BirchLane.net
July 2004
Saturday 31
Mt Tom.
Friday30
Lunch With Monet. In a recent issue of The New York Times Magazine (Architecture, Food, "Into Plein-Air" by Julia Reed, May16) we learn:
Monet was obsessed with light, and it influenced his meals, but in a different way -- lunch was always at 11:30 sharp so that it would be over in time for him to take advantage of the afternoon sun. He rarely allowed his guests, who ranged from Pissarro and Renoir to the statesman Georges Clemenceau, to arrive on their own, preferring to send for them so that they wouldn't be late. Once they got there, they were lucky. According to ''Monet's Table: The Cooking Journals of Claude Monet,'' they dined on pike from his pond and vegetables, fruit and even mushrooms from his garden. He served salads of dandelion and strips of bacon, or chicory with garlic and croutons. (He favored so much salt and pepper on the salad that no one else could eat it, so there were always two bowls on the table.) He grew sweet peppers and chili peppers, lima and green beans, zucchini and red, yellow and cherry tomatoes. (Olney, who writes that he ''can ill support a day without a tomato salad at one meal or the other,'' would have approved.)
Some of Monet's illustrious guests sang for their supper. He got his recipe for bouillabaisse from Cezanne and one for bread rolls from Millet. Rodin once sent over Isadora Duncan, who, naturally, danced.
Monet favored cakes for dessert, and on special occasions ice cream was made in a hand-cranked tub and frozen in a conical mold. Olney's desserts, especially in the evenings, when they usually followed cheese, were lighter fare. My favorite is a simple gratin of fresh figs (figs halved and drizzled with Chartreuse and honey, dabbed with creme fraiche and run under a broiler until bubbling) served with a glass of Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise.
Two more:
Thursday 29
Content.
For Rothko himself, the most important thing about art was not its style but its emotional content. "I am not interested in relationships of color or form or anything else," the artist wrote in 1957." I am interested only in expressing basic human emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on - and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate those basic human emotions ... The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them." Wednesday 28
The Name of The Rose.
Tuesday 27
Hope.
Monday 26
Golfing with Daryl.
Sunday 25
Coy Fish. I was looking for a poem about "coy" fish
and google sent me to:
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
~Andrew MarvellAnd there on the same link, Mary Oliver:
The first fish
I ever caught
would not lie down
quiet in the pail
but flailed and sucked
at the burning
amazement of the air
and died
in the slow pouring off
of rainbows. Later
I opened his body and separated
the flesh from the bones
and ate him. Now the sea
is in me: I am the fish, the fish
glitters in me; we are
risen, tangled together, certain to fall
back to the sea. Out of pain,
and pain, and more pain
we feed this feverish plot, we are nourished
by the mystery.Saturday 24
R&D. The more research & development I do, the more
Friday 23
Figure Drawing. I had my first class in figure drawing last night. I had met the teacher, Karen Dolmanisth at an art opening a few weeks ago. She received her BFA at Parsons, Cooper Union, and The New School for Social Research in New York, and an MFA from UMass. Karen has presented her contemporary experimental and performance art internationally and is currently showing at the Canal Gallery in Holyoke, Massachusetts and the Pierogi and Dabora Galleries in New York City. She has received critical acclaim in the Village Voice, Art New England, New York Magazine, Newsweek and on several occasions in The New York Times. Karen has taught in the Netherlands and across New England.
John Haber writes (Autumn 2002):
Karen Dolmanisth's circles of sand and mud manage to bring earthworks inside a gallery. They may connect, too, to the circle used at Ground Zero on the anniversary of the killings. Although the show had opened the day before, Dolmanisth was still installing the work with her feet and bare hands, happily ignoring me. Just in case I thought her work entirely site and time specific, up on the gallery mezzanine a video shows her doing much the same elsewhere—only then not while talking on her cell phone.
At what point had the work gone from installation to performance? I have no idea, and that is what creates such a nice space between entropy and ritual.
About the class: I was running a few minutes late as I wanted to get the index page for Studio19 up; I did, grabbed my sketchbook and compressed charcoal and ran down the two flights of stairs here in my building to The Guild Studio School. Karen showed me how to look at the live nude model and attempt to draw line and form. During the two breaks she talked about Matisse and showed us many of his drawings.
"To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage." ~Henri Matisse
My drawings; not bad, I think, for having never drawn:
Why figure drawing? It will help me with my photography; too see better and to help a model see what I may want to capture.
Thursday 22
And Today. This.
Wednesday 21
Index. So far I have.
"It is only when many meanings are compressed into a single word, when the depths of feeling are exhausted yet not expressed, when an unseen world hovers in the atmosphere of the poem, when the mean and common are used to express the elegant, when a poetic conception of rare beauty is developed to the fullest extent in a style of surface simplicity – only then, when the conception is exhalted to the highest degree and “the words are too few,” will the poem, by expressing one’s feelings in this way, have the power of moving Heaven and Earth within the brief confines of thirty-one syllables and be capable of softening the hearts of gods and demons."
~Priest Shun'eTuesday 20
New Work and Affirmations. So many e-mails today arrived about my work--how the photos move people to find beauty in their own lives, to look closer, to see--how they are, in fact, moved by the images. I have been taking photos of my neighbors the past week (I will update this link over the next few days; oh, and Montreal is pretty much completed). I also continue to be moved by the way Adell is helping me to craft my identity package for Studio19 and for "Bruce Barone" Fine Art Photography; I feel blessed--truly. This is Nancy, an artist (painter) and house painter; an amazing warm and talented person:
And I continue to experiment with lighting at night:
Monday 19
Experiments with Lighting. Finally, I bought seamless black paper, stands, and lighting equipment; first experiment:
Or maybe this image was first:
Sunday 18
It Is Not Work. Spent much of the day, so far, working on www.brucebarone.com and www.studio19.cc, both of which are not yet up. Listened over and over to Stacey Kent and Lori McKenna. Edited 16 more photos from Montreal and these two:
Doll from October Effigies.
Saturday 17
Dreams.
"...Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others..."
~ From A RETURN TO LOVE by Marianne Williamson © 1992 (Paperback; pp 190-191)
Friday 16
Old Montreal.
Thursday 15
White Boards. I feel tired with BirchLane (I have so much to say but do not know how to say it all) and I need an album for the hundreds of photos taken Montreal.
Wednesday 14.
If Not Now When. I am at a loss for words now to fully, or even incompletely, write about the past few days. So for now this:
In his book “About Modern Art: Critical Essays, 1948-1997”, David Sylvester quotes Piet Mondrian:
" 'The positive and the negative are the causes of all action ... The positive and the negative break up oneness, they are the cause of all unhappiness. The union of the positive and the negative is happiness.' The palpable oneness of the solitary flower or tower, being subject to time and change, had to give way to the subliminal oneness of a vivid equilibrium."
Tuesday 13
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. (copy to follow--meanwhile)
Monday 12
Hundreds of Photos. But first this; returning home I found a story about me and Studio19 in the local newspaper, The Daily Hampshire Gazette, Arts Almanac, by Phoebe Mitchell (July 5, 2004):
FROM inside Eastworks on Pleasant Street in Easthampton, a new art gallery will showcase the talents of young photographers from around their world whose work demonstrates ''an original way of seeing, a vision that is completely their own,'' according to owner and director Bruce Barone.
Called Studio 19, the fourth-floor gallery opened last month with an exhibit of Barone's black-and-white photographs, which include portraits, photo journalism and Valley landscape scenes.
Barone, 52, has worked as a corporate photographer and writer and, later, as a sales and marketing specialist at the New York City-based Hearst Magazines. He said Studio 19 was inspired by the gallery opened in 1908 by ground-breaking photographer Alfred Stieglitz at 291 Fifth Ave. in New York City.
There, Stieglitz exhibited works by new and innovative artists, including Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin and Georgia O'Keeffe.
''That gallery really thrived through many different artists being involved with it,'' he said. He hopes to infuse Studio 19 with similar energy by attracting the work of some of innovative young photographers.
Although leaving a career in marketing and printing is a little scary, Barone said he believes it is the right thing for him to do. ''It's something I've been dreaming of for years,'' he said. ''I just realized I wanted to be closer to the art world.''
Barone, who moved from New York City to Northampton 17 years ago, said his experience he gained through his last job in marketing and sales, for a large paper company in Springfield and a Connecticut printing firm, will be helpful in taking care of the business end of the gallery. Barone holds a bachelor's degree in art history. He said he also will use skills gained as publisher of a poetry and art quarterly, Birchlane, for the last four years.
He said he plans to feature the work of photographers he encounters mainly on Web sites. These will include artists from throughout the United States, England, Russia, Portugal and Finland, among other countries. Barone said he is in the process of creating a Studio 19 Web site to promote the artists' work.
''It will be quite global in scope,'' he said. The photographers whose work he selects for exhibition will send him originals or email versions, which Barone will use to print hard copies. He said he also plans to hold a number of discussions about art and offer artists' presentations starting in September.
Gallery hours are by appointment through the summer. In September, Studio 19 will set regular hours. For more information, call 527-8048.
Here is a photo of Dagmara, the house-keeper at the B&B where I stayed in Montreal:
With her best friend, Vanessa.
Sunday 11
Back from One Week in Montreal.
My first night in Montreal I saw Dessy Di Lauro at the Jazz Festival (one of my favorite performers from the entire festival):
With a voice like Lauryn Hill's, Dessy Di Lauro has collaborated with Dubmatique, written for Ginette Reno and sung in Cirque Du Soleil's Nouba for four years. Accompanied by pianist Ric'Key Pageot, this eclectic artist performed a synthesis of soul and Brazil-flavored jazz (from the program).
Sunday 04
I Wish I Was An Oscar Meyer Weiner.
Oh I wish I was an Oscar Meyer weiner
That is what I'd truly like to be
'Cos if I were an Oscar Meyer weiner
Everybody'd be in love with me!
Saturday 03
Where I am Not.
Friday 02
Major Storm Last Night.
My two vases of flowers I noticed were omitting a strange smell yesterday; the sun-flowers were dead and once photographed so I threw them away but I kept the dead rose:
And the day gave way to puffy white clouds:
At night two friends came over for dinner.
Thursday 01
A New Site Soon.
~ Woodrow WilsonNot a site to replace BirchLane, but a site devoted only to the promotion of my photography: BruceBarone.com. I bought the domain but it is not yet designed.
I had a frightful scare today. I thought I lost Baby, Danielle's first doll, and one of my favorite models. It took me a good ten or fifteen minutes to find her; she was in my backpack!
I have met many smart and fascinating and kind people since I moved. Maggie (painter, singer/songwriter, chef) is one of them):
