Now it may seem a long way from the Le Mans of Hervé Poulain or even from New York’s Grand Central Terminal, but the small Montana town of West Yellowstone (as the name suggests, just west of Yellowstone National Park) did a similar thing a couple years ago when they commissioned local artists to paint life-size bison sculptures that were placed around town.

Especially interesting here, from an artistic point of view (but I don’t neglect the relevance, especially these days, of the commercial significance), is the reversal of the common problem of representing 3-D space in a 2-D painting. Here the painter’s 2-D mindset must deal with the 3-D-ness of the sculptures. That means not only non-flatness and the volumetric cues, but the fact that the surface is not simply a distorted rectangle, but wraps around and contacts itself in multiple ways.

Painters can deal with this problem in various ways. For example, they can 1) generally ignore the issue, treating each side of a scupture as an independent canvas; 2) use an abstract design not depicting any sort of scene, which therefore doesn’t really have matching issues; or 3) work with the novel situation in a synergistic way. I think the image above, by Native American artist DG House, is one of the best examples of approach #3. The depicted animals, fairly flat but with slight indications of volume and major features, seem to nestle well within the protective bison shape where they are inscribed. Though there is some indication of landscape with horizon, it is quite subdued and has no problem existing on both sides (see below for the verso). In fairness, her style adapts well; this is not so different in general look from many of her paintings.

Have you seen other examples of this sort of project? If you had to put a 2-D image on a 3-D object, what would you choose to do?

…., artists can also take over the factory, make the art industry their own. Collectively and individually they can customize the machinery, alter the modes of distribution, adjust the rate of production to allow for organic growth, for shifts in purpose and direction. They can daydream and concentrate. They can make nothing for a while, or make something and make it wrong, and fail in peace, and start again….

Paragraphs excerpted from

The Boom Is Over. Long Live the Art! By HOLLAND COTTER

McLoughlin Boulevard was originally US Route 99E, part of the major north-south Pacific Highway through Oregon’s Willamette Valley to California. US Route 99E had its heyday just after WWII until it was eclipsed by Interstate 5, finished in 1966. Thereafter, the Boulevard, demoted into Oregon Route 99E, declined as Portland grew. The decomposition of the Boulevard, helped along by the curbing of the highway which restricted access to businesses, was accompanied by its enclosure by warehouses and industrial compounds, all gone slightly to seed. The farmland and residences that had been behind its initial length of business ventures got pretty much decimated over the years by other kinds of cheaply built warehouses and small factories.

I first learned about McLoughlin Boulevard because, when we moved to Portland 18 years ago, the Pendleton Mill End fabric store was located along it. I would take the bus to the Mill End store; to return home, I had to cross 8 lanes of heartless traffic and wait for the return bus in front of The Odysseus, a saloon and strip joint. I avoided looking at the patrons — and they avoided looking at me!

It was that kind of street — an American urban highway that makes used car lots look good.

Still, however sleezy the street has become, it still speaks to my love of urban archeology and history. Jer and I have been investigating the Springwater Corridor bicycle/pedestrian trail that has a new bridge over SE McLoughlin. The Trail runs along Johnson Creek, a major urban creek wont to flood in the wet season and stink in the dry. But between the creek and the biking trail, there is a pretty wondrous set of scenes through the Portland cityscape, including McLoughlin Boulevard.

Springwater Trail over McLouglin, Oil on board, 18 x 24″

The advantage to the painter of this particular spot along McLoughlin Boulevard is that the Springwater Trail bridge goes over it at one of its less savory (and most fully itself) spots. The view from above is of the street, the traffic, the desolate buildings, working warehouses and small industrial buildings, an occasional private residence, lots of highway debris and macadam, Johnson Creek, bogs and wetlands surrounded by fencing, and the Oregon Liquor Control Board’s campus (which is a model of contemporary urban office architecture, including lawns, fountains, and winding drives.) All viewable from a quarter mile stretch of walking path.

So painting McLouglin, in many of its versions, became, over the last month or so, a passion with me.

McLouglin at Mid-day, Oil on canvas, 30 x 40″

I posted one of my McLoughlin photos earlier to A&P:

Ochoco Street from the Springwater Trail, Oil on board, 12 x 16″

Ochoco is a side street, running perpendicular to McLouglin. It is where you gain street access to the Springwater Trail near the bridge.

McLouglin, Early Morning, Oil on board, 18 x 24

McLouglin, 7AM at the Bog, oil on board, 12 x 16

McLouglin, Early Evening, Oil on canvas. 30 x 40″

Obviously I got caught up in that yellow paint that the two derelict buildings had in common. I made up stories about a traveling salesman with an excess of yellow paint on his hands; or, alternatively, an owner of both buildings who in 1952 was enthralled with the receipts from the tavern and the circular “entertainment” center, and upgraded them, using the peculiar ribbed roof (on the circular building) and the excessively yellow paint to signify his pride. Or perhaps it was more like 1964, when the street was already on its way down and business owners were desperate to bring in customers and the salesman sold the owner on the efficacy of yellow, how it would bring in hordes of excited customers.

But other tales can be told also. In 7 AM at the Bog, I was trying to recapture the moment (truthfully, not at 7 AM) when we parked alongside the derelict rectangular building, with its debris of a burned car in the parking lot. When I opened the car door, the sound of birds in the little triangular bog in the middle left of the painting overwhelmed the sounds of Boulevard traffic. Cattails grew behind the sagging fence and water fowl paddled through the reeds. I could only imagine how magical it must be on an early May morning and how astonishing life was, able to reconstitute itself in the most unlikely spots.

Amidst the warehouses and industrial buildings that can be seen from the trail are a couple of perfectly kempt and charming cottages, painted and spruced, with gardens in the rear. I saw a guy in a yellow ball cap wheeling a heap of grass to his compost heap behind his garden. I couldn’t fit him into the painting but he fit into the real scene perfectly. And up on the Trail itself a lone flutist wandered along the trail, making sweet sounds, like the birds, momentarily refuting the traffic noise. Almost a John Cage moment.

I think I could go back to McLoughlin and paint another 5 paintings without beginning to be bored. There’s something about the melange of history and lived existences that that view from the Trail gives to me. I can see a painting of the riparian zone being rehabilitated, just on the other side of the trail from the derelict rectangular building. I could paint the mysterious low brick building with no windows and a large parking lot, set into a grove of forbidding trees, across Johnson Creek from the riparian zone. I could even include the transient with his dog and rusty bike, peddling desultorily along the trail — maybe an erstwhile denizen of one of the yellow buildings when they were warm and alive.

In other words, these paintings are as much about my imaginative meanderings as they are about the place. And they are least about the paint and canvas, which are mere conveyances of the stories I hear in my mind.

So I’m wondering — Steve, in your abstracts, do you tell yourself stories? And Jay, that view through the window, all your slighly unfocused foam excavations and the chains within chains — what stories do they tell? Melanie, are the stories in the medieval scenes you love what attract you to them? I make up stories about Birgit’s paths, of course, and even her mud scenes are anecdotal. What place do stories, a medium based on time, have to do with canvas and paint, a medium based on a single sweeping moment, anyway?

For safety, I recently switched to gmail because I lost all my archived email from my apple mail box after innocently agreeing to update the mail box.

Let us look at one of my gmail threads:

Of the total width, the leftmost 16% are dedicated to my archiving, next come my gmail message occupying 60% of the real estate. The right aspect, 24%, contains ads that reflect the content of my message. Emailing with Hanneke van Oosterhout about her grape picture, the ads on the left talk about oil paintings:

As another example of real estate on the web, let us look at one of my favorite news’papers’ on the web,the Financial Times, ft.com:

Here, 51% contains the news that I want to read, not centered, but offset to the left.

I am not complaining. There is a larger percentage of news coverage on ft.com than in the hard copy of the New York Times that I read in my local library after work. I don’t have a hard copy available right now, but my recollection is that the entire right hand page often consists of an ad and additionally, there are ads on the borders of the left hand page.

How do I react to this visual manipulation? My eyes immediately focus to what I want from the web. In gmail, my eyes are automatically directed to the 60% of the coverage, not centered but somewhat offset to the left. In the ft.com, it was more of a challenge to learn to filter out the flickering pic occupying the 35%, supposedly most important right aspect of the page.

What is your reaction to this visual manipulation?

Or does Saffron spell enthusiasm? Here is my snapshot of Saffron cloth billowing in the wind on a snow-free day, February 2005.

The actual installation of the Saffron Gates – only fourteen days long – contrasts with the length of their virtual reality. Negotiations for the Saffron Gates started in 1979. And now, three years after their short residence in the Central Park, the HBO documentary chronicles the tenacious negotiations by the artists with NYC administrators and the evolution of public opinion regarding the Saffron Gates.

While early negotiation with the city administration, just emerging from a fiscal crisis, were unsuccessful, more than 20 years later – post-9/11 – Michael R. Bloomberg enthusiastically embraced Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Saffron Gates project.

Antonio Ferrara, co-director of the HBO documentary, said on the day when the Gates were installed

I started to cry on blossoming day. The last time people were looking up they were seeing a lot of bad shit happening a few years before.

I too remember watching people exploring the Saffron Gates, expectant and joyous like young children on their birthday.

My snapshot of the Saffron Gates, so far, has given rise to dissent rather than enthusiasm. Anne-Émilie, a landscape architectural designer, had googled for an image showing the effects of wind. My photo captured her interest. She asked me whether she could use it for her current project as well as for any other professional work in the future.

My answer ‘Wonderful! Pay me one dollar and you use can my photo for anything you want’ did not make her happy. First, she complained about the endless red tape that I asked her to do. Several emails later, she encouraged me to ask for more money so that her paperwork would not look silly. I increased the price for giving up my rights to the photo from $1 to $1,000. Later, in a final email, I learned that she did not want to engage in a bidding war and had found another image on the web that she could use for free. I wished her good luck!

I still cannot decide who behaved more weirdly, Anne-Émilie or I?

Two more web sites to waste your time on:

www.bigthink.com including bigthink.com/arts-culture

and www.wiki.com.

I assume most of you have heard about the WGA (Writers Guild of America) strike. I’m not sure how much attention it gets in other parts of the country (or the world, for that matter), but here in Los Angeles it’s a big story. This is after all an entertainment industry town, and the effects of the strike can be felt in every part of our local economy. My wife is a writer and a WGA member, as are many of our friends.

The strike has come about because of a disagreement between the corporations who own the movie and tv studios and the writers who create their content over how much, if at all, the writers should be compensated for their creative work. The writers contend that they should be getting a slightly larger share from the sale of DVDs of the movies they wrote. From the sale of a $28.95 DVD, the writer of the movie currently gets 4 cents, or as comedian Tim Kazurinsky points out, that ‘s 4 cents out of 2,895 cents. The writers are asking for 8 cents.

But a bigger issue, and possibly the main one, is that the networks and studios want to pay the writers nothing, that’s ZERO $, for tv shows and movies that they (the corporations) post on their web sites. The corporations claim that these streaming videos are “promotional”, and that they shouldn’t have to compensate the writers for posting them. But these “promotional” shows have commercials, just like any regular tv show, and are a huge source of income for the studios. They just want to keep it all for themselves.

As Mark Harris notes in his Entertainment Weekly Online column, “Why the Striking Writers Are Right”:

“The problem with this position is that writers deserve a share of revenue for material they help to create. Not a share only if the revenue is really, really a lot. A share, period. If it turns out that streaming video is a goldmine, then both sides will get a lot of money. If it turns out not to be, they’ll get less. Corporations are fond of reminding their employees that they’re all a ”family” during tough times. But when families sit down to dinner, Dad doesn’t get to say, ”I’m gonna eat until I decide I’m full, and then we’ll see if there’s anything left for the rest of you.” The right of a writer to earn money from work that continues to generate revenue cannot be dependent on how comfy studio and network heads are with the fullness of their own coffers.”

The studios are responding to the strike by showing reruns, and more reality and talk shows. But many of the more popular talk shows themselves will have to be reruns, since people like David Letterman and Jay Leno don’t come up with all those clever lines off the tops of their heads. They are created by a staff of, you guessed it, writers. To their credit, both Leno and Letterman are supporting the writers’ position in this dispute.

For the personal reasons mentioned above, and also on principle, as an artist, I’m siding with the writers as well. It seems obvious to me that the people who profit from the success of a creative product should include the artists who actually created it, not just the executives who made the phone calls and brokered the deals. I don’t watch a whole lot of tv to begin with, but until this strike is over I’m not planning on watching any. I’m going to vote with my remote, and say no to corporate greed. I hope many other people do the same.

==============

Here are a couple of videos about the strike that you might find interesting:
Tim Kazurinsky on WGN
the writers of The Office