
•  Retweet 
 
•  Favorite 
 
• · Open
 

Death To My Hometown by Bruce Springsteen was probably the hardest anyone has ever rocked on our show. #wreckingball

Retweeted by brucespringsteen.net

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band with Tom Morello Play

Death to My Hometown on Late Night w/ Jimmy Fallon (3/2/12)

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band with Tom Morello Play

Jack of All Trades on Late Night w/ Jimmy Fallon (3/2/12)

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band 

with Tom Morello and The Roots

Play The E Street Shuffle on Late Night w/ Jimmy Fallon (3/2/12)

Bruce Springsteen Week Conclusion on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

(Entire Show - Friday, March 2, 2012)

More at:

"Bruce Springsteen's widescreen vision of America on Wrecking Ball is filled with terror, tension, tenacity and above all else, triumph which may not replenish your bank account, but it will replenish your soul."

-Anthony Kuzminski, Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball, antiMusic

"What was done to my country was un-American."

Shackled and Drawn

Jack of All Trades

Death to My Hometown

From Down Under: Sean Sennett Talks With Springsteen About Wrecking Ball

All Things Shining by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly

The Working Man's Voice - The Wall Street Journal

A More Chaste Review of You've Got It by Jonathan Lack

Onstage and Backstage with Springsteen at Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

Parsing the Samples and Quotes on Wrecking Ball

Bruce Springsteen, Théatre Marigny press conference, Paris, February 2012

Springsteen Visits Fallon: Streaming Videos

Stream Bruce's new album #WreckingBall in its entirety now at the newly redesigned Springsteen website: http://www.brucespringsteen.net

Don't Miss This Upcoming Event on NPR:

NPR Music will broadcast Bruce Springsteen's keynote speech from the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas. The live webcast of that address will take place on NPR Music on March 15 at noon Central time.