Julie RYAN exhibition SHOWROOM Gallery

Installation View: Julie Ryan @ Showroom Gallery, NYC, 2013

 http://www.showroom170.com/julieryan.html

Installation View: Julie Ryan @ Showroom Gallery, NYC, 2013

MARY, BLINKY, YAY! @ Kunstmuseum Bonn

From Left: Stefan Gronert (curator), Mary Heilmann, Christoph Schreier (curator, deputy director)

Installation view Mary, Blinky, Yay! @ Kunstmuseum Bonn (From Left: BP,BP, MH)

Installation view Mary, Blinky, Yay! @ Kunstmuseum Bonn (From Left: MH,MH,BP)

MARTIN PFEIFLE & STEPHEN WESTFALL @ Kunstgalerie Bonn

http://www.kunstgaleriebonn.de/03_2013_papier-3.htm

WESTFALL installation view Kunstgalerie Bonn, 2013

The Free Play/Second Proof

The Free Play/ Second Proof

Authorship:

“Just because I tell you something doesn’t mean that you own it.” He is talking about other artists infringing on his intellectual space. We sat on a slightly up-tight couch - the kind that looks inviting but betrays basic creature comfort. Having finished breakfast he spoke those words and I remember thinking to myself that that line (his line) would be a great first line of an essay: My essay. It seemed to me that by speaking it he inadvertently offered up a challenge. But no body quotes anybody anymore…what’s the purpose?

Swimming:

The pool in the backyard sits empty all summer long. In autumn it fills with leaves and a few worm riddled apples until winter when snow covers everything up and the pool is as close as it gets to filled-up. By spring the snow melts, ducks move in on their way to cleaner waters and they feed off the pool’s dredge. Mosquitoes gather in the swamp-like condition of this mini-ecosystem where raccoons bob for apples. The bleached out cobalt plastic blue liner invites all living things to its environ… except swimmers, no one swims in the pool.

FRANZ INVITED

FRANZ INVITED

Franz: “Do you think you could ever live in Vienna?”

Julie: “No. No, too many violins.”

Franz: “Ja, ja, too much violence.”

Franz nodded in understanding and continued, “But Vienna needs young artists.” And he invited me to stay.

I had been living in Paris (in love with a violin player) when Mary Heilmann’s impromptu invitation arrived to ‘hang out’ with her in Vienna for her exhibition at Galerie Meyer Kainer. She was travelling alone…’Would I join her?’ It took nearly 17 hours by train to get to the Austrian capital with a plan to stay for several days. Instead it became my home for almost 10 years…because I met Franz West, and Franz invited me. He was always inviting people to join, to eat, to show, to something.

Franz was a choreographer as much as he was any kind of great artist. And he was a great artist. He had this posse of people he was constantly keeping track of: picking up paper cones of tomatoes at the Naschtmarkt, meats at Meinl, bringing in fruits to the atelier, getting phones fixed: organizing. The first time Franz called me on the phone he wondered, “Do you eat lunch?” I thought it might be a trick dietary or leisure question (You lazy hungry artist!) but Franz was an eater, a planner, a reader, a conductor of the people around him. When he himself could not attend said lunch or event, he still orchestrated its line-up: He was still there. And that was just the eating part of the day. This doesn’t even begin to touch the actual art making, curating, family…

Franz had bad knees and a distinctive gate - a swagger. One could spot Franz a kilometer away weaving down the Kartnerstrasse with a book in his pocket, perhaps handing out some cash to the homeless guy who had least annoyed him that day. Because of course these guys knew his walk too (and where he lived!) and they knew he was good for a buck.

To say Franz was generous is perhaps beside the point. I don’t know that he ever thought himself as a “generous” person, as much as a person who was always giving: able to give. He gave back what he could as soon as he could afford to. As an artist Franz did not rise to the scene unscathed, he was not lifted, but rather hoisted (like some of his sculpture) into the art world’s eye. The man who did not drive, the music lover, creature of the night, storyteller, rock star philosopher, avoider of bourgeois middle grounds was one of the greatest livers of life around.

ROBERTA

This is Roberta. When I took this photo about a month ago though I did not know she was Roberta. She was a woman in a blue robe walking past a blank wall and a smoke signal I had some interest in. 


On this day I did not realize that Roberta can dance backwards or that she would come
to refer to my as the "smartest girl in the world." On that day I did not know that later she would insist that she run upstairs to get some money for me, because someone should be paying me lots of money. "Where did you come from? You are beautiful! BEAUTIFUL You are an angel. And look what you can do!" And she would sort of do this little dance and tell me she was going to run upstairs to get me some money.

YOUR MOTHER'S ROLLS

Sometimes when I walked into the bakery or now the restaurant where I cook I wonder 'How did I get here?" 

And I think back to Vienna, and your mother's rolls (which I never tasted) that you described to me. They maybe had cream in them. Not sweet. Crusty. And I imagined them and baked for weeks trying to replicate that taste for you.

I am still baking. I am still trying to find your mother's rolls in my cupboard of dry good. 

Re-Wind

I think Roberta's is my 'rewind' button. Every time we go back there it is like the first time, which is like it was the 3rd and 17th and today. 

WELCOME AUTUMN GLORY

So much catching-up to do! I spent the 'summer' working like a flour-dusted, oven roasted tasmanian devil and then it ended and now it appears to be autumn. A simple stew will have to do. Thank you spice angel! 

SLEEP

Time to lie in the bed I made.

TWIST and SHOUT

We are all born with exceptional physical gifts! All bodies are amazing bodies. I could have been born with a great jaw line, a teeny waist, fast runner or high cheek bones but I was born double-jointed. Yeah...it surprised me too! I twist...and others shout. 

VIP OPENING FRIEZE NYC

Nutcracker by Jennifer Rubell at The Breeder Gallery, Athens

All he wanted was a room alone (see above) to enjoy the fair. All she wanted were some nuts to crack (see above). Here I present some oh-so-random shots from the Frieze Fair VIP opening on Randall's Island, NYC. The titles are terribly incomplete and I will try to get to that later in the day! Right now, I got some nuts to crack, (literally!) It is time to go to the bakery.

SPARE TIME

What do I do in my spare time? I donate my creative energies to SCRATCHbread. I Paint giant arrows and I look for signs where there are none.

SKOWHEGAN AWARDS DINNER

 Skowhagan awards dinner and gala where Mary Heilmann was honored. Yeah Mary!

MY FEAR OF SWEET THINGS THAT BRING JOY: ECONOMY CANDY

I remember Halloween growing-up for two distinct dramatic events: one was the year my friends came hours late to pick me up for Trick or Treat and I sat on the front stoop waiting in my little princess costume feeling terribly sad (Ok, maybe I was dressed as a hobo - but I had the heart of a princess damn it! And I was distraught!) And the second Halloween drama would happen each year after Trick or Treat when we would gather up all of our treats and bring them to the hospital to have them x-rayed for fear that pins of razor blades had been surreptitiously placed inside a Snickers or a Mars bar. I am sorry...did ANYONE else do this?!

I think partially because of this I am not a a big fan of sweet things in general but I am a big fan of bright and bountiful nostalgia with cool graphics! Well, and I Do eat sweets sometimes and then I seek the perfect sweet, in the perfect place. Economy Candy on the Lower East Side has been serving the dental community since 1937.

Gum balls in lock-down at Economy Candy on Rivington St.

SNAILS IN WAITING

Zimtschnecken waiting to proof. In English: cinnamon snails. How lovely and true! Call it what it is: we are a sticky semi-sweet cinnamon snail that will sneak up on you. Yeah! There is a hot kick. Welcome small shelled creatures!! 

What did you do this time Micky?

I was struck (no pun intended, but hell, yes!) by the image on the Band-Aid container! Minnie is "Smacking" Micky (or vice versa?) ...obviously these Band-Aids are geared towards children. So who am I to say? But someone is beating someone up!


I need a Band-Aid.

PORK SHOP

Esposito's Pork Shop dishing out delicious pig parts and more since 1933 in Hell's Kitchen, NYC. Truly a beacon in the night after a spirit-sucking sort of day that called for a closing portion of spicy Italian sausage from some of the more than 10,000 pounds of the stuff they produce each weeks. (Don't really want to imagine the mass of that but..maybe the size of a VW van? Or two?)


Thank you pork people at Esposito's.

PERFECTLY PLASTIC

Tupperware held all of his sadness: a middle class and midwestern thump of hurt. The sadness of being raised on iceberg lettuce instead of arugula. It was the damage of the scraped and dinged (slightly melted at the lip) frosty-green iceberg lettuce crisper. The Tupperware that was no longer in use because no one could find the lid. The crisper was expendable, but no one cared enough about the container to even throw it out! It had so little value that it wasn't even worth throwing away. 


The guy hadn't showered in weeks. I couldn't smell him right then, but I knew who he was and he never showered. He was a drunk boy/man with a hurt heart and he stood screaming below our apartment windows that night in Cleveland. He wasn't looking or yelling for me specifically - it was my room mate who had caught his wrath - I was just in hearing distance, and yet he seemed to be yelling at me too. He cursed her, he cursed all of us (women), he was hard to understand at times but the proclamations were building to one last insult - the crescendo - bellowing..."You, you treat me...you treat me worse, you treat me worse than anything! You treat me like...like, I'm Tupperware! TUPPERWAAARE!"

I still recall his name. I remember his sour body smell in our house mixed with turpentine and stale cigarette. I remember the look of his paintings and that he was smart and well read. But today the only thing that truly resonates carried through the windows that night: You treat me like I'm Tupperware. 

DAILY DENSITY MEASURE

SCRATCHbread

Sometimes I define an inner chaotic day by a number of external measures: like how many subway rides I take. A four fare day is doable (0 is great! Two is cool.) while a 7 or a 9 would be exceptional and undesirable in theory...it would also make me wonder what the hell was going on!   

Now with the work in the bakery/kitchen I have a new external daily density measure because yesterday was a 10 sack day.