Today I started unpacking the show today. Had to frame the photographs. Because of all the blizzards the frames never got a chance to arrive in New York and went south directly. They look really good. And, of course, I was amused by the blue dog sticker on the tool cart, a famous icon from one of Rodrigue's paintings. George Rodrigue is a quintessential Louisiana Cajun artist.
Today I am at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, Louisiana starting the process of hanging my show. I had to laugh, they are expanding and it's under construction. Those of you familiar with my work know my predilection for construction sites so it's entirely appropriate.
I am staying with some good Cajun friends. I hope to combine working on the show with some fishing, birding and dancing so be prepared...
Hot off the computer, my newest film, Nightcar. A helter skelter urban experience on a rainy night. Nightcar, with music by the remarkable Conrad Cummings, is a tone poem, perhaps even a love poem, to New York City.
It even has a typical New York story to go along with it... One of the nights when I was filming oncoming lights in the pouring rain, standing in a gutter on lower Broadway, a car drove up. The passenger in the car began waving his arms, I flicked my attention away, thinking, "not another one." He kept waving and waving, finally the car pulled away. I turned to Kurt (of Susan and Kurt blog fame) who was standing behind me. He was convulsed with laughter. Whats going on? I said. Didn't you see James Gandolfini? He was waving at you and laughing to beat the band? Well, No I didn't. But you know, in New York famous people trip over you all the time, so contained within Nightcar is the New York story of the night I didn't meet James Gandolfini.
Last weekend I passed a gun shop and the word loaded flew into my mind. Loaded not as in gun but as in memory. Weegee's image (above) immediately flashed up. After I snapped a my own gunsmith photo, I was intrigued by the window display—it seemed to fit in with a more modern (perhaps timely or post modern) image reference. And lastly as I turned away, there was Bruce Willis, complete with graffiti, definitely post modern in its culture of celebrity. Personally, I prefer the window display, so where on the spectrum does that place me? Fully loaded?
I first saw Valerie Hegarty's work in a public project on the High Line in New York City. A painting being "reclaimed" by nature. Her work amusingly turns the conceits of landscape painting on it's head while also seriously investigating the meaning of landscape painting in the context of American history. A local artist, she also had/has a work on view in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum.
Susan Shaw is an internationally exhibited painter and photographer. Private and public collections include the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Israel Museum. Shaw is the recipient of two New York State Artist’s Fellowships and residency fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center and the Women's Studio Workshop.
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