I spent this afternoon at Brooklyn Artists Gym, a shared studio space that’s usually empty – and I have 4000 sq ft to myself (there were two other woman painting today).

The picture I took of my large acrylic sketch/painting is “My Segmented Life” and is about 4 feet x 2.5 feet – my 1.3 mega-pixel camara is not able to get much better than this- I did the work in about 4 hours.   It’s a self portait but I decided not to focus too much on detail.

I have been thinking of merging my web analytics work with painting (or maybe it’s a bad idea – I don’t know).  My idea was to take traffic segmentation to pages of a web site as it shown in packages like ClickTracks and do the same thing in my painting – except the segmentation is the parts of my life (I did not represent all the parts of my life – I just painted in a couple of segments as an after thought).

Was thinking of this idea for a couple of weeks – right after the artist Olan drew a map of me, describing my life (while we were talking about life) - decided to see if I could paint my life as visitor segmentation map - yet still hold it together as a painting (and avoid being too illustrative).

I don’t take any of these works that seriously, but I do find that I’m liking my work more, the less I try to “finish” it.  I used to spend so much effort trying to finish paintings and lately I don’t have time – it has to work the first time – I don’t know what my mood will be next time I come in to paint on something – don’t want to mix moods – would rather just do the painting in one sitting if I can.

So, incase you can’t make it out, I painted the words “web analytics” in red in the lower left, “work” in the mid, upper left, “blogging” in the mid-upper right and “Seo” in the bottom right.

Went to the DADA show at the MOMA this afternoon.  I put a bit of work into my post then my blog ate the post – and so I’m just writing a short description.

To me DADA is more an anti-movement than a real art movement – the attempt to take everyday objects and make them into Art seems as artificial as the art it was meant to replace.

I can say this now, 80 years later – but at the time, the DADA artists thought they were doing everyone a favor – and maybe they were.  Except for a couple of works, most of the show is pretty much everyday objects that are made into Anti – Art (like Anti-Matter) by the artist.

But just because a Duchamp pissing pot is symetrical, it does not mean it should be put into a museum – as the DADAist would have it.  The DADA movement was more important, historically, than for what it produced.

I also looked briefly at Douglas Gordon’s Timeline exhibition which was also at the MOMA. From the exhibition notes:

In his most well-known works, Scottish artist Douglas Gordon (b. 1966) addresses the familiarity and popularity of moving pictures by manipulating, reframing, and superimposing them to alter viewers’ perceptions. His works provoke feelings of anxiety, recognition, and amnesia with respect to the circumstances of the reception of media today.

This retrospective of Gordon’s work presents thirteen significant works by the artist, including 24 Hour Psycho (1993), Between Darkness and Light (After William Blake) (1997), and Play Dead; Real Time (2003).

By forcing new encounters with the familiar and confrontations with the willfully forgotten, Gordon exposes the distance between our dimmed, distorted memories and, perhaps, the truth—emphatically demonstrating that what he sculpts is not only media but time itself.

My take, the show seemed stupid to me – it was trying to take what looked like the 1930′s mimialist paintings and illustrate a relationship that really happens much better in my mind than in film.

I have been to many art openings recently, and with the proliferation of Computer Generated Films, many artists are trying to be deep filmmakers – but more often than not, what I see is noise – something I feel I should look at but really don’t want to.

But why force myself to look at something that’s not attractive or interesting to look at at the first place?    The modern filmmaker can have the same problem as DADA tried to solve – taking the ordinary and making it into art.  In the case of DADA, they took garbage and said it was sublime.  Modern filmmakers like Douglas Gordon are taking the ordinary and trying to super-impose some fake meaning – a meaning that looks artificial – the same way the DADA stuff looked to me. 

Give me something real – and natural and interesting to look at – not these Pseudo Movies.

The New York Times talks about H.D.R. Photography.

“Although H.D.R. photos are often compared to paintings, they are an attempt by software makers to allow photography to more accurately mimic human vision.

Dynamic range measures how great a difference between light and dark can be captured by a digital camera or film. Relative to the human eye, all photography has a limited dynamic range, and digital photography suffers even more than film.

It is this limitation that leads to landscape photos where a dramatic sky appears as a washed-out smudge. A classic example of the problem is trying to photograph a room’s interior while still capturing the view outside its windows. In that case, photographers are usually forced to choose either the room or its view as their subject.

“The concept of H.D.R. photography is fairly simple. It starts with a photographer harvesting every bit of difference in brightness by taking several different photos of the same scene, with large exposure differences between them. Software then sorts through the resulting images, which range from underexposed views that are nearly black to washed-out overexposures, to calculate the full dynamic range of the view. Using that vast amount of data, it then constructs a single, high dynamic range photo.

At least that’s the theory. While the actual practice can be highly automated, it is slightly more complicated.

These H.D.R enhanced photos, such as those shown in the New York Times, look like illustrations or highly polished paintings – but they’re still photographs.  I think the story here is not so much about High Dynamic Range Photos but the power that highend Adobe Software brings to the average photographer who has many more options of where to go with their photos than ever before.

I came across a press release earlier today about digital paintings that change based on your emotional state.  This looks interesting but I’m not sure how easy it would be for your average artist to use the technology.

Computer scientists from Bath and Boston have developed electronic artwork that changes to match the mood of the person who is looking at it.

Using images collected through a web cam, special software recognises eight key facial features that characterise the emotional state of the person viewing the artwork.

It then adapts the colours and brush strokes of the digital artwork to suit the changing mood of the viewer.

For example, when the viewer is angry the colours are dark and appear to have been applied to the canvas with more violent brush strokes.

If their expression changes to happy, the artwork adapts so that the colours are vibrant and more subtly applied.

The project forms part of on-going research looking to develop a range of advanced artwork tools for use in the computer graphics industry.

This has already resulted in software which produces highly-detailed artistic versions of photographs, and allows designers to create animations directly from digital footage.

“The programme analyses the image for eight facial expressions, such as the position and shape of the mouth, the openness of the eyes, and the angle of the brows, to work out the emotional state of the viewer,” said Dr John Collomosse from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bath.

“It does all of this in real time, meaning that as the viewer’s emotions change the artwork responds accordingly.

“This results in a digital canvas that smoothly varies its colours and style, and provides a novel interactive artistic experience.

“This kind of empathic painting only needs a desk top computer and a webcam to work, so once you have the programme and have calibrated it for the individual viewer, you are ready to start creating personalised art based on your mood.

“The empathic painting is really an experiment into the feasibility of using high level control parameters, such as emotional state, to replace the many low-level tools that users currently have at their disposal to affect the output of artistic rendering.”

The empathic painting project was carried out with Maria Shugrina and Margrit Betke from the University of Boston.

The images used in the project were created by the researchers using advanced artistic rendering techniques which give the computer-generated artwork the appearance of having been painted onto canvas.

More information on the empathic painting project, including a video demonstration, is available on the project website (see related links section).

The research was recently presented at the fourth International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR) conference in Annecy as part of the International Animation Festival.

I was thinking about a couple of details I left out of my last post about my interview with Olan tonight.

Olan Montgomery is very tuned into people’s eyes and in his paintings he focuses on the eyes, esp in the portraits.  In one case Olan showed me the eyes of a portrait where all the details of that person’s concern with recognition and copyrights was shown in symbols reflected in her eyes.  I don’t think this is the portait he showed me but it’s as close as I can find on his site.

When you look at the eyes closely you’ll see all kinds of things.

Speaking of seeing the soul of person in their eyes, I asked Olan to tell me what he saw in my eyes.   Honestly, being a Scorpio, I usually try to read others and don’t want them to see into me.  But I think we all really want to be known as well (and it would be curious to see what kind of Portrait Olan would do of me).

Olan did not really want to say at first what he saw in my eyes - he sorta brushed over it.  Then I asked again – and he said I was afraid of dying without having really lived and done things I wanted to do in my life yet.  He said he could see, in my eyes, that I was pre-occurpied with that – and that I did not need to worry so much about it – that what I wanted I could have now.

We discussed a couple of other things about why I started painting again and Olan said he’d like to own one of my paintings – he liked them. 

Olan talked a lot about his childhood, his family, the way he was brought up, and his Mother, Eslye .  He’s very close to his mother and feels she is more charitable by nature than he is (which is saying a lot because Olan appears to be a very charitable person – so if his mother is more than that, she must be very charitable).  He talked about how his mother would take his sibelings and some of the orphaned children near where he grew up to Museums as often as she could and how her life was devoted to art – and is devoted to art.   He mentioned that his father had a stroke 12 years ago and she takes care of him but never talks much about it.  Olan also talked about his twin brother and how they took very different paths in life, his brother being in the army at one time, and really going after totally different things – and their orientation was different as well.

So, my first part of the interview was more concerned about the outer things -  but this part of my interview is more concerned about the inner part of Olan’s life.

Olan is also a cosmetics specialist and is called in for model shoots and that explains his relationship with M.A.R. Magazine- where his painting graces the current issue with a portrait of Anne Hathaway, whom Olan has met. 

In fact, you can see the relationship between the models of M.A.R. magazine and many of Olan’s paintings over the last year or two – it looks like his portraits, in some cases, grew out of his contacts with the models and his use of color and focus on the face grew out his work as a Cosmetics Specialist – which is a model’s best friend.

I would not have written this second post on the Olan interview tonight – were it not for needing to present, as much as I could, a fuller account – and while I did not take photos, which I could have, I focused again, on just talking and letting the conversation form itself – much as a painting takes form.

Another thing Olan did with me tonight is take the areas of my life and drew them out as themes as they related to me (ie: Art, time alone, 9/11, Job) – it reminded me of the way a web analyst would segment traffic coming to a website or page – but in this case, the website/page is me – and the categories are part of my life.

So among the things Olan can call himself – a psychic, a soul reader, a keen observer who looks into the eyes looking for the soul.

And that’s the end of my interview of Olan Montgomery – for now.

I find it much easier to write an interview of Olan without looking at my notes from tonight’s dinner meeting; I met Olan down at his Gallery and we had dinner next, and he game me one of his small paintings as well (the painting was based on the image below – of a young, homeless, gay woman the artist befriended).   I was attracted to the face of a larger painting of this model and he gave me a smaller version of it.

We spoke about his current show which will be coming down soon and it’s success.  I asked Olan to define the metrics for a successful show – that started a conversation where different arragements of sponserships and other commissioned works leads to a profitable show.  The money part of art was something Olan did not really want to focus on  – he wants to be free to do his art and not have to get involved with the politics of gallery dealers and collectors.  We talked about how difficult it is to do art and live in NYC and that society, as it is today, is focused on the wrong things – like getting ahead at the cost of hurting other people. 

Olan thinks deeply about this and tells me he did not care for what happened recently on The View and how Star was replaced.

We moved on to another subject, using the internet to go past dealers and reach fans directly – Olan was intrigured with the idea of The Long Tail and using the internet to sell his work – but did not really know how to go about it.

I mentioned Amy Crehore, and her devoted fan base plus the writeups in Boing Boing as an example of reaching fans and buyers without going through dealers (though she also does have dealers of her work).  Also the recent addition of Charles Saatchi’s Your Gallery website which Olan Montgomery used to create his own mini-site with his work.  Olan found out about the Saatchi online gallery through me, as did a friend of mine, Drew Knapp, who did the same thing (posted his work).

In fact, I used the Saatchi online gallery to discuss the first instance, to my knowledge, of a Major Gallery Dealer getting involved with Social Marketing, Viral Marketing – it’s as if Charles Saatchi gets it – he understands that many artists want a legitamate way to reach dealers like himself and Saatchi also wants to discover new artists – so he makes it possible to do so with the Your Gallery website – and become the most progressive art dealer.  Yes, I give Charles Saatchi credit for seeing something that needed to be done in social media and doing it (and he did a good job with Your Gallery).

Olan mentioned the Chelesa art galleries in the West 20′s where some artists are able to get sponsership but to just survive and do their work, is such a struggle (it always has been).   Olan mentioned that being an Art Dealer was a good business to be in – but being an artist is much harder.   I interjected and said it was always like that with a couple of artist superstars (ie: Picasso is a prime example) making a most of the money while most other artists can hardly make anything.  

In fact, with the Long Tail, created by the economies of the internet – many artists can thrive in ways that would have been much harder even 5 years ago (and that is not generally understood yet) - I think Amy Crehore is an example of that – an artist with a strong fan base – who really can do well with internet publicity - and you don’t need to be a Picasso (or the modern version of that – or even be part of the Whitney Biennial (see my review of the Whitney Biennial here) to utilize the power of internet to magnify your brand.

In fact, there’s much that I did not discuss with Olan tonight - I will have to cover in the next interview.  For example – Olan’s site uses AdSense and Affiliate Marketing, along with a series of articles and news – and it was only by looking at it in detail tonight – after speaking with him (where he mentioned he does write articles and post to his site and on other sites as well) that I went back and took a look at some of what he posted.  What I see is we need another interview do discuss how he approaches his website marketing of his own work and brand and what kind of volume of visitors his site generates.  These are questions for Webmetricsguru.com but they apply here as Olan clearly is using the power of Google Advertising and Affiliate Marketing to  make part of a living. 

Olan suggested we get together again, on a monthly basis to continue this conversation.  We also talked about having me interview his mother, who is also an artist and a very interesting person. 

Getting back to the interview I did tonight -I found out an interesting metric – it takes Olan about $700.00, or more to produce one painting using the techniques and media he employs (there’s often the cost of the paints, strecher, linen, photo transfer, etc) and that he sees all the work he does and what he makes off it as a way to continue painting – in other words, much of the money made on a show is re-invested back into this work – and I think that’s the right thing for an artist to do, personally.

The meeting ended with a walk back, next door, to Ward-Nasse Gallery where Olan showed me the work of other artists in the Gallery and introduced me to the Art Dealer who runs Ward-Nasse.   I also took the opportunity to look at some more of Olan’s paintings near the back of the Gallery that I had not really looked at as well as some of the other artists who have shows at Ward-Nasse.

By the Way, Olan did treat me to dinner which included Pasta and two glasses of red wine each.  Olan had his dog with him, and the dog was begging us for food – I ate all of mine so Olan put out part of his pasta plate – about a third of the dish and the dog finished it.

And that’s it for tonight’s interview with Olan Montgomery.

Tonight I missed Innerscapes by Rachel Madden but I would have rather had seen that show than what was at Six Feet Under (which I did end up seeing);  I just did not show up on time.

INNERSCAPES
Paintings by Rachel Madden
July 13 – September 3, 2006

Opening reception: Thursday, July 27, 5:30 PM- 7:30 PM

NY Studio Gallery
is pleased to present paintings by Rachel Madden.These intimate, mesmerizing oil on canvas landscapes relay an intrinsically meditative quality springing from the human condition of hope amid despair. 

Hopefully this picture is not too large (in pixel size) or else I’ll need to resize it.

Kinda similar, in some respects to Bonnard’s work and does not have a title and is 24 x 30 inches.   Had I arrived earlier – this would have been the show to see.

I have a problem with making it over to the West Side – its’ really out of the way for me.  The galleries that have taken over Chelsea are mixed in with moving companies and the remains of the 3rd Avenue EL.  I have mixed feelings about having so many galleries that far west.  On the good side – you can hit several openings at one time; on the bad side – it’s really an effort to go there in the first place.

I wish the galleries would do something extra to encourage more people to come over to Chelsea – like provide a free meal, or a free something – I don’t know – I just think that sticking all the galleries in Chelsea does not quite feel right or natural – but maybe that’s just me.  I liked all this stuff down in Soho much better. 

And By the way, Park Slope and Brooklyn is up and coming and maybe thats’ the place to be.  Forget about Chelsea, go and build all these galleries in Park Slope.

For any of ArtNYC’s readers – my work is in both Art and Analytics – Web Metrics to be exact.   I had an interview of me recorded last month at the ClickZ Online Video Conference in NYC.  The Podcast of that interview was just published tonight and incase you want to listen to it, here it is:

Marshall’s Podcast

Enjoy!

I was finally able to get over to the Brooklyn Artists Gym today to do a little painting; I took my son Adam with me and managed to get him to sit for me and did this sketch (below).

It’s difficult enough to get a teenager to sit still for long – I managed to get Adam to sit for about 90 minutes.

I usually try to finish whatever I’m working on in the same sitting – as far as I can.  Years ago, when I painted more often, I felt I often overpainted and it took much longer to achieve anything.

 

As I mentioned in my last post, I planned to go to BAPLab2006 and I did; I’m 80 dollars poorer for it but I had a good time and it was all in the name of Art, or something like that.  I took a lot of pictures too – but I’m not sure it makes sense to post them here as quickly take up space on the webservers – maybe I’ll post one or two pictures, that’s it.

There were a couple of thousand people attending a werehouse that was converted into a large art gallery – happening space. Some of the same artists that were part of the NYU Interactive Communications Program were also in this show and I spoke to one artist whom I remembered from a couple of months ago.

 

There was a photo montage that altered a person and you could interact with it – and I am showing me, being altered, not for the better, I’m afraid.  Actually, the work I was part of here was called Musical Chari: A Game for One Musical Chair: A Game for One.  This work is influenced by the artist’s (Geoffery Bell) fascination with visual apparatuses from the 19th Century.   When the viewer remains still (me in this case) the repetitive images of the viewer gradually coalesce into a single image.  Audio segments are also triggered and manipulated by the viewer’s movements (that’s me, again).

 Other Artists I looked at were Ernesto Kar’s Convergenze Parallele, Jake Klotz’s Rejoice/Restage and another work called Robot/ a canternary project. 

One thing – I went up to the third floor and noticed some bathrooms without doors – they were part of the art installation but people were using them as actual bathrooms – and I must admit, so did I.  I think, only men did this – I did not see any woman using the art installation / bathrooms this way.

There was also a walled off room where some “oracles” were doing readings – or something – and there were silkscreen pictures of nude woman that were semi transparant (that made it interesting to know what was going on inside).  However, I never did find out as i was too hot and the line too long.

I should add that the show I attended appeared to be made up of a couple of groups including the 3rd Ward, a member based studio and workshop facility geared towards established and emerging artists – with facilities for audio/music recording, dance/performance studios, sculpture and fabrication, Digital Media Lab that is fully equipped, a gallery, converence space, lounge and Internet Access Cafe.   Sounds like 3rd Ward and the Bushwick Art Program have it all wrapped up (everything a modern artist could want) except the location – the location is too far out of the way for me to want to go over there – but if you live in GreenPoint, or nearby, it’s probably a good place to have studio space – there was a little floor bot robot painting a painting of about the 1970′s.  Don’t ask me what it all means as I don’t know.

I also found out about another artist space that is technology oriented closer to home called LEMURPLEX, located at 451 3rd Avenue, pretty close to Brooklyn Artists Gym (which I need to go over to, maybe Sunday – today – haven’t been over there for a couple of weeks and I need to paint).

LEMURplex is a new performance/gallery/teaching space in Brooklyn, located between the vibrant neighborhoods of Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Gowanus and Red Hook. LEMURplex will teach and showcase the best in art and technology.

LEMURplex is the home and workshop of LEMUR: League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. Founded in 2000, LEMUR is a group of artists and technologists who create robotic musical instruments. LEMUR’s work is shown throughout the world in performances and installations. For information on LEMUR, go to lemurbots.org.

How Fantastic!  Here, but a mile or two from where I live a couple of blocks from where I paint, exists the League of Electronic Muscial Urban Robots that goes all over the world to perform and create installations.  There’s also courses that are tought – but at this time I don’t think I’ll be taking any of these (they’re programming oriented – but more for visual artists that want to do robotics – a path I went down several years ago but found I did not have the interest or focus for it).

I’m glad I went to BAPLab2006 tonight – I’d probably not even have learnt about LEMURplex had I not gone – it’s also nice to see a new batch of artists – the future (which I see myself as a bridge to – I’m old enough to have lived in the 60′s and 70′s yet progressive enough to really live and identify with the artists of the 21st Century).

 

There’s an opening tonight in Brooklyn that I will attend tonight (if you can get to it) – or at least, look at their website.

This summer BAP will be hosting the first in a series of programs entitled the “BAPLab” taking place on July 22nd 2006. Showcasing well known artists side by side with emerging artists, the Lab’s purpose is to expose both audience and artists alike to the vast spectrum of digital culture. Located at 3rd Ward, in the outer edges of Bushwick, (that’s why I probably won’t make it over there) the Lab is an experimental event where artists are encouraged to explore new paths and investigate new ideas through a curated program of electronic music, video, sound installations and interactive works.

Part exhibition, part creative R&D program, the BAPLab is a festival of ideas.  An environment where artists can explore new approaches to creative expression.

I liked listening to Pathways To Pluto - by r. john valeo – perhaps it’s because I’m a Scorpio that I’d like Pluto music.  But then there’s Red Wine Reduction by Handshake or Sex Deluxe by Hakan Lidbo – you can hear all of the work by going to the website.

BTW, this BAP lab show sounds (no kidding!) similar to NYU’s Interactive Communications Program Spring Show which I covered in great detail on Webmetricsguru.com a couple of months ago.

Interactive show mobbed (I first heard about the NYU show via Smartmobs.com, a site I also write for now – but did not write for them at the time).

Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU – A Review – Part 1.

Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU – A Review – Part 2.

Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU – A Review – Part 3.

Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU – A Review – Part 4.

Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU – A Review – Part 5 of 5.

I’ll have more to report on later and you can also read a notice of this on SmartMobs.com .

Happened upon Charles Saatchi’s Your Gallery website which seems to me to be the first instance of Art Dealers getting into the Social Media scene.  Instead of looking for artist to represent – Saatchi is allowing the artist to post their work onto his site (ok, he did not invite everyone – but yet anyone can post their work).

There’s also a virtual tour of the actual Saatchi Collection in London that looks part Computer Animation and part Photography. What’s noticable to me is that the figures in the virtual tour are immobile, much as the art iself – perhaps in this case, the figures are part of the art of Virtual Tour (you can’t see the pictures on the wall very well – the movie is really about taking a tour of the Saatchi Gallery, not what is in the Gallery.

Perhaps the only thing missing from the Virtual Tour was Wild Divine’s biofeedback mechinism to make a tour interactive – As Wild Divine’s Wisdom Quest is (the second Computer Game from Wild Divine).

Getting back to posting your art in Saatchi’s Gallery, I posted one of my own.

Went over to the STUX Gallery tonight to view Six Degrees of Separation 2 – The inner Workings of Cold Contact.  Boy was it crowded!  Had a beer but had to work to find out where they were searving the free drinks.  Lots of things I would probably not care to own – some photos that were life size but whose subject was hard to look at – or want to.

New York Fine Art (www.nyfineart.com) also had a opening tonight – I’m not sure I attended as I attended for or 5 shows and what I saw and where I went seems to be a blur now.

There are many Galleries that used to be in Soho that moved up to the Chelsea section of Manhattan.  I’m not saying it’s bad – there was a struture to attending these NY Galleries that would have been missing had they stayed down in Soho.  On the other hand, it feels somewhat artifical to stick all the galleries right next to each other on the lower West Side of Manhattan.

I also saw a photography show calle “It’s very difficult to keep the line between the  past and the present.  Know what I mean?”  I liked several of the photographs in the show at Clamp Art.  

Also got together with some of the greatest Podcasters in New York at NYC Podcasting Meetup Group – these are a dedicated group of Podcasters who meet once a month.

Time for me to signup off and go to bed – I don’t believe how much I did and saw tonight!

 

Found these wonderful Art Pictures of what the Blogosphere would look like if it was an organism.  These pictures come from Mapping the Blogosphere Gallery.

And here’s what the Blogosphere could look like if you sketched it with a pencil (looks like Star Trek: The Next Frontier’s Crystline Entity).

And here’s a mixture of the two styles of drawing – mapping the Blogosphere, below.  BTW, where’s NYC in the drawing?

Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times reviewed a show  called “Teaching America to Draw: Instructional Manuals & Ephemera, 1794 to 1925”; the show continues through July 29 at the Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, Manhattan; (212) 838-6690.

I did not make it over to the Grolier Club yet (the club sounds familar but I don’t think I had visited it before).

In the New York Times Article Kimmelman writes:

“From 1820 to 1860, more than 145,000 drawing manuals circulated, now souvenirs of our bygone cultural aspirations. Not many of these manuals are still intact because they were so heavily used, worn down like church relics, which supplicants rubbed smooth from caressing.”

….The exhibition is full of such exhortatory books, many of them discomfiting today because they presume a degree of skill among ordinary citizens — even children — that would now be regarded as noteworthy in the art world. There are exceptions, like a popular manual from the 1840’s by Benjamin Coe, one of Frederic Church’s teachers, who, to judge from his illustration of a maiden in a glen, needed a little brushing-up on perspective.”

I’ll try to make it over to the Grolier Club before the drawing show closes (in about 10 days); looks like a good show.  Too bad this show was not reviewed earlier on – now people who read the NYT have little more than a week – it would have been better were it reviewed a month ago or more – as many more people would be able to visit.

I was lucky that the show at the Austrian Cultural Forum was only a block away from the Municipal Art Society on 52nd Street and Madison Avenue. 

I really don’t have a lot to say about a bunch of photos and relics of ship building and ship repair – but at least they had red wine at the Municipal Art Society – which is more than I can say for the Austrians – they had only White Wine and I don’t go out of my way to drink White Wine. 

To me, the rooms were more interesting that what was in them – at least for this show.

Amy Crehore has a new painting up on her blog which, to me, looks more ambitious than most of the other works of hers that I’ve seen online.  That’s the beauty of it all – so much of our work can be seen so much more easily now – and by a more select audience.

OK, where do I begin?  First, there’s more than the usual amount of symbolism, erotic and otherwise (ie: Woman eating a banana, monkey looking at the banana but maybe sucking on the woman’s breast – not sure – you can read it one way or the other – maybe she wants it that way).

By the way, Amy also paints a lot of cats, mostly the house cat type, but in this painting, the cats are replaced by a Tiger (cat).  Not sure what the Monkey means vs. the Cats (that would be interesting for Amy Crehore to talk about sometime – hint hint).

The Snake is often the symbol of evil and you have a Tree (Tree of Life?) with a Monkey holding a flower hanging off a branch of a tree.  Two other monkies are sucking their thumbs.  The Flower is an offering but none of the other monkeys or the naked woman seems to notice.

Meanwhile a Tiger that reminds me of Delacroix’s tigers are sleeping yet supporting the main naked woman who’s still eating the banana.  Talk about erotic symbolism – the painting is full of it – but is more rectangular, longer,  than most of the other works I’ve seen. 

As there are plenty more bananas hanging off to the right, there’s plenty for everyone to eat.

Meanwhile, there’s a black figure peaking out from behind the tree, his face blending in with “eggplants” or large plums that are growing around the tree (unless it’s some other kind of fruit).

What’s not clear to me is the meaning of the Red Pelican; even if Amy Crehore is not trying to be use the symbolism in a deliberate way – still the images have meaning beyond  what the artist intends it to mean.

The painting might relate the purity of the Garden of Eden, but then again, with the erotic symbolism, something more is going on – and what makes it good is your wondering what “that something else going on” is.

By the way, if Amy would like to know blogs that are similar to hers, in particular the blog post of the Banana Eater Painting – try this search on Similicio.us

http://similicio.us/search.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Famycrehore.blogspot.com%2F2006%2F07%2Fbanana-eater-painting.html&submit=find+similar

And while I’m finishing up for today I’d like to direct people to this mention of one of my other blogs, http://www.webmetricsguru.com/ which was just voted the Top Web Analytics blog by Avinash Kaushik.

And now I’m about to collapse – spent the afternoon and evening in the Emergency room with my wife who developed a foot problem – we’ll have to see how that goes.  When it rains – it pours – but maybe not on the Monkeys.

The New York Times has a review of two “nature-themed” displays of contemporary art in the Bronx (where I grew up) at the Botanical Gardens.

“Yellow Boat and Walla Wallas” (2006), by Dale Chihuly, at the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at the New York Botanical Garden.

The Botanical Gardens also has an ambitious production by the world’s most popular glass artist, Dale Chihuly, and Wave Hill has a low-key group show of conceptual works. 

“Chihuly at the New York Botanical Garden,” continues through Oct. 29; Bronx River Parkway and Fordham Road, Bronx, (718) 817-8700. “Garden Improvement” continues through Aug. 27 at Wave Hill, 675 West 252nd Street, Bronx, (718) 549-3200.

While I did not go up to see this show yet, if I could, I would. 

Did not get to interview Olan yesterday, an artist friend of his had a heart attack and the meeting was rescheduled to next week sometime.

If I make it to any openings Thursday, here’s what looks good. 

Table Top, an invitation to slow down and take a sit with  Erica Baclawski, Jason Middlebrook, Fabian Birgfeld, David Moreno, Beth Campbell, Adam Ogilvie, Marti Cormand, David Payton, Annabel Daou, Raymond Pettibon, Alexander Gorlizki, Fidel Sclavo, Alex Hamilton, Ken Solomon, Xylor Jane, Nicolas Touron, Ricardo Lanzarini, Andy Warhol, Marco Maggi, Amy Wilson…. We understand that after a hard day of Art viewing and complicated thinking you deserve a break. A table, a chair, a nice ice cold mint julip, some Epson salts in a pan of cool water for your tired aching feet, and a stack of the latest art magazines brought to you by a fresh faced Gallery intern can go a long way to help resist the summer heat in Chelsea at the Josee Bienvenu Gallery, 529 West 20th Street.

I posted earlier tonight about going to the Olan opening at Ward-Nasse Gallery today.  Within a couple of hours – Olan responded to my post (I know Blog Posts are quickly picked up – but I’m not sure what people use to monitor the Blogosphere for information about themselves).  My review of the Olan’s show (missed the opening, unfortunately) was positive – but I think it missed aspects of his work Olan would like people to know about – so here’s Olan:

I don’t believe another person ever has the right to diminish the esteem of another and I tell you this because many types of people come to my shows — some wealthy, commercial, some homeless, less commercial, and some considered “too much” by society. 
They all have their own things to deal with. My subjects eyes are important to me, their soul is important to me. My father was a photographer and my mother a fine artist, I honor them by combining their techniques, and since my father is American Indian their is a factor of capturing their soul through photography that intrigues me.

I write this so that you will know what is important to me as an artist.  I grew up in a home where it was common place to have a homeless stranger at the dinner table.  Last night I had one of my servers says someone had “grubby” hands when they took the food.  I told them those hands warm my heart and they are my guest, please treat them with respect.If you really look at the eyes of my subjects you will see the motion, emotion — that persons own moment of happiness, sadness, intrigue, desperation … you will have looked into the soul of a stranger for a time and not been wrapped up on your cell or doing whatever most people do in today’s society in their own little universe not to look at one another.
My art is about people looking at one another and my highest hope is that they will not judge one another less than in the process.

In your review of my work you put the piece “Address Unknown” of a homeless woman, who has passed now that I knew, who just happened to be sitting on one of those postal crates we are not allowed to sit on now in NY that night as I am reading you review - 

I think about how at my opening you missed seeing some of my other homeless friends eating and drinking at my art opening with club kids and society people like Tracy Stern and Stephen Knoll -  and I am concerned that you might not have enough information about me, Olan. 

The art is not only hanging on the walls Marshall, it is also standing right beside you — you just have to look at it.  The critique if what you experience is your own – and you fully have a right to that – I just don’t know if in 200 years our society will understand or rewrite that experience to how they have evolved in their own conception of what they consider “seeing one another”

I’m not sure I understand the last sentence of Olan’s note – marshall

“I think the life process by which an artist creates is as powerful as the work produced and I wanted to personally thank you for your review and look forward to meeting you some day and speaking with you in person – Olan”

I hope I get to meet Olan too, he sounds like an interesting person and artist – and I certainly missed a great opening party!

I think art is all around us and in the people and objects and ideas around us.  The fact that Olan’s paintings spoke to me – says that “I  get it”.  Given all the colors, it might be too easy to dismiss it as being commercial (not that those distinctions mean that much anymore – all the lines are blurred, as Seth Godin remarked recently) – but I see that past the photos colors and fabric paint to the artist and responded, especially, to the homeless.