From a Passerby

Spotted one of my favorite local artists @greggchadwick displayed At LA Union Station pic.twitter.com/aZMV7gVSau

— Theo Marshall (@ImTheoMarshall) April 14, 2023

Happy New Year! On to 2023

 

Gregg Chadwick

New York Stories (Five Minutes to Midnight)

30"x 40" oil on linen 

Happy New Year!

明けましておめでとうございます

Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu

In my painting "New York Stories" it’s five minutes to midnight. Waiting for 2022 to move into 2023 like the hands of a clock spinning into the next hour, figures move around the iconic Grand Central clock like foxes huddling beneath a tree in Andō Hiroshige's "New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Ōji"

It’s raining this New Year’s Eve in Santa Monica. I’m listening to a recording of a 10,000-member choir in Japan singing “Ode to Joy” in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Enthusiasm for Beethoven is particularly strong in Japan. Every year in December, singers gather in a concert hall in Osaka to sing the final chorus from Beethoven's Ninth.

Gregg Chadwick

Passing View of Shohei Bridge 

30"x24" oil on linen 1990

Again, my thoughts trace a circuit from this moment back to an earlier New Year in Japan as 1989 rolled into 1990. I was in Tokyo following the spirit and artworks of Ando Hiroshige. That winter in Japan, I clutched a large volume by Henry D. Smith II and Amy G. Poster on Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo and trekked on rail, foot and car across the historic core of what was Edo era Tokyo. Sponsored by the Nippon Seiyu-Kai's 30th Anniversary Award, I endeavored to create a series of new paintings inspired by Hiroshige’s woodcuts. Time, place, memory, mystery and lore all mixed in my artworks.

Utagawa Hiroshige (Ando) (Japanese, 1797-1858)

 New Year’s Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Oji

( No. 118 from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo)

 9th month of 1857  Woodblock print

 Brooklyn Museum

Today @nortonsimon posted a photo of one of the most mysterious images from Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Alison Baldassano from the Brooklyn Museum wrote about this artwork, "People aren’t the only beings who gather together for special celebrations on the night before a new year dawns. In this woodblock print by Hiroshige, foxes come together on New Year’s Eve to receive directions for the upcoming year and emit ghostly flames, the size of which helps predict the next year’s crop…. And, as the foxes could say in the morning, 明けましておめでとうございます (akemashite omedetou gozaimasu) or #HappyNewYear!"


#art #NewYear #NYC #japan

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Merry Christmas Everyone! #Japan #Trains #Caturday https://t.co/kXAkv4wOna

— Gregg Chadwick (@greggchadwick) December 4, 2022

Uncle Jake and His World of Stories

by Gregg Chadwick

My Uncle Jake looms large in my life. And not only because he has the build of a defensive tackle on the San Francisco 49ers. When Jake walks into a room he fills the scene like James Gandolfini in the Sopranos. Then the stories begin. 

Jolly Green Giant

Jake sets the scene. Imagine he is on a covert mission during the Vietnam War. President Nixon has launched a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia and Laos. From March 18, 1969 until May 26, 1970, code name Operation Menu targeted resupply areas that the North Vietnamese and their allies the National Liberation Front and the Viet Cong were using as bases of attack against the South Vietnamese and their American allies.  Heavy B-52 bombers from the US Air Force carpet bombed the Laotian and Cambodian borders in an attempt to interdict North Vietnamese supply lines. 

Airman Jacob J Desch (Vietnam Era Photo)

Airman Jake Desch was deployed in Thailand where the massive B-52s were stationed at U Tapao Royal Thai Air Base, and smaller bombers at the secret Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Navy Base on the Thai/Laos border. The story goes that Jake was onboard an aircraft collecting signals intel, possibly a C-123 Provider used for special ops over Laos, when the plane encountered difficulties. Engine failure, enemy anti-aircraft fire, pilot error - all possibilities. Jake is fuzzy on the details, but he definitely wasn't the pilot. Jake assures us that he was adept at airborne insertion and geared up quickly in his parachute gear. Soon Jake was out the door and free from the aircraft. The plane was flying low, so Jake's drop was fast. His parachute barely unfurled before he slammed into the Laotian jungle. Jake blacked out from the force of the descent and his abrupt landing. When he came to, Jake found himself caught high in a forest canopy. Jake was lucky, unlike many airmen whose planes were lost during the war. Jake had survived. Jake was a tech specialist and his quick thinking saved his life.  Trapped in the branches, Jake used the serrated edge on his survival knife to cut himself clear from the tree. 

A rescue team had taken off from a nearby base, perhaps Nakhon Phanom. Hope was on its way.

Fitting that Jake, a red headed giant of a man, would be rescued by airmen aboard an HH-3E Jolly Green Giant helicopter from the U.S. Air Force Rescue team. Jake hasn't expressed to me what he said to the rescue team. But, I am sure that as a Jersey boy he would have joked with them and asked - "What took you so long?"

The National Museum of the United States Air Force describes the incredible heroism of the Combat Pararescue teams in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War:

"The blood-red beret, symbolizing sacrifice, has been the pararescueman or "PJ" (for parajumper) mark of distinction since early 1966. The PJ's unique mission in the Southeast Asia War was to ride into a combat zone aboard a rescue helicopter and descend into jungles, swamps, mountains, and forests on a cable and winch. On the ground, they stabilized and helped hoist the injured to safety, often under fire. All volunteers, the PJs earned more decorations per man than any other USAF group in the SEA War."

 A U.S. Air Force pararescueman is lowered on a forest penetrator from a hovering 37th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron HH-53 helicopter during a rescue mission in Southeast Asia, June 1970. (U.S. Air Force photo)

U.S. Air Force air rescue team: Four Nakhon Phanom based A-1 Skyraiders and a Lockheed HC-130P Hercules recovery aircraft refueling a Sikorsky HH-3E Jolly Green Giant helicopter

U.S. Air Force - National Museum of the U.S. Air Force photo 1968

Jersey Guys 

Jake still carries the wounds of that encounter during the Vietnam War. Perhaps Jake gained courage that helped him move into his new life as a student at San Francisco State and husband to his effervescent wife Linda. 

Francis Ford Coppola directs Marlon Brando in the Godfather wedding scene 

Like a scene from Francis Ford Coppola’s sweeping masterpiece The Godfather, Jake's stories embrace the cinematic moments of life. Jake loves to tell the tale when he encountered a posse of overly friendly gentlemen at a reception in San Francisco. Jake's wife comes from an Italian American family and is proud of her heritage. Growing up in Newark, New Jersey, Jake had met his fair share of the cosa nostra. But that evening at one of the grand old hotels in downtown San Francisco was more than Jake expected. 

Linda and Jake Desch 1970s

As Jake tells the tale, the wedding celebration was opulent.  Lights, camera, action, The hors d'oeuvres, crudités (as only a Jersey guy would know), antipasti (most likely from Molinari's in North Beach),  lasagne, fish (this was San Francisco after all), and freshly carved meats were all spectacular. Champagne flowed freely , the music had swing (Tony Bennett should have been there), and the dancing went on all night. Linda liked to move on the dance floor and Jake eagerly glided along with her. Like most big men, Jake gets hot easily and he needed to take a break to cool off. 

At the sink in the men's room, Jake splashed water on his face with his eyes down. He could hear the thumping of the music down the corridor and then heard it grow louder as the restroom door swung open. Jake gathered himself quickly and looked up to see six large, beefy, muscular, no nonsense men gathered in the bathroom with him. Too many to wrestle with Jake thought. So Jake did what was natural to him. He made friends. "How's it going guys?", Jake asked in a Jersey accent he pulled out for these kind of occasions. The six men nodded positively as they looked Jake over. Their internal threat response meters sensed no threat from Jake. In actuality, the men saw Jake as a fellow member of their rare club. "What are you packing?", the lead bodyguard asked Jake in a whisper as he flashed his holstered weapon. The other five Italian guardians followed suit and displayed their handguns.

"What am I packing?" 

"These!" - Jake said as he held out his massive hands. 

Three Regular Jersey Guys in the Soprano's 

The meat market Satriale's created for the show  is possibly based on Sacco's Meat Market located at 806 3rd Avenue in Elizabeth, New Jersey which served as the unofficial base of "Uncle Joe" Giacobbe, a veteran made man in the DeCavalcante crime family.

Alaskan Earthquake

I remember sitting in the living room with Uncle Jake at the Desch family residence in Garfield, New Jersey when my Dad was with the 3rd Marine Division in Vietnam. We often stopped by to visit my Grandma and Grandpa and assorted aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews on weekends in those years, 1965 - 1966, to hang out with family. One Saturday the TV was on playing Attack of the 50 Foot Woman - a low budget sci-fi film from 1958 - and Jake was passing around a stack of photos of the damage from the Alaskan Earthquake of 1964 that he had taken while stationed at a Strategic Air Command Base in Alaska. To me, the film's theatrical release poster appears like a green screened actress in front of Jake's earthquake photos. Worlds colliding indeed. 

While Jake was there, on March 27, 1964, a 9.2 magnitude earthquake struck the Prince William Sound region of Alaska. The quake lasted  4.5 minutes and is still the most powerful recorded earthquake in U.S. history. It is also the second largest earthquake ever recorded, next to the 9.5 magnitude earthquake in Chile in 1960. Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson provides an historical account of the military's response to the quake:

"The military in Alaska, from the moment of the disaster, mustered their full strength to assist their neighbors," wrote Air Force Lt. Gen. R.J. Reeves, commander of Alaskan Command, in a letter to Army Maj. Gen. Eugene Salet, commander of the U.S. Army Training Center at Fort Gordon, Ga. 'The military services proved once again that they are ready, willing, and able to cope with emergencies, whatever their origin.'"

Alaska Earthquake March 27, 1964. Collapse of Fourth Avenue near C Street in Anchorage due to a landslide caused by the earthquake. (Photo by U.S. Army)

Jake and his colleagues started working immediately after the earthquake to provide aid to those in need throughout Alaska:

"At dawn the next day, 17 C-123 Providers left Elmendorf's runway carrying equipment and supplies south and east to Valdez, Seward, and Kodiak. During the next 21 days, nearly four million pounds of cargo was flown out in Operation Helping Hand. Massive airlift operations by the Military Air Transport Service shattered records, hauling in two and a half million pounds of cargo - from baby food to heavy equipment - from Lower 48 bases."

Homeward Bound

Gregg Chadwick

Jersey Cantos 

16"x20"oil on linen 2016

Private Collection, San Francisco

Northern New Jersey, where Jake grew up, is one of the United States' largest transportation hubs. When Jake was a kid, rail lines, automobile parkways, and air traffic filled the Jersey earth and sky with movement and the possibility of adventure. I remember when I was a young boy, Jake was on leave from the Air Force and brought by a small collection of his old toys to give us. Trucks, trains, and planes were there in miniature. And a red plastic spaceship ready to carry Buck Rogers and Wilma into the stars. I could almost hear the first line in the United States Air Force Song - "Off we go into the wild blue yonder, Climbing high into the sun"

Jake enjoyed telling me about his childhood playgrounds along the tracks of the Jersey Central rail line that his father rode along as a railway engineer. Jake and his buddies would play ball in a dirt yard next to an auto body shop on the edge of town. The crack of the bat would mix with the sounds of pneumatic air pumps and the hiss of paint guns. Often a train whistle sounded by Jake's Dad would ring out from a Jersey Central engine moving slowly down the tracks next to the field. Jake says that he and the boys would run and jump onto the freight cars as the train rolled on. 

One day only Jake made it onto the train. He was actually able to reach up towards the train engine and his dad pulled him up into the cab. "Where are we going Dad?, Jake asked his father as the train pulled away. "Anywhere you want to go Jake.", his Dad said. "Anywhere you want to go!"

Portrait of Frida Cano (E Line)

by Gregg Chadwick 

For the Metro project "We Are…Portraits of Metro Riders by Local Artists", I painted a portrait of artist, writer, and curator Frida Cano. 

Like a steel river, Metro’s E Line connects arts institutions across Los Angeles County. Running from 7th Street in Downtown L.A. to Santa Monica, the E train begins just down Bunker Hill from LA MOCA and the Broad Museum and passes by numerous art cultural centers from the California African-American Museum, to the art gallery districts in West Adams and Culver City, to the Sawtelle Corridor, to Bergamot Station, to the 18th Street Arts Center, ending a few miles from the Ocean Park neighborhood in Santa Monica that inspired artists from Richard Diebenkorn to John Baldessari. 

Frida Cano lives in Echo Park and often travels on the E Line to her art curatorial position in Santa Monica. Frida lives and breathes the concerns of our times. She writes,” As an emerging Mexican artist and curator, focused on the reevaluation of history and culture through Latin American perspectives, it has been my concern to truly communicate the social issues of our times.” Frida rides the train and sees the world reflected in the glass of the E Line as she travels across L.A. Frida believes that art curators, in tandem with artists and critics, can bring circulating and hidden ideas to light. This zeitgeist informed my portrait of Frida Cano, pictured thinking as she waits for the E train. 

"We Are...Portraits of Metro Riders by Local Artists" on view in the Union Station Passageway Art Gallery and in an expanded online gallery celebrates diversity and the community of transit riders. We Are... launches more upcoming programs in 2022 across multiple formats and sites ranging from including buses, trains and stations in Los Angeles County. The program will include even a special Metro Art Bus! Plus, the exhibit will be accompanied by all-ages community engagement programs, including tours, talks, and more. This multi-site exhibition and series of events is presented by Metro Art in collaboration with Metro’s Office of Civil Rights, Racial Equity & Inclusion and Communications departments. #Art #Trains #Metro #LosAngeles #GreggChadwick 

 See more at https://art.metro.net/artworks/exhibitions/weare/

Official We Are... Call to Action – IG/FB/Twitter: We Are... a community of riders. Join in Metro’s portrait exhibition! Tag a selfie #SomosWeAre and share your journey.

WE ARE… PORTRAITS OF METRO RIDERS BY LOCAL ARTISTS

PASSAGEWAY ART GALLERY EXHIBIT AT UNION STATION NOW OPEN

Metro riders are invited to contribute selfies and personal stories of transit using the hashtag #SomosWeAre

Celebrating the diversity of Los Angeles County and the community of transit riders, We Are…Portraits of Metro Riders by Local Artists is an exhibition featuring portraits presented throughout the Metro system and online. Each rider portrait has a story that is personal and universal, intimate and immediate— a single story among the many stories of 840,000 daily riders on Metro, and each told by an artist with ties to neighborhoods served by Metro.

The We Are… exhibition displays 35 new artworks in the Union Station Passageway Art Gallery along with additional artworks in an expanded online gallery.

To view all images in the online We Are gallery, click here.

Featured artists in the Passageway Art Gallery are Aiseborn, Eric Almanza, Kristina Ambriz, Jazmine Atienza, Susu Attar, Christen Austin, Moses X. Ball, Daniel Barajas, Chelle Barbour, April Bey, Javier Carrillo, Carolyn Castaño, Gregg Chadwick, Sean Cheetham, Cat Ferraz, Carla Jay Harris, Alepsis Hernández, Bodeck Luna Hernandez, Lanise Howard, Bryan Ida, Sheila Karbassian, Kaylynn Kim, Miles Lewis, José M. Loza, Cody Lusby, Rosalind McGary, Samuel Pace, Maria Piñeres, Adele Renault, LP Ǽkili Ross, Carlos Spivey, Edwin Ushiro, Dave Van Patten, J Michael Walker, Angela Willcocks.

Gregg Chadwick Artist Talk on Feb 27th 2016 - Last Week for Mystery Train at Sandra Lee Gallery and More Studio Notes from Gregg Chadwick - Winter 2016

  I reorganized my paints yesterday after fervent months in the studio painting the work for Mystery Train. Tubes of oil paint squeezed into empty twisted shells and stray caps marked only by a tell tale ring of color  were discarded. Brushes, newly cleaned, stand at attention ready for new work. A clean glass palette now sits on top of a used stack of brightly daubed surfaces. Painting trains seems to bring daily reminders of change, of process, of journeys. When a train or plane turns around for its trip back home, there is little time for introspection. Vehicles are cleaned, engines refueled, often a new crew is added - new passengers and new travels await. As Mystery Train prepares to depart San Francisco, I ask you to celebrate with me at a closing party and artist talk on February 27th at the Sandra Lee Gallery (details below) if you are in the Bay Area. I have listed below a series of events, exhibitions, press, and more that give a glimpse into the excitement around Mystery Train and my art. Thanks for taking the time to look at and ponder my paintings!
Hope to see you soon. - Gregg Chadwick

1. Artist Talk and Closing Party for Mystery Train on Saturday, February 27, 2016 2-4pm 

      Santa Monica-based artist Gregg Chadwick  has been painting for three decades. His current studio is an old airplane hangar where the flurry of takeoffs and landings on the runway outside seems to creep into Chadwick’s paintings as he explores movement and travel within his light-filled paintings.  His current series of paintings is entitled ‘Mystery Train’ and evokes the railways of America that Chadwick says run in his blood. His grandfather worked as a fireman, stoking coal in steam engines before advancing to train engineer on the Jersey Central Line. Chadwick often says that family gatherings brought the rhythms of the rails home. The sounds of railroad workers echoed in the music that Chadwick’s relatives played in the shadows of the train lines outside. For Chadwick and many others such as writer Greil Marcus, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, and musicians Junior Parker and Elvis Presley, the enduring mythos of America and its legacy is wrapped in the blues notes of the song ‘Mystery Train’. Chadwick will speak about these influences and how they shaped his current paintings.

       Sandra Lee Gallery 

      251 Post Street, Suite 310

San Francisco, CA 94108

415.291.8000

art@sandraleegallery.com

2. Gregg Chadwick's 'Mystery Train' Celebrates the Rhythms of the Rails! by Kathy Leonardo
Read more about Mystery Train in the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-leonardo-/gregg-chadwicks-mystery-t_b_9203570.html?utm_hp_ref=arts&ir=Art

3. Much thanks to Alan Bamberger for his photos and comments on the "Mystery Train" opening at Sandra Lee Gallery on Feb 4 -
Sandra Lee Gallery: Mystery Train - Gregg Chadwick.
Comment by AB: "Dreamy dynamic portrayals recall the heyday of rail travel and the nostalgia it evokes."
More from Alan at: http://artbusiness.com/1open/020416.html

4. Mystery Train: Influences and Inspiration (Videos and More) http://www.greggchadwick.com/Gregg_Chadwick/Mystery_Train__Influences_and_Inspiration_%28Videos_and_More%29/Mystery_Train__Influences_and_Inspiration_%28Videos_and_More%29.html

5. A selection of Gregg Chadwick’s paintings from the Mystery Train series was exhibited at the Palm Springs Fine Art Fair from February 11-14 in the Sandra Lee Gallery booth. 
(Photo by Eric Minh Swenson) Gregg spoke at the booth on February 12, 2016. Jersey Rain (Across the Tracks) was illustrated in the catalog and Gregg’s talk was featured as well.
http://www.palmspringsfineartfair.com/gregg-chadwick/

6. A solo exhibition of Gregg Chadwick’s paintings entitled Cities in Time, hangs through March 2016 at Vedder Price in Century City, California.

7. Gregg Chadwick’s painting Pigalle is featured on the cover of the latest issue of
    Black Fox Literary Magazine.
http://www.blackfoxlitmag.com/

8. A Balance of Shadows: Gregg Chadwick's Paintings 
    Authored by Kent Chadwick
    Hardcover – February 6, 2016
     Available Online at Amazon

Happy Holidays!

Gregg Chadwick
Rio Grande
30"x40" oil on linen 2015

Happy Holidays! Hope to see all my Bay Area friends at the Sandra Lee Gallery in San Francisco on Dec 12, 2015 from 4-6 pm for the Annual Holiday Group Exhibition. My new painting Rio Grande will be exhibited for the first time! Rio Grande will be on view until the New Year.