Wednesday, August 29, 2007

'w' is for ...

more of the same - not quite - thinner veils of fog, less muted, waning moon, wednesday weariness, wariness, political/human misbehavior, winning the 'war on terrorism', 12m$ trust fund for a dog, resignations, and the city of brotherly love is going to release a rap song in an effort to promote non violence in philly. why didn't i think of that?

this 200 year old barn i'm living/working in had vestiges of previous activities everywhere. evidently the wife of the farmer was an accomplished lithographer and left about a half dozen stencil cutting boards lying around. no recognizable image was apparent but the boards have thousands of cutting scars. i managed to resurrect some of the surface by sanding, burnishing, and staining. the result is a labyrinth of meandering lines whose paths go on forever (and would continue to go on given the nature of the aging and weather-beaten wood [as labyrinths go]). so i applied a thick coat of amber resin (spoke of yesterday) to create a stasis on one of the boards. maybe that's part of what all painting or art is? only did it to one board because i'm not sure about my own imposition.
i keep thinking about the japanese word (and school of printmaking) called ukiyo-e: 'pictures of the fleeting and transient world'.
saw clips of sidney pollack's doc on frank gehry again yesterday and i'm still chewing on frank's comment: "i'm hoping, that out of democracy comes an expression that is...the consensus is democracy - ...how does that express itself? it expresses itself chaotically! ...and that chaos, we're starting to feel is beautiful." [sony pictures,2006]
more to say on that later, but 'chaos' has its implications - 'deciphering simultaneity' and 'negotiating difference' are more in line with my sensibilities.
speaking of sony pictures, i was contacted last week about having one of my newport jazz posters on the set of the up-coming 'canterbury's law'. i wonder if shakespeare would approve?
the song in my head this morning: leonard cohen's 'waiting for a miracle'.