In June I traveled to New York for the opening of the 2010 NRDC Environmental Art Prize Exhibition.  What a trip!! It started with a fluke entry in a national competition, progressed through several weeks of non-stop painting for the late May deadline, and ended with a killer exhibition and opening at NABI Gallery in Chelsea.  NABI and the NRDC  hosted a fabulous opening and dinner afterward at Bottino.  Amazing people - from Joe Wemple to Christopher Rothko and Frances Beinecke to Krister Linder (I could go on) showed up, contributing much love and joy to the opening.

NABI entrance.  I had trouble finding it opening night, as the cab dropped me on W. 24th, where the gallery wasn't. Rain, mild panic.  I ran into a bike shop where I asked the dear man at the counter if he'd look up the address, etc.  He pointed out that the gallery was a block uptown.  Sigh of relief.

Party people/NABI opening.  A guest told a hilarious story about Bunny Mellon's hairpieces being mistaken for Llasa Apsos.  I thought I'd fall over with laughter.

Gallery shot: NABI hosts musical and literary events.  The work looked radiant in the space.  Brava to Gallery Director Janay Wong for her finesse in hanging and presenting the show, and with thanks to Val and Min-Myn Schaffner for bringing NABI into being.

Dinner at Bottino, sitting with Joe W. and talking with Christopher R.

Coincidence: One of the panel members was Christopher Rothko, a thoughtful and erudite man who is Mark Rothko's son.  Not only did he attend the opening and dinner, charming us all, but I had the great fortune to see RED on Broadway the following night - a thinking person's production about his father's psychology as it informed his process.  I sympathized with Christopher, wondering how it must feel to have the scrutiny of the art world, and now the theater-going public, directed at him.

One of the Sanctus pieces.  Strangely and sadly, the opening took place as the BP oil catastrophe continued.  Many people commented to me about their association between the disaster and these pieces.  While it was unintentional, I suspect I was operating from my subconscious.

There's new work afoot in the studio, prompted in part by days and days of rain.  Everything is permeated with the life that rain provides: both my home and community gardens, city parks' soggy ground and drippy trees, and my favorite boots.  Street gutters, sidewalks are running streams.  City trees soak up long-needed moisture.  All this as my son (reluctantly) studies botany and the concepts of xylem and phloem.

I continue to be fascinated by trees in winter.  As deciduous trees lose leaves, another aspect of their form becomes visible - lovely and bare, revealed.  Silhouettes in mist or fog, partially obscured by layers of moisture, compel me to wander amongst them and get lost.  Will I disappear as the mist closes around me?  Reminds me of the George Berkeley query about trees falling in a forest, which was principally questioning human perception and existence.

In my experience the trees I perceive exist, or I am willing to believe so.  And I paint them - portraits - as they appear in one moment in time.  Here's how it's looking so far.

A looming elm against a smoky, rosy ocher sky

A thriving neighborhood Gingko

In August I made a pilgrimage to Marfa, Texas, a place - and an experience - I would recommend to anyone, certainly to artists and people curious about art & artists.  That includes most people I know.

Marfa is known primarily for two reasons.  It is a tiny town in western Texas that sculptor and conceptual artist Donald Judd determined should exhibit in perpetuity his, and other artists', works in a non-museum environment.  Its second recommendation is the famed Marfa Lights, mysterious night time luminous lights that can be seen from the highway.  No one knows the source of the lights, but skeptics claim it's some landowner fooling the rest of us.  Phooey, I say, I believe.  And besides, why not drive out there in the middle of the night after hearing a country R&B band at a honky tonk, if only to lie down on the ground and be put in your place while pondering the Milky Way? 

Shot en route to Marfa @ 80 mph.  Amazed at the cloud formations, the landscape, highway culture (truckers, roadside cafes & gas stations), I couldn't help myself.  Following friends in another car while tuning the fabulous rental-car-satellite-radio, I couldn't pull over to shoot, so I shot on the move. 

What is there to say about the Judd cubes, enshrined forever at Chinati, in Marfa, except to note the material in all its  sensual, reflective glory, the scale (human, to my eye), and of course the natural environment Judd chose to house them.

Former ice manufacturing factory in Marfa, once a gallery, now for sale.  The facade had rich textures, material elements, history.

If you haven't eaten at the Food Shark, you haven't lived.  Or been to Marfa.  These people understand food, elevating lamb, falafel, roast beets, to new highs.  It's where everyone in Marfa congregates at lunch time, meteing and exchanging stories.  I met the quintessential art cowboy who had a few stories to tell.  Still have his phone number.

I'll never see Dan Flavin's work in the same way.  My eyes have been opened.  Room after room, building after building, of Flavin's painterly works.  Thank you Dan Flavin and Donald Judd.

Just one more highway photo, because the landscape is so varied and so intriguing to a Californian.  So long Marfa, until we meet again. 

I am a big fan of stone in all its forms, naturally occuring and human shaped.  

This is one of my favorite stone carvings, weather-washed and ancient, in the city of Lyon.  It lives above a doorway in the oldest section of town, depicting what looks like a rooster engulfed in flames.  The curving form of the flames and branches - sacrificial rooster?  phoenix? roast-chicken-to-go? - is a compelling image I couldn't shake.  I returned to observe it several times.

Hand-carved ochre colored sandstone in the town center of the quiet village of Theize.  This feature stands about ten feet high, and is often lit only at the top as the sun rises or falls.  Dogs and tourists circle it daily, sniffing out traces of history.  I can't recall the story of the figures, but would calculate a guess that they represent a biblical story, as this is a fixture of the early French church nearby.

Hand built, functional.  Keeping those dairy cows in the pasture.

There's nothing like coming upon an ancient stone wall, components degrading from centuries of lichens, mosses and weathering.  This in a village of largely dairy cows in the Beaujolais, north-west of Lyon.