Actually, this painting was made concurrently with “Traffic Jam”, however, unlike, “Traffic Jam”, which is an impersonal satire, “No Parking Zone” is a self-portrait that resulted from losing an occult battle with a powerful chihuahua that I met online. You may read more about this in my blog.
I am now seeking opportunities to exhibit my paintings. For this purpose I have created a special blog, “Gallery Data” for cataloging art galleries worldwide to add to my mailing list. Since starting this in December I have collected nearly 300 galleries (mostly in the USA and Europe), but I am seeking more, and so, if you want to suggest any galleries to me kindly submit them to my “Gallery Form”. I will greatly appreciate your help! – David Normal
PS: This is my new mailing list – informally entitled “Normal News.” Basically, this is incarnated from my old list at my gmail account. I intend to send out monthly dispatches featuring my latest art work from now on. If you don’t want to be on the list then by all means unsubscribe.
Keith Hennessy responds to the Artists & the Recession Survey Results (scroll down for info)
That is, an artist responds to the Survey’s startling revelation that artists are usually low-income and less likely to have health insurance than the general population. Additionally, the survey discovered that if we don’t quit, we tend to thrive in times of crisis. Oh yah and we prefer money to buying stuff and networking.
No personal offense intended to the individual human workers who receive this, but…
The following survey highlights are so ridiculously obvious that the money spent is a rude joke at the expense of art, not in service of art. The consulting fees that paid to find collect this info could have supported my next project, which has been rejected by five granting organizations and is now a dead idea. Probably several projects could have been funded.
Of course artists hold other jobs, have low incomes and don’t all have health insurance! You spent time and money to find this out? Again?
Do you know how insulting it is just to keep filling out these surveys every year or two?And then have the most tired news come back as a highlight.
Of course we think the arts are valuable. That’s why we put up with these conditions.
And yes art thrives in crisis, financial and ethical. Reagan was great for art. An AIDS pandemic during Reagan’s tenure was fucking amazing for art. Calling that an opportunity to collaborate and experiment is just another kind of poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
During the dotcom crash and the artspace crash, many artists lost space and funding streams they’d briefly enjoyed. But the art and non-profit consultants during that time continued to get paid at rates that most artists will never experience. How many art consultants and survey designers don’t have health insurance? You’re not the enemy, but your work could improve if you would hire artists as consultants – not as free survey fillers – to coach you on transitioning to a more activist or criminal pursuit that might end up with more artists getting more money. Yes criminal. I’m imagining Robin Hood. Whether slowly stealing from the organizations you work for doing some spectacular grand thefts, your talents would be much more likely to result in more money going to artists if you stole than if you surveyed.
How many studies do we need to prove that artists and small businesses are better economic stimulants than any government program or corporate appropriation of artist bodies (of work)?
Really. How many?
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it took me so long to answer this because of an explosion of performance possibilities, both public and private. And I thought things would slow down when you get old! Maybe blame it on the recession!
Keith, I totally agree with you. Historically we here have done well during recessions on every level. True, some of our sources of money have been cut and cut and cut again just this past year…. And there is no “cost of living increase ” because THEY have determined that the cost of living went down this year. [in what reality do they live?] But us artists know how to do things without a lot of money. We here pool our resources together for both living and art making. We are doing reasonably well in both.
Artists have to be adaptable. Most of us live on the edge anyway, so recession is just another thing we have to deal with. On their site, they say artists are underpaid! what are they talking about? A lot of us pay for the doing of the art… Art is an addiction. These people don’t understand that. They think art is a moneymaking career that somehow don’t make money! They are extremely linear! Most of us have day jobs. Are they saying those jobs are underpaid? True. But most of us don’t do those day jobs as ARTISTS, but as art addicts! We get paid not as ARTISTS at Burger King, but as burgers flippers! I think artists should be funded to do whatever art they do. But art is not a moneymaking career! And these crippled yuppies are just spreading distractions!
We are happy to start 2010 off right with a MINI BUTOH FESTIVAL consisting of two workshops taught by out of town guest artists, and two amazing performances, all on the SAME WEEKEND.
First, the performances:
BARE BONES BUTOH PRESENTS 16 A Benefit for a member of the community who wishes to remain nameless.
WHEN: Friday Jan 8, and Saturday, Jan 9, 2010 (yep, that’s this coming weekend!) Both performances are at 8:00 pm
WHERE: Studio 210 3435 Cesar Chavez St San Francisco, CA 94110 Studio 210 is located in the former Sears Building, inset from the corner of Cesar Chavez and Valencia Street. Accessible by BART – 24th St Station; and MUNI – #27, #12, #14, #49.
TICKETS: $5-$20 sliding scale. No one turned away for lack of funds. Additional donations are graciously accepted and gratefully appreciated.
WHO: This time around: Christina Braun (Sat only), Cheryl Burns, Shelley Cook-Contreas, Michael Curran (Fri only), Mark Deutsch (Sat only), Jennifer Hicks, Dorine Hoeksema, Henry Kaiser, Mateo Lugo, Luku (Fri only), Martha Matsuda (Sat only), Ri Molnar (Fri only), Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney (Sat only), Shawnrey Notto (Sat only), Liz Roncka, Liz Saari-Filippone, Sharoni S. Seigel, Bob Webb, and Daniel WrightAbigail. Surprise guest artists may well also be performing. There are often last minute additions (local, national, and international artists) to the programming, it’s that kind of show.
Bare Bones Butoh Presents is a performance showcase for local and International artists working in the areas of Butoh, Performance Art, and/or Ritual Performance. It exists for artists to try out new material, show works in process, hone improvisation chops and redo or revisit previous material. Bare Bones Butoh Presents employs the grassroots ethic of working together to sustain an artistic culture.
The minimal fee the audience pays at the door allows Bare Bones Butoh Presents to function as a fundraising platform which supports local Butoh and Performance Artists. Every Bare Bones Butoh Presents show has been a Benefit Performance for an individual or group within the Butoh/Performing Arts community in need. Bare Bones Butoh Presents 16 is no exception. All proceeds from these performances go towards a member of the community who wishes to remain nameless. Please feel free to donate freely, it’s a good cause.
Bare Bones Butoh Presents is community building and performance all smushed together into two evenings. We hope to see you there.
For further info on the performances, or to register for the workshops, please contact: Bob Webb bobwebb20@hotmail.com 415-821-7124
And now, the workshops:
Workshop #1 Syzygy Butoh Workshop Taught by Nathan Montgomery Saturday, Jan 9, 2010 2:00-5:00 pm Studio 210, 3435 Cesar Chavez (@Valencia) San Francisco $35
In this workshop we will focus on recovering and cultivating physical dignity in the body and expression. Syzygy Butoh proposes a dance training in which we develop energetic presence in order to liberate our impulses and learn to work with all our energetic qualities. We start by exploring the empty body, or corpse body. From there we move into progressive explorations of standing, walking, running, twisting and jumping. By focusing on these simple physical actions we can recover basic energetic principles of presence in the dance. We then move into improvisational explorations that challenge us to reach beyond our normal movement patterns and explore our connection to multiple dimensions of body, space, time and content. For example, we may explore what the quality of stone has to teach us in dance, or the quality of paper, flower, wind, water, etc. Come with a beginners mind. No previous dance training necessary.
Nathan teaches and performs throughout the United States. He has studied Butoh for over ten years with Diego Pinon, as well as spent time in Japan with the Ohnos. He works in collaboration with such groups as Human Nature in Arizona and the CarpetBag Brigade of San Francisco. He co-created TinHouse Experimental Dance Theatre in Boulder, CO, and continues to base his productions there . In classic proscenium, on mountaintops, or in the town junkyard Syzygy performs in diverse venues. and settings. For Nathan, while the work is originally connected to the seed of Japanese Butoh, Syzygy grows as an American Butoh.
Workshop #2 The Poetic Body Butoh: connection, spirit and form Sunday Jan 10, 2010 12:00-3:00 pm Studio 210, 3435 Cesar Chavez (@ Valencia) San Francisco $35
The Poetic Body is a movement laboratory for those interested in traveling deep into movement consciousness in the context of dance/theatre. Topics of exploration toward choreography may include personal memory, embodying imagery, awareness training, translating poetry to movement, puppetry techniques for the body, meditation, physical stamina training and choreography/designing space. Splicing metaphors and specificity of form, we become the worlds and carry its atmospheres. Exercises range from slow internal focus to chaos. The physical and energetic body transforms through birth, influence and letting go, revealing a new relationship to imagery, the audience, and body/mind. Combining movement imagery with space, shape, time, gesture, relationship and kinesthetic delight. Spirit, space, atmosphere, partner exercises meet though form.
Ms Hicks believes form must go hand in hand with spirit for the theater, not one chancing the other. We will explore pure kinesthetic joy of moving and finding connection to space, self, others and spirit as well as finding a repeatable form. We will work with form/technique letting spirit erupt from inside. We dance from metaphors and experience, colliding worlds open to a river of thoughts and feelings. We move from earth, from emptiness, from strength and from turmoil. From specificity, we create, through spirit we dance. Students will work as a group, solo and in partners.
Jennifer is of the 3rd wave of butoh artists which began dancing in the United States in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s. She has studied with many Japanese Butoh Masters, but her main mentor is Katsura Kan. She has also been influenced greatly by her study with Maureen Fleming and early training in butoh with artists such as the Tamanos at the San Francisco Butoh Festivals. Her other influences include modern dance, Body Mind Centering, Yoga, The Viewpoints, Shintaido and Trancedance. These aspects are taught in unique combination creating an ongoing investigation into how one is to take Butoh, as a viable performance technique, into the next century. Let’s talk, dance, and share ideas.
Basic class structure: brief meditation – warm-ups to unify the group, stretch and train the body/mind – dynamic group, partner or solo exercises designed to build spirit, energy and focus – work with butoh kata or forms – combine into dance/set in space and time – closing.
Once again, to sign up for these classes, or for further info on the performances, please contact: Bob Webb bobwebb20@hotmail.com 415-821-7124
Thank you
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hi, bob! I want to invite you guys to come and dance at my performance!
your jolly LOVE WARRIORS=in=waiting, arrive at the sound of the bells, and will at this beginning of new decade (it confuses us all?) twenty/ten and your small gifts from the mythical maji and I (I’m beginning to feel a little more mythical as though beginning my disappearance into a great cloud of love!) Is it mythical that deer come into A&C’s back yard for ‘munchies’?????? Or have you seen deer eyie-ing your gardens?
I want to see once more the amazing ‘opossum, standing up on his/her/it’s hind feet, awesome!!!!!!! that once one year I saw, and otherwise, with a noticeable fluffy tail that gave him/her/it the loook of a racoon; I thought may be a roundish cat until I saw his/her/its “profile of distinction!’ But never a deer, as yet!!! But animals are trying to tell us something, with this closeness!!!! And a whole organisation ‘out of Hollywood’ of course, are into the project of building “border-connectors’ avenues for animals to proceed from one urban area to another. (you can picture them getting readying themselves for a quick dash over the connectors, how do I look? Did I use too much make-up? “damn the high heels!” “is my make-up ikay?”) Seriously, the animals needed help on this and goodness knows the two-legged uprights need a clue or two from the way of animals, it’s like Michael Saxby, an awesome poet, would say, “the animals already had ‘the chip!” Never when I wrote a song about “dear rabbit and sweet little opossum, did I think I’d live to see one! Life brings blessings.
HAPPY NEW YEAR! and a keg of beer all around! Oh, perhaps root-beer! When barely out of my teens, in an apartment by myself (the familiy of brother in law owned a Long Island apartment building and when, having tripped over their way from New Jersey, alone, they took me to my ‘own apartment’ for the night and handed me a big glass of expensive cognac. Dutifully I drank it and went right to sleep!!!!!
This is a past year that Frank and his Crew have kept a kite flying high, with bold colors and marketing the elixer of naked love and coating anxieties with deep rich chocolate! Everybody is “king and queen for a day’ and then some!!!!!!
Jackie and I wanted to thank you for the spectacular Christmas Card. Amazing art Frank! And it really touched me that you went through the trouble of signing it youself. I will save this forever. We’re still working on ours. Hope you guys are having fun up there. Miss you all. Love.
