Celebrating Phillippe

Kathy often invites me to fabulous events at the Met- I wasn't able to go that often until this year, when my schedule has changed and I am done teaching by 5:30.

Phillipe de Montebello has been the director of the Metropolitan Museum for 30 years or so. I can't pretend to comment on the acquisitions that the Met has made during his tenure. But I really enjoyed attending the party (one of many) to celebrate Phillipe and the Met. What a great museum! I loved walking from a rifle- to a Caracci painting- to a Degas print- to a statue of Shiva- to a sword in the exhibition that highlighted the acquisitions to the collection under his watch. And at the reception, many tasty snacks were consumed. More pictures on flickr

James Marguerite and Crosby at Max Fish

Our friends James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook have a show up with their son Crosby at Lower East Side Bar Max Fish. James and Marguerite are artists who are also involved in comics. It is not exaggerating to say they are legendary figures on the Lower East Side, as artists, activists and gallerists. Also, they are recent graduates of BMCC! Both transferred to Columbia where they are studying now, Marguerite just won a poetry prize and scholarship. Crosby is an MC as well as an artist, I have never heard him perform, but Calvin assures me he rocks.

Here is a link to their book of maps of the neighborhood.

Catskills Roadtrip

Calvin and I went on a brief road trip to the Catskills to visit some of our friends in their great Catskill homes.

Yes, it rained a lot, particularly on the drive up.

First stop was to see Jim and Tiffany and their daughter Marlo in Stamford. Jim used to live in Calvin's building, they did a little sports bonding playing catch.

Jim is a sculptor and furniture designer.

Next we went to Bovina where we visited artists (and Momenta directors) Laura and Eric and son Leon.

Christy came by for dinner at Laura and Eric's, she also lives in Bovina.

Her pond is really beautiful.

As is her work.

More Comic-Con

This year, I was on a panel at Comic-Con. I was very excited to be a participant- the panel was about an upcoming show at the San Diego Museum of Art curated by our friend Betti-Sue Hertz that features artists who are using animation.

I talked about Robert Breer, who was a huge influence on me when I was studying animation in college in the 70's, George Griffin who was my teacher and boss (my first job after graduating from college was as the teaching assistant in animation at Harvard- bratty Harvard students turned me off from teaching for about 25 years) and Luca Buvoli, an artist who has done a great Not-a-Superhero series that seemed particularly appropriate for Comic-Con. Calvin was the moderator extraordinaire, Betti-Sue talked about some of the artists in her show, Lisa Cartwright of UC San Diego showed clips of early animation, and her 11 year old son Nilo Goldfarb showed some of his Flash animation projects.

Here is a picture of the event.



Many more pictures of Comic-Con.

Peony Drawing and More

This summer I have a few projects I want to finish up that involve drawing. I'm not a bad draftsman, but I am sorely out of practice. And drawing is like any other language, you have to keep practicing or you forget.

I realized that I could combine 2 of my favorite activities- drawing and watching TV. Every day I do at least one drawing from a paused television screen- thank god for DVR!

Here are a couple of examples, one from Gidget, one from The Four Musketeers, plus one peony. The peony was not on TV, but sitting in a vase in my apartment.

Vacation Homes of the Future

I was interviewed for Creative Time's phone tour of sites where some of their exhibitions took place over the last 30 years. It was fun to talk about my piece at Art on the Beach many years ago, which was a few hundred yards away from where I work now.

Minor Rant: Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum

On Saturday I went to see the Global Feminisms show at the Brooklyn Museum with my friends Ilona, Robin, Martha, Barbara and Kathy. This group has been shushed repeatedly at the Met by guards and other art lovers on another art visiting tour- I guess we are too chatty, but that's another story.

This show, the first in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, irritated me. While there are many thoughtful, beautiful and funny pieces in the show, it is dominated by naked women photos, many of the artists themselves. I have nothing against photos of breasts or bodies of women being tortured, but I wonder why is it that when women control the "gaze", it is always turned back on themselves? It is not the work I saw that bothered me, which is an important part of what is going on now, it was its relative dominance in the exhibition- what about the guys? There was an notable absence of depictions of men, and relationships between men and women (except for a video by Tracey Moffat with "romantic" clips from many motion pictures edited together).

Anyway, this is a brief rant- off to my final graphic design class!

Three Conferences in one Month

I haven't been posting too much lately, it has been a busy time. I attended 3 conferences in one month (with a workshop I organized on the other weekend)- is this a record? Perhaps only for me.

The first conference was the College Art Association- it was in New York, in a huge midtown hotel. Interestingly, I have no pictures of this event (is it a visual meduium? not at the conference level.) I managed to attend many, many panels - my strategy was to go to each meeting for approximately 10 to 15 minutes. Depth is not my thing, apparently, at least when it comes to art discussion.

Next was the fabulous NY ComicCon- second annual in New York. Kate has already posted about this. Not as much fun for me as San Diego ComicCon- but how can you compare the Javits Center in February with San Diego in July (when I am officially on holiday?) It was great fun to cruise the floor with Kate and, as in San Diego, with Marianne and Matt . I also attended the Diva art fair (Digital and Video Art) at Embassy Suites in lower Manhattan with Kathy that weekend- this was also really fun- mostly videos displayed in hotel rooms.

This weekend, I am in Covington Kentucky at SIGSCE. My life has taken an unexpected turn, when the one event of these three in which I am a participant is a conference on Computer Science Education. Chris Stein and I were invited to present our work on our National Science Foundation grant. Chris was not able to attend since his wife just gave birth to their first child.

Aging Superheroes

Anakin Skywalker

View of Cincinatti from my hotel room in Covington Kentucky

Our powerpoint presentation and poster at SIGSCE.

Me and Steve Cooper, guru in Alice programming curriculum, a generous, energetic and smart man. We adapted his curricular materials as part of our grant. Steve was very helpful in giving us feedback, and he also ran a workshop for us last January.