room to a view blog...influence of the Kali red in Jasper Johns' influence paintings

it's closing in on Valentines day, one of my favorite holidays..well, holiday in the sense that one has a sweetheart on that day that one is especially fond of doting on, but...I did paintings...and I would have to say that Jasper Johns has come about of an influence on them because of the Kali red I used...and the blue
Johns did mainly mostly flags...but as the color influence asserts itself...to me, the Johns work was about the white, the red and the blue he used...he was confined by his painting circumstances to painting flags...my brother has a friend on the Sekiu River with advanced alzheimers...this guy is the spirit of Johns to me...he sold me a funky air pump for the air mattress I bought from him and though many of us sweated on that pump, we could never get it to fill the air mattress...as I was sweating away...I thought to myself that it was like painting the American flag over and over and over...and would be relevant to continue to try to do so only if you were Jasper Johns...I don't know if that makes any sense..but that's when I realized this advanced alzheimer guy was Johns' spirit...he's beginning to not be able to do things for himself...rather disturbing...but those paintings of the flags...I have to divert my concerns there to the flags and the beauty of their concept..and revel in the colors..like a certain chord in the Bridal March by Lohengrin...the twang of the fallen in the Civil War I felt it conveyed...and not a twang so much as the sound of glass cracking...(or an air pump not filling the air mattress...duhh)...
so about the Kali red...I did an exhibit once back in DC at the Organ...Kali the Hindu goddess was everywhere in it...I had a Greek soldier's fluffy white skirt all dyed briliant reds..well they were pink more or less, I think this particular reddish hue the Valentine color...the sense of love conveyed in color...like how to do pacifcism probably...promote the concept that all is good and all is love and all you need is love...the mantra from the Beatles...it is true though and in the origins of the peace movement, which we all kind of evolved into what with our fringed moccasins and bell bottoms (does still wear those)...so in honor of the Kali influence a couple of my friends came down the street, having taken the Greek skirt from the wall of the exhibit, put it on...donned a few other Kali color display items..and marched a little peace march in the Adams Morgan 18th Street area..one was particularly tall and lithe being a sort of Isadora Duncan and the other was little Kira who lived up off Columbia Road with her parents...one of whom handed me in a cheese sandwich when I was gallery sitting and half starved, wearing my "Miss Whipple" outfit also a hand colored effort and when I walked up the 14th Street corridor I was restored...of course the next hand colored effort was 'thou restored'...and written on the leg of one of the previously starched white pants..actually I don't know if the pants came first or second but part of the art thing with me is coloring clothes and wearing them as an art statement...I'm not sure when I do it what the statement is actually but I know the Kali things were about peace and love...I feel numb thinking any other way about our human coexistence with one another because I know in the nuclear age we can't be any other way because of the 'dos' influence, direct operating systems...auto executor states...animals and so forth, plants, what we consume...I don't think it's so terribly confusing but I know that we don't get buy if we don't respect those rules as they were initiated by the Manhattan project and all the nuclear relevations of that time...well anyway, a bit of hippie art chair philosophy that but so it is...
haven't written much the last week or two...busy PAINTING!!! and yep..that was the point of writing just now, that it was the Kali red time...and the blue which I haven't found as pervasive an influence though the Reef is right across from the water's edge and I should know it...the Kali red comes to me whenever I call it up...if I have to call it up, there it is, perhaps because inside us all is blood and darn I poke my finger now and then but when it dries, that blood is an ugly brown, literally putrid in its effect and so only when it is live from within does it have any sort of grace, though it isn't of any particular warmth to me...the Kali red is that life blood distilled and conveyed as the spirit of man, I think, in its love, well, it's not my favorite color either, as I love them all, but for purposes of purpose, the Kali red does have a singular effect I've found, in that little peace march of Kira and her adult dancer escort, both of them coming down the street all dressed in the Kali reds...a strange configuration..something that until now hadn't been recorded properly and one I am curious to see may come again since I'm in the Kali mode I think...found a can of paint in a cupboard at the reef, I knew I'd brought one in but the anticipated tenant had waylaid it...so it persisted and I found it...just like I find a vat of terrible brown under the sink when I'd had a tummyache ..which I painted a little on the garage with...
So here it is...what, quite a bit later, the Kali peace walk was in the early early eighties way early...maybe before '79 not sure, we didn't keep records but there it was...and here it is again...and this is 2010 and it's not red dye on white cotton, which it was there, and the 'thou restored' was inks in blue and green so I don't know where that fits in but I do know that the color in the pieces I just hung in the front room at the Reef are those Kali reds...and the blue which hasn't any life yet so I'm not done with them but I hesitate to go too far into it until I look at them more..I made two more stretchers from wood my son cut for me...but I haven't put the canvas on them..have some linen to bring there and maybe I'll use oils for a change which I don't know about the sizing part but I guess I could muddle through...we never painted in oils at Madams Organ, we used whatever was sprouting out of the environment...which for me was sometimes music, sometimes writing, sometimes the studio wall itself...but anyway...a few more details and then a hot shower
There is a new visiting resident across the street, another Aaron...there's an Aaron up the alley in Albert's house and he the Albert Aaron was in a guitar band with my daughter when she was in high school..this other Aaron had a look at the gallery but said not a word about my paintings...I explained the neoGerman expressionism movement influence on the lineoleum works but I didn't say anything of Jackson Pollack so I guess I left it to him to figure that part out but it's strange how little people know about art when you think they do especially this other Aaron who is tall and looks like a young Indian brave wearing one of those funny peruvian caps that come down over the ears and have strings hanging (for some reason I used to think of those caps as 'period hats' meaning that either the male in the couple wore one or the woman when she was bleeding...so maybe that was Kali again)
this other Aaron came over Saturday when I was painting...I hadn't started anything and he ran into me when I was coming back from a foray to the Cannery building, which we'd been talking about at a co-op meeting which all of a sudden I'm going to meetings on even though I am part of several other clubs like I don't have enough to do...so this other Aaron looks like my brother Mark in a strange way and he's rather young, like one of my sons...but he's an adult and I want right away to see him as the young Pollock before he gave it up to the alcohol gods (if he did, I wouldn't know I wasn't there) or the Johns, who I don't know but don't have the association with because I have to say the life in Adams Morgan running the gallery there was kind of a strain in weird ways, like having been a conformist more or less and letting it all hang out all of a sudden was cool but stressful thinking about ways to make a living and so forth...I depended on my husband then for the physical support, but not really because I could always make my way and we never sold art...well we could but we had terrible arguments about it...just brutal arguments about how can you make money on something that is going to influence everyone great and small it's like religion...you don't make money on religion...but you have to eat...you have to be able to switch on your television and not have some moron say you can't watch that channel...back and forth...gnarly
so I made these three paintings and have two more to stretch and paint and I told my painter friends that I was going to do realism on these canvasses but it's not looking that way which is a challenge to me in some ways but it's also kind of spooky going to painting circle because of some of the people there, not that they're not nice but some are trapped in the between life phase issues...they paint well but are like the great void in terms of interaction...they're not like they were at the Organ...art as relevant to everyday life...we the great influencers of it with our psychology of color...I don't think this bunch would give it any credence although I have mentioned it to them a time or two...to not criticize either because they're dear to me...sometimes I bring my knitting, or play music in the ballroom upstairs..without the heat on...brrr
so at the Reef Raphael has been coming to help with little things but first off he tore his shoulder up and is wearing a sling at the moment...We went up to Dale's house yesterday after Mass and what a mess the boys left..Dale died a year or so ago, I think of him as Evelyn Waugh (don't I always think of someone as someone, like Art Grossman, Kira's dad..his beautiful wife Marty and their row house in Kalorama, haven't put a tag on the Grossman's yet but I'll come to find out what they art)...when Dale died the boys took over and Debbie got a new partner so she's still around but the place where they lived is like a bomb shelter after the Blitz...Raphael showed me the piles of things and things and things...and I wondered what talisman to take away with me to give good karma to the circumstances...I found a broom, a floodlight and a basket that had been through a fire...what the relevance is I don't know yet, but I'll think of it...realized after we left and came back to the Reef that I needed furring strips for the edges of the canvasses to present a properly framed piece but I can get those elsewhere...Dale's place will be restored (the pants...'thou restored')...one of my little art prayers perhaps...the great mountains of laundry, tools, general litter, motors, dead cars...oh my...well...looks like the Neah Bay dump there without benefit of a tractor to bulldoze it into oblivion...we'll see..several worthy ladders at the bottom of the yard...those I could use on the Reef roof but eh...Susan next door has one
A note on the other Aaron, he has a wife I haven't met yet named Rikki, didn't say anything about her when  I met him, so I'm always thinking hmmm...but they told me at the co-op that he did because I stopped in there to tell them the Cannery was open (another place with much flotsam)...so, neither here or there that but the other Aaron isn't married and he looks remarkably like my favorite actor Russell Crowe and is terribly nice but somehow isn't my cup of tea besides being much younger well...not to speculate on the male population or anything because I'm not about that I think..though the Kali influence does wander that way...not like I'm going to worship it or anything because I don't feel that it moves me THAT much...this Rikki lady is newly arrived from the Nepal borders now there is a Kali influence in that as well I think but they're only temporary as Robert and Thu have gone to Viet Nam for a family visit for a little bit and Aaron and Rikki are sitting the very old labrador retriever. 
So, I think I've covered all the bases up to date and have been cooking pot roasts and big squashes and watching little children along with the painting cycles and the weather has improved slightly though it's still drearier than Ingmar Bergman.  Have added rock to the fish pond at the Reef and contemplate removing the back fence to get to the pond and deploy a lot of soil and turf to keep the water out of the yard...have to take down a great mass of brush yet and can't decide if it should be burned or carted off...have ridden the bicycle george gave me and puffed my way up the hill to the house but flew down again to the Reef, ending the day walking it up the middle road which is much much steeper and not sharing dinner with the neighbors, who went into town instead.  None of the kids called today but I did talk to Middle Son yesterday and will go see them with the Valentine presents soon...
dogs are gnawing on their bones from the pot roast, on my second or third coffee and one piece of dark rye..time for a shower and flip on the radio...richstirfry and the jewish lawyer Bob Mackowitz (don't know that Mack is a lawyer but he's probably Jewish with that name)...wonderful Canadian station which I don't want to tout too much or they'll start playing too much Gordon Lightfoot...they had a Kate and Anna McGarrigle hour yesterday in honor of Kate's passing what beautiful music...my relatives of French Canadian descent in Minnesota it reminded me of...I neve rmiss those people but it's like an amputation you learn to live with it...I would have grown up with three hundred cousins but my dad moved us out West when I was still a baby...I've felt lonely all my life
I think that's why
so that's why I wanted to mention the other Aaron staying across the street because he looks very much like one of those cousins..Paul Marlenga for one...at a younger age...and my brother Mark for another...again, at a younger age...
sometime I'll comment on the nature of youth because this other Aaron has it in spades...for now it's about the influence of the Kali red...the little peace walk of Kira Grossman and the adult dancer..Kathy Keefe...upcoming Valentine's Day, mild weather, my three new paintings...two blank canvasses..the white doves from the Reef yard...I do think those are just fo rme but we'll see..have to make them a habitat if they are...