updating my catalogue with some new pieces
New paintings, drawings, ceramics
Been a while.
I should probably begin every post with this short phrase.
Having done a quick perusal of people’s blogs that I follow, I’m in very good company. I respect people who manage to maintain their blogs, their Substacks, their Rumble and YouTube channels; it isn’t easy. Mea Culpa.
That said, let me try to first contribute to the general feeling of malaise we are all experiencing…and then I will try to attenuate with some pictures…
What is going on? We seem to have a mass formation psychosis of assorted hysterical reactions to others having hysterical reactions…Couldn’t we have confined ourselves to Terrifying Clown sightings?
When did it become a positive character trait to be a timorous, quaking victim at the slightest alternative point of view? It is distasteful and discouraging.
Years ago I wondered if, assuming a less-than-linear flow of time, maybe those dire predictions for the future were simply echoes of the future clamorous headlines du jour as our information bloom begins to choke us. That firehose! It would explain why an increase in disasters and malfeasance looks much worse when every single small negative bit of information is put on top of the “worthy of notice” stack of leads. How to build our own rational hierarchy of importance? Not knowing, maybe.
My theory is that, having learned to be intolerant and reactionary online, we are now acting it out in real life. We do learn fast, after all. Our lack of real problems has lead us to create some surrogate doozies for ourselves! When we cast aside the wisdom of generations (who learned the hard way, by making mistakes) and decide that
a) Giving people free printed money helps the economy, and
b) Being “tolerant” of the homeless and mentally ill helps everybody, especially everyone who doesn’t want to get involved personally, and
c) Problems are solved by growing the bureaucracy; another law solves another new problem, and
d) Blocking conversation between consenting adults contributes to the general well-being, and
e) Allowing everyone who can get across the border to stay, including children, half of which will disappear to sex traffickers and shadowy “company store” labor entrapments, and
f) Blocking access to all those who chose not to be inoculated with an untested and outdated serum is fine, while allowing everyone else to ride out their diminishing “coverage” freely, and
g) Stealing our young ones’ childhoods earlier and earlier is a valid corollary of insisting on acting-out like spoiled brats? And damaging the few legitimate transsexual people by passing off auto erotic cross-dressers as a class of “PROUD” (mostly) men? And using all this as a form of virtue signaling and TDS statements?
This last one is particularly galling, if you add in Women’s Sports, you understand that the damage to my fellow females is tremendous. And
h) The government will fix it. The government will fix it. The government will save us all.
The overall effect of all these points of rancor, I believe, is to erase the grounded feeling of ease and communality that used to be the basis for American life. The word “community” is everywhere, but hardly evident in most places. Communality maybe is a better word. “Safety” is another word that I would gladly do without, mostly because every time I see it there is a rule that emerges which constricts me in some way. The rule-makers will imply, incorrectly, that the highest elected officials must be ever-vigilant for our “safety” when, in truth, their only real commitment should be to uphold and defend that pesky document on which the country is founded.
Any “community,” at any given time, is really an amoebic shape-shifting supposition. The real magic in this life is one-on-one interaction between complicated, exasperatingly unique individuals. Maybe we have lost our tranquility precisely because these desperately-needed encounters are now minefields of uncertainty, and we avoid them.
In Italy all of these tendencies are evident, although not to the extremes I see in the USA. There is a pesky thing called “tradition” which, in many circumstances, pressures people to behave in a way that does not damage others. And yet, I rarely perceive that palpable pressure to watch what I say, or define myself by my politics, that I feel in the US. Maybe its just me. It feels more tolerant toward each of our idiosyncrasies. This can border on chaos, but isn’t that freedom? In the US things are more dependably enforced, and therefore “safer.” But I don’t like being yelled at about my dog doing his doggy duty in the dog park before I can even fumble out the plastic baggy!
And such are my opinions today.
Here are some new pieces:
Sunset near Montescaglioso (oil)
All Things Being Equal (oil)
Leaping Clouds (oil)
Flat Top (oil)
Listen to the other side (oil)
Buyer beware (oil)
Masseria Abbandonata, Montescaglioso (oil)
Irrigation Canal, Ginosa (oil)
Sisterly (pencil)
Parochial Dissident (oil)
Flooded Evening (oil)
Pioneer Caryatids (pencil and gouache)
Another Feminine Diversion (pencil and gouache)
Another Thunderhead (oil)
Testosterone (oil and pencil)
Please Clap (oil)
Agreements Must Be Kept (oil)
Book-Learned (oil)
Purple Shadow (oil)
Unowned Property (oil)
Another Tree Island (oil)
Lifting Fog (oil)
Two Hills (oil)
Sunset Villa (pastel)
Two Grazers (oil)
Stoppie, Matera (oil)
New paintings, drawings
( pencil on paper)
(oil on canvas)
(oil on canvas)
(oil on canvas)
( oil on canvas)
(pencil on paper)
( oil on canvas)
(oil on canvas)
( oil on canvas)
( oil on canvas)
(mixed media on paper)
( pastel on paper)
(oil on canvas)
(oil on canvas)
(oil on canvas)
Some New work
INTO THE jaws of beastS*
I have been remembering Berlusconi. Those who wrote that history have been less than honest. There are many similarities to Trump’s time in office, as far as personality goes. Berlusconi brought some prosperity to Italy, and reforms that worked and some that did not, but he lowered the bar to accommodate himself acting badly. I have always thought that expecting politicians to act in ways that illustrate the people they SHOULD be is, quite obviously, futile. Therefore as long as they produce positive outcomes, I don’t really care about their behavior until they start commissioning fake dossiers on opponents or approving the torching of small businesses. For example.
With Berlusconi, as with Trump, there were some successes, some failures, too much egregious self-aggrandizement which so often describes the hubris of leaders who think they are incapable of getting stuck in the sand trap during their best game. Opposition takes many forms, and in a democratic system it is essential to the healthy functioning of the various branches of government. I wonder if anyone agrees with me when I assert that the left is much more effective as opposition than the right, which as opposition is ineffectual at best. In fact a vote for Trump in the last election was strategic for some, in that his winning would nurture oppositional forces, and lead to a healthy skepticism toward a pompous and overextended system. Same for Berlusconi all those years ago. But thanks to much coordinated misbehavior, here we are, late in 2021, desperate to keep our heads above the maelstrom of bad (very bad!) politics.
Corona Queen
Italy is desperate. It is crying for relief. Italians are literally crying. We have been sentenced to Draghi as our commander in chief, a non-elected (as is the entire government ) bureaucrat whose dark dealings involve almost exclusively the international banking sector. He is a creation, and creator, of the European Union and its dirty game. He knows, as a cool currency manipulator, nothing about virology or evolutionary selection, or furin cleavage sites, or ADE, or D-dimer tests, or vaccination-induced variants.
But in our brave new world opposition can be memetic, not so much spreading as appearing spontaneously in all places at once. A meme is not a rational construct, born of intelligent analysis, but it is an infection, a body with no brain. Fluffy and perfumed, or noxiously malignant, it modifies the landscape. Truth can be found in memes, but the circuitous route to the truth requires serious, exhaustive, hard work. Exhausting hard work. If there ever was need of a shortcut in the form of a universal meme for Italy, it is now. It would function as a secret hand signal to others who feel the same but can’t make it to the protests. Let’s go, Brandon.
I have the dubious advantage of being someone who can peruse the news in more than one language. Twice the aggravation! As I see stories in Italy and in the USA, I am always surprised at the journalistic laziness that is apparent in both. It is frustrating to see the same repeated opinions masquerading as facts, regurgitated across continents. Packages of “news” are purchased in bulk and handed out to the shitizens. If by chance you have not researched the track record of company negotiations of Pfizer, you should. I don’t google things, I use alternative search engines, and you should, too. Preaching aside, Pfizer’s machinations in negotiating contract terms around the world are nothing short of horrifying. Brazil, among many other southern hemisphere countries have given up sovereignty to this company. A moment as I have to spit.
Old News
My research is ongoing regarding the virus. I know too much now. Here in Italy we are desperate to shrug off the grinding remorseless tyranny that is taking us over in the form of the Green Pass. If we could freely discuss all of the scientific literature to date, and debate the merits, how could we not be better off? The only dangerous ideas are valid ones, because the worthless ones are, well, risible and not worth censoring. The only speech that needs defending is that which you don’t want to hear. How did we get along all those long months before the Pass? How are other European countries getting along so well without mandating its use?
We have been divided into castes. Don’t worry, I will keep my distance from you. Some of us must eat out on the sidewalk, and in the coffee bars we cannot sit, although we can stand for as long as we like. We can ride packed busses and commuter trains, but we cannot take the nice bullet trains or planes without a pass. We can ride in a taxi, but the driver must have a Pass. We can still buy our own groceries here, but not everywhere. Now it has been decreed that nobody can go to work at all if they do not possess the Green Pass on their phones. Forget those silly videos of people burning their Green Passes. Even someone working at home, or someone who never has any contact with the public, such as a truck driver, must either get the jab or be laid off indefinitely without pay. (This used to be known as being terminated.) A truck driver from anywhere else in Europe does not require the Pass, however. All those indispensable angels who nursed Italy through the first waves of the pandemic are now cast out, no longer useful without the injected holy water. A rapid test costs from 15 to 85 Euros, and is needed every 48 hours for the unclean to work. Once issued, the Green Pass is valid for one year. If you don’t know why this is ludicrous then you should not be reading this blog, you have way too much catching-up to do.
Meanwhile, protests are growing, inflation is sending more old people to the dumpsters for food, and the list of permanent injury and death is getting longer and more alarming each day. Italy has lost over 500,000 businesses since the lock downs. Meanwhile, confident pass-holders are going wherever they please with no testing, as they stand close, and cough, filling every packed locale with warm moist breath. The government advice is, and has always been, “vigile attesa.” This translates roughly to Watchful Waiting, or the American, “Stay home until your lips turn blue.” The press had a field day, together with their American counterparts, giggling about horse de-wormer and forbidding the appearance of abundantly available graphics attesting to the successes of other countries in treating Covid-19 with “alternatives” to the “vaccine.” Yet no advice about diet, or exercise, or time outdoors, or vitamin D-3, or quercetin, or zinc, or aspirin, or any kind of early effective intervention. The “I” word: Don’t say it!! No museums, theater, classes, hospital visits, or time with dying loved ones for us: The Unclean.
And meanwhile, in far off Spain, or Norway, and other EU countries, people are partying like its 2018.
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Here are the first four articles of the Italian Constitution:
Art. 1
Italy is a democratic Republic founded on labor.
Sovereignty belongs to the people and is exercised by the people in the forms
and within the limits of the Constitution.
Art. 2
The Republic recognizes and guarantees the inviolable rights of the person,
both as an individual and in the social groups where human personality is
expressed. The Republic expects that the fundamental duties of political,
economic and social solidarity be fulfilled.
Art. 3
All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal before the law, without
distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political opinion, personal and
social conditions.
It is the duty of the Republic to remove those obstacles of an economic or
social nature which constrain the freedom and equality of citizens, thereby
impeding the full development of the human person and the effective
participation of all workers in the political, economic and social organization
of the country.
Art. 4
The Republic recognizes the right of all citizens to work and promotes those
conditions which render this right effective.
Every citizen has the duty, according to personal potential and individual
choice, to perform an activity or a function that contributes to the material or
spiritual progress of society.
****************************
The European Union directives, like the Nuremberg code, clearly state that citizens cannot be either coerced or forced to have any medical procedure of which they do not approve.
But where coercion fails, almost anything can be obtained with enough fear. We are complacent in our irrational fear of… something. There are not enough hours in the coming year to list all the examples of false information and half-truths that have led to a population that believes that the virus must be fought in a certain way, to the exclusion of all others, and at any price. If we could only, only pay attention to statistics. It is tragic because the price may be much higher than anyone could imagine.
*****************************
A parable, and a true story: There once was a woman in Bernalda who nurtured a massive phobia about geckos. Her knowledge of geckos was limited, but her irrational fixation about them filled her with dread. They could fall, they could bite, they could appear in the most unexpected places, all true. But her imagined reaction if she should encounter one would be so overwhelming, so terrifying , that she was prepared to do anything to avoid it.
Geckos climb walls, and clamor across ceilings, and occasionally they lose their grip and gravity wins: but rarely. They will protect themselves by biting, and the larger ones can draw blood with their bites. But they will always, always run away first, and only retaliate if grabbed or pushed into an inescapable corner. Geckos love dark places, tiny spaces, window screens. They lay their eggs in stacks of lumber. They can eat their weight in insects any summer night. They are nocturnal , drowsing away the daylight hours in their hiding spaces, flattened and cool, eyes veiled.
On this day the woman had a task. Faced with cleaning the wooden blinds on her balcony, she found herself outside the glass doors of her dining room. Suddenly a shadow darted out from behind her cloth and ran across her hand as it scrambled for the shade. Terrified, the woman lunged forward, clamored over the railing and fell three storeys to her death.
Big Creek (This time I brought my paddle)
* “fauci” is “jaws” in Italian.
*”draghi” is “dragons” in Italian.
Some new little characters, landscapes and such…
Future
Hat
Oaks
Tart
Slice
Lap
Lawnchair
Siren
Chord
Snack
Ulivo
Choir
Clocked
Blue
Eight Ball
Big Date
Old News
Hormonal
Central Texas stream
Grazers
Chama
Plan B
Ringed
Werewolf
Bargain
Live Oaks
Tryptich: (Part A)
(Part B)
(Part C)
Ngo
Party
Rebel
(plein air) Seasonal
(plein air) Lago Immaginario
Bather
Poodleluv
Library
Outfit
Hops
Exam
Plan
Battle Of The Sexes
Offer
(plein air) Hillside 1
(plein air) Ovile (sheep enclosure)
Gravity
Network
Flown
(plein air) Hillside 2
Strike
Prize
Familiar
Unfamiliar
Salad
Stop
Stultus populace
Maybe saying it in Latin puts me outside of this group?
I want to say a few words in defense of statues, which, if you distill their associated impedimenta to essence, are actually ART. They required a person/people to create them and take responsibility for their final aspect. Commissions are also art, so whether or not the artist agreed with the motivation for creation of their subject is irrelevant. Artists must often work to eat, a noble motivation, and this means that sometimes their subject matter does not correspond to personal convictions, much less inspiration.
I live in a country rife with statues (Italy) …and monuments, and architecture, and paintings, and libraries chock full of very old and authoritarian writings. Lifetimes of leavings from learned men/women can be found in every sheep field and in every museum basement stacked to the rafters. Some of these people had no doubt despicable personalities, and some of them undoubtedly committed heinous acts. Some skipped meals, some failed to wash regularly, some were strangely aroused by vegetables……Well, where is the relevance? Some of the statues represent people that, in today’s context, offend certain groups. Understood. Let’s move them, but after a referendum.
Who destroys art? In full maraud, groups of human beings bent on correcting what, exactly? It has become clear that discussing motivation has become impossible, as our attention spans and willingness to employ our higher faculties have been reduced to three seconds or less. My impression is that these riotous groups have jettisoned “motivations” for action and proceed accordingly. After all, they do not have free access to the museums where painted representations of the same tarnished historical figures are displayed. That would be too complicated. And the books written about these figures are simply too ubiquitous. Destroying them would require effort, the result of judicious planning based on the amount of offense caused, and to whom…
Because there is no sense to be made of it. I have a repeating memory of orange dust and fists in the air as centuries-old carvings of Buddha are destroyed by imported anti-tank mines. Silver lining: new discoveries were made at the site. Can we hope that important discoveries will also be made at the sites where statues stood in the US? A wad of gum stuck under the base from 1911? I doubt it. Most understood that the Taliban mentality was a perfect example of dogma -over- tolerance. Or we did at the time. Everyone who tours Greek archaeological sites appreciates that they have often been used for target practice by occupying armies. No noses, no arms, no heads, oh well. So many libraries burned, so many golden objects reduced to bars of currency. It will require much less work in the future to dispose of important works, as the digital format has that infinite fragility which allows it to go away at will. Forever…if you can find it all.
Unless it is a YouTube video from 2008 in which someone used a word, expressed a prejudice, made light of shortcomings or touted any one thing over that other thing…and in the intervening 13 years the context radically changed and turned a lighthearted observance into anathema.
My fellow humans! The kindest observance I can make is that we are all animals. We learned how to cooperate and designate expertise, and now if a light bulb burns out in the hall closet it becomes an existential crisis. Our cooperation has allowed us to cultivate, in alarmingly successful fashion, ignorance of anything outside of our field of expertise, if we are so lucky as to have one of those. Combine this with superficiality and confirmation bias and same-day delivery and here we are. Distillation of thought to a three-word headline.
And so it is laid bare that ART is the lowest rung on the social ladder after all. I suspected this when I decided to spend my life creating free exhibitions for people I don’t know. But I didn’t know how thorough the lack of presence of “The Artist” in today’s “conversation” could be. Art is expendable, art is cheap, or free; art is only a means to an end. How inspiring for the artist! Let me spend all my free time outside of my paid job (nothing to do with art) working to express exceptional circumstances of thought or deed or cultural devastation, only to have it destroyed by the mob. Do you know what is involved in creating a larger-than-life representation in bronze? It is quite the undertaking. The same might even be said for building a small business.
But I digress. I have a metaphorical story of what is actually going on in the US right now:
We are a group of five friends (the population) who has been playing Parcheesi (politics) and at one point a person ( factions including manipulated groups devoid of critical thinkers) understands that he/she/it/they will never manage to win the game. One friend knows that if he/she/it/they can instigate another player to be disqualified, (political party manipulators) then the game will have to end and possibly restart later. Another friend (voices of reason) tries to open a dialogue in order to calm nerves but is silenced immediately by the other players (cancel culture and social network monopolies-by-consensus) who either shout over him/her/it/them or refuse to listen, fingers in ears. So the losing player rushes the table and grabs the board, throwing it in the air and scattering the pieces across the room. Stomping and spitting ensues. Game over.
Really? Are we really here? It was a short jump from making ad hominem comments on social media to physically manifesting the same in public. All it really took was a few weeks of ‘rona enforced isolation, lost hopes and wages, and a very, very bad orange man. And an upcoming election. We learn fast!
Who is it that does not understand that every great idea is strengthened by debate, and bad ideas are weakened?
Statues are the least of our worries, but even so, please remember the artists who made them. It is disturbing that in the weeks since this trend started in earnest, I have not heard or read a single word in defense of the art involved in making the symbol. It follows that maybe abstract art is the way to go in order to assure that pieces last for many years, unless, of course, the artist chooses a controversial title in which case all bets are off. No titles is better. Well actually no art would be the best way to go.
Irony aside, can we save the historical sculptures by moving them? I am pretty sure that the casting molds are nowhere to be found.
————————————————————————————————————
Since many of us only read short articles anymore, and listening is perfect for multi-tasking, here are a few podcasts that I love:
Brett (and Heather) Weinstein’s Dark Horse podcast
The Portal (Eric Weinstein)
No Agenda (with Curry and Dvorak)
Jimmy Dore Show
The Rubin Report
(episodes of) Joe Rogan
More new pieces, May
“Ranch” 30 x 60 inches, oil on canvas.
“Cliff” 7 x 5 inches, oil on board.
“Happy Girl” 7 x 5 inches, oil on board.
“Curve” 7 x 5 inches, oil on board
“Clutch” 7 x 5 inches, oil on board.
“Cloud” 7 x 5 inches, oil on board.
“Eve and Eve” 7 x 5 inches, oil on board.
“Pop” 50 x 60 inches, oil and pencil on canvas.
“Spat” 6 x 6 inches, oil on board.
“Alpha” 7 x 5 inches, oil on board.
“Dust Up” 7 x 5 inches, oil on board.
“Valley” 7 x 5 inches, oil on board.
The Joy of Cycling.
There is no other way to say this:
I had my first orgasm on a bike.
I got there because I have always been in love with the bicycle. First one was a Schwinn made of solid iron, discovered under the Christmas tree when I was about eight, shiny and blue and obviously meant for my older sister, not me. And yet Behold! As my parents were resurrected with their coffee in hand they heralded that the bike was indeed to be mine and not hers. Oh Joyous Day! They could not get me to come home for supper.
At ten I spent my afternoons browsing through the limited bicycle section of the Sears catalog, and I had become obsessed with a Schwinn Sting Ray, banana-seated purple girls “muscle bike,” complete with tail light, hand brakes, and a 5-gear shift on the top tube. I lusted, I craved, I obsessed, all to no avail as my mother was going through a “don’t spoil yer kids” phase. However, after a particularly successful multi-starred report card, she softened and drove me to Kiddie City and I came home with it. It remained my obsession for many happy years in which, lucky kid to find myself in that time period, free-range and pedo-free, it was my neighborhood pony. I went everywhere with this bike, and kept it until the late eighties when my father, in some kind of irrational snit, decided to clean the barn and take it to the dump. I see on E- Bay today that similar bikes are starting at upwards of six thousand. I still mourn.
Then a succession of largish generic three-speeds, followed in late high school by a slim and essential ten-speed Raleigh road bike. It was elegant and beautiful; still IS beautiful down in my basement, where it resides since I brought it with me to Italy in the eighties. Nothing I am riding today compares to the aesthetic of that bicycle.
However! Now I am almost 63 years old. At some point when the kids were little I rediscovered that riding a bike is one of life’s essential joys. Seeing the boys noodling around on their bicycles, I decided; Where and when, if not Italy and NOW, would I be better served by the purchase of a bike for myself? Subsequently I have had a series of bikes, city or mountain or hybrids, until the miraculous appearance of the pedal-assist.
Hallelujah! There is nothing to compare to (they call it “flow,” and that covers it!) the feeling of setting out to get as far as you can, no fear of steep hills, flying along at a high rate of speed for no reason at all. Heaven!
Many people do not understand pedal-assist bikes, and here I must speak in its defense to all those who make snide comments such as “Oh, you have a motor. So that’s not really bicycling.” As they totter off in hobnailed tap-shoes, their buttocks munching happily on shiny Lycra bike shorts. Let me explain.
Pedal-assist means that when you encounter a long steep incline you do not have to be filled with dread, destined to push the bike along until finally, sweating and wheezing, you can rest before remounting. It means steadily moving along. Flowing up the hill. If it is a mountain bike, it means equal satisfaction maneuvering obstacles up the hill as well as down. Oh, you are still going to sweat! As to the workout, it also means pedaling a 40-pound bike entirely without help at any speed over 25 kilometres an hour. The assist mechanism cuts out at 25. If your average flat speed is about 30 well, you are getting quite the workout, believe me. It also means flying away from a full stop and reaching maximum speed in about five seconds. Joyous!
But most importantly, it means racking up the miles. It means getting out there and using the bike as often as you can. Thirty pounds lighter, and with an old knee injury that no longer bothers me, I can attest to the exercise the bike provides. My average ride goes from about 25 to 40 kilometres. But I am doing it almost every day, and when I get back home I am still ready to mount up and go. I wear a cut piece of old nylon stocking over my nose and mouth to avoid eating a ton of flying insects, which, at these speeds, are inevitable. I recognize the blank “does-not-compute” expression of people who look at me, a heavy older lady zigging through parking lots and hopping over obstacles, zagging through traffic and racing automobiles at stop lights. Somebody’s grandmother flying down an agricultural road, earbuds blasting EDM, scaring the sheep. Look people: I am having FUN.
I admit this is a bit exaggerated. I am scrupulous about obeying traffic laws. The bike, especially because it is fast, must behave like a car in traffic. The only trouble I ever have is with other cyclists who suddenly do things without warning. I am appalled at how many cyclists I see with no rear-view reflective device at all. How can they maneuver without knowing what is happening behind them? I have been blocked by tandem teams of lethargic and chatty road bikers, oblivious to the concept of single-file in a bike lane that can accommodate only one rider each way. I have been pushed to the gravel-and glass-filled outside edge of the bike lane by clots of spandex-ed weekend warriors. Thank you, and may you soon encounter a patch of pure and unavoidable sand. If you drive a car, and you have groused at bikers who ride outside of the bike lane, you should know that all the collected detritus of the road inevitably ends up there, and broken glass, sand and gravel can be deadly for the cyclist. I am always happy to see the brush cleaner trucks making their rounds. I hope you don’t park in the bike lane.
Have I convinced you that there is nothing like a bicycle? Now let me tell you about my motorcycle….
What do they say? It’s like riding a bike!
a parallel life 