Posts from — February 2009

Ran over to Mass Art Paine Gallery (how apropos!) to see the R. Crumb Underground exhibit, which was written up recently in the Phoenix and the Globe.   This exhibit kicked off two years ago at the Yerba Buena Center of the Arts, and has been making the rounds from city to city, and finally seems to have drifted into Boston on a Greyhound bus, clutching an old leather bag of 78s and sinsemilla buds.

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On my first trip to China, in October of 1990, I entered from Hong Kong by rail to Guangzhou Station, then bought a ticket on a flight to Kunming for the following morning.    I was staying at the Camelia Hotel , then a backpacker’s paradise, with a huge co-ed dormitory and easy access to various transportation routes.  At that time, the entire Hong Kong women’s volleyball team was staying there, after having competed in the 1990 Asian Games.  What a deliriously stimulating dorm room that was!

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Attending Antonio Di Mambro’s lecture last night at Boston Public Library, it was amazing to see the giant crowd that packed Rabb Lecture Hall.  Who would have thought that an urban planning talk — stoked with dire warnings and gloomy facts — would bring out such a vibrant cross-section of the city?  It is almost as if, after thirty years of vapid hand-wringing and self-gratifying acts of “green” living, the mass of architects, planners, designers, and technocrats are beginning to realize that if they do not actually change the way America is built starting immediately, that our cities are literally going to fall apart.   Cities can only take so much pillaging by the greed heads, then they go belly up.

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This year’s Boskone had a stellar line-up of artists, including the likes of Donato Giancola, Daniel Dos Santos, Omar Rayyan, Dave Seeley, Bob Eggleton, Ruth Sanderson, Alan Beck, Margaret Organ-Kean, Stephan Martiniere (Artist GOH), and others!  (Greg Manchess participated in many of the demos and panels as a member of the audience.   Greg Manchess and Rick Berry were also hanging around.  Sophisticated crowd!)   Art Director of Tor Books, Irene Gallo, was a Special Guest, too.  This made for a really art-centric program, which, in my opinion, was excellent!   Not only were there five art demos, but there were three panel discussions about art techniques, one dedicated to graphic novels, one about science fiction cover art design, one to care and restoration of original art, one about this year’s Master Class workshop, and another panel in which the artists interviewed the art director.

As Gallo pointed out in one of the panel sessions, “it’s amazing when you consider that these artists are in high demand in painting workshops, where memberships cost hundreds of dollars and are always sold out.   And yet, they are all here at Boskone, for three days straight, teaching, painting, and sharing knowledge at a fraction of the cost.  Someone really needs to get the word out!”   If this trend continues, Boskone will be the premiere low-cost concentration of SF artists, that’s for sure.  Considering next year’s slated Arist GOH is John Picacio, things are still looking pretty good…

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Yikes, just home from Boskone…and the table is piled with loot!   Working on my notes for the con report, so stayed tuned!

Yes, I knew her way back when…   That is to say the original sproutling.   Here we are in the artist’s hip pad, with me sporting my usual fantastico look!

Now my daughter, Nuie, has launched her first solo art show at Backstage Studio Productions in Kingston, New York.    The website is out of date, but they actually are hosting the show this month, and held the gala opening last Saturday night, February 9th.   Nuie somehow managed to sell 9 pieces on the opening night!    Way to go, Nu!

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Boys, it says here that GoogleMoon is buying up all the prospecting claims from Tycho all the way over to von Braun.    With the kind of muscle those guys are bringing in, our little stake will be washed up.  I’d say we need a new racket!

Thinking about Master Sheng Yen prompted me to run back over my own history of attempts at meditation, which dates back to the early 1970s and takes a ragged course up to the present day.  It occurs to me that even without touching on the teachings themselves, just a brief note on the course of events might be an amusing trip for those of us who took similar journeys, or who might not have been born yet.

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The parting message written by Master Sheng Yen to all of us:

Grown old while busy with trivial matters,
Shedding tears and laughter over emptiness…
But in the beginning there was no I,
So birth and death can both be tossed aside.
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