~Got Tech ? what about a .. pressure cooker ?
ok, so artlovers is in the midst of a tech crisis and I gotta upgrade, quote: “artlovers has exceeded its .. we cannot disclose .. shared server memory allotment”, so I have to go slow on the uploads. or they gonna kick me off, and it’s not so easy to fix.
on a low budget.
nothing like reading a good cookbook to help relax the brain .. in the midst of an under-financed web server breakdown. so, guess what JULIA CHILD had to say about pressure cookers, aka IEDs / improvised explosive devices .. !!
Julia disliked them .. “Stinking, nasty bloody pressure cookers, I hate them.”
pg 57, ‘Julia Child – A Life’, Laura Shapiro. Penguin Books, 2007.
so was Julia right on, about EVERYTHING, or what !!
I also really like the book’s cover photo because it relates time-wise and utility-wise to JERRY BLACKMAN’s landline ‘telephone’, below.
and NO, I’m not making light of it, the Marathon Bombing. it was esp terribly sad to target a celebration of life and a new age aspiration .. to bio human green-ness !! I’m just saying, anybody else notice both parents were safely out of the USA. it’s like they came here, and dropped their evil Chechen seed, and split.
I’m just saying I feel for the younger kid .. because he didn’t have a chance. nature & nuture. it’s totally in-wired for humans, esp young humans .. to BELIEVE and to be manipulated . . that’s why their parents are supposed to stick around !! and to set them straight. not twist them out.
see: ‘BELIEVE .. Ever Meek, Ever Malleable’, FRANK BRUNI, NEW YORK TIMES, AUG 26, 2012
IMAGE GRAPHIC/Gullibility .. BELIEVE/FRANK BRUNI, NYT
which brings me to .. this past weekend I went up to YALE, to see the Graduate Open Art Studios.
the one thing that struck me, was .. how much they were bullied by their teachers. produce produce produce. grow grow grow. hey, even the WALL STREET JOURNAL will tell you that sometimes your best ideas come when you sleep, and that the world’s top ten start-up entrepreneurs say number one: .. take time to walk in the park and smell the daisies !!
so, FILE UNDER: pressure cooker, TAKE II.
teachers, ambitions .. living in a bubble. boil. boil. whatever.
it got me thinking back to my OWN time in grad school. well luckily, or unluckily .. pretty much just as much (!!), unlike most of the world .. I was born a dyed-in-the-wool CONTRARIAN, as opposed to a BELIEVER. though I have been, and still pretty much am, quite naive .. which is why the topic holds so much interest for me, I guess.
while everybody else was doing huge, and I mean huge !! acrylic color field paintings, with mad use of masking tape to delineate the sharp compositional edges .. I was drawing, with pencil, tiny 4 x 6 inch drawings .. riffing off 18th Japanese woodblock prints. go figure !!
I had a lot that said: “UP YOURS” !! though I can’t find one like that, exactly at this moment.
but here’s another one:
note the funky hair, and dazed expression .. looking both backwards and forwards at one and the same time, wtf ?
I saw something. but how to put it to .. words.
it didn’t change when I got to New York either.
Kiki Smith conceptualism, Basquiat primitivism .. I was painting flower & vase watercolors.
Jeff Koons hyper-fabrication. I learned to stitch and repair antique quilts.
Cindy Sherman and Gregory Crewdson fabricated narrative photography ? ha. that’s the best !!
I became a paparazzi.
Brooklyn, and back-to-the-earth drawing, with homemade pigments. I started a blog.
I guess that’s just another reason why .. they call me: CRACK, for short ?
NANCY SMITH, pencil drawing, riff off an 18th C Japanese woodblock print, 1976. on paper, 4 x 6 in. Concordia University, MFA Studio Program. Montreal, Quebec, CANADA.
Guido Molinari was my teacher / mentor.
yep, I paid .. my dues. and 3 decades later, I’m still waiting for MY ship to come in.
so good luck .. all.
I’m a BELIEVER, not !!
actually, in a hard-core sense .. yes !!
but, seriously: good luck. NYC ain’t one to embrace anybody, esp work work work, produce.
more like, network network, have dough – can travel.
not that I want to burst anybody’s bubble – what, me ?
and by the way, that’s NYC, spelt: pressure cooker. the mother of them all. and, that’s what’s so much fun about it.
for a contrarian, anyways !!