Basements have always haunted me.
Archive for the ‘Art’ Category
Day 5
Friday, November 18th, 2011Day two.
Tuesday, November 15th, 2011In a desperate plunge for the camera from my laptop bag after realizing that day two was running low, I zeroed in at anything hoping for some art. In route 46 north Jersey traffic jam, and perhaps moving the camera on purpose, I snapped at least twenty shots in the dark out the front windshield. This is the one I picked for day two.
Last night on a warm couch, instead of Everybody Loves Raymond, I ended up watching NOVA. It was about something that I could never even to begin to understand: Quantum Physics.
The show tried really hard and succeeded, (at least I thought) in explaing something so complicated as “how an atom works” Wow. The graphics they were using gave me inspiration for day twos photo:
My ride home in traffic as explained in the Quantum Physics theory.
Next Episode:-Drinking out of a colored tin cup in Las Vegas.-
beneath the neon glow (Diary of a sex addict)
Sunday, April 24th, 2011Late one rainy Spring night in a hotel, Midtown Manhattan New York City. A dark room with one single candle on a night table next to the bed. The performers cannot be seen, only heard apparently from a pile of pillows and blankets on the bed. A window next to the bed is covered with rain. The reflections of a neon light occasionally flickering on and off splashes red and blue lights on the bed.
Butch: (yawning) are you still cold?
Coco: Mmmmmm mmmmm
Butch: What about you?
Coco: Mmmmmm??
Butch: What about you?
Coco: I’m really tired….mmmmm…..so tired. My clients were so demanding today. My Mac is acting up. The photo shoot was horrible. My package design was outright rejected.
Butch: What about you?
Coco: Oh, I don’t know. Maybe when I was like six or seven my father used to make me take showers with him. He never touched me but even then, I knew it wasn’t right. I mean shit, at that height it was the only thing I saw. I remember eating breakfast in the dark because we never paid the electric bill and my mom had arranged to have an extension cord come through the window from our neighbors house. She would use the cord to make the coffee first and then the toast. It snowed a lot when I was a kid. One time I went outside in my snow suite and it was so cold that I was pounding on the door to get in after only five minuets. I don’t know what they were doing in there but it seemed like, maybe it was an hour or two before it opened again. I got sick and my mother hide the frost bite by not letting me go to school for a week. One day when I was around ten, a man pulled up next to me in his car to ask for directions to the library. I knew where the library was because I went there all the time. I loved to read books about design, color and architecture, even at that age. I used to go to the library to hide from life. The bullies at school were starting to get physical, pushing me into my locker and laughing. I was so scared I can’t even tell you. Well anyway, halfway through my directions to the library, I realized that the man in the car had no pants or underwear on. I was so stupid, I just finished the directions and walked away. It was the third penis I had ever seen. That is if you count brothers. I used to change my younger brothers diaper. I remember running through snow covered hills and making sleds outta cardboard until my friend Bobby got hurt one day. His sled went off the trail, it was too icy and he hit a tree head-on. An ambulance had to come and we only saw Bobby two times after that, looking out of his bedroom window waving at us. They say he became retarded after he hit that big fat oak tree with his head and we never went sledding again. I found myself going to the library more and more to read and sit in a corner sometimes until it closed and they chased me out. I loved learning and discovering what made things work. I stole my mothers Polaroid camera, well, she never used it anyway and took pictures of everything, I mean everything. The film wasn’t expensive because I stole that too, until I got caught by Mr. Jeffries at the five and ten and he took me in the back room and said he was gonna spank me, and that maybe I might have to pull up my dress. When I told him I knew he was just trying to look at my vagina, his eyes almost popped out of his head, he gave me the rest of his Polaroid film which was seven packs…enough for fifty photos and ten dollars if I promised not to steal anymore which I agreed to but I had my fingers crossed behind my back. I loved taking photos with that camera it became an extension of me. I started to experiment and paint and write on the film before it had a chance to dry. Then I started cutting things out of newspapers and pasting them on cardboard that I found behind Mr. Jeffries store. I had a big box of art and supplies that I had to hide from everyone because I know they wouldn’t like it or my mom would certainly throw it away. My bigger pieces I put in the garage behind the broken washing machine. I started to really like making things from nothing. I was addicted to it. The first time a man put his thing inside me I became addicted to that too. I think I was seventeen. In the corner of my garage on an old army blanket right in front of the broken washing machine that hid some of my artwork. I wanted to go to college and keep on learning but it was never mentioned by my parents in my senior year. My dad said that Mr. Jeffries had a “Help Wanted” sign on the front of his store window. I went up to my room and cried. I dreamed of collage that night. I was walking down the hall and there were no bullies. The walls were filled with art, the windows were big and there were oak trees and a valley. The teachers were all nice and helpful. I had long black hair and black eyes. I wore dresses of yellow and orange covered with tulips and bees. But then my dreams slowly evaporated. I became obsessed with something else. I had reached a turning point in my life with no more school. I was on the verge of the deepest most darkest days of my life.
Butch: Really?
How I never met Madonna
Sunday, March 6th, 2011This is it. It has been ALMOST ten years since our wonderful mother has passed. Seems like yesterday right? As I write this it is almost exactly ten years ago that she happened upon a paper and pen and wrote what is now the very front (index) page of the family web site.
Also this week it has been two years since they took me in the office in New York at Apple Digital Graphics and told me “It was nice, but it’s over.” The most I remember of that was the very blurry and surreal ten block walk to the early (at least today it was) long bus ride home. “So…here I am again. Looking for work.” and I always think of those lucky bastards that always have a way to not punch the clock, yet they make it through life. Or the other lucky bastards that put in an application for ONE job. Get it. Then work it for twenty-thirty years and retire and go home. They never have any clue of what it is like to be standing in the cold begging for a job.
A very somber photo of a woman who had a tough life.
I was still sunburned from cutting the lawns and weedwhacking in Central New Jersey. I was late for the first date. I was sleeping in my office. I was living one day at a time. A little while after that, the British guy told me to meet him at Ruths Chris Steak House for dinner and as I was chewing on a $50 dollar steak, my boss from New York called and wanted me back. I made a fool outta myself, the phone slipping out of my hands from the garlic butter and I couldn’t turn the ring tone off. The British guy gave me a 10 grand raise and a year later after that a $5,000 dollar after Christmas bonus. For what? For becoming a total extension of this new job. For living, eating and sleeping graphics. For pretty much performing miracles of 60-70 hour work weeks. In this time I met Mike who was married to Joanna who was my girlfriends sister. She quit a nice salaried job to go back to school at the Visual Arts in NYC by special invite. Mike is an extremely talented puppet creator who sides as a Saturday Nightmares convention maker. He ran into a little trouble making puppets on ebay with some sesame street copyright infringement bullshit but now has a way around it. Joanna was handed a brand new guitar on the first day of a second semester class (with 18 others) and was told to pretty much create something from it. Based on a musician and her/his charity. So I guess most famous people with alot of money have charity’s sincere or not-basically to make them feel less guilty for being richer than God and it always works nice as a TAX WRITE-OFF. So my girlfriends EX has a job where he builds floats for parades. I never knew that could be a real job, let alone a year-round full time job. I thought the puppet making job was pretty cool but building parade floats is right up there. Meanwhile down in Florida the property that is in my name is slowly deteriorating but my very talented wood-working brothers, Grant and Gary are going to fix it up and rent it out. I have fallen behind on the taxes and the property insurance has expired. The only neighbor that lives there, Tim (the same first name as my British boss) told my crafty brothers that he caught a man with a pick-up truck trying to steal my refrigerator from the property. This is a disturbing thing, when something 2,000 miles away from you is being taken. Talk about feeling helpless. I wasn’t even sure how old the refrigerator is so I asked my brothers and they said “pretty new” so now that pissed me off. If it was really old, maybe I wouldn’t care if he took it, the fucking thieving bastard. My girlfriend creates many different kinds of art
Seven chakra jewelry
Garfield, little Poland as seen from Botany Villiage
_The effects of the moon-
February's full moon-2011
you made me smile
Thursday, January 13th, 2011An anthology of our love. Drawn crinkled
Curtains. Capacious
day. Another in and out cloud-filled sky.
I’m sick and tired of writing about my rapturous crap. Drowning
In my own self-pity.(my real)curiosity is
Of your soft inner thighs(and the smell)
Of fresh cut grass. Now
As the wind kicks in. Your sunflowers
swaying in a huddled group. Your
stories are beautiful. It touches my senses (fills my eyes)
There are dead crows everywhere. Lobster restrictions.
In the crispness of dusk, people flee the streets, as
the mosquitoes rise from the marshes, weathervanes twist sharply,
hammering keyboards in the darkened day, wondering if your lips
Are achievable. The irrelevance of my brightly-lit-ego-marquees
In the hushed fog of early morning bike rides, head bowed in prayer,
wondering if you are there, who died in a porch laden sleep,
though I still see you walking with all the ghosts,
of all the aunts, in long summer dresses, a pinched smile
a long traveled mile
To the Fair in August, and the smell of manure
scrap yard ferris wheel with half the lights out,
Some blinking. Creaking rust and happy children
Screaming innocence of blacked-eyed suzie
bemoans its fate to a vase as
New Construction covers the northern lights,
parsley crab pie, an internet recipe, a mouthful of fire, spices,
cooling on the windowsill, microwave madness, purity of steaming rice
Spread out before me. Impressed. You made me smile.
You made me cry. Like a baby. One day we’ll make love to this
Violin
One Day
I’m going to revise this poem
GCH
winter solace
Thursday, January 13th, 2011Today was fuzzy socks
under a tall tree of solitude
long branches dipping
into sandy creek
reflections
of sun
and who I am
Today is over in a sea
of yellow orange
love that I intend
oh, distant heart
distant heart
can you hear me?
Today was an astonishing island
shipwrecked imagination
that howls in the tunnel
of nightfall
Outside is frozen mulch
and hungry birds
Tomorrow will come tonight
out of the forest of fears
and the lights of all-night diners
racing blood
imprisoned memory
of yesterday
yellow buckets
Monday, April 12th, 2010
An exercise in distortion. (A photo of Krystyna)
If photographs are messages, then the message is transparent and mysterious. Dressed in black, with black hair (black like the night) and a black bra, and black eyes, she introduced herself to my bleakness and told me to have a seat in the kitchen. There she prepared soup from scratch and I watched in amazement as the steam rose from the bubbling pot.
“You make me want to take photographs of everything.”
I said to myself in a dream.
“Why?” the woman in black asked,
“Because I am inspired, by the dreamy quality of life when someone cares about you and you care about them, and you could listen to their stories forever, of their mother and father, the cows, chickens, the artwork and an innocent stroll through a museum filled with yellow buckets of sunshine. Then waking up on a bed filled with yellow buckets of sunshine. My own snoring wakes me up and you are gone. The white dog remains sleeping by my side but I cannot dream consistently without your body next to mine. Buried under the warmth of quilts (because the Spring is still Winters mistress and Summer takes forever to boil over –like your soup, hot steaming fresh. We waited in long lines speaking and thinking Polish, smelling the smoked meats, picking up odds and ends for the Easter feast) Even better than being cared for is caring for. When those two work together then sometimes (mostimes) there seems to be a magical spark within yourself that says “All things are flowing”
When we all woke up from what had to be the worse Winter ever, it is not a coincidence that the tulips are singing, the trees are popping SIX weeks early and Spring has arrived on the express train. The floods in North Jersey have subsided. The snow has all melted and maybe the wind has whistled its last dangerous song. It is days like this when you say, “I’m gonna hold my heart up to the light and see if there is more to it then just muscles and blood. I’m gonna give it all I got to touch you, and hold you, and keep you from the Winters of life. These things I promise, in the Spring of this new decade, a new time to be hoping.” (Yes, I love you)
urban runoff
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
what lies behind us.....
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
One bright Fall day in Rosendale NY
Saturday, October 17th, 2009
Bob (left) a mushroom harvester and Chris (right) steel drum player/human puppet
In my exploratory discoveries of upstate New York, yet another quaint little town shown to me by Golden Bear. We found Bob in a parking lot when a blue herring suddenly and gracefully flew across the sky. We all stood in awe and my first impression of Bob was ripped and thrown away when only he was able to identify the bird immediately. When I noticed his Florida license plates, I felt drawn to him and soon found a wonderful man with a wonderful story.
He was once well over 300 pounds when he met a woman, who taught him how to cook and eat organically.
He also went to a 6 month spiritual retreat with her and together they became interested in healthy eating and cooking. He took a course in Mushroom harvesting and comes up here to NY to identify and harvest. He goes town to town to sell his “schrooms” to local restaurants. Some can fetch quite a pretty penny per pound.
Chris was sitting on his chair playing a small steel drum instrument that he had invented himself. The sound that came from his fingers against the drums was heavenly and mesmerizing as the town people just walked about doing their thing. Chris was surrounded by an open garage filled with hand-made masks, robes, banners and the smell of paint. The banner across the top advertised for a “puppet show 4:00 PM” something I just couldn’t (and glad I didn’t) miss.
Halloween comes early in Rosendale
You can’t beat entertainment that includes most of the children from the audience and live music provided by the locals. Community comes into your heart like a great wind, knocking down barriers of prejudice and fear. The show made me want to sing, chant and dance along and I would have if that by doing that I would have blocked others view and been too rude.
This makeshift stage, (garage) hand-painted scenery and stories probably written that day was one of the simplest joys I had experienced in a very long time.
An exciting way to activate your intuition is through wonder!
Another nice find, The Rosedale Cafe, full of locals and good food (and free WiFi ! LoL) is a great place to visit among all the history and restored buildings.
Family Talents
Friday, July 31st, 2009
Art comes in all flavors. Gary shows us his wood crafting skills at work. If you have ever been to his home there are many projects by him, old and new, (my favorites are the outdoor bird cages) and his wife Ann also has an amazing flair for creativity. Some of it is on Family Ties, some of it I need photos of. Would also love to see some more of Elizabeths work.
Jeffrey Gill project for his interactive media class.
Jim Gills son Jeffrey did this digital piece of work that I can really appreciate. Looking for more to come this way.
