Sunday, December 16, 2012

Small works show at Art And Frame

The Inquisitor
The opening for the Second Small Works show at Art and Frame in Danbury was well attended. Seth Lefferts (see photo below which is actually from Molten Java) played admirably. The show remains up until January 20. I have three small polymer heads in the show, (one shown above) all with huge price tags because I want them to come home to me afterwards.








Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Fine Arts & Crafts in Bethel, Sat after Thanksgiving

Fast talking, always smiling, Bohemian wildman artist Mike Seri sent me this poster. He curated the first Pop Up Bethel show and i have to tell you it was wonderful. So why not do your Xmas and Kwanza gifting right here and support the arts. So check this out:

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Robin's Rant: Words like pebbles

I liked this new blog post from a blog called Robin's Rant! Robin's Rant: Words like pebbles:

"I don't let go easily. I save words like pretty stones. I turn them over and over, feel their heft. Smooth or rough, they are all beautiful."    - Robin Sampson

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Art and Frame Photo Show in Danbury


Art and Frame's Photo show has some interesting works. Take a pass through and check them out. This gallery and frame shop is located near Chamomile on Route 6 in Danbury. Check their Facebook page and click on events for show openings.  Besides the artwork, their show openings usually feature great local music and a nice spread of noshable items. On this particular evening I was too early and missed the music however.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Threads - a seasonal weave

I haven't written a post in quite a while, so I thought I would start with a picture. This fluffy bit is all digital,   a digital doodle.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Helen of Troy, a treat at WCSU

Classic Greek drama visited Danbury Monday night. It questioned the efficacy of violence and the benevolence of the fickle "gods."  The play was Helen of Troy by Euripides. The performers were a professional touring troupe under the direction of Eftychia Loizides.

The play provides an alternate view of Helen. In this version she'd been whisked to Eqypt by Hermes and never taken by the warrior Paris, who instead, stole a phantom of smoke, whipped up a goddess bent on mischief. Yet as we find out - this means all the blood shed, lives lost, agonies endured for the sake of Helen during the ten-year Trojan war, had been offered up in vain....

Literature Professor Donald P. Gagnon, PhD  set the play among Euripedes other works, before the curtain went up on this performance, noting that it was banned for a time some 2400 years after it was first produced, because it was considered too powerful for the situation then.

It took me a while to get used to the stage voices, but after a while I was immersed.  It was tastefully done with a minimal set and some beautiful (haunting) singing.

The production stared Leslie Fray as the beautiful clever Helen, Brian Scannell as craftly but noble Menelaus, the delightfully villainous Chuk Obasi as Theoclymenus, and an equally strong cast of other players including Aaron Barcelo, Nora Aislinn, Katia Haeuser, Stevan Szczytko and Sandra Maren Schneider. (Leonidas Eftychia Liozides Theatre Group)

The production of Helen of Troy was sponsored jointly by Western Connecticut State University and The Deno and Marie Macricostas Family Foundation.

A reception with delicious food, coffee and Baklava afforded an opportunity to chat about the play, with the actors and the sponsors immediately afterwards.  A delightful event, entirely free to the public. Thank you. This low budget person says, Thank you very much.

See also www.loizidis.com and http://helen-oftroy.blogspot.com


Thursday, September 20, 2012

File under: Healthcare-miscellaneous discontent

Today I read an opinion piece in the Danbury News Times by Dr. Kenneth Pellegrino, a family doctor in Brookfield. It's one of the best assessments of the current system I have ever seen in such a short space. The title is "The guarded state of American health care: A doctor's diagnosis. Bravo Dr. Pellegrino!!! I read it in the paper paper rather than online.

I borrowed the book  How Doctors Think, by Jerome Groopman, MD from the local library. It reveals an amazing view of what influences a doctor's thought processes, and what reasoning a doctor may use when putting you into a pigeonhole of care -- or instead, actually seeing and speaking with you as a living being..... Eureka!

 I recenty learned there are apparently online "health record vaults" where health records can (supposedly)be shared with insurers or various doctors you might have. Not that you actually would be able to convince anyone to look into it, and it looks like it might be a fulltime job just to get the info up there. And by then I'll be 90.... or not. Sigh.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Women's Voices at the Bank Street Coffeehouse

Four differing voices made an interesting evening for poetry in New Milford last night. The reading, called "Women's Voices" was organized by reporter and poet Susan Tuz, who made the poster on the right.  I snapped the picture as it hung in the coffeehouse window and you can see a faint reflection of the buildings on Bank Street.

The four poets were Susan Tuz, Joan Kantor, Robin Sampon & me. (Mad Mar Walker - no pic of me):






Question the glib backslapper


If anyone claims me as a friend, expresses a vague acquaintance with my story (or even details as they are right here on this blog) don't assume it's true, ask me.

Con men use other people's name's like skeleton keys to unlock the door of opportunity. They climb them like stairs, and from each step leverage access to the next, maneuvering cleverly, to get close to key people who can vet them to others, to get assess to opportunity and funding. We more readily believe a big lie widely told, with ready grins and easy conversation.

If someone comes out of nowhere consider how they appeared and from where...

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Bucket & Brush Painting did a nice and speedy job

We a had a good experience with Bucket & Brush recently. Maisy's bedroom and hallway including the cealing needed work to cover insulation plugs in part of her ceiling. They came in at 8am, did the work and were gone by three pm. No hassel at all. It's a nice job too.

This video talks about their services. (Okay - it's an ad, but they did a great job.)

Friday, September 7, 2012

Pop Up Art - fabulous works right in Bethel


Pop Up Art, curated by local artist and poet Mike Seri, had a depth to it, of style and nuance. It had some amazing intricate engaging works, lots of whimsy, and plenty of opportunities to look into the human alter ego as well - in many different media.  I missed the opening, but enjoyed everything so much when I finally got to see it. The video above was produced by Take Notice Productions which has its own Youtube channel.

Artists in the show include: Erin Nazzaro, Frank Foster Post, Tarol Samuelson, Katie Bassett, Juan Andreu, David Teti, Eric Camiel, Leslie Pelino, Bibiana Matheis, Nicole Cudzilo, Juan Andreu, Michael Morris, Joseph Farris, Tara Burgess, Ival Stratford-Kovner, Judith Wyer, Suzanne Ross, Tanya Kukucka, Kathleen Benton, Keith Dube, FranK Kara, Chris Durante, Kenny Hess, Justin Buto, F. Henry-Meehan, Jim Felice

The gallery is opposite the Bethel cinema.

Video no long up I guess.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time

Although I've always thought of Marge Piercy, the author of Woman on the Edge of Time,  as a poet -  she is also a novelist.  This particular book is an odd and interesting novel which came out in 1976, one of a half dozen novels she wrote. According to Wikipedia it's "considered a classic of utopian "speculative" science fiction as well as a feminist classic."  (I picked this up this classic at Newtown's annual blow-out used book sale. It's a great sale!)

Woman on the Edge of Time is sort of a sci-fi tapestry woven with intricate anthropological/futurist twists, inner-landscape psychological-chatmeup, environmental philosophy and humanity.  It's not a quick read but I liked the heroine Consuelo, and felt compelled to keep reading.

Much of the plot occurs in some bleak present time in an insane asylum where regard for human rights is not in evidence and the abuse of the powerless by those with sometimes only a crumb more power, is rampant.  The other half  unfolds in fits and starts in a egalitarian argraian New England village in the far future where men and women are equals and balance in all things is important.

And it is a book that requires thinking as some aspects of the plot are not particularly obvious until you ponder them in retrospect. It's ending was not was I supposed.

And in the end it's hard to tell what really happened.  Did Consuelo save the future with her violent eposode in the present?  Was she railroaded by the power structure of patriarchy or was she really crazy?  I was also left wondering if Piercy meant to say that the end justifies the means.  Was it the 60s declaring war on what came before and perhaps what came after?

 Each reader must decide for themselves.
Woman on the Edige of Time at Google Books
Woman on the Edge of Time - Wikipedia
Woman on the Edge of Time - Amazon

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Fibers in Fine Art - unexpected intricacies


When I hear the word fiber I used to think digestion.  But not this week. Two different shows - one local, one vicarious - have pointed me toward its capacity for beauty.


The local show is at Art and Frame in Danbury (Rte 6 near Camomile).  These pics don't do it justice as each has so many subtleties and such understated nuance. The artist name is Paula Renee and she combines weaving and knotting, applied color and collaged papers (I am guessing here) with wonderful sense of color. She's won two awards: One from the Society for Creative Arts of Newtown for best in show (a silk "stiching" called Red Trees Lakeside, and another from The New Canaan Society for the Arts for a mixed media work called Brain Storming.. The photos here are not very good.

Her stuff is only up until tomorrow so get out this weekend and see this free exhibit. You might take one home even - as there are many small sized, matted items with good prices!

The vicarious show - well that is an online article about artist Lauren DiCioccio's gorgeous  hand embriodered issues of the New York Times. This is not your momma's embroidery. It is MOMA's kind of embroidery though. Check out Katie Hosner's great article at http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/lauren-dicioccio-sewnnews

Monday, July 23, 2012

Supposedly enlightened closet chauvinist


Last week I had very unfortunate series of electronic exchanges with a senior citizen who runs some sort of poetry/jazz/improv open mic over in Westchester County, New York.

This man was berating a friend of mine on her Facebook page for her involvement with slam poetry and with her boy friend who is also involved in it. She asked me to look at the posts which she thought were a bit creepy. And wow, he'd said some pretty gross things on her pages. Later - he more or less excused it all, saying enlightened people are never wrong. ( How 'bout that! )

He had taken the position that slam is "evil." He said he knew two women with tragic lives he was trying to "help" who left off consulting or consorting with him and turned to male slam poets instead, and they had come to no good ends. he said. Now, one of those people was someone I knew who'd had a whole constellation of problems not one of which stemmed from slam. The things he said about her were just wrong. Yet he thought he knew better, than anyone else, as a paternalistic "enlightened" male guru just trying to guide a few poor confused women.... (grrr)

Essentially he was saying that because some men involved in slam hurt some women who were involved - we should ban slam. This seems pretty self-serving for someone who runs a series that competes with local slams for venues, funding and community involvement and of course, women poets.... And by this logic we should ban men because sometimes they hurt women. And the opposite could be said as well. It's all pretty silly. And the self-declared "enlightened" seem to be an catastrophically unreliable source for life guidance. More like a fount of bad advice.


Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Happy 4th to all, everywhere


Heat, sunshine, shade, AC, PC, cat, (and cat hair), raspberries, lime-ginger pasta salad, distant barking of fireworks somewhere.... Someone is drawing. Someone is doing a crossword puzzle.

We are so lucky to be alive. To have food, quiet, electricity enough for now.

Thankful to everyone and to no one in particular for this day - to history, fate, and especially to those who have endeavored over the years, to keep separate religious dictates and political power in this country.

Monday, June 25, 2012

Ubiquitous entropy




Summer seems an odd backdrop for thinking about fall, but entropy is on my mind today. Ordered systems tend toward disarray. Everything that grows also harbors a limit of time, energy, health, of life itself. Nature ferments a slow cycle of wax and wane. These days, this is is not a popular thought. Yet, everything is cyclic, planets, plants, even people and ways of thinking about the world. All things bloom and wither. Things change in the world and in us. The interior world does not follow a smooth logical trajectory upward anymore than the exterior world does. Oceans rise. Rivers dry up. Things that are whole fall into parts. Things that have grown crumble into compost. That which crumbles doesn't permanently return. Something new might grow. And even in barren dry soil, a desert might offer it's subtle beauties. Selah.

The above picture I made in an online browser program. I was thinking about fall.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

A view of land, water, sky

This new work was created entirely in browser-based programs, including DeviantArt Muro and Google+ Creative Kit. This work was inspired by a landscape workshop I went to last night. It was given at SCAN by James Grabowski - whose playful nonchalant approach prompted me to experiment more freely with color in the context of this landscape. All rights reserved.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Emerging from something or other


This morning's doodling. Made using Pixlr.com then finessed using the creative kit on Google+

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

CL&P not to blame - CT A.G. Jepsen is wrong

GET OVER YOURSELF CONNECTICUT

I am not a corporate shill, nor am I even a corporate enthusiast.
And our new CT Attorney General Jepsen is wrong wrong wrong on this issue~

What issue? Blaming them for the damn weather and for our own negligence in not allowing tree trimming. Ask any tree warden in Fairfield County. They have to practically plead with homeowners to remove even diseased and dying trees.

Connecticut's tree-loving "Don't touch my trees" nature lovers must acknowledge that their stance gravely increased the severity of power outages during last august's bone-crusher storm which struck when the leaves were in full leaf, bringing down hundreds of trees across the state culminating in on of the longest power-outages in recent history.  And - which the whole state seems to want to blame on CL&P.

There are lots of things on might legitimately blame them for. Not this though. Punishing the corporation by imposing penalties, as Jepsen calls for - penalties which the rate payers will ultimately shoulder - is just counter-productive. We did this to ourselves. 

I am a tree lover, I am a tree hugger in fact. If I can say it, so can you.

Contributing to the chaos was the blind arrogance of wealthy ME-FIRST towns who thought their power restoration was more important that other areas of the state -  and who complained unceasingly, and yet refused to stay off the roads where powerlines lay live under tree limbs they refused to have trimmed earlier in the year. 

If you want a real issue - let's concentrate on THE OVER FILLED SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL POOLS right here in CT which I'd bet still hold every fuel rod ever used in the state.   No it doesn't go away.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Cantus - gorgeous voices and arrangements


Cantus -- read that:  Lush.  A celebration of all that is human.

An all male professional a capella vocal ensemble from Minnesota, they call their performances and music the art of "spontaneous grace."   The men often weave and move and interact with each other as they sing.  They obviously love what they do, are present and focused, and the audience can't help but be swept up into their musical universe. There is no stern baton waving distraction out front and no sheet music to crinkle, no folders to block our view of their expressions as they sing. It's all from memory, all internalized. all amazing. They also create many of their own arrangements.

The program I head last Friday, at the Gardiner Theater in Pawling, NY included the classical and popular, the ancient and the modern, the sacred and the profane, never flinching as it looked at the human species and its frailty, its fragile gasp of time, at the depth of loss and the joy of living. For an idea of their range check out these two videos from YouTube. Very different. Both incredible. They have a YouTube channel and a myspace page and six or more albums, (search iTunes or Amazon or Google Play)

  Yes, it's a week and a day later. I am so far behind on my posts I may never recover.


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Wednesday, April 18, 2012

the Phoebe Wars


Skill and sweat built the house where I grew up -- the skill and sweat of my father (left), his father, and my mother (below), guided by blueprints scratched on the back of an old window shade.

Almost before the roof was on, another kind of building was in progress. Two little grey birds with instinctive skill and determination of their own were slinging mud and moss under the back porch overhang. They cemented their nest to the side of ours - a union that would last more than forty years.



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By a bird's reckoning it was a perfect location. It was a foil for cats, eight feet off the ground with no climbable surfaces below. It was totally sheltered from the weather by the porch floor above and protected on three sides by the cellar-door alcove. With nearby woods the supply of insects was endless and mud for the nest was readily available. In short it was phoebe paradise.

Every year since then, a pair of phoebes has happily dribbled mud somewhere on this house. Evidently phoebes are like salmon and earnest men - willing to swim against the current to reach their stream of origin. The opposing current in this case was my father who was determined to move them. Their preferred nesting spot was directly above the cellar door, which Dad used several times a day. He hated to disturb them once there were eggs involved and he worried the nest would fall if he inadvertently slammed the door. His only alternative was using the garage door. The roar of it always sent the phoebe flapping off to a nearby tree, leaving her four or five whitish eggs cooling alone.

My father spent a lot of time thinking about how to outwit those birds. He didn't want to hurt them. He was in fact a bird enthusiast who provided suet in net-bags and bird feeders overflowing with sunflower and other seed. These treats were set where they could be easily seen from the kitchen window where Dad breakfasted with binoculars and field guides.

But phoebes are members of the flycatcher family. They aren't interested in handouts. All they want are bugs: gnats, mosquitoes and flies on the hoof, caught right out of the air during angular sorties that put the maneuvers of an F-16 to shame. Unknown to the phoebe, my father admired them for their work ethic, for their domesticity, their agility and especially for their stubbornness. But he was stubborn too. And he wanted them to build somewhere else. He decided on swift preventative action in the early spring, before there were any eggs in the nest. So began the great Phoebe Wars of New Road.

First came the battle of the pie tins. Dad hung one on a string so it spun and whirled on every breeze right in front of the unfinished nest. So the Phoebe began building on the other side of the doorway. My father knocked the nest down. They built it again. He knocked it down again and hung a flurry of pie tins to wave and flap and bang together in the breeze. While not much impressed with the hardware, the Phoebes finally built over the living room window instead, a spot well out of my father's reach.

But the following spring they were back under the porch. Every year it's always their first choice. And with each succeeding season they seemed less and less impressed with the shiny, noisy decorations; so the size, variety and decibel-capacity of the deterrents increased accordingly. Eventually things escalated to sheet metal, old kitchen pans, chicken wire, strips of tin foil, usually arranged to rattle and clank like the Ghost of Christmas past. Although the Phoebe were indifferent to Dickens, knocking down the unfinished nest often won the day. Several years in a row they built a second nest over the living room window. Once they built over the front porch light.

One year my father went to knock down the nest but found it was way too late. Five open mouths with pink gullets pointed at him, emitting various squeaking sounds. He determined they all had lice and he dusted each of the baby birds with delousing powder, dusted the nest and lowered it into the bottom half of a plastic milk carton which he nailed back over the doorway. The adult birds came back flustered and scolding but fed the chicks anyway. Dad didn't bother them again that year.

During winter he got to thinking that the ledge on which the birds anchored their nest was very narrow, barely an inch in width. In spring he optimistically stretched heavy tinfoil over it with no success. The next year he built a triangular ledge filler-upper that ran the length of the door. He was fairly satisfied this would stop them. Any nesting material would just slide right off, like snow on a steep roof, he thought. But he overlooked one important aspect. The triangle was hollow and he hadn't plugged the ends. That year the Phoebes built inside it. They probably thought it was a bird house.

My father carried on his bird wars until he died in 1984. For their part, the Phoebe have continued to build under the back porch, though in recent years my mother has taken up the torch of moving them out. This spring she hung up a roll of chicken wire. When the birds began building inside it, she took it down. Amazingly, they started building again in a completely new location. Their latest nest sits in an elbow of drainpipe under the roof overhang in the crook of the ``L'' formed by the dining room and the kitchen. This spot might prove to be a new favorite.

While I can't kid myself that it's been the same Phoebes all this time, I'd wager its been a long line of descendants of the original pair - birds that returned here because they felt the first tickle of the night breeze while still damp from eggs pecked open in the shelter of the porch overhang. Some internal homing device brings them back from their winter travels. If only wandering humans could find their way home so easily.
-- Mar Walker , original date 1993

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Inverse Origami (1998) now on Google

My very first chapbook (from 1998),  Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding is now available for reading though Google Books....   If you visit its page on books.google.com/  you can download a pdf file of the book via a dropdown menu on the upper right. Or you can view a full text preview on this page by either scrolling down, or clicking the arrows, or jumping to the table of contents and clicking on each poem title. Very cool, Google!!!

I started this process around Xmas of last year - sent off the package and documentation, and never heard anymore about it. Just this week, it came online!  I sent the physical book in to be scanned as the publication's original MS Publisher file predated Windows XP, and was so antiquated as to be unopenable.  Though I have second thoughts about the 2012 cover and front matter, the rest is reasonably presentable for something captured in an automated scan.

  I also have also discovered I can make a ebook pdf on Google docs. So more books are coming.  Hurray!

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Philosophy from my past - a 1982 journal entry

I found an old journal of mine in the basement - a book in pen on paper. Some entries I think I will post. :)

This is the very first, from January 4, 1982 -- long before blogs, before cell phones, before I had email, or even a computer.   I was fighting sadness:



     There are no whys.

     There are only nows,
     spanning eternity end to end,
     like points in a line, infinite,
     yet each in strident isolation.

     I am sick of whys.
     Whys stink of pain.
     Give me distraction: the eternal present.
     The kingdom of contentment is "NOW."

     Life needs no reason.
     Life is reason enough.
                   
                           -- Mad Mar (Mistryel) Walker





Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Library Concerts: Berkshire Big Band - WOW


I cannot say enough good things about the Berkshire Big Band.  I saw them at the Brookfield Library on March 18 - a free concert - and it was just incredible. (Library concerts are wonderful that way.)

 "They're going to knock your socks off" Victoria Munoz, who is a sax player with the band, told me before the show. She was right. The sound of those smooth brass harmonies flowed over me like a wave! They are just amazing: The playing is tight, nuanced, totally danceable. They present each piece in the frame of its history, cut across styles and do it well, play things you don't expect or things you do in a way you didn't.  For this show, there were tunes or arrangements by Benny Goodman, Glen Miller, Count Basie, Buddy Rich and more.  There was a vocalist too Jan Maki.  It was a wonderful show. Go see them.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Berkshire-Big-Band/75080779193

Monday, March 19, 2012

Paddies Day Part 2: Killian Troupe at Molten



Three heads are better than one they say. On Paddies Day evening I caught the first performance ever of a new trio: the Killian Troupe at Molten Java in Bethel. It's an acoustic trio where all three sing and write songs.



It's comprised of Richard King, (upper right)  Cassandra Mulcahy (upper left) and Jeff Smith (lower left). This was their very first show as a group. Though there are a few instrumental kinks to work out,  the result will be quite nice judging by Saturday's performance. Their vocal harmonies were wonderful, and they can also each take the spot light for a song or more or swap out instruments to lend variety to the show.






Each of these independent musicians/songwriters brings different strengths and skills to the group and this may play out well over the long haul:
  • Jeff Smith  brings a relentless melancholy musicianship and songwriting to his own songs, that is emotive and somehow transcendent. He also brings guitar and mandolin, both accompaniment and lead.
  • Cassandra Mulcahy, a music therapist, brings a counterbalancing joy and delight in life, an impish loving song-writing charm on guitar, keyboard and bass guitar chops too.
  • Finally Richard King who bills himself as "The Old Picker" brings a lifetime of performing as a folk/country player. With it come a sense of pacing and that solid entertainer's patter to the audience which is almost always lacking in the shows of beginning musicians and songwriters who are so busy feeling their music that they forget they must be showmen too.

You can find out more, and click "like" on their Killian Troupe Facebook page where there are links to their individual pages.

Paddies Day Part 1: Flowers & Music at Art and Frame

Jen Vanderlyn and some of the Flowers wall display.
Art and Frame in Danbury (on Route 6) stages some really nice art show openings and this Paddies Day event was no exception.  There's eye candy on the walls, tasty interesting food & wine  - and to ice the cake, there's live music.

Jen Venderlyn
The music on Paddies Day was Jen Vanderlyn who is half the sisters folk/rock duo Free Thought.   She has a great voice and compelling original material. I really can't wait to hear the whole duo in August. For information or to hear some wonderful samples from CDBaby visit their website at FreethoughMusic.WordPress.com

The Flowers show runs through April 29th. You can see what else is up at Art and Frame at http://artandframeofdanbury.com/
the table!


Thursday, March 15, 2012

Serendipity: an accidental photo

This photo about sums up my week. First I've felt like a big oppressive hand was getting ready to grab me by the scruff. (And it was I had a day-long migraine the day after I wrote this.) Second I feel like the puzzle of my life is ahhh still well, a puzzle.

The photo to the right didn't start out as a a trick pic. It  was taken accidentally on Enders Island as I was walking around snapping pictures. I turned and swung around and must have taken a picture while not aiming.... The frame captured the horizon and my hand, all out of scale...  Serendipity!

It was subsequently finessed in the online photo editor "Picnik" using a Puzzle effect and a frame effect - two of the effects Google, (which owns Picnik) hasn't seen fit to port over to the Google Plus "Creative Kit" Unfortunately Picnik will close in April and we will be stuck with a much more limited array of possibilities than previously. Lately I've begun wondering if Picasa Web Gallerys are going away eventually as well, tucked into G+.  I wouldn't mind but they always leave out some little functionality or other that I had admired and that worked well for me.

Oh well.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Danbury Library Concerts - The Kerry Boys

This past Saturday morning at 11 am - I was down at the Danbury Public library, already caffeinated, with ears perked and ready. Besides browsing among the books - I was there to hear the Kerry Boys, or at least two of them do their musical Irish thing....  The event was well-attended and there were lots of wee folk and I am not talking the little green kind of Irish folk lore. It's good to see a new generation getting hooked on live music.  Pierce Campbell led the kids in a series of hand motions to the Unicorn song which was a big hit with the younger set.

 The able fellow on banjo and mandolin was a great foil to Campbell's quips. They did some original Irish drinking songs and took favorities requests from the audience. On of the requests was O Danny Boy. Campbell was in excellent voice and did a really nice job on that tune. I needed a tissue.   Thanks to those Kerry Boys, and the Danbury Library. For information check out the Kerry Boys website and Pierce Campbell who also plays and sings original folk and jazz. Givea listen. Get on their mailing lists!

Thursday, March 8, 2012

POEM: Open Source Cosmos

Last night I read just this one poem at the Calling All Poets series open mic at the Silas Bronson Library in Waterbury, where Jon Anderson was the evening's feature poet.  It's from my latest chapbook, Tabernacle of Bees, published in Nov of 2011. I believe I read this one at Confluence in Feb of 2009 as well.

For those not into computer lore, open source is a kind of software program where the code is freely available and any enterprising geek can tweak it, and change the code to add or remove functionality, to streamline or enhance it or add hidden easter eggs of silly sayings...  And the functionality is improved very gradually by little changes over time. Of course if it weren't serendipitous we could tweak ourselves off the map.....


Open Source Cosmos

in serendipitous evolution,

the replicant’s tic in mutating pattern
changeling inheritance gathering force

'til mental metamorphosis tweaks free,
a comet trail of idea scatters seeds.

Laugh as the vortex roars, the brass
the shatter and scold of turbulent limit,

of serendipity in the dark cackle chambers,
the immaculate laugh-box, the techno-lotus mind

where time loops asymmetrically, the meme
slips into everything, lost, replenished

gone and coming around,
altered just a little.

-- Mar (Mistryel) Walker
c 2011

Monday, March 5, 2012

First Layer: Chromebook as canvas



This is the first layer of a new painting I've started -  just a doodle so far really, and it's just black and white, though that will change. The canvas is the white cover on my Chromebook. Okay I am nuts. I was admiring some of the laptop covers I saw which are sold on various sites around the web. They seemed too pricey though - I thought it would be easier and cheaper just to paint the thing itself. Call me crazy, (or reclusive, awkwardly antisocial in many cases. )

I used an inexpensive acrylic paint in a squeeze bottle. I only have black  right now, so when I get more colors I will add new layers and post a photo of each as I go along.

Friday, March 2, 2012

Images of the unspoken: dances by Pina Bausch


Polite small talk is a social mask, but in the dances of choreographer Pina Bausch - you simply cannot escape viewing the unspoken subtext.

A severe and menacing man chooses among deeply fearful women who offer him a red cloth. He rejects all but one.  All are distressed. A flock of men poke and prod a woman as if she were a melon, or a small child.

These were among a few vingettes in the film "Pina" - a commemoration of the work of coregorapher Pina Bausch. It's not a biography, nor a documentary really, nor an epic. It sets Bausch's major works in the loose frame of her dancers memories of her - which are admiring and well, sort of oddly worshipful. The film shows them onstage and sometimes takes them dancing out into the city, and country.

I hoped the images present in the dances would be interesting and might inspire a painting or a drawing perhaps a poem also.  (I like to paint the human form in motion, and evoke motion, even in doodling.)  The dances were evocative of human relations and contained quite a bit of visual metaphor. The trailer will give you the idea.....

One scene that really struck me contained a couple embracing. Suddenly another man comes out of the side door and rearranges their embrace - then he picks up the woman and hands her to the man. The nitpicking spectator then goes back behind the door, after which, the man drops the woman. She immediately gets up and flies back to him, and they assume the original pose...  Then, of course, the man comes back out of the side door, rearranges them again, and this whole process repeats over and over and over - and  accelerating faster and faster to an impossible pace.

Finally the man no longer comes out to rearrange them. He doesn't have time and doesn't need to either because they have accepted his expectations and rearrange themselves. They subsequently revert to type, rearrange themselves, revert to type......, repeat, repeat, etc etc  What an odd, wonderful visual metaphor for social expectations and the way we internalize them.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Measure for Measure - better than getting a seat....


Last Sunday I went to a free concert at the Yale Museum for British Art in New Haven, called Measure for Measure - the Music of Shakespeare's Plays. The Ensemble Chaconne performed about 24 songs on period instruments: Peter Bloom on flute, Carol Lewis on viola da gamba, Olav Chris Hendriksen on lute, and finally a guest artist Pamela Dellal, a mezzo-soprano.

The room was "at capacity" as they say. We arrived before it began but still too late to get a seat, so we went up to the forth floor where there is a gallery or mezzanine-type opening in three of the walls. I peaked over a bit, but mostly I sat in a big comfy chair reading while the music spilled over into the gallery from below.

This was a very relaxing way to hear a very excellent concert. I could get up and stretch, look at paintings on the wall or check my email all  without disturbing anyone or enduring scathing looks from earnest concert-goers. I think in the future, I would prefer to be part of this spill-over crowd on the forth floor.

As a bonus, I found a wonderful painting I liked very much:A Grotto on the Gulf of Salerno, Sunset painted by Joseph Wright of Derby around 1781. It seemed so cool and relaxing to be out of the brightness of the sun and hidden away - almost like hearing a concert from the mezzanine!


Afterwards we visited a nearby Thai eatery where we had small bowls of miso soup $3.50 - a bargain! A friend also had fried green tea ice cream which arrived in flames. Couldn't resist taking a picture. Nice presentation with the drizzled chocolate.


Monday, February 20, 2012

More drawings, this time a life drawing


This is quite a few years old - something on paper. It might even be from a drawing class at Western Ct State U.  That was several decades ago. Life drawing is term used for drawing from a live model. If you have never tried it - it's really not what you might think. While working you find you are following the relation of line, form, volume, and contours receding into other contours. Really, the model becomes a human landscape or a still-life.

Since that time I've also done clay sculpture from a model during classes with Janice Mauro and with Alexander Shundi, among others.

I am quite behind on my posting.

Gee, I wonder if my blog will get a PG rating now... hmmm.  Looks like a human being. Of course human beings do need parental guidance. At least for a while.... haha.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Cubist-like, flattened? Man with a dog, bone, & cigarette



I was shooting for flatness, lines with no heft, or volume, depiction in two dimensions without the illusion of mass, when I drew this little shot - quite a few years ago. A reclining man is  smoking a cigarette, while making a dog jump up for a bone.  It seems like a summertime drawing, maybe after a picnic. I really like the feel of the chair but that may be because it is the only thing with any discernible three dimensional form.  I had been looking at a lot of Picasso but certainly this is not quite that either. The actual drawing has a crease down the middle. You can still see it a bit.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

More abstracts: Purple Neon Night



This composition makes me think of unexpected chaos at night in New York City.  I like all the reds, purples, and dark brooding smoky blues, the hazy blackish green on the edges. It seems noisy, exciting, yet it's too much and the viewer is hiding. I am not sure what I am making when I do this sort of work. I just keep adding and tweaking until I am satisfied with the effect.


Wednesday, February 1, 2012

More phone art


Woohoo!  More phone compositions. Different phone this time. Virgin Mobile. Prepaid. No contract. I sold the iphone and ditched ATT. I had 4000 plus rollover minutes, paid for 450 minutes a month I never used, and was starving for data.  Oh well. On the bright side, I'm paying half the bill and now am getting mostly data and only paying for 300 minutes a month i won't use.  I don't miss iOS at all even though I'm only on Froyo Android. Made with a free version of the MagicDoodle app. Something new everyday.....

Monday, January 30, 2012

Alice-Anne Harwood and Robert Messore: The Woulds wow

Out of New Haven -- The combination of Alice-Anne Harwood's clear evocative voice (both in the singing and as a lyricist) and Robert Messore's nuanced guitar work and excellent arranging make The Woulds superb. They are sooo worth hearing.  With heart and musical skill, poetic lyrics, an organic weaving of guitar and voice lines, an actual conversation between two musical entities - with humor & humanity  - well you have to hear them live. There isn't any substitute for it.  I saw them at the Buttonwood Tree in Middletown, for the Riverwood Poetry Series on Saturday night where  the duo performed both musical compositions and AA's poetry with a guitar accompaniment.

You can like their Facebook page at
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Woulds/161183917263131




Friday, January 27, 2012

Molten's new digs, and events




One notable thing that happened in January was the opening of Molten Java in its new location at 213 Greenwood Ave, in Bethel, CT. A lot of elbow grease went into this opening and it shows: everything is gorgeous.  This is a day shot of the front room.

There appears to be renewed interest in evening activities too. This was my vantage point for viewing last night's Open Mic - from the stairs you can see the whole room. Below, there was not a chair to be had with a view of the performers. It's a packed house these days. go early if you want a seat.

Nicholas Wells and his group played, Sal Saldagdo, Justin Virga, the host (whose name escapes me), young folks named Megan, Holly, etc. A few read poems.  Neal and Richard the old picker were there too. The list was long. I got a bit clastrophobic a little after nine and Henry Cort and I went home without playing. It was just as crowded the week before also. Maybe third is the charm.

There is a gallery upstairs and tonight from 6-8pm is an art show reception for Katie Bassett and Thomas Nackid whose work is up there right now.

At 8 Seth Lefferts plays. Might have to check that out since the Pears are not on....  Some events are sometimes listed here





Thursday, January 26, 2012

First Casablanca open mic last night


Al Rivoli (above) who plays and sings at quite a few area restaurants, hosted his first open mic last night. It's on Wednesdays 7-10 in the Casablanca Restaurant's small bar. The food is good, the coffee really excellent. It looks like this room might well open to a large side-porch in summer also so stay tuned.  Michel Rae (left) and Sal (below) did a duo and they performed solo also. They are both members of The Hip Relacements. See them if you can!  Michel and Sal are at the Blue Chip next Thursday I hear.

 I had a great time, and got to play two sets since it was a first run and there were not too many signups. I did my first live performance (world premier haha) of Elves on Expresso and I think my new tune caused a few near-dancing moves at one table!