Experimental blog content - note to webmaster
www.http://vimeo.com/450172497
www.http://miaarts.com Does this work [?] Sam, go to Minneapolis Institute of Art website to get information on calendar
page. I may return to this blog page to add text. Trying to post links. Dad.
Blog starts here September 2,2020 - Solo Exhibition at Minneapolis Institute of Art open now runs til November 29 week end after Thanksgiving. Title mine - Under The Influence - Early works some ringers mostly on paper, chosen from nearly 80 works that were borrowed last year. By Nicole S. and Bob C. whilst I was rushing on my run ( a tad manic) trying to get Cozzolino to buy the whole house and all the art within for museum . No soap but they brought a lovely sandwich from my favorite Vietnamese deli. Ya da ya da. Anyway long story short sort of unsatisfactory no sale. The Institute owns the Purcell Elmslie mansion a block from Lake of The Isles a gift from some patron they rehabbed it years back. They suggested I have all my sketchbooks and notebooks given to an archive where they scan them and put them online. Which I thought was very cold. Though many years ago I asked Siah Armajani R.I.P. about microfilming all the notebooks then maybe 1973. Now I feel people should be able to touch them at least in libraries like the Walker’s McKnight study room. Walker and Mia have notebooks in collections.
Anyway just experimenting with my blog to bring attention to new exhibition another history show. People like the short video which is cool as it was a huge pain in the ass to make hurt my feet and my ears. Great edit I was so discursive that day. Mike Dust a very good director. The show seems to be getting seen despite the pandemic which has killed at least 185,000 people many old black brown and immuno challenged like myself. Hoping to make some sales, but sales are always a trick. More soon . Frankie Gaard.
check out my Tumblr.com @ FrankyGaard or FrankyGaard PonyLover or something like than for a dose of incoherent coherence.
Also stay strong life goes on with you or without you - John Lennon and/or Paul McCartney or Paul McCarthy better evening.
September 7, 2020 - After my sister died. Things waxing and waning recently more than usual. Struggling with my moods more that usual this time of year my more manic summer moods give way to my more depressive autumnal depressive self destructive moods, all those years going to school and then teaching made this transition especially difficult , I remember meeting in August with the faculty to prepare for the fall semester. I hated those meetings all the faculty meetings were onerous. Some professors thrive on them any excuse to not work in their studios was welcome, they carried old leather briefcases full of notices minutes of meetings etc. I found the idea of being an art school administrator dreadful like the final solution to why I had no studio time. It literally drove me bonkers. For a while I was in charge of the painting studios which were nearly always empty except for the little displays the students would leave on their cubicles. The smell of turpentine would indicate someone had been there recently to leave an impression they had just stepped out for fresh air or a joint.
At some point I realized I had been in art schools for decades, that it was like a sort prison without walls. The contempt for fine arts majors was very real from the design majors who were often the true hipsters the propaganda industry was one of the post war economic miracles. Any product could be made to sell with just the right type of advertising, even Hitler’s people’s car the 1960’s thanks to great creative advertising.. it seemed as if the pendulum had swung towards advertising propaganda and left the fine arts behind like an anachronism. When Andy Warhol emerged as the quintessential Pop artist the merger was complete. A shoe illustrator had crossed over and become perhaps the most celebrated artist of the late 20th century.
When I started getting sick I was teaching foundation studies color theory it was actually very fun and very challenging but that sense of will I ever get out of this place always nagged at me . I was spending my best years trying to get through to people like myself who were deluded enough to think they could succeed where thousands had failed! I finally could not sleep, I just was up constantly for days and nights until I was hospitalized in May of 1974. I spent several weeks at a facility in Golden Valley Minnesota first in intensive care units then on open units. First time I had ever been locked up! This went on for three springs followed by suicidal depressions each fall. How I survived I do not know. That’s enough for now.
Tuesday September 8, 2020 ...Yesterday my dad’s birthday always a rough spot on the calendar the old love/hate conundrum. He was an immigrant from West. Last of Norway a small village named Haugesund, born a home . I think his father was a suicide but who knows for sure 7 kids is a big crew. The only photos I have seen of my father’s father he has. Nietzsche mustache and a very screwy look on his face and I know he vanished. My dad’s mother came to Minnesota in answer to an old widower in the Farmington area in South West Minnesota looking for a wife . She came married Mr. Olsen he died she sold the farm and moved to Chicago. There she used the money from selling the farm to buy an old Victorian house near North Avenue in an ethic enclave of Norwegian speakers. She turned the place into a rooming house and started bringing her younger children to the states the older kids stayed behind in Norway. My father Johan was the youngest he and his brother Otto lived there when Grandma died the oldest sibling Louise took over the rooming house and became the matriarch, she was straight out of central casting very much like the actress on “I Remember Mama” a popular film and TV show about Norwegian immigrants in San Francisco. My father’s brother Otto was the sweetest of the three, a little less bright but a real mensch had been in the Navy in World War II on submarine tender had lots of tattoos from all over the world. He was a bus driver and he was not nearly as bad a drunk as my dad. My father was an alcoholic union house painter who beat my mother nearly every pay day terrorized my sister and I and when sober was very quiet with an intense sweet tooth. Lots of sweet rolls for us on Saturdays after his benders. Long story short I only finally got free of him after he passed and I started going to Adult Child of Alcoholics meetings in the mid 1980’s when I had married an alcoholic junky who wailed on me! I tended to hook up with abused women, but then I began to think all women had been abused by father’s bfs and husbands. Me too , as they say now.
i hear Pamela waiting up time to get going more later. Miles to go back ache fell hard on Shabbas night.