emerson

The price of fuel, in real terms

For a balanced overview of what’s going on the pumps, Andrew Leonard’s piece in Salon today gets the job done (subscription only). After hacking through the tangled woods of bureaucracy, politics and economics to bring a little light to the real reasons prices are so high, he arrives at the same destination the examination of most big issues lead to:

A simple answer requiring tough personal decisions that therefore keeps us all searching for easier alternatives and magic bullets...

We need to use less fuel.

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Tweet Suite repeats

By Dale Conour

emerson featured artist Laura Levine (see Q&A at right) is opening a new exhibit of her "Tweet Suite" at the Varga Gallery Woodstock beginning May 24 if you find yourself in upstate NY...

Songbirds of the Catskills, by Laura Levine

Link: Vargas Gallery exhibitions
 

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Decemberists and the open heart

Inspired by the Crane wife folk tale. Desktop image available for download at Decemberists.com

By Dale Conour

I’ve been listening to the Decemberists’ Crane Wife 1 and 2 a lot lately. If you know the song(s), then you’ll remember that at the end Colin Meloy repeatedly belts out "heart" like he’s reaching in and pulling back his rib cage to bare a wounded heart and soul. It moves me every time, and I’ve found that singing along with it, imagining I, too, am opening my heart to the world (even if I’m singing the notes a bit flat), is great therapy. (And seeing them live is great fun, by the way, don’t miss the opportunity).

I think we respond, in part, to the creatures of the world with such wonder and affection because that’s the way they live all the time: Not necessarily soulfully, but truthfully. They are what they are. Of course you could say the same for young children, and often, for the elderly. There’s such honesty there and I hunger for it.

It rakes at my heart.

Links: The Decemberists Crane wife 1&2 , from their website

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Buy Ky

Pair (11" W x 15" H), by Ky Anderson 

By Dale Conour

emerson-featured artist Ky Anderson (find her in "Q&A" at right) has hooked up with Velocity to produce  The Ky Anderson Shop, featuring her new print series.

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Q&A: Tom Killion

Lake Tahoe from Maggies Peaks, Desolation Wilderness (13.5x17 inches), by Tom Killion

By Dale Conour

Tom Killion is one of California’s most beloved artists. I realize that may harbor negative connotations— after all, unless you’re wielding puns dangerously, you’d never refer to his work as "cutting edge." But you could pull out the overused "timeless" here without shame. The master woodcarver and printer has been capturing the wilds and not so wilds of California and beyond for decades, and by capture I mean not only their likenesses, but more importantly as artistic work, their more elusive characters. It’s worth spending a few minutes on his site to learn more of his rich personal history, and his technique.

Q: How has woodcutting impacted your relationship with the outdoors, with nature?

A: Printmaking hasn't much impacted my time outdoors, other than it perhaps makes me do more sketching. On the other hand, I did a lot more watercolors and finished drawings in my youth, before I really accepted printmaking as my only "finished" artistic production. One thing printmaking does is it makes me "take apart" landscape scenes in my mind, contemplating how many color blocks and various split-fountain rolls and reduction-cuts it would take to get a particular scene look the way I wanted it. When I am actually "woodcarving" (your Q) I am in my studio, not outdoors. I do all my work from sketches made in the open however, so the sketching process gets me to spend time, between 20 minutes and an hour usually, "meditating" on the landscape—which is nice.

Big Arroyo, Foxtail Pines (10x12.5 inches), by Tom Killion

Q: How does your chosen art form allow itself to be pushed by the artist? What are the boundaries?

A: I like printmaking for several reasons: First, it forces me to abstract the landscape to some degree, as I must reverse the image, carve it into wood or linoleum for a "Key" bloc and then use that block as template for a number of color blocks, all carved in reverse as well. The reassembly of the landscape takes place while I am printing, layer upon layer of color. Otherwise, as one can tell by looking at my work, I would be too "literal" an artist and my landscapes would look very prosaic.

Second, I can romanticize the world into another time and place—maybe a place like pre-modern Japan in the time of the Ukiyo-e "floating world" aesthetic of the early 19th century, when people were smaller on the land, and more in harmony with it. It is kind of hard loving the visual landscape of central California in the late 20th and 21st century and seeing it violated and abused on such a massive scale by us humans. So my art allows me to remake the world the way I like to see it, to some degree—although I do not entirely remove the human element (my Ukiyo-e mentors taught me this lesson, as they always kept the human element as well).

The City from Grizzly Peak (14x17 inches), by Tom Killion

Boundaries in woodcut printmaking mostly have to do with the flatness of the printed surface and the hardness of the edge of the line—to get soft and fluid effects, clouds, mist, water, reflections etc. are the great challenges—but that is why it remains continually interesting as a medium. Far more challenging than painting, for example, when it comes to landscapes.

Q: By creating works interpreting places that are not only known, but held dear, by so many people, do you ever worry that your art is appealing to viewers for reasons of sentimentality as much as for the aesthetic quality of the pieces?

A: Perceptive Q.—I have heard so many people tell me they are buying a print because it depicts a scene dear to them—it is extraordinary to find how important some places are in people’s lives—childhood haunts, marriage proposals, weddings, ashes scattered, it runs the gamut of peoples lives—but I rarely choose places b/c I think they might appeal to others, it is b/c they appeal to ME.

Yosemite Valley II (11.5x16 inches), by Tom Killion

The most charismatic landscapes have universal appeal of course. I have one view of Yosemite Valley from the Wawona Rd. Tunnel—the classic view—I really hesitated to make a print of it, it has become such a trope,  but it truly is one of the more stunning scenes nature offers, and lends itself so well to the medium of woodcut. So I did it anyway.

I know if I only did tourist sites and "flowers above the sea" I would make a lot more money, but I don’t—if you look at my website you’ll see most of my scenes are actually off the beaten path. I do love fields of poppies and lupines above the sea, one of the loveliest features of our old California land, but I try to only do them every few years, almost out of resistance to the general love of them.

Bolinas Ridge to Pt. Montara (Gulf of the Farallons), (14x18.5 inches), by Tom Killion

In the end however, the exciting part of printmaking is the overlay and juxtaposiiton of colors and patterns, and the subject could be almost anything. Sometimes I turn my prints upside down and just enjoy the color/texture mixes; and if they delight me upside down or sideways, I feel like I really got it right. Oddly, the ones that work best for me on this purely abstract level are also some of my most popular images.

Greenwood Cove, Mendocino Coast (11x14.5 inches), by Tom Killion

Q: As an artist, when you see strangers out in the world, do the ways they interact with the world ever frustrate you? Inspire you?

A: I am as critical of people as anyone else, especially as  a fourth gen. Northern Californian. I particularly dislike bulldozers and roadcutters, but I also dislike ornamental invasive plant planters and eco-Nazis who would rather have coyote-brush everywhere instead of the beautiful wildflower grasslands that we have inherited from 200 years of ranching and 6,000 years of Native Californian burning. All power to grazers and old Indian women who burned the meadows for their brodaea fibers! There are few landscapes in the world more beautiful than the central CA oak-savannah steep hillside grasslands juxtaposed w/ redwood forest canyons and mixed bay, madrone, fir mountainsides. Keep California free, join the CNPS and Ventana Wilderness Coalition, but tell them to work to keep our grasslands open.

Where I live now, out in West Marin, provides a great example of what can be done to mix sustainable ranching with grassland preservation—it is really beautiful and it works. The model should be expanded, but instead the National Park service is a slave to bizarre ideas of "wilderness" where wilderness never existed since the last Ice Age. Let’s rethink people in the landscape—we are here, we belong here—but in a sustainable relationship, not in this dualistic, all-or-nothing false dichotomy that wilderness bureaucrats (can such a monster really exist?) seem to believe they are mandated to create.

Addis Abeba (8.5x9.25 inches), by Tom Killion

Links: Tom Killion’s website, California Native Plant Society, Ventana Wilderness Coalition

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"Evocations" opens

By Dale Conour

Just a quick heads up that emerson-featured artist Mary Daniel Hobson’s work will be on display at Modern Book Gallery in Palo Alto, beginning with a reception this evening. Here are the details (worth a trip down the Peninsula, SFers, don’t be scared). You can find my interview with her to the right in Q&A.

#002, from the series Evocations, ©2007

The details

A two-woman show...

MARY DANIEL HOBSON: "Evocations"

and CLAUDIA KUNIN: "Myth"

April 4 - June 3, 2008

Opening Reception with the artists on Friday, April 4 from 7-10pm

Modern Book Gallery
494 University Ave, Palo Alto, CA
650-327-6325

On view will be a selection of works from  three of Hobson’s series - Evocations, Sanctuary, and Bottle Dreams.

Modern Book also has a nice selection of work from Mapping the Body in their upstairs gallery.

Links: marydanielhobson.com, modernbook.com

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Letting it all go

Photo by Calvina Yang Nguyen

By Kendra Smith

I’m starting to think about downsizing. Sure, it has something to do with tax season and all the dire predictions about the economy. But it has just as much to do with a desire to have less, to simplify. When it takes me 10 minutes to find something I’m looking for, I think I probably have too much stuff. When I start to forget more than I can remember, I know it.

That’s why I’m intrigued by Australian Ian Usher, who has put up his life for sale, ala John Freyer, the Iowa artist who auctioned his possessions on eBay and wrote a 2002 book, All My Life for Sale, about it. The reason for Usher’s downsizing—a messy divorce—is more tragic than pragmatic, but the questions it raises are universal. The key one is posited in a poll on Usher’s home page: Could you do it?

Like Freyer, Usher is offering it all: the car, a motorcycle, his jetski and kitesurfing gear, the house and everything in it. “I take nothing with me,” Usher writes on the website (note: his future plans are to travel the world, not to disappear from it).

Since, ultimately, we take nothing with us, I have to wonder why our stuff is so important to us, and why a simpler life is still a choice outside the norm. These men challenge us with the notion that we are not our stuff. And yet, in this age of consumption, many of us must believe that our possessions, what we choose to surround ourselves with, do say something about what we value and believe in.

Could you do it?

Links:
Telegraph article
Life4Sale
All My Life For Sale

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Q&A: Ky Anderson

On top of the mountain you can see forever #95, 2007, 24"x24", Oil on canvas, by Ky Anderson

By Dale Conour

Artist Ky Anderson dreams of mountains and then paints mountains as dreams. Her work has the weight of something primal and true, calling on the power the mountain has always held over us to create an iconography of the soul. Photographer Ky Anderson, like most of us, sets out to document, but with her artist’€™s eye, can’€™t help capturing those fleeting moments that tell volumes.

Q: In your 20x20o notes about your featured painting there, you wrote:

"Often when I start a painting I like to imagine myself as a traditional landscape painter..."

I read an essay (by Sophie Gee) in the NY Times Books review recently about adaptations of classics into films, and this thought of hers stuck with me: "...the best books always need rewriting, and the best writers know they€’re rewriters."

I wonder how this applies to art, especially to work like yours that re-imagines what a "landscape" painting is?

A: When I say I like to imagine myself as a traditional landscape painter it comes from a very romantic place. I do pull from a history of landscape painting, but I don’t have a lot of landscape painting books around my house I look at. I am pulling more from the activity of being a landscape painter, being on a hillside with really good light and a cool breeze. This is how I put myself in the mindset to paint. I use it as a trigger. It makes me laugh to think of myself looking a hillside very seriously while what actually comes out on the paper is something completely different. It’s a nice place to start from, and so loaded with great history and meaning, not only from an art history place but also from places of great beauty.

I do think that artists constantly remake other pieces of art.  But it is rare to find an artist who admits this. Thinking about it simply, there are two sides to it. One side is that inspiration can come from a similar place, and the other side is that people can be inspired by each other. Both are very different, I find that most artists are very protective about where their inspiration comes from. 

My parents are both artists and this is something they regularly discussed at the dinner table when I was child. (Now that I am older I get in on the discussion) Inspiration to make art, for both of my parents, comes from a similar place, but the final outcome of their work could not be farther apart. They both feel completely original and alone in their inspiration. I think as an artist you have to feel original to validate what you are doing. Its important to grasp the inspiration, own it and feel deep down that it is yours and only yours. If you sat around and thought about the fact you are just remaking art that already exists you might put the brush down and go to business school. On the other hand, there is a part of me that also thinks its important to be aware that you may not alone in your inspiration and appreciate those that came before you and those around you doing similar things.

Q: This leads to something else you wrote:

"My paintings tell stories but by leaving them abstract and simple I challenge the viewer to bring their own story to the work."

The way you use "stories" here doesn’€™t literally mean plots with beginning, middle and end. I’€™d love to hear more thoughts from you about the artist as storyteller, particularly in the context of landscape.

A: I think most artist are storytellers, but in many different ways. Sometimes artists have very elaborate concepts behind their work and sometimes it’s the simplicity that is the story. I am somewhere in between. I do tell stories in my work but your right it does not mean a plot with beginning, middle and end. I want the viewer to be involved and make up their own stories.  In my work I talk more with metaphors for thought, a simple story can talk about much more. For example when I paint a mountain with an object balancing on top of it, the painting is about the balance and struggle of that object and all that it has to deal with when it spends its time only balancing, never falling. It becomes exhausting.  I think in our modern world people can understand how that relates to their life.

The landscape gives the viewer an immediate place. Give it a horizon line and everyone knows where they are. Sometimes if I am feeling unsure about a painting, a simple horizon line can help me know where I am in the painting and it somehow tells me where to go next. As a story teller the communication between artist and viewer is very important. I like to think of the viewer having quiet moments alone with my work, and hopefully my work will cause question and wonder. Of course some people don’€™t get it. I was once trying to explain this all to a collector and they said "€œoh, isn’t that nice and happy". I don’€™t see my paintings as nice and happy. I see a lot of them as pointing out the bad with a touch of optimism.

Two pointy mountains, 22'€"x30"€, Acrylic on paper, 2006, by Ky Anderson

Q: Another quote from you:

"To me the mountain image is filled with meaning. It comes from my first memorable dream of falling off the top of a mountain."

Love to hear more about your attraction to mountains, the resonance they have for you.

A: My first memorable dream started at the base of a mountain, my father and I were getting into our old truck. I had really long arms, so long that my hands flapped out the windows on both sides like wings. This mountain had a road that wound all the way around it like a spiral, as we started to drive up it the weather got worse and worse. Light snow, then ice and then full on blizzard at the top. The roads were very slippery but it was calm and peaceful in the truck. We were almost to the top and our truck started to slip on the ice, we slipped of the mountain and started to free-fall to the bottom.  We crashed and I died. I floated up out of my body and saw the wreckage and our broken bodies, then everything went gray. I was about 5 or 6 when I had this dream. This was my first dream of dying, and since then I have one or two a year. I don’€™t know or really care about the psychology behind it all, but I find that I keep making art about it. It pretty wild to see yourself dead in a dream, it resonates with me for weeks after.

Something stuck with me when I had that dream, even when I painted as a child I painted mountains. It’s a bit compulsive. When ever I get really into the mood from painting, I think the same simple thought, "€œman, that painting would be great with a mountain in it"€ then I paint the mountain, and it feels really good, very satisfying, like really good sex. Then I sit back and think, "€œoh man, I painted that damn mountain again! What is wrong with me!?"  Sometimes the whole thing feels ridiculous. But then I remind myself that I am probably not the only artist out there to be compulsive and repeat themselves.

Yellow Mountain, Blue Circle, 22" €x30"€, Acrylic on Paper, 2006, by Ky Anderson

Q: ..And I wonder how viewing Close Encounters, with the main character’€™s obsession with Devils Tower, impacted you... ; )

A: Actually when I first saw that movie it made me really uncomfortable, because I was already aware of my compulsion. I thought, just as long as I don’t start making mountains with my mashed potatoes everything will be okay!  It was pretty funny.

Viewing the mountains, 2007, 22"x22", Oil on canvas, by Ky Anderson

Q: How is your approach to photography different than your approach to painting. How is it the same?

A: Sometimes I pull from similar themes that are in my paintings, but mostly I just shoot. I take pictures and then pull out the series later. Its great to see the series emerge from a pile of photos taken over the years. I love to document, and for me that is an instinct that comes from a sentimental place. 

I have one series that emerged from my photographs after more than 10 years. Without realizing for years I had been taking photos of my friends when we went out to eat.  I ended up with a really large series of pictures of my friends eating or looking at the menu or getting irritated with me for taking pictures of them. It’s a great series, it shows time in a wonderfully simple way. It shows people coming in and out of my life, and the life long friends shine. Once I noticed the series I became too self conscious to take those photos anymore, and when I tried to take the photos they felt forced. So I learned that I don’€™t like to push anything when it comes to my photography. My favorite photos are spontaneous. I suppose my painting is the same, the spontaneous paintings are some of my favorites.

Jaime, 1995, by Ky Anderson

Q: What’s your favorite way to get a nature hit?

A: Gardening! Oh man, in the spring it takes over my life! I try to grow and can food to eat all year. I have a huge garden that is sometimes more than I can handle. I don’t know if most people would call that a nature hit, but I think it is. I love being outside all day and being completely covered in dirt and mud at the end of the day. When the garden catalogs start to show up in the spring I call them my garden porn magazines! I spend hours looking at them and planning my garden.

Swimming in calm rivers and tubing down them is also a favorite pastime.

Q: What’s a perfect world look like to you?

A: Wow that is quite a question. With all the politics in the air lately I have been thinking a lot about promises made by people no different that you or I.  Sure they have more power and money, but they are still people ruled by their moods and emotions, people who make mistakes and regret decisions they have made in the past just like everyone else. One minute we think one horrible thing like lets bomb them, then the next we are ready to say we are sorry. How can we possibly have a perfect world when people are so irrational, and everyone has an entirely different view on how the world is supposed to be without any acceptance of the difference. I would like to think that if we all took some time out to really think about our decisions and think about the future the world might benefit. In a perfect world everyone would have compassion, empathy, and openly embrace difference.

Every week I drive over a huge bridge that was built 50 years ago and only designed to last 50 years. An 8 lane bridge over the Hudson river that tens of thousands of drivers rely on every day. Every time I drive over that bridge I think about the person in power who made a financial decision to not build a better bridge, they knew they were leaving a huge problem for future generations but they did it anyways, and nobody stopped them. That is a small example of something that would not happen in my perfect world.

Rodeo, 2007, by Ky Anderson

Q: What have you always wanted to be asked as an artist? And what’s the answer?

A: Of all the things to do in this world why do you make art and don’€™t you think its kind of selfish?

I make art because if I don’€™t I turn into a real grump. I make it because it triggers a true joy inside of me that I cannot achieve any other way. In that way it is selfish, but not if you talk to people close to me, they know I am better person to be around after I have had some time in the studio.

I think about the selfish aspect of making art all the time, sometimes I think I should be doing more with my life to have an impact on the greater good. On the other hand, I do believe artists have a very important role in the world. A role to help others see things in different ways, I hope that throughout my life as an artist I can achieve this.

Handing it to me, 24"€x24"€, Acrylic on Paper, 2008, by Ky Anderson

I have an old family friend who passed away a few years ago, he was also one of my painting teachers at The Kansas City Art Institute. Lester Goldman, he was an incredibly prolific artist, the amount of work he did in his life is enormous. His wife recently put all of work on display and last week I spent several hours looking through hundreds of paintings. Looking at all of his work together and seeing the timeline of his life in his art put making art into a different perspective for me. It made it all feel worth while. His wife and I did a painting trade, so I got one of his great paintings. I hope that after I am gone someone will feel something remotely similar to how excited I feel that I get to live with one of his paintings.

Links: Ky Anderson, Ky Anderson at 20x200, Sophie Gee’s NY Times article

Let’s stay in touch.

Q&A: Laura Levine

Natalie Merchant © Laura Levine

By Dale Conour

You know those bios you read that make you feel like your entire life has been a waste and what’s the point in even starting to try harder now? Laura Levine, filmmaker, rock n roll photographer, animator, artist, author, etc., has done it all, with her work featured everywhere from the New Yorker and Rolling Stone to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum to the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe. I recommend reading her bio and converting the inevitable envy into inspiration—Laura’s been livin’.

With her recent forays into natural history, specifically her series of regional bird illustrations (the "Tweet Suite" series), it seemed like a nice time to bring Laura Levine into the fold of the New Romantics (surely a greater honor than the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, no?)

Q: You wrote recently about your work featured in 20x200: "Lately I’ve found myself focusing more on nature..." How does a subject usually make its way into your work? (If there is a "usually.")

A: It’s never a conscious decision, it just sort of happens. Sometimes the smallest thing can trigger it and off I go. I tend to work mostly in a series format, and I’ll usually choose a subject that fascinates me or strikes some sort of chord, as well as one that I’d like to learn more about. Once I get involved in the subject there’s generally a lot of research involved, and I can become rather obsessed with it.

So, for example, I’ve painted series of portraits of petty criminals of 19th century New York City, actual documented UFO sightings from the Fifties, Old West outlaws and heroes (cowboys, cowgirls), and of course, biographical portraits of musicians (which arose directly from my love of music and my previous career as a music photographer). It’s all documentary reportage or storytelling in a way, what I sometimes call "documentary illustration."

Years ago I picked up a torn old diagram of the Titanic at a yard sale and got a bee in my bonnet about the story (this was well before the Broadway musical and movie). It wasn’t a particularly popular subject at the time, but I dove right in (pun intended), even traveling to visit the Titanic Museum (which turned out to be the back room of Henry’s Jewelry Store in Springfield, Mass.). However, this was a situation where I eventually found the subject matter to be so utterly depressing that I never completed it. And once Titanic mania hit, that was it, I stopped. That was an exception though.

Birds of the Catskills © Laura Levine

Q: What was the evolution of the "Tweet Suite" series? Any surprise twists and turns or was it just intelligent design all the way?

A: Tweet Suite actually came out of a one-off illustration project. I was asked by Mark Murphy to contribute a page to a calendar project called Artistic Utopia.  I sometimes paint up in the Catskills, and there are several bird feeders outside the window, where I can easily spend hours watching the birds. That was pretty much it, my idea of artistic utopia: painting and watching and being in nature. Up till then I’d mostly painted people or objects, but rarely the natural world.

I made a painting of the birds I saw out the window, called Birds of the Catskills, and it sold right away (to my old friend Laurie David the environmental activist, who’s been collecting my work for awhile now). I so enjoyed doing it, and it seemed to hit a nerve with other people as well, that I decided to continue it as a broader series of common regional birds of the US. I researched other regions of the US (Rockies, New York City, Los Angeles, the Pacific Northwest) and as usual, I really got into it - stacks of field guides, web research, and correspondence with ornithologists (who were incredibly generous with their time and knowledge).

The trading stamp background was kismet as well. I’d picked up several shoeboxes-worth at a yard sale years earlier, and had saved them, patiently waiting for just the right project.

When I take on these subjects, I take them very seriously, and I require that my research be thorough and accurate, a perfectionism which probably owes a lot to my background in photojournalism.

Birds of the Northwest © Laura Levine

Q: Did spending so much time looking at, and thinking about, birds, change the way you see them, experience them?

A: I’ve always been a big animal lover, but I never specifically related to birds until I started this project. I certainly got to know the personalities of my little visitors - the bullying bluejays, the skittish chickadees, the pair of mourning doves who never left each others’ side.

Q: Is there anything about the outdoors that you dream of being able to capture in a painting, or photograph, or even on film, but it remains elusive?

A: It’d be nice to tackle a landscape, but I wouldn’t even know where to start. Having never taken a painting class, and having gotten into the field later in life, I don't really feel I have a handle on that yet. I’m still working on the small subjects. Maybe someday.

Q: Are you at work on anything now with strong "nature" overtones or subjects?

A: Well, I’m continuing with the birds, as they’ve gotten such a great response and I feel like there are so many more species and regions I’d like to explore and learn about. I’ve got a solo show coming up this spring at the Varga Gallery in Woodstock, NY of the bird paintings, so I need to paint a few new ones. I’m also starting to produce prints of some of the bird paintings, which I’m very excited about.

Björk © Laura Levine

Q: You’ve accomplished such strong portraiture in your photography, seemingly capturing something true and natural about your subjects, and yet your participation in the process is clear: They’re distinctively your creation. How does that process work (or not work sometimes)?

A: Is my participation really that clear? I try to not impose myself into the photographs, aside from trying to make the subject feel comfortable, be themselves, and hopefully create an intimacy that will then come across in the image. Obviously I have a certain visual style and approach to composition, lighting, mood, etc., but my idea of a successful portrait is one that creates an insight into the subject; it’s not about me.

I often pick up on certain aspects of a person - particularly ones with a very public persona - that aren’t often illuminated, and try to show that more private side of them when I take their portrait. Maybe that’s what you mean -- I create the atmosphere in which the subject is allowed to be themselves, with perhaps a little nudge from me here and there to help bring them out.

Q: There seems to be a strong folk art influence in your illustrative work—how "studied" is that?

A: I came to painting rather late. I was a photographer and already in my late 20s before I picked up a paintbrush and decided to see what might come out, having had no training (art school or otherwise), so in that sense I suppose I am self-taught, and I think that most self-taught (or untrained) artists who come from that place inevitably have - on the surface - a similar sensibility and look to their work: naivete, lack of perspective, bold colors, etc. It's what comes naturally. Believe me, if I could paint "better," I would!

Mike the Headless Chicken [click for larger version] © Laura Levine

Q: So, uh, tell me more about Miracle Mike, the headless chicken. Where did that come from? : )

A: Miracle Mike the Headless Chicken is one of the longer narrative pieces I’ve been lucky enough to do for Blab! magazine. Monte Beauchamp, the editor, gives me two pages an issue and lets me run with it. I’ve mostly focused on writing and illustrating stories about real life people and events  - the painterly equivalent of a documentary film, I suppose (another pursuit of mine). In fact, one of the pieces was actually based on a short doc film I’d made. My previous stories were about the Collyer Brothers, Veronica Lake, The Piccolo Midgets, and then there’s Mike. He was quite the celebrity in his time. All of the stories share certain aspects - truth, curiosity, humor, sadness, celebrity, and most of all, obsession.

Links:

Laura Levine’s website

Laura Levine, featured on 20x200

Fantagraphic’s offerings of Blab Magazine

Levine’s making a private run of Scarlet Tanager (limited to an edition of 100) as a gift for friends, family and selected collectors—"But there’ll probably be a few remaining, which will be for sale to the public"

Let’s stay in touch.

One-Mile Island finale

Living what's a dream for many of us, graphic designer Nik Schulz checked out and headed for a remote island, St. Agnes, in the north Atlantic. This is the last in a series of 17 excerpts that have run every other day. You can find previous excerpts through the link at right (or by scrolling down).

By Nik Schulz

Excerpt 17
---01.01.2000---

Even minutes before midnight, I doubted the clocks unstoppable march. Would they really manage to make it to 2000? Would that last passing second really have the strength to roll over all those zeros? Incredibly, it did and we found ourselves drunkenly stumbling into yet another 1000 years.

New Year’s Eve on St. Agnes was to be celebrated with a “fancy dress” party (which is fancy English for “costume party”) at a deconsecrated church known as the Island Hall. By late afternoon I was still trying to get a costume together but coming up short. In deciding what to bring for a six-month stint on a remote island, I hadn’t figured on needing a costume. Show’s how much I know... I ended up improvising, finding some wire-framed sunglasses, a skin-tight, striped, blue and purple shirt paired with white overalls, recovered from the wreck of the cargo ship, Cita (which, I’m told, littered the islands with overalls when it crashed on local rocks a couple of years ago). I then blow-dried my as-yet-uncut-on-English-soil hair into an afro of gigantic proportions. This ensemble I somewhat convincingly passed off as 60s-era, art scene-chic.

To start off the evening, Ellen and Bryce had kindly invited me to join them and their friends for dinner.

For costumes, they had decided to all dress like their ancestors. While I knew this, I wasn’t prepared for the moment I walked into the sitting room and saw Mia sitting there in strappy, low-cut, vaguely Egyptian shift, wearing a black, onyx necklace fanned out from pronounced clavicle to pronounced clavicle. False eyelashes, a long, platinum-white wig and a tiny, butterfly tattoo, probably taken from a child’s sticker book and sparkling below the corner of her left eye, only added to her otherworldly appeal. She was so gorgeous, I almost stopped breathing. After a moment I recovered and spent the whole dinner trying to figure out how to spend as much time with her as possible over the coming week. The only thing that distracted me was the fact that Ellen and Bryce had prepared a fantastically delicious meal of local beef, sea spinach mouse and potatoes, alongside unspeakably good crepes topped with salmon, creme fresh and caviar, all accompanied by an astounding 10-year-old champagne, one bottle of which they uncork at every significant milestone in their lives.

At some point this fine dinner among friends degenerated into a raucous, champagne-fueled sing-a-long as we charged, at top volume, through the musical standards of our generation. It was, without a doubt, the most fun I’ve ever had exiting a year.

We ate, we sang, we ate some more and slowly made our way down to the Island Hall. It had been decorated to ring in the New Year and shined like a beacon at the far end of the island. Inside, the tinfoil stars and dark sailcloth sky, the snowy white and frosty blue windows, white plaster walls and wide-planked floor gave the impression of a high school theater set. “2000” was spelled out over the door in Christmas lights, rendering the date in home-town proportions. It looked lovely and they had done a marvelous job decking it out for the occasion. As we arrived, we saw that the revelers were already in full swing, so we got drinks and stood outside.

I found Mia and struck up a conversation. After few minutes her mouth formed the bullet, “My boyfriend blah, blah, blah...” I wasn’t sure if she realized she’d been carrying a rifle, or was even aware that it had gone off, but the words left her lips like a gunshot. Wits not yet dulled by the champagne, I dove out of the way hoping to avoid the little missile as it flew past. Too late. As I got up and brushed myself off, still in mid conversation, I knew I’d been hit. The flash of her words erased from my memory everything else that she said the entire evening. All I can remember is her platinum hair, demur smile and the most perfect fireworks display I’ve ever seen, as a group of men lined up to launch expired ship’s flares at the stroke of midnight. They rocketed into the air and exploded, floating in the near sky like weightless lanterns, illuminating us in the misty-wet night, as we huddled together behind a little round hill, glowing in front of the Island Hall.

Let’s stay in touch.