Friday, April 15, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Why?
To open, to shut up and free at once, to blind, to empower, to force, to focus, for clarity?
Strong hands, he had always had strong hands, comfortable in every situation his hands of confidence of generosity, his virility and heart in strong hands. Strong hands I could not see now, the night had covered them in their own masks. He stood there and stared, I do not know if his eyes were opened or closed and it does not matter he stood staring on. His pale skin like ice to me in the mid winter cold, his back, his thighs all visible as he was sparsely dressed in boxer shorts. No shoes, I could here the slap of his bare feet once he stirred. He left, he left me, he left his brother and walked away. His shoulders held bravely, his back straight, his head with gentlest tilt to imply a smirk, his steps large, he walked away, he walked as a man who thinks the world belongs to him because he has nothing.
I would not follow him, I had no reason to, we were nothing much to each other. But when he left it was like he had come at me with blades up and down. I kicked, I kicked everything I could reach, I hit my own self, on my head, along my legs, I stood there flailing.
I was all out of breath and the blood running through my veins felt hot. The sting of the air kept my eyes open and as I watched the boy squirm on the ground, I was soothed, their was something rhythmic and delicate about it so that I was calmed by the entrancing figure.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Tim Roda at the Greg Kucera Gallery
I wrote this a long time ago maybe a couple of years ago. I wrote it for a small mag in the UK, looking over it again now I can't help but laugh at my sensationalism. There is something so naive and cocky about it. Of course there is, my writing is to a degree still so but it is only because of my youth. I am cursed with my youth to be sure of the world.
See? I'm doing it again. Or maybe it's because I've been reading English writers lately; When you read an Englishman you can't help but laugh at sensationalism. Anywho here it goes:
Tim Roda at the Greg Kucera Gallery:
Most galleries are clean and sparse, sterile even. The Greg Kucera Gallery goes above and beyond, when you enter it feels absolutely lifeless. Footsteps heard in this gallery are the type of hollow steps that should only be heard in the dead of the night A barren world fit to be inhabited only by Tim Roda's photographs of family and play.
Trained at the University of Washington and currently residing in New York, Roda returns home with a show full of uncertain glances. Incorporating himself, his wife and children in most of the black and white photographs on display, he creates captivating and oddly complex portraits. The depictions insinuate classical themes which involve cut up cardboard, wooden spears and teeth gnashing all suggesting child's play. But once you look closer you find a sudden and arresting loneliness in these portraits. The ambiguity of the family's emotions appears to rest heavy on their games. Despite the confused look in Roda's eldest son's eyes or the lack of smile on his wife's lips the silliness about all these photos is only intensified by the subjects ostensibly serious minds.
Then walking amongst the living visitors to the Kucera Gallery's self imposed Dead Sea aesthetic ou come to a second realization. That Tim Roda is giving you an adult view on childishness but truly a view on the primal nature of man. From his son standing stoically, spear raised in a gesture of power against the sea or the family roasting a humongous fake pig, belly splayed open; to the brutality of kings and knights swept far away from reason in passionate actions. His displays of mankind's descent into anger seem dangerous yet forgiving, Tim Roda shows us tangled in loneliness, in joy and in the primitive; all the way to our pasts of solitude in our animal selves and back.
Random flowing of words in the night
Just got a new follower, Mandee you are incredible. Now follow me to your undoing, no freedom, pain, passion, torment or broken pieces of humanity shall escape our grasp. The youth pounding through our veins like rough surf cutting against the rocks, no smooth river in the rain, but girls standing in fish nets and boys clad in dog collars and denim coats, taking the tour, wide eyed round the flesh of mud, of man in vulnerable sight, down side walks, in upstairs corner apartments with tortured yellow walls comes contact with an other soul and knowledge tongued deep into us by men walking in high-heels, women in soft pink and maiden flowers sit helplessly in lewd, forgetful ridiculousness. But our grasp is far reaching to an other time of smoke and freedom sug, smoke and freedom. Mandee follow me down to hell.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Faded Dreams
We all have memories of dreams, the troubles we once held, consumed day to passing night. A couple of years ago I had a dream of elegant nature, not a creature of a life like so many of my dreams, it was a repast of a life.
I had the dream that I would become an artist’s model and not by beauty but by heart I should garner my fame as a desire. An utmost need to every artist who knew or only have yet to know they require a warm body to create true life in still nothing of color. From painter to photographer to sculptor would I be tossed around the globe, sought, created, glorified and scrutinized by artists who seek out only what is. In this life I require no riches but only a friendly hand, an open smile and one warm meal a day. I expected no glamour, no fame but only opportunity, chance to know of the greatest minds, to see creation, to see the world moving and dying behind eyes of innocence. I would by great heart create my charm, by quick mind earn my reputation. I have no desire to be an artist in this life no, no I wished to move through the heated breath of creators who toil in the filth of the ditches with a scrubbed face and teach philosophy fractured with belief. To lay my hand on each sweat rich brow and speak, to think is to be.
Through knowledge of living, through knowledge of lies, through lessons of heart would I give the bearing of soul to each piece. To each item of beauty would I give a piece of myself, sunny and silk to cotton and loneliness but never would it give a drop of beauty to me. Because I would not squander my right and duty, to bear soul upon not only beauty but to represent common workers with hair dark as oil, to missing children whom wandered off from home, to the homeless who forge on still, forgotten walkers of cold streets, mothers, daughters, those with broken hands, the resented, the plagued, those fallen in the dirt, with bleeding lips, limps, those who know no treasure but memory, eyes in the dark and rosy cheeks never seen. Touch them with hands of care, offer the open palm and shed light through tears.
At the same time I am acutely aware of my other obligation, to birth in you inspiration, to provide the fool’s gold, hope. My caress, my song, my warmth, to allow you to bathe in a glory that is not mine, no I merely pour the warm waters down your back and wipe your face clean. I am to love you as you come and I shall, to each person who stands before me I shall be pitiful. It is my duty because I am not human, I am art, I am thought, to think is to be and I am nothing else but raw existence.
Need less to say this dream never came to be and I suppose I shall close the book on it.
Goodbye my loves and troubles.
Artists in order of appearance:
1. Joanna Zjawinska
2. Loic Allemand
3. Frank Weston Benson
4. Richard Emil Miller
5. Renoir
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Luke butler photo cred.
I saw a man in a field, the man in the field in rough brown and cold denim; his attire human soldier wear; he lay sleeping drawn out in peace, I watched from afar perhaps the man had eyes that opened and touched the scent of grass that brushed upon his sodden limbs, from a closer place I watched with out a twitch or breath from he or I, a closer step and a louder step nearer, gentle creep into intimacy with this man, from a place curled up inside him from behind him I watched, he lay sleeping. I thought to me, I came to me in clarity that life is an instance, more than a travel or desire and in an escape I found this man who is telling me more. He made it clear that this is man, we can not be one but all, what utterance is greater, what command or folly? A man is here to toss, turn and grasp and be each person, each breath. I realized that I was not enough I had to be granted greater, the only way, to collapse into myself propelling myself forward collapsing again and again and by action to only be still, to create a tongue, a taste, encompassing every act that twitched. I needed to embrace that nothing was enough, that wholly I had to consume every spec of dirt coming across my path.
I watched for very long, he slept, not a sound came, I wanted to speak to him, to touch him, to hold his head against my chest, to stroke his beard, great man I found.
After hours, his skin changed and his face seemed dryer and I realized great man was dead. So I stole his clothes and fingered his watch.