I would not have turned away

Something About Mary

She looks like her daughter. Her Italian skin is too pale. For her hair color. I promised to write a poem about her. To myself. She is too beautiful. To be crying. At the kitchen table. And I thought. 20 years earlier. When she was married. She would not have looked at me. So longingly. And I would not have turned away.

Avoid snug

Artists aren’t jocks. But that is the perception of educational institutions. Jocks or techies. In a slumping economy many are wondering about the existence of fine art programs at universities. We’re not talking about the training of sound engineers, cameramen, etc. Schools don’t create artists.

Some years ago Morley Callaghan was teaching a creative writing course at the University of Windsor. He asked the students how many wanted to be writers. About two thirds of the students put up their hands. “Well,” he said. “What are you doing here? Get out there and write.”

I think this holds true for all the arts. Writing, painting, sculpture, music, theatre. Even motion pictures. With the advent of cheap cameras, editing programs, and digital hard drives, making movies or at least short films can be very cheap. To get yourself a name. Even if you graduate from a film school you will have to go back to the street level to begin your career.

Of course there are the instructors. And in some cases this can be an advantage. But none of that has to happen in an educational institution. This should be happening in our cities. In our cafe life. In a studio life. In Toronto it is too expensive for students to rent studios or galleries. Then they should move. Leave Toronto to the bankers and accountants. In southern Ontario for example, Hamilton, only a few miles west of Toronto, provides an alternative environment. It isn’t afflicted with avarice. Open for new ideas. Affordable.

In my universe, young artists will abandon the schools of art, of higher learning and return to the streets. Talk to each other. Plan. Create your own theatre. Your own music. Your own galleries. But of course this demands a risk by artists. It is much easier to stay inside the walls of educational institutions. Easier when you’re comfortable. When you’re snug.

Change demands heroes. But does the generation that is nursed on apps, pads, and cell phones have the stomach for it?

 

I mean it in the best possible way

Every weekend I would rush to read her column. They were always economic, insightful, and very funny. I can’t remember her name. Maybe she was a he. But I loved her reviews. Of restaurants. And that’s the life of a critic. They are the most easily forgotten of writers. Because they are parasites. And I mean that in the best possible way. They live only as long as their host is in the limelight. But unlike most artists, they make a decent living, marry happily (or not), send their kids off to college, and die, gasping for breath in an empty hospital room. I have been hurt by critics. One, I swear never read the book he was ravishing. I have even been hurt by critics who loved my books. They didn’t go quite go far enough in their praise. You see, the whole thing is about vanity. And the critic’s is the largest. Even larger than the artist. Because he/she decides who is worthy.

That’s it. I’m out of here. (Beginning to sound like a critic myself.)

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Twists of fate

I was reading an article that mentioned Detroit as the new birth of bohemianism in America. And I was trying to remember Yorkville in the summers of the 60s. Coffee houses. A young Neil Young and Gordon Lightfoot playing in the clubs. We used to make our way down the village and hang out. And then others would drive their cars downtown to cruise slowly down Yorkville Avenue to look at us. One evening I was pretty despondent. (I was 17) A girl came up to me and we started to chat. (I’ll call her Cathy) A lot of time passed. And then we parted. She gave me a kiss. I said, ‘you will never remember me’. Years later, I was in a different city, in a bar, with a different girl. (I call her Mildred). Mildred was telling me about this strange girl she had met in Vancouver the previous summer. They were at a party. The girl was coming on to her. The girl was telling her about this strange boy who had told her that she would never remember her. It was my Cathy. All these tightly knit twists of fate.

Renovations complete

A new room has been built in my gallery. iAMaGALLERY.

power of h

I have another blog. Which runs parallel to this one. It is more an appraisal or a discovery of other artists. It is called ‘the power of h’ and can be found at

http://powerofh.wordpress.com/

oh god, I’ve become Charles Dickens

It was a cold day. It was a hot day. It was a day filled with smiles. It was a day filled with tears…. oh god, I’ve become Charles Dickens.

That’s my intro to these illustrations found at my websight… iAMaGALLERY

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Ed Kuris

Went to see a friend of mine today. He lives in Guelph Ontario with his wife, dog, cat(s).  He’s an artist. And he just finished a group of paintings that wiped me out. There is a darkness in his work and it looks to me as if he is beginning to grow out of it. At least that’s the impression I got from his latest work. I wish I had some examples to put up but alas… If you’re in Guelph he’s going to have a show of some of his work at a local gallery. I will give you the details when I get them. Stay tuned.

Happy Birthday Bob Dylan

Modigliani

At 17 Modigliani wrote  that artists had ‘different rights, different values than do normal, ordinary people because we have different needs which put us – it has to be said and you must believe it – above their moral standards.’ [This was quoted in a review, of MODIGLIANI A life by Meryle Secrest, in the NYT Review of Books] All through my young life as an artist I seemed to have fought against two stereotypes. One was the artist as an aristocrat whose position allowed him to do what he pleased. The second was as the artist as a victim, a Christ like figure who suffered for the rest of us. Ironically enough it appears that the first stereotype often evolved into the second. These alpha humans are interesting. For a while. At  workshops, in bars, at meetings of the staff of literary magazines there always seemed to be this emphasis on the ‘ego’.  Everyone has one but after one is in the company of the egocentrics for long their company becomes as distasteful as too much sugar in your diet. And I knew people like Modigliani. Sometimes they weren’t artists, but priests or lawyers. I always felt that it was not necessary to be abnormal to be an artist.  And yet… I love Modigliani’s work.

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