Will miracles never cease? Looks like I’ve got a couple of walls to paint oil on in Williamsburg for the summer. God bless the sublease season. It will be nice to take the oils and brushes out of storage… they’ve been untouched since IT IN space. There is a lot you can do with acrylics and inks and various mixed media, but at the end of the day there is just something so luminous and flesh like about oil paint… nothing compares and it smell like heaven (or sex at least) as well. Finally I get to do the Diners paintings and Willoughy and Clark.
So I was off to Manhattan yesterday by way of 2 and 3 at Bergan, when I was struck by an intense need to rid myself of the gallon or so of ice coffee I’d drunk moments earlier. Hard to find a public pissoir on Flatbush Ave, so I wanderd into Freddy’s, the Art Bar a block off. The above wall gaffiti is some of the best I’ve seen since Basquiat closed at BMA. Freddy’s is the sort of place where you find paintings on the wall that you recognize from past Allan Stone group shows… real serious paintings and lots of art zines and poetry and of course drunks. Quigley and I used to fancy the place quite a bit, but then life happened… so thanks to my bladder it was nice to visit ecore fois for all the old times.
I took a walk in the swelter of Central Park and there is a fair set up at the skating rink, which is a fun idea, but I was mostly interested in the engineering of this new skyscraper. I guess that these exterior tirangles are load bearing like that thing I.M. Pei built in Shanghai, or was it Hong Kong?
Here is the Summerstage stage, where Major Tom and the boys will be opening for the Blind Boys of Alabama some time soon. Nice venue.
Sometines Central Park seems like a Seurat Idyll…
…with little Picassos along the paths…
Actually the Picasso chalk drawing is from Prospect Park and was by some Puerto Rican kids hanging out after the parade… here they are:
This mornings miracle involves the Polyphonic Spree. I’d seen them a while back on Trio in a live show and the they sort of freaked me out. The lead singer is filled with charisma and sounds kind of like Pink Floyd front man, Rodger Waters (who has agreed to reunite with Floyd for Live 8… which is sort of amazing) but witha better voice and then his huge band has all this Brian Wilson Smile type arrangements and instrumentation going on… you know the guy playing the glochenspiel will put that down and play tuba… and weirdest of all, they dress up like a church choir in robes and sing all this happy peppy music (sort of like The Happiest Guys In The Wold… but more Brian less Beatles and more people)… When i went to to Thiebaud opening with Scooter, we talked at length about how great and weird they were and I really wanted to get their album, but as I’m always broke and I had no idea what any of the songs were called,… it seemed risky. So I’m walking Ms. Pearl Bailey and we come upon a huge bag of empty c.d. cases … not a c.d. in the bunch…just the jewel cases… except for one sleeve laying in the middle of the street: The Polyphonic Spree… with the song I liked best (the single with video) Light&Day. Shall miracles never cease?
