TORN

Saturday, September 8, 2012.  Layers of images and innuendo.  I see the fear of alien in this.  Underneath our skin, is there an alien presence, the implant of a species that left us here?  Will we react to it as we see so often in how we react to the unknown, with force and violence?  This image portends the worst.  Yet there is a word of hope - LET.  Let it be.  Let it live.  Let us imagine.  Let us grow.  Let us become.

A LA CLARK

Sunday, August 12, 2012.  This is what lies behind the mask.  Behind the eyes is structure, light, darkness, cracks.  The stripping away of this rectangle has given us insight, but has denied us entry through those soul tunnels - the eyes.  Adding to or taking away helps me to see in very different ways.

MOONLIGHT IN THE PRIMEVAL FOREST

Sunday, April 29.  Ah, what mysteries unfold in this corner of the forest, lit by the golden light of a full moon?  The figures meet and perform the ritual, the trees and vines as witness to the dance.  It makes me sad to know that this work will soon be gone, an ephemeral piece of our City.

ROCK FACE

January 16, 2012.  It must have been an early impulse for humans to draw, to use simple lines to enhance what was partially visible in the cracks on a rock wall.  From cave drawings to subway drawings, working with a surface that is rough and already pocked with its own marks, the artist gives more solid lines to a vision, a recording.  I can see this square jawed, stocky man waiting for a subway.  I can connect with him and what he thinks and how he uses this thing to move around his world.  I can see myself.

MASK FACE

March 31, 2011. This drawing of a mask wasn't meant for everyone. The artist applied it to the back of a phone booth in the subway. To see it, you had to stop, turn away from the tracks and look behind a support post. Why? Was it to force you to look for it? Was the act of standing in front of it, or simply walking past it too easy? Here you had to make a conscious decision to view it. And this seems to be the view the artist wanted - the far side of the face was only to be imagined.

ALTERATION

March 11, 2011. Should a work of art remain unchanged? When is that decision made, who makes it, and is it right. There are those works we would probably not want to see changed in any way. But is there room for interactive pieces such as this? Did the first artist decide the work could be changed and do so? Did another come along and decide it could be improved? Was the first sad to see the original go away, ephemeral as a sand mandala? I would have liked to see them continue, alongside each other.

TEAR AWAY

March 10, 2011. The artist Elspeth Meyer created a subway series of collage faces, which she has slowly unveiled at successive shows at BWAC. I anticipate with eagerness her studies of the people that she observes on and off the trains. Here, under CPW at 96th street, an unnamed artist creates observations of their own, but from the billboards that line most platforms. I like that selective tearing away reveals a layer of random color and shifts the face into another dimension, unknown except for the fact that I know.

COLLAGE 96

October 15, 2010. A surface that has been glued over, painted, graffitied, papered and stickered, has become a work of assembly that arrests the eye and wants you to stop and look. What happens when we just pass by, not taking the time to let the layers, colors and patterns soak into us? Maybe nothing. Maybe something. Our experience of today is either changed or not.

SUBWAY PORTRAIT

June 13, 2010. Ah, now here's a face, a scowl, an unhappy outlook on the adventure that awaits anyone entering the subway system in NYC. The train can carry you to faraway places, new cultures, or work. It can take you to the IKEA ferry to visit Red Hook for the BWAC art exhibit. This face doesn't know that. He is rendered in light and darkness - but the darkness seems to control his face, force its outlook, weigh on what could be an exuberant day.

PUFF

May 27, 2010. Some art is ephemeral, especially grafitti. A previous post, 4 Men 4 Cigars is no more, but this sketch is now on the same wall. Simple, elegant lines create a figure in motion, as sinuous as the smoke rising from the cigarette. The figure is urban, relaxed and current - all suggested in a few simple lines.

4 CIGARS

May 5, 2010. 4 cigars and 4 men on 12 tiles. I walked into the subway tunnel and there they were. Who could pass them by? Four faces and cigars in unity and opposition, defined as much by the light as by the shadow, unable to exist one without the other. The images immediately bring to mind the fat cat financier, the architect of our doom by back-room dealing. The boss-like demeanor is accentuated by the cigar, almost now an emblem of dirty dealing.

PURPLE

April 11, 2010. I don't know how this is done, but I love the chalky white background of these post poster surfaces. The dark sweeps of the roller cross the surface to provide a background for the swatches of purple that start and end the frame. Did someone do this on the run - a sort of kamikaze approach to this subway art? I don't know how long it will stay, but I want to enjoy it while it is there.

I WALK AS A GHOST

November 21, 2009. After my morning swim I was coming up from the 7th Avenue line, when I came across the first image. Completely random, a slip of the trowel, a whistle that signaled closing time, and the person on this job didn’t smooth the last of the cement where tiles will eventually cover this work. A ghostly image, a woman in a shroud, a priestly figure, a graduating student – I don’t know – but I stopped.

Moments later, walking up a street in my neighborhood, I passed by this tree. It has been there many years. I didn’t see it. Now look how the bark has separated from the trunk, wrapped around it, embracing, holding, not wanting to leave its source. The play of texture, the softness of the bark, like birch, against the smooth trunk, like a post readied for staking to make a fence on the farm.

SUBWAY ROTHKO

October 23, 2009. My subway Rothko. Over a black background is painted this blue rectangle – admittedly washed out, but blue nonetheless. Every day I walk down the stairs to the downtown C and I wonder who painted this, and why no one has painted over it in a single bureaucratic color. The black is shiny like hot black tar on a Minnesota roadway in July, and it makes me smile as I make my way to work.