upd8.

october the first 2010. 10h53 am and a friday following a deluge of rain all week—historic amounts of rain in Wilmington. the gray clouds and paled landscape slow time, allowing memories to sift through busy body-shuffles of daily demands. autumn and rain push a personal history through a heavy body.


today opened with an eight miler through ogden park, jumping the many puddles along the way, watching the leaf blowers work the tennis courts dry, dogs splashing alongside owners, each very pleased to be outside. the run was cool, the first time I’ve felt cool in many months, and the wind pushed chills outta arms and ears. then a warm shower followed by some dead and Columbian coffee and now for some drawing.

October third.

I work at a restaurant downtown, and this past weekend was Riverfest, which brings the full spectrum of Wilmington area folks out and about. Sunday evening brought a guest carrying a small dog, a pomeranian or chihuahua, blanketed up to its neck through our front door. "May I help you?" I asked. "Yes. I am going upstairs to the sofa lounge and this dog is a disability assistance dog and she has papers," she said. "May I see the papers?" I asked, finding the whole thing strange and questionable and being responsible, in part, for upholding certain laws inside of the restaurant. "I can show you the papers, and I am not trying to be difficult, but I am a lawyer and you should know that you can be sued for requesting the papers, according to the American Disability Act. All I have to do is say this is an assistance dog and that will satisfy it legally."

She showed me the papers.

So her threat/ caustic reproach got me thinking. . . Most assistance dogs have a tag and a visible vest or harness indicating their status. So my question is: If someone states their dog is a disability assistance dog, and there is no evidence beyond that verbal declaration, do I not have the right to request further documentation? As I work in a public space I should know these things. and I looked it up to discover she is absolutely right. In fact, one does not even require carrying the documentation for the dog. the animal is differentiated from being a “pet” by the designation “assistance animal.” the harnesses are not required, nor can one legally deny service to the individual and their companion animal unless the dog barks or threatens another guest. that is not applicable, however, to the individual; they have the full right to bark and bite at all around.



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Sunday, I awoke at 6am for a cup of coffee before a local race. the run the river 8k seemed just the type of organized run I wanted, a nice road race covering the three bridges and some of downtown along the cape fear. so I ate a clifbar and a banana and headed out with shoes in hand so I wouldn’t wake ky and kas. when I got there, the sun was still pushing through clouds, and the temperature was a crisp 60 degrees. nice. I held the thirty dollar fee in hand, but ran a few warm up laps to see what my body was feeling. chatter from other runners told me that they were not running the bridges, that the course had been changed. a bit of a bummer. . . so the course was my old stomping grounds, my old daily run. with that knowledge i just couldn’t justify a thirty dollar timing chip wrapped around my laces. so to the car I went, stashing my cash beneath the seat with my keys and cell phone—7h31am. locked the door—and a ten mile run took me down the river, through recently flooded front street, across and around Greenfield park, back up fifth then fourth then third then water street and back around front street and the riverfest setup crowds. the final two miles were rainy, and the rain was cold and increasing in intensity until I finished shirtless and cold with my nipples raw and unamused. I fit right in with the riverfest workers smoking while flipping sausages and pushing tarps across trailers to push out the rain.

October fifth. Agony of da’ feet

a nine mile run today, tuesday, with the feet burning on soles and arches, toes feeling stretched out in faster pacing. . . . but a good run, quiet and thoughtful, passing the colors starting to fall from the dogwoods, maples, and the assorted oaks. . . one image made a strong impression: was a leaf, faded and degraded and twisted, mirroring the fading boneless bird decaying beside. . . how they referenced each other, mirrored in a gruesome way, as a strange visual poem. brown of torn tired leaf, brown of bone-webbed bird.

to run in autumn; wild geese push necks southward.

October the seventh, thursday. eight miles, a route not done in a while, from the northeast library to the coast, to shell isle and back up through summer rest trail towards the completion of the oblong loop.

Fernando Castro Pacheco amazing Mexican art.

October 11 2010.
mountain excursion passing through Asheboro and the state zoo and then black mountain/ montreat area. . . a superb night & meal at the laughing seed in asheville put the family’s mind at ease for a few days. running trails throughout montreat, new parks and accordians in Asheville, and the downtown rowdies of Asheboro punctuated the weekend, making for a some terrific scenery on all potential interpretations. more to come. . . .

floods, simple updates & an essay in italics.

sept 27th 2010.  bach’s cello suites. rain of astounding force battered Wilmington for 12 hours straight, all through the evening and night until dawn this morning. the day remains grayed, misty, soft. languid.

evening has fallen—nighttime with the black clouds (red and orange on television maps). this is the perfect night for a french press coffee with lots of sugar and some cream and a madura cigar and a seat on the porch. . . . read some old kerouac or miller for kicks and just veg out. a hemingway short story. . . the smoke and the read. ahhhh. but how will the nine miler in the morn feel after a forty minute smoke? and how enjoyable will it really be, once smoke is burning eyes and awkward fit in mouth and just sitting outside in the dark fighting mosquitoes and smoking up money I could use for a new comic or a pair of calve compression sleeves. . . a romantic impulse quickly waning into a self denying monologue.  the internal preacher. 

looking for runs, I found a very welcome addition to 2011’s roster: the run for ray event website is now up and official. http://www.runforray.com/ it is a marvelous knee grinding, chest scorching, mind-pumping, vision blurring, scenic run that you should drive/ fly/ hitchhike/ trebuchet to get to. . . . seriously.
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tuesday. sumatran coffee. kent williams.  seven miles downtown from nam’s home through greenfield park (no dog chases), through front street and some flooding across flat areas. . . no gators. a good run though it started slow and forceful, fitful. pushed through two miles to arrive at a comfortable state, somewhere around an 8 minute mile, and maintained that with some marley. geese are starting to pass through in migration.

September 28th 2010. wednesday. kyote and I watch the rain, for three solid days now it has rained, and the total is approaching now, maybe exceeding, two feet. . . we are considering getting out of the house for a minute, finding something interesting at the library, maybe running by a comic book store or townhouse art supply. . . . tomorrow is a tropical depression watch or warning and the whole of the southeastern nc is in flash flood warnings. meanwhile beethoven’s piano trios (performed by the beaux arts trio) trickles adagio from the studio, and tubes of paint line up by the palette and consider images to come. drawings fill various cheap sketchbooks, free association, automatic drawings mainly with minimum references in mind during the act. but a figure normally emerges. bodies dominate my visual repertoire, the narrative form like a visual biography, touchable kissable music.
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essay for bodyfalls show last year:


hero-joker



falling dancer, posing nude.

bodyfalls: a selection of paintings by jay edge.
Caprice Bistro
june ’09.


new images painted on pre-existing images. often the figures are inverted and frequently falling. disoriented. free fall: free. I work with the figure because I love the human experience—my own and others—and a body is the ultimate testimony of one’s history. the body may be a visual chorus of the soul’s song. . . . or the body can be a defiance of the soul perhaps. . . . anyway, the paintings: a recycling and a refreshing of the canvases as now I am a father, husband, artist, man and struggling in an evermore complex fugue of layers. . . . often the pre-existing images are swallowed & lost in new layers—a history of the surface which is process-oriented (personal), rather than visually declared. while obscured, the evidence is subtly presented in underlying brush textures, rhythms of the current composition, and other idea/ image references. these paintings, as all works and persons, are fugues.


it is a human need & instinct to document, preserve and study history (personal history but not excluding collective history). this is often an anonymous and private experience, an unshared meditation. that anonymity, that silence behind the Now. . . . that your path is entirely unknown to others but for its obscure yield of experience-derived knowledge, that your entire life culminates into instincts unconscious dynamics abstract associations consequences and various manifestations. . . . that our scope of existence could lack a depth of history to most we encounter is such a flattening fact of reality. most of us see scars and cars when we see others. . . the private, idiosyncratic and often tragic paths we have each walked but rarely shared.


to bear witness is somehow foreign and absorbed. tedious.


ultimately the current work is derived from a personal transition of declaring—confessing, absolving, redeeming-- my past. a need to preserve. the residual images are artifacts, subjects of an excavation. . . . traces of nostalgia struggling against the daily surrendering to the complex weave of my Life. a turning away. . . the transformation of solipsist Self.


invertigo.


sometimes referencing dance, grace, classic figurative posing, the figures are meant to be as much visual rhythms or visual mass, body bulk. they are not intended to be narrative, but rather moments: culminating nexus of a life. they are a response to the emotional tides of being a father, husband, man, artist. they are often hurried and overworked, then simplified, painted over, repainted. . . . collage has been used to cover large areas, introducing a mass media reference but also serving the functional (newspaper is cheaper than paint).
my creative process is built on study and work. there is much thought as well as action in these paintings (actionable thought). observation of a painting until a solution emerges, which is then executed, often rapidly, from pre-worked studies. frequently, intrepid painting uncovers the solution, an active labor of paint and canvas and image-reference. the idea: research, exhaust, react/ respond. requiem and renaissance; discover and recover. additive and subtractive methods of image creation/ unraveling build interesting textures, documenting the process of image-construction. evidence of early drawings, early paintings, struggles all remain visible and starkly present. evidence to reduce ego while working, to maintain honest searching and identification with a form or pigment.

invertigo.


aesthetic inspirations include rome, nyc, vast numbers of painters and musicians, and finally Wilmington itself. . . . the cracked roads and parking lots, the multitude of parking decks, the gravity of bricks that is downtown wilmington’s architecture, the abstraction of aging and gravity. dilapidation versus renaissance, a process of reclaiming. . . . broken bottles, broken windows, multicolored parking tickets, farmers market. . . . runs down chestnut or princess or fifth or the boardwalk. abandoned storefronts, thrashed up cobblestone, the mires of water street, buildings held upright by jaundice plywood with scrawled cartoons, graffiti in chemical toilets. . . .


also—the dominance of red is related to the idea that red is the first recognizable color of a child’s perception. large areas of color are also meant to stimulate my four month old son, who spends many mornings and afternoons in the studio beside me.

I hope you enjoy the paintings, and thank you for your interest.
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Ditto.