HOME

This weekend I sold the three Day Of The Dead mariachis. Nice to have a little money, but I will miss my little boys.

Today I deliver the boys to their new home in Santa Fe and here they are just about to catch a ride in an old Toyota pickup.

I spent longer than I wanted trying to figure out what kind of beast I have been making...and at the moment still not sure other than it appears to be some kind of tumbling he-goat.

But yesterday morning I was looking at it and thought if it was a "he-goat" there seemed to be some equipment missing. Suddenly I saw the vision of two chrome spheres in a strategic position. This is where things can manifest when you least expect it.

I sort of went through my inventory in my mind and realized I had no such spherical items, so I dropped the idea from any real possibility.

Later in the afternoon as I was nearing the end of fiddling with what I did not know, one of my friends dropped in and asked me what I was up to, and then asked if the thing I was making was a falling horse...that impressed me that he could see anything.

I then explained to him what I had been thinking about and said it was a shame I did not have two chrome balls because it would complete the work.

He went home and brought back the two , and hence the subsequent title of BALLS TO THE AIR.

1. New Gate. 2. New signs. 3. New work with chrome balls. 4. again. 5. again. 6. Old work. 7. again.

On the weekend, my little pal Fabian who lives across the street usually comes over and asks if he can help me do anything. Sometimes I say no and sometimes I get over being an old grouch and let him do things just for the fun of seeing a little guy who really has heart.

This weekend I let him repaint some of the signs I hang in the front of my place. At the conclusion I gave him an old sign and told him to do whatever he wanted. Within minutes he had his hands in the paint and was smearing colors like a real maniac artist...he may be the next Jackson Pollack.

1. Fabian paints OPEN. 2. Detail. 3. Getting there. 4. Nearly done. 5. Signs and Fabian. 6. His wild art.

I was wondering around the other night and took a bunch of "night shots" with my digital thingme.

Mostly the photos are for Ruth because they are portraits of her favorite boyfriend.

The big wood lump I am working on so far...as of yet I am not sure which direction the "thing" is going. It is about nine feet tall.

After work yesterday Ruth and I walked up Canyon Road, looking at the art in several galleries. I saw one artist's work I liked and a lot of stuff that was very competent but a copy of someone somewhere I have seen many times.

I don't know how to evaluate what I do. My only insight is I am probably seen as a "tramp artist" at best and an "itinerant naive" at worst...other than that I have no idea.

Hmmmm...the truth most often in this guise is that it is a baby-sitting exercise, where my main purpose is to keep the kiddies from eating each other or burn down the school.

I keep telling myself, one of these days when I grow up, and have made a famous splash on the horizon, I really will retire back to my humble abode and write memoirs of my lightning arrival in the world of success.

This weekend I watched Ruth's shop while she was at her workshop business. So to pass the time I watched traffic and continued portraits from historic photos of the Apache people.

1. A man arrived driving a 1941 Lincoln Continental Mark I 2. Rear View. 3. Front view. 4. Other side.

5. Now in my "INDIAN " period. 6. Apache couple. 7, Jicarilla Cowboy. 8. Tonto Apache woman.

1. Spring winter. 2. No moto. 3. Whatszut? 4. Sculpture corral. 5. Eagle hut. 6. Be here now? 7. Our yard. 8. The meadow. 9. Foggy

Not so bad, but everybody in our valley is bitching, "Where is our warm weather?"

I was reading Barry Graham's blog, http://the-urban-monk.blogspot.com/ The following caught my attention, so I added my opinion of his rules in red.

These days I'm working intensely on some revisions suggested by my agent and my editor for my novel before I turn in the final draft. This got me thinking about the seven rules I follow when writing fiction:
1. Never resort to the use of irony; if sincerity isn't enough, be silent. Hmmm..., within my own life if I ignored the impact of irony I would have very little to write about, yet I agree about sincerity, so I sincerely envelope the irony of living.
2. Forget the self. Artists are boring; it's the art that matters. If you just want attention, go out in the street and pull your pants down. Don't write anything you don't have to write. Hokay... I suppose this rule could also encompass being a visual artist, and even though it hurts my pride a bit, the truth is I never was commanded to create any image, and the world would not have missed my scuff marks on the doormat of existence. In short, the self willed me to be out there on the street pulling my metaphorical creative pants down time and time again.
3. Don't make people less than they are. No argument here, although often I find people way too much.
4. Don't write for other people, and don't write for yourself. Just write. Agreed again.
5. Don't lie. Well...now that is the million dollar challenge, and it is a good idea, although I must suggest very few people ever manage to face the truth of their own existence, much less so by describing a fictional version of it, still it is a noble pursuit.
6. Don't be fearful. Right here again. Bash on baby.
7. Don't be boring. Irony, self-consciousness, making people less, writing for others or yourself, lying and being fearful all make for boring writing. Okay, lets take an example of a writer being not boring, say Dylan Thomas's Ulysses. Not boring yes, but after attempting to read it several times, I have given up what he was trying to say. Yes boring writing is bad, and so are boring people, but most likely boring may just be in the eye of the bore-holder.

Well, there you go. I suppose we must all have rules we do our personal work by, and thinking about what rules I use as a visual artist, there is no easy list to jot down. If I must commit, there would be one major rule which is:

1.DON'T LET TINY PRECIOUS PARTS EXIST IF THEY ARE NOT PART OF THE WHOLE. IN SHORT, CUT, CUT, CUT.

The other thing in regards to Barry's list, is he really is a writer, while I have to admit I am at best a devoted hobbyist at writing, having never been published or critiqued in the mass-public-eye. ( Of course, I mean the real critical glossy-magazine world, not this self-indulgent superhighway we all can publish to our hearts content)

Tax day is always a pain, so yesterday, having already done the deed with TURBO TAX a month ago, I checked my online bank account to be sure it had coughed up the spadoolahs I owed the fed...and yes it was gone, but to my amazement I discovered I got my social security bananas early. It was an even trade being it was almost the same amount of $366...wow what a financial empire!

To celebrate I picked up my daughter on the motorbike and we went for a little ride in the mountains, then had lunch in a nice place, and afterwards we went back to her house and I looked at her photos of the recent trip to Scotland/Spain/Africa.

We decided we would finish the day by going to the movies, so we did. We saw ALIENS VS. MONSTERS. It was hilarious if you have a simple brain like mine...actually really clever. The writing was very funny and the animation just amazing.

I worked on a new large animal sculpture, but so far it is just a unique pile of sticks.

In the late afternoon an old buddy from ABQ days showed up on his Harley and we talked over his new plan to return to the weird and strange world of being an artist...this is after being a successful arts entertainment officer for one of the big Pueblo casinos for eleven years...so he drops from a fat-cat salary back to wondering how to pay the rent every month.

Most people decide not to do such crazy things. And he questions his own sanity, so when he opened the paper yesterday and a job was posted for an "arts entertainment officer" at another casino, he did the obvious thing. He got on his motorcycle and went around the country with his portfolio to see what would happen.

Ruth is going to take a few of his prints. It is a start, getting back to being what he used to be---a starving artist .

Anyway, we had a great time talking about his brave re-entry and did the next obvious thing---adjourned to the pub.

Ruth told me one of my paintings may be sold soon and although the money would be nice, I will miss this painting.

Finally got a kind of camouflage style fence and gates around my sculpture shack...the idea being to hide the chaos of my wood piles and provide more standing space to sort out what kind of wood I have...hmmmm?

I never know what the sculpture will look like until I have assembled all of the organic "found" pieces into some kind of shape...

Some of what I have worked over this week...none of it new, but old and damaged so I repainted or changed completely.

1. Paint studio mural in process. 2. My favorite for the week entitled "PLUM SUCKING DORK WORM" signed by my alter-ego, "Santiago". 3. I portrait of Ruth which is kind of like her but not. 4. Clown down. 5. Who Me? 5. My rendition of "END OF THE TRAIL" a classic originally created by James Fraser *. 7. Eye to eye. 8. Dork Bird. 9. Shrine to Fallen Artists. 10. My Butt and a Gun. 11. Painting studio and old reworked portrait. 12. Portrait of Who?

While there are many great American sculptors, and particularly good examples of Western art, the piece most evocative of that era and its subjects, has to be “The End of the Trail” by James Fraser.

An original plaster sculpture depicting a Native American Indian and his mount, tired and dispirited, either from their trip to the Pacific coast, or from their fate, End of the Trail has come to symbolize the surrender of a proud people driven westward by the encroaching civilization of a new country. Whether or not that interpretation is the correct one, nobody knows, as Fraser never left any papers or records of what his thoughts were when he created the work.

James Fraser’s family moved from Minnesota to South Dakota in 1880, when he was only four years old. Fraser then grew up amongst men who traveled the railways, and cowboys who told tails of how the Indians were disappearing further and further to the west. It is thought that these stories were the inspiration for Fraser’s best-known work, which was completed when he was barely 17, winning a $1,000 prize from the American Art Association in Paris. He then went on to work for one of the jury panel that had judged the work.

In 1915, Fraser recreated the piece as an 18 foot plaster sculpture for the Pan Pacific exhibition in San Francisco, where it again won the Gold Medal, and virtually overnight, became a cult phenomenon, which was reproduced in various mediums.

The sculptor had wanted to see the statue cast in bronze and placed on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, but wartime deprivations meant that was out of the question. After the Exhibition, one of the greatest American sculptures was consigned to a heap of refuse, along with others from the display.

It was rescued by some admirers from Tulare County, California, in 1918, but they too, were unable to afford the bronze casting, or even repairs to the now deteriorating plaster work. It languished in a park near Visalia, California, until 1966, when the National Cowboy Hall of Fame purchased and transported it to Oklahoma, where it was repaired, a mold made, and Fraser’s dream of a bronze replica was finally cast and placed in Tulare County. A bronze replica also stands outside the Cowboy Hall of Fame, while indoors, in a room of glass walls and ceilings, the original, restored statue stands as a proud tribute to the artist and the subject.

In the last decade of the 19th century, the American Indian had been largely forced from their lands onto reservations. The spread of civilization across America, also brought the spread of disease to an indigenous population that had never known such illnesses before. Decimated by war, sickness and starvation, the Indians’ traditional ways of life had come to an end, although many held their heads high and looked to the future, beyond their forced assimilation into a culture that was foreign to them.

As a people their destiny languished for 30-40 years, a time when Native Americans did not even have the vote, or a say in their own futures. But in a strange twist of fate, their very assimilation into the culture of a new America, brought about a resurgence of pride in their roots, origins, and tribal traditions, which has continued to grow over the years. Defying the apparent attitude of surrender that most people see in “The End of the Trail”, the Native peoples of America live on, their lives strongly rooted in both the tragedies and triumphs of a nation, much of which is portrayed in that singular sculpture of Fraser’s.

1. Nearly finished with new sculpture workshop. 2. The Sculpture yard so far. 3. Moon over our porch. 4.Shiloh inspecting. 5. Night art. 6. Cow skull in Picasso mood.

This week I spent most of the time trying to enclose a new sculpture workshop area as well as hide all of the miscellaneous pieces of wood I collect. It is out in front, so the mess is one of the first things people see when they come into the yard.

It still is a mess, but more kind of an organized accident now, so hopefully it will look more like a weird old man's idea of art.

The other small thing that happened this week was I had a few moments where I got back to painting. I don't know if the pieces have any worth, but it was fun to be a painter again...

1. A painting done by Ross Ward, a fellow artist that died a couple years ago and was the inspiration that created Tinker Town ( http://www.tinkertown.com/ross.html ) on Sandia Crest.

I knew of Ross from my very first days in New Mexico, 1984, when a stranger leaned over the Lead Street bridge in ABQ while I was painting the EL MADRID mural and yelled down, "Hey bro, that's bad, but you know what?" Of course I asked "What?" and the guy went on, "Yep, that's bad what you're do'n, but Ross Ward can paint circles around your ass!"

A couple of years later when I finally met Ross, he was painting a restaurant, and I had to walk at full speed to keep up with him as he talked and laid down some of the most elegant brush work I have ever seen...and yes, he could paint circles around my ass.

Anyway, just as a kind of serendipity thing of names and friendship, 25 years later not only do I have a painting across from Ross Ward's Madrid, NM, landscapes in the Mine Shaft, but I am lucky that Ruth loves me so much she brought home a work by Ross Ward, a man I regard as one of the most unique artists I have ever known.

1. Sculpture yard in process. 2. Kinetic Wall in process. 3. Sculpture shed in process. 4. Shrine to the Fallen Artist, dedicated to Walter Baca. 5. Bits and pieces section in process.

I have no idea what this web site will look like in the next few months, because my server has informed me they have stopped supporting the FrontPage platform I use. Apparently this program is as old as dinosaurs and even Microsoft who produced it have now taken it off their systems...

I looked at a couple of other programs, DREAMWEAVER and KOMPOZE and they are much more complicated than what I have been doing...however I guess I have no choice but to switch systems soon.

Today Ruth and I will hang out together, go shopping, visiting her parents and do basic stuff in town. Every once in a while, it seems like a little adventure to drive ALL THE WAY INTO TOWN...

9:30 AM Yesterday I watched Ruth's shop so to make the day go by a little quicker I pulled out my old painting/drawing kit and did two thingme's...totally schizophrenic stuff...but apparently one of the other shopkeepers thought they were both self-portraits ...hmmmmm...

Would you go to some place in the third world where not only do you give blood for a year, you pay for your own expenses?

Tell us about your range of artistic experience and what focus or development has excited you the most recently.

How have your experiences in the past couple of years prepared you for a year with ArtCorps? Give details about leadership, teaching, facilitation or community experience if any.

Please describe an achievement you are particularly proud of and the steps you took to reach it.

Tell us about a particularly difficult experience you have faced and how you addressed it.

Tell us about a time you were faced with a new environment, new culture, new living conditions, or new way of communicating. What strategies did you use in order to adjust? Be specific.

Briefly list the places you have traveled to or lived in and the amount of time you spent there.

ArtCorps artists have found in the past that they have needed about US$2,000- $2,500 during their stay for personal expenses. How do you plan to raise this money?

1 and 2 are the beginning of four portraits taken from a famous photograph of Geronimo and three members of his band in 1886.

3. is yesterday, working with Ruth and a fellow shopkeeper who owns a small back hoe, who was trying to find the lid of the septic tank for Ruth's building...it was a mystery but eventually was found. 4. The Los Cerrillos hills north of our house and down in the trees are few of the houses of our village, Cerrillos.

Yesterday, whether it was April fool's day or what I am not sure, but the ruler of earth climate was really in a humorous mood. The day sucked...

Anyway...today is a brand new day, and the sky is back to the normal New Mexico blue we love.

1. Apache series, Geronimo and Company. 2. Apache. 3. The septic tank with Kathasha. 4. Home

It is cold, it is windy, the dogs and cats kept us both up and out of bed last night, and I am a grouchy old man today...Ruth is pleasant too...but we will be the same as always once the sun comes back out...

For whatever it is worth, my friend Harry came by the other day and stayed for the night and we drank beer and talked like the two friends we are all the way to midnight...

In the course of the conversation Harry told me I was one of the most successful people he knows. Hmmmm...

I mean here I am 64 years old, make the astounding amount of $750 per month on my VA pension and Social Security, and as far as most of the "ART WORLD" goes I might as well never existed.

In short, as far as my personal view to what I am, I seem to be a colossal failure in regard to what I thought I might be one day as an artist...

Harry said he envies me, and quite frankly I was surprised because he actually has done a very honorable passage in the world of business and most of his long time friends are successful professionals...

A Piece of American History – The End of the Trail