New Paintings by Deborah Petoskey at Caprice Bistro

Local artist Deborah Petoskey will hang her work at Caprice Bistro for a couple of months, starting the first Thursday of August. While she works in many disciplines, this show will focus on her paintings.

According to her website http://artbypetoskey.weebly.com, she creates art because, “Like breathing in and out, the creative soul finds itself in need of something more.” She appears to be a roaming spirit that wants to explore and expand things. She wants to be intrigued and to intrigue, and thus her art.

Petoskey savors spontaneous moments of paint and enjoys the details of a work. She sees the compositional pulleys move with visual weight, and she balances blocked planes of near-monochrome against charged paint-quilt areas. She gets involved in the nuanced spaces, operating in the smaller frames that converge towards the larger ones. Her process works through and against a sequence of material/idea application, interspersing language with urban & architectural references. Layers of masking offset a build-up of surface, a Benton-like push/pull effect, and she frequently achieves moments of good paint-handling. There is a joy in effect presented here, if somewhat raw. Unity wrestles dissolution as bold linework maps the stages of the canvas. Early Pollock comes to mind, maybe a note of Klee or Mondrian's experimental drawings.

Petoskey's compositions are abstract, whether one focuses on a section or steps back from the painting, and they satisfy in their nonobjective state. The paintings feel natural in their flux. The variety in scale and palette, even style, will allow for several visits throughout the duration of the show. Give them one chance and you'll give them several.

Caprice Bistro will host the exhibit of paintings in the Upstairs Sofa Lounge. The opening will be Thursday August 4^th From 7pm until 9pm.  

an early morning run & brief requiem-

abbey nature preserve was the trail and i beat the quads into a lactic-coma in just five miles and the smoke from northern fires still smells strong and mingles with the new and early humidity and together it makes for a tough cycle of breath.  while the mind was working the body and the smoke was working the throat/lungs, the run was burning the upper legs, a sort of lurching, hard pain in the thighs and hip flexors.  IT bands are taut and unwilling.  gmm is still freshly carved into bone and musclemass and the tears of 26 miles take some time to heal but i am impatient.  so i kept up the run, thinking of the derby 50k for the saturday following thanksgiving, my next big organized run, thinking of the bull run run 50 miler, mt mitchell challenge, trying to conjure goals that might keep pushing one foot in front of the other. . . . i thought of a painting, and did not want to paint.  i was thinking of the fugue of the run, the fact that i've been running forever, at least on some interpretive level. but really i was still reliving the grandfather mountain run, the running around the asu track, the holloway's mountain passage, the personal meaning of the run, the accomplishment of the trial by endurance, my mother's disbelief when i finished, my wife's pride, my own myriad of feelings, but i still did not conquer all of my regrets.  so i continue running such that i may one day outrun the angst.

otherwise i was thinking of twombly's recent death and his reclusive nature, his erratic launches of fresh canvas into international galleries and museums, his quiet studio work shaking the rigmarole and ridicule that makes for the artworld chatter and twombly made marks, read his ancient texts, hiked the hills of greece, bicycled rome with eyes tuned to the elusive ghosts of that geographic nexus, sought a refinement of a private language in a world obsessed with something more generic and PC.  he scratched philosophical passages of colour into the cakebatter painthandling of the 70's art scene, mocked the pastorales of other field painters, followed his own aesthetic from one series to the next.  dissed rauschenberg's more pop-oriented imagery with pre-graffiti psalms.  blooms of love.  the blackboard paintings.  the paper collages.  the rome paintings.  his paintings celebrate the delirium, the manic juggling of the modern psychology, a funneled, infinitely rich, infinitely nurtured, visual curiosity.  his scrawl is some of the most honest, some of the most purely modern work, reaching back through the ages via the collective unconscious, back into a wolfwomb of birth, back into the mire of nonlife, the choking horror of first breaths, the ideograms of new eyes and the cursive of sex-postures. twombly nailed it and i hope his heaven is a heaven indeed.

grandfather mountain marathon.

this was my family sighting at mile 26.15 of grandfather mountain marathon! behind me, the highland games bagpipe and clog, sling blocks of cement or logs, herd sheep, carry broadswords. . . 

my family and i took some time to be family this weekend, driving six hours through severe storms to the blue ridge mountains to plop down with my mom & john (known henceforth as mammie and pa).  pa had prepared homemade meatballs with a meat sauce, ladelled over pasta, and i had my first friday night meal with my wife and son in nine months.  we had tea and stories and a restful evening as the mountains tucked deep in torrential downpours.  heavy cascades continued and the night fell leaden and sleepless as i rolled and twisted before the prescribed 4h55am alarm.  i was a bit wound up because this was to be the morning of my first road marathon, of my first marathon ever.  this was the morning of my grandfather mountain marathon.  and i was more than a little apprehensive about the 3000' of elevation between appalachian state university track and the mcrae fields where the highland games shared the dirt track for the ~450 registrants to complete the work.

the start on the track, fully lit in the predawn green-gray light, wound up one full loop and then spiralled through the gate and out into the boone streets.  runners talked across the leg-warming first two miles until the road clung against the first climb. and the climb was the story for the next five miles. and then down, which was no reprieve as the descent punished quads like a jackhammer and one could feel the femur-bones bending beneath the gravity of the quick descent.  and the run became the work of the run for a while.  clips of music in the mind, brief and truncated; thought-phrases not entirely coherent.  guts lurching inside heaving ribs and the back pushing into the gallop and then the tight-cut roadcurves and the x-slope work awkwardly the musculature of the foot, throbbing IT bands and knees and then a thinning rope of runners bob back up the mountain. shull's mill road.  lucidity would lapse into rambling, then an interesting conversation would start up with another runner, and then the running effort would recommence, quiet and serene, or with silent angst. to transcend.  self-reliance.  to run something that years ago seemed nonsensical and absurd.  mantras reminding us of the goal.  short breaths and short strides.
and the volunteers were top-notch, one group cut think hunks of watermelon as we entered a gravel road.  this steep road would gnaw my guts on the ~3 mile incline to the parkway, and the parkway allowed easy breath with its warm-white mountain laurel and rockstacked creeks and then a small waterfall on the rockface off of 221 into the final five miles of scorched-leg-muscle, staccato bursts of determination, rachmoninoff running, and power-hiking and running onward to grandfather mountain's entrance where the whole thing cut through the songs of bagpipes and ended on the dirt track, my chest heaving against the thinner air and my body unsure of things then the sight of wife and son and my applauding mother standing and elated and proud.  the time clock reads 3h 48m 30sec.

the highland games was the destination, and if shit wasn't strange before you ran 26 miles, try running into the second largest highland games in the world.  i mopped off and changed shirts and walked with the family through the campgrounds while browsing kilts and caps, haggis and shepherd pies, rugby jerseys, rosetta stones.  i then sat, heavy legs and heavy eyes, savoring a freshbaked scone built up with strawberries and whipped cream, lapping hot coffee while watching scottish guys drop bass-thud slams as they wrestled near sheep-herding terriers.  it was a marvel, a strange thing, and the bagpipes played through the fog of midmorning humidity and the final breaths of campfires and we boarded a bus with other runners who were already discussing the next race registration.  madness.

i met some wonderful runners, and i thank them for their time shared on the roads. some very positive spirits embark on these journeys, and i am grateful to get to know them. one was a young man from virginia beach whose father, a diabetic, was experiencing a sugar-drop several miles behind us.  they both finished strong.  another was from charleston, a quiet, lone guy whose bus ticket had decomposed in his running pocket.  i ran early with a guy from cullowhee who ran mostly alone in the trails of western north carolina.  my friend mark sported a deep green kilt. there was the quiet figure on the bus who wore the umstead 600 mile club hat:  he smiled behind his sunglasses, knowing some secret nexus.  and the wiry man talking up the flatlander marathon the next day, starting in downtown boone, and the emphatic nods of agreement as he explained "its really not as hard as you think to do a back-to-back marathon.  just go home and sit in an ice bath and show up tomorrow morning."  sorry i missed it gentlemen, maybe a rain check.

i commend the RD on a fine race and a great course.  the volunteers were admirable and joyful, and they kept me believing in the abstracts that go into something like this. i fully extend my gratitude to their good acts.  a big thank you to the park rangers who kept us safe.  the use of the track at asu was amazing, and the highland games welcoming us onto their dirt track was surreal and dazzling.  thanks to all who brought those logistics into coordinated fluid action.

thanks to my family for hosting my manic ideas and for nurturing them into actionable work.

important to me personally was the start, which was just below the window of my freshman dorm, and the passage of hard miles, the processing of time and choices and life-paths, the meditation of movement, the poetry of distance, erratic, unpredictable, capricious, raging.
near the start, the asu art department, wey hall, just around the bend of asphalt, a longlost thing, but i remember like yesterday smoking in the back door on break from life drawing and drinking a cranberry-apple juice and talking to james and jen and feeling an emphatic promise. an illuminated drive, faith, clean like snow.  the body and soul reeling with the grand architecture of youth and naivitee.  a cathedral of possibility is the young mind.
important to me was the finish:  my family, my pride in accomplishment, my freedom of health, my expansion of self to include new accomplishments.  my stability and the ability to dance within a framework.

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the world will rage against your passions, stripping the mind to a clot of stagnant language, thieves and fifteenth-rate ideas, imposing dimensionless servility, but you must rage back.  rage with the joy of the divine.  rage with the passion of survival.  rage with legs and eyes and mouths and hands.  rage with love.

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privately, i kept thinking of this as "my little mt mitchell challenge."  that was the run i read about some six years ago that started my fascination with long distance, the mad ascent of mt. mitchell for twenty miles, touching the february summit, then turning back for a twenty mile descent home. a grueling, man-versus-nature-versus-man, raw-ass running, ascetic-gut challenge.  it is a very difficult run to acquire entry into.  but, if not entry into the ultra, there is the junior version, the black mountain marathon, which might just be the thing.  there is also the derby 50, the bull run run 50, and the umstead 50/100. . . . who knows.  for now, back to the daily runs, the scribbles, the coffee stain drawings and the rebuilding of layers of muscle.
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a used bicycle at a local shop-- 450 dollars.  worth it? i dunno.  ~2007  allez sport.   the current consideration.

so, above is the newest addition to my considerations:  a road bike.  an interest in cycling has dawned as the summer heat erradicates my energy, draining me empty on 40 mile weeks.  thus far i've ridden a 1997 fuji finest, a 2010 giant defy 3, the above allez, and i am going to try a surly cross-check if i can find a 56" frame.  cycling seems like a great way to cover distance when time doesn't permit the slower pace of running. we shall see.

a catch up of things, 6.19 to 6.23.

6.19 sunday was a nine mile kick across summer rest and the loop and the shorter run left a long morning ahead to chill with the family. restful hours, re-creativity and leisure, they rejuvenate and rebuild things, burn out the debris to a clean working space, push the mind out of the miles. 

lazy afternoon flipped across a scratchy color documentary on de kooning. . . interviews, clips of his studio, the man working against canvas and pigment, de kooning in old age sweeping a liner brush into final melodic ribbons of color as his own mind-knots unraveled. Paintspattered overalls. Alternating color and b&w shots. Stills & moving images. Sag harbor and the door paintings. The charcoal and pastel drawings. The transfer sheets. De kooning's thin toothed smile, smoking into bent fingers.

Eventually all minds fade to music or paint or quiet.

The mileage is struggling against the heat and I am torn down by a 40 mile week that should be more manageable. Aside from the physical work, mental preparations begin to buffer against the travail of the grandfather mountain marathon. The angst that cancers into efforts comes earlier and harder and the endurance escapes the legs via negative self-talk.  Exertion is lost to unwillingness. To continue the legwork is a process of transcendence, and it is a process of being present, a fugue of self. 
meanwhile a six miler at blue clay today with my native american blood going and I felt playful, felt dialed in, hopscotching roots with bursts of speed (smooth but short passages), a fun run, slow and easy, shade and the stillness of the woods, breath, the metronome of things. Was refreshing to just run, turn the garmin outta sight, feel my body doing the work again, to be the center of a moment, the center of a movement. To run with the freedom that started the passion.  

unaware of the numbers.

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A fantasy.

One day I will live in rome and I will bicycle from modern districts to ancient ruins and I will have a notebook in my pants where thoughts and images collect.

Rimbaud never did this and as commemoration of my 37^th year I am running umstead for 37 kilometers which translates to 22.9 miles and it will be slow and easy and gnarly and miserable.

Ash, smoke, charcoal & the aesthetic of franz kline.

37y, 37k (rimbaud never did this.) a writeup regarding a long trail run in umstead park. . . .

well it was an alarm at 4h44am then abrupt silence but for the sound of percolating coffee and then two hours through dark and dawn to umstead park, and it was 7h34am on sal's branch trail and it was a running narrative of promise and voltage and impact and smooth running, fueled and wholly into the act, and then I searched out the head of the preplanned loop beginning with sycamore loop trail and wrapping the guts of umstead with company mill trail and sycamore trail was a beautiful thing of roots rocks river banks where granite piled like broken plates and little trickles of water entangled with the thrusts of squirrels, clouds of dragonflies, and then the run evolved towards a narrative of solitude, of blues, of bees, and the trail jutted quartz and exalted a young buck chewing air and wrapped hills and the terrain sort of reminded me of the runs in georgia and certainly one of the most engaging trails i've run and the loop knotted back into itself at an intersection of graylyn trail and north turkey creek trail and while reading the trail map I realized I was swarmed by bees. . . true annoyance became anger as those fuckers kept up for at least two miles, new troops added occasionally as one beelines my neck or shoulder or just levitates in my face, eye contact with a thousand eyes, and I was trying to read my now-soggy map and my run became a narrative of lost miles and disorientation and anxiety, of ongoing lost miles and then it was the mad-dash of another trail runner bringing my sluggish quads to a crushing awareness of fatigue, despair, thirst as i'd intended on refilling my bottle at the nowlostcar and the next two miles were plodding along, speed-hiking at its worst, unnerving and hollowing. But back to the blues and man I was thinking of the blues of my life as this was a birthday celebration run and thus retrospect was due and the blues came to mind starting with picasso's blue period, my tubes of pthalo or french ultramarine (red or green) or cobalt or cerulean blue and the minimalist palette of poverty and frequent uprootings, and then m. davis blues, kerouacs smokey blue word-notes, mingus and his blues and roots, monet's false blues as water lilies spin beneath light-flecks of sky, a chapbook I wrote fifteen years ago called “bluesin it in deep winter gray,” the blue of yves klein, the pasty blue extremities of freud's figures, the blue eyes of previous lovers, the blue eyes of a wife, the blueblack cheeks of sleepless years, blue horror of struggle and insomnia and terror and the blue book. Back to the bee swarmed intersection, the bee swarmed intersection now bee-free as they were spread all across my route like the bread crumbs of fables and I now know where the world's bee population has concentrated itself, but turning into the trail with my bearings intact, i kicked 'til i reached the car, grabbed a yogurt and gulpedgulped water and caught back up to my body's needs, eased back into the woods for one more three mile loop on sal's branch and that was that as driving home through raleigh traffic and dead kennedy's and marley and the pleasant fatigue of 17 miles behind me with who knows what ahead other than a shower and the evening's shift and I can honestly say that my efforts on the run held poetic parallel to those of my life, that the run served as a physical metaphor for the endurance of my 37 years, and in just being there, in the woods, running alone against mind and body and soul and time and running with Nature and God and Shewolves and Life and Mooncycles and noise and running just felt right and natural, a place where work is grateful.  And getting to a point where my life feels natural, aligned, synergized, has always been the goal.   

a write up regarding the Brooklyn Arts Center.

Brooklyn Arts Center at St. Andrews is a space that Wilmington needs, has needed. The renovated church is historic, roughhewn, storied, and renewed, like Wilmington itself. Located on fourth street in the Brooklyn Arts Community, St. Andrews has undergone years of efforts and talk towards a recycling into contemporary use; a local finally made it happen. The renovated church now offers an elegant option for many functions.

1. Appearance
   Since its construction in 1888, the grandeur of the space is preserved by much work and love and time. Massive angles and receding curves offer a musical structuring of the space, working an American gothic style. The edifice is a vertical launch whose size constantly surprises. The facade is a mosaic of earthtoned bricks culminating in a grand spire looking towards the Cape Fear river and PPD and downtown. The inside was gutted into a vast & versatile openness with a stage/altar/focal point at the front. Massive pours of light enter the tri-paneled windows during the day, warming the white-toned walls against the fine-craft woodwork. Attractive ironwork hangs from the ceiling, housing the lights to illuminate nighttime functions. One has a sense of the American majestic that Southern communities sought, the residual influence of European cathedrals prominent and obvious, permeating with the American handicraft and emotive marvel that was a 19^th century blend of faith and craft.
   
   
2. A brief history
   Defiantly chic and elegant, the Wilmington landmark remains august after years of decay and neglect.  St. Andrews was a dominant church of the area for a century, serving for religious rites and community functions. Down the block is Goat and Compass and Acme Arts, and near that corner was a man whose memory of the space included his mother's funeral. He reflected on traveling from NYC on holidays to visit his family, and attending the church on those occasions. The neighborhood was once a vibrant and prominent community before succumbing to economic struggles and failing to corresponding blight.  The space has always been an important part of Wilmington.
   The original stained glass of St. Andrews was removed some time ago for preservation but I remember its partially boarded state, a patchwork of gorgeous pigmented glass and deplying panels of wood. This condition preceded its current hipness, when shit was degenerate and undesirable. Fourth street was rough and inaccessible up until seven/eight years ago, and on the cusp of transformation a handful of artists rented a warehouse caddy-corner from St. Andrews and installed a stainless steel bar and named it Art Asylum. Painters and artists worked in the partitioned space, threw a few parties, and we even had a broadway-styled musical debut there. A flower in blight, we survived for a while.
3. A personal account.
   I remember breaking from painting and sipping coffee while watching the derelict foot traffic on Christmas 2002. The rusted fire escape to the front door of Art Asylum was frequently riddled with trash. The arts council housed below was anonymous and bunkered. I would have never predicted a resurrection of the neighborhood into something so revitalized and beautified. Certainly I would not have guessed that I would stand on an air-conditioned balcony to watch Galactic perform in that trashed building across the way, impressed with the design of the building, the acoustical tightness, the clean state of things, the grand light as sun set, the hardwood freshly varnished and worn in that charmed and comforting way old things can be. And I am grateful for the work and determination that went into putting Brooklyn Arts Center back into use.  It fills a vacuum in our community, connects something vital in our local patchwork culture.

check them out at http://www.brooklynartsnc.com/ where you can see pictures and get ideas of their offerings. 

early june morning.

Woke up with reflections of miro, his spanish gardens & basque colors, his pastorals with the rich furrows of land anchored by plastered homes made of clay hands, and miro was painting the wondrous wisdom of the Peasant in his sundrenched canvases but then his metal sculptures appeared, les oiseaux of starlike appearance, a songful launch of cosmic form, the bird like a feminine hand arching into a stream's current (miro was sculpting the bird's song as much as the bird's appearance: the birds presence). miro's large blue paintings (heroic & grand if not tragic and suffering) and the genitalia/farmanimals becoming constellations (earth and her fragrant needs) and the amorphic swells of shape that reference any organic being or no organic being. irving penn's portrait of miro featured his sunleather hands of thick-muscle gentleness, a painter's hands maybe but hands accustomed to work, a slight sepia behind the silver gelatin tones of the print. 

i swallowed coffee before lacing the salomons and heading out to blue clay trails to run a loop of six miles where i fell into the terrain of the earth and pushed up and leaned in and acquiesced to the trail's demands which were many. . . blue clay trails are smooth, fast, yet remain technical with a lot of humps and jumps and the roots are still prominent; speedchess for the feet. the trail engages the body as the dank smell of trees baking and the shifting light of a trail engage the mind. 

running roots while contemplating a painter and his work. different seasons call for different communions.  sometimes we commune in paint, or physical movement, sometimes patient quiet, sometimes ravenous excess. sometimes we are simply autonomous roaming beings, delighting in an angle.

schumann, beethoven, mingus, a spontaneous essay.

i was listening to the radio with kyote on a wednesday afternoon.

schumann was a fucking mess but when you hear the throaty clangor of his piano clashing against vivace strings like german tongues barking into a venetian night, when you hear his pianoforte syncopation lull then jar against melodic blackforest birdsongs, when the angst of his late compositions tear into something deeper than ears or mind to furiously dazzle, you realize his music was sincere and perfect. Languor and anarchy collide in schumann.

he died in an asylum in 1856 at 46 years of age and was still a fucking mess after a suicide attempt two years before. his ambition of becoming a concert pianist was promising as a student- schumann possessed equal proportions of talent, determination and technique- but the dream collapsed when his hand was worked by a machine of his own devising. The function of his invention was to increase the reach & strength of hands but it instead caused irreparable damage.

(there are other theories explaining the demise of his hand. One theory includes a botched surgery to separate ligaments. Another theory proposes faulty coordination of the hand to be an effect of mercury poisoning, mercury being a popular treatment of syphilis at the time. no one really knows but these theories all convey the slan of romantic conjecture unless, of course, you were schumann living through the raw experience, prior to the fauxfinish of a retelling, the ornamentation of myth, the gaudiness of an orator's language. . . the irony of perception and recitation and the mongering that occurs.)

schumann's a composer whose work I know more from his influences (schubert, beethoven) , his influencings (schoenberg, lizst, brahms), than his own actual compositions. but the abrasive ironwork, the bone-hammer of his piano concerto commanded attention and research and then the parallels to other artists start emerging.  

ie: the late voracious pianoworks of schumann compare in emotional texture to beethoven's final works, the hammerklavier and even the antimelodies of the grand fugue quartet. the syphilis connection to schubert offers a simple correlation in both's relatively young death after a prolific period of work. How all three suffered the torture of audio hallucinations becoming “angel songs” and then degenerate noise- cacophonies of unsound mine. I think of mingus, mingus the composer who preceded mingus the photographer. Mingus who preceded the bedraggled figure evicted from his apartment, bass-less and baseless, the tragic clown of his own musical selfportrait. Schumann was a man of hardedged suffering in a long line of them.

all in all schumann is a powerful orchestrator, a titan of the language of pure sound, a man whose mind swelled like a hornet's nest in a storm while spinning out an opus still marveled over today. . . a vessel dissolved by the power of the very acid it contained, like a narrative, like a nautilus, cantor's aleph, like a love or a lust, a shard of music in the afternoon sipping coffee with an orange scone.