Light From Heaven...

A funny thing happened to me on my way to the Guggenheim, I didn't make it. Instead, as I walked by the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, I saw a stealth banner with art about a show: Provoking Magic, Lighting of Ingo Maurer. I knew the name but had little knowledge of this legend's work and being an interested lightofile (I've made a couple of lamps in my day) I decided to check it out. Phenomenal is light praise for this collection of way-out there lighting pieces, heavenly could be a description but I'm sure some people who believe in such a thing might not think it proper. I do. Ingo Maurer is a god. God of lighting, anyway. He creates a menagerie of work that displays light, tricks the viewer, changes space, augments design, interrupts time, makes you look, makes you look, makes you look in the picture book! It's awesome. His light not only throws light it throws light on light. Every room you go into is a new experience, a play, a narrative that is thrust upon you and the narrative ranges from the hilarious to the melancholy of a sitting room. There are fireplaces, tables, gold fish ponds, wallpaper, mirrors, sculptures, paintings all using light in vastly creative and outrageous ways. When you walk up the stairs you are literally watched by a pair of portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie whose eyes shift and who speak as they look down at you. And although the lighting is extravagant there is also plenty of consideration for the simple screw in light bulb, but what you perceive as an everyday light bulb is actually a holograph of a light bulb, one of them even has a holographic fly on it that changes places as you walk past. He has put lights on hat bands that strike you with first their beauty and then their humor. He has an egg swirling in a watery tornado lit with a crisp white light that is hypnotizing. Before I left I secretly took some photos from the hip not knowing what I was getting. Above is what I photographed, it is not of a single piece of Ingo Maurer's but the reflections of a room full of them and my ode de Maurer...

Art Is Everywhere...

The day after Thanksgiving, I'm still more stuffed than the turkey. So I decided to take a Walk Around The Block to massage a bit of the bloating from my being. And since I'm feeling a bit slow I decided to keep it low by searching the sidewalks for a little chicanery. It's something I do to test my artistic acumen and my sense of humor. The great French artist Duchamp created the "found object" form of art. He found toilets, bikes, tools and placed them into the realm of the artistic and they became art. Myself, when I search the sidewalks, I'm searching for tableaus that stir my imagination. These tableaus consist of everything from tossed garbage to scrapes in cement to discarded gum. I even captured a puddle of spittle covering a dime that magnified it to a size of a quarter that was beside a giant water bug. The still life quality of this display inspired me to draw it but it just didn't look as good as the original sidewalk art. So I was out and about trying to get a bit of the gobble out of my bobble. I searched the sidewalk for anything that would capture my artistic eye and my funny bone. The first thing I came upon was two pieces of gum, different colors, that appeared to look like super dog, a super-hero that can stretch, bounce and blow bubbles and all this against a florescent blue background. I liked it so I took the picture above. I hadn't gone three steps when I saw what I am now calling "banana on the moon". It was a banana skin, that makes me laugh every time I see one on the ground because of the crazier than life pratfalls that come from slipping on one. So it had me at that. I took the picture and realized how much better it was than just a slippery fall; it actually looked like a banana on a half moon, hence the title. With these two images caught I headed home feeling lighter and happier and ready to start the holidays, realizing once again, art is everywhere...

Discovering New Things...

Getting away from unpacking is my favorite pasttime these days and it has let me walk around my new neighborhood to get a feel for it and discover new things. Although I am only 11 blocks and a couple of Avenues from where I once lived and still on the Upper East Side it is like moving to another world, different personality, different things to see and eat and different things to discover. The first thing I discovered thanks to a meticulous friend is that you spell Ruppert with two p's not with one like I did in my last blog. The second thing I discovered was that the Second Avenue Subway is not an urban myth but a huge construction site right now running from 94th Street to 92nd Street that creates a maze of mammoth proportions forcing people to take elaborate routes to get somewhere that is causing quite a stir amongst the local shopkeepers, who place loud flyers of protest in their windows claiming the city has totally disregarded them in their plight dealing with the bold move forward to create more much needed public transportation. I understand their pain but as they say, whoever they are, you can't stop progress. I've also discovered a couple of great restaurants, including Taco, Taco and Delizia Pizza and become reacquainted with Rathbones an old haunt that still remains a great pub. On one discovery walk I took a turn on 88th Street and was excited to find a small gallery space that looked very interesting, unfortunately it was not open although there was a dog sleeping on the windowsill that looked up at me with a suspicious eye as I took the picture above. Was the dog the gallery owner or a piece of art, these questions haunted me because I was unable to enter Gallery 221? The small space had one large piece on the floor, a roller coaster looking ceramic sculpture that playfully captured a mood of carnival. There were also some staff-like ceramic pieces that hung on the walls. It would be hard to get two people in the place at least with the dog there, but size never was a detriment in my mind when it comes to art or showing art, so my curiosity was so peaked that it probably could kill a couple of cats although I would never intend to do such a thing even though I am allergic to the feline species. I wondered who the artist of the ceramic fantasia was and who owned the joint and if that dog could actually be a high-fillutin art dealer? These are things I will have to find out when I return. I left continuing my discovery stroll...

(Part 2) Moving In...

So the moving men from Oz are gone, the price of the move was twice the estimate and I'm sitting amongst boxes I packed less than 24 hour ago feeling down and out. Two things not to have when you are moving: a teenage daughter, who sits around complaining about not being able to watch the Gilmore Girls while she packs one earring at a time, or a dog that barks through out the move between nervous pees and diarrhea in the hallway of the new digs. It isn't pretty. So now I sit on my broken barker lounger and peer at several art frames that are broken and one piece of art that is gouged. I am told that all of this will be taken care of and not to worry. But I do. As I start taking stuff out and placing it in foreign places in the new house, I understand why people say the three most upsetting things in life are death, divorce and moving. On the move out I got rid of a great deal of stuff I hadn't seen in years collecting a dozen yellow refund receipts from thrift shops and just tossing a lot of other junk. Now as I unpack I do the same. Out with the old in with the new. As I write this my dog is peeing on a box because I have not taken her on her walk. I climb through the maze of boxes and furniture, clean up the mess and put the leash on her and head out on my first walk around the neighborhood. I like the new location in the shadows of Rupert Towers. There's a park where children play, there's a hill that is hard to climb and will serve as good exercise and I'm closer to Fifth Avenue and the Museum Mile. As I walk the dog I realize I don't want to return to unpacking so I walk all the way to Central Park, my dog looking back at me with a 'where the hell are we going' look. I look back at her with an 'I don't know look' because I don't know...

(Part 1) Moving Out...

So after looking at over seventy apartments, actually a lot of them would not be considered apartments in third world countries, and dealing with real estate people from hell and other parts far worse than that, and actually making moving arrangements to move from the much loved Upper East Side to the new enclave of fresh and new, Long Island City, that is one stop from Grand Central and gives you expansive views of Manhattan, on the last day before moving, having just started packing I see an apartment for rent ad in the New York Times. The apartment is on East 90th Street and for some strange reason it sounds legitimate. I make my daughter come with me for the eleven block walk. We arrive and agents and their clients are circling like vultures for the owner to show up. When she arrives she lets us in and it turns out to be the perfect apartment so I have to move quickly to get to the real estate office on the Upper West Side with papers,cash and certified checks, racing a dozen blood sucker agents and their clients. An elbow to the face stopped the closest agent to the door. My daughter threw a body block which wiped out another and we were off! The next morning after not sleeping,praying, meditating and incanting magical words, burning sage and screaming at all that makes the universe turn, I get the phone call and I'm in! What a blood curdling process. Now the moving out is in process and I just want to go to sleep for a year. There is a deep realization that all the crap I've accumulated over the years I should just throw away, it all seems pretty worthless. Bric and brack, albums, cd's, old computers (I still have an Apple 2E computer from the 1980's); heirlooms that are more like error looms; books, way too many books, that I will never read again; plates, glasses and silverware, I mean really, don't you need just one of all them?; pillows of all kinds, again one is enough, maybe three; and just tons of stuff that I have dragged home for some reason or another that I can't remember; clothes that I don't want to wear anymore, why can't I just walk around naked? It's endless and I'm in the middle of it and all I want is to beamed out of here to anywhere that is not cluttered with boxes and junk and doesn't involve moving out...