Once

I have been neglectful of the blog, besides being ridiculously busy, as usual, there's this thing called Instagram, and when you post things there, complete strangers seem to have an inexplicable urge to look at them.

Sometimes however, nobody looking is more the goal.

I made a lot of Harry Potter style magic wands as Christmas presents, and seem to be still making them for no apparent reason.

Core for my last magic wand for a bit. No further comment.

Once in a dream (for once I dreamed of you)
  We stood together in an open field;
  Above our heads two swift-winged pigeons wheeled,
Sporting at ease and courting full in view.
When loftier still a broadening darkness flew,
  Down-swooping, and a ravenous hawk revealed;
  Too weak to fight, too fond to fly, they yield;
So farewell life and love and pleasures new.
Then as their plumes fell fluttering to the ground,
  Their snow-white plumage flecked with crimson drops,
  I wept, and thought I turned towards you to weep:
  But you were gone; while rustling hedgerow tops
Bent in a wind which bore to me a sound
    Of far-off piteous bleat of lambs and sheep.

-Christina Rossetti

Upcoming shows Winter 2016

I will be displaying a brand new collaborative sculptural work with artist Oksana Prokopenko in:
Safe Space the Openings Collective 10th anniversary show. I'm both an artist and co-curator.

Opening reception is Jan 26th 7-9pm St Paul the Apostle, Columbus ave and W 60th NY, NY
Artist talks are Feb 9th 7pm
Show  runs Jan 20th -Feb 22 2017
http://www.openingsny.com/safe-space


Several drawings of mine from my 2015 drawing a day effort will be in Beautiful and Powerful at Nails in the Wall Gallery, 17 Oak Avenue Metuchen, NJ
Opening reception is Saturday, January 28, 2-5pm
Show runs through May 2017
http://www.nailsinthewall.org/beautiful.html

Hope to see some of you at each of these events. 

A (Large) New Piece

Being unable to allow my work  in progress count to go down, I've immediately started a new big piece. Finally making something from a solid couple hundred pounds of what remains of the oak that came down in Sandy is a bit fraught for a whole lot of reasons including the time commitment. This one will hopefully be completed in time for my 3 person show in PA this spring, we shall see...

Cedar Lane Tree Monument

These aren't the 'official' photos, I still need to put on another coat of sealer, and get a day with better light to take some photos. But this weekend I finished the roof and re-leveled the foundation. Structurally the Cedar lane tree monument is done. It has literally been in progress since the tree came down more than 3 years ago. The me that started this project did not live to see it completed, but some version of me did, and it is completed. More to come, but for now thanks to everyone who has made it possible. Particular thanks to Perry and Gladys Rosenstein at the Puffin Foundation for their constant support, my brothers for physical help and my long suffering parents for accepting what has not always made sense.

I think back to how I finished my daily tree stump documentation project and the words I found then seem more appropriate than ever: http://anthonysantella.blogspot.com/…/cccxlvi-to-be-continu…

'I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned'

A Landmark

I've been a bit quiet here of late, but  I think having the Cedar Lane tree cross section reassembled and upright warrants a post, thanks due to Nicholas and Dennis Santella and Geoff Sullivan for their aid in moving and to the very nice Teaneck cop who both laughed at and stopped traffic for our initial move of the wood from the Teaneck Creek Degraw entrance.

Coda V:83 Woven of Water and Logic and Hunger, with No Strand of Love in Them

Coda V:83 Hands, Woven of Water and Logic and Hunger, with No Strand of Love in Them, ink and graphite, 2016

That whole semi-conscious in the hospital thing in the spring threw me off my drawing routine and I never got back to it, after ~540 contiguous days of drawing. But these words have been echoing in my head all week, and for better or worse this emerged... I don't know what's up with the graphite scribbles over the ink, that is so not me...

These poems, these poems, 

these poems, she said, are poems 

with no love in them. These are the poems of a man   

who would leave his wife and child because   

they made noise in his study. These are the poems   

of a man who would murder his mother to claim   

the inheritance. These are the poems of a man   

like Plato, she said, meaning something I did not   

comprehend but which nevertheless 

offended me. These are the poems of a man 

who would rather sleep with himself than with women,   

she said. These are the poems of a man 

with eyes like a drawknife, with hands like a pickpocket’s   

hands, woven of water and logic 

and hunger, with no strand of love in them. These   

poems are as heartless as birdsong, as unmeant   

as elm leaves, which if they love love only   

the wide blue sky and the air and the idea 

of elm leaves. Self-love is an ending, she said,   

and not a beginning. Love means love 

of the thing sung, not of the song or the singing.   

These poems, she said.... 

                                       You are, he said, 

beautiful. 

                That is not love, she said rightly.

Robert Bringhurst, These Poems, She Said from The Beauty of the Weapons

Weekend's Work

My brother was in town so I recruited him to work a bit on cutting some boards from the red oak that has been sitting in my folks yard for the past 3 years. (Another 3 and I'll have it all out.) We got two boards cut. Not sure why cutting this stuff seems to instantly dull the blade...

Also got a little work done on the ongoing Cedar Lane tree memorial. The first side is now fully together and pegged. If I had a cow, I'm not sure how I'd feel about housing it in a barn built to these engineering tolerances. Luckily I don't have a cow.