Dennis Hollingsworth

Blink

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Ahora Sorta

("Sorta" because I have to delay the post until I find a wireless signal to send it out with.)

Fly, Freak Flag.

What gets blogged on this site? What I try not to do is a "dear diary" kind of blog... what a cesspool of narcissism that would be. I try to keep the topics directed toward the paintings, the artwork. Sometimes the topics are directly pointed toward painting. Sometimes I try to convey the character of the environment in which I am painting. And sometimes the posts may seem arcane as I let my freak flag fly high, trusting my intuition that everything will add up later.

Two examples:

1. Our new bathroom:

We still have several odds and ends to wrap up this project, but the major aspects are in place. We wanted to use tile up to a wainscot and the first question was exactly what kind of tile we would choose. We poked around, considering material like limestone... until we realized that keeping to the 1923 roots of the house. So we conjured the thought of a Raymond Chandler type hotel bathroom, spotting this kind of design in a old restaurant nearby. After that, the choice of green and black was the big design "move".

2. It was a late Saturday night in ChinaTown. I had just taken Stephanie to the airport as she business trips into the FarEast for a week or two. Since returning here from Europe past mid September, we've been fire drilling with home/studio preparation/improvement projects like crazy. And now after the Thanksgiving dinner, our to-do list has been boiling down to reasonable proportions. I'm looking at a short and intense period of time with only painting on the agenda. It's like the feeling just before you run the marathon, feeling fit and vaguely unaware but blissfully oblivious of the pain and stress that accompanies the looming depths of the coming experience.

Belly to the bar at Hop Louie, I opted to sit out the opening nearby. I was moving my mentality to converge in the studio and an immersion into a pool of divergent opinions and ideas didn't seem what I needed at the time.

Joel walks into the bar in a similar mood. He didn't want to talk to other people, he felt out of sorts, buggy. He had been growing a mane of hair on his head for a while, a triumph of hair. He was looking very old Testament. I wish I could do that. But joel had had enough of it. It was time to shear it off. Shear off the history, the baggage, the encumbrances, a worn identity in many ways.

Phil had the equipment next door. I tagged along with a camera:

A new man. Joel had cut his freak flag down a bit.

Admin: Gratitude

1. For some reason, I've been having problems uploading an image to blogpost Steve LaRose's Fish or Cut Bait. Steve was kind enough to blog about this here blog.

Thanks, Steve!

A friend and former school mate, Steve has created a fine blog that is moving along at a fast clip. A nimble painter, he's has always merged the vectors of drawing and painting in an effortlessly vigorous way. Steve is in the Soup of Links to the left, so by all means click on into his rabbit hole.

2. And here's a big shout out to all of you who have sent a holiday greetings this season. Thanks for hanging in there as we moved back into our place in Los Angeles. I hope to find my blogging rythmn soon and surge the blog material back to you all over this internet thingy. You have reminded me of what the purpose of the sentiment associated with the holiday winter season.

Happy holidays to you all!

UPDATE: Here's the image originally intended...

Circus Buchs

A blinkin' report from the Circus of Books opening last night...

Tif Sigfids, Joel Mesler, Mark von Schlegell and Thomas Winkler have just completed a cross country book/music tour. They emerged in fine shape. This show was the capper. I was happy to participate in the festivities.

Professor Winkler's speech here.

Here's Professor Winlker's invitaion:

***
DIE PROF. WINKLER KUNST- UND LITERATURTAGE LOS ANGELES

11.22.05 ? 12.22.05

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

I, Prof. Winkler, am happy and proud to announce you the opening of DIE
PROF. WINKLER KUNST- UND LITERATURTAGE LOS ANGELES, a group show in which
noumerous contemporary artists from Germany, the U.S. and further countries
are showing works of arts.

Furthermore there will be readings, music-acts and presentations of several
new publications, such as the third issue of MEISE, a magazine from German
publishers Verlag H+K, for example.

Visit now!

Yours,

Thomas!

Opening Reception:
Tuesday Nov. 22nd 2005, 7 ? 9 pm
Circus of Books Gallery
8230 Santa Monica Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90046
Open daily 6 a.m. ? 2 a.m.
Tel: 323.656.6533
www.circusofbooks.com
www.prof-winkler.com
www.friedens-siemense.com

Artists-list:

Julia Abst?dt, Angelyne, Bara, Michael Bauer, Heather Brown, Andr? Butzer, Marc Chandler, Mason Cooley, Felisa Funes, Erin Garey, Bruce Hamilton, Dennis Hollingsworth, Marcel Hueppauff, Nathan Hylden, Peter Klare, John Knuth, Jackie Kohn, Maja K?rner, Joep van Liefland, Brett Lund, Rachel Mason, Daniel Mendel-Black, Joshua Raymond Nathanson, Johanna Roetteler, Sarada Rauch, Marc von Schlegell, Frances Scholz, Fabian Schubert, Tif Sigfrids, Henry Taylor, Erin Trefry, Phil Wagner, Thomas Winkler, Ulrich Wulff and many more

***

Yes, let's visit:

The evening started off with Mark von Schlegell's reading from his recently published SciFi book "Venusia". He read a passage regarding hot human/alien plant sex.

Yes. Sex.

This is Circus books, after all.

A simmering snippet:

Had Martha held the beautiful creature in her skinny arms? It was hard to remember. She certainly smelled the real scents of love-making, felt that strange softness in her limbs, under her skin. But her time in the room had been like a series of dreams, and ever since the n-scape had entered her life, it was difficult to know for sure what was real.

She had pulled Johanna into the extravagant bed. They rolled and touched on its wide softness. Quietly, they kissed. Johanna had stroked Martha's hair, kissed her eyes, her ears. She murmured tender blessings to the inside of her ear, kissed her belly and behind her knees. "Sshh." When Martha began to ask her a question, Johanna had placed her soft hand against her lips.

Joanna Zeep's sultry eyes melted into green, feline slits as she received Martha's gaze. Her cascading locks tumbled down back. She opened her legs and lay back as Martha stroked her tender skin. The dark-clipped patch of Johanna's private hair curled before Martha's wide eyes like the crescent o fhte softest, sweetest moon.

It's getting hot in here. Subsequent paragraphs might upset the family parts of this blogger's audience.

It's time to move on...

Tif sang a few fine selections from her recent album. More info at Pruess Press.

There are a couple of covers, the rest of her album is original work, fine songcraft.

I hitched a ride with Henry Taylor. Henry's a CT local artist too, he shows with Sister Gallery. Seemingly a wild man (he paints that way), I got to talk to him and trade personal histories with him on the ride over to West Hollywood. I'll tell you more about him later as I wriggle a camera into his studio (a veritable cave of Ali Baba, full of treasure). He's a fine fellow, a very interesting guy.

He's got this animated way of communicating, street scat "Hey, whazzup my man, you're lookin' fine all dressed up an' everything!" Then, he'll get into your personal space and all, eye contact close. "Whatzyu' up to now?" He reminds me of a Miles Davis, but happier.

As Tif sings, Henry calls out now and again. "That's right!" "You go, now!"

Henry's supercool.

Real, if you will. (And why wouldn't you?)

Afterward, we move in the direction of the bar across the street. Henry mugs about with Joel. Santa Monica Boulevard is nice at that particular segment.

Oh yea, and the art. Let's face it, artwork was close enough to the status of party decoration that we can all admit it to be so. Even so, I'm happy and grateful to drop a (ten year old) "glaze painting" on paper into the mix. (There was no time for anything to be produced for the occasion... and I didn't know that the occasion would be so... down home, let's say.)

I was hanging next to Frances Scholz and Andr? Butzer. Very nice, that. I'll blog a little more on Butzer later.

And to top it all off, Angelyne had a piece in the show too. She made an appearance, after a fashion. The lighting was muy mal for her, so she remained in her car outside so she can sign autographs for the curious and passionate.

And so it went.

Blink: Winkler's Circus

(images from the show to come soon)

Blink (Scooter Sunday)

We went to Elysian Park last Sunday afternoon so Stephanie can get some scooter time.

The weather here in LA has been incredible this week, a second summer.

But this is Elysium after all.

Blink

Our home is beginning to look like one.

Blinking in for the Close up

Although we have DSL in our home, I'm still looking for my rythmn in capturing a reliable signal near my studio. Text rich ruminative blogposts are still just beyond my fingertips... therefore, I'm still blinking.

(I called off the skirmish.)
Blink.

Kind of Red

The studio is small, but there's this nice adjacency of the New Dragon Restaurant's stairs. The entrance is on the other side, so these steps are all mine, in a way. The width is nearly the same as my studio, so a virtual room is figured in the street before me.

(One shot can't convey the passage of time. So here's a reel.)

In short: I can sit there for a long view of painting-in-progress.

Standing outside, I can see (simultaneously enough) a close up and a panorama. The human eyes+brain sees dynamically- a kind of view that a camera can only approximate.

So here I zoom in.

So far, I'm setting up for a skirmish of back and green over red. The big question is what kind of red. It's a big decision since any action off he center of this intention will drive me off into divergent territory. And diverging is bad bad bad... this time.

I mix paint, testing things out.

Converging. Now, that's the way to go.

So...

What kind of red. What kind of red.

It so happened that I had a pepper in my hand.
(I've taken to eating them like apples.)

Well, there you go.

Many kinds of red...
...right in my hand.

Ahora

LA Party

Today, my wife Stephanie sent me an email:

Check this out. Scroll down to the 21st row.

http://www.thecobrasnake.com/partyphotos/wastedwednesday/index.html

Someone at work found this pic in the archives of thecobrasnake.com

(It's Stephanie and our friend Robert Romero.)

I reply:

Can I blog it?

You two look fabulous!

She grants my wish:

Well since I look fabulous, I suppose you can blog it.

The pictures are from the Guess perfume
launch part at the Mondrian Hotel.

Joel's Back

GhostDog of ChinaTown.

(A single position camera shot that works is a marvel. Too often, I've found that the world as seen through a singly shot foto is different from the one I witnessed shortly before taking the shot. And what I see in the many-tiled "organize" function of my iPhoto program seems closer to life. So, maybe I can replicate that here.)

Joel and Tif have returned from a cross country music/book tour with singer/writer Mark von Schlegell and Professor Winkler... future blogposts on their shenanigans to come.

Admin: Mail Call

DSL high speed internet service is still not in place either at home or in the studio. At home, I can surf a neighbor's signal by holdin my laptop aloft at an angle in the corner of the house. In Chinatown, I can surf at the Via Cafe (I'm weighing the value of gearing up a separate phone line and DSL service in the studio) ... I'm still a long ways from my previous two studios where home and studio were cheek by jowl and blogposting was fluid and fast.

I'll soon figure out a path to fluid and fast in our new home/studio configuration. In the meantime, blogging here might seem a bit furtive.

Here's a bit of mail that I have recieved over the past few weeks:

An old Navy buddy writes in:

welcome back to estadas unidos (?) amigo. it seems you are doing a lot of work refurbishing, replanting, remodeling, and not re-laxing. are you taking a break from painting for a while? you better get back to it because the hard labor you're doing is making ME tired! did you get the hardwood flooring down? i expect i will be doing that before long. we have bought a new house in savannah georgia that we will move into in a couple of months and sandy wants to replace the carpet in the 38' x 18' bonus room with wood flooring. can you come over to carry the boxes of wood? i hear you're good at it as long as you can carry the freight up and down steps! :)
contact info for sandy and me

look forward to hearing from you 'wood.

gary

(Gary and the lads on the USS Truxtun took to calling me "Hollywood" back in the day.)

Brent Hallard (link in the Soup to the left) sends out a high five:

hey Dennis fantastic studio, home, wheels, and well, ur ripping it apart. look forward to seeing your work up again and one day our meet. maybe 2006 right?),omio moves the end of this month.
regards
brent

Thanks Brent. I'm looking forward to our meet-up in the near future too.

Artist and teacher Howard Sherman says hello:

Dennis,

I just recently discovered your blog. One of my fellow grad students mentioned it and I've enjoyed hearing about the remodeling job and learning more about your paintings.
I really enjoy the pronounced texture.

How do you get those amazing shapes? What artists are you looking at right now?

Regards,

Howard

The shape-ology comes from the tools and an eye for the natural repose of paint-as-material. As for the artist-in-my-head: Soutine. And Glen Brown's big wad of paint at the MOCA-LA's (Paul Schimmel's) Ecstasy Show.

Here's a shout out to Jim Murray, whose writing style is kinky and mesmerizing:

Hey Denn?..looks like ??urspace is taking its new identit?..looks
great!..always interesting to divorce oneself
(voluntarily..involuntarily..or b? mean needs) from one passion
ie: paint
and..
immerse oneself in another activity,..ie: ripping ,measuring and
hammering be they congruent in nature or not..
cuz then when ya come back up for air..you got some different
perspectives..
I final??went back over to m??space in an old schoolh?use..to figure out
how im gonna heat that sucker and work this winter..cant really?affrod not
to....but after my 25 ?e?r retro of collages last winter ..lifes viscitudes
h?ve rendered my creative ps?che reeling....ha
but I was inspired..we will see..anywa?s..i surfed backward to ??ur and
??ur wifes trip to espana...(m? oldest daughter was born in barcelona)..plus
the delicious pics of ??ur sweet painting done around that time...i wish I
had some hard cop??of some of them , theyd make beautiful adverbial bits in
m??collages..!.ma??e ill figure out how to do it on this gizmo here at
school...but I dug the explicity which with the??were approached and
photoed..almost like the color edit/choice u made of different paintings
anatomy were vestal virgins in a cheap skin mag....
*****
But I dug the recent images of the building gutting too..made me think of
this bit by rilke (from ben ledbetters architectural musings)

"Space exceeds us and translates things:
That the tree's being may succeed for you,
cast around it the inner space, that space
which announces itself in you. Surround it with restraint.
It knows not how to limit itself. Only in taking form
from your renunciation does it truly become a tree."

Rainer Maria Rilke

later, jimmy?murray from hog heaven

Simon Banks

One of the unique aspects of my studio location here in ChinaTown is that I am situated directly adjacent a gallery: "Rental Gallery", a creation of my friends Joel Mesler, Daniel Hug and another (a mysterious third partner who must remain nameless). This is an exhibition space that is for rent for galleries abroad, a great idea, a kind of super gallery... a gallery that shows not artists but galleries... sort-of.

This time, I get to meet the artist Simon Bedwell, a very genial fellow. Here is the press release sprinkled with fotos I shot here and there:

RITTER/ZAMET
presents

SIMON BEDWELL: the adverts

AT: RENTAL GALLERY, LOS ANGELES CA
NOVEMBER 12 ? DECEMBER 17, 2005

OPENING RECEPTION:
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 12, 2005 6 - 10 PM

For their guest appearance at Rental Gallery in Los Angeles,
Ritter/Zamet, London are pleased to present the first solo exhibition
in the United States of British artist, Simon Bedwell.

Since the demise of the infamous guerilla-artist collective BANK in
2003, Simon Bedwell has established himself as a renowned solo-artist.
He was short-listed for the esteemed Beck(c)?s Futures Art Prize 2004 at
London(c)?s ICA and his work has since been exhibited at the Saatchi
Gallery (Galleon and Other Stories, 2004), Laden F?r Nichts, Leipzig
(England Their England, 2005), and at White Columns, New York (Post No
Bills, 2005). He had his first solo exhibition at Ritter/Zamet in
April/May 2005 and is currently showing his latest project, GENTS: A
Melodrama in 2 Acts at Platform in London. Upcoming shows will include
The Triumph of Painting Part 6 at the Saatchi Gallery and a solo
exhibition at White Columns, New York later on next year.

Simon Bedwell is best known for his hand-manipulated trashed posters
and photographs, using text and spray-paint to generate esoteric,
strangely poignant or crass comedic fusions of word and image. The
work draws on the visual vernacular of the streets, employing the
cheap and throwaway nostalgia of posters scavenged from billboards,
bargain bins and thrift stores as raw materials to fragment, divert
and elaborate the original meaning into absurd compositions, poetic
narratives and sardonic allegories of power.

Some of the posters have had their transient commercial directives so
intertwined with the artist's fictional and material alterations that
it is impossible to tell where the original ends and the mutation
begins. But whilst destroying the quick-hit, constantly shifting
message of this ephemeral material, Bedwell also saves it, giving it
new weight and an object-quality that meanwhile retains an echo of the
familiar, like a nagging memory difficult to place.

(from left to right: Peter Frank, gallery owners Ritter and Zamet and Simon Banks)
For further information, please contact Ritter/Zamet, London at +44
(0)20 7261 9510 / +44 (0)7967 001 689 or via e-mail at
info@ritterzamet.com. From November 5 we can also be contacted at the
Rental Gallery at 213-617-0143.

The exhibition address:

RENTAL GALLERY
936 Mei Ling Way
Chinatown, Los Angeles, CA 90012
T 213-617-0143 E info@ritterzamet.com
Hours: Wednesday ? Saturday 12 ? 6 pm

blink

blink

hell to pay

The only news story that has my attention right now is the riots in Europe. Just how bad is it over there?

Here's the end of Timothy Garton Ash's "This is not only a French crisis - all of Europe must heed the flames" in The Guardian:

On all reasonable assumptions, Europe's population of immigrant descent and Muslim culture will grow significantly over the next decade, both through higher relative birth rates and further immigration. If we cannot make even those who have lived in Europe since birth feel at home here, there will be all hell to pay. Six thousand burning cars will seem like nothing more than an hors-d'oeuvre.

Addressing their socio-economic problems is half the answer, but very difficult, since the key is jobs and jobs are being created in Asia and America more than in Europe. The other half has to do with citizenship, identity and the everyday attitudes of each and every one of their fellow citizens.

Being European should be the overarching civic identity which allows immigrants and those of immigrant descent to feel at home. Indeed, it should, in theory, be easier to feel Turkish-European, Algerian-European or Moroccan-European than it is to feel Turkish-German, Algerian-French or Moroccan-Spanish, because being European is by definition a broader, more all-embracing identity. But it isn't easier.

Somehow, Europeanness doesn't work like that. Native-born Europeans can feel French-European, German-European or Spanish-European. Some - we happy few, we band of brothers - even feel British-European. And there are examples of people who definitely do feel, say, Pakistani-British or Tunisian-French. But the direct hyphenation rarely works. To address the greatest problem of our continent, and not just of France, we need to do nothing less than to redefine what it means to be a European.

blink

Last night.

I had finished the prep work in the studio yesterday, working thru dinner and coasting to a stop by the midnight hour. Three final items had to be dealt with: getting my flat files on wheels so I can port them around and keep the studio clear, curtains over the top windows and a dash of paint over the mezzanine and front bottom storefront window (this ain't a store).

(too much detail?)

Anyways.

Here's a interior. No frills. It's a tool.

Here's an in-progress shot.

And the scooter? That's my solution for transportation for our return to LA. I just don't want a car right now. I figure that I can rent a car when I need it. A truck for big hauls, a Budget little sedan for appointments across the city, and a fine pimp mobile when the situation warrants.

My ride is simple, between Echo Park and ChinaTown: thru Elysian Park by one way and thru Sunset Boulevard to Echo Park Avenue by another. Pueblo scale, just like in Tossa de Mar.

Admin

The major monstrous gotta-do's are dispatched and out of the way, we are in the house and I am in the studio. I can finally get some space to blog a bit, even though we don't have dsl yet... I can enjoy the hospitality of the local ChinaTown cafe ("Via Cafe")... and at home, I can act the pirate and steal a little of my neighbor's bandwidth if I huddle into the corner of my house.

I like pirates. The Humphry Bogart type.

OK.

So, welcome back all y'all regular readers of mine. Thanks for hanging around and checking in from time to time. The past month and a half has been pretty tough, and blogging was not an option.

For the newbies: I'm an artist who lives and works in Los Angeles and Spain (Tossa de Mar)... 'nuff said for now (click here for a timeline). The archives will take you to the time when my wife Stephanie and I were living in Dallas (we were there for a year), our subsequent move to Catalunya and our recent return to LA. Thanks for tuning in.

The Comments are still out of commission for the meantime, that's alright by me. I don't miss the insidiously neccessary despamming chores. People chime in via email (the address is to your left in the margin), and that's been working out fine. The comment function will be restored soon enough, reliant as I am for the help of a good friend for this fix. I told him no worries, to do it as his own pace, and I meant it.

So, I'll lope along and blog when I can. I hope to have DSL up in a few weeks and then this blog will be cruising along at top speed.

blink

...blinked twice...

blink

Sunday night was the first time that we had felt as if we have finally moved into our house. A big pile of debris in the back and another huge mound of yard clippings in the front. We're holding off with the final trash haul for a few beats to make sure we get it all once and for all.

BLINK

(Ahora)
I can get a sliver of wifi from a neighbor if I cock my laptop inot the corner of the house like this....