Cat's Eye

“I don’t want to go,” I said to Ben.
“You don’t have to,” he said. “Call it off. Come down to Mexico.”
“They’ve gone to all the trouble,” I said. “Listen, you know how hard it is to get a retrospective anywhere, if you’re female?”
“Why is it important?” he said. “You sell anyway.”
“I have to go,” I said. “It wouldn’t be right.” I was brought up to say please and thank you.
“Okay,” he said. “You know what you’re doing.” He gave me a hug.
I wish it were true.

And those are really the first words addressing this retrospective the woman artist is having in her home town in Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood. They come in after 92 pages of childhood, girl friendships and games, poverty, a wayward family – all things which are familiar to me actually, art aside. And those kinds of tales probably cast a much wider net as regards readers. But I’ve been waiting for the moment when you just know that this girl Elaine will be an artist, though this story seems more about relationships, not art.

And why would it matter? Because to become an artist is one thing, to stay an artist is another and I want to know how she navigated it, especially back in Postwar days. I'm hoping I hear more about it. One thing I found accurate is her recount of loving small things, of liking bits of paper, tin foil, just simple objects that came her way as a child. As she ages, she wants things more. But Elaine expresses this not just as acquisitiveness or as girlish vanity, but more as an artist who collects and examines something for its own thingness.

As someone returning for a big show, she’s also not wild about discussing what it is to be a “woman artist.” When the local press come to talk about feminism, she’s not buying. But I don’t think I was either back in 1988, when this novel was published. This may be the ideal time to read this book too because I am heading to southern Oregon tomorrow - my childhood home, where the girls were, with its own complexities.

Michael Kenna on KBOO

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Michael Kenna has a beautiful show of photographs called Recent Travels at Charles A. Hartman Fine Art. We talked about his work when he was in town. The interview will broadcast during Art Focus on Tuesday.

posters and polaroids

For the past week I am acting as archivist, detective and photo editor for the film Alien Boy. It has been an adventure and a strange blast from the past as I am visiting some people I haven’t really seen in years. But they are the ones with the poster stashes and cool Polaroids from back in the day.

Like Mark Sten – he printed posters for gigs and has a great record of what happened here. Alien Boy will be able to draw from an archive that spans the birth of punk in this town plus the few years which followed, when James Chasse Jr. was active in the bands Possum Society and the Psychedelic Unknowns.

It was fun to go over the posters with Sten – as they flashed before my eyes, so did the memories of those nights. The scene was so small back then that I knew every band. The entire audience was made up of those kids; all we did was just change places from stage to floor and back again. In fact I wrote somewhere in my diary of 1980: Things are weird now, changing. We see all these people in the audience that we don’t know. I laughed when I read that.

Of course the most important Polaroid from the collection of Randy Moe is the one above, whom we knew as Jim Jim. But the other portraits are a fabulous treasure trove I would like to curate into an exhibition if I had the means. In some cases the photographs spawned posters and it would be fun to show them side by side – like a Polaroid of KT Kincaid (of the Neoboys) was the basis of a poster later made by Randy. There are several examples of this. And as we know, Randy Moe is no slouch of a draftsman.

What I enjoyed the most about the photographs as a collection was how intimate, lively and casual they are. Only a friend from the inner circle could capture such relaxed yet brutal, spontaneous honesty. Even when we are posing like crazy, it is real. There are no “Three Guys on a Stage” pictures. The few which are of a performance do not feel like it, not with their cut-off heads and the fabulous haircuts of the audience.

Michael Brophy on KBOO

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This Tuesday my guest on Art Focus will be Michael Brophy, who has a show opening at Laura Russo. There are big oil paintings and small square gouaches. Brophy's house + studio were destroyed in a fire - some of the work is about that.

Jeff in Venice, etc.

A book I unfortunately can’t finish – not being able to reach the headset of Mann, Amis, Ginsburg or half of the other fellows this reviewer ties the book to. Maybe I could have related more if my trip to Venice was as Bellini-and-blow fueled as the narrator’s, who supposedly is a hero in a dumbass antihero’s costume. The reviewers say he is bored with his drug antics but at the age of 45, I’d say he is pretty damn lucky his heart hasn’t given out. I lost patience around the time the dude was shocked that his love interest said a smart thing, to which he replied (loosely quoted): “What are you doing talking like that, working in the art world?” “I know,” she tells him, “I am going to leave and become a hedge fund manager.” But then we only know her by her mane, her smell, the turn of her ankle and sandals, nice dresses and underwear. As a Californian object she was so sweetly drawn that shit it was a shocker when she had something intelligent to say. He hardly knows her when before we all know it, they’re on to the ol’ 69. Acrobatic but so easy. Maybe I’m just jealous – why wasn’t my Venice Biennale like that?

the Lesbian Art Show on KBOO

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Today I visited the Lesbian Art Show at Fontanelle, which features Dada-inspired collages, painting and installation by Azsa West and Mary McAllister. I loved this show - it pays smart homage to herstory of the 20th century with a very contemporary feel. There's even a booth where you can enclose yourself with the Well of Loneliness and a shot of whiskey. I was able to snag a spot on KBOO for this show by hosting Friday's Radiozine - that's tomorrow at 11AM.

Diane Durston on KBOO

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Today on Art Focus Diane Durston will join me. She is the curator for the Japanese Garden here in Portland. She put together the beautiful Parallel Worlds exhibition, which compares ceremonial robes and textiles between the Ainu of Hokkaido and the Native American artists of the Pacific Northwest.

Arvie Smith on KBOO

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Tomorrow my guest on Art Focus is Arvie Smith, who has a show up at Beppu Wiarda. He says the show is about the election of Obama, but I see a lot more than that in these paintings and will have to ask him about it.

The American Painter Emma Dial

A couple of years ago the search for a woman artist in fiction as the Prime Mover became something of an obsession with me. While there is a small selection of woman artists in literature, they sort of just litter the stories of lives about the Great Man. Or as Theodore Dreiser at least had the sense of humor to call him, “The Genius.” What I wanted was a story where the woman is the one making all the brainwaves and the closest I came was Mary Gordon’s Spending.

In a way, The American Painter Emma Dial by Samantha Peale is also a search for the female Prime Mover. In this case it’s the narrator herself, who as the book jacket insists, “risks everything to fulfill her ambitions as an artist.” Emma Dial is an assistant to a very successful artist, truly the woman behind the great man and in her case, she paints every single thing that comes out of his studio. Once he saw how great a painter she was, he quit painting altogether - and never missed it.

And of course she’s doing him too. Nothing serious, since he’s got his main course of a wife, but then again just enough to have more than one level of power and control. He also is very adept at craftily keeping her away from opportunity. Emma is clinical in her reportage, like maybe we need to know just how tough she is. That part I can easily believe. Six years later, Emma is wondering how to get her paint mojo back.

By page 100 we see where she thinks she might find it: in the form of another male artist, the old friend and competitor of Genius Number One. Of course this man has more integrity – he actually makes his work. And she is clearly crazy about his painting and puts him right up there with Velázquez. At this point though (I have not finished this novel and will report back), I feel more than a little tenuous about her adoration. I don’t care how supportive, cool, hot, whatever he is.

And I’m probably tenuous because it hits a little close to home as we run from one field of promise to another, where no matter what the professional crescendo isn’t yours. This better not be another Pygmalion story where you want to shake up the woman and say: “No, Girl, this is about you!” Greedy as that sounds.

When she visits Number Two’s studio, he goes off on his age: “Did you know I’m 53 years old?” as if you can’t say anything hotter. Hmmm, that’s the age I’m turning this year.

Eric Vines of Sitka on KBOO

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Between W+K and KBOO, I was going a little crazy. But now W+K Radio is going “grey” and reinventing itself over the summer and I am back to one radio show a week.

Tomorrow I will have Eric Vines with me on Art Focus – he’s the Executive Director for the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. While I have been a part of their gigantic annual group show at the forestry center and have seen their extensive newspapers all over town, I’ve never fully grasped what Sitka does. So tomorrow we’ll find out.

artist book from 1984

One thing John Brodie and I talked about in his interview were artist books – books in the Store and also, his own book making. I do not make books now but there was a time when I made many. I can’t say that every page was a great piece, but taken as a whole they were good.

Recently I heard from an artist I knew well in the 80s, Ginny Lloyd. She was cleaning out her closet: would I like back the book I made for her in 1984? Of course I would, since she’s asking. The name of the book was Darling, as you see above. That photobooth is Ginny and in fact the book was filled with pictures of her.

- And filled with collage, painting, colored and lead pencil drawings and all kinds of stuff. Above you see Bryan Ferry with some keys. What he’s got to do with Patti Smith’s Babelogue next door, I don’t know, but at some point I just start filling in pages randomly. Clearly I am still in the throes of New Romanticism.

You can tell that I have now started my career in fashion and makeup by then - I was a makeup artist living on Sutter Street in San Francisco.

This was also the initial time I was interested in the target as regards women but had not made any kind of substantial statement yet. It’s like I visited the idea but did not commit. When I started the recent Target Photomontages, I was building on the casual work of 25 years ago. That's Veruschka below, one of my favorite models.

The image below is from an even earlier time, 1980.

John Brodie on KBOO

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John Brodie has organized Store for a Month, which opens June 3rd. Brodie takes his concept from Claes Oldenburg’s “Store” of 1961, inviting artists to make works on the spot and sell them too. One of the works offered is the piece above, Cloud Painting 1 by Arcy Douglass. Over 60 artists are participating. John Brodie will join me on KBOO this Tuesday and tell us all about the store.

Jerry Saltz on Facebook

Some people think Facebook is a timesuck, but it can be the place where you repeat and investigate your obsessions. We may have stated something once or twice or far too many times in our blogs or website. But we can REALLY hash it out on this other gabbier site.

Jerry Saltz has posted at least five posts, all short observations, on the paltry numbers of women artists showing at the MOMA. He’s had to post his views so many times because literally hundreds of responses follow and his page nearly sets itself on fire.

I just had to mention it because more than one person has alluded to gender bias in the art world as tediously “my thing.” But this thing, which is so boring to many, is still a hot topic to others. I was surprised and encouraged – not by the sad statistics of course but by the willingness of so many to be that unfashionable. I think you’ve got to be Jerry’s “friend” to see all these posts, but he’s already got thousands and seems to be pretty generous about that….

Emily Chenoweth on W+K Radio

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Tomorrow my guest at W+K is Emily Chenoweth, who has a new novel out called Hello Goodbye. Previously Chenoweth published a short story in an anthology called The Friend Who Got Away. This novel picks up from that story.

I am right now in the thick of reading the book, which is an interesting place to be when heading into an interview. Some people have raised their eyebrows, as if I haven’t done my homework, but I kind of like it this way. I’m fully engaged and curious and besides, the interview isn’t about spoilers anyway.

The book is based on true life and in another time, another year, might have been a memoir instead. It is also especially meaningful to anyone who lost a parent when young - which I did, and so did Emily Chenoweth. The sweetness of youth is eclipsed by illness and death and things are never the same. Chenoweth has this immense gift for graphically recounting the visual as well as emotional details.

Myles Haselhorst of Ampersand Vintage

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This Tuesday I will have Myles Haselhorst as my guest on KBOO's Art Focus. He owns Ampersand Vintage on Alberta, which functions successfully as both a shop and a gallery - and that’s no small feat. Often a space works best one way or another, but Ampersand feels serious about its product, its design as a store as well as what they have on the walls. You could get lost for hours – great art books and ephemera – found images, books, postcards and all kinds of photography.

Ampersand also keeps an interesting blog filled with images and old found graphics. I found the warning about not altering images pretty funny though. Of course they did not make them or generate them in any way but now claim ownership so extensively that they state right in the blog: “You may not alter material or build upon it in the creation of new works.” This is a topic for Collage Clearinghouse indeed! We’ll also talk about their upcoming exhibition of mixed-media paintings by Graham Fracha (see image above) and the kinds of exhibitions they produce.

Katherine Dunn interview on W+K Radio

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Katherine Dunn has a new book out: One Ring Circus, an anthology of essays on boxing she’s written over the years. She’ll be my guest tomorrow at 10:30AM on Creative Type, my newly-dubbed podcast at W+K Radio.

When I first met Katherine she was not a boxing fan at all. We met at the Long Goodbye’s weekly open mike poetry readings in 1978. By ’79 I was living in NW Portland, her neighborhood. (The Polaroid above is from that era.) Often we met for coffee and cigarettes early in the morning at her place and she would tell me long stories about how she was dreaming up this fantastic character, this hunchback pigmy girl. Ten years later, we had Geek Love.


I was around when she met her soon-to-be husband and had the honor of doing her makeup for her wedding, when I was hardly the professional makeup artist I would someday be. She was incredibly inspired by boxing by this time, but I’m not sure if she was writing about it yet. I left Portland in ’81, gone for sixteen years. But when I returned, we picked up right from where we left off.

It’s an understatement to reveal that she’s been one of the most important mentors and artists in my life. I couldn’t begin to express it, so I won’t try. Katherine of course is a radio pro herself. In all the time I’ve done radio, I’ve never had her on and I am really looking forward to tomorrow.

Anne Grgich on KBOO

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Anne Grgich is a self-taught artist working in the tradition of Outsider Art. She makes books and works in paint and assemblage. She has shown all over the world. She’s also someone who used to live here, traveled all over and now she’s back.

Yesterday I went to her birthday party and she showed me a bunch of books she is working on. Some of these are not “books” as we tend to think of them. They are big mirrors or frames or whatever else she has on hand, sometimes beaded and gilded and totally over the top. Then she mounts them together as though they are book pages. She’s my guest this week on Art Focus at KBOO.

Jim Neidhardt, Art Beat

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Now every Friday at 10:30AM W+K Radio will feature my interview with a creative type. So tomorrow I will have Jim Neidhardt on W+K, who has a show called Book Lovers at Blackfish (see image above). With this Jim has joined the ranks of artists who mess with books but he has also created paintings, all kinds of art objects, videos and films.

I will also be a part of PCC’s Art Beat, giving a lecture tomorrow at Cascade. Jacqueline Ehlis asked me, saying: “I want you to present yourself as an artist.” Whoa, easier said than done. Last time I lectured, it was just about the Targets. That was fairly contained compared to this.

Dinh Q. Lê on W+K Radio

Halo in the Night I , 2009

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Dinh Q. Le is in town for his exhibition Signs and Signals From the Periphery at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery. We met at the W+K Radio studio for a short interview about his new work, which will air at 10:30AM Friday, May 8th and then be archived here afterwards.

Make at W+K

Tonight I will be checking out the Global Agency Art Show at Weiden+Kennedy, Make. This is an exhibition celebrating the creativity of W+K and is also a benefit for Room to Read, a nonprofit which promotes and ables global education. The show features over 100 pieces, all made by Weiden Kennedy employees from their seven offices: Amsterdam, Dehli, London, New York, Portland, Shanghai and Tokyo. Check out the work – it’s completely collectable, affordable and fun. All of it is purchased online, but only here in Portland can you go down to the agency and see it.

more women and Molly Haskell

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I know exactly what I want to paint right now. But I cannot do it. So I montage quite a bit. Above you see another LT. It’s the combination of Los Angeles transforming into a track housing grid with the actress emerging into color from black and white. This is the biggest piece I’ve made yet in this series, almost 18 inches square.

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You may think I have some fascination for Liza but I do not. I just have a very extravagant Life spread from when Cabaret came out, that’s all. The center target is from the 2nd piece I made in this series over a year ago. It was never right, so I yanked her out and placed her with torch songs from the Middle Ages.

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"I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin." – So said Oscar Levant about the star. Her success shoved her into the role and I think her time with Hitchcock showed how much she was capable of. I made this collage right around the time I came across Molly Haskell’s great essay on Doris written in the 70s. By the end of the 60s, Day’s whole virgin schikt was stupidly tiresome but Haskell has some very smart things to say about her. Right now I’m reading her new book Frankly, My Dear. Just as she did with Day, she’s giving Scarlett a whole new attitude.

Mark Woolley on KBOO

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Tomorrow my guest on Art Focus will be Mark Woolley. He’s been in the news a lot because he is bringing his gallery to a close. He has one more show to mount in that space: I could have been a Collecta. We’ll talk about his future plans and reminisce about his favorite shows.

It’s also pledge-drive time for KBOO - which means I’ll be offering a couple of family memberships to the Portland Art Museum during my show, as a way of thanking you for supporting the station. We’re also offering a glamour-filled evening at Bluehour. I hope you tune in.

Sarah Waters on KBOO

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Some may call it a guilty pleasure, but I am fine with admitting that I’ve read everything Joanna Trollope has written and with a vengeance. One evening while tracking her down on Youtube, I saw that she recommended a newish novel by Sarah Waters, the Night Watch. I devoured the book, which goes back and forth in time, tracing the lives of gay and straight people working (and loving) literally in the dark during the Blitz in London.

Now Waters has a new book out called the Little Stranger and I’m going to interview her about it this week for Between the Covers. In this story, Waters examines a fragile postwar family who were once glorious in the style of Gosford Park, with its upstairs/ downstairs, family-secret mode. Now they can barely keep the lights on as their immense estate crumbles. The doctor who helps them out is the son of one of their maids of a bygone era, so class issues and transitions abound here as he moves up while they move down. It’s also a ghost story with Gothic touches. Sarah Waters will make an appearance at Powell’s on May 4th at 7:30PM.

Hilary Pfeifer on W+K radio

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I'm really excited about the new radio coming out of Wieden + Kennedy. Tomorrow I have my first interview on the station. I’ll be talking to Hilary Pfeifer about Art on Alberta and the annual Art Hop, which will be on May 16th this year. This year the organization is honoring Thelma Johnson Streat, an artist from here who was the first African American woman artist to be exhibited and collected by MOMA. There will be about 50 of her works (pic above) exhibited in various galleries along Alberta Street. The broadcast is 10:30AM.

Kim McKenna on KBOO

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I am looking forward to having Kim McKenna on the radio this morning. She has a show of paintings called Modern Problems at Beppu Wiarda.