The Great Disaster

The Great Disaster we're all a part of isn't the one in the headlines. It's not a sudden catastrophe. A day of horror. An explosion on a street. Planes hurtling into high rises. It's long and drawn out, incident after incident, law after law, arrest after arrest, murder after murder--none of which are the Great Disaster, but each are a part of it. More like a movement of techtonic plates--every tremor, every seismic event, is but the visible part of an imperceptable change of the landscape, of the shape of a continent. More like the melting of the Greenland icepack... we see the calving of the icebergs, as spectacular as the are, but not the rising of the oceans--which doesn't happen in an hour or a day. I'm speaking of the end of this civilzation... of all that's been built on and dependent on the delusional autopoietic machinery of capitalistism and nation states that it created to serve it. We can feel it cumulatively... feel that everything is changing, the world as we have believed it be is already no more, but then... it looks not that much different than yesterday, or the day before, and we go about our lives, oblivious of the escalator of extinction we're all riding together. lnevitable as growing old... noticable only when we look back a decade, or two or three, and see the marks of death written across our every feature.

#161 New Mexico (3)

#160 Red River frift (2)

#159 Red River rift, New Mexico

 #151   35x24"

Acrlyic on Masonite, pieces of plastic

#148

The course of true love never did run smooth  48x22", weathered board, plastic, roofing, rope, acrylic on composition board on Masonite.

Thinking about the spirituality of the visual. How when I make visual art, there is no need for reconciliation with science. There is no need to distort syntax, to subvert grammar to say what I'm impelled to say. No need for defiant credulity, for magical thinking.

<"Inelectable modality of the visible... thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane.> "

... at least that if no more" from Joyce, Proteus. Episode 3, Ulysses

I make stuff... assemblages, paintings.. is this 'art?' I don't know. Used to be, artists would think there might be a future where what they did would give pleasure, would expand the visiion of future generations. But we don't have that now. There's only, 'now.' It's pretty clear the power elite are psychopathes, concerned about nothing but their own delsusional idea that THEY can survive, even as they orchestrate the destruction of the rest of us. It's a relatively new idea... making art with no concept of 'posterity.' That there will be no one left to pass this down to. If Van Gogh were working now--there would be no future generations to appreciate what he had done. There is no comparable fantasy for working artists in this, one of our last generations. You just do it anyway... cause you have to. Like Camus' doctor in The Plague. You go about your business --though you know there is no hope. You cannot save the victims of the plague. And we are all victims of this plague.

#140

#141

Chromatic Fugue in C# Major, 48x24 Acrylic on Masonite

Self Portrait

Wells Fargo Trial: Not Guilty!

News reports:
Breaking News: Philadelphia Jury Acquits 12 Wells Fargo Protesters in “Citizens’ Foreclosure”

 Links below

PhillyCom

FireDogLake

Adbusters

You Tube of Press Confeence

PHILADELPHIA--Twelve protestors arrested in November 2011 for occupying a Center City Wells Fargo branch have been found not guilty by a Philadelphia jury. Defendants claimed they were staging a “Citizens’ Foreclosure” on the bank for engaging in discriminatory lending and sapping millions of dollars from the School District of Philadelphia. After viewing video of the protest and hearing defendants’ testimony, a jury found all 12 defendants not guilty on charges of conspiracy and trespassing.

“This verdict shows that the people of this country stand on the side of justice and not the reckless profit-driven motives of big banks,” said defendant and Occupy Sandy organizer Larry Swetman. “I hope this decision will give the United States government the courage to start taking these banks—the real criminals—to trial and to hold them accountable to the people, instead of letting them hide behind back-room settlements.”

One of the only Occupy-related trials in the country to be argued before a jury, today also marked the first civil disobedience Free Speech case in recent Philadelphia memory.

“Today the people of Philadelphia defended the First Amendment,” said Defense Attorney Marni Snyder, one of seven lawyers who volunteered to represent the protestors pro-bono.  “We sent a clear message to the District Attorney’s Office: prosecute the real criminals at Wells Fargo; these twelve defendants stand on the side of justice.”

Defendants included a non-profit housing counselor, a Wells Fargo mortgage holder, a local teacher, an activist who participated in Civil Rights Era struggles, and Temple and Penn graduate students. During testimony, they pointed to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission’s report on Wells Fargo’s prejudicial lending practices and investigations by the Pennsylvania State Auditor General’s Office to draw connections between Wells Fargo’s profiteering and the defunding of our communities and school district.

“I’m excited the jury chose to stand with us and ask the real questions about Wells Fargo and our city,” said defendant and future public school teacher Aaron Troisi, “Questions like, can we really afford to let Wells Fargo to continue robbing from our children and stay silent? Wells Fargo and other banks are partly responsible for the situation our schools are in now. The banks have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from our schools and city.”

The group was defended by seven local lawyers working pro bono:, Leo Mulvihill, Jr., Marni Snyder, Paul Hetznecker, Michael Lee, Michael Coard, Lawrence Krasner, and Jon Feinberg.

#133 Subpoena Dog/ Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs Willard R Johnson

#131

Good and Evil

Standing on evidence matters in morality no less than for science. If one observes that the consequences of one's beliefs and practices create suffering and hardship for others--those beliefs and practices must change. Those who cling to the abstractions and hide from or rationalize the consequences, are wrong. Dead wrong. I can't for the moment think of an instance where this doesn't apply. No matter what you've been taught, what you've been brought up to believe--if you remain open to the real world consequences of those beliefs, have the capacity to empathize with those affected, you can change, you can become a better person. If there is such a thing as 'evil,' I would define it as a hardening of the heart, the refusal to exchange received notions and treasured beliefs, when evidence shows the suffering they will cause, if implemented. A person may be racist, misogynist, xenophobic--this in itself does not make them evil, if that is what they have been brought up to believe, if that has been their understanding of the world. But the first instance when they are confronted with evidence of the real suffering which those beliefs cause... if they do not begin at that moment, to change, to transform themselves... that is the beginning of evil. And with every denial, every hardening of the heart... they establish themselves ever further from the possibility of human redemption... that is... a place of justice and honor in the human community. Jacob the Elder

Wells Fargo Trial

Trial is ON for Wells Fargo defendants. Municipal Court Bldg, 1301 Broad.
We want to fill the courtroom. We anticipate that the trial will run from 9am-3pm from Tuesday to Friday next week. The most important turnout days are Tuesday and Wednesday (we think.) A great time to come show support would be in shifts: 

Tuesday: 9-12 and/or 12-3
Wednesday: 9-12 and/or 12-3
Thursday: 9-12 and/or 12-3
Friday: 9-12 and/or 12-3

If you can attend for any part of the trial please RSVP! As little or as much time as you can offer is greatly appreciated! We need a consistent presence. 

ALSO keep an eye out on Facebook and twitter for changes to the schedule.

https://www.facebook.com/events/162437573906475/

Take Wells Fargo Back to Trial in Philly

February 26 at 9:00am

Municipal Court Building 1301 Filbert Street, Philadelphia

You start from the bottom ...

I love this Nicolaides, The Natural Way to Draw… “ A tree does not grow from the top down but from the bottom up. Start then at the bottom, and in a loose, easy, tentative manner allow your pencil to move upward as you can feel that the tree moves up…
“

Yes! The tendency (even when you mark the proportions) to start drawing with the head (yeah… 1 head to the nipples, 2 heads to the navel…la la la..)  … think about it! The HEAD. The fucking BRAIN… that’s not seeing the BODY. Gravity matters! Start from the bottom… everything else must have its support from this base.

And yes (Nicolaides again, The Natural Way to Draw), it’s not about ‘parts’.. “Through your ability to grasp something of this, you will begin to understand other things like proportion and perspective, for the truth is that those things are caused by movement and are a part of it. It is far more important that your studies contain this comprehension of movement, of gesture, than that they contain any other single thing.”

It’s so obvious.. and so hard to grasp. Or rather—one has to overcome so much built in resistance to grasp it.

In my open studio sessions… I glance at how others are doing. I seem to be somewhere maybe a little over the average… which is encouraging, given than it’s been more than 40 years since I’ve drawn a human figure from life. Then I start thinking about the ones with significantly greater mastery… like text book illustrations. I respect the skills, the perfect shading, being able to render the forms… I mean, that’s what we’re all here for. But I know that’s NOT what I want to do. The easy rendering, yes.. .the understanding of anatomy, yes… but I don’t want to do ‘Illustrations’… or graphic comic figures (no disrespect here—any one of these graphic artists, their skills—proportion, anatomy, perspective, foreshortening… they can do ANYTHING! they are Amazing!) … but it’s not drawing as I want to make it—and Nicolaides is so liberating in that way.

Drawing… a feeling that I couldn't do it, that I wasn't good enough—even though I wouldn't admit it then, that’s what backed me off  of visual arts… step by step.   I see now how far I fall short  of what I want to do…but see my strengths now as I didn't before… or wasn't ready to trust--, and so much more clearly what I DON’T want, what I don’t need to emulate to justify myself as an ‘artist.’ 

Nicolaides is my ‘Spring and All.”  

Modernism, visual and literary

Thinking about Josipovicii. ... his take on literature and Modernism... I'm doing assemblages, what amounts to abstract expressionist painting... primal late Modernist stuff. For Josipovici (literature), the Modernist experiment was cut short. Left unfinished... vistas unexplored. For very different reasons .. .I should write "reasons" ... in quotes. Visual art was cut off from that stream as well. Equally unfinished. The economics in each case were instrumental--but following a different thread. The strange intervention of the CIA promoting American art... and it's "freedom" versus... the cold war stuff, shot modernism into an economic ascendancy that eclipsed lts literary parallels... way ahead of popular acceptance. But what came after was along the same lines... in the visual arts, a comodification of modernist conventions ( you see them in every institution you walk into) ... and in literature... a limited use of modernist conventions in support of a wholesale retreat into pre-modernist illusionist 'Realism'... I'm so glad I've been straddling this divide... waking me up to what ALL the arts have in common.. I mean, all the artists (not the art) who don't want to pimp for our bloody Empire of Money & Death..

#104 Woman Ascending

#103 Homage to Hubble

Acrilic on PVC on cardbord on Masonite.

#102 44x28, shoe, roofing, plastic lattice, dirt, acrylic on cardboard.

The Impulse to Anarchy

It would seem that it is the very nature of the State, that no matter how noble its founders intentions, no matter how lofty the principles assigned to its laws and institutions, over time, little by little, or in a sudden plunge into profligacy, the actions it takes up congeal more and more solidly and irrevocably around the absolute worst impulses of our species?

130, Mr. Joyce--thanks for having been here.

Up at 7 AM. Didn't even hurt much. Haven't seen 'em cause I haven't been there, but I know there's been flocks of robins on the lawns of SJU and Fairmont Park for at least a week now. Makes me think how words that might have passed away like extinct organisms hook themselves up to some phrase or idiom and survive, like the mitachondria in every cell in our body that once were independent organisms and still preserve their own DNA.

Harbingers.... as in, harbingers of spring. Robins. Don't know that I've ever heard that word in any other context. So maybe waking up at 7 AM, maybe that too is a harbinger of spring--the end of winter hibernation mode.

And by the way--happy birthday, Mr. Joyce. Died the year I was born. Born this calender day, 1882. I'm so glad you lived on this planet. Woulda been a sadder stay for me without you. Here's to your memory.

Wall in my work space

 B&W piece, roofing mounted on washing machine panel, with acrylic & string. 

#92