On the third night of Hanukkah a photographer gave to me..

... an awakening to the pleasures of Gin and Tonic.

Who knew?

My only experience with Gin was back in art school, when, under the influence of Quadrophenia-era Who mythology, I tried my hand at Gilbey's.  On the rocks.  

I swore I could feel brain cells being incinerated with every sip.  Tasted like ass, too.

Then last night, during the latkes and before the lighting of the candles, my photographer friend Zara said "Oh, you've really got to try one".  It was her house (okay, her and her mother and brother's house), and so how could I refuse?

As we sipped Zara quipped "Ahh, the perfect drink for colonizing the world, eh?", and how true that was.  Or for just relaxing at the club after a rousing game of quoits with the fellows.

Still, the drink was a marvel or refreshment, all limey and tonicy and delicious.  Now I get it.  

Thanks, Zara.  Summer and my liver will never be the same.

And Happy Hanukkah to all.

In other news...went to  Renga for some last minute shopping today and heard Alex Chilton's great song "Free Again".  Thought it was Big Star (must still be fuzzy from the Gin & Tonic), but I was wrong.   We met the folks who own the place and they are the kind of lovely, smart, funny, creative and committed people that make this part of the world so inspiring.  

You never step into the same river twice.

South Fork of the Yuba River, 2008.

Bronwen Dickey reflects powerfully on the legacy her father's book "Deliverance" has on the Chatooga River.  In "The Last Wild River" (Oxford American Magazine #61), Ms. Dickey writes of what our insatiable desire for access to "nature" as adventure/entertainment does to both the land and communities involved.  Does the government have a right to restrict access to public lands in an attempt to preserve a sense of "wilderness"?  What is the impact of one person on a landscape?  Ten people?  Ten thousand people?  

Does an area having its "wild"-ness admired in publication immediately start the process of its destruction?  The people around the Chatooga undoubtedly prospered in the short term from tourist revenue, and were happy to do so.  Some thirty years later, disgusted by the influx of "outsiders" insisting on what's best for the river, not to mention having to routinely fish out dead whitewater enthusiasts, there is plenty of resentment among longtime residents who used and most assuredly abused the river for their own ends.   

Ms. Dickey's account is certainly good reading for those interested in the nuts-and-bolts aspect of our collective relationship with "the outdoors".

By the way, The Oxford American is one of my favorite magazines, especially their annual Music Issue (out now at very selected bookstores) .  It always includes a great cd of Southern music from every genre and period.   This year, they're going nuts with a 2-cd set, so you really need to get your copy NOW!  

Additional viewing:  Werner Herzog's "Encounters At The End of the World".  Amazing stuff, and who knew that Henry Kaiser is a cinematographer?

Link Dump

Bottled versus Eau de Faucet:  ScienceCafeSF has it all laid out for you in five easy pieces.

Number one way to relieve your garden's thirst:  Plus, it repels deer.

Not alone...

UTAH  (1983), Polaroid 

Earlier this month, the area weekly ran a run called "The Conspiracy Issue".  Replete with what you and everyone else on the list might imagine, it included a short piece concerned with the water quality of the Russian River.  Though the writer has been a Sonoma County resident for fifteen years, she has yet to swim in the Russian.   And for all the reasons you might imagine.

On a positive note (and thankfully the point of her article), there is an organization called Russian Riverkeepers dedicated to cleaning it up.  From stormwater to non-native species to pollution to over use, RRK is on the job. 

There's just one little thing. 

In an attempt to persuade the author to go for a dip Program Director Don McEnhill assures the author "..if there were dangerous bacteria in the Russian River, Riverkeepers would know about it and would be doing something to solve the problem...", adding that "his 87-year old aunt swims in the river every day".

Now while I certainly give props to anyone with the discipline to swim anywhere every day, let alone the SewageLite™ fluids of the Russian, I have to ponder that the conspiracy here may be in keeping fetid reality away from an aging relative.  While McEnhill may be justifiably proud of the work he is doing in cleaning up the river, to claim ignorance of the infestations of e.coli and algae blooms in the river is, well, I don't want to tell him.  You tell him.  

Thankfully, the author was not convinced and remains one of "us".

Upstream a piece, Friends of the Eel River are doing what they can to preserve the quality of one of California's major river systems.  

Arts & Entertainment

California (tipi), 1983, Polaroid

Scene Update

The gallery that is home of the most shocking event in Sebastopol cultural history is not pressing charges.   It turns out the perp had no particular axe to grind with the art or the artist (damn!), or even the gallery.  She just wanted to be arrested.  As in a cry for help.  Which I hope she gets.   As told to this reporter by an eyewitness "She just had that look in her eye, you know?  I've seen it once or twice before.  She just smashed it and sat down, wanting to get arrested.  She had nowhere else to go".  

Throwin' in the Towel

Our San Francisco correspondent reports of finding out about Bolinas' "response to Burning Man" called Gushing Woman, wherein participants gather on the beach to celebrate women and the fluids they love.  Or have.  No one is quite sure at this point.  Yet, when our man in parenthesis went online to check it out "all I could find was female ejaculation porn."   

The two most terrifying words in the English language:  Jazz Brunch

Hydrology and you, part 1

HANS HAACKE:  "Condensation Cube", 1963

The standard model of the Water Cycle (check it out, kids) is that there is a constant, finite amount of water on Earth, in an endless cycle of evaporation and condensation, all of it powered by the sun.  No new water will be created and none will be destroyed.  It will only change physical state and location.

This is all apparently true enough.  If the planet were left to its own devices.  The technicality is in how the cycle is affected by human use and manipulation of our little clear pal.  We have dammed rivers, created and removed entire bodies of water, continuously pumped out groundwater at a rate faster than it can be replenished, and in other ways have altered the natural arrangement of how water evaporates and condenses.   

This also impacts the amount and quality of groundwater in our aquifers, which contributes to springs and wells drying up.  Let us also add to this doom and gloom cocktail a jigger or two of chemicals and/or toxins, which might be "removed" out by the process of infiltration, but it takes thousands if not millions of years and even that is arguable.

And then there are the legal maneuverings of governments and private firms diverting, manipulating and privatizing water in the name of the public good, which of course, means satisfying the desires of constituent/consumers in the name of survival.   Whether these regulating entities are referring to their own survival or not is a bit too easy of a point to make.

In the solutions department, the most popular "fixes" are based on insuring water for human use:  desalinization of seawater, filtration of greywater, and conservation.  Discussions of more profound changes like dam removal are something else altogether.

Sebastopol Art Scene, Part 1

From the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat:

Sebastopol gallery print smashed

A Sebastopol woman allegedly snatched a framed print from a gallery on Main Street and smashed it on the sidewalk in front of the shop, police and a witness said.

Melissa Goldstein, 32, was arrested on suspicion of burglary and vandalism Thursday and booked into Sonoma County Jail, Sebastopol Police Officer David Hairston said.

The woman's motive was unknown, and Hairston, who found her seated on a sidewalk bench, said she was "unresponsive to questions."

Sandy Eastok, an artist and co-owner of the Sebastopol Gallery, 150 N. Main St., said she was approaching the gallery when a woman emerged with the print.  People from another Sebastopol business were yelling at the woman, who raised the print overhead and smashed it onto the walkway.

"It was kind of traumatic," Eastoak said.

The print, which was ruined, was by Robert Breyer of Graton, another artist/co-owner of the gallery.  Eastoak said it was worth $345.

Wow!  Shades of Tony Shafrazi!

In other news of Sonoma County's fine arts whirl, I was picking up my paintings from Far West (they're still available online, now at reduced prices), when I happened to run into Rik Olsen, whose work I really like.  He seems to like mine, too, and said he'd like to invite me to the annual Invitational Show at Graton Gallery in January.

I am very excited to be thought of by Rik for this opportunity and can only hope that by then Melissa will be out on bail.

Cable Nudes Network

"Here are some programs that will be aired on Northern Peaks, a Canadian adult-movie channel, according to its recently approved CRTC application.

50 Blow:  "Showcasing the oral talents of middle-aged Inuit."

Saskatchewankin':  "Highlights and sidelights of the best in Prairie-style masturbation, filmed live in Prince Albert National Park."

Bear Bonin' with Tim and Lester:  "Wild and wooly all-male action cut tragically short by an unfortunate misunderstanding."

Shaved Regina, Volume 3:  "Ordinary women, only smoother."

Moosejaw!:  "That's a complement around here, eh?"

Quebec to Your Wife:  "Swinging after curfew in downtown Montreal with host Gino Vanelli."

National Hockey Night:  Tape delay from the CBC

AC/BC:  "No holes barred action from suburban Vancouver trailer parks."

Y'know, after a while, they start writing themselves.

Real. Nice.

TREE FARM (2008), oil on canvas.  24" x 24"

Now that the show of my paintings has closed, I still ponder the comments viewers have made on the varying levels of realism in the works.  Some really liked the literalness of most of the images.   Others favored the more symbolic representation of the remainder.  Still others offered that they knew of painters who became much more successful after they'd gone to complete abstraction.

I could spend a bit of time positing the profiles of those who preferred one over the other, even though the feedback I got "skewed" toward the "city folks like the looser stuff" angle.  I also get the sense that those urban dwellers tend to favor the energy and "freedom" of loose, gestural imagery because it enhances a balance of nature and culture that we all need.  As a kind of non-linear information held in a series of linear containers from frame to room to building to street grid, etc., the painting becomes an object through which they can reflect on states of their humanity.  I suppose.

Realist painting is viewed as being primarily about craft, discipline and hard work, as well as the dewey sentiment that those qualities are nearly obsolete in the current ethos.  How well can you duplicate reality, or its photographic equivalent?  And why would you feel the need to?  Even for the cold, hard-edged photo-realism of guys like  Richard Estes or Robert Cottingham, once you've gotten the point of view digested, it still boils down to the "jeepers!" factor of how they did it.  Really well, it turns out, but still I find myself looking at works like that not for how tight and disciplined it is, but for the various inconsistencies in the brushwork, the "mistakes" that make it human.  That's a hell of a way to appreciate something that's supposed to evoke "reality".

And plein air painting, god bless it, has the worst image of all.  The realm of beret-topped retirees working their meepy impressionism on any even remotely scenic rural highway or cityscape, it is probably the most romantic ideal of the artistic lifestyle.  Certainly less seedy than rendering naked women in a Parisian studio, and more productive than the existential loftspace ennui of a beatnik demimonde.

Sonoma County, for better or worse, inspires virtually everyone who lives here (and many who don't) to render its seductive charms.  I certainly can't blame them.  To be honest, I don't trust anyone who isn't inspired by such astounding, painterly beauty to not want to "capture" it somehow.  And there are thousands of them, diligently creating souvenirs.

Which brings me to what I'm doing.

Put most simply, my desire is to convey content without the distraction of technique.  Increasingly, that content regards the sensual nature of water, what that triggers in our memory, and what our reaction to that is in a physical sense.   Desire at the molecular level.

For me now, this requires a recognizable representation of the scene, but not an infatuation with obsessive precision or clarity.  Many people refer to it as "knowing when to stop".   This nicely coincides with my current level of, ahem, technical competence, which one could charitably describe as plein air vernacular.  What distinction there might be lies in my process.  I don't paint in the field.  Plus, I don't look good in a beret.  I'm using a combination of photographs, both mine and others, recollection, and personal archetypes to determine what is produced.

At the time I began this new direction, some six or seven years ago, I was living in San Francisco, where realistic landscape paintings are somewhat rare.  This made for a nice pretense regarding the "uniqueness" of where I wanted to go.   Upon moving to Sonoma County, this conceit was rendered thankfully useless, and I could move forward, freed from the whispers of strategy.

For the time being , the works are still available online through Far West.

And I keep painting what's next.

Meanwhile, In Florida

There's a slick, informative site dedicated to Florida's springs, with lots of eye candy and, of course, ways you, the Floridian, can help.  And by help, they mean lessen your impact on the Floridian aquifer.   Bottom line:  get the hell outta there.  

Or so it seems in this pdf file from Florida's Department of Environmental Protection.

Growing up in Miami, our summer vacations to Alabama, Georgia and other parts of the south inevitably led us past Florida's great spring-based tourist spots,  Weeki Wachee and Silver.  Weeki Wachee was home to "world famous" mermaids, lovely young women in tails sucking air out of garden hoses and posing for the folks behind the enormous glass windows of the "aquatheater" or "aquatorium" or whatever they called it.   I remember my infatuation with it because it seemed like God's swimming pool.  Or at least like color tv, which hadn't been invented yet.  Silver Springs had "world famous" glass bottom boats, and was also the place where they shot"Sea Hunt" in gorgeous black and white. 

Because I'd actually been in swimming pools, which by default have that same mix of crystal clear and turquoise and white, my frame of reference was always how great it would be to go swimming in there.  I never did, sadly.   We didn't have time.  But I'd venture that that's what most of the other patrons felt:  how great would it be if that was my swimming pool.

And so the troubles began.

Forty years later, both of these attractions are covered in algae, the result of too much nitrogen in the water.   The nitrogen comes from agricultural runoff, stormwater pollutants from cars, roads, and chemicals, and the general effluvia that comes from having too many people around.

Fortunately, the State of Florida is trying to address these problems, both in the central part of the state where these two spots are, and elsewhere, by buying up the springs in private hands and attempting some kind of management of them.   In addition, there is greater awareness of the limitations of the once perceived as limitless Floridian Aquifer.

Here in Northern California, on the other hand, our water comes from the Sierra snowmelt.   Which is at its lowest level in years.   But that is another post.

Riding Mower

I was recently "back" east, in one of the lovelier parts of the country, the Finger Lakes area of New York.  Hot?  Sure.  Muggy? Hello, it's back east.  In July.  But the land is just so beautiful.  Massive, rolling lawns of perfectly trimmed grass.  A fuzzy green ocean without a single patch of brown that those in the south or other parts of the country have to deal with on a daily basis.  Oh, it was perfect.   Some kind of payback, I suppose, for all those long, snowy winters.

Anyway, turns out the northeast is really the only part of the U.S. where lawns should be.  Or, to be more precise, the only part of the U.S. where a lawn doesn't require obscene amounts of water simply to survive.  

But, hey, its not our fault.  We wuz duped!

Wide, wide river

PRINCETON D, (2006) 10" x 10"

Fans of the long-lost sixties band The Fugs* will recall the song of todays posts title.  Scatological in the truest sense of the word, the song aptly describes Sonoma County's Russian River.  Dumping ground for the wine country's agricultural runoff, wastewater and treated sewage from cities and towns upstream, the river remains a tourist and recreational mecca for many Bay Areans.  These people, whether oblivious or unconcerned, continue to canoe, kayak and, heaven help them, swim in the rivers dubious waters.

Friends who visit us here are often surprised when I reveal the content of the Russian's flow, and why I refuse to drop any body parts in or around it.  It is especially tragic, given the beauty  of the river as it runs along River Road and highway 116 to the sea.  But the river also has the misfortune of being the easiest way for people to get rid of things.  In large quantities.  In the middle of the night.  And broad daylight.   Trash, wood, chemicals, sewage, only the last two remain officially sanctioned "products" of municipalities unwilling to bear the cost of responsibilities to their downstream neighbors, let alone the ocean, nature and the world.  

The results of too much growth and not enough planning is the default history of America in general, California in particular, and Sonoma County in spades.  The solutions are always "cost prohibitive" if you listen to the various councils, commissions, and assemblies.  So, here we are.  A river you shouldn't swim in is still hyped as a great river to swim in.  When some poor bastard, knee deep in the stuff, shrugs "Hey, it's the river!" when told about its toxic levels of e.coli, you realize The Fugs* had no idea.

* Ed Sanders, one of the founding members, was the publisher of "Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts", which to my mind, may be the greatest magazine title ever.

  

Link Dump

NATIONAL:

Bringing it to the people: Adding waterfalls to New York's East River.

STATE:

Set it and forget it:  Geegaw figures out how much water your lawn needs.

LOCAL:

Chablis uber alles:  "Wine Country" locals are done with grapes.

Preface

Most of the perfect times in my life have been spent either in, or next to water.  Frequently naked.  Sometimes high on something or the other.  Almost always with friends.  These details all but ensure that I was someplace secluded, remote, and what we tend to regard as "in nature".   These were experiences of a primal comfort that blended sensual pleasure, solitude and, with any kind of luck, the glimpses of connectedness and enlightenment that usually only natural psychedelics can provide.   Usually, but not always.

Years after those ecstatic experiences I would either hear sad stories of, or witness first hand varying degradations of these wonderful places.   I could've seen it coming.   What I had found amazing about these spots, so had others.   And their friends.  And their dogs.     

Sometimes things were managed to provide access to these spots while limiting the potential impacts of human activity.  Sometimes not.  But the idea that sources of fresh water were being depleted was never discussed. 

Seven years ago, I came across a small Qing Dynasty porcelain in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  About the size of a small teacup, this celadon container mesmerized me with what I perceived as a perfect shape, size, color, and finish.   I thought it was declaring  its purpose across culture, and language, and time.     And it was called a Water Coupe.  Coupe as in the French definition of bowl or cup.

The memory of this little object stayed in my head for some time, and in 2003 I began a series of paintings based on the relationships humans have with water.  Paintings serving to "contain" water.  The memory of water.

I had been making art for over thirty years with varying levels of intensity and success, mostly low-to-barely perceptible.   Regardless of the media I was focused on, painting was a favorite method of expression, and so I decided to focus my direction on "re-learning" the process.  The initial paintings of this effort can be seen on my website.

  

During the making of these works, I began to think that it was also important to do something, however small, to examine my own relationship to water in the world.   The obvious survival issues are a given.  The increasing coverage of water as a political issue between have and have-not countries warrants some kind of attention.

But even on an admittedly hedonistic level, shouldn't everyone have the opportunity to experience pristine water in the wild?  A visceral and personal connection to where the water comes from?  A chance to experience that kind of pleasure?

Now to begin.  

I've been inspired by many of my friends who have used their creativity to provide something beyond their own desires and profession.  Something that will help.  

While I'm certainly not above including my own ruminations, artworks and pithy crackpot remarks, my desire is to gather information, pass it on, and perhaps enable discussion and community.