Month: January 2013

In the Studio 1.27.13

Lake Erie finally froze this week.   When the Lake freezes, a giant marker highlights ‘winter’ and shouts WINTER.  Often, after many storms, the snow and ice are thrown into huge mountains that reach amazing height and transform the Lake into a silent, alien world. I took this shot from the studio window at first light. …

Book Thief

 In the summer before third grade, we moved to a small town far from Dayton.  The ramshackle house we rented was across the street from the public library.  With its pink-marble columns, the library seemed to exist in another world.  I began spending all of my free time there.   My frequent visits to the library…

David Hickey’s Air Guitar

Do you like to read?  Me, I’ve always been a voracious reader.  Like other autodidacts, I let my interests take me where it will–I read what I damn well please.  Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of art theory  (Foucault, Panofsky, Derrida, Johnson) and criticism, which brings me to Hickey.  I recently finished two of…

Carl Gaertner

Yesterday was a lucky day–I discovered an artist new to me: Carl Gaertner (1898-1952).  Gaertner’s reputation is almost entirely local  to Cleveland, as  Robert Smith‘s is confined to Dayton. Gaertner was born in Cleveland and lived in and around there until his death.  He taught for many years at the Cleveland Institute of Art.  The Bonfoey Gallery…

Love Everything About It

I love everything about art making.   This has always been the case for me, but when I was young I was more impatient.  I also had an elevated view about the role of artistes.  As a consequence, I was sometimes careless with my equipment.  Brushes could remain brush-down in turpentine for days–horror!–until I got around…

Aside

I missed the Toledo Art Museum’s Manet exhibition.  As consultation I am reading Foucault’s “Manet and the Object of Painting.”

On the Easel 1/6/13

“The Gift” (large painting on the right) and several smaller paintings.  “The Gift” is 48″ x 48″.  The smaller ones are from a batch of new canvases I stretched and prepared during the holidays. The ground is snow covered but the light is good for January.  Over the past several days Lake Erie started its…