The Rest Is Noise [Dumb Box 05]

There's so much noise in New York, almost everywhere, that it begins to work like silence.
This box has cardboard inserts, like fingers in the ears.  Not meant to be removed.  But possible.

Trust Me [Dumb Box 04]

I've been working in our studio on 36th Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues, the Garment District, and photographers have been running around the neighborhood because of Fashion Week.  They take pictures of everyone arriving for the shows, and though I try to get it, most of them look no more fashionable than the rest of us, but perhaps that's the style now: gods should look like mortals.

(Collection: Lori Barra and Nico Frias)

Equator [Dumb Box 03]

These are the first objects created in our new studio in New York.  A couple days ago I turned 69 and I am very much aware how fortunate I am to be in a new city at this time in my life.  It feels like I’m in the right place for me at the right time, not a bad way to feel at this age.  Or any, for that matter.

 

Begins Ends Each Moment [Dumb Box 02]

I think of these objects as projectors, not for slides/transparencies, but for the ego; or as reliquaries of a religion that doesn't believe in the existence of the body.  They're measure about 6" x 10" x 6", and they're plain: birch wood with gesso and acrylic.  This one has cardboard inserts.

 

I Am Big Heaven 2012 [Dumb Box 01]

Back in 1966 I got my first apartment, it was in San Francisco and in it I had nothing but a bed, a chair and a table.  I made cardboard sculptures back then, very simple ones, on which I mounted type and images.  Now that we’ve just moved into a temporary apartment in New York, I decided to go back to those cardboard boxes, but drop the images and construct them out of wood.  I'm working on a dozen of them; this is the first.

Last San Francisco Paintings

Tomorrow my wife and I leave our San Francisco studio in preparation for our temporary move to New York, where we plan to live in Manhattan for a year. Here are the last three paintings done in California, created between November 2010 and January 2012. We plan to move back-and-forth between the two cities, hoping to use the best of each.

Rococo File 10 acrylic on canvas 64" x 45"

                                               (note: this was painted out in July of 2013)

Rococo File 10

Rococo File 11 acrylic on canvas 67" x 46"

(note: this was painted out in June of 2013)

Rococo File 11

Rococo File 12 acrylic on canvas 62" x 42"

(note: this was painted out in June of 2013)

Rococo File 12

New York, New York

Just to make sure 2012 means something new, Vivienne (my wife) and I purchased one-way tickets to New York.  We'll be living there for eleven months, from 01 February until 31 December.  Who knows what changes that will bring about?
Happy new year everyone.