ASHLAND ARTISAN GALLERY

This morning I went to Robert Paulmenn's figure drawing session at his studio here in Ashland, Oregon. I haven't been in awhile (see some of my earlier posts for drawings done in these sessions), and I'd heard he was leaving town, but it seemed like business as usual once I sat down.

I'd run into Robert the other day at the sneak-preview opening of Ashland Artisan Gallery's newest project, a combination studio/gallery/workshop. The space is in the Provost Building located at 357 East Main Street, a three story, historic building. At the moment the building looks in need of some work, in terms of lighting and interior remodeling, but the sheer size of the space is inspiring. I would have liked to have taken video of the upstairs studio spaces, which are very nice and well lit, but my battery died taking this video in the basement.

I'm toying with the idea of renting space in the upstairs, but just this morning I was talking with Robert and learned that his studio space will soon be up for rent. It's about twice the price of the space in the Provost Building, but it's been the spot for a weekly figure drawing session for years. It seems that the regulars don't want to discontinue if and when Robert leaves town, and with the income they generate ($10 per person per session), it would almost pay for itself if it remained open for the Monday morning sessions.

Then there's the fact that the studio space in the Provost Building wouldn't be private, but would be in a cubicle-type environment in a big, open floorplan. Robert's studio is totally private, with its own locking door, which would mean more secure storage of artwork and supplies.

Neither space will be available until early next spring, and there's no guarantee I'd even get Robert's space before someone else, but it's good to be aware of the possibilites.

GO PHILLIES

I watched the election results at my friend's house, who is black. There were about 30 or 40 people there, with only a handful of white people. It was very wild and exciting. We drank Dom Perignon and Moet Chandon, and I ate so much food I thought I would burst. I wish we could kick the incumbents out today, right now. This country's ready for change, but we still have to put up with two more months of the terrorists who are occupying our government, and I'm fearful of what they'll attempt to pass through legislation before Jan. 9.

But, their time is at an end.

For 20 of the past 28 years we've had Bush in power; as the VP with Reagan and then on his own, Bush was the controlling influence of the entire 1980s. Isn't it weird that the last time the Phillies won a World Series was in an election year (1980) that started a whole new precedent (of fear and hatred), and now they won in an election year that has started a whole new precedent of hope? Maybe we'll actually be able to walk through Independence Hall again someday....

QUINN DEVEAUX

Quinn is from the Bay Area and is currently on a West Coast tour. The last time I saw him, which was the first time I met him, was about a year and a half ago, and he was about to embark on an East Coast tour. I asked him how it went and he said it went very well, and that he went even further east, to London and Scotland.

Quinn says his influences include Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters. He's got a great voice, and his hollow body guitar sound really picked up well with my cheap little point-and-shoot camera.

This video was taken during Quinn's last minute booking at Liquid Assets wine bar in Ashland, Oregon. It was a Monday night, and since there were no Shakespeare plays that night, it was a rather slow night for businesses in the area. There were about ten people there to see him play, mostly friends, although there were a couple of randoms who ended up buying his CD (which I did as well, it's called Lions on Lakes). I'm looking at the CD now, and there's no website listed on it, even though I heard him tell some people there was. I was going to link to it from this post. If I find out what it is, I'll come back and update this.

Last night Quinn was supposed to play another club in town, but when I got there to see him, it turned out the place had been triple-booked. So, Quinn and I and several friends sat and had drinks and watched the other bands play. I left early, right as Quinn was setting up on stage to play, and I felt bad for ditching him, but he had quite a crowd at that point. I'll have to ask him how it went when I play disc golf with him later this afternoon.

MOVING TYPE

Wandering around Manhattan last week I happened across the New York Times building. It was a huge building, with the NY Times masthead over the entrance in big, metal type. Curious to see if I could get to the top floor for a view, I walked inside (see below for the video of when I finally did get a good view of the city from a rooftop).

The lobby had this cool art exhibit of moving type, which is shown above. I have no idea what the significance, or insignificance, was of each bit of type on the screens. The only common thread is that each screen poses a question, with no answer. It was kind of like a reverse magic 8 ball (remember those things from the 70s, where you asked a question and then shook the 8 ball up and an answer appeared in the window?)

NINE ELEVEN OH EIGHT NYC

Just got back from a whirlwind tour of Manhattan. I was there for almost exactly twenty-four hours, and spent the entire time trudging up and down the city streets in Keen sandals, which have no arch support at all. Highly recommended.

I found out that day that the place we were staying, which was supposedly five minutes from Rockefeller Center, was actually in Weehauken, New Jersey. Does anybody know where that is? 'Cause I sure didn't. Suffice it to say that you're missing absolutely nothing if you never, ever visit the place. It's a ten to fifteen minute cab ride via the Lincoln Tunnel, depending on your driver's familiarity with the area. If, say, your driver has to consult with his cab company on the radio several times while driving around post-industrial warehouse districts, your trip might even take as long as twenty minutes. And that's only if you're getting in the cab at the lower end of Central Park and it's two in the morning.

All in all it was an epic trip, with Weehauken the only asterisk. Unless you include having to run a gauntlet of canine-unit cops at the Philly train station, or having to subject to your bag being searched at the Conan O'Brien show. But I don't count those things as asterisks. Just Weehauken.

DR. SKETCHY'S ANTI-ART SCHOOL

What a fun event this was. In a small town like Ashland, everyone knows everyone, and since there's a ton of super talented artists here, it was a very festive and creative evening.

I originally was going to go by myself, but at the last minute a friend of mine, Julia, came by my house to play backgammon, and I told her about this. It was surprising she didn't already know, as she's an artist and way hooked into the art scene here. But it was more fun to show up with a date than to show up solo, even if she does have a boyfriend.

It was tricky drawing in bad light, with multiple shadows of my pencil all over my drawing pad. But being up front helped a lot; most people were much further away from the stage than I was (I was sitting on the models' couch).

I was really glad to get this one drawing out of the event, as the rest of the ones I did weren't that great. This is the girl you see in the end of the video, nearest the camera, who's talking. She was by far the hottest model there, and this portrait of her was done while she was posing with two other models, but I didn't have the time, or inclination, to draw them with her so near at hand. One thing that was difficult was drawing the makeup she had on, which was a big blob of red on her cheek and some heavy eyeliner.

PHILLY GRAFFITI

My brother just sent me this link to a graffiti artist whose work we used to see back in the day in Philly.

http://215hiphop.com/interviews/first-element-interview-with-credit-xtc/

The writer's name was Credit, and I remember seeing his work all over Center City, where we lived. This was in the early 80s, and it was so cool to see graffiti evolving from bubble letters to wildstyle as it was happening. I remember I moved to Oregon in 1983 and was wearing an adidas running suit and suede Pumas with fat laces, and no one, and I mean no one, had ever seen anything like that before in Oregon. It was pure culture shock for the locals, and for me and my twin brother as well. Moving from inner city Philly to the homogenous, white state of Oregon was a trip. I remember being way into graffiti, even though I was only 13 and had never really done any major pieces anywhere. One time I worked up the courage to go out and do a full color piece, and I got caught by a cop walking the street. My brother was standing watch, but we weren't prepared for how much noise the can of paint was going to make. It made it hard to hear anyone approaching.

I think that's what I really miss about the early days of graffiti. It was still raw and unpopular among the masses, and it involved a great deal of risk, which made it a great adventure. It's one of those things you think only you and your friends are into, then all of a sudden it's mainstream.

(Kinda like 420. 21 years and counting, but now it's to the point where the Comedy Channel makes a nod to it on their programming—at least that's what I heard they did this last Sunday).

Anyway, reading this link above was like a missing piece of a puzzle that finally turned up after 25 years. I really wish I'd taken photos of some of Credit's killer shit, like the piece that was up on McCall school on 6th and Spruce, next to Jay Cee. Credit's piece was this killer wildstyle I'd never seen anywhere before, and Jay Cee's was the old school bubble letters next to it with the blue to white interior. I can't remember who went over it, but I do remember seeing Met and Espo up there after that.

I don't think this link mentions Bucks as part of the XTC crew, but I could swear I remember seeing XTC next to a couple of Bucks' tags near 10th and Spruce.

Taking the train to see our dad (whose birthday is today, happy birthday Dad!) in Germantown was always an occasion to look for new work by Credit and Jay Cee. We'd leave Market Street station on the Conrail, and there were a few years there where we kept seeing new pieces like every week. By this time graffiti had mostly moved to walls, though I do remember the days of riding the old Septa subway cars covered with bubble letter graffiti, with the insides completely covered with early writers' tags. People thought it was ugly back then, but I remember being a kid and being fascinated by the lettering, and trying to decipher what it said. I've loved typography ever since.

NUDES

I was going through my sketchbook just now and I figured I might as well post more of these images from my Monday morning figure drawing sessions. I mean, what good are they doing anyone just sitting in an unopened sketchbook?

A LIKENESS

After missing the past couple of weeks, I attended the Monday morning figure drawing session this morning. The model was a woman in her mid to late 60s, and she had a lot of detailed lines in her face that I wanted to capture, but the drawings we were doing were mostly gestural, with a couple of 25-minute sessions at the end. It's amazing how fast twenty five minutes goes by when you're super focused on something. This is all I was able to do in the last 25-minute session, but I really captured a likeness of the woman. It's the first likeness of someone I've managed to capture (their face, anyway) since I started doing these workshops.

HANDS AND FEET

In yesterday morning's figure drawing session, I wanted to concentrate on the model's hands and feet. Most people don't spend enough time practicing drawing hands and feet, and I learned in art class a long time ago that it's easier to fake an area of the face than it is to fake accurate looking hands and feet.

In this particular pose I was most concerned with the model's left leg, in particular how it firmly weighted her to the ground. I wanted to convey how much of her weight she was putting on her left leg, and also how relaxed her hands were. She had very large, mannish hands, and I had to check several times to make sure I was seeing them correctly.

LEST WE FORGET

The other night I got home from a day at the office (thankfully a rare occurence) and my friend called to tell me it was Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras. I found some purple beads—couldn't find the green and gold ones to go with them—and headed downtown. No one was out celebrating, and I couldn't figure out what was up. Then I walked into a bar with a TV and realized that not only was it Fat Tuesday, it was also Super Tuesday.

The nerve of the networks to override a real and tangible holiday with coverage of an unreal and intangible non-holiday. As if the election process means anything anymore, if it ever did.

New Orleans deserves better.

WORTH THE WAIT

Finally.

Today was the day I was finally able to ride the hill I live on. After four years of temptation. It's a very steep, very long hill, and it got 9 inches of snow dumped on it in just over four hours. And it's still snowing. It usually gets plowed before I think to snowboard on it, but today the snow was just too thick and too fast for the plows to catch up. I was racing the plow with each run, and I knew it, as I could see the plow on the streets below mine.

I got three runs in on the hill to my left, which is the steeper of the two (I basically live at the top of a convergence of two hills which are at a 90-degree angle), before the snow plow came along. Then I got two more runs in down the other hill before it got too dark to see.

It was epic.

I was actually able to carve and make powder turns, right from my front steps.

The power was out during the snowboard runs, and stayed out for a couple of hours afterwards. It's obviously back on now.

During that time I decided to read an art history book called David to Delacroix, by candlelight. There was a partially full box of beer outside my front door, covered in snow, left there by a friend on poker night last Thursday. I stepped out on the porch, barefoot, and grabbed a beer. It was a New Belgium Fat Tire, which I've avoided drinking for over 10 years. But it was sitting there in the snow, and the power was out, so I tried it for the first time in over a decade and discovered that it was delicious. I don't know if it was the circumstances surrounding the tasting of the beer, or if it actually had gotten better.

Then my neighbor called (on my landline), and asked if I had enough candlelight to play backgammon by. I said I did and voila, we were playing backgammon.

It was all very romantic.

Until I thought I detected a slight humming sound.

I got up from the game to turn on a light switch, thinking for sure that it wasn't going to produce anything. But no, on came the light. It was so disappointing.

Hopefully the power goes out again soon.

SNOWED IN

I woke up this morning to an email from my twin brother, saying they had about six inches of snow in Cottage Grove (Oregon), and that it was still snowing hard. I called him and asked him to turn on his video camera on his computer so I could see. He figured it was snowing where I am, since the elevation here is about 2200 feet and the elevation in Cottage Grove is about 1000 feet. But no, it was just slightly raining here at the time.

Well, that's changed, as you can see.

My cat decided to make a cameo in this short film; thank you Tabitha.

Just finished a glass of red wine that someone left here on poker night, which was accompanied with a bit of 12-month aged Spanish manchego cheese on a rice cracker. I don't normally drink in the afternoon, but it was so pretty with the snow falling and the quiet that snow brings that I just couldn't help myself.

Now it's back to working on production work for my most recent client, adidas. I've gotta cut out the background from thirty pairs of shoes, four shots for each shoe. It's a good thing my new Native sunglasses arrived the other day, as the act of staring at a screen all day is greatly improved with the addition of polarized lenses on one's eyes (no color correction at the moment, so I can get away with wearing them).

CONTEMPLATION

Once again I attended the Monday morning figure drawing class. Today I wanted to focus mainly on hands and feet, but this drawing is probably my favorite of the day. The model had a very contemplative mood, which I think I kind of managed to capture.

CARROT CAKE KARMA

Today was one of those days where things just sort of worked out. I went to the local food co-op to grab some lunch and groceries, and when I was paying for my stuff at the checkout counter I was told that my co-op member number wasn't showing up in the system. This also happened to me yesterday, and the checker said her machine had done that to someone else, so I just figured it was a computer issue.

But today the girl who was my checker happens to be a friend of mine, and she told me the real issue, which was that my membership must have expired. She asked me if I was on the payment plan for my membership (it's $100 to be a member, and they let you make $20 installments every six months, interest free, so of course I did that rather than shell out the full hundred all at once). I told her that yes, I was on the payment plan, and she said to go the customer service desk and get it straightened out.

I went to the customer service desk and was told that I'd missed a payment, and as a result would have to pay a $10 reinstatement fee. I asked the girl at the desk what the policy was to notify members of when their next payment was due, and she said I should have received a bill. I told her I'd never received a bill, and then she looked up my information and said that I'd been sent a bill last December 1st. I told her I'd never received the bill, which I didn't (I'm thinking now it must have gotten delivered to one of the mailboxes next to mine, as I often receive mail that belongs to my neighbors), and she then got the manager to come deal with me.

The manager, who was surprisingly young, came along and told me that it was simply policy and there was nothing she could do about it. "But I didn't do anything wrong, and now you're charging me", I said. She then said she had a record of the fact that the bill had been sent to me, and I told her that was great, but I never received it.

By that time I'd migrated over to a demo table where another friend of mine was giving a demo on some raw, vegan food supplement, and there were several people standing around trying the samples. One of the people standing around was a woman in her early 60s who happened to mention to someone else that she was shopping for ingredients for a carrot cake, but that she didn't have a good recipe for a carrot cake. Overhearing this, I introduced myself and told her that I happened to know of the best carrot cake recipe in the world, and that it was my mother's and was published in a cookbook which I happened to have. The woman was just in the process of giving me her phone number so that I could call her with the recipe when the manager who'd been looking into my membership billing issue came over and kind of hovered there, waiting to talk to me.

She mentioned again that my account had been officially past due as of January 1st, and that I should have received a bill, and I remembered right then that I'd just received my monthly co-op member coupons for the month of January. I asked her how it was that I was still receiving coupons if my membership was expired, and she agreed that was odd. Then the woman wanting the carrot cake recipe, who was still standing right there, said to this manager girl that she was a member, and hadn't received her January coupons. It was perfect timing, as I was then able to say, "see, the postal system isn't foolproof".

The manager finally relented and told me she'd wave the reinstatement fee if I had the money—twenty dollars— for my overdue payment, which I promptly handed her.

I got home and called the woman to give her the carrot cake recipe, and then said she might as well stop by and borrow the cookbook from me, as it was rather lengthy to tell it to her all over the phone. So, she came by, and she just left. She was here for about half an hour, looking at my art and telling me stories about her life in San Francisco, and how she was an interior decorater and a color expert and lots of other things. She came into my kitchen and started looking at stuff, and I was glad I'd just done a thorough cleaning of my house last night. She was wearing some kind of perfume, which is still lingering in my living room.

MONDAY MORNINGS

Today I attended my first figure drawing workshop in the studio of a local Ashland artist. I'd met him during this month's First Friday artwalk, and he encouraged me to come to his workshop. It's on Monday mornings for ten bucks, and there's no instruction, which is nice. Just a series of drawings done in consecutively longer increments. First it was two-minute drawings, then five-minute drawings, then 15-minute drawings, and finally 25-minute drawings.

There were about 15 people at the workshop, with myself and another guy being the only men there. Not sure if that means that most of the artists in this town are women, or if it means that it's mainly women who are interested in figure drawing.

This is the drawing I did that I like the best. I did a few face drawings, but the paper I chose to bring had way too much tooth (rough surface) for fine detail work.

COMANCHE MOON

I was at my brother's house over Christmas and wanted a book to read, and my brother handed me a nice, thick, hardback book from his bookshelf, which is loaded with nice, thick, hardback books. It was a book I'd never heard of, Comanche Moon, which is the prequel to Lonesome Dove. I'd never heard of Lonesome Dove either before last fall, when my brother gave me that book to read the last time I was at his house wanting something to read.

I've been reading the book on and off since Christmas, and I just finished it tonight, and there's some weird coincidences concerning it. First, I've noticed in the past week during football games on CBS that some kind of made-for-TV movie of Comanche Moon is supposed to air soon, maybe even tonight. How is it that a book written over 10 years ago, which I've just recently heard of and even more recently completed, happens to be broadcast as a TV movie right as I'm finishing the book? There were no ads for the movie when my brother gave me the book; it was only because he'd known I'd finished Lonesome Dove that he remembered to give me that particular book (as an identical twin, I feel qualified to sometimes speak as if I knew what my brother was thinking, even if he didn't actually tell me).

And the second weird coincidence is that, in the very last pages of the book, a character was mentioned who was just some background character that was never mentioned before or after. Just before I got to the page with that character, a friend from Eugene called and I got up to see who it was and didn't answer it 'cause I was so close to finishing the book. Well, the friend who called has a somewhat unusual name, Josh Korn, which just happened to be the name of the random background character in the book. Granted, the character in the book was spelled Josh Corn, but still, it was weird to see that name staring back at me right after I'd gotten the phone call.

Bizzare.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

So tired. Was up 'til 4 a.m. Wednesday night, hanging out with a girl I met at open mic night at a local bar here in Ashland, then got up and went to Eugene for the Pac-10 opener of men's college basketball, where the Ducks played Cal. Right before I was to leave, a friend of mine who used to live in Eugene, but who now lives in D.C., called from the S.F. airport and said he'd be in Eugene that evening. Since I had no place to stay lined up, and his mom's house is super nice, I was glad he called.

After the game, which Oregon won 79-70 after blowing a 14 point lead in the second half, we went out to a club where there was a killer DJ and lots of slutty looking dancing girls. Then it was back to the nice house in Hendricks Park to sleep for a few hours before making the journey back to Ashland this morning.

And now I'm off to another group of girls' house for a birthday/sushi party, for which I'm late.

WINTER CONTEMPLATION

While on an irregular visit to the local Ace hardware store (I'm not the handyman type, at all) to pick up an air filter, I happened down an aisle filled with art supplies. There were several varieties of paper to choose from, and brushes and paints and inks. Overall it was the best selection of art supplies anywhere near my house, and it took me over four years to discover.

I knew I wasn't going to be able to leave the art section without picking up something, and my eye landed on a sumi-e ink set. I've always loved Chinese brush painting, and even though I've spent many hours watercoloring, I've never managed to work with sumi ink. I went to some websites just now to get inspired, and the paintings I liked the most were ones that incorporated snow. I think what I like most about the idea of painting snow with black ink is that of course you can't paint white snow with black ink. You have to paint other things to make the snow stand out.

This is an entirely different process than what people say I'm good at, which is creating photorealistic drawings. While there's something satisfying about drawing in that manner, it lacks spontaneity and freshness. Yet I find myself drawn to both types of expression.

This just reminded me of something that happened on the First Friday artwalk last Friday. I was in a cluster of studios above one of the galleries, where the respective artists had work on display. I overheard a conversation about Philadelphia, which I still resonate with from my childhood there, and went over to see what was being said. I introduced myself to the artist, who was a woman from a suburb of Philadelphia. I then went to the adjacent studio and picked up an American Artist magazine from a stack near the door, and opened to a random page, which turned out to be the beginning of an article on Philadelphia artists.

I read the article for a bit, then went up and introduced myself to the artist, who had some very good portraits in his studio. After listening to him talk for a few seconds, I asked him if he was from Philly. He said that he wasn't, but he was from Jersey, which is basically the same as far as accents go. Then he said that I was the first person to call him on his accent, and that no one else ever picked up on it (or at least didn't comment on it if they did). I asked him how long he'd been here, and I forgot the exact number of years, but it was lengthy.

I realized, while talking to him (I can't remember his name), that he must be the artist that did the Monday figure drawing sessions. I asked him if that was the case, and he said it was. I promptly invited myself to the next session, which costs $10, and he said he'd see me on Monday, which was yesterday. However, after snowboarding in 10 degree weather, and drinking beer and sake with a friend who was visiting, I didn't feel like getting up Monday morning and walking through the snow with my art supplies. So, I want to do it next Monday for sure.

BACKGAMMON BLUES

What to do when the local ski resort is closed due to too much snow? Play backgammon on a brand new table of course.



EXPAND MT. ASHLAND—OPEN ARIEL !

SPRING IN JANUARY?

Just got in from sitting outside reading a book. It's 60 degrees here in Ashland, and even warmer in direct sun. At one point I had to wave off a bee that was trying to land on me. A bee, in early January! I'm taking advantage and have all my doors and windows open, and the fresh air is blowing out all the canned air that's been trapped in here for weeks.

Spent New Year's Eve here in Ashland, and at the midnight hour I was at the Inner Child Cafe, trying to land a kiss on one of the few remaining single women in the crowd. I managed to succeed, briefly, with one of the women I'd had dinner with earlier, but alas, she told me she'd promised to bed with another woman that night. I was mildly disappointed, but not nearly as much as my friend who'd driven an hour to spend the night with the other woman. Poor guy, he had to drive all the way back at 3 a.m. Or at least that's what we think he did; no one seemed to know when or where he'd wandered off to.

Yesterday was spent watching meaningless college football games, the highlight of which was videotaping my drunk friends standing in front of the big HD TV pointing at hideous Georgia cheerleaders, saying rude and crass things. Now I've got great blackmail material should I ever need it...