Week oh heck who is counting?

Blog, Week I don’t know anymore

Hmm, this appears to be a bi-weekly blog now. Since my life has settled down to a dull roar now, this seems appropriate, but I hope it won’t keep some of you in unbearable suspense for too long (Dan). I have to read my own blog to see what happened last time. Lessee here….

Oh yes, the indominatable Christine Parsons. What a lovely woman she is. In spite of her being very busy with her many friends here, and in spite of my ridiculously long-lasting cold (I still wake with a sore throat), I felt that we had a good chance to re-connect. She took me to parts of the city and little coolio restauranty places that I would never have found on my own, and very generously allowed me to accompany her to mountain climbing stores where she purchased a great deal of what is sure to be the newest fashion trend in Jerusalem when she gets there – if she isn’t there already. (Chris – get in touch, darl!)

The jobs continue to go reasonably well – lots of somewhat tedious work, but it is nice as I can work hard and then leave it alone. Momenta is an interesting space, and I am learning a fair bit about how the various systems work here.

I have decided to take up the Cello. My friend Jessica has generously offered lessons in exchange for painting lessons (which she probably won’t have time for me to get to do), so it looks like I’ll have a new arena in which to vent my bassy sorrows. I’m already competent at G, C, and D major scales, and can read some of the notes on the Bass clef. I’m hoping to be good enough to give Sarah a recital when she comes…though at this stage I think every time I make a sound it is amazing, so likely I have a lot to learn.

Also, had a fun time at the Brooklyn Museum’s famed First Saturday event, where there was a Brazilian Samba band complete with free Samba lessons, free movie screenings, presentations, talks, and about a zillion people of all sorts milling around soaking up the Culture. I love how everyone here goes out to all that sort of thing here.

What else? More recently: a humorous brush with fame. (Sensitive readers skip the politically incorrect paragraph which follows.) So I’m having lunch with a couple of friends at the Half King in Chelsea, chatting away and doing whatnot. Behind me sits a big table of well heeled so and so’s, whatever, none of my business, right? So I decide the time is right for some critical fashion discussion, so I says to my friends “I’m not sure about these new glasses of mine. I dunno, I think they’re a little fete somehow”. My interlocutor looks at me funny: “Fete? What do you mean, fete?” “Well,” I says, “you know, like maybe they’re a little on the twee side”. Nope, still no good, not understanding the concept of twee, so I lean in real close not only to my friends ear, but coincidentally to the ear of the bald man with the thin mustache who is one of the well-heeled gaggle and, with a suitably hushed whisper, say “Faggy!”. To this rather shameful utterance, I see the head of the thin-mustached man turning to me and find myself face to face with John Waters! Who proceeds to look at me with, well, what can I say, Disdain, perhaps? Oh lairdy. (For those of you who don't recal Mr. Water's comely visage you should be reminded that he is nothing if not exceedingly twee...). So there goes my chance to be a cult movie star, down the tubes. You have to be careful what you say in this town, especially when you whisper.

So, on to what for many of you is the most important part: The Art Report:

Today I went to the Armory show, and now I am very, very tired. For those of you who don’t know, the Armory is a four day art-fair in which the biggest commercial art galleries from all over the world (mostly Berlin, Paris, Milan, NYC, London and Tokyo) set up work by the artists they represent in TWO gigantic enormous massive gigunda bigger-than-aircraft-hanger sized warehouse things on two Manhattan Piers. This absolutely exhausting display of contemporary art should be seen, as I have learned, when you are Nothungover. I decided to go in a state of Hungover, but I can see now that it was a mistake. So perhaps the following comments are partly motivated by the dreariness of my soggy brain. But that aside: dreadful.

Or perhaps that is a bit strong. Try again: Disappointing. Repetitive. Selfish. Insider. Colorful. Poorly executed. Still with the bloody Dzama. Why is bad painting so good? And for those of who secretly think my paintings are bad – I’m Caravaggio next to these guys. Is this the sincere but sloppy response to the grossly hard edge irony of yesteryear? That makes no sense. The wallowing in technical ignorance is totally loaded with irony (except when I do it. I’m sincere in my ignorant wallowing, and besides, my flatness is in important conversation with the trompe-loile image underneath it, not ironic at all. Well, ok, maybe a bit.). Moral of story: I’m cool, they’re not. Also moral of story: you don’t have to leave Calgary to see good art. Wait, revise that: You don’t need to leave Calgary to see art that looks like art at the Armory show of 2006. Not a lot of Mark Mullin abstraction around – most of the abstract stuff is very hard edge or pastel derivations from nature, but a fair amount of Chris Cran cleverness and heaps of those suburb house guys (Scott, John, etc. sorry I cannot remember the name of the school!). Still some odd return-to-drawing stuff, like nice b&w inky drawings of grassy landscapes. What is strange is that any of these watercolory things that are even partly well done really stand out in the context of so much loud mushy oil smearings. And also just heaps of boring, banal images which are only interesting when you learn of the process in which they were created or the actual contents of the work (i.e. that isn’t just a boring house it is the house destroyed by bombers the next day, etc.). Which is either subversive or stupid. And, I might add, is rather a lot like my TV paintings, so I’m hoping it’s subversive but secretly realize is stupid. So all in all not an exciting year for the dealers of the world. Highlights, however, included Sophie Calle’s return to being followed by a private eye and this time not even being remotely interested in it (cheery!), the entire booth of Peirogi Gallery (here in Williamsburg!) – featuring two beer bottles which had been identically smashed into a thousand fragments and all the twin fragments cleanly presented in a sterile vitrine, a feat of amazing quantum probability! And it wasn’t made by Tim Hawkinson, (who is increasingly the coolest, supercoolest, most underrated and underknown artist, by the way), um, and a guy named Charles Sandison, who at least Palmer should check out, as he did a really nice LCD language thing.

And it was nice because as I was wandering around I ran into two friends, and invited them to dinner with me. It is nice to be in a huge place like New York, or an even huger place like the Armory Show, and be able to run into people you know. And then eat Pad Thai.

Yoikes, way too much information, Ben. Report over and out. Oh, but just so you know too, apparently I’m in another show at Image 54, the same paintings as last time, but in case you missed your chance…

Once again, I hope you are all well. Peter Ross has emailed me, so it is possible that Hell has frozen over and Calgary has been wiped off the face of the earth. Pete, I owe you an email of sincere joy. Seriously. On my current list of people I’m curious about: Mel, Emma, Holly, Jess, Jane and Hye-seung. What are you guys at?

Ooh, that reminds me: I’ve just started a new book – likely quite the opposite of the Foster/Kraus/October people some of you guys are focusing on. It is by Joanna Drucker and it is brand new and called: Sweet Dreams, Contemporary Art and Complicity. Look it up, check it out – I think I think it is good, and very Art driven.

Ok, I’m shutting up now! Love to you all especially my crazy folks in Spain and England!