Pierrot Lunaire

I am finally gaining insight into my newest works in paper (The artist is always the last to know...).

As you know, they had the working title, Tropes but are clearly concurrent with Pierrot Lunaire by the Belgian writer, Albert Giraud.

Fables, tropes, and the absurd. Dreamlike, fractured, nocturnal. Stories that are told without telling coalesce into potent though uncertain relationships.

Within a theater of recurring figures and gestures, a disconcerted balance of undiscovered and ambiguous histories emerge as metatheatre — improvisation and invention, parody and burlesque a world of lunacy, deceit, disorder, and confusion.

In my Pierrot, man and animal trade body parts, morph into mists and smoke and touch each other in ambiguous spaces. With these tropes on the fabulous and fractured, all is possible.

Here's a preview:

Susan Shaw, A host of playful pranks

cotton, linen, trash pulp  2016

Susan Shaw, Linen spun of light

cotton, linen, trash pulp  2016

Susan Shaw, The fountain laughs in it's pool 

cotton, linen, wood, trash pulp  2016

Anticipating a colorful spring

Oblique Directions

A red, blue, green and yellow Herring

Oliver Herring's recent show at Meulensteen was vastly entertaining. Part happening, part exhibition, part people spitting paint. I went a few times to see the evolution, layer on layer, an artist's form of reality TV or is that just what we fondly remember as reality?

Chelsea sightings...

In Chelsea recently, lots of shows about...surfing. Made me sooooooo want to get outta town.

Kurt's view #2

Another recent photo I like. This one shot with his Lego camera, out the studio window.

Kurt's view

Just really liked this photo of his. It has the content he so loves, and the shapes, the frame, and the color are so sophisticated...

Leonardo...Drew

I stopped by Sikkema Jenkins Saturday night for the opening of a solo exhibition of new work by Leonardo Drew. He is a friend via my time at the Vermont Studio Center. He creates dynamic large-scale sculptural installations, which incorporate created, manipulated and found materials such as paper, wood, tree branches and roots, rust and mud. His work stuns with humble materials in the service of sophisticated shapes and arrangement. His opening was all abuzz, and he oh so added to the general excitement wearing a bowler and a pair of peacock feather pants.

Andy's Daily Diary

This broken traffic sign was a marker for some mental cloudiness about a decision I have to make. My method of dealing with my lack of clarity it is to walk, taking photographs and letting my subconscious attack the problem. Last night my conscious brain was thinking Andy Warhol and his daily Tri-X diary. He shot at least a roll of Tri-X a day, not surprising since his work has a photographic base, but interesting in that what he shot was truly a visual diary. There were celebrity pix, interesting objects, ideas for paintings, people having sex and more. You can see the descendants of these ideas in the work of Nan Goldin, or David Hockney. I enjoy the freedom and randomness of the shots I take and the diaristic freedom that attaches no particular individual value to the imaging stream. I enjoy the jokes too, e.g. the limited palette abstract of the crumpled wrapper that states "quarter pounder no cheese." Perhaps a visual diary adds clarity in retrospect. I sincerely hope it does.

Showing your true colors

Personas is a new software experiment on MIT's site. What it does is look for references to your name on the internet and then builds a color profile/persona of who you are based on those references. There were 29 Susan Shaws. I am the first two here. My doppelgangers run the gamut from writer to scientist, from republican to beauty queen, from CEO to social worker. Maybe I should re-write Felix Krull... Maybe we should put on a show...

New paintings...'nuf said.

Shepard Fairey Yet Again

I am becoming almost paranoid about Shepard Fairey. His art is interlaced throughout our culture and my life.

Four recent examples:
1. Andre the Giant seen on an abandoned building in the new art district in Miami.
2. A spoof (of Fairey and Obama) on the cover of The Advocate.
3. A recent holiday gift to me, the Shepard Fairey Acme Obey Card Case for business cards. Let's hope the clients get the message...
4. An actual Shepard Fairey recent Obama critical poster.

Serial Folk

Photographers like to work in series. It creates a depth of investigation. Saul Robbins gave a very good talk about his work recently at B&H Photo. His series Initial Intake is a series of photographs of psychotherapists' chairs seen from their clients' perspective. It was written up in The New York Times and is a very New York idea. His other series are very interesting as well, my personal favorite is "Where's my Happy Ending?," oblique views of domestic life.








Kurt and I like to work in serials as well, for example we've been documenting the Mermaid Parade for several years, and continue to go to Louisiana to document the wildlife. And, of course, right now the Metropolitan Museum's recent showing of Robert Frank's The Americans which can still be seen online.