After the Domku sale last Saturday (12/3/05) SB called and said he wanted to purchase two paintings from me. I normally don’t like to sell paintings to friends, but I felt that I might do more harm than good by refusing to accept money. So I agreed to deliver them to his place.
I started out by going to Chevy Chase bank to setup a business account. I’ve never done that sort of thing before, but I feel that the time has come to start separating my finances from my personal life. Plus, I will need a EIN # (amongst other things) in order to take credit cards, which is part of the uberplan or trying the art fair circuit.
Turns out, I don’t have any of the right documentation to get a business checking account. I don’t have a business license, a trade name certificate, nothing. I vow that I will return with these things and get back in my car. I now have an hour and a half before I have to make my delivery. Whatsa boy to do?
I decided to kill time by going to the 14th St. Galleries. Its something I should do for my personal and professional development and it was just the right time of day (and week)
I started at Plan B. Group show. The stuff was all of a medium quality (a fact that has not impressed me when I saw the U of MD painting profs work their) but I got some ideas about how my matted work should be presented. The only work of note was Ted Milligan’s watercolors. They were small tightly controlled drips. The type that you get if you take watercolor and blow a straw at them while they are drying. He then embellished them with paint, using the similar hue trick (two colors of the same hue, placed next to each other makes the eye go “boinining”)
Next it was over to the 1515 building. G fine art had Lynn Meyers marker drawings on velum. It was minimalism gone bad. They weren’t computer printouts, but they looked it. They had all the hallmarks of minimalism, with that “I’m leaving a trace of the artists hand by making easy to figure out how I did them” factor. Once I figured them out, the trick was over. All I was left with was a nagging question for her: when you started in art, did you think that you would end up making thousands of repetitive tiny marker lines on giant sheets of velum? Is that really how you want to spend your time on earth?
A brief moment of digression: I went to see Les Miz last night. It wasn’t as good as I remember….but I was reminded of the feelings I used to get when I would read the journals of Delacroix. I always wanted to go back then and life in a world where there could be nothing but painting. That is, you could have your frock coat and your crust of bread and a candle or two and just paint. (of course this is not how it really was) In the audio book I am reading, (is that the right word choice?) Interviews with Studs Terkel , one of his guests (from the 50’s ) says that we are in a time when leisure is available to all. In the not so distant past, most of the worlds people were forced to work all damn day, everyday, just to keep food on the table. This is the world that would create barricades. Today, we have a duty to make the most of every tool we have. Our leisure time is a wonderful gift that mankind has only recently been given. And even though I seem to be oversaturated and over stimulated with so much possibility, I need to take advantage of every avenue that I can. Because the life where there is no free time, no ability to express oneself is just a hairs breath away.
Some okay painting was up in Hemphill, but he place was pungent with beeswax, which I was not impressed with (contrary to other bloggers opinions). The paintings were from the bigger is better, but that means the strokes too, school. Plus he seems to ruin the work by writing OM ME PAD ME OM on the me in pencil. Like, am I supposed to think that’s deep?
Fusebox had a bunch of BAD work from Jason Gubbiotti. His stuff really seems to come from the undergrad Corcoran rave culture aesthetic. Which is looking really tired. Plus, what his work is saying or reflecting is not part of the world I want to inhabit. I will say that some of his bent paintings are touching on something, but only in a bad formal way. Someone in the ARTcity documentary said that “how boring would it be if music were to only concern itself with the formal structures of insturments and notes…why does art seem to be preoccupied with that.”
The other work in Fuesbox is W.C. (unfortunate use of initials) Richardson. Who does these sexy-looking large paintings. Wait, they are all the same size. Wait a minute, they are all hung on the EXACT same spiral pattern underneath…whoa, they are all only consisting of 3 or 4 layers of figure ground alloverness. Once I figured out the trick, it was all downhill….
After all that I dropped off the paintings, picked up the check. Ill be cashing it and putting into the business account when I get the proper paperwork together.
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