I want to make landscape paintings again.

I am using Kerry James Marshall as a starting point. He does all the things I like to see in paintings- a variety of text, each signifying something else, his flat paint mixed with the really wet paint, all on giant pieces of drop cloth. Hmm...I wonder why I like him so much?

So when I was in the city, I took a bunch of pictures of the walls. I will appropriate the entire image, paste it to a canvas, and paint over it.

I always wanted to invite the graffiti kids outside my building inside to start my canvases for me. But this will be better, because I would have had a hard time painting over their work. I need to go back to take more pictures, though, because I want the sidewalk and the sky in there to so I can put in some birds and people and dogs and babies.

hohum. it should get easier. is it and i just forgot how hard it was the first time?

Wordpress is better

Ok, so I'm not sure how wordpress measures views of my website, jameslipovac.com, but since I signed up 10 days ago, my site has been viewed 824 times. My blogspot, set up in the beginning of May, has been viewed 110 times. And, blogger counts every time I look at my own blog, even when I am signed in. Wordpress does not do this. And it lists where the people have been linked to my site from. So the day I posted a link to my new site on Facebook, I go 400 views. Now I think every time a page is viewed it counts as a site view, so if you looked at all twenty of my posts, that would be 20 views, but but but, 110 views, mostly from me, in four months vs. 824 in ten days, no comparison. No one is on blogger anymore. Its the myspace of the blogging world. Lets get out of here.

Measure Once, Cut Twice

Materials contain meaning, meaning that grows out of the color and texture that the material is. How smooth, rough, thick or thin, bright or dull, dark or light, opaque or transparent, labored over or half-a**ed, created or appropriated. There are no rules, except that all the above mentioned ways thing vary must be considered each on its own, and then considered in relationship to the whole, and then on its own again, and back and forth like googlie eyes. But if you try to think about it, then its no longer interesting, and its definitely no longer art. But if you don’t think about it sometime, it will hard to understand why what you are doing makes sense. I think you have to think about it when no one is watching, and then deny that you ever did.

Website update

www.jameslipovac.com

I have been working hard to make my website be as easy to navigate as possible, and at the same time make people see the things I want them to see. Check it out, let me know what you think, info@jameslipovac(dot)com.

MAURY

Peeping Tom

Oprah talks sex

I saw Jack Nicholson at the Phillies Game

Hunter Mountain

Northern Liberties

I am spending this rainy Saturday in the suburbs with Cy Twombly grilling corn on cob.

The Horse's Mouth

I am rereading my favorite book, Joyce Cary's "The Horse's Mouth", the third part of a trilogy about fictitious painter Gulley Jimson. I had to post two quotes.

First, when Gulley realizes his art needs to change:

"I could turn you out a picture, all correct in an afternoon...but it was just a piece of stuff. Like a nice sausage. Lovely forms. But I wasn't looking for any more than a sausage machine. I was the old school, the old Classic, the old church. I even sold some pictures...but one day I happened to see a Manet. Because some chaps were laughing at it. And it gave me the shock of my life. Like a flash of lightning. It skinned my eyes for me, and when I came out of it I was a different man. And I saw the world again, the world of color. By Gee and Jay, I said, I was dead and I didn't know it."

The second is when Gulley's buddy Planter tells a crowd that artist's are around to make the rest of us see the beauty in the world. Gulley responds:

“Well, what is art? Just self-indulgence. You give way to it. It's a vice. Prison is too good for artists- they ought to be rolled down Primrose Hill in a barrel full of broken bottles once a week and twice on public holidays, to teach them where they get off."

TIME LAPSE

when I was 18 I started this garden...

now I'm old and everything is HUGE!

I love this minature and faceless bear who lives under the pine trees.

And the cement racoon who sits and watches the real live frogs on the lily pads in the pond.

Check out this Go Green sign I snagged for free after school let out.

So Mirella, a 4th Grader at my mom's school left this beauty behind after school let out last week. She had hung it above the drinking fountain. There is a lot of good artistic supplies and ideas floating around an empty elementary school in the summer.

Cy Twombly meet Cy Twombly

For those of you who don't know, I have a dog named Cy Twombly- named after the this guy above. He is a bit much at times, but sweet. He looks like a bat in the face sometimes I think. And he sits like a frog with his hind legs spread out, but he is 100% dog. He has a million names and nicknames, I will list the ones I can remember below:

CC

CC. B. Moore

Cy

Mr. Twombly

Mr. Twombles

Scientist

Scientologist

Psychologist

Cyborg

CY TWOMBLY!!!!!!!!!

Airports

I have spent a lot of time in airports lately. I love them. The music that I would never listen to, and people I would never otherwise talk to, and stores I would never go into are all there to help me waste time getting somewhere really fast but, in a sense, very slowly. There are a lot of “I love you” conversations to overhear. And my favorite: the “set up a meeting for Tuesday” conversation. The views from the plane are great too. Flying into Cleveland, I saw a heart shaped pond on someone’s farm.

But the best of all things is flying and the quiet, meditative state that people seem to have. Especially when they take off. It feels so spiritual, a compressed group of strangers all thinking about whether they are about to die or not. At least that’s what I am thinking about.

The Stewardess yelled at me as I got off the plane for taking this picture.

HOME

Alinea- I want this yuppy cookbook

I thumbed through this the other night at a graphic designer's party, I feel like that is an important detail. Alinea is a fancy restaurant in Chicago that I have never had the chance (money) to experience. It is a bit much, but all the recipes looked so impressive and small and expensive. Its by Grant Achatz. http://www.alinea-restaurant.com/index.html

On Saturday at 1026 I went to see the Trutheater Theater. It was the best thing I have seen in Philadelphia in a while. It was a play about man and nature and it had a great title "The unbroken circle of broken things." It was low budget but not too low budget. In other words, lots of cardboard, but electric stuff too, which made it economical and intelligent.

Here is a blurb about it:

"A tree, a thief, an alchemist and an albatross match wits in this cycle of parables within parables whose cumulative power unveils a new plane of reality for the weary wanderer to enter upon and leave all worries behind. TRUTHEATER THEATER weaves this all together with their signature blend of transformative costumery, shadow puppets, video projections, electronic music, eerie voices and blacklit magic. THE UNBROKEN CIRCLE OF BROKEN THINGS promises a visceral experience, engulfing each and every audience member in its spell of baffling wonder."

Check out this kitty Cy found. Let me know if you want to own him!

Fabric Workshop/ PAFA Student Show

I have mixed feelings about the Fabric Workshop, but they do put on some good shows. This trip was no exception. The giant felt whale by Tristin Lowe was wonderful. It is covered in scraps and barnacles. And in the annex they have an installation by Ryan Trecartin that was intense and worth a visit. I felt sucked into a world that made me uncomfortable, but I couldn't walk away.
Then I traveled over to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to see the annual student exhibition but I didn't go in because they wanted me to pay them $10. PAFA, seriously, there is almost no museum anywhere that costs that much and this is not a museum. This is a student show where you are trying to promote your students and your school. That just doesn't make sense to me.

SHOWA SOPHISTICATION: JAPAN IN THE 1930S

So I went to the MFA in Boston to see the Titian vs. Tintoretto vs. Veronese showdown. The paintings I hoped to see are still somewhere other than Boston (like Venice) and while it is great, wait and see if the show goes to the Met and save 20 bucks. I was lucky because my friend got me in for free. Thanks Emily. Anyway, they had another show of Japanese paintings that floored me. I am posting the ones I could find on the web, not the best of the show unfortunately. The had this beautiful show of a man on the summit of the mountains with his ski gear and snow all around him. If you are in Boston before November 9th, check it out. http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/sub.asp?key=15&subkey=7510


Miki Suizan



Enomoto Chikatoshi

Claudia Lorraine Augspurg

Meet Claudia.

Named after this guy.

Claire Joyce

I was looking at the website of an old friend from college/high school that I have lost touch with. I was excited to see that she is making giant paintings with glitter too. This one is 12 feet long and only glitter and glue. Check out her website www.clairejoyce.com



“A Quarter-life Crisis in Three Parts: 3. Repression, yeah! Things go South” 2006, glitter and glue on panel 96"x144"

Jesus- Healer of Broken Hearts

A year and a half ago I was driving home late at night and had to take a detour because of an incident on American and Cecil B. Moore. I never knew exactly what happened. Over the next few weeks, I decided that it must have been a high school male that had died. For months there were people on the corner almost around the clock praying. There was a sea of objects and graffiti that seemed to eventually cause a conflict with the nearby businesses and eventually it dwindled to nothing, but it took nearly a year. Today, so long after, four memorials were set up, with very direct messages. One that I didn't show in picture form says "Why does peace call and violence pull?" I don't know if it is disrespectful to post this, I hope that it isn't.

Art Block

No amount of coffee seems to help. So I have been looking at art on the net. I was told about this gallery, Maccarone, by my buddy Jacob who lives in the city. It is run by Vito Schnabel, Julian's son, and the paintings below are by Nate Lowman, boyfriend of Mary-Kate Olsen. He makes work that is all over the place, which I love. And it isn't labored over, which I also love.
http://www.maccarone.net/




The other gallery I looked at was Luhring Augustine, where Janine Antoni shows, another favorite of mine. Currently they have an exhibit of large paintings by Albert Oehlen. They feel like late Warhol's to me. I like the large scale and simplicity of the work. I always want my work to be like that. I think that is where the block is coming from. I am almost done, and I don't want to do too much.

http://www.luhringaugustine.com/