The things you see in Chelsea

Over the course of two relatively recent visits, some highlights:
Reflecting pools under subway gratings.
Tiny mushrooms growing out of a tree on 22nd Street. (Lovely to see, but probably bad news for the tree.)
Some lovely Robert Morris felt pieces at Sonnabend, and some lovely ladies looking at a Joan Mitchell painting.












I've never felt much for Joan Mitchell -- all those later American abstraction heroes kind of blend together for me the same way classic rock radio filler does. I would never seek them out the same way I would never intentionally listen to Steve Miller Band. But this visit to Cheim and Reid I rather liked these paintings. Maybe it was the two ladies sharing the gallery with me. Maybe it was because I've been thinking about paintings of plants. Maybe it was just the way suddenly you hear Tiny Dancer on a car radio and find yourself singing along so happy to hear it again. And you know every word.

Or maybe Joan Mitchell is just like Aerosmith, who I do truly adore.

My own private landfill

As many of you know, I've been collecting styrofoam from my friends and neighbors for a few months now. I could rhapsodize about the material forever, but right now I want to focus more on the accumulation. It's taking up quite a bit of real estate in my studio. It's pretty amazing that a few posts to a few yahoo lists can generate this much styrofoam.



I've always had a very local and personal response to the problem of consumer waste. Our apartment gets perilously close to being a collier mansion, not because I'm such a hoarder -- I don't really want the stuff, or picture a future for it -- but because I can't bear to add it to a landfill, or worse, send it off floating on a barge forever.

Now I read that (as usual) I've simply been a little ahead of the trend. This week's NY Times reports that as the demand for materials to recycle falls, cities and people are being forced to store their own paper, bags, bottles &c.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/business/08recycle.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

No time to blog...

...because of the baby.