I’m not too easily stirred to acquisitiveness, but since I first heard Sufjan Stevens’ Casimir Pulaski Day on Radio David Byrne, I’ve become increasingly obsessed with this man’s gentle, quirky poetics. After weeks of making do with what I could find on Youtube, I knew I needed to buy some CDs. My local record store had only Michigan and The Avalanche (extras and outtakes from Illinoise.) I bought and am more than pleased with both, but was still a little frustrated that I couldn’t find Illinoise.
Imagine my delight when I found it on sale at Amazon for only 5 bucks. It’s the best 5 bucks I’ve spent in a very long time. 22 tracks, including the haunting “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”, featured in Claire Carre’s Youtube video above. What a deal!
Well, a small section of a work in progress- the bit that can be caught on the scanner bed.
I’m working on this painting for a politically-themed show. Originally sparked by Mark Twain’s brilliant short work The War Prayer, I found myself looking through a box of my grandfather’s World War I stuff for inspiration. Among a bleak report from the division sanitary inspector ( the unwrapped French bread was loved by American soldiers but always getting unloaded on the muddy ground) , a brief history of the operations of the 1st division, and a June 19, 1918 memo on the exorbitant price of French foodstuffs, I found a poem. 52 type-written lines organized in 3 stanzas are written about “The Other Bird,” the guy on the supply side who wishes he was fighting. The last half of the last stanza:
There is another attractive juried exhibit currently showing in Denver at CORE New Art Space. The Dog and Pony Show, juried by Craig Marshall Smith and curated by Claudia Roulier, called for artwork depicting animals in any media. I was happy to have a couple of pieces accepted into the show, including “The One-Horse Town,” shown above. My personal favorites from the show were Skyler McGee’s large, loosely worked, breathtaking canvases just inside the gallery’s front door.
I’m thrilled that jurors Patricia Calhoun and Jason Salzman chose my painting, “Spanish Lesson,” for inclusion in this show at Next Gallery that was conceived to relate to the coming Democratic National Convention. The jurors who chose the work and the artists of Next who hung the show did a great job. You can view images from the show here. One of my favorites from the show is Michael McGrath’s “The Rape of Uncle Sam.”
