In Memoriam: Three Archived Posts

I'm working hard in the studio and can't spare the time to blog right now although I'll be back soon. Meanwhile, here are three interesting posts I wrote about the dear departed along with the reasons why I chose these particular ones from among the many. I think they are worth reading or rereading. 

The Queen portrayed by Lucien Freud

Lucien Freud: My post of February 4, 2011 here.
When I looked at the stats for my blog last night, I saw that the number of hits on Thursday and Friday was in the thousands! Between the two days, there were more than 5000 hits, where they are normally in the hundreds. At first I thought they were all New York dealers responding to my work as publicized in Joanne Mattera's blog (irony), but actually they turned out to be people who were somehow directed to the post I had written about Lucien Freud last February. An unknown search engine listed my post and directed people to it because of Freud's recent death. Here's what I said about Freud last February after reading a book about what it was like to sit for a portrait by him.

A portrait of Roy Neuberger reading, by his grandson, Matthew London

Roy Neuberger: My post of February 19, 2011 here.
Last night I received a comment on a post I had written about Roy Neuberger from his grandson, Matthew London, a New York photographer. Neuberger was a well-known art collector and founder of the Neuberger Museum in New York. He lived to be 107 years old. Matthew thanked me for writing about his grandfather and directed me to a website he had set up for him. He also listed his own website, where he had posted portraits of his grandfather. Matthew London's photographs are strikingly beautiful and I urge you to visit his website to see them.

Rob Moore from the Boston Sunday Globe article about him

Rob Moore: My post of December 17, 2009 here.
I continue to get comments on this post from people who search Rob's name and find it. There is not much available on Rob, a wonderful painter and teacher at Massachusetts College of Art for 26 years. Rob Moore died in 1992 at the untimely age of 55, before the internet could immortalize him. Only years after graduating from MassArt and painting many paintings was I able to understand what Rob meant in his criticism of my work and assignments in color theory classes. He was a brilliant teacher and a very colorful personality. He is still very much missed by his students. How I wish I could show him how my work developed. It only took me 20-some years after studying with him.

My Arden Show Reviewed

Featured in the Arden show - Schematic, 2011, 30x40 inches,
mixed media with encaustic on panel (click to enlarge)

In case you haven't seen the blog post yet, this afternoon Joanne Mattera reviewed my current show at Arden Gallery on Newbury Street in Boston (up until July 30th). Joanne is starting a new feature, cleverly called "Critical Mass," in which she reviews shows in Massachusetts. I was fortunate enough to be included in the premiere post, along with Jennifer Riley and Damian Hoar de Galvan, who are showing at Carroll & Sons Gallery in the South End.

Starting off with "If Nancy Natale is not known to the New York art world she should be," Joanne went on to allude to my work as "the love child of Lee Bontecou and El Anatsui." She described it as "equal parts formal beauty and polyrhythmic muscle."

Wow! How great is that? Thank you, Joanne! If anyone wants to know, you can tell them that I do not yet have a New York dealer but of course I'm interested.

And just in case you think I haven't been working away in the studio while the show was on, here's the newest piece from the Running Stitch series.

Red Passage, 2011, 24x60 inches, encaustic and mixed media
on three joined panels (click to enlarge)

Friday Morning in New York

OK, OK. I've dawdled long enough and I can't postpone it any longer; I have to wrestle all my experiences and memories of the recent arting trip to New York into some kind of post, or posts. Writing about it chronologically would be one way to organize it, but why should I let that influence me?

This reminds me of the debate as to whether it's better to eat your favorite thing off the plate first because you just can't wait to get at it, or whether to save it until the end so it can be savored and will be the last part of the meal you taste. I think I'm going to go for the best first, as I do when eating, because there's always the chance I could stroke out before I clean the plate - or finish the post.

Dawdling on Binnie's terrace on Friday morning
(Greg Wright, left, and Binnie Birstein, right)

View from Binnie's terrace - See why we were dawdling?

(By the way, you can click on most images to see them larger.)

Brian Dickerson at Kouros Gallery
We began our expedition on Friday by first visiting Kouros Gallery at 23 East 73rd Street, on the upper east side. We went specifically to see a solo show of constructed paintings by Brian Dickerson, whose work I had seen online and included in a post in my Art of Bricolage blog. Brian had seen the post, emailed me and kindly sent me a catalog of the show that contained images of his work and an excellent essay by Eve Bowen of The New York Review of Books.

Brian Dickerson, Untitled II, 2010, 30 x 23 x 7 inches, wax, oil, mixed media on wood

Autumn's End, 2010, 31 x 21 x 5 inches, oil, wax, mixed media on wood

Seeing work online and then in person can sometimes be disappointing, but this was certainly not the case here. What was surprising was the scale of the work. All three of us had thought that the work was much smaller, perhaps because of the intimately worked surfaces, but these pieces were substantially sized, many pieces fairly deep, and all having a powerful presence. The color was a surprise, too, because although the overall tone is fairly dark, there are areas of saturated color that appear in some paintings behind the main plane or in a corner of the piece. These colorful places suggest that perhaps the entire piece was once strongly colored and became darker over time.

Roseboom, 2010, 71 x 31 x 6 1/2 inches, oil, wax, mixed media on wood

This is thoughtful, carefully made and deeply considered work that required being made over a long period of time. There are traces of change, earlier states, blemishes, hidden color, multiple coats of paint, scraping, wear and marks. The work looks as if it had been made from old, used wood, but I understand from the catalog that it is all new wood that has been worked to its present state.

An unusual feature of Brian's work are the small openings into the interior of the works. These gaps or spaces seem to offer glimpses beneath the outer skin and into the heart of the paintings. The spaces are mysterious, unknowable, unfathomable. To me they represent the mystery of life itself, the source that humankind is always trying to reach through religion, philosophy, meditation, drugs or some other method of discovery that allows movement beyond the present to attain the sublime secret.

I was really wowed by this work and think that it shares a feeling for the darkness, for loss, for the sense of time and memory that I strive for in my own work. Sensing a shared sensibility doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it is a powerful connection.


American Abstract Artists 75th Anniversary
at OK Harris, 383 West Broadway, Soho
Next we took the subway down to Soho and walked a few blocks over to OK Harris. This enormous gallery was founded by Ivan Karp in 1969. Ivan Karp was Leo Castelli's co-director for ten years, from 1959 to 1969, when he left Leo and went out on his own, establishing his gallery as the first on West Broadway in Soho. When I was in school at MassArt in the late '80s, Soho was the locus of a thriving art scene. Now it's mostly expensive clothing and shoe stores - the way of Kardashian World.

Outside OK Harris showing the advertising banner.
All of Soho used to be filled with these in the heyday of the gallery  scene.
 The groups of men are cigar smokers and construction workers.

OK Harris is so big that they put on five solo shows at one time and do that seven times a year. It is so big that it could fit the huge American Abstract Artists 75th anniversary show into the space and still feel gigantic. I took only one picture that shows how big just one gallery is and doesn't do a good job of it.

Front gallery showing one corner

I took some scattered shots of works that I liked, but the AAA site has a full complement of photos showing the whole exhibition. In fact, their site has images of more work than we saw because OK Harris was closing for a month and a half the night we were there, and many works had already been removed and packed for shipment.

For some reason, the black and white and/or grey works really appealed to me, and those are the images I'm including here. This is kind of surprising, given all the color in many works.

Merrill Wagner, Wave, 2009, rust preventative paint on steel,
41.25 x 60.25 inches

John T. Phillips, My Daddy Drives a UFO, 2008,
oil on linen, 76 x 78 inches

Mark Williams, Split Diptych-Correspondence (1033), 2010
acrylic on canvas, 14 x 21 inches

I guess there is a certain horizontal stripeyness that these works have in common, and who does that remind me of? Hmmm.

The small grey gallery was, by consensus, the best gallery in the show, and one group in particular was a hit with us, image below from the AAA site.

L. Gabriele Evertz, Contrast and Assimilation: Blue, 2009,
acrylic on canvas over wood, 24 x 24 inches;
C.  James Juszczyk, The Wanderer, 2009,
acrylic on canvas, 29.5 x 33.5 inches;
R. Gail Gregg, Crosscut, 2005, encaustic on coardboard,
16 x 12.5 inches

Since you will have all the images from the exhibition to look at on the AAA site, I'll show you what else I photoed - the back room.

Left side storage area in back room

Binnie looking at some paintings on the floor - showing desk at the back

Right side of storage area in back

Staff lunchroom - a great collection of signs

The desk

Suspicious characters lurking on the front stairs

Lunch
Always one of the day's highlights, lunch on Friday was exceptionally good. We were hot, tired and ravenous. It was late and our Iphones were not giving us the right info. We stumbled onto a great little place called Bistro Les Amis on Spring Street.

Inside dining room at Bistro Les Amis

The air conditioning was soothingly cool, the service was friendly and prompt, the prices were not too bad and the food was excellent. Furthermore, the restrooms had piles of paper towels. Ahh, heaven!

I'll have to continue with the afternoon events in my next post. Stay tuned for the Chelsea galleries, a face-to-face meeting with a Facebook friend, and a great dinner at a Japanese restaurant - oh, and the High Line.

Ahrty Photos from the Art Trip

Overload

Alienation

Looking up the staircase at Kouros Gallery

Fuzzy, illegal photo at Richard Serra exhibition

Art Daze

Unidentified giant, rusty, cylinders in Chelsea

How Sweet It Is on the High Line

Palms or petrol?

Must be time for...

Another photo?

Thanks to the models and art companions - Binnie Birstein and Greg Wright
More posts to follow, this time with text.

New York Bound

New York midtown skyline

Every few months I need to make a trip to New York to do some heavy looking. Luckily, my dear friend Binnie invites me to stay at her beautiful home in Connecticut when the need for an arting trip makes itself felt, and the city is just an hour away from there by commuter rail. This time, joining Binnie and me, is our good friend Greg Wright. This threesome is a sure bet for many laughs, a lot of discussion of art and innumerable other topics.

Since the Chelsea galleries are closed on Saturdays during the summer, we will be heading there on Friday instead and have quite a list of special interests, recommendations and favorites. If we managed to hit them all, we'd take more than one day, I'm sure.

Brian Dickerson, Autumn's End II, 2011
Oil, wax and mixed media on wood, 42 x 21 x 9 inches

One gallery not located in Chelsea but on East 73rd Street is Kouros Gallery. A show of Constructed Paintings by Brian Dickerson has just opened there this week and that is a special destination for me. I have only seen Brian's work online, but he sent me a wonderful catalog that the gallery printed with many images of his work and an interview by Eve Bowen of The New York Review of Books. The interview relates how Brian developed this work and continues to make it, his motivation, his inspiration and the context in which he places his work. This well-written piece was very insightful and illuminating. I hope to include a post about Brian's show when I return from my visit.

The Cone sisters on either side of Gertrude Stein.  Claribel (left) was a doctor and Etta (right) was rumored to have had an affair with Gertrude before Alice B. Toklas came on the scene. Stein wrote of them in Two Women: "There were two of them, they were sisters, they were large women, they were rich, they were very different one from the other."

On Saturday, we are headed to the Jewish Museum to see a wonderful show of work on loan from the Baltimore Museum of Art that was collected by the Cone sisters of Baltimore directly from the artists beginning in 1905. This is the most intact collection of early work by Matisse, Picasso, van Gogh, Gaugin, Cezanne and other modern masters. To see about 50 works from their collection, which at one time numbered about 3000 pieces, is a remarkable opportunity.

Also on view at the Jewish Museum is an exhibition by Maira Kalman, whose paintings and observations I have often enjoyed in The New Yorker and the New York Times.

Alexander McQueen dress made of razor clam shells, 2001

Then, of course, there is always the Metropolitan Museum, which has so much to offer. We would love to see the Alexander McQueen show but don't want to stand in line forever, so we may see instead the Richard Serra drawings. There is also a piece by Liza Lou that I would like to see of a mile-long coil of white beadwork.

For dinner Saturday, we have a reservation at Robert at the Museum of Art and Design. Binnie raved about this when she went there before, so this time we're all going.

Wow, it sounds action packed and I left out a lot on purpose.

July Show at Arden

I had a wonderful time yesterday at Arden Gallery. A few artist friends and my always-supportive wife Bonnie were there celebrating my first appearance on Newbury Street with me, and I was available to meet some collectors that Arden had invited. Bonnie took all these photos - thanks for a great job!

Me with Brought to Tears, 24x24

First of all, the people of Arden are great - very welcoming, enthusiastic and warm. Everybody should be so lucky to be represented by such a terrific gallery!

Some Fell Among Thorns, 24x42, and Schematic, 30x40

This is the picture that was in the sneak peek, so you've seen this already, but I'm going to go around the gallery and show you how each piece relates to the other. There were just five pieces in the show, but they were beautifully displayed and lit. I thought they looked great in place (but then I'm prejudiced).

Some Fell Among Thorns

Schematic, 30x40, with Brought to Tears

The gallery where my work was exhibited is the middle room of three in the gallery. There is an opening into the third room between the picture above and the one below. On the other side of the opening, the walls are painted a lovely soft brown, which really complemented my work.

Passing Days, 24x24, and Cinch, 30x40

On the small wall between rooms, two amazing works in encaustic by Matt Duffin were hung

Here Greg Wright, Joanne Mattera and I (back to camera) are discussing Schematic

Lynette Haggard and Binnie Birstein examine my book about
the Running Stitch series (apparently a real sketch)

Joanne tells us what's what. Here we're in the third room of the gallery
where works from each of Arden's artists is shown.

Three works by Joanne Mattera along with those of other gallery artists

Andy Woodward, one of the Arden staff, with a large Joanne Mattera work

We resort to drink (spring water) in the front room of the gallery. 

The featured artist in the front room was Teri Malo. Here are three of her smaller works.

To get the color and image right, here is Teri Malo's A Deeper Measure from Arden's website

A nice shot of Lynette with Joanne. In the background,
one of Teri's works with a window onto Newbury Street.

A good time was had by all, as you can see.

This was a lovely introduction for me with a lot of laughs and much discussion of art, artists, shows and, of course, personalities. Not shown in these pictures were Linda Cordner, Philip Gerstein, Eleanor Steinadler, Cynthia and Richard Frost, and Chris Kyle and her husband (sorry, I don't have your name). There were others that I don't know, but thanks to everyone who came to take a look (and not just at my work).

Then today, back to the studio to finish a big piece. An artist's work is never done.