Maps of the World

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On the advice of the excellent mostly-art blog Best Of, we checked out the current show at Vermillion: Ryan Molenkamp's The San Juans. It's very good—it evokes the otherworldly quality of the San Juan Islands without being overly reverential or literal.


There's something about Molenkamp's technique that reminds me of a cross between this Peter Doig painting, which I clipped out of Harper's magazine long ago and look at all the time…


…and the drawings of BMX tracks they used to have in Bicycle Motocross Action magazine when I was a kid, where they had these hatch marks showing the angle and elevation of the berms:


Also showing right now is Cheryl Gilge's Spatial Transgressions series.


The two shows kind of bleed together, both being topography-related, and I think both artists' work is good enough that it might have been better to give them each their own exhibition. But no matter really – there's lots of interesting things to look at either way. I recommend checking it out and then having some drinks and delicious snacky foods in Vermillion's lovely back bar room while you're at it. More info and images at vermillionseattle.com.

The next day we went to Punch Gallery (on Prefontaine just South of Yesler), which is currently showing Justin Colt Beckman's Honky Tonk.

The Ellensburg-based artist has transformed a modern space into a convincing honky-tonk bar, complete with sawdust on the floor, cans of peanuts in shells, and a metal tub of Busch beer on ice, which he offered us as we walked in. "The show's about to begin," he told us. "Grab a bench."

For the show, Beckman appears on stage in video-projection form, lip-synching classic country songs ("There's a tear in my beer / 'cause I'm crying for you deer / you were on my lonely mind") to an enthusiastic audience (that would be us, plus an applause track). You might think it was one of those one-man show kind of deals where you're not sure when it's okay to leave, but you would be wrong – the whole thing was oddly captivating and we stayed right up through the encore-with-banjo.

Honky Tonk is a really unusual idea, executed just about perfectly. The thing is, a lot of actual bars have adopted this kind of decorative scheme in real life, and it would have been easy for Beckman to simply echo that explosion of nostalgia (which actually does often succeed in being relaxing, fun, etc.—who doesn't like to kick back and listen to tunes in the comfort of old stuff while they drink some beers?) Instead, Honky Tonk is a thought-provoking meditation on city vs. country, high-tech vs. digital, and real vs. not real. In other words, it goes beyond the decorative surface appeal and addresses the impulse behind it…or something. I enjoyed the gallery's description of the show, so maybe it's best if I re-print it here in full and leave it at that:

Inspired by music variety shows, karaoke, and childhood lip-sync concerts, Justin Colt Beckman’s Honky Tonk transforms PUNCH Gallery into a full-scale country bar for three weeks during the month of November. Combining video projection and sound, with found materials he's dragging over from rural Washington, Beckman continues his investigation into the urban/rural dichotomy and its associated stereotypes as he explores the act of country music stardom vicariously through his art-making.

In their many manifestations, the terms hillbilly, redneck, and white trash have been used in national media representations and by Americans within and outside rural areas to both uphold and challenge the dominant trends of contemporary American life, including urbanization, the ever-expanding centrality of technology, and the resulting routinization of American life. While often used to define the benefits of advanced civilization through negative counterexample, these terms have also been used to question the legitimacy of modernity and progress. Whatever. We just want to drink some cold beer, throw our peanut shells on the floor, and watch Beckman sing a few of his favorite country tunes.

Cheers to that. I would have happily stayed for another, but we had places to be. The show is up through November 22nd; more info at punchgallery.org.

All American

This week's episode of This American Life features excerpts from the late, great Studs Terkel's radio show, among other things. It is riveting stuff. Click here to listen.

Westworld

Michael Chrichton died this past week from complications related to being an a-hole. He was responsible for a pretty great movie though, the first drive-in movie I ever saw as a kid, over by the Burgermaster off of 520 in Bellevue:



Two sequels followed: Futureworld, and a little smutfest called Sexworld that a friend of mine got a hold of in high school.

Thank you, Michael Chrichton, for making the world a little warmer.

Beauty through a Cracked Windshield

In this morning's New York Times Manohla Dargis previews the 10-film Robert Frank retrospective playing this weekend at the Anthology Film Archives. In case you don't want to read the whole thing, here's my favorite part [spoiler alert]:

The critic Amy Taubin has described The Americans as a road movie, an observation that underscores the rootless, searching quality of so many of [Robert Frank's] images, still and moving. This sensibility is even there in a lovely, understated 2002 short video, Paper Route, that finds him riding shotgun with a newspaper delivery man through Mr. Frank’s adopted hometown of Mabou, Nova Scotia. For 23 minutes he keeps his eye on this world’s barren beauty through a cracked windshield, which is about as perfect a metaphor for his persistence of vision as I can imagine.

Click here to visit the Anthology Film Archives.

Several beautifully packaged DVD sets of Robert Frank's films are available from Steidl. That's what they look like right there on the left.

Read a short review of Robert Frank's infamous Rolling Stones documentary Cocksucker Blues and watch a clip at Wooooo.

One Picture of One Picture

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William Eggleston: Democratic Camera (Photographs and Video, 1961–2008) opens today at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. It is perhaps lucky for those of us who will miss it that Eggleston's work reads very well on the web—the backlighting of a computer monitor provides some semblance of the intense color in his dye-transfer prints.

Color photography can be considered in the realm of "art" almost singlehandedly because of William Eggleston's one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1976, curated by John Szarkowski. This show the Whitney is only his second one-man show in the United States.



It presents a huge survey of his work, including a recent re-edit of his film Stranded in Canton, shot in the early '70s. As the Times critic Holland Cotter puts it, "road trips and craziness were cool, and Mr. Eggleston set out on some hard-drinking picture-taking excursions. He also embarked on repeated shorter expeditions closer to home in the form of epic bar crawls…Mr. Eggleston would show up with friends at favorite bars, turn on his Sony Portapak, push the camera into people’s faces and encourage them to carry on."

Here are some clips:





There was also a documentary a few years ago called William Eggleston in the Real World. (Forgive me if you already know all this stuff, I'm just trying to, you know, surround the story.)

Here's the trailer:



Many more photos, film clips, writings, etc. can be found at egglestontrust.com.

Click here to read the New York Times review and here to read a story on Eggleston from W Magazine, which includes this Juergen Teller portrait of the man:


More info on the Whitney exhibition, which runs now through January 25, 2009, can be found at whitney.org

The Wide World of Mr. Littlejeans

There was a request recently for more posts featuring the cats.

Sometimes Jeans looks like a baby seal.

Our other cat, Inez, is beautiful and sweet too – but she is a stray and she will always be a stray. She was rescued as a kitten, along with her mom, brother, and sister, from a Brooklyn backyard on the block of Dean Street where Fortress of Solitude takes place (just to give you a little context, in case you know the block or the book, or both). The rescuers kept the mom, someone else got her brother and sister, and we got Inez. She could fit in the palm of my hand, she was so small.

The photo above perfectly expresses the relationship between our two cats. Jeans is gigantic (lay off, it's glandular) and rules the house. Inez worships him but he pays little attention, except to swat at her if she gets too close, or to occasionally lick her face if he's feeling charitable. We're glad to provide Inez a place to live and steady meal service ("three hots and a cot" as Emily puts it) but it's not really like having a regular cat – she's more of a roommate who we see every once in awhile.

And Jeans is just Jeans, the cat who thinks he's a little man.

PS - I have been instructed to inform the reader that in the above photo, Emily is watching TV, not looking wistfully away from the camera in some posey way.

A Frontier Story

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At Rachel Comey's Fall/Winter 2008 show earlier this year (held at the venerable Salmagundi Club), she showed some shoes with handwriting painted on the platforms—book titles like Séance on a Wet Afternoon, and if I remember correctly there was some Ouija board and Houdini stuff on there too.

For the special Northwest edition, sold only at Totokaelo and Impulse (36th North at Fremont Ave) I suggested using the title of Carol Ryrie Brink's 1935 book Caddie Woodlawn: A Frontier Story – and here they are. I love it when a plan comes together.

I should mention that Carol Ryrie Brink (1895–1981) was a resident of Moscow, Idaho, where Emily grew up. I remember a Caddie Woodlawn craze when I was in elementary school and Emily has a nice old copy:

Ryrie Brink wrote a bunch of other books but the only one I've read is Buffalo Coat (1944), which Emily bought me a few years back:

I highly recommend it for young and old dudes and ladies alike, as it is just a good old intrigue-filled pioneer story about the early days of Moscow.

I think some of Carol Ryrie Brink's books are still in print but you can also search for them at abebooks.com.

Streets of Fire

I don't remember the color being so good in Seattle. Every time I walk by it, this tree around the corner blows my mind.

Destroyer Streets of Fire mp3

Look Up and Live

Some random photos...

A new day

I don't even know what to say. It feels good to be proud of our country.
Photo nytimes.com

Tonight in Celebratory Drinking:

See you there.

James Brown Funky President mp3

Hawks & Doves

Emily found this really cool little wooden bird at D&G Antiques in Butte, Montana.

There are a bunch of good antique and vintage stores in Butte, but this is one of the best, for its sheer variety, organization, and fair prices. Guy and Delores Palmer are also probably some of the nicer people you will meet in the great state of Montana.

Down Here on the Ground

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While we were on the road, Paul Newman died, and I wanted to post something about that, but it fell through the cracks. Being so late with it, I won't add another obituary to the mix…I will take the opportunity, though, to post one of the most beautiful pieces of soundtrack music I've ever heard, from one of Newman's best films.

Lalo Schifrin Ballad of Cool Hand Luke mp3

Virginia is for Lovers

...of modern architecture:

Today's New York Times Magazine features some stunning Nikolas Koenig photos of a Frank Lloyd Wright house in McLean, VA. Constructed from cinder blocks and completed in 1959, it sits on a cliff overlooking the Potomac River.

Click here to read the article and see a slideshow.

Chilis I have loved

We had dinner Saturday night at Mike's Chili in Ballard and were served by Mike himself, whose grandfather Mike (or maybe great-grandfather Mike) built the place in 1922. (This old photo is from the website, and kind of looks Deer Hunter-era, but the place looks exactly the same nowadays.) I have been wanting to go forever and it did not disappoint. As someone whose better half orders chili just about every time we eat at a diner or bar, and as someone who then steals a good amount of that chili, I have had a lot of chili – and Mike's is very, very good. I'm not sure if it's the best I've ever had, but it would be pretty dang close. I'll have to try it again and then I'll let you know.