The World Examining Works

Cabin Fever

 

 

 

 

Winter is getting a bit old hat around here - but must be even more so for the inhabitants of North Dakota and Minnesota. So I have taken to meditating on mandarins - well - looking at them anyway.

 

I like the ones with leaves on best.

 

 

Robert is painting - as per usual. I always find the painting eqipment picturesque in itself.

the tape, the paper towels, the blotches, the blades etc etc.

 

even the gloves and the face mask.

 

This was once a very nice linen skirt from Eileen Fisher that I had had for at least eight years - even when we lived in Morocco. (Sob sob) - and R. says it isn't really absorbent. Lil assef (too bad) quelle domage (what a pity) che vergonia (what a shame). Weird that when you get really ancient you have all this stuff floating around in your head...

As you can tell the cold is getting to us.

This is a metal baking tray with tin foil in it - and paint too. At least it's nice bright color.

Hope you are feeling cheerful and colorful.

 

What We See

 

In 2006 we went to live in Morocco which was wonderful but felt a bit isolated. My son asked me if I had ever thought of starting a blog --which he explained was a WEB-LOG. 

So I started blogging ( sans photos) to record our rather different life there. So when we came back to New York, I continued blogging for all sorts of reasons.

In truth, I had become a shutterbug. My husband meanwhile was painting and painting and showing his work at a gallery in Chelsea and looking at things all the time.

Recently he asked me if he should start a blog to record images and ideas. An excellent idea. So he did, and it is here.

So here are both of us playing with images and looking at the world from the same spot but differently.

What would I do if I couldn't look out of the window?

As to what blogs are for.......well, they're for anything you want.

 

Abstracty

 

Top layer: Robert works on a glass palette and the water and/or thinner makes natural inlets and mountains and waves.

Middle: Paper used for cleaning brush. Random.

Lower: Plastic spread on floor now floor has been sanded.....

Dog.

Building that somehow got inside a car on 22nd Street.

Flower that has lasted over a week.

 

 

Work in Progress

 

"I love work: I could stand and look at it for hours." A very ancient joke.

 

But how thrilling the great big, gigantic hole in the ground at the corner of 8th Avenue and 26th Street! With bulldozers and diggers.

Peter Lappin does quite different work entirely. He sews clothes from 1940's Butterick patterns and transforms himself into Cathy. How rarely one comes upon a snood nowadays.

Deniz scores films.

Henry is just beginning to create all sorts of things like pictures and block towers.

With us, it's same old, same old, but how much fun it is to do work you like to do, and what torture it would be to be made to work eight hours at something you hated just to get the money -- which is the fate of so many people.

A glass palatte

A hat under construction.

Re-reading Mrs Dalloway after a forty year gap. How differently it reads, and how rich it is! It is truffle and fruitcake, to be taken in very small nibbles. It is also dreadfully sad.

 

 

To worship idleness in days like these

must be accounted sin. To contemplate

in silent awe and longingly these trees

this path leaf-strewn and wet, roses late

blooming after frost --panoply of things

I may not stop for, may not understand.

Count wasted time this lingering which brings

content not cash. It isn’t what I planned.

 

 

 

 

Crab's Last Outing

 

 

Robert Moses Beach, Tuesday. Photo courtesy of Robert Schmid

 

My reading suggestions appear here.

Art Opening

 

The good things about art openings are: 

the flowers

the puppies

 friends and family

and people wearing orange --for some reason the evening's top color.

 

Photos taken at the Sears Peyton Gallery, June 2nd.

Details of the show here

Paintings

 

 

A long time ago, in another life, I was an art crtitic for Long Island Newsday. I would go to exhibitions all over the Island and have to come home and think up 750  semi-sensible words to describe/evaluate/discuss the exhibitions I had seen.

This was not always easy. If I liked the work, I was considered 'perceptive'. If I didn't like it, I was considered stupid or ill-educated.

As everyone knows, there is a great deal of bunk written about art. Probably more pretentious verbiage than about almost anything else. There is also some thoughtful, useful stuff, but not much of it.

All this rambling is because I have to write a short piece to go with Robert's art show in June. All these pictures here aren't his paintings at all.

Just the paper he cleans his brushes on.

I was thinking of inventing an obscure abstract painter to write about. This might have been fun. Quite a lot of modern art borders on the hoax-like. So no great thoughts from me. 

 

 

*

Just People/Maroc

 

The new airport is rather splendid and airy.

It provides employment for all sorts of people. I don't think in America there would be six people in suits organizing the baggage carts.

Such contrasts: here Essouira. A shop with open bags of grain.

Ismail, a very modern young Moroccan, who used to work for us is now a waiter at a swanky riad. Photographed at Cafe France. 

If you want anything toted about the place, men with handcarts are happy to oblige. Sometimes things are rather slow.

When couples have been together for ever and ever they seem to turn into an amalgam of a person: colors.....sandals....Seen at the Medersa Ben Youssef.

At the Musee de Marrakesh, pattern upon pattern......

Grandpa with his bicycle in the park. Marrakesh medina. 

In Djemma El Fna two young girls encounter an old man who, apart from his Crocs and socks, might have lingered from Bible times, and a water seller with rather a splendid hat.

On rue riad zitoune djedid (Olive House Road --the new one) the fruit stand is always open and the little boy clamors to see what's available.

 

 

Note:I hate having my photo taken and I bet other people do too. There were so many people I would have loved to have photographed but didn't dare ask or want to intrude.

Sweetness

 

What a positive orgy and wallow in all that is sentimental and Hallmark card-ish!

Such gift wrapped hearts with ribbons and cellophane.

A holiday designed...

 nd sickly and not at all good for you

fofor lovebirds and kindergartners

and charming little putti!

But how to devour the little angels? Should one begin at the feet? Better not to think.

The best are the chocolate labs. Haha!  a pun, sort of.
 

Then to trim it with ribbons and chintz-covered boxes.........

but look up above --a row of elegant shoes....

Photos taken at Bon Bon Chocolatier in Huntington New York, according to my husband, the very best chocolate in the whole world. And no, they are not paying me for saying this....

This picture is from the heart wreath in the window.

Oh, overblown holiday!.....such fun nonetheless.

Send candy soonest.

*

Unsettled

 

 

 

It's still much too cold.

New snow falls on old snow and people from Poland tell me weather is rather fine.

Robert starts the very complicated drawing for a very complicated painting.

Even the tracing paper ripples like the ice-clad sidewalk.

The space that is a pop-up shop on the corner of 8th Avenue and 22nd street is setting up for a new art show. Repro antique sculptures a bit like the ones we had to draw from in art school in the sixties of the last century. When they asked me if I wanted to come in, I thanked them and said it was fine.

I just wanted to take a photo of the spare-parts dolly because it was so spectacularly gray.

For some reason, this week has been rather blanched of color...

...except this morning when the blue sky cradled the reluctant-to-leave-moon.

The pigeons were circling and circling over the dog-run the other day.

 

On a more cheerful note, I'm reading a wildly ribald but wonderfully funny book called Duck Duck Wally about a young man in LA who is a ghostwriter for a rapper--(who knew?) The author, Gabe Rotter was one of my students. How sweet vicarious success is!