2012

Apparently the end is near, or at least the end of the Mayan's Calendar. And we know how well they lasted...find me a Mayan, that's all I have to say.
Here is the thing. We're all so quick to focus on trouble. Real or imagined, high or low potential, big or small. There isn't a damn thing you can do about it anyway so get present and enjoy the day. Make plans, follow through, participate, evolve!
Shake up your schedule. Talk up someone you never chatted with before, take a new route to work, create a different workout at your gym, listen to music previously unconsidered. Read a book. When you shake up your life, change your schedule, or handle things differently, the Gods Pay Attention To You. They're like, "Holy Shit, what's that motherfucker up to now? Wait a minute...damn! Look at her go! He didn't! Unh-unh..." They get involved then. Then contribute. They participate and agree with you. They love it.
Have a great and beautiful New Year.

Heureuse Nouvelle Année

Daisy

Graphite on Paper

4" x 6"

2011

Moscow, Russia...

I love Russia. Well, to be exact I have only been to Moscow. But I feel a deep love for the whole nonetheless. I worked in Moscow for two weeks while I set up Pagliacci for Los Angeles Opera via The Israeli Opera who rented our costumes. Directed by Franco Zeffirelli, it played at the Kremlin Palace Theatre. The thrill of going through security to get into the Kremlin, right next to Red Square and working with the Muscovites, is something I will never forget. I remember walking over the bridge that takes you into the Kremlin proper, knowing this was the very bridge that Napoleon crossed on his horse...among so many other people of historical significance...and me. One evening crossing this bridge I remember in particular. The sun was golden light as it was about to set. Deeply set stone-cut bricks  make up the bridge. It is powerful and sturdy, built with precision and strength. To me it spoke volumes about the people; what they had, created, and endured. Standing on this road I felt these bricks underneath, and looking down at my feet as I walked these 'cobblestones' I had the most amazing time travel flashback. I am a teenager. It is nearing sunset also, with the same golden hued evening light-time glow. It is one of the many times I am walking towards backstage in the summer musical theatre production I was a part of for many years. I quickly returned to where I was, on this bridge into the Kremlin. I stood there thinking of the long road of Life I have walked, and the many shows on which I have worked. My passion for the theatre began at that summer arts program I loved so much. I thought to myself, "I have a love for the performing arts so I could be here today, in Moscow, at the Kremlin Palace Theatre." All the Broadway shows I have worked on, all the Stars I have watched, worked with, and enjoyed from the wings...and that moment, right there on that bridge on my way to the evening performance of Pagliacci, is the most special to me.

The bridge into the Kremlin.

Onstage of the Kremlin Palace Theatre

Flying over Moscow en route to land at the Sheremetyevo Airport I looked down and saw nothing but Birch trees. It seemed like fields and fields of Birch trees. Their shimmering leaves catching the light in the wind and their unmistakable white papery bark standing down into the ground like giant white icicles. Russia was a mysterious land to me, a place we were taught to fear growing up in the 70's, and then magically dispelled by Reagan and Gorbachev in the 80's. We were suddenly allowed to be friends.

Me and Peter, Red Square

I wanted to dive into the Moscow World. To understand, to befriend, to know. I felt like I had never lived anyplace else once we were there. I felt the Spirit of Russia as if it was a part of me, and I was a part of it. Its size was marvelous. The food was incredible. The vodka, well...not that I was able to enjoy too much as I worked long days and didn't really want to drink at night as to be too tired the next day, still was delicious. I brought home a bottle that to this day I haven't opened. The coffee each day in the cafe  at the theatre was the best I may have had anyplace. Tiny servings in tiny cups that packed a delicious intense warmth that got you going. Running down the street after the costume designer Ramona, who claimed that Russia had the best cherries in the world. She darted into a shop and came out with a huge bag full of the dark fruits that we enjoyed the rest of the day through fittings. I Discovered one day that American cigarettes were cheap as candy bars, so I smoked Parliaments like all my Comrades at the theatre. I found this incredible honey shop that had some 100 or so different vats of honey. I brought home a couple of jars that I wanted to save forever, but couldn't help myself and enjoyed the golden flavor. Eating apricots soaked in honey from Moscow...mmmmm, heaven.
There are many days when out of the blue I am transported back to Moscow. I can see the light of the day in my minds eye...the beautiful people...men sitting on the sidewalk making brooms out of the fallen branches...the tall statuesque young women each one more beautiful than the next...the expanse...Red Square...St. Basil's...Gorky Park...all of it. I miss it, Her, regularly. I believe that in the future, Russia is where the next pyramids will be built. but that is another story...
The one thing that stayed with me the most though, were the beautiful Birch trees. I took many pictures of these trees while we visited the Novodevichy Cloister. I have loved birch trees since childhood, as many were on my grandma's land in Minnesota. We used to tear off the paper bark and fold it into a canoe-styled shape and float them in the marsh, or down the clear stream that ran through the woods. I always thought of these trees as magical, as silent watchers. The earth in Moscow at the Cloister smelled just like the same earth as on Grandma's farm. Soft and with a slight sandyness, damp and rich. I remember smelling this so clearly and also flashed back to her farm. I felt two places at once. Was I a child at her farm, or a child here, in Moscow?

Outside Novodevichy Cloister

Novodovichy Grounds

Russian Birch

I believe the space of Moscow, of Russia, allows for this kind of experience, this time-jumping through memory. The enormity of her allows an openness that I never experienced in the comparatively and ridiculously cramped, puny, Manhattan, or the country-like Los Angeles. When I thought of these places I felt I could hear Russia giggling..."as if", she seemed to say. "There is no comparison to Mother Russia!" "Come, cleave to my breast!"
But still, it is the quiet gentleness of the Birch trees that I think about most. I painted them several times over. Coming back to them again and again. They are like ghosts, silent young gods. Waiting. Whispering, "come home. Come home."

Birch Tree #1

Oil on Wood

12" x 13"

2008

Church

Oil on Bamboo Curtain

60" x 84"

2008

Russian Birch #1

Oil on Wood Tree Planter

23" x 23" x 15.5"

2008

Missing Painting?

So, in my office at The Ahmanson Theatre I have some of my paintings hanging on the walls. Yesterday when I went to work one of the paintings was missing. I was in a slight panic thinking it has been stolen. My friend and co-worker Ann found it behind the support beam, behind the door as it is when the door is propped open. I was baffled. I am the only one who has a key. Well, actually security has a key, but to be honest they have no idea which key it is. The lock was put in special when they built my office. The few times I have left my keys at home or in my car and asked security to open it, several minutes of fumbling and hunting for which one fits made me realize that no one would ever go in there. Note...this means the cleaning staff never goes in either, which means I have been cleaning my own office for the last year (gratefully, not a complaint). Said painting is hung on the wall to the right of my HD monitor, behind a sculpture and two other small paintings that lean against it. In order for this painting to "fall down" all this other stuff would need to have fallen also. When I opened my door last night I saw right away that the sculpture, one of my "Delicate Balance" sculptures was on its side. I made the Delicate Balance scupltures after 9-11 as a reminder of just that. We all reside in a very delicate balance. I have most of them at my studio, up on shelves. I call them my earthquake detectors. They are figures that stand on a precarious balance. They have never toppled even when we had a 4.9-something earthquake...I also noticed that the two paintings that lean against it were more forward than normal, but I didn't notice the big painting that was gone from the wall, until a few minutes later when I was like "what's missing here?" "OMG where is the black and white Shell Reversal painting?" One of my dressers asked if it was one of my 9-11 paintings. When I confirmed it was, she said she felt it had to do with the truth of 9-11 being revealed...hopefully. Then Ann found the painting behind the post, behind the door. I put the painting in a new place on another shelf, this time not hanging it.
I work with a lot of very special souls. Psychic, healers, yoga instructors, astrologers...all on the cosmic wavelength.
It can be tricky working with such aware souls. Sometimes it brings in so many unseen energy/souls/time jumps that we have to constantly check in with each other. "Where are you, did you get that?"
LOL
I like living in the realm of magic, possibility, spirituality...it reminds me of the special place we inhabit. It is so brief, and it also lasts forever.
I don't know why my painting was in another place. Science so easily removes the magic, all inexplainable things can be explained away because the mind doesn't want to live in a place of unknown. But it is all unknown. For me 9-11 remains a reminder of the beginning of the our last chance to understand: You can't chase money. People, their lives, their connections are all that matter. It was the World Trade Center after all. Occupy Wall Street is its child. And like any child, they are here to show you where you are wrong. Your faults, your misguided and misplaced focus. Your lack of self awareness. Your lack of self love. My experience with our daughter Marlow reminds me of this daily. She is two. Terrible? No, not by a long shot. Oh, yes I joke about it, but I am taking it very seriously. She guides me to do better. Not unlike the White Spirit I encountered in our house last night who said to me, "Do good work."
It was both a statement of acknowledgement, and a command. It brings tears to my eyes to hear it in my head over and over again. It is I think the next line after "love one another."
We need to do better, we need honesty, we need to Do Good Work.

Shell Reversal Black/White

18" x 30"

Oil, Oil Stick on Cardboard

2011

with various ephemera on shelf in front:

Sketch of Starpeople

Study for Amerika

Delicate Balance scuplture "Showgirl"

Occult

Striving to create new work is a lifelong goal. After all the work that has been created and produced I wonder, "is there anything left to do?" I know, I know... like I said here in the beginning, "not been said by you though, George." However the desire to create something that opens a new vision, a new idea, is so compelling that it is always at the back of my mind when I work. All that comes is from what I have seen before, just distilled and computed by my creative self into a new series...and then through that it is new in that it came from me, directly, honestly, compelled by a force in me that strives to make something that hasn't been made before.
There are those accidents that spill out. Like Kate Bush sings in An Architect's Dream:

Watching the painter painting

And all the time, the light is changing

And he keeps painting

That bit there, it was an accident

But he's so pleased

It's the best mistake, he could make

And it's my favorite piece

It's just great

Kate has a new work coming out, I am listening to it on KCRW a free preview:

http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/ap/ap111114kate_bush_50_words_f

It is different, a new expanse for Kate. It must not have been easy, knowing her music as well as I think I do. The tonality of the chords, the harmonics of the voices, the etherial lyrics. More light and opaque than usual. Inspiring to listen to an artist who continues to push her own envelopes like that. I listen to music constantly when I work, Kate being one that I've mentioned before who takes up much speaker time in my studio. It is like a drug to me, enabling me to escape into my own depths so I can work. Undistracted, hiding from the rest of the world in my studio. 

Why does the painter paint? Why work to make new art? I wonder that as I am at it. Unable to stop if I wanted to, but not an addiction, an extension of how I came into this world and what I desire to do. Even if that desire is coded and screened from my conscious mind. I do link to my unconscious, my superconscious, seeking from where the work comes. My job is to bring it out. Not quite sure why.

My new works are coming from this place. New works that started out as leftovers, accidents and spills. I had a few of these from over the years that I kept. One of them I put on a wall in my office and I have an understanding of now that previously was only a hint. I have always liked it, wondered about its significance. It is abstract and yet is very much a picture as the picture that it creates in the mind. Well...I don't want to over analyze now what I will be showing later. I think of what is hidden behind the screen, what the opaqueness remains, and that is what these works are. Occult.

On another note, but in the same vein, it feels like 1987, 88, 89 to me...those were years shortly after the huge New Age convergance that swept the country, and the world really. Books referenced in The Occult section took up more and more shelves in the Barnes and Nobles. Shirley MacLaine, Whitley Streiber, Ramtha...they occupied my imagination, took ahold of my fear and eventually set me free. 

More on that in a later post, but for now it works with the new works I am working on and is part of the inspiration for why now is the right time for these new paintings. 

Study for Occult

Watercolor on Paper

5" x 7"

2005-

Three Loud Knocks...

above my side of the bed on the wall behind the head board struck at 4:30 AM, Thursday, early morning. 11/3/11.
I sat there in bed wondering, what the hell was that? It was unmistakable, even in my sleep state what I heard. Normally I would tune in and ask "what is that?" However, this was so precise and specific that my shock took over and I kind of retreated, not wanting to know or even connect that this was perhaps "real." I laid there for another hour before I fell back asleep. That evening going to bed I asked Peter if he heard the knocks, and he confirmed that he had indeed, but tried to ignore it also. "We watched too much American Horror Story," he said. Many times during that day I thought of my dear friend Byron, who lives in New York. Byron, who I have mentioned here before as he lives across the street from Patti Smith. I heard Byron talking in my head. "High-Society voices," he said. I laughed to myself. Little funny things he has said to me over the years, funny things just between us. Things I had not shared with anyone else and I thought to myself, "funny how this particular thing between us on one else knows about...and as funny as it is I have no one else to share it with."
I learned the next day, Friday, that my dear beloved friend Byron had passed the day before. No one seems to be sure when he died, although I have a pretty good idea.
My beloved friend Liza told me she was just reading about the number 3 in spiritual terms, connecting to the perfection of Birth, Life, Death. She felt that the three loud knocks resonated with this, and Byron passing.
When someone close to us passes through, they leave the door open and through them we can connect to the multidimentionality of All That Is, of who we are. I have experienced this many times in the last two days. Connecting with Byron, even when I am at work and trying to focus on the job Byron will pop through and I will be transported to another place and time. Suddenly backstage at the Winter Garden Theatre and Bryon is passing me in the dark carrying a wig. In the smoke lounge laughing as he flicks another cigarette out the window. "Did I tell you about the time I flicked a cigarette into the open window of a taxi driver and it accidentally landed right in his crotch?" Laughing until tears formed in the edges of my eyes.
"Tout a lour." I find myself saying to the performer I just apparently had a quick change with during the show Bring It On, which I am currently working on. "Tout a lour" was what Byron always said to me and what I said back to him whenever he left. I bounced out with Byron without thinking of it. Of course I am fairly susceptible to wandering, although Byron is helping. I think about Byron downloading his Life as he passes and wonder how that affects those of us who shared it with him. Does it cull from us those memories, those attachments, those shared experiences and work them through so he can pass easily? Do they hold him down, slow him down, keep him near for a bit longer because the pain of the belief of separation is too much to bear? I hope Byron flows easily into All That Is. I hope he is detached from these earthly experiences, and enjoys the expanse of the infinite that he is. I know these aspects of him that are so funny, so courageous, so connected to the beautiful mystery of Life, and so giving to those he encountered and worked with and shared with but I know that he is infinitely much more than this. He is complete. He is 3 and has experienced Birth, Life, Death, and upon leaving (or maybe it was upon arriving?) gave three loud knocks.
Thanks Byron.

Opium. Dreams. Poppies.

It's just a dream, right? All made up but a willing participant. The plot of the dream made up so long ago we have forgotten what we all agreed to, and now fumble around trying to get back. Like when you run in your sleep but don't move. Wild horses off in the distance of the Great Plains thundering towards you, or is it a summer storm? I haven't decided yet. Both are plausible. Both sound good but each bring something different. It hasn't arrived yet, still time to decide. Still plenty of time to change my mind.
Like what is contained inside the envelope folds of a Poppy. Beautiful silk paper wrapping, smoother to the touch than anything. The hands of God giving you something pretty from the Winter cold, first signs of Spring. The thorny leaves of the Poppy should give signal to what She hides in her heart. Cold icy freeze. Bringing dreams and despair depending...The Opium Angel who reaches out to hold your heart in her icy grip. Numbing, removing, detached. "Hurdle jumper," she said to me. Reached out and taught me what She has to offer from a distance. Understood. I was a Chinese man selling Opium in San Francisco She told me. Part of the dream, part of what I'm here to work through. What I didn't leave behind. The smell of it burning in the night, taking me back. The idea being that She's here to remind you of where you came from so you could jump the hurdle too. Stay on your path, remembering what you came to do. It's so easy to forget though. Then body breaks down trying to remind you of where you sidestepped, helping you to reboot and continue on.
"I fell off the wagon for you," Arden said to Myrna, and their Life began, living his dream. Doing what he came to do and then moving on. Marcia told me she dreamed of a man smoking a pipe and I knew Arden had passed, my best friends Father. Reminds me of when my own Father died nearly 19 years ago? Is that correct? Nineteen? Nineteen years ago I left the fashion industry behind, and decided to work on Broadway. Dressing the actors for their show...pointing the way for them to flow into the spotlight. The illusion of attention. The illusion of being left behind. The illusion of time standing still as they perform their magic for you to hide in too, while you watch. I'm done watching. I'm done pointing the way. Making pictures that no one wants but me. Well, that's okay. I still make them, still do what I can to bring them into the world. Who knows? With the internet so many more see my work than could have years ago, not having a white gallery wall today to hang them on. But I'm not complaining, just wondering when I will get my walls. Once I declared I wanted to work in the theatre. Well, now I'm done, and my work needs a gallery.
I want it to be Wild Horses. I have had a Summer Storm. I know what that is, what it brings. I want the Horses.
Poppies. I'm dreaming of Poppies. Poppies to take me there...remembering what I came to do.

Poppy (1)

Digital Photograph

Print Size Variable

2005

2AM: Full Moon

It's 2AM and the Full Moon wakes

Stirring your night and lighting your way

Uncovering in your mind the things you thought you'd hidden away

A giant bird sits outside my back window

In the hovering blue moonlight it looks like a white faced owl

Huge haunting eyes

It alights silently

We stared at each other for 10 minutes before it turned midair and flew into the blue night

It is so clear, blue hours after midnight and the things in your mind race toward an eternal unconclusion. So when confronted with this giant bird at my back window I wonder of the reality of it. Her. Head bobs and turns quickly. I wonder what She sees of me through the window. Does She get a silent moonlight reflection, obscuring my image in the night or for Her is it clear? Moonlight even as bright as it is this evening can be deceiving. The light hovers playing tricks, and again I wonder of the reality of this meeting. I crack the back door as silently as this house will allow and watch Her turn towards me. Sitting on a line that runs right above this door, perhaps ten feet from me She stares. We are locked for 10 minutes. Door ajar a couple of feet and I wonder if She will come in. Trying to fix my gaze to Hers I know my eyes don't contain what Hers do and I give up and let the door slowly open all the way. I step into the moonlight with Her and She alights, turning midair silently and flies off into the night.

Detail, Pellucid

Oil on Canvas

10' x 5'

2002