Speed of Life

Jessey Dorr's "Off to the Oyster Beds," a painting found at a garage sale, led the buyer, Davis Dutton, on a several-year search for the painter. Photo courtesy of the Davis Dutton Collection Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle has a wonderful piece by the Los Angeles bookseller* and author Davis Dutton on the search for the artist behind a haunting painting found gathering dust in a garage. This account is so well written that it calls out to become a book. It has much to say about art and life in California in the early part of the 20th Century: The Burnt Paintings Artist Jessey Dorr: Born into a wealthy Nob Hill family, she was a strong-willed woman who burned her paintings after a bad review. Photo by Imogen Cunningham As an artist I always wonder where my works will end up in fifty or a hundred years. Like most painters I know,(See Martin Bromirski at Anaba ), I have found a few treasures stacked against the walls in small shops. I once found an original Cezanne etc...

On Monday November 7th at Book Passage in Corte Madera at 7 pm, Phil Cousineau and Huston Smith will talk about their new book "A Seat at the Table: Huston Smith in Conversation with Native Americans on Religious Freedom ". The book is cast as a series of dialogues in which the most widely read and beloved historian of religions in the world, Huston Smith, engages in conversations with American Indian leaders about their five hundred year long fight for religious freedom. These intimate, impassioned dialogues yield profound insights into one of the most striking cases of tragic irony in history: the country that prides itself on religious freedom has resolutely denied those same rights to its own indigenous people. Phil Cousineau and Huston Smith With remarkable erudition and curiosity, Smith and Cousineau, respectfully engage ten American Indian leaders: Vine Deloria, Jr. (Lakota), Winona LaDuke (Anishinaabe), Walter Echo-Hawk (Pawnee), Frank Dayish, Jr. (Navajo), Charlot...

Stewart Lupton and Betsy Wright "I'm coming into my own," Stewart Lupton says. "Every painter or poet has this period - the good ones always reinvent themselves. There's always this little epoch where you step into your own skin and leave what T.S. Eliot called 'the anxiety of influence' behind." Gregory Korn, a talented writer and artist, passed on word of The Childballads recently, and the lone song available on the band's website haunts me: Childballads: "Cheekbones (White Chocolate Tea)" . This song was in my dreams last night and I woke up singing it this morning. Of course the name, Stewart Lupton, sounds familiar. Recently in the New York Post , Maureen Callahan wrote: "IT'S rare that someone gets another shot at becoming the next big thing - especially when people aren't quite sure whether you're still alive. In the late 1990s, Stewart Lupton was poised to be the biggest rock star to emerge from the burgeonin...

Arcade Fire on Pancake Mountain Filmmaker Scott Stuckey created Pancake Mountain , the Washington, D.C., cable-access show on which alt-rockers like Ted Leo, Shonen Knife, Weird War, Fiery Furnaces and Arcade Fire play before an energetic and very young audience. "Bands started hearing about it and called us," Scott Stuckey says. "So many parents write us," says Stuckey, "and they're like, 'Wow, this is something I really like watching with my kids.'" Rufus and Henry Rollins In addition to live performances by bands, Pancake Mountain features interviews between the show's puppet host Rufus Leaking and musicians — including Henry Rollins and George Clinton. The program is currently available on cable in DC and New York, but you can buy the episodes on DVD from the Pancake Mountain website. While created with children in mind, the show appeals to kids of all ages. My favorite clips include Shonen Knife performing "Twist Barbie" and...

Army Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, director of the force's combined press center, described the number as an "artificial mark on the wall." "I ask that when you report on the events, take a moment to think about the effects on the families and those serving in Iraq," Boylan said in an e-mail. "The 2,000 service members killed in Iraq supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom is not a milestone. It is an artificial mark on the wall"

I voraciously gather images to use for reference in my artwork. I especially like to collect photographs of artworks that move me in some way. I spend hours in the studio looking at these images of paintings and sculptures and then jotting down my thoughts and ideas. A year ago, on my birthday, I was traveling in Maine and shot a few photos along the way. Modern Kicks' entry on the Neil Welliver exhibition, currently at the Portland Museum, brought back memories of that journey. On that gray day in Portland, two works in the collection stood out. Winslow Homer (1836-1910) Sharpshooter, 1863 oil on canvas 12 1/4 x 16 1/2" Portland Museum of Art, Maine USMC Sniper Team, 2004 Photo by: Gunnery Sgt. Keith A. Milks Winslow Homer's "Sharpshooter" is as relevant as the front page of today's New York Times.* Alexander Eliot in "Three Hundred Years of American Painting" describes how Winslow Homer's "huntsman eyes saw the world his contempo...

Rosa Parks died today, October 24, 2005 at 92. On December 1, 1955, Mrs. Rosa Parks set the modern civil rights movement in motion when she refused to give up her seat on the the Cleveland Avenue bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white passenger. When the front of the bus filled up, the driver ordered Rosa Parks, a seamstress for the Montgomery Fair department store, to give up her seat for a white rider. She refused and was arrested. Rosa Parks's arrest for breaking Montgomery's segregation laws started a boycott of the city bus line that lasted over a year. This eventually led to the 1956 Supreme Court decision which ruled that segregation on public buses is illegal. Rosa Parks: "The famous U.P.I. photo (actually taken more than a year later, on Dec. 21, 1956, the day Montgomery's public transportation system was legally integrated) is a study of calm strength. She is looking out the bus window, her hands resting in the folds of her checked dress, while a white man si...

de Young Museum in fog A party was held at the new de Young Museum in San Francisco on October 20th for the local art world. The event was sponsored by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which encompasses both the de Young and the Legion of Honor, and the San Francisco Art Dealers Association. We were asked to arrive in festive attire. A heavy San Francisco fog shrouded the new building which seemed to appear briefly then vanish into the mist. The new structure looked less like a beached aircraft carrier and more like the Enterprise cloaking and uncloaking in Golden Gate Park during one of the Star Trek films. The new de Young is both spacious and elegant which gives the art room to breathe. The architects, the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron and Fong & Chan Architects from San Francisco, have allowed the function of the building to determine its internal look and structure. "We wanted to keep the art itself in the foreground," Herzog says. Looking down on Andy Go...

Currently at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is a Huang Yong Ping retrospective entitled "House of Oracles". Huang Yong Ping "11 June 2002--The Nightmare of George V" "The title identifies the hunter as King George V of England. Huang explains that in 1911 the king, while hunting in Nepal, killed four tigers in three days, a remarkable feat. One of the tigers attacked the king, and he donated this specimen to a museum in Bristol, where Huang found it. In Paris the artist located preserved animals from other treks. He attached to a wicker howdah on the elephant’s back a tiger in the documented position of attack, but he replaced the royal howdah–an emblem of empire–with the sort used to protect well-heeled tourists. The tableau looks back to the approaching end of the colonial period." - Artforum Crate Logo for Huang Yong Ping Exhibition at the Walker Art Center Designed by Phil Docken The Walker's visual arts blog has a wonderful piece on the tr...

This Sunday on the Cal Berkeley campus, the writers of the Simpsons will come clean as closet math geeks. "We couldn't handle the pressures of academia", they might say, "but at least we kept our day jobs in animation." MSRI’s Archimedes Society invites you to this FREE public event Mathematical Writers from The Simpsons and Futurama Sunday, October 16, 2005 • 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Valley Life Sciences Building's Chan Shun Auditorium (Rm. 2050) at UC Berkeley Writers David X. Cohen, Ken Keeler, and Jeff Westbrook have kept their math habit alive by sneaking in hundreds of mathematical and scientific references into The Simpsons and Futurama. Join in as the writers discuss their mathematical backgrounds, favorite theorems from Homer and Bart, along with thoughts on the representation of mathematics in Hollywood. In honor of this event , and in anticipation of the upcoming Simpson's Halloween special, we join The Simpson's episode "Treehouse O...

(Jennifer S. Altman / LAT) "I try to find beauty in the middle of the horror, and vice versa," she says. "Sometimes, really horrible things — you can turn into a weapon of beauty." -Shirin Neshat in an interview with Tyler Green Tyler Green's article on the Iranian- American artist Shirin Neshat in the Los Angeles Times is well written and provacative. A must read: Shirin Neshat: Trapped Between Two Worlds More on Shirin Neshat: Shirin Neshat: Photo Essays- Time Europe

HAROLD LEVENTHAL 1919 - 2005 Harold Leventhal, died on Tuesday at the age of 86. A renowned folk music champion, Leventhal acted as promoter, producer, and manager for Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and countless others. Leventhal presented a 21-year-old Bob Dylan at Town Hall in New York in Dylan's first major concert hall appearance on April 12th, 1963. Harold Leventhal was featured most recently in Martin Scorcese's documentary "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan" in which he provided glimpses into Dylan's early years in New York. Harold Leventhal enlisted in the US Army during World War II and was stationed in India from 1944-46. These years had a profound impact on his life both politically and artistically. In India, Harold's political interests led him to seek out members of the Indian National Congress. He met with Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi. Harold Leventhal and Jawaharlal Nehru,1945 Jorge Arevalo, in the concert notes to the Tribute to...

Shahzia Sikander (detail from dissonance to detour, mixed media on paper) Shahzia Sikander, who has traveled from Pakistan, to Rhode Island, to New York is now in Los Angeles for a short time, as a guest artist at the Otis College of Art and Design. Her recent work is on view until November 12 at Otis' Ben Maltz Gallery. Shahzia Sikander's exhibition "Dissonance to Detour", curated by Meg Linton, features new paintings on paper, a digital video animation, and a large wall painting. There is a rich fluidity to this work, especially in the details which play with the idea of 17th century Mughal miniatures. There is an expectation of narrative and resolution within the paintings. But upon closer examination, the works slip into a vivid flux of color and line. By shifting the viewer's expectations from narrative to paint, Sikander refuses to create the works that might be expected. Instead Shahzia Sikander's exhibition evokes an imaginative response. While viewin...

by Gregg Chadwick Gregg Chadwick A Walk With Ganesh 72"x84" oil on linen 2005 Recently during an extended visit in Thailand, I toured the elephant parks in the mountains north of Chiang Mai. Each day the elephants are brought down to the river and bathed. As I watched these daily baths, I knew that I needed to paint these moments- the elephants, the mahouts, the river, the water, the light, the color, the heat and the air. Ganesh- (in the Hindu pantheon, known as a remover of obstacles) provided an apt title. Hokusai "Blind Men and Elephant" from the Hokusai manga series ("Random Sketches"),  volume VIII, Pages 13,14 1818 After viewing "A Walk With Ganesh", Julie Weiss brought in a treasured book on the Japanese artist Hokusai opened to Hokusai's manga -"Blind Men and Elephant". This image wonderfully illustrates Buddha's parable: Once, a group of blind men, who generally got about by holding ...

Dear Friends and Colleagues: The devastation in New Orleans and the gulf cities is almost incomprehensible. New Orleans is one of the richest cultural centers in the country. It is home to hundreds of musicians, visual artists and theatre professionals. Yet New Orleans also has one of the highest poverty rates in the country. Like many of us, these artists live gig to gig, check to check. And these artists are now dispersed throughout the country. I’ve been in touch with several colleagues from New Orleans and while they may be physically okay, they are trying to figure out the day-to-day reality of their displacement. This day-to-day may well turn into months if not years. The national arts community is mobilizing to help with this crisis. If you would like to help, the recommendation is to give to the Red Cross relief fund and then give a little more to the artists affected by Katrina. The Southern Arts Federation has established an artists’ and arts organization fund, which wil...

Gregg Chadwick Belle Ville 11"x11" oil on linen 2005 NBC's Dateline producers movingly combined scenes of the destruction and the suffering of the victims of Hurricane Katrina with Bruce Springsteen's song "My City of Ruins" at the close of their look last night (Thursday, 9/1) on the hurricane devastation in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. It is a brillant, sad, and stirring song, which Springsteen originally wrote for the economically-gutted hometown of his imagination: Asbury Park, N.J. It changed meanings when he included it in his performances after the World Trade Center's destruction on 9/11/01 and on his album exploring the pain of that day, "The Rising." On screen last night his words and somber chords honored yet another group of sufferers who have seen their city ruined. And its our city too, our belle ville, our most European and artistically fecund city that has been drowned. It is our neighbors who have died or had their live...

Gregg Chadwick "La Palabra en el Tiempo" (The word in time) 48"x48" oil on linen 2005

Have a nice day !