The Secret Museum

Happy Skating Squirrel - Where's Moose?

Refreshingly goofy animals-in-Wonderland holiday painting (I like the cross-species diversity: terrapin, rodent, felinocanine) on the windows of Animal Kind Vet Hospital in Park Slope, Brooklyn, seen last week when I took my cats in for checkups. They were good to my ginger tabby Pushkin when he had emergency surgery a couple years ago.

(He's doing fine.)

Village Psychic

This is my 101st post to this weblog.

Last night, on my way to Unsilent Night: appealingly overwrought signage in the Village, rendered transcendental by the Palm camera (the digital Holga):

What answers might I find down these stairs?

artists in iraq

Artists have been central to recording and interpreting the wars of their times. While the results often fail to be strictly factual--Washington's crossing of the Delaware didn't quite come off the way Leutze painted it--such work can still reveal, centuries later, the feelings of the time: fears or aspirations, despair or hope. In Iraq, artists are breaking free of years of totalitarian censorship and stagnation to record and interpret what's happening around them. They're creating Renaissance-style sculptures of the figures from the Abu Ghraib pictures, paintings of tanks burning and bombs dropping, and a flowering of satirical dramas in which star-crossed lovers meet in the shadows of American tanks.

This creative freedom would have been impossible under Saddam Hussein. I guess that's one of those ironies of war.

(via Modern Art Notes)

The Moving Scene at MoMA QNS

So, especially fitting for a secret museum: mysterious boxes of art. Went to MoMA QNS yesterday to see the Lee Bontescou exhibit before it, and MoMA's outpost, closed today. Hopefully will find a moment to write about it--thoughts and ideas filled my mind as I looked at her work, and I felt my heart lift gazing at her hanging sculptures that evoked floating cities, fantastical organic spaceships, organisms, and universes.

Meanwhile, around a couple corners, things got more linear, and I snuck out my Palm camera:

End of the Age of Dinosaurs

Signs of Life in Small, Dark Spaces

Mars: Fascination Present, Anxieties Past

NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers continue to be our avatars on Mars.

WNYC's Radio Lab delves into fantasias of anxiety focused on the Red Planet. Listen to the original 1938 broadcast of the radio drama "The War of the Worlds" by Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre, which caused panics when listeners thought they were listening to news of a real invasion, re-enactments of listener reactions from the 1938 and subsequent scares, and even parts of Jeff Wayne's groovy 1978 WotW rock opera!

The poster illustration above is from the classic 1958 film version of War of the Worlds, produced by science fiction disaster master George Pal in glorious Technicolor.

Science fiction author, digital rights activist and boingboing.net contributor Cory Doctorow just read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy.

Here's an ultimate WotW fan site.

Of course, there's always the 1898 novel that started it all: The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

Breastfeeding Offends Ferragamo

New York City, for all it's self-aware transgressiveness, has a remarkable streak of parochialism. This is probably all about keeping tourists on Fifth Avenue comfy and ready to spend—I'm sure Ferragamo would like to clothe as many breasts as possible. From boingboing:

An artwork (video) by my friend Amy Jenkins, featuring her daughter breastfeeding and falling asleep, [SecretMuseum note: wearing adorable Ferragamo shoes called "Audrey," which is also the name of the artist's daughter] has been called "distasteful" and removed from an exhibition at Salvatore Ferragamo's 5th Avenue store. (Ferragamo originally invited Amy to create the piece for their store's art gallery on the second floor.)...Amy would love to show this piece elsewhere, unfortunately it was made specially for their 42" widescreen monitor (a costly item that she doesn't own!) Her hope is that "The Audrey Samsara" will soon be shown at a more open-minded venue.

Next Bronx loft art event

Mitsu has put out his new call for participation for his next loft art event in May. I recently wrote about showing my work at the February event. Look for the entry titled "Art reportback."

Art making and world events

How do we make art in the face of overwhelming world events? Since 9/11, at least three ideas for photo-based installations have come and gone while I sat and did nothing to realize them. Thinking too long brought on doubt.

In a recent issue of Orion Magazine, composer John Luther Adams wrote,

What is the value of art in a world on the verge of melting? An Orkney Island fiddler once observed: "Art must be of use." By counterpoint, John Cage said: "Only what one person understands helps all of us." Can they both be right?

Three decades ago I came to Alaska to help save the wilderness, and I was an environmental activist for years. When I left that work, I did so with the feeling that someone else could carry on my part in it, but that no one else could make my music. In recent years I'm wondering again about the meaning of my life's work...[H]ow can I make art that doesn't speak directly to world events?

I am able to decode how to respond to world events as an activist. Finding myself in direct, desperate opposition to the Bush administration, I write my articles, I register voters.

But as an artist, I am mute on the big issues. I can only observe small things: individual lives and deaths, the map of human nostalgia, loss, sadness, regret and depression. Perhaps a bittersweetness over the mixed blessing of memory.

I made this bowl (and burned the candle) the day after Spalding Gray's body was identified:

Danger for Dangermouse

This week, EMI came down on DJ Dangermouse. Posted on February 25 at Stay Free Magazine, "EMI sent out a cease and desist notice to Stay Free!/Illegal Art and about 150 other websites this week, claiming "willful violation of [copyright] laws." EMI wanted to prevent Grey Tuesday, an online protest [held February 24] of Capitol's attempt to squash Dangermouse's 'Grey Album,' from taking place. "

The New York Times reported,

Around the same time Mr. Burton received his cease-and-desist letter, his album was receiving critical acclaim in Rolling Stone magazine. The album took on a distribution life of its own online, circulated via file-trading sites and on e-Bay, where bootleg CD's were selling for as much as $80 yesterday. Two weeks ago EMI issued cease-and-desist letters to an undisclosed number of record stores and e-Bbay sellers.

How arguable is it that DJ Dangermouse and The Gray Album are on the side of art? He's mixed samples from The Beatles (i.e., "The White Album") and rapper Jay-Z into something new, that none of the other musicians could have anticipated, music very much of its moment technologically, aurally, racially and artistically.

Elements of popular culture pastiched into a new statement-- right now, at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., Douglas Gordon is showing video artwork made from pieces of Hollywood films. No one's lining up to sue him, or the Smithsonian Institution (of which the Hirshhorn is a part).

I respect artists' rights to be paid for their work--I have a vested interest in the protection of these rights. The rights of artists to express themselves are much more in danger, however, thanks to copyright laws that belong to an earlier era, a conservative government agenda that puts the rights of corporations over those of the individual, and of the public good, and the vast wealth of media conglomerates who can fund legal action against creative individuals and those who distribute their work.

Electronic Freedom Foundation is a good place to catch up on this stuff.

Art reportback

Mitsu posts a report of the Loft Event on his blog.

I have to agree that it went well, particularly on Wednesday, when the Bronx Culture Trolley supplied a steady stream of visitors. He notes that many of the filmmakers were there to talk about their work. I think I was the only "visual artist" there to talk about her work. Without the structure of the video presentations--introduce video, show video, ask artist questions--I was left to simply approach folks looking at my collages, introduce myself, and try to engage.

The horrible dynamic: "What do you think of my work?" What artist likes to ask this question, and which viewer really wants to answer it?

I have wonderful memories of days in museums with my Aunt Eleanor. From childhood on, she engaged me in this manner. As a child, coming up with an impression, an opinion of the art work, seemed like climbing a mountain. What was I going to say about Kandinsky? Why was she asking? Why all this pressure!?

So, I feel for the people who found themselves face to face with this unknown artist from Brooklyn a few weeks ago, trying to come up with something coherent to say about her collages (no Kandinsky, she).

But this is the viewer's part of the deal. The art is communication. I want to know if, and how, the signal has come in. Has the information transfer really happened if you just look at an art work, make a low-voiced, noncommittal expression of reception ("five by five!"), and go looking for the cheese plate? (By the way, the cheese was good, and so were the little slices of sausage; thanks for bringing them, Bronx Council on the Arts.)

One of my last museum outings with Eleanor was to the 1999 "Sensation" show of young British Artists at the Brooklyn Museum. I pushed her along in a wheelchair, checking in frequently so that she was not stuck staring at something longer than she wanted to. This forced me to pause and consider the work more thoroughly, and overall it gave us a lot of time to talk over what we were seeing. How wonderful to look at and talk about art with her, trying on interpretations, smiling together at the amusing works and debating the "controversial" ones. (Eleanor, a psychiatrist, took a medical professional's interest in Damian Hirst's slices of cow, and decided they'd be better seen in a natural history museum.)

How much more empty I'd feel since she died, not having our lifetime's dialogue to remember. She trained me to think, and express ideas, about art.

Remarkably resistant to abrasion

This morning, I am sanding down some panels that I collaged late last year. The collages are fairly simple: three panels (purchased from Simon Liu, Inc. Fine Painting Supports) each with a single Polaroid image glued onto a ground of acrylic paint. Each of the three Polaroids is a portrait I made, I think in late 2001, of a man I was seeing. The paint and Polaroid are covered over with several layers of translucent Golden Extra Heavy Gel (Matte), for an encaustic effect.

I hang on to stuff. Sometimes it ends up encased in translucent acrylic media.

I was not careful in applying the gel. It foamed, trapping little air bubbles inside. You can see the bubbles against the paint and Polaroid below. This isn't the effect I wanted. The panels cost me just enough that they're worth reusing.

I emailed Golden late last year, asking how I might remove this stuff once it's dried. Sanding is pretty much the only option.

For a delicate material, Golden Extra Heavy Gel (Matte) is remarkably resiliant when sanded with 60-grade coarse sandpaper. I work away at the surface for several minutes. It doesn't want to smooth down. If I press too hard, it starts to heat up and get stringy. I have to stop for a while and let it cool.

The best I'm going get, I think, will be to clean up the panels around the edges, and get that gel roughed up and ready for a couple new coats of gesso. When that's dried down, I'll paint the panels again.

My current palette includes titanium white cut with a bit of umber; a bright sand color heavily reliant upon titan buff; and, a milky blue that reminds me of photographs of Antarctic glaciers.

I'm all out of Polaroids of exes.

Oscar Fantasy

I am giddily obsessed with the Oscar race this year. Will a fantasy film--The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, natch--actually win Best Director or Best Picture?

Most of the sf/fantasy folks I know--editors, a copy reader, a writer or two, some very dedicated readers of the stuff--could care less about this, and I don't count any truly obsessed LoTR trilogy fans in my circle of friends. Why does it fascinate me?

Maybe it's the standard underdog pov of the sf/fantasy fan. Vindication, at last!

Maybe it will just be fun to have a film involving wizards, magic, halflings, ents, and elves win an Oscar, and to watch hobbitty New Zealander Peter Jackson triumph amidst all the botox'd, siliconed, glazed-to-perfection Hollywood royalty.

Maybe I just need something fun to think about.

I'll be showing photographic collages...

...in the Bronx, Wednesday February 4 and Saturday February 7, at Mitsu-Sue-Amy's latest Loftevent. Click here for full info, including address. The salon will be a stop on the February 4 Bronx Arts Trolley, sponsored by the Bronx Council on the Arts. They're calling it "Conversions, Changes, Transformations."

Like a lot of people who've been online for a while, I have several different email addresses. The emily who gets her email at mindspring: is she the same as the one at the WELL? And what about that Secret Museum lady?

And, there are even more than those, super-seekrit logins to servers, or an emily at majorwebportal_limpingalongpostbust.com that I used when I went to New Zealand. The account my friend gave me on the best domain name ever, neurotic.com, which she had the smarts to register early.

A half-dozen sorcerer's apprentice-emilys, all sort of different and sort of the same. I think about consolidating them all, but it is sort of fun to watch them running around, buckets slopping over with SPAM.

All of which is to say that I have put my resume and arts & publications vita online at last, but over at my mindspring account, since I've been using it on biz cards for about five years.

Adobe's censorship upgrade

Tiffany writes that Adobe has installed a funny little "anti-counterfeiting" feature into Adobe CS, at the behest of the U.S. Government: Scan that snazzy redesigned $20 bill, and CS will present the following public service message: "this image has been censored."

What's more, Adobe sorta kinda left news of this enhancement of their promotions and release notes. Users broke it in Adobe's own online forums.

Spalding Gray

Spalding Gray has been missing for over a week. Press reports all note that he "has a history of depression" and at least one past suicide attempt.

He was sighted on the Staten Island Ferry the last evening his family saw him. Apparently he had tried to jump off the ferry before. It's been record-making cold here in NYC for two weeks now, the harbor is icing over. I have only a small sense (glad for that) of what kind of feeling would drive someone (someone with family, a children, friends, an artist's success and an artist's life) over the railing and into the unbelievable dark cold of that water.

I can't express how wretched I feel at the prospect of the world without more of his brilliant, intelligent, acutely-observed, angry story-performances.

John Perry Barlow writes about his friend Spalding Gray.

" Doubt is my bottom line. The only thing I don't doubt is my own doubt. "
-Spalding Gray

Salon de Bronx

Mitsu, Sue and their roommate Amy held their first salon last night in their Bronx loft. A good 20-25 of us traveled through this weekend's blizzard to view short films and artworks, chat and drink green tea.

The program included The Unconscious Art of Graffiti Removal, the short film I saw and loved at the Seattle Art Museum last month. Mits has worked with the filmmaker, Matt McCormick.

Some students from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program turned up at the salon--Mitsu's original email was forwarded to an ITP list--and two showed their work in progress. Fun to see stuff happening right now and people with open horizons.

Planned to process film at my darkroom today, but am vanquished by the weekend's subway service changes. On Friday and Saturday, I spent at least 8 hours in the subway, about 5 of them just trying to get home after 11 p.m. As I live in Brooklyn and the darkroom is in Tribeca, that would mean more time underground today...just can't face it.

Monday I must be in Manhattan for an informational interview (trying to leave behind my role as an unemployment statistic). So will go to darkroom tomorrow, and try not to question my dedication because I'm not there today.

Aladdin...El Ala Din...Alladeen

Last night: Alladeen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Click on that link to get a taste of the multi-media performance. Probably the best thing I've seen at BAM this fall, as part of my Next Wave subscription (which, to be fair, was to five performances and not the whole series).

Really using multimedia instead of just sync'ing up live performance up with a video projection, Alladeen digs into global dislocation, primarily by dramatizing the workings of Indian call centers--huge enterprises where young, intelligent, educated, English-speaking Indians are taught American or British accents and idioms, briefed in cultural referants, and given working-hour alter-egos as Rachels, Matts, Joeys and Phoebes.

They enter and exit the western world via fiber optic phone lines, selling and supporting and offering advice, turning their own lives upside down (deep night in Bangalore is day in North America) to keep a good job and realize some of their own dreams. The companies that employ them realize huge savings in salary costs, but also know that most Americans want to think they're talking to a fellow American when they book their flights non-stop London-NewYorkCity.

Alladeen was very good, blending sound, video animation, live performance, projections--sometimes via small computer cameras on the "workstations" as the actors played call center employees on the job. The audience surveilling the workers just as management would, while seeing small personal anguishes and triumphs play out simultanously on the stage.

Images of Aladdin, from Hollywood and Bollywood, joined Asia and EuroAmerica, much like the fiber optic phone lines and the international flights into and out of expat communities in London or New York City or cell phones, or Asian dub and electronica. Aladdin flying on his magic carpet, magically riding out of obscurity and into importance. The genie granting all his wishes.

I wish I had a job. I wish I lived in California/New York/London. I wish I would make another sale. I wish I knew which city I was in. I wish I wasn't worried all the time. I wish I could fly.

A Day With(out) Art

My cousin, Ron Gertz; I didn't know him well.

Spent three hours browsing in

Spent three hours browsing in Powell's City of Books yesterday. Being able to access the store's whole inventory via the web back in New York City has taken the edge off searching the store when I manage to get to Portland. Actually, I'd have to amend that; it's transformed the experience: now browsing is relaxed, rather than a desperate attempt to find a few vital texts before I have to leave. I wandered from travel writing to nuclear studies, to photography, to science fiction and back up to photography, on a stream of associations and remembered authors.

So I finally got to browse a book I covet: 100 Suns by Michael Light. In a pure expression jealousy, I said to the photo department clerk, "This guy's a genius. He's got a monograph and he didn't take a single photo in the book!"

But really, editing is a big component of good photography, and Light sorted scads of archive photos of U.S. atomic and nuclear bomb tests to arrive at this book, as well as adding text components and writing the notes. It's a beautiful book about weapons of mass destruction.

In Seattle. Yesterday, went to

In Seattle. Yesterday, went to Seattle Art Museum to see the exhibition, "B2V: Baja to Vancouver: The West Coast and Contemporary Art."

Immediately I was taken with the concept of the exhibition. Would a New York museum organize show around the fact that all the artists live on the Atlantic Coast? Probably not.

Standout work (sorry, I didn't take notes on who did what, bad of me) included sculptures reminiscent of Native Northwest tribal masks, but made entirely out of white, red and black Nike sneakers. Beautiful, immense pencil and ink drawings based on what the artist sees when he looks at the stars though a telescope, but with an edgy attitude (they include the urban glow that blocks out the stars in some cases, and little words worked into the drawings that not only celebrate GALAXIES but also note the POISON IVY on the ground beneath his feet). Also, a wonderful art mockumentary, "The Accidental Art of Graffiti Removal" by a Portland artist (Mark McCormick?), narrated by Miranda July and shot in Portland's southeast industrial district. Graffiti removal: the Northwest's advancement of suprematism, a hundred unknown Mark Rothkos daily covering tags in subtle tones of "snow," "halation," and "dove" colored paints?

It made me homesick for Portland. I'll be there tomorrow.

Spent the afternoon at an

Spent the afternoon at an open house for the MFA in Photography and Related Media at School of Visual Arts. There was a nice spread of fruit, sweets, coffee and Dasani bottled water, and a lot student work on the walls. A diversity of subjects, from portraits to landscape, suburban vernacular to abstracted nude studies.

It's a very nice contemporary facility, with lots of computers, digital video editing stations, on-site high-quality printing, and a few vestigial graduate darkrooms.

SVU photography is emphatically digital at the graduate level. The staff we met spoke of their students as the vanguard of a "new image-making paradigm in the 21st century."

They also mention that graduates of the program are in Chelsea galleries, the upcoming Whitney Biennial, and coveted tenure-track professorships. 20th century paradigms of status and recognition are still alive and breathing, apparently.

The idea of getting the MFA has dogged my thoughts for years. It's as if the MFA would confer a legitimacy to my undertakings as an artist that the MA I actually got, in Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, can't hold a candle to. Doing an interdisciplinary environmental studies degree that emphasized photography and landscape history didn't really put me on a well-defined career track.

When I got out of SVU, it was dark. Late fall, night time in New York. Leaves blew dramatically on a cold wind, and the lights on stoops and in store windows glowed out into the clear night. A most dramatic and beautiful time of day and year in my home town.

A few hours later, I walked by a man and his son in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The father was saying, "It's a good thing there are no clouds in the sky," and I said Oh yeah! and looked up, in time to see the onset of tonight's amazing lunar eclipse.

After ten years of indirectly pursuing the life an artist, now I am trying more and more to center on it. This comment from Akira Kurosawa's autobiography inspires me: "To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes."