Dennis Hollingsworth

So Robbie walked in...

So Robbie walked in, it was his last night before he would return to New York, and he stopped to look at a self portrait, wet into wet. I said that I would like to paint his and he said why not now?

Why not indeed?

So I laid down some Prussian Blue and a sheet of warm white on top because I knew I would see the blue again and Prussian Blue is freaky, a little goes a long way. It was a dark enough color to show what I was seeing that night. Three tries and two wipe outs took us to 1am no problem.

A closer look:

OVAL

Andrew Hahn has a stack of wood ovals in his studio, his preferred format for ambient painting support. One night, we painted a few, this is one of them. Whip whap, the collaboration was the way I like it: alternating swings at the target, each of us keying on what the other has introduced, each of us flinging the painting into a new direction in turns.

This was made last late winter/early spring, a moment where, with Andrew's help, I found another door to representation unlocked, the door knob turned quite easily in my hand.

Oh, hello Vincent!

Snapshots from Fantastic LA

Barry Blinderman sent in shots -on the fly- of the show Fantastic LA.

More to come.

Painting

QualiaSoup

Ahora

Fantastic LA

(Brian Calvin, "Killer", 2006.
Acrylic on canvas, 39"x24")

Here's a big shout out to Barry Blinderman for his generous inclusion of me in his show, Fantastic LA at the Illinois State University Gallery, College of Fine Arts:

Great company.

Link.

Barry just sent me an iPhone pic of part of the install:

That's Phil Wagner's painting to the right.

Ahora

Closer:

And closer, still....

A few notes:

*

One night soon after I returned from Spain, I invited a couple of friends over for a reunion over drinks and smokes, to talk about what's been happening and enjoy one another's company so sorely missed. As one bottle led to another, wine for two and tequila and beer for another, the hours clocked into the madrugada and Michael Jackson's recent passing floated into the crosshairs of our conversation. In moments, my pals found themselves on either sides of a moral issue: did Michael Jackson err by clouding the question of pederasty? ...or is such a moral line difficult to locate in our day and age? As point jammed into counterpoint, I tried (unsuccessfully) to point out that it is interesting that both of them in fact agreed that such a line existed and more significantly, that perhaps this is a sign that we are living in a new era.

The modern era was, among other things, concerned with contesting the existence of such a moral line. I prefer to think of the emergence of the modern in terms of acceleration and velocity. Acceleration is the rate of change in velocity. Cultural change from the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th was one of great acceleration. We were thrown back into our seats by the birth of modernity, an excitement of the social change wrought by technological revolution (communications, warfare, engineering, etc.). Today, life is indeed changing a great deal but we feel relatively less acceleration that we did at the turn of the previous century, even though our cultural lives are now traveling at such a great velocity. The only way to feel such a comparable change is to imagine what would happen to society if aliens would land on the White House lawn, or if cold fusion was not a fool's errand. This minor thought experiment is a way I use to try to place myself into the mentality of an artist living during the birth of modernity. The arts were preoccupied by sorting the fruits of such radical change and one consequence was an ongoing contest of whether distinctions of any sort should exist at all. It was a worthy and necessary project at the time, and it generated a great many valuable, indeed priceless, cultural artifacts. However with the fullness of time, it was a literal dead end in as much such a line of inquiry led to nihilism and thus this led us to the threshold of suicide. Art and life together die at the extremities of nihilism.

We all want art to live on.... don't we?

Despite the fact that my pals were struggling with each other on opposite sides of the issue, I wanted to point out that it was significant that both of them -and all of society by extension- were cognizant of the existence of a moral line despite the fact that they were arguing where the line was or even could be drawn, and this could be a distinguishing feature of an era that has -in this historical moment- succeeded the previous era, modernity both classical and postmodern. In other words (...less words...), it was significant to me that they weren't contesting the existence of the line -that a line existed at all- but that they both implicitly agreed that such a line existed.

(* The drawing was a collaboration, and I should conceal the attribution until I get permission of my friend. Until then...)

Ahora

This Morning

Dude Dogg tonight in CT

Tonight, LA will bust out art openings all over town. For those of you who might end the night in ChinaTown, Dave Deany just sent out this bulletin:

TONIGHT - ONE NIGHT ONLY, THE WILDEST "OVER 35" FREAK-OUT CIRCUS, DUDE DOGG WILL BE PERFORMING LIVE!

IN ADDITION TO TIMELESS CROWD PLEASING HITS, THIS SET WILL INCLUDE ALL NEW COMPOSITIONS SUCH AS:
EMOTIONAL BLITZKRIEG, FARTY PARTY, DUDE DOGG CITY, MR. WORTHINGTON,
AND MORE!!

510 BERNARD STREET in CHINATOWN (the cul de sac - out back!) 10PM. CHILDREN AND SENIORS FREE ADMISSION!

Rebuild Them

(Image Source.)

Outtakes

Here's a few moments to tuck away.

Cuentas

Two sites for your perusal, the power of new media in illuminating lives formerly overshadowed by aging master narratives. I found Callejeros on Spanish television, a fountain of very interesting journalism

Memoro is a site mentioned on a Spanish televison show that I saw in passing this summer.

What I like about both of these and other shows -of this type that I had encountered in viewing the television programming in Tossa- is the first person accounts, wherein the presenter is a step out of the frame and therefore the viewer can instead have a chance to be the one to encounter the subject.

Well worth poking around, lots of good stuff there.

Evan Lintermans' Foto Stream

Evan Lintermans sent in a link for fotos of his time in Spain. You can see his fotos of Tossa here. Click back for his shots of Barcelona. Good stuff.

Evan Lintermans in Tossa

Chinatown LA friend, artist, painter, next door neighbor Evan Lintermans hung out with Henry and me in Tossa for a little over a week. Snorkel, snorkel, a drink at this bar, a drink at that bar, beach, beach, hikes in the local trails, shimmy shimmy coco puff at the local guitar bar Tahiti...

It was wonderful to share Tossa with friends.

Here in this foto, we were waiting for our table at restaurant Can Pini to strap our paella on, some sangria, and maybe an appetizer of chiperonis too (baby fried squid).

Henry Taylor Works in Progress

Here's a short tour of Henry Taylor's paintings in progress, August 2009, Tossa de Mar, Spain.