Secret Language

Abstract painters always seem to talk about painting as language and the individuality of mark making. I have come to enjoy the secret coding of the walls and sidewalks of New York. These particular ones are clustered in Chelsea.

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.

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.

Missing Edward Winkleman

The thing about gallery wandering through Chelsea is that you intersect with lots of people. At the openings you expect it. In fact, I recently introduced myself to Chuck Close, a personal hero because he has that renaissance touch in multiple media, at a Pace opening. But the sweetest moments are fleeting. At the instant I was taking the photograph above, Edward Winkleman walked by. He saw me and turned his head to see what I was seeing and kept striding. By the time I gathered my wits to say hello, he was gone. For the rest of the day I felt an odd kinship, every photo a mapping of that oh so slender event.