Snippets Samplings Static—the Opening

If you missed the opening, there's still time to sample it. The show doesn't close until April 10. Besides if you don't see it, how will you be able to answer Cora's question, "With the end of modernity and the loss of absolute ideals, faced with a sense of fluctuating values, instability, in a context of incessant questioning, reconsideration, how do artists make work?"

I ask myself that every day....
Ernest Rubenstein Gallery, 197 East Broadway, NYC on the Lower East Side!

Town and Tidings

Lets see...continuing on the news front


According to the New York Times, "Art...both reflects and facilitates change. For more than a century the Educational Alliance on East Broadway has democratically provided instruction, studio space and exhibitions to artists. Important careers have emerged from it. " (Lets hope one of them is mine.) I still take classes at the Alliance which I love. It's a great place and I feel connected to the history of New York here. Mark Rothko was a student here and Louise Nevelson taught here. I found it through my son, who studied cartooning here as part of the Young Artists Program. This painting of mine, Green Vase, was done using the studio window. You can see some of the ever present LES new construction in the distance.

There are two new Drawathons coming up: Saturday Jan 31st "Making Faces" and Saturday Feb 21st "Gershwin Hotel" The one at the Gershwin ought to be double fun. It's the "art" hotel on 27th street, you know, the one with the lighted sculptural protuberances, right down the street from the Museum of Sex...

I'm included in a recent book, Light and Lens by Robert Hirsh. It's in the section discussing Figure Ground relationships — no surprises there. The image is from the group of photographs I call "Parallel Tracks."

Getting in Shape

Art is like boxing. You have to get in shape and you have to stay in shape. One of the ways artists do this is by drawing. Even if you are an abstract artist, you draw. What drawing does is it makes you look and it makes you see.

I'm taking a portrait drawing class currently with James Cooper at the Educational Alliance. Today's image is of a charcoal self-portrait of the teacher with last week's model. Click through to Cooper's post of the portrait drawing class and see if you can guess which three I drew.

Getting back to Work

Finally getting back to serious work. This snap is from late at night after leaving the studio at The Educational Alliance. Painted three days this week—none of it good. But it feels good and I have faith that as fluidity returns things will fall into place.

I can literally see the light at the end of the new studio construction. The basic space is done and painted. With the skylight well now white, it truly shines in the daytime. Shelves and painting storage racks are done. The stainless sink and grease separator should arrive next week (I hope the elevator is fixed by then). As my daughter might say, I am mad hot to begin!