Speed of Life

 by Gregg Chadwick Good morning Happy weekend pic.twitter.com/bU6Kc42wGO — Rabih Alameddine (@rabihalameddine) July 29, 2017 Rabih Alameddine is a San Francisco based author whose most recent novel, The Angel of History ,  is a masterful act of remembering. The scourge of AIDS ravaged the queer community in the 1980's. Alameddine honors the lost in his book that echoes Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical, elegiac work The Master and Margarita . For those who have been asking me lately for book suggestions, these are both must reads. Along with his literary work, Alameddine is a master at social media, especially twitter. If you are on twitter, follow Rabih Alameddine now. His feed is full of surprises, especially his engaging threads of artworks. Have a Happy Weekend! Good morning, Velázquez pic.twitter.com/31wBaLrOrP — Rabih Alameddine (@rabihalameddine) July 29, 2017 Saturday Morning at Gregg Chadwick's Studio 

by Gregg Chadwick I have been carrying my copy of Jana Prikryl's engaging book of poems " The After Party " with me for a few months now. Before I go out the door, I almost always slip the collection into an open slot in my bag. On recent travels from Los Angeles, to San Francisco, to Carmel, to Milwaukee, to Memphis - Prikryl's book has been with me. Each destination flavors my reading of her poems, almost like memory itself. And in a sense that is what Prikryl does in "The After Party". In her book we travel with her through a series of moments, or times, or places, or memories. Unlike many books where the narrator disappears into the text only to reappear as an overbearing Disney-ride like explicator, in " The After Party " Prikryl joins us on a journey through time. Memory can be like an artist's drawing full of smudged marks, erasures, and fantasies. Prikryl acknowledges this in her poems and lets us glide through her veils of ti...

Gregg Chadwick Buddha of the Adriatic 24"x18" oil on linen 2014 My heart breaks for the families who have lost their daughters and sons during this weekend's senseless massacre in Santa Barbara. There is so much to discuss, to argue over, to ponder. But tonight, I will continue to mourn and ask that attention be focused on the six University of California, Santa Barbara students who were stolen from us.

Communicating the loss of a loved one is never easy. It is best done in person but words alone can also provide light in a difficult time. With deep sadness I have to send  on  news about the death of our beloved family member Hannah Johnson. Hannah passed away Sunday night in a traffic accident, and her husband Matt is fighting for his life in a hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. ( Update on Hannah's Husband Matt:  Matt is coherent, awake, conversant and stood up today!!) Hannah believed deeply that all are created equal and that we all deserve an equal share of human rights. Hannah worked tirelessly for marriage equality in California and New Jersey.  Pictured in this New York Times photo from 2009 is my courageous family member Hannah Johnson tearing up as she applauds a New Jersey Senate committee vote on a bill to legalize gay marriage.  The struggle continues in New Jersey and in California photo  by Richard Perry / New Yor...

Gregg Chadwick La Vita Trasparente (The Transparent Life) 48"x36" oil on linen 2012 Inspired by the poem La Vita Trasparente by Luigi Fontanella: LA VITA TRASPARENTE Luigi Fontanella Apre la città le sue strade, corrono biciclette senza persone, alla finestra s'affaccia e sparisce un volto di donna, le vetrine offrono sessi per ogni stagione, giro di vite: balla una coppia agile e magra nella piazza deserta, la corsa degli uomini, agita chiome il bosco in controluce, passi su foglie e solchi di fango duro, viale d'autunno carrozza regale pioggia di rugiada e di carta: la vita trasparente. The Transparent Life by Luigi Fontanella (translation by W.S. di Piero) the city opens its streets, bicycles go by riderless, a woman's face in a window appears then vanishes, shop windows offer fetishes for every season, lives turning, a slender agile couple dances in the deserted piazza, the race men run, the hairy woods shivering...

Gregg Chadwick A Gion Rain 22"x30" monotype on paper 2011 I came home from a memorial service for a great artist and a great friend, Sylvia Moss, on Sunday night. In times of loss and uncertainty, I tend to turn to the arts - books, music, film, theater and museums - for solace. But when an artist is severely ill or dies I find that I have to create. I have been in my studio for the past few weeks creating monotypes. A monotype is a singular impression made from an image which has been drawn or painted on to a printing plate. My monotype process is technically straightforward but pushes my artistic subconscious in both image and mark. When I painted "A Gion Rain" onto a copper plate, thoughts of Sylvia fell like rain across my mind. Sylvia Moss died in Zurich, Switzerland on May 9, 2011. Sylvia had long suffered from the challenges of multiple sclerosis. Sylvia Moss grew up in Piedmont, California and then moved east to a beckoning New York City to pursue...

Spreadsheets can save him by Kent Chadwick Where’s the pattern? What ratio will show he’s getting better, that he’ll breathe again on his own? The ventilator pushes puffs of warm air through our son’s trachea every time his brain asks for oxygen, into his second set of lungs, damaged too soon by pneumonia, scarred and stiffened. The machine ka-shooshing eighteen or more times a minute to make Luke breathe when he needs, and it graphs his breath, reads his volumes, scoring the resistance—centimeters of water pressure—ready to alarm and warn of dangers, displaying seven variables in LED orange with each breath, repeatedly—and I stare. My hope has fallen to this new machine, that maybe, maybe its gentler aid can coax Luke’s lungs into recovery. What numbers, what ratios show progress?, something the doctors no longer expect. Is it peak pressures to tidal volumes? 89 to 760 Or his diaphragm’s nerve activity to the ventilator’s support level? 62, 70 to 1.5 What is significant? What is just ...

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need For this bright morning dawning for you. History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage, Need not be lived again. Lift up your eyes upon The day breaking for you. Give birth again To the dream. -Maya Angelou Twenty years ago on December 1, 1989 the first Day Without Art was held to spark dialogue and create a day of action concerning the AIDS crisis. At least 800 museums and galleries across the United States closed their doors, shrouded artworks or removed them from view as symbols of mourning and loss. The goal was to show that AIDS can touch everyone. And it worked. Today on December 1, 2009 museums are again engaged in remembrance for those lost to AIDS and are actively marking the gains that have been made so far. In 1997 the day became known as A Day With(out) Art to reflect the force art can bring to the cause. Today, A Day With(out) Art has grown into a international collaborative project in wh...

Sea Breeze, Bombay by Adil Jussawalla Partition's people stitched Shrouds from a flag, gentlemen scissored Sind. An opened people, fraying across the cut country reknotted themselves on this island. Surrogate city of banks, Brokering and bays, refugees' harbour and port, Gatherer of ends whose brick beginnings work Loose like a skin, spotting the coast, Restore us to fire. New refugees, Wearing blood-red wool in the worst heat, come from Tibet, scanning the sea from the north, Dazed, holes in their cracked feet. Restore us to fire. Still, Communities tear and re-form; and still, a breeze, Cooling our garrulous evenings, investigates nothing, Ruffles no tempers, uncovers no root, And settles no one adrift of the mainland's histories. (From the Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry ) When tragedy strikes, art has the power to connect. While searching my files for artistic connections to the events in Mumbai, I found the thoughts and writing...