THE LADY BUNNY

March 28, 2010. Some situations are just surreal. Add Lady Bunny to a Macy's balloon stage and three flower faced judges and you get the Pet-a-Thon. Owners paraded their pets, but I don't know what the end of it was. I was just in a blur listening to Bunny MC this show outside Macy's on Sunday. God bless her!

RED DRESS IN THE LIGHT

March 27, 2010. A red party dress, a fire escape, sunlight, Manhattan. What's not to like about that image? I like to think that people do this just to add something fun to a drab landscape. Or maybe people do this to draw our interest to design and spectacle and lighting that just happens on city streets.

DAD, MULE AND LAND

March 26, 2010. Today is my dad's birthday and he would have been 89. When he could no longer drive, he could still drive the mule around his farm. Mule modification was done by my family that lives in and around the home village. Seeing this makes me want to go lay in the grass.

MARCH, AS A LAMB

March 20, 2010. Flowers from asphalt. If they can’t grow, art can help them along. These were so real, that I wanted to pick them, but held back because I knew if I did so, the next person who happened along wouldn’t be able to enjoy them. Hanging on by a thread, the stems twisting in the wind, these delicate white blooms surround the corner of this construction site on Canal Street. They were such a surprise on a sunny afternoon in Manhattan.

MANHATTAN MONSOON

March 14, 2010. It rained, and blew, a lot, from Friday into Sunday morning. Here is what was left, dozens of umbrellas in various states, in the garbage, in the gutter, on the sidewalk. Shells of umbrellas, the fabric of umbrellas, handles and ribs, all scattered about. Do umbrella sellers dance when we have bad weather?

VAN BRUNT DOOR

March 13, 2010. Red Hook. Again. BWAC held a juried show and it was eventful as always. One of the artists sent us, in the pouring rain, on a quest for pulled pork sandwiches. On the way, we found this door. Unsightly, maybe to the building owners, but interesting to the rest of us. It looks like a collective work, added on over time, layered from one artist to the next. What happened to the person who started to write out bastard? Who was feeling so full of themselves that their only statement was I? Or did they also add the poison symbols (same paint colors) and then what did that mean to them? I am poison? I would be sorry to think that. But the optimist to the left gives the antidote for that – a big smiley face.

LOOPS

March 8, 2010. Continuity. When I was a boy there was a similar hose outside my father’s service station. It was rolled in circles on its hanger, waiting for the next person who needed to put air into a bicycle tire, or a car tire, or a farm machine. Nice circles. Now the hose is a loopy series of shapes, mostly off the ground, but energized and ready to go someplace, eager to be off its perch. It’s funny to find a service station in New York City.

WHERE DO CLOTHES PINS GO

March 9, 2010. As a child we played with clothes pins in our sandbox. They could be almost anything, taking on any characteristics – man, animal, robot, target. They would disappear, not back into the ice cream pail so that they could be used to hang clothes out to dry, but to some other mysterious place. How was I to know they came to live in a store window in Times Square?

INDIA LIMA

March 7, 2010. I wait for the hand that held me, the hand I covered and warmed, to return and take me once again, to reunite me with my compatriots, my left mitten, my hat, my coat. I am unable to proceed under my own power, I am adrift.

SHIMMER

March 6, 2010. 2 years ago, I was shown an ad for this man’s work. El Anatsui. It was placed by the Shainman Gallery on West 20th Street in an art magazine. I rushed to the gallery. I was breathless. I had to see these works. I was a year too early. I went back a year later, and I went back again this year. The works by El Anatsui are magisterial to me. They are sensual in the way that fabric can be, and they shimmer like metal would if it was woven into fabric. I would want to wear these next to my skin, even though I know it would be punctured, bloody and torn if I did so. The impression is both timely and timeless, harking back to the first weavings women ever created, which have been reinterpreted and built on over eons. This new work has changed (at least in my memory) from the first work I saw, with the addition of circular shapes and meandering lines, paths perhaps, leading across a landscape texturally lush and eager to be explored.

GANESHA IN WHITE

February 28, 2010. Ganesha is removing obstacles at the West 4th Street station. My friends Zekio & Christopher gave me a Ganesha of my own, which I keep by my door. I see him every day as I leave, and I think of what may face me as I move into the day. My friends Jeff & Jim sent me a picture from Costa Rica of beautifully white Brahman cattle, and this Ganesha reminds me of that. He is seated, his white trunk rising to the sky in greeting and celebration. I think the white in front of him is the recent snow that fell in NYC. To me it never seemed like 20 inches of snow, but there you have it, it was. My Ganesha is eager to help in removing this, but how? What form does this take? Perhaps many snow balls, or snow men and women rolled into shape, or snow forts. Ganesha offers me many choices.