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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.