SuperLuckyLand

I have an abundance of abundances... frustration, restlessness, grief, unused titles, etc.

Writer's block, or its equivalent for visual artists, is not a problem I've had for decades. I maintain lists in abundance: of experiments I want to conduct, shows I want to curate, artists I want to work with, and so on. So if for example, I'm not sure what to do next in the studio, I just look at the list of experiments I want to try out, and start with the item that most strikes my fancy at that moment.

And, several years ago, I realized I'd accidentally used the same title more than once. So I started keeping a list that included both unused and used titles. Whenever I can't think of something for a new piece, I can just find one that feels right in the list. And whenever I think of, or hear something that sounds GREAT, I add it to the list. So for example, the letter 'R'...

radiant darkness
radiant monument
√ rainbow table
rainy day in northern europe
rampant or recumbent?
Ravel was the soundtrack to his mid-70’s metrosexuality
√ real people living unreal lives
real time monument
real toads in imaginary gardens
received images
recreational mathematics
redecorator
redshifting to heaven
refresher
√ rehab for men
relational decay
remote control camel spanker
√ rental
requirement already satisfied reshuffling effect
resting suicide face
resplendent ego
restoration
resurrection room
retronet
Richard Nixon Is Not the Father of My Child
robot bibles
√ Rock Conference
rubberbound
rubbernecking

(The items preceded by √ are used titles.)

wall label I wrote a few mornings ago for an exhibition next month, "A Gift in Motion," at the Corcoran next month

on-progress, from a history of the world in 100 objects

It's 80° and 75% humidity in DC.

The best place to escape DC's oppressive heat and humidity in the summer of 1985 was the Smithsonian American Art Museum (then named National Museum of American Art). I'd go several afternoons a week, and spend a few hours walking a route that included four artworks. I'd regularly visited those pieces prior to that summer, and would continue to revisit for years. Rehangs in more recent memory have reduced that to only one currently on view (at least that I've seen recently.)

I couldn't explain my fascination then, and still can't really, for Blume's "Vegetable Dinner," but that enduring mystery is why I still want to live with it, to go to that place. It has all of the humidity and impending late afternoon cloudburst that I was evading plus attractive ladies around a table preparing a savory meal likely seasoned with savory gossip. For whatever reason I've always mis-remembered the title as, "The Potato Peelers."

Peter Blume, Vegetable Dinner, 1927, oil on canvas, 25 1/4 x 30 1/4 in. (64.2 x 76.8 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1984.101

Before the before afternoon storm, was the blistering noon sun that melted roofs, bubbled aluminum paint and overexposed everything. Hopper could show it to you, but Kline could make you feel the white-hot slam dancing rage in your bones.

Franz Kline, Untitled, 1961, acrylic on canvas, overall_2: 72 1/2 in. × 106 in. (184.2 × 269.3 cm) frame: 73 1/4 × 106 5/8 × 1 1/2 in. (186.1 × 270.8 × 3.8 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Vincent Melzac Collection through the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program, 1980.5.1

And then the impending storm again. Diebenkorn's acrid turpentine clouds drip with humidity. I've never felt the clouds in this, or in the Blume painting, to be ominous. Rather, they anticipate an auspicious event that connects me to a much larger, majestic universe.

Richard Diebenkorn, View of Oakland, 1962, oil on canvas, 58 5/8 x 53 7/8 in. (149.0 x 137.0 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of S.C. Johnson and Son, Inc., 1969.47.11

Away from the AC-cooled grand marble gallery, deeper in the building was an interior HEAVEN. What the clouds are to the external experience of majesty, James Hampton's are the interior reflection of same.

James Hampton, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly, ca. 1950-1964, mixed media, dimensions variable, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of anonymous donors, 1970.353.1-.134

26/07/21, some writing this morning.

As a teenager I started exploring the city, ranging into new and strange neighborhoods. It seemed like Cool "Disco" Dan was everywhere a part of the visual fabric, both sides of the river, all four quadrants, all eight wards. I must be mis-remembering, exaggerating, because according to Wikipedia he mostly hit spots along the Red line. His tags - and graffiti in general - spoke to my own rebellion, AND my budding interest in... typography??? The written word is a special case of 'visual phenomena,' and so another ingredient in my picture-making vocabulary (around this time I also had a crush on Barbara Kruger). I never knew Dan Hogg, but I have a childhood friend who did; I think she even commissioned him to tag the garage of her house. He was just a few months younger than I am, but sadly passed away in 2017. I wonder what his ghost or re-incarnation might be tagging in 500 years? In 5000? What language? What handwriting? And with all those ages of memory, what Lutheran manifesto would he tag on which door to authority?

In my first semester of art school I was required (against my will!) to take a writing class. Not something I was looking forward to, as I was there to PAINT. But within five minutes of the first class, it was conveyed to me (possibly through psychic waves) that we were here to use language like colored mud on a canvas, or clay to assemble... ANYTHING. Our teacher was one of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, Doug Lang, who insisted on chain smoking for the entire class. He was easygoing and forgiving, but for all that no less challenging or rigorous. On the last day of class he gave us our grades - with typewritten commentary, slipped into a chapbook, "Magic Fire Chevrolet." That was my first real book of poetry. It was in fact a collection of 'concrete' poetry: frustration, rage, and loss conveyed via typewriter and Letraset. This was about a decade before the desktop publishing revolution, but as soon as he could afford a computer he bought one and went NUTS! Doug and I continued to discuss all the important things (and a lot of the unimportant things) until his passing in 2022, and I still have conversations in my head, and wonder what weird language machines he might be experimenting with wherever he is now.

26/05/19, some writing this morning.