MY PRETTY

And what will you become my pretty?

THE EARNEST BAKER (VEGAN FOR A NIGHT)

Every time I run out of eggs or butter I become a vegan. (Until, of course the next day when I buy more eggs and butter!) I know some great bakers and some great Vegan bakers...I am neither under any circumstance. I am an earnest baker at best and a lazy half-*#ssed baker otherwise. Tonight was an earnest attempt to conjure up some peanut butter cookies for a dear friend who deserves a decent vegan treat!

Recipe follows....

HUNTER: GRADUATE THESIS SHOW

Jonn Alex Gonzalez 

Top 3 (In no particular order): 

John Alex Gonzalez and his radio-style illustrated cartoon drama with excellent soundtrack. This modest and engaging multi-projection film noir had me from the first sax notes, but it was the attempts to light a cigarette a flip zippo lighter and the timing of the images and text that clinched it. That scrolling sound of the finger on the hinge, the calm speaking voice: it was filmic and it was not a film. It was my favorite surprise and I could imagine it bigger or smaller. 

Jay Gaskill presented two major paintings striking and flawlessly executed. One (I did not measure) must have been 16 feet long and 6 feet high and the other with a golden metallic ochre ground was also large in scale. Both works were smooth emblematic abstractions. I imagine the one pictured here as a complicated pictograph in a UFO exit row really small or in a giant gallery with white walls. Here I am!

Amanda Valdez had a whole slew of paintings presented. A bit of editing might have helped, but never mind, because a few of these were so strong one ignored the rest. The sewn together fabric, canvas, embroidery and paint was a real discovery that could have happened in a LES gallery somewhere. It happened to be at a college graduate show but they are ready to be anywhere and shined.

Jay Gaskill

Amanda Valdez

REINHARD BERNSTEINER: 1963-2011

Bernie (Reinhard Bernsteiner) was born in Villach, Austria in 1963 and would prove to have more style and quiet charisma than any man deserves. He was a very distinctive figure in a Vienna art scene which does not lack in distinctive figures. Bernie and the artwork he made always stood out. 

Bernie's art iconography was simultaneously self-depricating and celebratory. He was a brazen self-chronicler - warts and all - as they say. One of the last works I saw he sardonically lassoed his body parts, including the tumor inside him and took them for a stroll or a dance. It would break my heart to see it hanging in my house except that it was so damn alive! 

PANDA BREAD

People only see what they are prepared to see.

                                    - Ralph Waldo Emerson

It seemed so Panda-Like before it was a Panda. As three lumps of dough rising in a round it was the very essence of the reclusive, polygamous, bamboo-munching black and white beast. 

HELLO CASIO!

I am prone to keeping an eye on the ground in case a fateful trinket be left in my path. But recently because of the paw problems I am more pragmatic with my downward gaze, scanning the sidewalk for pitfalls, old tires or a piles of chicken innards which happens on occasion in my neighborhood.

THE AMAZING MARY

STARBANKS

 I had never seen this before: a combo Capital One Bank and a Starbucks in the bank!? A Starbanks. Ha. But really what a crazy hybrid.