Three weeks ago I took a trip to Kirkland and Seattle, WA. My trip had a two-fold agenda: first, scout galleries and meet people involved with the art scene in the Puget sound area, and second, spend some time with my good friends Stephanie, Michael, Matt, and Meredith. Michael White and I think a lot about art and about life. We have many times travelled different paths concerning these topics, but more often than not our roads intersect and we learn a great deal from the sharing of intellect.
I had unfortunate timing for gallery hunting as it was two days before the monthly First Thursday event and everyone was either taking down a show or putting up a new one. I did get a chance to meet a few good people and find some excellent galleries to send portfolios to. The high-light of the art was seeing Neo Rouch’s work at the Frye Museum. He’s brilliant. Rouch is one of many contemporary artists practicing a form of popular-cultural collective unconscious collage or compilation; by far the best I’ve seen so far.
Through out my stay with Mike, we talked about many things, alchemy, mysticism in general, the art business, motivation for painting, the socio-cultural importance of art and how our work can and can not contribute.
I came home Wednesday for a relaxing evening with my wife before the preparations for a frightening weekend took place. I slept well and dreamt long, but was forced to rise early to hang a show at Verve Coffee and apply the finishing touches to ArtSpace1, the new artist co-op gallery I’m involved with. This was an excellent experience for me. I’ve learned to never commit to a show before I gain a complete understanding of the manager’s expectations, fees, commissions ect. and, in contrast, how invigorating it feels to have a space to present my work completely uninhibited by any such manager, curator, or other business entanglement.
Tony Magnotti, another close friend of mine. visited last weekend and spent Saturday with me minding ArtSpace1 during business hours. The gallery has a temporary sandwich board and is therefore quite vague and not the most inviting. Tony and I sat on the stairs at street level watching yuppies cruise from winery to winery giving us curious looks while peering up the staircase with an air of drunken fear and confusion. Needless to say, we didn’t get many visitors. We did, however, exchange a vast amount of knowledge and opinions concerning all things art.
The following evening I performed with Hans Fly as Circuit Board Centerfolds, a new wave synth pop act, at Verve along with Sven Sven, PineCone, and Seven Years Absence. It was a good show and probably the last Hans and I will play before he bounces about the globe like cultural hitchhiker he was born to be. With the closing of the weekend and a finale for CBCs, a new door is opened to me. Since then, I have already started a new musical endeavor, done a few photo-studies for new paintings, fine tuned my portfolio in light of the advice and experience gained over the past weeks, started reupholstering a chair, and put myself and my new work on display at the annual Walla Walla Balloon Stampede, an adventure which is an entirely other story of its own. Oh, and of course I went out to lunch with my mother on Sunday. Now I move forward with the soil of life lived behind me and the clouds of mystery and progress growing in my horizon.