wet sponges and the dark abysm of pish

I was looking up the origins of "butt-hurt" on Urban Dictionary to prove a point when I ran across this:

"H.L. Mencken said of U.S. President Warren G. Harding, 'He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.'"

I wish that the pressure visual artists experience to prove their dedication to craft through slavish repetition or to make the same point continuously for a lifetime did not cause us to toss succinctness out the window. Also, "flap and doodle" is now my go-to private assessment of most things.

Artist Lecture at the City Gallery: Alan W. Jackson!

[Images originally published in Charleston Magazine, republished here with permission from Jackson]

Clement Greenberg, the famous '50s - '60s Modernist art critic, used to say that art should be judged and experienced virtually free of context, that it should stand on its own. You don't need to know about the artist or the scene.

I took a look at Alan W. Jackson's pen drawings at the City Gallery's "Under the Radar" exhibit, without any context besides the gallery atmosphere and here's what I saw. Just under ten abstract black & white line drawings on white paper framed in white behind glass. They were all based on simple patterns, drawn in the same size pen using lines only. Though they appeared very precise the hand execution allowed for subtle texture and undulations to appear. The finished pieces looked very polished and the titles simply described the pattern or method.



I thought the pieces might be engaging modernity, somehow related to digital love/hate. They reminded me of Agnes Martin's grid pieces but didn't seem to reflect any ethereal or spiritual qualities that defined those Martin pieces. Instead they seemed more bold, the hand-made variations dealing with clarity rather than uncertainty. The meaning, intention and even effect of the work was ambiguous.

As it turns out meeting Alan W. Jackson and hearing him speak about his work is a fantastic argument against Clement Greenberg's theory* of viewing artwork independently of the artist or context. Jackson, an architect and draftsman, explained that before the industry switched to auto-CAD everything was drawn by hand. First it was pencil on velum, then he switched to pen on mylar. Remarkably Jackson and his partner have re-imagined hand-rendered architectural drawing and still produce it professionally. Jackson showed many slides of the architectural drawings illustrating the very subtle differences in techniques; he didn't merely reference the idea of drafting, he wanted us to really look at the subtle differences, a quality that is reflected in his work.

Jackson then began doodling and that grew into free-association abstract line compositions. He showed the work to a friend in the art world and was encouraged to show it, and over time he developed the drawings hanging in the City Gallery.

He cited Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt as inspiration. He appreciated Hesse's graphic abstractions more than any critical ideas associated with Hesse. LeWitt is famous for producing instructions to make a drawing then allowing others to create the works independently. Rather than capitalizing on the standard idea of LeWitt as a hands-off conceptual artist, however, Jackson connected with the idea of using simple instructions or a set of confines to complete a line drawing. One of Jackson's pieces, for example, is only broken vertical lines that cannot touch. Another is a series of sections of vertical lines each beginning with a wavy line and the rest reflecting that wave but gradually straightening out. Perhaps the ambiguity of his work has to do with similarities in appearance to such vastly different artists as Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt and Agnes Martin.

Having heard Jackson speak the drawings now resembled a detailed plan or blueprint for a hand-knitted organic scarf or handwoven basket. Moreover the work and Jackson himself reminded me of a very difficult-to-describe type of curiosity that I associate with artists such as M.C. Escher, N. C. and Andy Wyeth (and the whole Wyeth family), and James Gurney, who illustrated Dinotopia and writes a fun blog about illustration. It's a science-y, empirical, experimental and myopic sort of curiosity. I generally run across this attitude in biographies or films that really depict how an artist works or views life and it is usually reflected in the sketchbooks, planning stages and odd side projects of the artists, i.e. the offshoot of a "serious" ouvre which reflects the craftsmanship side or underside of art-making.



Indeed drawing has long been associated with planning, not only in architecture but in old Academic traditions for both painters and sculptors. While daVinci's sketches and mock-ups may be priceless today such drawings were generally not valued as pieces unto themselves until the twentieth century. While the French Academie of the 1800s considered drawing more philosophical and painting itself to be associated with lowly craft and thus encouraged emphasis on tone and value over painterly color in a finished painting (according to Waldemar Januszczak in Techniques of the Great Masters of Art) the actual preliminary drawings were not themselves valued.

But by producing finished, polished pieces that begin and end with what's on the page (i.e. no reams of preliminary sketches but beginning with the instructions and ending with the finished drawing) Jackson has conflated the ends with the means. Even more interesting, his background in literally making plans has positioned the plan as the finished product. In this way he is similar to Sol LeWitt but in Jackson's case the plan itself is also an art object.

After hearing Jackson speak his work also brings to mind Piet Mondrian in that he has broken down visual expression into its very simplest elements--black lines on white paper--and is pushing the limits of what is possible in order to get the maximum expression from the simplest possible means. Mondrian was very involved in spiritual movements and was interested not only in pushing the simplest of formal elements to the visual max, but pushing visual representation itself beyond the physical realm and into the metaphysical. Jackson mentioned no such thing in his lecture but the pieces certainly are calmly awe-inspiring in terms of what is possible with the simplest broken line and a human mind.



*How ironic is it that a professional art critic would come up with the theory that a piece of art should stand alone without accompaniment? Way to write yourself out of existence.

Traffic

I took a look at the traffic (if you can call it that) for this blog. To the two individuals who searched for "mila kunis nude art," and "fucking hipster copycat," I'm sorry to disappoint.

Carmelo Gannello, John Bramblitt, and Petros Roukoutakis

"What is art, anyway?" asks Elisabeth Axel in this video. "Is it the image in the artist's mind or the painting hanging on the museum wall?" Axel isn't talking about post-structuralism or Death of the Artist. She is instead introducing art education for blind people and how it works.

The late Carmelo Gannello was a severely visually impaired artist whose vision was obscured by flashing, intense or dark orbs in his eye. He incorporated the orbs into his work at the suggestion of his doctor. It was hard to find examples of his work but I really love his stark graphic abstractions. Creating an image of an eye that isn't grandiose or cliche is a tall order but here you go:

Carmelo Gannello, Running River. Woodblock print (9" x 11"), 1977.

[Image description: A bluish-black and white geometric abstract print with obvious carving marks. A cube, multiple circles and concentric circles intersect each other in front of a body of water with crude mountains and sky in the background. On the left a pair of scissors morphs into what could be an eye so that they both become the outline and the blades appear to be encircling the eye as if to cut it. The eye also functions as a sun whose beams enter the cube and shine on a fish. The style is similar to Paul Klee and Joan Miro.]

I found some more videos of artists who are working completely without vision, by feel only. John Bramblitt, who lost his vision later in life, does some absolutely amazing portraiture. I really wish I could find more video showing his and others' working process (most of these videos understandably focus on how inspirational the artists' efforts are). Intensely valuing color was another common theme, which surprised me considering some of the artists featured had never seen color before.

Petros Roukoutakis, a Greek sculptor who is blind. [Video shows Roukoutakis at a table sculpting a one foot tall clay female figure who looks like an early Picasso figure or a more representational Henry Moore figure. He uses his fingers only, no tools, creating a smooth rounded surface. The effed up music is not really descriptive of what's shown in the video.]

Another video of John Bramblitt, who does a great job at describing what he's doing (ahem, not all artists can do that well). [Video description: it shows him feeling a plaster mold of a face, then making some preliminary sketches using a paste or paint that he squeezes onto paper, creating a raised line. He then prepares a canvas, creates such a raised outline in white, then using a brush fills in colors which are very precise realistic colors for a very realistic looking face. He creates the portrait on the left side of the horizontal canvas, then fills the right side with fluid, loose, thick vertical dashes of bright blues, greens, and yellows that correspond to the music notes he describes. He then stretches the canvas.]

The first video I linked to, "What is Possible: Art Education for the Blind," depicts how a blind gallery goer can appreciate an art object by feel if such a tour program is available. It occurred to me that conceptual art and art that eschews the object-hood of artwork would be particularly accessible to not only blind people but people with other sensory disabilities or people who cannot leave their homes easily to see a piece of art in question.

I'm happy to say I think large portions of this blog are very appropriate for someone without sight, so I'm going to try to make this blog more accessible: image descriptions under the pictures I post, descriptions of how the work in question is situated within a gallery. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

Special Announcement:

There will be no critical analysis of Harry Potter on this blog. Should this inconvenience you I refer you to the rest of the Internet.

Artist Lecture at the City Gallery: Conrad Guevara!

So yesterday I wrote about Melinda Mead, who spoke with Conrad Guevara at the City Gallery at Waterfront Park. I'm quoting from memory, so hopefully it's accurate!

Yes I took these with my iPhone in a dimly lit gallery. Sorry. If you really want to see the work go to the show.

Like all great things Guevara's talk was in the form of a PowerPoint Presentation, in which he showed what inspired him: photos of the kids he teaches, the materials he uses, and a music video with a bunch of people rushing a basketball court, with pompoms, spotlights and dry ice. "I love this, it's so... everything is great. So I wanted to make the mylar like--" he pauses as we watch a man in a gorrilla suit making a slam dunk go sailing through a cloud of glitter and dry ice in slow motion--"a party."

Guevara had 3 things on display: a crocheted pipe sculpture, a cut-paper "painting," and an installation of 4 large sculptural panels covered with grids of fluttering cut silver mylar (assisted by a small oscillating fan) and painted hot pink at the back. I would classify them as "modernist toys." As in, toy versions of modernist painting and sculpture. I'm saying "modernist," and I mean the highbrow cult of Abstract Expressionism of the 50's and 60's and the criticism of it, plus to an extent some Minimalism which can be seen as an extension of formal abstract experiments and was admired by the same sort of crowd. Guevara used the word, "serious." "I want to communicate these serious ideas and have serious work, but disguised with this easy-to-digest fun style," he explains, referring to the sparkle-tastic mylar and candy-colored squishy yarn.

"Exploding Pipes at the Pompidou"

As a teacher, communicating "serious" ideas in a fun way is obviously important to Guevara. He said he wants kids to be able to relate to his work and was particularly happy that one of his mylar sculptures was hanging in the Children's Museum (the birthday party room!). This could be why I got the impression they were toys.

Guevara also talked about getting studio space in Redux and how that changed his process and really encouraged a flow of ideas and focus. He describes how he got materials-- paper, paint samples, a bag of free yarn-- and how relieved he was to have such cheap materials to use (omg, I can relate). He seems to have stuck with them, though, and they seem to be working really well for him. In this way he seemed to portray himself as a bit of an outsider to professional art-making, focusing on kids, free materials, and a "not serious" approach. I didn't get that from his work at all, though. In fact, of what I see of local artists, Guevara's work seems the most likely to be at home in a big city gallery and be really finely attuned to postmodern trends.

Yarn and fabric, for instance, have been popular choices since the '70s. When artists got frustrated with the limitations of the "cult of Modernism," I mentioned earlier, or Very Serious Abstract Expressionism, there was an outpouring of theretofore completely unacceptable artwork: art by women, crafters, illustrators, performers, people of color, openly gay people, and people with non-NY/LA backgrounds who had all been conspicuously excluded from the so-called 'universal' Modernist movement. Flaunting that which had been forbidden, many women utilized traditional women's crafts like sewing and crocheting as a means of sculpture (as opposed to steel, marble or bronze of the Modernist heyday) and later artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres used ordinary objects and large quantities of cheap, fun stuff associated with nightlife and ordinary life (as opposed to strictly oil paint on canvas).

"The Universe Pokes Holes In You." Guevara explained that the title referenced when things in your life seem to be on an upward trajectory and then your plans get sliced in half by The Universe.

Paper has also gained popularity as a postmodern material of choice. It brings so many things to mind: illustration, comic books, note-taking, education, office work, sketches, magazines, transitory throwaway stuff that had no place in Serious Modernism but is now the focus of inquiry. Mylar, similarly, is a material more visual artists are familiar with today as it is simply a newer product (developed in the mid-1950s and used by... wait for it... NASA) and as photography, printmaking, industrial design, old-fashioned hand-done graphic design and other technical fields are celebrated in visual arts curricula (a departure from the '60s) more visual artists are introduced to the material. Mylar has also been popular because it looks like commercial packaging and is *shiny* so has been a popular choice to access a modern commercial aesthetic.

But one interesting thing about the way Guevara used these materials is that, as he explained, they were cheap. But rather than use cheap materials to make a purposefully shoddy-looking product (as did many conceptual artists and Arte Povera artists who sought to criticize the "beautiful, original, expensive art object" values of Serious Art) or taking wildly expensive materials and making them look like shit (as does Jeff Koons or some of those Young British Artists) Guevara has taken cheap materials and made them look like either an expensive designer toy or famous high-priced paintings. Each object he displayed is highly finished and very covet-able. Moreover the cheap products he's using are only cheap in a modern industrialized country: only because of high capitalism, for instance, are reams of neon polyester yarn or millions of immaculately screen-printed paint samples a cheap byproduct.

Moreover the paper, as Guevara used it to mimic a Serious Painting, suggests the way the current generation of artists understands Modernism. We usually only see it on paper: in books, in abstracts of famous essays, photocopied and handed out. Postmodern artists usually reference Modernism in order to play around with the ideas or critique it or completely tear it down. But in order to reference it we collectively construct a quick intellectual mock-up of the movement in order to tear it down. Developing a visual short-hand for "the way things used to be" is essential, and I would argue that that short-hand consists partially of pedestals, canvases, drips, the Mona Lisa, images of 1950s housewives and the color white. The way Guevara used both yarn and paper, though obviously very time-consuming, suggests just such a quick mock-up. The yarn, too, suggests the playful malleability of Modernist ideas in the hands of the current generation.

Still his aim remains unclear to me. He said in the lecture that he wants to disguise Serious Stuff in a fun and kid-friendly way and not once did he mention satire. But his work isn't an all-out party. The pieces themselves are very careful and contained and this suggests a flip-side of doubt or unease. Before hearing him speak I interpreted an element of bitter sarcasm in the work, a sort of love-hate relationship with the work he was referencing (the Centre Pompidou, the minimalist work of Donald Judd, Barnett Newman and unnamed Abstract Expressionists). His fun packaging slices through the bullshit "untouchable genius" narrative built around the Modernists but also through the respectability of those artists. Of course it doesn't necessarily follow that in the wake of this respectability one would hate the Modernists; there is still room for appreciation, fondness, curiosity. Entire generations of Dadaists, Pop Artists and Surrealists came and went without ever dismantling the public awe of Modernism and Serious Art.

His work will be up at the City Gallery at Waterfront Park (i.e. Pineapple Fountain park) as part of the Under the Radar show till July 31, along with work by D.H. Cooper, Rebecca West Fraser, Nina Garner, Melinda Mead, Greg Hart, Alan W. Jackson and Lauren Frances Moore. So go see it! Plus hopefully I'll be writing about the next two artist lectures, which are this Saturday, July 16 and the next Saturday, July 23 at 5 pm.

Edit: Oh yeah, I almost forgot! I blogged about Guevara's work a few months ago, from the ReNude show.

Artist Lecture at the City Gallery: Melinda Mead!

Please pardon the shitty photography (my photos of the work, not Melinda Mead's)

"We all look for truth in photos, right?" explains Melinda Mead to a crowd of 50 or so people in City Gallery looking at a wall of her photos. There are around 6 on one wall, and 6 more around the corner. I'd guess they're between 11 x 14" and 14 x 17", matte digital prints mounted on some thick board with no frame or border, all in lush color and rich contrast. "As a record of who did what, how it was, who really has friends on Facebook, if Osama Bin Laden is really dead." [I am quoting the best I can from memory for this entire post] "So are they truthful? NO! These look like photos of people in their rooms having a solitary, somber moment. But I'm RIGHT THERE with my camera. We were making jokes and small talk. And I had to edit hundreds of images to get these."

I fell victim to editing before I even saw the show. I knew nothing about Mead or her work, only the snippet of one of her photos on display from City Gallery's advertisement: a young woman lit ethereally brushing her hair and looking in the mirror. "Oh great," I thought. "Another young, pretty woman artist who makes images of young pretty women doing pretty things." Sure there are artists who do this really well-- I've blogged about them before-- but it's usually a lazy trend that I'm just tired of. Fortunately when I got to the gallery I discovered I was flat wrong.

The photos are of Mead's friends, all in their 20's or 30's, some of them recognizable Charleston artists, alone in an interior space. The images are all crisp but it's obvious from the dim lighting that the exposures were up to several seconds long. That, combined with the thoughtful or mundane expressions and depictions of chores or processes being competed, imbues the images with a strong sense of elapsing time. The figures are small, framed by interiors that function as a formal extension of their thoughts while at the same time as a pedestal that objectifies them to the viewer. In one group of 6 the interiors are curved and organic, as in a van, or large and mostly empty. On the other wall the interiors are all mashups of rectangular door-frames, bookshelves, magazines and and furniture that Mead shot parallel or perpendicular to the edge of the photo so that they are flattened and collage-like with a person in the middle. I completely forgot I was looking literally through Mead's camera and that she was present in the shoot, just as I wasn't aware of myself, the viewer, looking at the scenes.




Mead explained that she got into photography like most people: to document friends and family so you can look back later and have a record of what things and people were like. But the reality, she said, of photography is that you want what's in the photo, what's already happened, but it isn't real. Taking photos and looking at them are inherently an exercise in nostalgia and loss. Mead says she didn't realize it while shooting this series but she now understands that she was reacting to her mother's recent death. Many of the images deal with grief in that they're solitary and solemn, dim with a figure turned away from the light source. But she also seems to have utilized the medium of photography perfectly in order to express elements of grief: that which a photographer falsely creates to prevent its passing and then grasps after it has passed.

I also thought it was interesting that, when presented with the challenge of working outside the conventional bounds of a medium that is normally trusted for truth, reality and accuracy, Mead chose to make images that were even more real. The dim lighting, composition and form all enhance the "solitary moments" subject-matter so that the viewer sees the content but also poetically and instinctively feels the mood. Although Mead posed some of the shots and issued instructions she ended up with overly accurate images. While many photographers when faced with the "photography = reality" problem would tweak subject-matter to depict a physically impossible situation or turn to some sort of surrealism, I think hyper-reality is a daring and rigorous solution.




The Q&A afterward was cool because the audience was engaged and thoughtful and Mead did a great job both communicating basic photography concepts and getting to the interesting stuff. Everyone wanted to know: what was it really like? How did you talk to the subjects? How did they feel? What are your own private moments like? Would it have been different if they weren't your friends? Which were most difficult? Why these people? Her description of what it was like to involve her friends in a formal project was especially interesting to me as a portrait artist who has a really hard time asking people to pose.

Her work will be up at the City Gallery at Waterfront Park (i.e. Pineapple Fountain park) as part of the Under the Radar show till July 31, along with work by D.H. Cooper, Rebecca West Fraser, Nina Garner, Conrad Guevara, Greg Hart, Alan W. Jackson and Lauren Frances Moore. So go see it! Plus hopefully I'll be writing about the next two artist lectures, which are this Saturday, July 16 and the next Saturday, July 23 at 5 pm. Next: Artist Lecture Part 2: Conrad Guevara!

A belly from a painting I'm working on right now.

Thar she blows.

Forever Cute

[Image: Zooey Deschanel dressed in pale pink in the sunshine holding up a heart necklace]

Sorry this is so long, but I have a lot to say:

I enjoyed this thoughtful post from What Tami Said: Who is the black Zooey Deschanel? No one really tries to identify a black Zooey, though, because what she is really asking is, can a black woman pull off a cutesy, innocent/sexy, intellectual yet vapid little-girl aesthetic? Does society give black women room to define themselves in this way? As Tami pointed out in another post, a white woman streaking her hair pink is seen as whimsical while a black woman doing that is seen as "ghetto." Both posts and comment threads I highly recommend reading.

[Image: Nicki Minaj, also in a pink dress, making cute face, and with pink hair, literally impersonating a child's toy.]

While there understandably wasn't much love given to this trendy eternal-little-girl persona on a post about how this mode of self-expression is unfairly racially exclusive, or examination of why white women might choose this on a blog that isn't about white people, I think digging deeper in this issue is actually very pertinent to Tami's question. I realize many women use cutesy-ness to be transgressive, that there is deeper meaning at work for many lesbians, sex workers, forty-year-old women who've defined themselves differently in the past, and many many more situations. But this is a mega-trend and since 80% of people don't seem to think deeply about anything at all, I'm going to assume 80% of the trend followers haven't thought deeply about this either. And to be as clear as possible, the "cutesy" I'm talking about is what I think of as Etsy, alternative precious weddings, Real Simple Magazine, cupcakes obsessives, DIY tissue paper pom-poms, and yes, Zooey Deschanel's persona. And no, I don't have a problem with people who are into this stuff (or Deschanel). It doesn't make you stupid or shallow. I myself enjoy a stiff drink even more if it's pink and coordinated with a pastel retro tablescape.

Let's say a white girl doesn't like being sexed up like a reality star. She doesn't enjoy the Barbie persona, doesn't enjoy the snap judgements or the way people treat sexed-up women, doesn't enjoy the harassment, doesn't enjoy the objectification. Let's say she doesn't want to focus her life on male attention, either. But she also wants to stay within the acceptable limits of what girls do. She's not about to grow out her pit-hair and spend tedious hours reading up on The Male Gaze. She doesn't want to be one of those Icky Girls. She wants to be a girly-girl, but on her own terms.

Louise Brooks, in a boyish bob, cupid's-bow lipstick and sailor costume. She was extremely young in these photos and a poster-girl for "boyish" figures, i.e. small-breasted and straight-hipped.

Probably the only time a woman in her 20s or 30s remembers feeling free of The Sexiness is early childhood. It's just about the only time in a woman's life where she is deemed "ok" by society. Hopefully it's pre-dieting, pre-making sure you keep your legs together when sitting in a skirt, pre-skeevy-uncles, pre-slut-shaming, pre-prude-shaming. This would not be the first time women rebelled by channeling childhood. Remember the flappers in the '20s who flaunted "boyish" (aka pre-pubescent) figures and loose clothing like a little girl might wear? Louise Brooks? Or the Sixties, when mod and Jackie-O prep styles both made women literally look like dolls (oversized hair, big eyes, clothes that were cut to make limbs look tiny and disjointed, that hide the waist and breasts)? It's a subtle way of saying, "I'm not a sex object. I'm a 'person,' not a 'woman.'"

Jackie O in doll-like dresses. Notice the proportions of head to body because of her bouffant, and the way the clothes slice her into movable parts. Compared with cinched-waisted, pointy bazooka dresses from the '50s these also downplay her breasts and waist.

And then there's the way the current trend (at least as opposed to other trends) centers itself around "female" experience, not performative femininity. For example, tweeting about adorable kittens, as Deschanel did, is basically for a female audience. Sharing childhood experiences is another big element ("Omg remember Thundercats/MyLittlePony/Full House???") and that is also about female community. People like Deschanel seem to be developing a sense of humor that is based around appealing to other women both on the cute level, the "our experiences are worth sharing," level and the girl-friendly gross-out level (I'm using "female" and "girl" as abstract ideas here). The guys in their universe can either get with the program or be relegated to the sidelines.

And it's not just "girly" ideas you can share, but intellectual stuff too. There's a strong current of liberal arts education, contemporary art/film/music awareness, and political awareness that comes rolled into this mega-trend, probably because of the affluence of the mainly white, slightly older participants.

And best of all you're still a good girl. You're still a desirable employee, a good daughter, a cute girlfriend, a good student, a good consumer.

So why is this a new (ish) trend? Why now? I know people in every decade believe women are being hyper-sexualized more than ever before but... I think women today are being hyper-sexualized more than ever before. Women in the workplace has been well-established since the '80s, and since the liberal '90s there has been a growing conservative backlash fetishizing domestic labor at the same time that working is just what women do. That requires delicate balance.

Also women--particularly middle-class women--are experiencing a decade-or-so-long no man's land between adolescence and doing traditional "grown woman" things: getting married, having kids, owning a house, having a Career-with-a-capital-C. Today there's often college, a few shit jobs you have to take where you're not treated like a real person followed by some fluff occupations while you're trying to figure stuff out, some hit-and-miss career moves, dating around and having a few long-term relationships, crazy room-mate situations, basically a time when you want to play around for a while and for the first time in history you can. Or for many, a time when you want to be treated like a grown effing adult but aren't. You graduated and haven't been able to get a job (any job!), or you have a humiliating job, or you have to move back in with your parents. Again, this requires a delicate balance and I think the eternal little-girl trend addresses this for lots of women.

Manet, "Bar at the Folies-Bergere." I think we all know how she feels.

But of course there are major, major problems with this, and I haven't even gotten to the issue Tami brought up yet. First, due to porn and legions of pervs, little-girl-hood isn't as desexualized as most would like it to be. In fact grown women infantilizing themselves is a huge turn-on to a lot of men. Because of the focus on female, not male appreciation I mentioned earlier I think many women can knowingly overlook this. Furthermore since there is a huge hipster-cute-little-schoolboy-aesthetic trend among guys, these women can often find plenty of men who share the childhood mentality instead of being pervy consumers of female sexualized infantalization. But I wouldn't put these guys in the majority. And while little girls may be mostly free of sexual stigma they aren't particularly powerful in society. Giggles and fantasy don't get you very far in a board meeting or an argument. The main problem with this persona: there is NO room for anger, power or raw sexual energy-- I'm talking about MAJOR HUMAN EMOTIONS here.

Deep breath. And here's my other point:

I think the media (mostly owned and/or run by white affluent men) uses black people and black stereotypes to be a fantasy outlet for white people who play by the rules. Black "bad-asses"--characters like Samuel L. Jackson's in Pulp Fiction and Shaft, and heavily produced personas like Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent--function as fantasy outlets for white men and, somewhat, to white women, to the extent that many white men will, instead of expressing anger or misogyny in their own words, simply imitate black stereotypes. It's a way of saying the ugly shit you want to say but still having it be a joke (and a way to quickly earn my disgust).

Thus black women's stereotypes that get hyped in mainstream media are a directly related to white female fantasy (in addition to the old Women-of-Color-as-Exotic-Sexual-Deviants male fantasy). There's anger, power, raw sexual energy. I've seen many white women who, instead of simply standing up for themselves, imitate the neck-roll, finger-waving image as a way to say "Seriously, get out of my face" but in a cute, joking way. Even many positive-sounding phrases of empowerment used by white women are derived from black women because of the "power" fantasy: "You go, girl!" "Preach it sister!" "Right on!" "Tell it like it is!" etc. Plenty of white women directly imitate black women shown on MTV to express sexuality, too. I once saw an all-white, all-female Southern church group out at a bar being very prim and tittering until some music came on and a few of them ran to the dance floor and started booty-dancing and rolling their hips. They quit after a few minutes, all of them collapsing in laughter. They got to express their sexuality but not get in trouble for it because it's just a joke! A fantasy. Part of why reality shows seek out the same black female knock-down drag-out dramatic situations over and over is that there isn't any other viable female anger/power fantasy on TV. As the white girl cutesy trend has grown the angry black woman stereotype seems to get played in heavier rotation. White people can identify with certain black characters as fantasy, then imitate them to express emotions and attitudes that are forbidden.

I think Tami does a great job explaining why this is extraordinarily unfair to black women, both in this post and her entire blog, so I don't have much to add to that. But I'll point to the positive aspects of cutesy-ness I listed earlier that I didn't think were touched on in the post as a viable tool (however problematic) women use to circumvent societal pressure that is being denied Black women and other women of color. I also hope women who subscribe to the cutesy trend will give it some thought and perhaps develop some way to make it work for a full range of human emotion, including anger. Finally I hope that if any readers have ever thought of stereotypes assigned to Black women as Not Their Problem, that this post has illuminated just one way in which stereotyping Black women is gross and demeaning for all women, part of a system that sucks for everyone.

Noses

Opening credits on Ugly Betty.

In the past week, a woman between the ages of 40-ish and 60-ish whom I talked to while doing portraits, confided that she'd had a nose job when she was very young and that she didn't like the result. So I shouldn't draw her face. Then another woman between the ages of 40-ish and 60-ish told me, while I was doing portraits another day, that she'd had a nose job when she was very young and didn't like the results because she felt like the nose was someone else's, and was concerned about how some young women she knew felt about their own noses. Another woman asked me not to do her profile--she hated her nose. These were all within a week.

I can certainly identify to an extent: my nose is large, bent at the top, trapezoidal at the bottom, very shiny, and bumps up and down when I talk. I really, really wanted a different nose when I was younger because I thought it would make me prettier. I'm white, though, so I guess I got off easy with no pointed racial messages about my nose. People just said, "it gives you character," which doesn't mean much when you're a teenager and you're fed a bunch of hype about female beauty but none about female character. Strangers also frequently ask (!!) if I'm of Middle-Eastern/Greek descent. "No, why?" I ask. "Uhhh.... your eyelashes." Right.

Now I still think a straighter nose would make me prettier, but that would be a problem because my nose goes with my personality really well. Looking like a round-faced cute-nosed brown-haired girl would be misleading (see Sarah Vowell's story about wanting to appear more menacing and getting a goth makeover). All the same, I have no problem with cosmetic surgery in general. But it's such a shame people do it so young. I've heard lots of people in their forties say they're just starting to be comfortable with the way they look and are starting to understand the role (if any) that beauty plays in their lives. I guess it's not the nose you grow into, it's the idea that you're really, seriously not an object (and that can take a while).

So, since this week is apparently about nose-shame, instead of contributing something constructive about Patriarchy, I'll just post a "top ten" of my favorite noses, noses I simply appreciate. I have no idea if any of these people has had cosmetic surgery; either way, I like what they've got.

Comedian/actor Lily Tomlin

Actor Sandra Oh.

Snoop Dogg. And here's his nose in action:



Actor Sally Field, whose adorable looks never stopped her from throwing some of film's most memorable meltdowns.

Spanish actor Rossy de Palma.

Actor Julia Roberts, whose entire face fascinates me endlessly.

Actor/musician/comedian Jemaine Clement.


Actor/comedian Bill Murray.

Musician Nina Simone.


Actor Marc Indelicato, who played the adorable Justin on Ugly Betty. America Ferrera gets honorable mention with really expressive nostrils that she had the good sense to utilize throughout the series.

And an extra. Number 11, Actor, activist Audrey Hepburn.


Okay, just one more extra. Number 12, Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean, Black Adder).

Sir Isaiah Berlin by Sir Lawrence Gowing at National Portrait Gallery, Britain

Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller by Stephen Conroy at the National Portrait Gallery, Britain

Sir Michael Caine by James Hague at the National Portrait Gallery, UK

"Summer" at Rebekah Jacob Gallery

I stopped by Rebekah Jacob Gallery on my way home from some errand and unexpectedly viewed their new show pre-opening night. They've got the usuals: Tim Hussey, Timothy Pakron, Kevin Taylor. Their pieces are definitely worth another look as they're best viewed in person. Hussey's scraped and lightly sculpted surfaces, Taylor's smoothly glazed paintings and Pakron's large hand-processed photographs are more rewarding to see up close than photographed. There was also photography by Richard Sexton of the demolished crumbling building variety. I spent a long time looking at his photos, fantasizing about history in general, and feeling very Charlestonian.

My favorite, though --and SEE IT if you didn't see it at the Gibbes last year!!-- was Brian Rutenberg, who had two pieces up. I took myself out for my birthday to the Gibbes last year (or '09 maybe?) in time to see his show in that second-floor ballroom type gallery. The room has some sort of cupola-skylight thing, if I remember correctly, and a worn light wood floor, historical moulding, and double doors leading to a schmancy second gallery with ornate old globe chandeliers and large windows. The work itself was a series of medium-to-very-large canvases loosely--LOOSELY--depicting scenes from the woods in a very abstract, thickly painted, richly colored style. The sense of light filtering through branches and perspective was conveyed through saturated color and Diebenkorn/early Mondrian-style blocks of paint, with plenty of fractured, faceted shapes and a rich variety of brushstrokes and paint application. The paintings fit perfectly in the space: old/modern contrast, and both sharing a filtering of natural light in an almost sanctified space.

So, when I saw the to pieces at Rebekah Jacob Gallery I was disappointed at first, as that space is your typical white box, small and narrow with recessed lighting and a window at the front. But it turned out to be a more intimate place to view them. What was a medium size in the Gibbes seemed large in this gallery, and since there were only two I stopped for longer, looked closer, and appreciated the inner dynamics of the composition, which is rich, lively, and well-resolved. I could compare them to each other. Oddly, the space made them seem more "modern art"-y: paint for paint's sake, formal, angular and blunt,while at the Gibbes they seemed more narrative and lyrical. I have a serious art crush on this painter, so go see this stuff!!

Oorutaichi

The blog Contemporary Japanese Art has a post about Japanese musician & performer Oorutaichi that's worth a look. They describe him as performing, "his own progressive form of ‘drifting folklore music’ combining elements of dance, folk and pop. Singing with a palpable joy in his own invented language, while at the same time mashing and mixing driving base-lines with disco-kicks and synthesized freestyle beats." The second video is probably a good description of an annoying circular dream experience I have a lot, where you're trying to do something and all these obstacles come up that you have to deal with but you're never really done, just on a loop. Anyway, I think it's funny that "folk" can be this digitally sophisticated but I guess that's an honest description for someone that age in Japan in 2011, with "folk" being the flip-side of terms like, "crowd-sourcing," "networking," "DIY/guerrilla," etc.





Here's what this looks like live:

First painting I rememeber

This is definitely not the first painting I ever saw (my mom had actually made flashcards with famous paintings on them that she taught me along with the alphabet. She was very "classical music in the womb" at that point). But it is the first one I remember. I must have been 3 or 4 and was visiting my grandparents' Baptist church in rural Tennessee. We were walking down a basement corridor decked out in '60s office drab when I looked into a classroom decorated with smiling cartoon biblical men in beards, the "footprints in the sand" poster, and this poster in a frame:


I walked into the classroom, which wasn't lit and had some cloudy window light so I could see the poster. I sort of remember hearing the grown-ups exclaiming "damnit, where'd the kid go?" and just not caring. Someone eventually had to come find me. I told my mom I was looking at that painting and she said, "well, it's ok but not really my thing." It was SO my thing. She looked like a princess and I wanted to be a princess because, duh. But it was inexplicably so much cooler than "pretty." I thought it was cool how none of the whites were white and the composition (I didn't know that word) was weird. It seemed utterly mysterious.

Harold Pinter, by Justin Mortimer at the National Portrait Gallery, Britain

Bag, by Hendrik Kerstens

This is a photo. Kerstens has a series of awesome photos of this model, who is his daughter (and judging from his portfolio, a remarkably patient woman). The modern iterations of old Dutch costume are continuously witty and evoke '60s fashion and photography at the same time.

Sketch by Elizabeth Peyton

Thelma Mary Bernadette Holt, by Jennifer McRae at the Nat'l Portrait Gallery, Britain

"Hannah" by George Fuller

"We create because we gather together."

Speaking frankly, I create because I'm sort of a chauvinist loner. Sure, I have created in teams, when I'm forced to, like group projects or orchestra or something. But participating in a group for its own sake never felt exciting. Some people get into a group and share ideas and they're like "OMFG WE'RE IN A GROUP SHARING IDEAS WE ARE AWESOME." And then they call a school assembly or a company-wide meeting to form an even bigger group and tell everyone how awesome their group experience was and SHARE SHARE SHARE. And I was always the loner in the back row clapping politely and thinking in my head "wtf is your deal?" I had an asshole-ish running commentary in my mind about the speakers that was difficult to shut off even as my better self tried to pay attention to the speaker. I'm sure if I had shared my asshole-ish thoughts more often I would have found a like-minded group of other assholes and we would have shared and stuff too, but I didn't and I ended up in a circle of friends who were more absurdist than snarky. This is why, even though I don't fear public speaking, it is still annoying when people try to reassure me that the audience is rooting for me, the speaker, to succeed, because I know that that simply isn't true. Transitioning into a reasonable adult who actually does root for the person on stage and empathize with their efforts has taken time but has mostly been a success, and I found myself able to test this progress at last night's Pecha Kucha. As I was very much PMS-ing last night (sorry, TMI) this progress was REALLY put to the test.

They started doing these Pecha Kucha nights in Tokyo. The name is Japanese for something like, "come together and share," or something. Then someone brought it to Charleston. There's a gathering, you pay to get in, and there are about 10 speakers who give 6.5-minute presentations about a topic very loosely related to creativity. I'm unclear on if they're asked to speak or if they volunteer. They project a slide show while they speak and during intermission you can buy doughnuts and beer. (I went over for an ice-cream-doughnut sandwich and they were all out, which is probably for the best). Unfortunately I didn't stay for the last several speakers because, while I was enjoying the presentations, I began to feel extremely sorry for myself as always happens on that particular day of the month.

After we spent about 2 hours of milling around a field, boozing and people-watching, listening to DJ's Cassidy & the Kid (fun), the sun finally set and the slides began.

The first speaker was Karalee Nielsen, a resturanteur who started a group that operates Poe’s Tavern, two Taco Boy locations, Monza, and Closed for Business. She focused on the creative, constructive part of running and opening a restaurant and explained how her team worked. It was cool to see some of the faces and processes behind the restaurants, since I go out to eat as much for food as for entertainment. Now I've got more to visualize. Nielsen spent lots of time graciously thanking her crew, which made me feel good, though I'd have been interested to hear more about some of the problems they solved and what it's like to run a restaurant.

Next up was Ethan Jackson. Let me explain: back in high school when I took the Spanish AP test there were numbered categories of how good your written essay section was: excellent (5), good (4) and so on. But there was one category beneath "poor (2)" which was, inexplicably, "nonsense poetry (1)." I have always remembered that phrase and wondered, first, why it was beyond bad and second, what the examples of this could possibly look like. I must have missed some critical information (I couldn't hear everything) because as Ethan Jackson got going and the words he was saying failed to mesh into coherence I thought, "this is it. This is nonsense poetry." But I enjoyed what I saw. The introductory blurb he gave the MC was basically about what a terrible person he was-- I enjoyed that and very much identified with it-- then he lanked onto the stage (if that isn't a verb it should be) and proceeded to have fun in front of a slide show of surfers, motorcycles, hip hop stars, RunDMC Adidas, Kathryn Hepburn on a skateboard, and finally his coworkers in a time-lapse stop-motion video, also having fun. Going back and reading his bio today on the Parliament site it's starting to make more sense. He has worked in advertising for a bunch of companies in NY and Spain, then moved back to Colombia, SC and works at a firm called Lunch + Recess, while serving on the boards of several organizations including the Indie Grits Film Festival (see my post on Toro y Moi). I think his presentation was all stuff that inspires him. Again, it was difficult to hear everything he was saying.

Then Kate and Lindsay Nevin talked about opening a creative "commons" building at 1600 Meeting Street. I've driven past it dozens of times and wondered about it sitting empty. I always assumed it was condemned or something but they showed photos of the inside and it is quite lovely. They want to put architects and designers and people in offices in there, so it's probably something I could never afford or use but it sounds neat. They talked about how there is a "creative corridor" running up Meeting/East Bay area and showed a map highlighting places like Santi's, Taco Boy, Tatooed Moose and some galleries and design places on mid-lower Meeting. I understand gentrification and what it takes to make an area a good investment. Yes, it made sense. But in the back of my mind the map read like outposts of where white kids like to hang out in the middle of a predominantly black area of town, being shown to a predominantly white audience in a predominantly white part of town. Like we were plotting a takeover or something. I hope that as the "creative corridor" idea takes off investors and enthusiasts are able to appreciate what is already there in the neighborhood and that it is revitalized for everyone in it. Of course the 1600 Meeting project sounds exciting and I'm certain that's not at all what they intended the map to be. They also mentioned that the idea was formed several Pecha Kucha's ago, which was cool.

Hailey Wist, whose documentary film The Garden Summer is soon to be released, talked about how she and a group of five other young people started a farm in Arkansas (I think) as a response to the food-crisis feeling after watching such films as Food, Inc. They grew crops sustainably, sold them at a farmer's market, and used the money to buy and eat locally. She showed slides of them on the farm and a teaser for the film. It looked, honestly, like heaven.

Mary Mac McFadden identified herself as a designer, even though she has a degree in architecture. My dad is an architect and has a real problem with interior designers and people who aren't architects referring to themselves as architects and doing an architect's work, mainly because of the qualification issues. So I'm familiar with architectural anti-designer rants. That's why it was novel and enlightening to see McFadden identify herself as a designer and discuss design as a creative process that spans many professions.

Then Yve Assad and Will Fulford, who founded TheFastandDirty.com, an online flat-track motorcycle racing magazine, explained the history of flat-track racing while three riders drove around the perimeter of the park and entered the stage area with a puff of dry ice. They showed film of people racing in the '20s on hand-laid wooden tracks with no brakes, no throttle (just "off" and "full speed go") and no protective gear save leather "helmets." When they crashed, if the collision didn't kill them, they'd get so many deep splinters from the track that they'd die of infection, because it was the freaking 1920s. So they moved racing to flat dirt tracks instead. Plus, the wooden tracks were a pain in the ass to build.

I left while Carolyn Evans, author of Forty Beads; The Simple Sexy Secret for Transforming Your Marriage, was speaking. She probably has awesome advice, though once I heard the name of the book I couldn't stop thinking about anal beads. "Dang, that's a lot of anal beads," I thought. She was in fact referring to her birthday gift to her husband of 40 beautiful antique glass Venician beads, along with the promise of daily sex for 40 days (which she promised drunkenly and then thought "oh crap I cannot do this" the next morning). In the anecdote her husband asks, "What am I supposed to do with these beads?" Evans left this teaser as a mystery so we'd read the book, but in my mind I immediately answered, "Put them in your butt." Since this book and method is so popular, though, I am guessing that is not the correct answer. Plus you don't really use loose artisanal glass beads for that. And is it just me, or would 40 straight days of sex not really be that scary? The only problem I see, assuming you could just do oral some days and give your genitals a rest, would be getting extremely pissed/annoyed at your SO one (or more) of those days and still somehow delivering on the sex. In movies when couples start fighting it's sexy-fighting where all of a sudden they stop yelling and slam themselves, smooshed together kissing, into a wall. Whereas when I fight it's because I'm irritated, petty or angry, and it doesn't lead anywhere except maybe a crying fit or food binge.

And that, for me, concludes Pecha Kucha. I liked it, and even though I was PMS-ing I found that watching presentations as an adult is very different from in high school in terms of mental snark. I felt sort of community-y, a little excited, and more informed about what people in Charleston do, enjoy, hope for, and create. I think I will do it again next time if I can get my ticket before they sell out.

Authenticity, hipsters, copycats

There's a post about authenticity at Thread for Thought that links lots of topics-- hipsters, Native Americans who reclaim imagery, drag queens, Marie Antoinette, the ongoing hip-hop baggy-pants legislative battles, French ladies' hats during German occupation.

Much has been written about dominant cultures appropriating oppressed cultures. Fashion trends like the current "tribal" and "ikat" trends take various cultural elements and re-sell them to Westerners with no context of meaning or history, flippantly turning those idioms into Western ones. Some Native Americans, for instance, reclaim images of old Hollywood cowboys & Indians like feathered headdresses because those images have been appropriated and twisted by an oppressive dominant culture. To put it another way, hip hop culture has also been appropriated to some extent by powerful corporations and white pop culture. Dance moves, phrases, beats and clothes "borrowed from," (but never returned to) hip hop street style have left a sour taste for many people of color who consider themselves a part of that culture.



I think this is a small part of why so many people are angry with hipsters. Hipsters appropriate from everywhere. They're in hot water with cultural studies departments right now for wearing feathered headdresses, championing "ironic racism," and for fetishizing oppressive masculinity. I think part of the reason they do it stems from simple retro styles being back in. The '70s are in, and in the '70s the dominant culture appropriated massively from Native Americans and other cultures.

But hipsters also appropriate from dominant cultures. Anchorman mustaches; unwieldy glasses which, still today, can be seen on white-collar workers and nerds alike; a nostalgia for the '80s that was popularized by Gen-X-ers who glorified their own childhood, but is now seen from people born in the '90s. Lodge/sportsclub decorations and aesthetics, European bicycle culture, white "trailor trash"-y styles. The implication is, all those cultures exist for hipsters to play around with. It implies that those dominant cultures don't know any better because they're older and stodgier, but hipsters are young and playful so they're doing it ironically. For many people from dominant cultures in the U.S., this is the first time they've experienced having their culture appropriated and twisted.


I definitely don't want to compare appropriation of cultures by their oppressors to dominant cultural appropriation by hipsters. First off, hipsters aren't dominant. It's not like aging geeks and good-ole-boy hunting clubs don't have a mouthpiece with which to object. Second, I don't think it's really hurting anyone, just sort of mystifying them and pissing them off. I bring it up because I want to note that the attitude has changed and expanded about what's up for grabs, and that's a new feeling for a lot of people.

What does this have to do with portraiture? Mmmm-- something, I'm sure.

Osama Bin Ladin's Dead... hmm.

This has nothing to do with art, but...
So they finally got Osama bin Laden last night. Not just "got," but killed, shot in the face, and buried unceremoniously at sea with no Muslim rites of burial. I sure don't feel sorry for him, but my first instantaneous thought was, "they didn't have to do it that way. How many people will die, be injured and be raped because we had to show off?" I mean, bin Laden was just a man. Radical Islamist militancy, though, is a movement that will keep growing and I shudder to think of how he was so thoroughly made a martyr and how this is a beginning rather than an end. Ugh.
It is true that in some cases one person's 'terrorist' is another person's 'freedom fighter,' but Bin Laden was just a monster: cult leader, bloodthirsty militant, and power-hungry opportunist. But I learned something incredibly important from him. Watching the videos he released I was floored by how gentle he seemed, so charismatic and thoughtful and spiritual. He had a very empathetic face and it was simply unearthly to look into his face and realize he wanted me dead, that he delighted in death and suffering. It was an important lesson in what evil looks like.

For instance people are always so surprised when a child molester or domestic abuser is proven guilty because, "he's such a nice guy/girl!" My mother and I both experienced blatant sexism from bosses who were well-loved and very friendly. Over the years I have unfortunately become acquainted with more than one sociopath, and while I cannot call those people themselves evil, the effect on those around them is a bitter pill to swallow if you want to believe in humanity. Bad guys don't look like they do in movies: most racists don't look like Colonel Sanders in a white hood; most sexists don't look like the rich guy from Titanic, most killers don't look like Hannibal Lector and that's the problem. They can be likeable people.

I truly hope the world will be a more peaceful place after Osama bin Laden is gone but the skeptic in me is... well, skeptical.

Adele: Rolling in the Deep

I am in love with this singer. Seriously:



I wouldn't call this video "entertaining," so much as "enthralling." And even though I'm sure it wasn't cheap, it is simple. The director, Sam Brown, made a great choice to keep the focus on Adele's actual performance, the voice leaving her body and her facial expression (and she's very good at acting while singing). It's an old-fashioned magical aspect of watching live music and has been largely missing from pop music. I'm tired of female musicians being forced into a convenient box and having their creative talent limited by marketing, so it's nice to see it done right.

My husband remarked the other night, "It's shit that the edgy art you see in Charleston was cutting edge in NY about fifteen years ago." I opened my mouth to join in the complaint-- I was ready!-- but then realized where really contemporary art can be seen in Charleston: interior design. Design has consistently echoed contemporary art about ten years later: in the early sixties, the simple unadorned shapes mimicked the abstract expressionism of Lee Krasner and Alexander Calder from the early fifties. Layouts and wall treatments felt like an upscale gallery: a big white box. In the eighties, everything was supposed to be "sculptural," echoing the pure colors, geometric shapes and industrial feel of seventies minimalists like Donald Judd, Dan Flavin and Frank Stella. Trendy layouts were more like artists' lofts and guerrilla art spaces in "up and coming" New York. Now upscale hipster nests and trendy King Street furniture stores resemble '90s gallery installations. Loose hanging light bulbs; stark, careless-looking furniture layouts that seem to have been culled from here and there (a la struggling artist finding supplies), vignettes culled from "found objects;" artwork casually leaning against a wall, everything "reclaimed." There aren't too many visual arts exhibits that look like this in Charleston (even though it's hard to find one that doesn't in big cities) but the look is very prevalent in interiors.

So, to get back to the video, I noticed that the scenery looked like guerrilla art "happenings" and generally like a series of art exhibits in a trendy gallery. The director knows Adele's audience well: young, interested in the art scene, probably female (as are about 70% of art school applicants) interested in something with depth but probably not willing to sit through a Bruce Nauman-style ordeal.

Of course the whole reason this slung-together installation look was developed in the seventies and eighties was to avoid being an aesthetic. Conceptual artists were rebelling against the art market's iron-fisted control over artists, so they made art that wasn't exactly an object (installation) or wasn't made to be sold (not traditionally beautiful or cool). Those artists are probably super-pissed about how trendy and commodified the look is now, but I think it's kind of funny. Maybe that makes me a capitalist tool? To continue in that vein I'm glad the 50s/60s acoustic "wall of sound" is trendy again. Sure it was co-opted by major labels from musicians seeking to rebel against pop trends but it's still nice to hear it on the radio once in a while.