Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man

January 31, 2013

Photos by Grier Horner/All Rights Reserved

In my last post I showed a shot of Nicole Rizzo as Nefertiti in profile. Today I give you Nicole as Mona Liza sitting on a pedestal. She could have posed for da Vinci's famous painting.

Mona Lisa by da Vinci

Here are a few more shots I took of Nicole on a pedestal. In some she looks like the dancer that she is. In the silhouette her sense of drama - she studied at the Theatre in the Square - comes through. Showing a little leg comes from another of her roles - burlesque. She is the director of Gypsy Layne, a burlesque troupe.

January 28, 2013

Photos by Grier Horner/All Rights Reserved

Nicole Rizzo has a profile that rivals Queen Nefertiti's. This is one of 600 shots I took of her the other day.

Why 600 shots in two hours? I've had no training in photography, so to try to compensate, I shoot furiously, figuring if you keep firing away you're bound to hit something.

With her background in drama, dance and yoga, Nicole is a wonderful and inventive model. It was fun working with her and I'll be showing more of the photos in future posts.

Photo from The Guardian

I was struck by Nicole's charisma when I saw her perform at a recent First Fridays Artswalk and asked if she would do some modeling. Lucky for me she agreed. Nicole has a background in theater and dance and is the director of the Gypsy Layne burlesque troupe that performs around the area.

Inspired by working with Shakespeare and Co. as a teenager, she studied at the Circle in the Square Theatre Conservatory in New York City, concentrating in dance and theater.

You can find out more about Gypsy Layne and review Nicole's theater and film credits at www.gypsylayne.com or watch a video (which is not appropriate for all ages) of the company performing.

January 26, 2013

Photo by Grier Horner/All Rights Reserve

Early evening Wednesday and the moon, almost full, had already climbed high into sky. It is seen here among the branches of the giant silver maple in the yard next door.

On that day the moon rose early in the afternoon and was nearly full. Today it will rise at 4:51 PM and become as full as it can get at 11:58 PM.

The full moon in January is called the Wolf Moon.  Popularly the name is thought to have come from American Indians who heard hungry wolf packs howling outside their villages. But Wikipedia says the name probably came from Scotland.

Moments after I took the shot of the moon, I circled to the back of the house and photographer the sunset reflected in the glass or our doors and windows.

January 23, 2013

'Photo of My Studio' by Grier Horner/All Rights Reserved

George and I go to lunch once a month in Amherst. Yesterday was the day. We are fans of Judie's, a bright, friendly place with good lunch specials at good prices and that's where we went.

When I went in I told the hostess, "I'm meeting another old man for lunch," I told the hostess. "Have you got anyone here that meets that description."

"I think I do," she said, and lead me to a table. There was George a beer in front of him, a baseball cap on his head. (I'm 77 and George is 10 years older.)

He told me he had already ordered a beer for me. I told him I'd be back in a minute. I had to go to the John, something guys our age do more often than they used to. I came back and we ordered the Tuesday special - we always get the special no matter what day it is. 

"It's wonderful what the cold weather does for parking," I told George. Usually I have to go underground to park but on this frigid day there were plenty of empty spaces at ground level. I told him how I had fumbled around with the "pay-here" device before figuring out that I had to punch the "OK" to get it to accept my credit card.

It's a serious parking lot. We saw the police putting an orange boot on a car. It was the second time we had seen that in a couple years. The boot is a real incentive to pay.

We talked about old times at the North Adams Transcript in the 1960s and some of the reporters we knew there - a pretty colorful bunch. And whenever we talk about the Transcript, Phil Lee's name comes up. George didn't like Phil and the feeling was mutual. George's still impressed, thought, that Phil, who he maintains preferred trivia to real news, gave a huge Page One play to his (George's) story and photos about the propane truck that lost its brakes and wrecked havoc on a nearby town.

He also gave Phil credit for running my lead about a kid and his girlfriend plunging off the Hairpin Turn and surviving - amazingly. It was another case of a vehicle losing its brakes at the worst time. The lead contained the kids words "hang on honey, we're going to hit it hard."

After lunch , we always go over to a local coffeehouse frequented by college kids on their laptops. I shouldn't say always because we used to go to Starbucks, which stuck in George's throat because he's no fan of corporate America.

Usually we get coffee - what else? Normally we admire the girls - yesterday was a rare exception. We didn't see any that met our specs for admiration. Usually we talk about life and how the world is going to hell. That's George's take on things. Me, I am a counterbalance. I think the world is no worse than it has been and probably better.

Yesterday was an exception. I took a lot of time telling George about Graham Greene's novel The End of the Affair. Like a 10-year-old I gave him a lot of the story instead of a summary. That was because I had to build up to the heroine kissing a soapbox atheist whose otherwise handsome face was terribly marred by a birthmark on one cheek.

The kiss was bestowed shortly before her death. I thought her death would end the story of her affair with this stiff English writer who was insanely jealous of the woman - who he thought was having affairs with other men at the same time she was seeing him. The jealousy got so bad, he hired a detective. He reported that the woman, who was married and previously had loved who she wanted without qualm, was going to the home of the atheist every week. Of course it turned out she wasn't going to bed with him but she was going because she liked to talk religion with him. The writer didn't learn that until after her death.

Also after her death the English stiff runs into the atheist and finds that the hideous markings on his cheek have disappeared.

It took me two readings - or listenings: I 'read' on my iPod - before I realized that it was the woman's kiss that had accomplished the cure.

George said it was nothing like the movie. I knew George would be put off by the miraculous cure. Normally I would have been, too. But the subtle way Greene pulled it off won me over - not to miracles but to his writing about one.

There's another old man thing I should tell you about. When we pay for the coffee, it takes me longer than it should to dig my wallet out and remove the right number of bills. For just that reason, George carries his money in a change purse. But he's no faster than I am.

You've been behind old people at the check-out counter. You wish they would speed it up. It used to annoy me, too. I'm more charitable about it now for obvious reasons.

George and I havve a great time on our outings. It's sort of cool to be an old man.

P.S. The picture, which has nothing to do with the post, is in my newly cleaned up studio. After five months not picking up a brush, I have started painting again. All of these were in process before I developed painter's block. But I have redone the one in the middle and the one on the right. I will be tackling the one of the left at some point.

January 19, 2013

Photo by Grier Horner/All Rights Reserved

This computer-manipulated version of a photo in my family album is the latest in the series on my parents called Remembrances of Things Past. Blown up much larger than it appears here, her face almost becomes a jigsaw puzzle.

And in it's large version it is quite abstract up close but the face springs into focus as you step back, almost like a Chuck Close portrait. Even in this small version I think you can get the idea if you take five or six steps back from your computer screen.

The closeup comes from the photo below:

It's another of the photos of her as a young woman on a sailboat during a cruise from Florida to Cuba.

It's a companion piece to the shot below that I blew up for my show at Berkshire Community College's downtown gallery last summer.

P.S.  I  haven't posted in a week because of technical difficulties with my Contribute softwear, the program I use to produce the column. It hadn't occurred to me until last night that the Contribute package on my laptop might not be effected. You can see how good I am at strategic thinking.

January 12, 2013

Photos of the woods by Grier Horner/All Rights Reserved

Let's go up to the Beautiful Field about 15 minutes into the woods from my house. What you're looking at is the view to the west. Invisible about a half mile downhill from that treeline is Route 7 and Cavalerro Plastics, the former Pontoosuc Elementary School which our kids went to.

But up in the field you would think you were miles from Pittsfield, miles from Route 7. It is quiet and peaceful - except when the snowmobiles come through with their high-pitched whine - and that's not too often. It's the place I have long dreamed of building a low-lying house.

It would not be a glass house. It's too exposed to the elements for that. But two or three sides would have a set of wide sliding doors. Over the doors there would be a glass panel. These glass areas would be protected from high winds by sliding barn doors. I don't believe in walls of glass, because a house also needs to provide sanctuary and lots of wallspace for paintings and bookshelves. And at night a glass wall is black and inhospitable.

You can see what I mean in this photo of Chuck Close's studio on Long Island . That's him in the doorway. This photo is by Tony Cenicola of The New York Times.

A fireplace that burns real logs, is a necessity. So are sofas scattered around so there are lots of comfortable places to sit. A blanket folded over the arm of each sofa for extra warmth when we watch TV at night or take an afternoon nap. Oriental rugs. Cool lighting. The place will be amazing. I'll need a studio so there will be a smaller building that includes garages on the South side.

Below you have the view to the North. And below that you're looking East. I didn't think of taking a shot facing South. That's the only view with other houses in it - two - and they aren't close. The field, I guess, is about 15 acres of gentle hillside. I forgot to mention that you can see, if you look closely at the western treeline, a little of the pool house at the Walden Village condos.

What a place to sit out a snowstorm, a thunder storm or revel in a day of sunshine. One disadvantage would be the driveway. It would be long and the wind would keep filling it with snow.

The field is hayed a couple times in summer and we'd plant sections of wildflowers to grow in with the hay, as some do now naturally.

It's going to be an amazing place to live. Or I should say it would be.

January 10, 2012

Photos by Grier Horner/All Rights Reserved

During my visits to MASS MoCA on Saturday and Monday, I took a break from the Phoenix Project (see my January 8th post) to take a fresh look at some of the other art. Here are four of my favorite pieces from Invisible Cities and Oh, Canada. The shot above is a detail from Diana Al-Hadid's sculpture Nolli's Orders. Beyond it is Sopheap Pich's bamboo and rattan Compound.

The incandescent No Way Out, above, is by Cuban artist Carlos Garaico.

Looking across the entry walk from a gallery, you see Gisele Amantea's glowing Democracy on the corridor wall encasing the Hunter Theater.

This is a detail of the huge purple and silver piece Spotted by Garry Neill Kennedy of Nova Scotia. It is not only beautiful but a reminder of the fact our country used torture during the Iraq War. The planes are ones in which the CIA flew terror suspects to other countries for brutal interrogations. The program was called extraordinary rendition. And the things that were done to the prisoners were sordid and extraordinary.

January 8, 2012

Photos by Grier Horner/All Rights Reserved

Xu Bing's big birds at MASS MoCA are magnificent, a startling conversion of construction material and debris into two giant phoenixes which cost a fortune to fabricate and were almost grounded before ever taking flight. This show was curated by MoCA's director, Joseph C. Thompson.

The Phoenix Project was commissioned by a developer who was about to build the World Financial Tower in Beijing. It was to go in the glass atrium of the structure designed by Cesar Pelli. One and a half years after construction of the 100-foot birds began, the developer dropped the Phoenix Project, objecting to the sculptures' appearance and apparently feeling the impact of the global economic slowdown.

I'm going to tell the Phoenix story largely through excerpts from pages of a book displayed on a long shelf in one corner of the North Adams museum's football-sized main gallery. I'll start with Page 30.

The head of each phoenix was the "fierce business end" of a hydraulic breaker attached to the arm of an excavator, which became the spine for the long necks. In the shots of the heads you can see the use of hard hats, fans, and other construction leftovers.

The birds, by then covered in a thick layer of dust, were washed down to make them presentable to patrons who might take the project over. Art on this scale costs lots of money to make, although I couldn't find out how much. Artists at this level are involved not only in aesthetics but labor and capital.

A

Photo by Tom Chen

Xu Bing, the son of college professors, was forced into communal farm work under Mao's Cultural Revolution, which is interesting in itself, but also interesting because a project like Phoenix is communal. It takes many hands to build a 10-ton bird.

When the Cultural Revolution ended, he studied art and started making a name for himself both in China and America. Following the violent put down of the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989, Xu Bing moved to the United States for 18 years. He gained recognition here as a member of the Chinese new wave and was awarded a McArthur genius grant.

In 2007 he returned to China to become vice president of the college he attended. He now maintains studios in New York and Beijing.

The Phoenix Project, which had two brief showings in China before coming to MoCA, will be up through October 31 and then move to the Cathedral of St. John the Devine in Manhattan. One of the biggest churches in the world, it is still under construction more than 100 years after work began.

Suspending these birds from the museum's rafters looks like a major construction project of its own, resplendent with dozens of chain hoists that enhance the looks of the Phoenix Project.

Some final - maybe - thoughts. These birds are fierce and fiercely beautiful. They look like they could be the front-runners of armagedon. But there is something whimsical and endearing about them, especially their heads, that makes me think they aren't agents of destruction. Although it would throw a terrible scare in me if I saw one land in my back yard.

January 6, 2013

Photos by Grier Horner/All Rights Reservced

First Fridays Artswalk, started last May by Leo Mazzeo and Mary McGinnis, continues to draw people downtown despite the winter weather.

A new wrinkle last Friday was that Mary led a free guided tour of Artswalk locations. It started at her Gallery 25 on Union Street, aka Mary's Carrot Cake. In the shot above, the crew with her joined those already at Berkshire Community College's downtown gallery, packing the space.

Below is a sampling of art Babbie and I saw Friday night.

Above and below are bold abstract paintings by Dan Brody. I find the one at the top haunting. I got Dan to pose with one of his works in his studio. It's located in NUarts on the corner of North and Union streets, a bustling collection of studios. That second-floor location is a compelling stop on the monthly event in which art is shown in stores, studios and other downtown locations.

These colorful paintings by Tom Fahey are at the BCC gallery at the Intermodal Transit Center on Columbus Avenue. The popup clown-in-the-box above is packed with emotional and compositional complexity. The one below is called Life at the Bottom of the Sea.

Tom, at the left, is an outgoing guy who I met at my show in the same gallery this summer. He had a steady flow of visitors throughout the evening. 

Here is Scott Harrington in his NUarts studio, which overflows with his work. Scott is one of the city's best selling artists. He sold 43 paintings in 2012.

NUarts, formerly known as Art On No., houses the studios of 17 local artists, musicians, and performers, making it the city's largest group of artists under one roof.

Marguerite Bride is another popular Pittsfield artist with a studio in NUarts. My hands and shoulder are reflected in her lovely moonlit watercolor above. Her iconic Park Square scene below is at Gallery 25, where her solo show was ending. The streak of red in the upper right is a reflection.

The mist-shrouded scene above is by Kathy Gideon who also paints at NUarts, as does Joan Palano Ciolfi, the creator of the portraits of dresses below.

Here we have whales and other objects made by Sam Ponder, who creates his folk art  pieces in a narrow studio in the same building. His whales were shown at the Herman Melville House in Pittsfield in 2012 and will be there again this year. Ponder carves the whales out of gourds from his native Arkansas.

In the shot below you can see a couple of his whales and some of the gourds that will eventually join his pod, a term used to describe a school of whales.

This work by Sally Tiska Rice shows the photo of a Harley Davidson she was commissioned to paint, the painting in progress and, in the top panel, the finished painting of the customized bike. She is another of the Nu Arts artists. And I've just scratched the surface of who is making their art in that building.

This is the work of designer Paul H. Hergenrother being shown at the Marketplace Cafe near the Beacon Theaters. His doorway collection includes groups from Berkshire towns, other communities and colleges.

Babbie and I saw them when we finished off the evening with sandwiches at the Marketplace. We picked this one to show you because I went to Brown and Babbie graduated from its former coordinate college, Pembroke, as well as Rhode Island Hospital's nursing school.

January 4, 2013

Photos by Grier Horner/All Rights Reserved

I really can't stay - Babbie it's cold outside.

I've got to go away - But Babbie it's cold outside...

The neighbors might think - Babbie it's bad out there...

Baby, it's cold outside.*

Babbie didn't stay. She got out of bed and said, "Look at the window. You've got to take a picture so we can send it to R. I don't think he knows about Jack Frost."

So I took these shots when I got up and we're going to email them to that child of the South.

Babbie said it was zero when she got up at 7. (I didn't roll out of bed until an hour and a half later. Riley told me it was "negative 3" at her house.

That's the coldest it's been this season. Nothing like the -20 readings that sent shivers down our spines in some winters past. Mostly long past. It just doesn't seem to get as cold in the Berkshires as it used to.

*Baby, It's Cold Outside was written by Frank Loesser in 1944.

January 2, 2013

The winner of  the name-this-photo contest was Darol Bates.  The photos are of Lysol toilet bowl cleaner in the toilet in my bathroom when I cleaned it Monday. Darol's father David guessed it was the Statue of Liberty's crown and Rosemary Wessel guessed a wild sunburst.

Photos by Grier Horner/ All Rights Reserved

So here we are in the second day of the year 13 of the 21st Century and I am once again advancing the case for intellectual art. Happy New Year. Belatedly.

My first posted photos of the new year signal something deep and Duchampian. Maybe something deranged, something sinister. Maybe the rise of a Blue Period like Picasso or Yves Klein.

These are photographs, not paintings. Do you know what they are of?

Maybe the one below will be the give away.

So submit your identification of the subject of these shots by clicking on this link for my email address. I'll post your name and answer - assuming there are any responses and assuming it isn't X-rated like Kathy Griffin's hilariously misguided stunt with Anderson Cooper on New Years Eve.