Whisked Away

As much as travel anxiety plagues me, I love the idea. I grew up on a pretty, tree-lined residential street which also served, for some reason, as a bus route for a large Intercity service as well as the local metro. Every day I would watch the buses fly by, and I'd wonder where they were going, what adventures they were having in the Big City (1983 Buffalo, NY!) and I'd dream of one day being among them.

Be careful what you wish for. I've been commuting by bus for over 30 years and... let's just say, I have stories.

Lost & Found

There is no shortage of songs about the love of the American highway. It's in our DNA, whether we were born here, came here or long to be here. Often the songs that celebrate the freedom of the open road take a melancholy bent at some point. Because the open road, as exciting and mythical as it can be, is also fraught with fear and loneliness, and very often travel leads one to take in the unexplored expanses, uncharted roads, and dark alleys of the heart.

One of the finest lyrics to define this ache of self-exploration amidst the thrill of exploration comes in Simon & Garfunkel's "America":

"Kathy, I'm lost", I said,
Though I knew she was sleeping.
"I'm empty and aching and
I don't know why."

Baggage

It's really not travel I dislike. But I'm a naturally anxious person, and from the moment the house fades away in the rearview, I begin to imagine all of the calamities that could happen at home -- from the trite is-the-coffee-pot-still-on to the more realistic daymare of one of our cats getting a tail amputated by a door blown shut to the insane Rube Goldbergesque fantasies of a spilled bowl of water ballooning into a situation in which first responders bust in and then everyone will know that I didn't clear the breakfast dishes! Yeah, that's the inside of my skull. And I haven't even begun with all of the insane possibilities of hitting the road.

In my defense, when we headed out to Columbus, OH last May for our anniversary, we didn't make it to the Eden-Angola exit before the windshield wiper came loose and began flopping around. So I'm not TOTALLY nuts. I'm not.

I'm NOT.

Totally.

New Arrival

I hate traveling. I live in constants (unrealistic) fear that we will win the lottery, and my wife will drag me all over the world. Ugh. I mean, I like BEING somewhere, I like SEEING things, but traveling, I just don't enjoy it. Unfamiliar places put me into a small panic. I love Chicago, but we arrived on a Sunday evening, and downtown was as desolate as Buffalo on a Sunday evening. Looking for a cheap place to get a quick bite, we found nothing but a Subway restaurant. Thrilling. I'm sure there were other places, but, like I said, new places put me into a mode of constant worry.

I'd love to SEE the world, I'm just not keen on how to GET there.

Oddly, I love to drive, long aimless drives to nowhere. But if you give me an itinerary, I'd rather be....why, I'd rather be down in the studio!

Night Lights

"Sans Furniture" Reduction woodcut print, 8 colors, printed on Masa paper from single shina plywood block using Renaissance Graphic oil ink on an antique cast iron book press with additional burnishing via wooden spoon. Edition TBD. First print of 2018.

I love this print. Folks familiar with Hamburg know Sans Furniture, which has occupied a mid century modern building in the heart of the Village for my entire life time and beyond. While their bold storefront dominates on Buffalo Street, the rear Pine Street entrance, seen here, is cosier and more inviting. I pass by often at night on weary walks home from the bus stop, peering into the windows warm with the golden glow of artificial homescapes.

As a color mixer by trade, I'm most proud of the colors here. The sky, yellow gray with the aura of street light, the warm interior. The ceiling was a crap shoot -- I left it unfinished in my drawing, unsure how to execute.

It may be my most favorite print yet.

Well, This Is Awkward

I've talked about this in past posts: awkward stages. They usually involve the need to print a light color over a dark color, sometimes as a buffer against a bold color like red, sometimes because I forgot a color, sometimes because the second to last color just seems lighter. This color, a yellow gray, had to appear now for structural reasons -- applying ink is easier in the later states if you have more relief scattered around the block.

But it also offered a happy accident. I intended to have the sky be black, but I like this color for the sky. I think it captures the glow of sodium arc lamps in heavy humid air. I'll think about it.

The thing with awkward stages, in art and life, is just to remember that there is purpose to them, and surprises await.

Come On In

It's hard to name artists who inspire me -- the list is too long, and always growing. My first art infatuation was Picasso, when I was just 11. Then the usual suspects for a kid -- Dali, Warhol, Pollock. Anyone weird. I still respect them all, but when I look at this print with just two colors to go, only two names come to mind -- Hopper and Burchfield. Contemporaries, Burchfield, in my opinion, was the far superior artist, with his work approaching and crossing the boundaries of abstract expressionism. Hopper is revered for his "commentaries" on isolation and desolation, a notion he had scoffed at, admitting that he was only trying to study light. Both geniuses, both inspiring this print.
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Space Exploration

 It wasn't too long ago, but it's been a few years since "DeSoto Motel" (right). The print was similar in that it was a study of light and dark, though my chief concern was more the light of the sunset, the lights of the outdoor roof and the neon. I wasn't happy with the print though, for several reasons, one being my dismissal of the interior of the hotel office.

The current print is partially concerned with making amends for my ignoring space. Though I am still focused on the effect of light ( in this case, the orange glow of sodium arc municipal lighting), it was vital to explore the inside of the building. The image is only 9"X7", and shina plywood becomes brittle as the block gets inked and wiped, so I can't get as detailed as I might sometimes like. But I can feel the space here, and with 3 colors to go, I'm pleased.

In the introduction to his novel, "Birdy," William Wharton offered the following poem:

"There are bird tracks
And nothing in the sky
Something lived, left
And left something"

That speaks to what I find fascinating about these storefronts, aglow as if ready to fling open their doors to commerce, but closed, locked, and still. Rest, repose, sometimes, in the case of the old empty Woolworths I used to peek into, dead.

Think of your desk, or your garage, or someplace untidy with the folderol of life, and imagine you never return to it again (let's not be maudlin -- you moved, you retired, you stepped out to get a giant Paula's Donut, you are creating new bird tracks on another beach somewhere). What would someone coming on the scene think? What story is being told about you in the universal language of stuff?

Seeing the Light

Ten years ago, when we lived in Buffalo, I took a side job delivering newspapers in the southeast corner of the city, a somewhat rough and rundown area called, ironically, Lovejoy. I'd deliver my route somewhere around four or five in the morning, just the darkest time. I saw some crazy things in that neighborhood, as the drunks stumbled home, the skunks roamed for a snack. But the solitude of that hour was calming. The houses with the droopy window eyes, the yawning garage doors, the whole world lulled to slumber by the lonely howl of a train off in the distant railyard. Or maybe I'm remembering Snoopy as the World's War I flying ace in "Great Pumpkin." Anyway, one day I had to go to that neighborhood during the day. I couldn't find my way around -- the garish colors of the houses, rotted roofs and torn sidewalks that we're rubbed out and faded by the charcoal of night's dark. Daylight sure has it's beauty, of course. But the dark of night offers a glorious pallet, and a warmth of its own

Seen here, three pools of color, trying for the perfect one. Sometimes you have to go on faith. Reduction printmaking is deep on faith -- you never no if it will work out until the end.

Floored

For most of my formative years, up until the last decade or so, I was a night owl. You could find me at 2:00 am walking the quiet streets. A favorite place to go was the village shopping center. I loved to wander up and down the concrete walks, looking in the empty shops, quiet and cozy, with only a few lights left on. Woolworths, Pleasures & Pastimes, Ulbrich's Stationers. I can't say why I was drawn to these vacant night scenes, or why I still occasionally wander over there (P&P is now a Tuesday Morning, Woolworths is a closed tanning salon, and Ulbrich's was long ago demolished to become a Rite Aid parking lot). But a few things around there stand up against time....

Pop the Cork!

Happy New Year, folks.  I'm starting a little late on my first print of '18 -- I decided that it was time for a new brayer and new knives. Now that they're here, I've begun. Feels very good.

I want this print to be revealed as I go. As you see it develop, I'll add some observations and insight into this print, which I hope will lead to a larger exploration of the subject.

I live in the town I grew up in, a small pretty village South of Buffalo. I spent many late nights as a kid walking the streets in the wee hours, watching the business district change over the years. I saw it bustle with shoe stores and grocery stores and liquor stores, dissolve into vacant shopfronts and demolished buildings, rouse again with offices and new structures, empty out again as the economy collapsed, then surge back to life with an infusion of hipsters.

Through it all, though, there have been a few constants.....