Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 178 (Novato)

Here is the third of the four collages I made using material I printed at a recent class I co-taught with Suzanne Jacquot at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art. All four use the pattern of circles as a basic element.

This is Untitled Collage No. 178 (Novato). April 22, 2017. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, collage. Image dive 23.7 x 31.9cm (9.2 x 12.5 inches). Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, visit my collage website at: http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/

Books I'm Reading: The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece

Eric Siblin's The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece (Grove Press, 2009) was a birthday gift some years back. I should have picked it up sooner. It was a very entertaining read. As the title suggests, it's a look at what today are among Bach's most famous compositions, the suites for cello, through the lens of Pablo Casals's relationship with the music (he was their early champion in modern times) and through the author's research into that relationship and into the history of the original manuscript of the suites (which remains lost).

Despite their fame today, the suites were largely forgotten not too long after Bach wrote them, and when they were played, they were usually considered exercises rather than music to be performed on stage.

Much of the book is biography, sketching out details of the lives of J.S. Bach and Pablo Casals (the book looks at how a young Pablo Casals brought the cello suites new attention; Casals was largely responsible for establishing them as concert pieces)—but much is about the music itself, the chapters and the book laid out out in a pattern that mimics the structure of the suites. It's a bit frustrating that you can't hear the music as it's being discussed. This book could be very nicely adapted to the screen, becoming a mini-series with an episode devoted to each of the suites, the music in the soundtrack. Well written, well researched, and engagingly written. Highly recommended.

Rain: A Little More Rain in a Record Year

The 2016-2017 rain year ends on September 30, but we rarely get rain in June, July, or August, so, by the end of May, the annual rainfall total usually is pretty clear. This year has been unusual. We got more rain than ever before recorded in Santa Rosa since record-keeping began in the 1880s, and today we got 0.3 inches of rain in the first week of June—not unheard of, but unusual. It started late last night and it's been misting pretty much all day. That brings our total at my location in Santa Rosa to 55.30 inches and the first rain since April 19.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 177 (Novato)

I co-taught a class with Suzanne Jacquot at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art back in April. My role was mostly showing how I make the monoprints that become raw material for my abstract collages. This is the second of four collages I made from monoprints that came out of demonstrating for the class. Suzanne had brought a pile of cardboard sheets with circular cutouts and these made interesting prints. All four of the collages from Novato use images made using the cutouts.

This is Untitled Collage No. 177 (Novato), April 22, 2017, Acrylic on paper (acrylic monoprint), collage. Image size: 35.8 x 25.2cm (14.1 x 9.9in), matted to 20 x 16 inches. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, visit my collage website at: http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/

Books I'm Reading: The Great Dirigibles: Their Triumphs and Disasters

A Dover publication of a text originally published in 1957, I picked this up somewhere long ago and finally read it over a recent weekend. John Toland's The Great Dirigibles: Their Triumphs and Disasters is not very well titled. It would be better called The Great Dirigibles: One Disaster after Another, as the author spends little time talking about the successful flights of these once-great airships. The book is mostly a telling of how some of the most famous of them met their ends—in great detail, based on eyewitness accounts. If nothing else, this book makes it clear just how fragile and dangerous dirigibles (especially hydrogen-filled dirigibles) were.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 175 (Santa Rosa)

Having just written a brief post about one of my recent collages (Untitled Collage No. 176 (Santa Rosa)), I realize that I skipped posting one I wanted to show here. This is Untitled Collage No. 175 (Santa Rosa). Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, collage. April 16, 2017. Image size: 27.8 x 17.3cm (10.9 x 6.8in). Matted to 20 x 16in. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, visit my collage website at: http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 176 (Novato)

The first of four collages I made recently from monoprints I did while co-teaching a class at The Marin Museum of Contemporary Art. This is Untitled Collage No. 176 (Novato). April 22, 2017. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, collage. Image size: 23.6 x 32.8cm (9.3 x 12.9in). Matted to 16 x 20 inches. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, visit my collage website at: http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/

Art I'm Looking At: Chris Beards—Sculpture at Paul Mahder Gallery in Healdsburg (through July 15, 2017)

Chris Beards And After opening reception, Paul Mahder Gallery

The Paul Mahder Gallery in Healdsburg opened an impressive show of new sculptural work by Santa Rosa artist Chris Beards last night (May 27). The artist was in attendance, along with many of the North Bay’s best artists, gallerists, and curators. I say sculptures—and they are sculptures—but all the pieces are wall-hung rather than freestanding, and they are dramatically lit, casting complex shadows on the white walls almost as interesting as the art itself.

Chris Beards, Siege (2017), detail

The show comprises about 12 pieces made from steel—mostly formed from sinewy, twisted strips or wrinkled sheets of steel—mummified in paper. Beards works by encasing steel armatures in multiple layers (sometimes as many as 20 layers) of paper bonded to the metal with thinned glue and other media. The paper and glue layers are then heavily worked. The layers are sanded, overlaid with more paper and glue, re-sanded, painted or shellacked or gessoed, sanded again and then further overlaid and finished in a laborious process that results in remarkably refined, sensuous, satiny surfaces, suggestive not of the raw steel underneath but of other metals—well-used bronze, smooth-worn iron, patina-green copper—or even softly eroded marble. The underlying steel is present in that it defines form here, but the surface finishes Beards achieves are as important as form. The sculptures have a skillfully crafted look in an age of art that often celebrates the opposite, and they are refreshingly appealing for that. There is something decidedly seductive about the work. You’ll want to touch it—caress it, even. Happily, the artist gives permission to touch the work a little.

Chris Beards in front of Within/Without (2016)

Beards has titled the show And After. A statement on the wall explains that the work is about how memory transforms experience—in particular, about the way time distils raw experience into something softer. The work, Beards says, is about the way our “narrative of the past becomes smoother,” the way the “sharp edges and thorns are softened and dulled.” He speaks of his sculptures not as depicting specific memories but rather as addressing the idea of memory itself. The finished pieces are presented as the softened remains of their underlying rough metal selves. He likens these sculptures to “time-tumbled driftwood or bones” and the metaphor is apt.

Chris Beards, After the Last (2013-2015)

Among my favorites pieces were Within/Without (2016, steel, paper, glue, spray paint, acrylic paint), After the Last (2013–2015, steel, paper, glue, spray paint, graphite, soft pastel, shellac), and Tiered (2017, steel, tracing paper, glue, gesso). The first of these suggests an unearthed artifact—a scrap of an obsolete, abandoned farm vehicle, perhaps—rusted but its surfaces polished as if long-caressed. After the Last is evocative of more organic forms. It kept suggesting to me part of the mummified remains of a frilled lizard, perhaps squashed flat on a roadway, or a fragment of a grasshopper—but the sculpture is again transformed into something sensuous by its satiny surfaces.

Chris Beards, Tiered (2017)

Tiered, my favorite piece in the show, reminded me of centuries-old stone steps worn smooth by the foot traffic of generations of pilgrims (the interior staircase of the leaning tower at Pisa, the steps inside Haghia Sophia, in Istanbul, came to mind) or the much-touched drapery of a recumbent figure on a white marble sarcophagus lid. These are only a few impressions, but Beards’s work is beautiful to look at and richly evocative.  And After will continue at Paul Mahder Gallery (222 Healdsburg Ave, Healdsburg, CA 95448, (707) 473-9150) through July 15, 2017 (although Paul Mahder now represents Beard and will therefore continue to handle his work after the show). Highly recommended.

Art I'm Looking At: Stuart Davis at the De Young, San Francisco

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing, installation view

I've been aware of Stuart Davis since I was a teenager. He's always been among the 20th century American artists I've enjoyed most, along with other early American modernists such as Arthur Dove, John Marin, Charles DeMuth, and Charles Sheeler, but, having just seen the Stuart Davis show now on at the De Young Museum, in San Francisco (Stuart Davis: In Full Swing), I realize that I knew little about Davis the man, that I've never seen much of his early work, and that I've never seen large groups of related canvases by him together in one room.

Stuart Davis, Odol (1924)
Museum of Modern Art, New York   

Walking into the exhibition, one thing struck me immediately: the galleries were largely empty. The contrast with the Matisse/Diebenkorn show at SF MoMA was startling (it's been hard to walk in the Matisse/Diebenkorn galleries at times for all the people). Is Davis so obscure? Perhaps the high attendance at the SF MoMA show just reflects the ongoing power of early modern European artists to draw crowds. I imagine the Impressionists, for example, remain the single most popular group of artists among the general population and that most people attending the SF MoMa show go to see Matisse rather than Diebenkorn. There's a certain irony there. Davis was among the important American artists struggling for recognition in the 1920s and 1930s when US collectors and museums were still very much focused on European art, while American art—particularly modern American art—was viewed with some skepticism.

Stuart Davis, Lucky Strike (1921)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Having never seen much of Davis's early work, I was unaware of his heavy quotation of advertising imagery. His well known later work, with its frequent use of text, is certainly suggestive of commercial signage, but early pieces in the De Young show are much more direct in their use of this kind of imagery. Odol (1924), for example, anticipates Pop Art's direct appropriation of product advertising by at least 20 years. In Lucky Strike (1921), Davis has, in effect, painted a collage of scraps of cigarette packaging. At this stage, the painter had already learned a great deal from Cubism, but his wholesale incorporation of advertising imagery into his paintings went well beyond the occasional, fragmentary quotations in the work of Braque, Picasso, and Juan Gris.

Stuart Davis, Place Pasdeloup  (1928)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Davis spent a year in Paris, in 1928–1929. The look of his paintings suddenly changed. Oddly, the influence of Cubism seems less here in the city that gave birth to Cubism than in his earlier work. Davis's Paris scenes are blocked out in flat planes of color overlaid with simple black outlines that depict cafés, storefronts, street lamps, and architectural details—although details, in general, are comparatively few. The work is simple, highly stylized. These paintings suggest travel posters or illustrations in picture books for children. The work of Raoul Dufy comes to mind. The De Young show includes several examples from this period, among them the pictured Place Pasdeloup (1928).

Stuart Davis, New York Mural (1932)
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach

Also of interest among the early pieces are the "Eggbeater" paintings (not shown here), these among works first championed by Edith Halpert of the Downtown Gallery. Having recently read Lindsay Pollock's biography of Halpert (The Girl with the Gallery: Edith Gregor Halpert and the Making of the Modern Art Market), it was fun to see the actual paintings. There is a striking 1932 mural of New York as well, which, according to the wall label, was made in response to an invitation from the Museum of Modern Art to produce mural designs about life in America after WWI. Davis's design includes many coded political references (Alfred Smith's brown derby and bow tie, a banana referring to the 1928 Smith campaign's use of the song "Yes, We Have no Bananas," and a champagne glass turned on its side (upper left) referring to the candidate's support for the repeal of Prohibition, among others).

Three compositionally related works

The show would have been worth seeing just for these early works, but there is a good selection of later, more familiar pieces, including several "sets" of compositionally related works mounted side by side that illustrate the way Davis repeatedly drew on his own canvases to create variations in the manner of a musician improvising variations on a theme. Davis was a jazz enthusiast and thought of his working process as being akin to jazz performance.

Throughout the show, and particularly in the later sections, I was struck by how strongly Davis's canvases suggest collage; most are very easily imagined as pasted paper cutouts. Some of the busiest pieces, such as The Mellow Pad (1945-1951) are notable also for the way Davis covers the entire canvas with color and form in a way that flattens and de-centralizes. He creates a dynamic overall pattern with almost no part of the image more important than any other. Here Davis would seem to have anticipated Jackson Pollock's drip paintings by at least a couple of years in his use of space if not in technique. Stuart Davis: In Full Swing, through August 6, 2017 at the De Young, offers much to see and much to think about.

Stuart Davis, The Mellow Pad (1945-1951)
The Brooklyn Museum

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Serendipitous Art: Rust and Red and White (May 17, 2017)

Rust on a pole painted red and white looked like art to me. Unintended art, serendipitous art.

For more unintended art, see my blog Serendipitous Art.

Wines I'm Drinking: Three Rosés from Grocery Outlet

Two of three rosés I picked up recently at Grocery Outlet were worth going back for more. I tasted the 2015 Head High North Coast California Rosé, the 2015 La Domitienne Sur le Sud Vin de Pays d'Oc, and the 2016 Comtesse Florence Côtes de Provence Rosé, all picked up at the Santa Rosa Grocery Outlet store. Brief tasting notes follow.

2015 Head High North Coast California Rosé: A very pretty, medium-deep amber-rose—by far the deepest in color of the three wines. Although it seemed a little distant at first on the nose, it offered hints of strawberries and caramel—or, more precisely, something that put me in mind of creme brulée. Rich and fruity on the palate, with toasty notes. Bold, highly extracted berry flavors, again with a toasty component. The fruity sweetness was nicely complemented by brisk acidity on the mid-palate, and there was a tart brightness that extended onto a longish finish. Ripe, rich, fruity, but dry and well balanced with acidity. A very bold, California-style rosé. Not subtle, but, in the right setting, the sort of wine that's far too easy to drink too much of. Still available as of May 23, 2017 at $4.99 a bottle.

2015 La Domitienne Sur le Sud Vin de Pays d'Oc: This is a 50/50 Grenache/Cinsault blend from the Vin de Pays d'Oc appellation—one of those exceedingly pale, light, southern French rosés that can be either quite bland or surprisingly flavorful. The La Domitienne was on the bland side, although even this one wasn't entirely uninteresting. Very pale pink. Not much on the nose. Slightly fishy at first, as these wines often are, but that dissipated. Light and not unpleasant on the palate and with a somewhat interesting savory flavor on the finish—a finish marked by light, grainy tannins and a delicate tartness. Acceptable, but not interesting enough that I felt compelled to go back for more. Probably better with food. Apparently sold out as of May 23, 2017

2016 Comtesse Florence Côtes de Provence Rosé: A rather amateurish-looking label, but I liked the wine enough to return to the store for a few bottles more. Another 50/50 Grenache/Cinsault blend. Again, a very pale, watery pink, but this wine had much more on the nose than the La Domitienne. There were floral scents and a citrus component. If pressed, I would have said gardenias and lime, but the floral scent was not quite as sweet and strong as a gardenia. Brighter on the palate than the La Domitienne. With decent acidity, but still a little soft. Quite dry. There's a very attractive delicate strawberry hint on the finish. In general, the palate is reminiscent of the nose—suggestive of perfume, limes, and flowers, and then strawberries. A much lighter, more delicate wine than the California-style Head High wine, but a solid rosé from the south of France suitable for everyday drinking. Apparently sold out as of May 23, 2017

I have no financial or other connections with any producer or retailer of wine. For more wine reviews, use the "Wines I'm Drinking" label at top right

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 174 (Santa Rosa)

A while back fellow collage artist and friend Sherry Parker gave me a stack of handwritten music (mostly done in fountain pen, some in pencil) that had been heavily revised in red pencil, sometimes in blue pencil. I love the stuff. It's seductive. I keep using it despite my usual reluctance to incorporate found paper into my collages. This is my latest (and perhaps last) composition using a fragment of one of these sheets. I've since given the remainder of the paper to other collage artists. Much as I like the music for its gestural qualities and the subtle color accents it offers, I don't want to use too much of it.

Pictured is Untitled Collage No. 174 (Santa Rosa). Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, found paper, collage. April 16, 2017. Image size: 33.1 x 23.9cm (13.0 x 9.4in). Matted to 20 x 16in. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, use the "Art I'm Making" tab to the right, or visit my collage website at: http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/

Books I'm Reading: Libation, A Bitter Alchemy

I don't remember how I acquired Dierdre Heekin's memoir Libation, A Bitter Alchemy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2009), but it's been on my bookshelf for some time. I wasn't entirely sure what it was about when I picked it up a few days ago. Having read it, I'm still not sure I can say. It doesn't really go anywhere. The only linear narrative is supplied by a series of vignettes that deal with the author's decision to plant a vineyard in Vermont and her progress toward making her first wine from her grapes. These vignettes are interspersed between chapters of a wide-ranging text that is held together loosely by its focus on the making of things alcoholic, including wines, but also absinthe, vodka, and Irish whisky, as well as distillation of perfumes and other subjects. Reading it felt like an aimless but pleasant walk through an interesting town. Despite it's rambling structure, it's nicely written (with one or two exceptions—a glaringly questionable fact; she repeatedly refers to the cochineal insect as a "ladybug*" and there are a few unconventionally used words) and enjoyable if taken at its own pace and without expectations.

*Unless, I'm mistaken, the ladybugs (or ladybirds) are true beetles, while the cochineal insect is a scale insect and ladybug larvae, in fact, prey on scale insects.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 173 (Santa Rosa)

A recent collage. This is Untitled Collage No. 173 (Santa Rosa), a small piece (7.5 x 7.0cm or 3.0 x 2.8 inches). April 14, 2017. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, found paper. It uses various scraps of monoprints I've made, a fragment of a doodling robot drawing (the orange and black linear element at the center of the composition), and bits of hand-written music. Matted to 11x 14 inches. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my collage work, visit my collage site at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site.

Wines I'm Making: 2017 First Sulfur Spraying

Today I finally got around to spraying the grapes with sulfur for the first time this season (2017). I'd delayed in part because we had had so much rain that it seemed pointless to spray. Last week I thinned the shoots on the vines and a few days ago I persuaded my neighbor to remove part of the row of cedar trees right behind our little vineyard that has shaded the grapes more and more each year—to the extent that our yields were getting very low and it was hard to keep mildew away even with careful sulfur spraying. The rows are now getting a lot more sun again. I'm hoping that we'll have a substantial harvest this year for the first time in several years. In a related note, I opened a bottle of the 2014 wine. It's very good. The best we've ever made. The 2015 Cabernet will be bottled very soon. We got so few grapes in 2016 that there will be no 2016 Cabernet. I mixed the Cabernet and Sangiovese grapes we did harvest and made rosé from the lot of it.

Books I'm Reading: John Berger's Ways of Seeing

Writer, artist, critic John Berger died in January this year. I had been only dimly aware of him. His death was much in the news, however, and given the attention it received, I thought I ought to educate myself a little by reading the book he is perhaps best known for—Ways of Seeing (Viking, 1973, although I read the 1977 Pelican paperback edition), apparently a companion book to a BBC series about art and imagery Berger hosted in the early seventies in Britain. The book was created in collaboration with Sven Blomberg, Chris Fox, Michael Dibb, and Richard Hollis, although Berger is the author given on the cover.

The text is divided into seven independent essays, three of which are image essays (without words). In a note to the reader, the five authors say the image essays are meant to raise as many questions as they answer. The authors say their aim mainly is to "start a process of questioning."

The first essay considers how knowledge affects seeing. The second, an image essay, looks at how images of women nearly always objectify—at how women in imagery (both artistic and commercial) are usually acted upon rather than actors. The third essay uses words to articulate these ideas about images of women. The fourth essay is another image essay that includes many images of women as objects but also of material abundance—images of possession. The following essay articulates in words what appears to have been intended by the preceding image essay—to suggest that the subject of art, particularly European oil painting tradition, has been closely linked with status as conveyed by pictured ownership. The sixth essay, is another image essay. Most of the images in it are of people, or pets and livestock. The questions it intends to pose are less clear to me here than elsewhere, but again, the pictures seem to suggest we should ask ourselves how imagery reflects sexual power politics and class structure. The final essay focuses on modern advertising imagery, suggesting that the uses of imagery in the European oil painting tradition have not been so different from the uses of imagery in advertising—although the authors see a shift: whereas painting has been about conveying the possession of wealth and status, modern advertising is more about suggesting to potential consumers a lack of possession while offering a way to do something about that lack.

The book is now almost 45 years old. Views change in that amount of time. A lot of what Berger writes seems self-evident now, but I imagine the book was somewhat controversial when new because it so strongly emphasizes the role of capital and sexism in the way we create and consume images. Ways of Seeing therefore seemed mostly of historical interest. The text notes in passing that landscape painting is perhaps the least susceptible genre of painting to the offered class and sex-based interpretations, and the book fails to mention abstract art at all. It's hard to imagine how abstract art could be construed as class-conscious or sexist, but, by omission of the subject, the book does raise related questions. Berger is said to have been strongly influenced by Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, a text I should get around to reading.  

Miscellaneous: Warning!

From a distance, I saw a small lift-like vehicle parked in a supermarket parking lot. I didn't think much about it until I approached and saw the sign attached to it. So many warnings! Some of them seem a bit obvious. For example, I assume the picture of a figure falling from the extended platform (bottom left) means it's best not to fall off?

Art I'm Looking at: Lusha Nelson at the Philbrook Museum

I wish I could go to see this show of photographs by a photographer I'd never heard of before—Lusha Nelson. The Philbrook Museum, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is doing a retrospective of Nelson's work. Apparently, he died quite young—which is a shame, as his career appears to have been off to a very good start, judging from the photographs included. The exhibition catalog is online and worth a look. (Photograph of actress Jean Arther (c. 1935) by Lusha Nelson.)

Art I'm Looking At: Suzanne Jacquot on The Art Wall at Shige Sushi (May 2 through July 2, 2017)

This week is the last week to see the Contemporary Bay Area Photography show on The Art Wall at Shige Sushi (through April 30). Next up is a solo show of recent paintings by Suzanne Jacquot. Opening May 2. Opening Reception May 8, 2017 5:00-7:00PM. The show will run through July 2, 2017.

For more information, visit the Art Wall website.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 172 (Santa Rosa)

A new collage. This one combines a bit of calligraphic gesture with a geometric array—a self-contained diptych of sorts. Untitled Collage No. 172 (Santa Rosa). April 4, 2017. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, collage. 32.2 x 22.0cm (12.7 x 8.7inches). Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my collage work, visit my collage site at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site.

Books I'm Reading: The Wright Brothers

David McCullough's The Wright Brothers (Simon and Schuster, 2015) tells the familiar tale of two bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio solving the fundamental problems of sustained, controlled, powered flight by dint of persistent hard work. McCullough doesn't dwell on the very early lives of the brothers nor does he detail the protracted legal issues Orville Wright dealt with to the end of his life, long after the principles of powered flight were well established. These and other loose ends tied up in a short epilogue. The book mainly covers the period starting from around 1900-1901, when the brothers finally realized that much of the available information about flying was simply wrong and that to fly would require starting from scratch—methodically accumulating data about airfoils and control strategies.

It is remarkable that it took them less than three years to do that; they first flew at the end of 1903. McCullough ends the main part of his narrative around 1910, by which time there was no doubt about who had first made nearly all the discoveries that led to manned flight. I had read before that Glenn Curtis invented the aileron, but McCullough points out that the idea of the aileron had already been suggested by the Wrights themselves in a 1906 patent as an alternative to the wing-warping method of control they initially used. None of the Wright patents was ever successfully challenged.

Having myself lived in Dayton from 1970 through 1977, through middle and high school, it was fun to read about places I know in the city and nearby. Huffman Prairie, where the Wrights first really learned to fly after returning from Kitty Hawk, is now part of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (technically, in Fairborn, I believe). I'm distantly related to the Huffmans after which the prairie (and nearby Huffman Dam) was named. My grandmother is buried in Dayton's Woodland Cemetery, a stone's throw from the Wright brothers, their sister Katharine (who gets a lot of deserved attention in the book), and both their parents.

I knew the Wrights had demonstrated their planes in Europe after the US government initially showed little interest in the airplane, mostly in Paris, Berlin, and later Rome, but I hadn't known that the brothers also flew demonstrations at Pau, in the Pyrenees. The book is full of other interesting detail, but it never seems cluttered. McCullough's style is crisp and to the point. It's a quick read both because of the clarity of the prose and the inherent interest of the subject. Recommended.

Rain: OK, Now I'm Sick of the Rain (April 17-19, 2017)

It's been raining again. And more rain is in the forecast—through the end of this week. Already we've had another 0.8 inches since I last reported. That brings the total at my location for the 2016-2017 rain year to 54.65 inches. This has been the wettest year on record since people began keeping records for Santa Rosa. It's nice that I don't have to water the garden, but a little sun would be pleasant now.

[Update: On the evening of the 19th it started raining again. We got an additional 0.35 inches after I wrote the above. So, we are now at 55.00 inches at my location.]

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 171 (Santa Rosa)

A new collage. A small one (4.4 x 4.1 inches) using some smoky-looking bluish black papers I recently made. This is Untitled Collage No. 171 (Santa Rosa). March 31, 2017. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, collage. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my collage work, visit my collage site at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site.

The Cocktail Glass Collection: Susie's at Night

Susie's, in Calistoga, was the first neon cocktail glass sign I added to what has become a growing collection. I'd never seen the sign at night before. My original photo is a daytime shot. Here's Susie's sign at night. The original post is here.

For more, click the "Cocktail Glass Collection" label at right at the top of the page.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 170 (Santa Rosa)

A recent piece. Untitled Collage No. 170 (Santa Rosa). February 15, 2017. A comparatively large collage for me, this one measures 25.5 x 35.2cm (or 10.0 x 13.9in). Matted to 20 x 24 inches. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, fragment of a doodling robot drawing. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my collage work, visit my collage site at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site.

Rain: More Rain (April 12-13, 2017)

On the morning of April 13 there was yet another 0.90 inches of rain in the rain gauge. That brings the 2016-2017 rain year total at my location in northeast Santa Rosa to a fairly amazing 53.85 inches.

Art I'm Looking At: Newly Framed

Art: A Lot to Think About, Sherry Parker (2012) and London 17 (Old Bond Street), Yoshida Katsuro (1975). Iron Kettle, Japan, 1960, atop a Taisho-era shoe chest, Japan (c. 1920). I just framed the Yoshida, which is the first piece of art I ever bought with my own money (in 1978, when I was 18).

Places I'm Visiting: The House at Webster and Filbert, San Francisco

On my way to see the Matisse/Diebenkorn show again at SF MoMA, I passed what is probably my favorite house in San Francisco—the confection on the corner of Webster and Filbert. The house has just been given a complete make-over and it looks wonderful. It's been repainted a subtle green and all the trim has been redone in white with embellishments in gold and violet. It looks like all the metal domes have been restored as well. This building was being used as a temple of some kind last time I saw it, painted an odd pale lavender and looking a bit run down. It's been transformed. Well worth a visit. Below is a photo of the house before the restoration.

Rain: Record-breaker

Last night and yesterday (April 6-7, 2017) we had another 1.9 inches of rain. That raises our total for the 2016-2017 rain year to 52.25 inches at my location in northeastern Santa Rosa and makes this the third-wettest year on record since records have been kept in the county, since 1888, apparently. The official record for Santa Rosa (monitored at the Sonoma County Airport) is already at  55.51 inches, likewise the third-wettest year relative to the official total, and only about two-tenths of an inch behind second place; we're likely to move up a slot by the end of today. Another 1.5 inches in the coming weeks will be enough to put us into first place, topping 56.06 inches, set in 1889-1890.

[Update: More rain on the 8th. An additional 0.70 inches puts us at 52.95 inches moving us into second-place for wettest year on record, at my location: as noted above, the official tally for Santa Rosa already has us in first place this year.]

Books I'm Reading: On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder

Midnight, Ninotchka, Ball of Fire, The Major and the Minor, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, A Foreign Affair, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, Sabrina, The Seven Year Itch, Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, One, Two, Three, Irma La Douce—Wilder either wrote or co-wrote the screenplay or wrote the screenplay and directed each of these films (and more than a dozen more Hollywood films that are less well known today, not to mention the many screenplays he wrote before emigrating to the United States). It's an impressive list; each is a classic.

Before picking up Ed Sikov's On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder (Hyperion, 1998) I had seen all of these films but I realized quickly as I began reading the book that I knew very little about Wilder's early life—in particular, that he had written so many screenplays. I knew him mostly as the director of the films from the sweet spot of his career—say, from Double Indemnity to The Apartment.

He got his start, however, as a screenwriter, working first in German, following a period as a journalist in Vienna and then Berlin. He had been born near Krakow, in 1906. Twenty years later, he was leaving Vienna for England in the company of bandleader Paul Whiteman, on tour (he had become friendly with Whiteman by showing him around Vienna; as a reporter, Wilder knew the city well). A few months later he left with the Whiteman entourage for Berlin, never looking back. When it became clear in 1934 that Jews were no longer welcome in the German capital, he left for Hollywood, without his mother, who later vanished in the Holocaust. When he arrived in the United States, he had virtually no money and spoke almost no English, but he quickly found work as a screenwriter anyway, often working as a team with Charles Brackett. Leveraging his quick wit, chutzpah, and good luck he found increasingly lucrative work and eventually landed an opportunity to direct. The Major and the Minor (1942), starring Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland, was his first directing credit.

On Sunset Boulevard looks at Billy Wilder as an artist, a businessman, and, eventually, as an exceedingly wealthy art collector gradually left behind by a changing Hollywood. Author Sikov looks at each of Wilder's films in detail, from conception to critical and popular reception, while serving up a great deal of anecdote to create a vivid portrait of one of Hollywood's most important directors. Along the way, Sikov gives us much about the people Wilder worked with and for and the people who worked for him, particularly writing partner Brackett, and performers such as Marilyn Monroe, William Holden, and Jack Lemmon. Wilder was notoriously foul-mouthed and casually abusive and tightly controlling on the set—character traits that not everyone tolerated well. It was his desire for control that drove his ambition to move from writing to directing and that kept him writing much of the material he directed, material that was often on the edge of the limits allowed by the Hollywood production code, a code that Wilder was instrumental in eroding (Wilder's writing was often darker and more sexually suggestive than the censors would allow, particularly early in his career). Long but a worthwhile appreciation of the man and each of his major films and worth reading for the wealth of information it includes about how films are conceived, written, financed, and produced.