sliver rivers and internal logic

The canting voices on this particular story will fade, but they will be going strong on other subjects. We live in a time when people feel pressured to make sententious, pompous and completely false statements about the arts. Art does not have an inherent social or political responsibility. Today with the arts funding slashed there are even more temptations than usual to pretend otherwise- to insist that art can save derelict urban areas, that it can heal the sick and make flowers grow. But the very language that claims to defend art can smother it's wild nature. A work of art, if it is any good, is enigmatic, remote and takes centuries to understand.

In the 1930's a combination of economic misery and political crisis forced artists out of their studios and into the world of public argument-the world of cant. European modern art never really recovered from the dogmas and functionalism of that low dishonest decade. Bob Dylan grew up in a folk movement rooted in the 30's, but he saw that politics was not life-whereas art IS life, and life only. He is an example to emulate: a poet, not a politician, who acknowledges no duty except to making great art. I don't think his critics will change that!

so, someone asked JP, is it a record of performance in the studio? Yes, partly. And then I just had to have this on record "a collector of mine caught her husband staring at one of my paintings......when she asked him what he was doing he said he was trying to read Jose's painting and the more he tried to read it, the more he saw his own story inside the painting. When you look at a Cy Twombly painting and you get just a fragment of the sentence, just one word, but that one word leads you into your own (story): the red color, the bright yellows, touchstones in the painting. I think that is what is happening in these works, which can only be read by me. It's like a diary that you lock. It's private"people need to leave a mark, people write messages that are political, messages about love; people tear shit down and put stuff up.Internal logic resides in the traces



Oh ...my seaweed is almost ready
something about these two just sends me....the cardboard,

the neon enamel paint, the breath compared to the piles I've made....

I just don't know what to do now. BREATHE....
smaller and smaller I go...I think now in reverse. These are very cool piles of unpacked paintings. many layers of homemade detritus...some book pages have found there way in. I am taking a breath for a moment to catch my bearings. I think one more large sheet before the June residency. One or two more trips to NYC prior to res as well. Have any of the questions been answered? I got the book Kamrooz recommended called Abstraction/New Perspectives in Painting.........

let me know when YOU think I am going crazy!

sailing on a cardboard sea

fragment

rivers run through it

rivers run through it
move her.....
of human.........
see the boat? heading south!!!!!!
most of these are tiny as the remains are more like chips than maps......oh the maps!

particular beauty

Anselm Keifer blows me away almost every time.

I heard him speak recently and someone asked if he was scared....

he said no,

he wasn't scared, he was terrified.

Raymond Hains was a french artist part of the Noveau Realisme' I think I may be channeling this group!

of course mark bradford is included here! I have loved him from the start!
as I prepare for my next paper I have come across some particular beauties from my posse'

blue blue indigo

blue does not read the same here.....It really is intoxicating in person. you will see what I mean. I did this last night after some most excellent homemade ravioli and wine ever!! I fell asleep in front of it and woke up in love. it's pretty big....

.hello jooyoung!

I will show you my seaweed next time
blue tape and garden verses....this will all be pulled off once I pick up the ink.
Roots and music OR music roots?
a reflection in a vernal pool in the woods across from my house. I have imagined this, but I know it exists. The snow is nearly gone completely and the earth does smell like this. If you squint your eyes while you are walking you can't help but catch flashes of sunlight as you make your way through the branches down the path on decay as the last fallen leaves metamorph into earth. We too go there.
walnut ink on paper, on canvas....wow canvas. I've mixed up the best batch of wheat paste I've ever made and now all I want to do is wheat paste! I'n pretty certain this will not stay brown.

white girl from south jersey

I can't be Mark Bradford cause I'm not black and I didn't grow up in LA! I can't be Jose' Parla' because I'm not Cuban and didn't grow up in Miami! And I can't be Ellen Gallagher cause I'm not bi-racial......WHO AM I? ....

I found a vintage book of maps I picked up at a yard sale or church sale or something.........things may shift as my detritus gets used up......plus the seaweed I found resembles my collections. I think it may have something growing on it as it has a reptilian texture. We'll see.
Everything I touch turns into something new. every peel I do turns into two. A frontside, a back side an inside an outside. I am finding it harder and harder to throw any scrap away! the piles of detritus are growing. The pieces are smaller and smaller as I use them up and so I have begun a smaller body of work so the proportions remain the same. I haven't glued any thing down yet. I became overwhelmed today by my obsessive compulsive work habits! Questions are surfacing....like, what the fuck am I doing? If I keep this up I will need a bus to get all this to the June residency! I don't mind having a boat load of work but I get into this groove and there's so much and I don't have a clarity to what I am trying to say. I can talk about it endlessly but what am I saying? Am I just using up materials I am producing.......making my own detritus? Why? there is already so much everywhere. But then I went to the backshore and I saw all of my paintings in the landscape of my island. It was an opiphony! This has happened to me before.
I am looking in the woods on a winter day....I am walking on the rocks backshore, picking up sheets of deckled seaweed and stones smoothed by a million years of water, hand drawn rings of igneous intrusions. a rusted pipe wins my attention in this plethora of the mother's detritus......she is the ultimate maker. The rust is her's as well...the pipe holds no beauty with out her touch. She is a force to be reckoned!
glue.......time and collection!
peel.....time and erosion
This is the sweet one today! she is about half the size she was yesterday!

so it snowed......and it was perfect for building these guys! We almost used up all the snow in the yard! I like the idea of the bunnies existing after all the snow on the ground is gone.

notational everyday disturbances

in the gallery but not part of the exhibit

as usual......I gravitate here..
Souls and medicine bottles.......

I think they are saying the same thing in differing languages

too bad about the blue wall

Some interesting pieces from the show
this was the scene prior to people arriving
Went to the first opening of the Base Camp Gallery in Portland Maine last night! Jackman has a large 4x8 woodcut on rice paper in the show!