Tag Archives: art

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artshow


Wooah.. DeJaVu!… Last Fall kicked off with an art-show opening for my friend and mentor Cournoyer… Just like last Friday.

While the work was pretty much the same – the venue was more “upscale” this time.

This gallery was in “Clayton”, (county seat for St. Louis and where the elite play)…. Good for Jon from an art-sales standpoint… Bad if you’re allergic to pretense.

I liked the other artists’ work a lot more than last year though. One guy’s work was really graphic and in my opinion could hold a candle to Jon’s work… Actually – the one piece, (inset photo), we all three liked was only $900… Which is a lot of money.. but not a lot for a piece of original art. Ugh.. Can’t really swing that right now though.. (responsibly at least).

The gallery was small and the crowd was definitely more “snooty” than last year’s relaxed young crowd… The lack of elbow room and pretense in the air made for a stuffy, uncomfortable environment… We made a couple of loops and then retired to the sidewalk to chat with the folks we did know.

We only got to speak to Jon a couple of times…. I could tell he wasn’t crazy about the dog-and-pony show vibe either… We reassured him that he was doing just fine and to keep smiling and sent him back into the swarm. I hope he sold some work.

We took off and grabbed dinner at reportedly the best hole-in-the-wall Chineese restaruant in town. (it was pretty good- but the Mu-Shu was better we had durring Elise’s birthday).

Meanwhile – it’s Monday – I’m draggin’ ass and not blogging.

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green walls and ham

missing ham

I’ll never forget the afternoon I met Buc. I was at the corner of the bar nursing the burns on my face from the long day of testing air bags at the Volvo factory.

I had just dropped out of the tenth grade and the world was my oyster… or so I thought…

It was the racket of the trash cans being knocked over that made me look up from my ouzo and seven… In stumbled in this lumberjack of a man with multiple piecing, full-sleeve tattoos and a smart low-cut top and canary yellow stretch pants.

“phhhuckoff gimmie a vodka and olive juice” he growled at the bartender.

I had to know this beautiful stranger so I shimmied across the bar, without leaving my barstool, and introduced myself.

The stranger peered at me through his one good eye and said..

“Hi.. My name’s Buc… Ya know.. It rhymes with fire engine.”

We chatted for a little while before deciding to leave the bar and scratch our respected itches… While hailing the cab he confided that he can only achieve orgasms in laundromats.

“Where to buddy” – the nice cabby of middle-eastern origin asked..

missing ham painting

“Soap-n-Go on Washington and 8th please”

Of course.. this is complete bullshit… I’ve never met Andy… (a.k.a. buc, a.k.a. thefatrooster). But that didn’t stop him from creating, bar-none, the coolest birthday present I received this year. (if not the coolest of all 33 birthdays).

I’ve been dropping hints that I’d love one of his paintings – but only half-heartedly.. I mean – why in the hell would some guy who I’ve never met want to create a piece of art for me? I mean that’s right up there on the intimacy list with not pulling out.

So… I’m now the humbled owner of a Buc original.

To add to the personal flattery, its subject / theme, I assume, is based on a previous entry I made in this thing you all think is a blog.

I’m not blogging – urr.. I mean – if I was – it would have taken me three days to watch the light to find the perfect time of day to shoot the painting and figure out how to express my gratitude.

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y chromes and Chuck Barris

y-chrome donor in garage

Today was my Wednesday off. I didn’t do jack aside from get up, load the dish washer, and chain nap all day.

Got a call from my pop late that night. Apparently someone in his subdivision was throwing out some willow furniture and wondered if we’d be interested in savaging some of it for ourselves.

I was just getting ready to propose to Kevin and Chad that we go for a walk since I was in the house all day and had a slight touch of cabin fever.

This was a good excuse to get out of the house for an hour – so we jumped in the car and made the very short trip over the river (well more like creek), through the woods and to Daddy’s house we went.

I’ll refrain from the little cut-away, frustrated socio cultural anthropologist micro-essays I tend to slip in these entries. My father would require a small book and to try to wrap him up neatly in a paragraph would be an exercise in dismissive minimalism.

The furniture wasn’t our bag… Too rustic.. no…. “too neo-chromagnon”. Pop however liked the table so we nabbed it up and carried it down to the house to add to the other stockpile of items he’s collected over the past few years.

Dad, who’s now on retirement disability from the railroad, was originally trained as (and in my opinion never stopped being) an artist. After my mother left him at the end of last century, his eccentricity hit new heights without having a spouse to keep him in check.

His favorite activity is dumpster diving. Not the kind you see homeless guys do, rummaging for tin cans and spiders in discarded gin bottles. Nope. Dad likes to snag up discarded and damaged items from craft stores. In the past four years he’s filled the garage, and several rooms of the house, with all sorts of odd items. Picture frames, bras headboards, baskets, floor tile samples, etc.

Most of his spoils are used to make these “found art” sculptures that defy description. I own two.

I’m happy he’s creating again.

Back to the house to take in a rental: “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind”….
The story was a little snoozy, (probably COMPLETELY uninteresting if you weren’t cutting your mass media teeth, like I did, on the likes of The Gong Show and know who Chuck Barris is). But I really liked a lot of the production. The DP really had a nice style and they did a lot of “practical / in camera” effects which is always charming. It gets a good 4 to 4.5 Monkeys (out of a possible 6) on the Monkey Scale.

Shit… The boys are oversleeping – and if I don’t stop not blogging, we’re all going to be late to work.