Peter Voulkos, Cermaic Abstract Expressionist

PETER VOULKOS 1924-2002

This is the ceramic artist I'm writing on for my lil' diddy due on Monday for Ceramics 250: Beginning Wheel.

Not only do I think Pete Voulkos' heavy, fractured/rough work is visually interesting, but I love his name. Not only do I love his popular name: Pete Voulkos, but I ABSOLUTELY LOVE his birth name given to him by his parents who immigrated to the US from Greece:

Panagiotis Harry Voulkopoulos

At first it looks like a tongue twister. Then there is sort of this strange music to it that in no way could I say the name three times fast. Just looking at this name makes me think this is the way to teach beginning writers about assonance and consonance. His parents must have either consciously or subconsciously been in love with the assonance of the A sounds working with and against the O sounds with the repetition of the consonant P. The name makes absolute sonic sense while making me go, Huh? No wonder the boy with such a name became an Abstract Expressionist.

Here's some nuts and bolts on Pete:

Voulkos' sculptures are famous for their visual weight, their freely-formed construction, and their aggressive and energetic decoration. He would vigorously tear, pound, and gouge the surfaces of his pieces. At some points in his career, he cast his sculptures in bronze; in other periods his ceramic works were glazed or painted, and he finished them with painted brushstrokes. He bought some of his metal from Sidney Levinson. In 1979 he was introduced to the use of wood kilns by Peter Callas; much of his late work is wood-fired. Peter Voulkos loved working with an audience. He died of an apparent heart attack in February 16, 2002 after conducting a college ceramics workshop at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, demonstrating his skill to live audience. He was 78.

Some of my favorite pieces by him:

http://www.chubbcollectors.com/vacnews/images/article_images/222_2.gif

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/41/82153300_cad767622c.jpg?v=0

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images/425915408/460535.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.artnet.com/Galleries/Artwork_Detail.asp%3FG%3D%26gid%3D425915408%26which%3D%26ViewArtistBy%3Donline%26aid%3D17365%26wid%3D425933331%26source%3Dartist%26rta%3Dhttp://www.artnet.com&usg=__7cB8ULerkB_9Ay_JqXQYM3RGajQ=&h=470&w=640&sz=21&hl=en&start=16&um=1&tbnid=Jry5sM_yVjwHwM:&tbnh=101&tbnw=137&prev=/images%3Fq%3DPeter%2BVoulkos%2Bceramics%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26um%3D1

Dale Chihuly

I've been a big fan of anything Dale Chihuly for some time now. I think any American artist in any genre, medium or whatever should know who he is.

Chihuly practices in multiple forms but it mostly a glass installation artist. Some glass is blown. Some is pulled with tongs. Some is just flat out Chihuly and there's no other way to put it than that.

Chihuly became famous for his chandeliers like this one currently on display at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, AZ:

Chiostro di Sant'Appolonia Chandelier, 1995:
http//www.chihuly.com/installations/DesertBotanicalGarden/DesertBotanicalGarden013.html

Yes, that is glass. Sometimes HOLY SHIT is the only response we can have when looking at a piece of art this intense yet delicate and soft. The technical term for this piece is HOLY SHIT.

For more HOLY SHIT visual experiences, check out some of the other pieces on display linked below.

Current Chihuly exhibit at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix:

The Sun, 2008:
http//www.chihuly.com/installations/DesertBotanicalGarden/DesertBotanicalGarden003.html

Scorpion Tails and Bamboo, 2008:
http//www.chihuly.com/installations/DesertBotanicalGarden/DesertBotanicalGarden004.html

Ruby Fiddleheads, 2008:
http//www.chihuly.com/installations/DesertBotanicalGarden/DesertBotanicalGarden006.html

Blue Reeds, Marlins and Floats, 2008:
http//www.chihuly.com/installations/DesertBotanicalGarden/DesertBotanicalGarden009.html

Blue and Purple Boat, 2008:
http//www.chihuly.com/installations/DesertBotanicalGarden/DesertBotanicalGarden010.html

How are these pieces not inspiring?

In my poems, I try to bring together fierce intensity and vulnerabilty. Chihuly does that for me every time...with glass. I look at these installations and think they look so, so violent, but they are also so breakable and vulnerable at the same time. Jesus Christ I cannot get over this exhibit and it is almost over. I can't get over how Chihuly responded to the desert setting, how he is reacting to the local floral and fauna and overall landscape. He's owning the landscape and letting the landscape own his work at the same time. His art isn't competing with the landscape. It's contributing to it. Both the art and the natural setting mingle so well.

Like I said, I've been a long time fan, but this show, this exhibit is just out of this world. This is a pure, pure example of a hard, well practiced artist in the prime of his prime. I think any contemporary artist in any form of art should know Chihuly's work.

Long Live Salvatore

Yes, that's how you spell his name, Salvatore. He is the red paper shredder I bought this evening in the midst of cleaning. He's a cube. He's small. He's always hungry and I have lots of shit to feed him. At this moment, Salvatore is turned off and unplugged from the wall. He's overheated, again. This is the third time he has overheated since I birthed him from his packing material at 8:00. It's currently 10:02.

In three years time I have stowed lots of FUCK in my apartment. Right now, I'm going through all of my old bills and whatever enveloped mail that snuck into my desk drawers or elsewhere. I feel a bit like I am a member of the Watergate crew as I smoke cigarettes and stare out the window shredding my documents.

I know that I could just tear this shit up by hand, but I get paranoid about identity theft and shit like that. I must think pretty highly of myself because I have ZERO money. But some how in my brain I think that it is possible for a piece of paper to fly out of a dumpster and into the hands of some evil person.

I guess this must be some form of mail paranoia. I totally would have burned the mail, but it was too windy to light the grill on the back side of my apartment complex. Believe me, I thought about it. I thought about it even more because there was a big group of mo-fos sitting together under a tree singing songs from Grease at the top of their lungs. For a moment I thought, Awww that's sweet. When that moment passed I considered setting my mail on fire by shooting the grill with an arrow from my bow. That's some Grease Lightning for ya. Maybe I could have said that from my apartment window. Yes. I would like to set my mail on fire by shooting an arrow at it from my apartment window. But, with my luck, I'd miss like five times before I'd have to walk out there, get my arrows, and just torch the shit by hand.

All viking funeral rituals aside, Salvatore and I are going to wrap up the night now.

More on the adventure that is my moving out of this shit rigid apartment later.

Wheel Pottery: Part I

It's been a long long time since I've been able to put up a post, so I imagine that in the following days I'll be posting often. I have a complicated relationship with blogs. Sometimes I'm all over my blog like a fat man on a jelly doughnut. Other times blogging gets pushed to the back burner and I forget I write one. Enough of that.

As many of you know, I've been working a lot with clay and wheel pottery this semester. I'm aboslutely in love with working on the wheel. I'm not even that great at it, but the small triumphs are incredibly rewarding and both beginner and veteran potters know how to take pleasure in the small miracles and accidents that come with practice practice practice. Here's a list of what I like about clay:

1. It seems to me that no matter what skill level of the potter, you've got to have a sense of humor and be able to let go. This is fragile business. Anything can go wrong. More things go wrong that right, but when something does go right, even mildly right, it's mistake driven beauty.

For example. In my practicing I managed to turn out a thimble size cylinder (some of you have seen this masterpiece) from a six pound hunk of clay. Six pounds is a lot of anything--three pants sizes, a very good size rump roast, two average size cantaloupes.

I wedge and wedge this clay by rocking and kneeding it back and forth to get all of the air bubbles out before the clay ever touches the wheel. If there's an air bubble, even a tiny one, say the size of a Zippo flint, not only will that create havoc while trying to lift the walls of a cylinder, but after all my work of doing that, whatever I make will probably explode in the kiln and take everybody's work with it. Fussy-wussy was a hunky of clay.

After wedging, I shape the clay into a large pear form so that when I throw it onto the wheelhead the hunk stays level and as centered as possible before the wheel rotates. I wet the six pound pear with a squeeze of water from my sponge. This is the beginning of my making a pitcher on the wheel. Call it the very beginning of working on the wheel with this pear that, utlimately, enjoys being pear-sized and was, by nature, designed to remain stationary. My task is to manipulate this clay into a functional pot.

I brace my elbows onto my thighs and kick on the speed pedal with my left foot. As the clay begins to move I press this clay down with all of my weight. Not doing this means that the clay launches off the wheel. I have had a three pound hunk of clay launch off the wheel, which resulted in a son of a bitch and scramble to retrieve said clay.

While the clay is moving at about five miles per hour, I center the clay. Centering is a real sonofabitch. That's right. The type of sonofabitch that requires the running of words together. With the clay moving at top speed I cup my left hand around the hunk lean in with all of my strength and flex to keep my body from moving. Clay can boss you around. A hunk can move your whole upper body if you don't brace because the clay is now an extension of you body, an extension moving five mile per hour.

Once the clay is centerd I cone up the compact mound by placing my hands on either side and squeezing so the clay has nowhere to go but up. I lift the clay up to about nine inches. I do this because I'm stretching the clay in preparation to make a cylinder that's roughly 14 inches tall.
I've got to keep this "coned-up" clay centered all the while. If the clay becomes uncentered, you go back and center and center, otherwise you'll get a wicked wobble and the pot will fall over.

Still at top speed I press the coned-up clay down with the palm of my right hand while keeping the thing centered with my left. I do this gradually so not to knock the thing out of whack and control the speed with my left foot on the speed pedal.

At this point, I center the whole hunk with the wheel going as fast as it can go. Once that's good to go, I brace my elbow on my thighs and us the index and middle fingers from both my left and right hands to make a bowl in the clay. I dig softly while stretching the walls out, pulling softly at 4 o'clock. I check the bottom of the pot then compress by pushing down softly with the tips of my fingers. With the bottom good to go, I compress the lip rim to keep the clay center and switch off the speed pedal.

From here on out, I'll go manual and kick the wheel with my right foot to keep control of the speed. This is truly the beginning of where everything that can go wrong will go wrong because the ultimate goal is to get this clay to get up off its ass and up in the air by raising wall.

I stick my left hand into the bowl and with my right hand on the outside I press in on the outside of the wall with two fingers and lift. This is a delicate process because the clay doesn't want to be bossed around. It will want to wobble, so I keep my whole body brace and flexed while hands lift those wall to about four inches. After that pull, I center the clay again by compressing the lip rim. From here on out I will repeat this process by pulling the walls until I'm up to my elbow in the pot's bidness and kicking the wheel to a speed not too fast and not too slow so I don't run out of speed in the middle of pulling up a wall.

With a cylinder fourteen inches tall, it's time to start bending the clay so I can get the shoulder of a pitcher. The clay does not like this one bit. I put my hand inside the moving pot and slowly raise just like doing a pull, but stretching as I go up.

The clay is wobblinging now and wanting to cling to my arm. It clings to my arm and a ripple in the pitcher. I try to fix the ripple by stretching out the wall again. Nope. Another ripple. This is the pitcher that didn't even turn into a vase. SO, I cut off the top and try all of the above, again. Nope. I cut off a little more. I'm mug size now, trying to create the body of a mug. Nope. The Mug gets smaller and smaller and smaller. The mug is now a thimble.

The Curious Incident of the Invisible Pet in My Highland Hills Apartment

At 9:10 this morning I finally resolved the battle with my landlady over the mysterious pet of which I had been accused of owning and "harboring" in my apartment.

The Back Story:

During December "Saftey Inspections" a Highland Hills staff memeber discovered evidence of my owning a cat of which in a January conversation the landlady said I was harboring a cat, as if I had a cat underground railroad stop, as if I hang quilts in my window signaling when it is safe for refugee cats to stay at my apartment, as if the John Dillenger of cats purrs on my lap while I'm lounging on my sofa in my underpants.

Though the landlady said she would "investigate" this matter and get back to me, I heard nothing out of the office until a friendly "unauthorized pet fee" of $50 arrived this past Thursday. When I called the office on Friday to discuss this with the landlady she was gone at "a meeting" but since I wasn't going to pay the "unauthorized pet fee" by Friday and the landlady wasn't there to take care of the paper work I would be given a $25 late fee.

On Monday the landlady was not in her office. On Tuesday she left me a phone message letting me know of the fees.

This morning I called ready to raise hell in a full-out declaration of war: David Estate vs. Highland Hills.

On the phone, the landlady told me that during the "saftey inspections" a staff memeber saw evidence of my owning a dog. The story she told me in January had to do with a cat. Hmm....

What is the supposed evidence of this pet? I don't own a pet. No cat. No dog. The only animal in my apartment is me, I said.

Well, did you have a water bowl or a litter box out? the landlady asked.

Why would I have that? I don't own a pet.

Have you ever had an animal visit your apartment? The landlady asked.

Yes. Human beings, I said.

Because the landlady didn't even know what this supposed "evidence" seen in my apartment was I asked, Does your staff have pictures of this evidence of my owning a pet.

No, but I trust my staff and the staff has a keen eye for people keeping unauthorized pets.

Extremely keen eyes, since the staff can see invisible animals, I thought.

Listen, I said, What we have here is hearsay. You say I own a pet. I say I do not...

Do you ever have pets spend the night? the landlady asked as if I am having some kind of wild parties with multiple pets, as if I am having pet-based orgies.

No. No pets spend the night and I do not own any pets and like I was saying this is all hearsay, so what I'm going to do is call the Police. We need a non-biased third party. I'll have the Police search my apartment up and down and report if their findings.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

Well.... We don't need to go that far, the landlady says.

It's the only way to prove that no animals other than a human being lives or stays here.

Well.... No pets stay there, not even for the night?

I don't own a pet.

Okay....Well.... If that is the case and there are no pets then what I can do is drop the charges.

Good, I said.

As I am writing this, the landlady just called. She checked the staff notes. The staff reported a water dish on the floor. There was a water bowl on the floor, the landlady claims.

A bowl on the floor does not mean I own a pet. I can keep as my bowls on the ground as I want, I said.

I know. I was just letting you know what the staff saw. It's still over.

Okay.

So why did the landlady call me with that information? Hmm.... Why all this stupid-ass bullying as if Highland Hills doesn't fuck people enough out of their money, as if I haven't put up with enough from these people who invent fees and fines while letting crackheads and whatnots live here.

I've decided what to do when it comes time for another "saftey inspection," which should be over Spring Break. Interesting how the saftey inspections are held over time periods when the majority of residents--students--are out of town. Suspect. Well, this is what I'm going to do:

When the little slip of paper announces that "saftey inspections" will take place I am going to Pet-Co and thrift stores and dollar stores to buy pet toys. I'm gonna create an arsenal of squeaky toys, chew toys, plush duckies, and rope toys. I will spread them all over my apartment alongside a bowl of water in each room. When I am accused of owning a pet I will tell my landlady the truth about said evidence: Those are my toys and the bowl of water hydrate the air in my apartment.

To be continued, motherfuckers.

Lima Bean Update

Last night I faced a terrible temptation. The lima bean size zit festering on my upper, left thigh would not stop talking to me. While braising spare ribs and making garlic-tomato soup, I would feel the lima bean noodle-maker rub up against my right thigh. Yes, the zit has adopted the old Iron Kids Bread song that played constantly at the end of TV commericals in the 90s, "Strong and growwwwwing." Between searing ribs, simmering whole tomatoes in beef broth, mincing garlic, and sauteeing mushrooms, a deep, satanic voice would scream, SQUEEEEEEZE ME.

I watched the tomatoes leaking their clear juices out into the brown broth. I stared at a toe of garlic the same size of the noodle-maker growing on my leg, SQUEEEEEEZE ME, as if that giant flower from the Little Shop of Horrors has set-up shop on my upper thigh.

I resisted for a total of five minutes. The clamorous SQUEEEEEZE ME convinced me to drop my pants right there in my kitched depsite the potential dangers that can become of a bare, defensless penis in the company of a simmering sautee pan and cast iron stock pot.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEZE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

The wee head of the lima bean of some five hours before had now developed into a whitehead the size of a match head. That white head centered in directly in the middle of all that interior puss looked like the eye of a hurricane. No. It was the eye of a hurricane. Staring down at the zit I felt like inside the zit there was a party going on, a party I wasn't invited to until the voice came again and again and intensified the more my pants stayed around my knees.

I squeeze that fucker as if making hommade lemonade. Only a trickle of puss emerged and a sense of guilt and feeling like a dipshit remained inside the now redding lima bean. I knew I'd provoked a beast.

In Praise of Zits

I want to tell you about an ingrown hair on my upper thigh. There is a large bump now the size of a lima bean with a wee white head festering with an industry with ooze that I absolutely cannot wait to pop. Each night before bed I pray and pray and pray that when it does come time to pop this mother-ship of a zit there will not be an eruption of puss; I pray for a swirling, spiraly, out of control noodle-like release. Those are the best kinds of zits to pop. The ones with the instant, Mt. St. Helen's type explosion are fun, but the noodle-makers (technical term) are by far the best. There's just something extremely satisfying about watching all that puss zip straight out of your own skin like a minature version of squeezing a tube of toothpaste.

This is not my first relationship with ingrown hair zits. Once I had one on my chest that I squeeze so hard that it blew out a pencil eraser size hunk of skin that has never grown back, which means there's a little, jagged dent there; I wear it like a medal. My last year of college I got an ingrown hair right between my eyes, the ever epic third eye. I provoked this goddamn thing so much that to this day you will see me walking around with a little red dot between my eyes. This is because I've been squeezing, prodding, hoping that some puss has grown there, that a thin, thin noodle with shoot straight out of my forhead. Most times zits are positioned in strange places on the body that make you strain your neck or contort your body to see when you pop them. Not this guy Paul. That's the name of my third eye zit, Paul. That's what he told me anyway. We've been pals, roomies, and partners in crime since 2001. Yes, he's eight years old. He is my first born. My only child. He's in second grade. He's the ooze of my life.

And Paul doesn't mind that Paulina, the lima bean sit has moved in. He knows she's only probably here for a little while. Or maybe not. I have to admit that if I had a lima bean noodle-maker zit I could pop every month, I'd be a happy man. And the best would be all the random places I could pop it when I just can't resist the urge, when I know this is the day the zit hath made for popping. Squirt. Squish. Squish.