Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Large Collage July 2015


Art done by me in June 2015











The Indian River Review



Just got a couple of copies of "The Indian River Review" published by indian river state college in fl. They published 3 of my photos 2 of which were originally in color but are printed in black and white. The third one of the bird and cat was taken when I was a late teen and is a black and white photo. Would have liked the color ones to have been printed in color,but I guess their budget is low.

Monday, June 29, 2015

Last Postcard of June 2015


Colette Marchand 1925-2015 & Magali Noel 1931-2015



Sunday, June 28, 2015

Last collage of June 2015


Eyes of Laura Mars 1978



This can easily be renamed Eyes of Faye Dunaway since her peepers are the real stars of the film. Never one of our more subtle of actresses, Dunaway who by the way still looked great at 37 acts out the role of a famous and fabulous fashion photographer with basically two expressions, shock and fear both of which are shown through her popping eyes, that at times I thought would fall out of her head on to the floor. Faye plays as I said a world famous photographer who takes grotesque and grim photographs of models in provocative poses and situations for her fashion layouts. Think Helmut Newton who actually supplied the trashy photographs used in the film. The thin plot concerns a maniac who for some reason is killing off Faye’s friends and acquaintances, the murders of which Faye can see as they happen. It turns out that besides being rich famous and fabulous Faye is also clairvoyant. So one by one they go and an impossibly young and very attractive Tommy Lee Jones playing a police detective is investigating the case and of course falls head over heels for her.  Three





years away from her career defining and career-destroying role as Joan Crawford (another eye popping actress) in the camp classic “Mommie Dearest”, Faye screams, rants and cries her way through this tepid shock and awful thriller for all she’s worth. Granted the clothes and decors are late 70’s fun, and the New York City locations can make one nostalgic for the grimy and grim days of an affordable New York City.  Was Soho ever so dirty as it is in this movie?  The supporting cast includes Brad Dourif, Raul Julia, Rose Gregorio and Rene Auberjonois. The love  theme is sung by a weak sounding Barbra Streisand who was dating Jon Peters the producer of this thing.   Directed by  Irvin Kershner with a screenplay co-written by John Carpenter (yes that John Carpenter).

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Oddball Magazine

Oddball has just posted one of my paintings. View the poem and my painting at this link.

http://oddballmagazine.com/2015/06/24/poem-by-jacklyn-janeksela/

Monday, June 22, 2015

Miriam Schapiro 1923-2015


Sunday, June 21, 2015

Postcard June 2015


Friday, June 19, 2015

The Stardust Gazette

The Stardust Gazette Has just published an early piece of mine in their latest issue.
New York Box 1969


http://www.thestardustgazette.com/#!issue-2/c4o4

Thursday, June 18, 2015

June 2015 collage


Monday, June 15, 2015

Notebook Drawing June 2015


Moma Mia


        This is a good time to visit the Moma, which is bulging out all over the place with many worthwhile exhibitions. The day I was there, last Wednesday was bearable in terms of the tourists and hoards, maybe they were all at the Whitney taking in the gorgeous views. The main show is the big Yoko Ono retrospective that I actually liked more than I thought I would. For sure I had problems with some of the work which I thought was too cute and sweet, and I don’t like reading 100’s of texts hung along walls, save it for the catalog. The works of course getting the most attention from the young tourists and fans are the sound proof room where you can grove on music from the Plastic Ono Band and her collaborations with John Lennon which I disliked even at the time. Their “War Is Over If You Want It” seemed callous and simplistic to me at the time, and it still rings hollow and her “Wish Tree” almost makes me gag.
                 By now everyone knows about her “imaginary” show that was never held at the Moma in 1971 which was a classic and imaginative action that has now 40 years later come to fruition with this rambling hit and miss show. Her collaborations with the important art movement Fluxus is also well represented with flyers and photographs and I would seriously consider taking another look at this show before it closes in September. I don’t know if this exhibition will get Klaus Biesenbach a reprieve but at least he has finally managed to mount a show of an artist who deserves the attention.
               I also liked the large show “From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires: Grete Stern and Horacio Coppola” even though it’s a bit chaotic and confusing in its installation. Stern and Coppola were a married couple and sometimes art collaborators who were active in the 30’s 40’s and 50’s and whose work was unknown to me. This is the kind of show that the Moma does so well introducing unknown or little known artists to a larger public. It’s filled with both of their art that take up separate galleries, In one is Coppola’s Bauhaus looking photographs, in another his photographs of Buenos Aires. The best pieces for me were by Stern including her strong design work she did for Ringle & Pit her graphic design firm that she ran with Ellen Auerbach in 1930 and her marvelous Surreal photomontages from the late 40’s and early 50’s ’s that she did for a woman’s magazine published in Argentina.
                 Also on view is a show of the early work of Gilbert and George, a pair that might not appeal to everyone, but it’s a handsome display of their mail art (Wish I hadn’t sold the set of inscribed illustrated pamphlets that they mailed to me in 1971) a set of which are now under glass in the show) along with videos, large drawings and installations. Wait there’s more. A perfect light summer show of Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup Cans and other early work from 1953-1967 is also popular with the tourists, and the photographs by Shunk-Kender from 1960-1971 which is not. This is probably due to the fact that the exhibition is made up of documentation photographs which begins with the great photomontage from 1960 Yves Klein’s Leap into the Void (Saut dans le vide). The rest of the show consists mainly of documented photographs from Pier 18, a project that was conceived and organized by the late sleazy independent curator Willoughby Sharp in 1971 that  consisted of  works by 27 artists and although it interested me and brought back memories I don’t think that it would be appealing to the average Moma museum goer.
               Also displayed were a series of photo documenting Yayoi Kusama’s Happenings of the late 1960s that one of my first roommates John McSpaden took part in also working as one of her assistants. Unfortunately there were none of him in the show, but I do have one of him in my own collection that I’m reproducing here. John who was seminal in my life through the late 60’s and early 70’s, and was just as important to me as that other John was. He was one of the first to encourage me in my art making and introduced me to the work of many of the pertinent artists of the period and he once took me to a big party at Kusama’s loft in 1968 that made my hair stand on end. I should add that I could find no mention of the fact that when Shunk died in his home and studio in Westbeth in New York City on June 26, 2006 all of his photographs and other belongs were thrown in dumpsters (a fear of most artists) and much was rescued from the garbage by a clean up man hired to empty out his apartment.  Why and how this happened as I said is nowhere to be found in any of the information labels in the show, maybe its mentioned in the catalog but a search on the internet brought up this article from the New York Times.   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/nyregion/after-a-recluses-death-a-cleanup-man-reaps-a-trove-of-art.html. Part of their vast archive of some 600 photographs recently became part of the MoMA’s collection, thanks to a donation from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation
The final show I took in was “Scorsese Collects” which is a small but beautiful show of 34 mostly foreign movie posters from the director’s large collection that is installed downstairs near the movie theatres. 






Friday, June 12, 2015

Notebook drawing June 2015


Thursday, June 11, 2015

trash

I must be getting better. I went to the Moma yesterday and was delighted to see that Bjork had left the building. What remains of that dreadful exhibition is much better that what went before it. One man's trash is another man's treasure as the saying goes. More on my visit to the Moma to follow

Olive Kitteridge 2014








The other day, a facebook friend put up a post about the lack of opportunities for actresses 50 and over and mentioned a few who are still vital and working. She then asked her friends to name any actresses that we like who are of that age and still working. The list was impressive and I mentioned Frances McDormand who is 58. A woman who appeared to have had no success at all in her acting ventures and appeared angry and bitter responded to my post with “well she’s married to a famous director”. I replied, “So what, he’s married to one of our greatest actresses.”
                   I mention this because that very night I watched the first two hours (I finished the last two hours the next night) of “Olive Kitteridge” in which McDormand gives one of the greatest performances that I have ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot. Yes I fell in love with her the minute I saw her in her first film “Blood Simple” back in 1984 and my admiration for her has only grown. The 4 hours mini-series (which she also served as an executive producer) is based on the Pulitzer Prize novel by Elizabeth Strout. The film set in a picturesque small town in Maine covers 25 years in the life of Olive a middle school math teacher and her marriage to Henry a pharmacist and their son Christopher. Cranky unloving on the surface and hard to get along with, this is one nasty pitted Olive who gives everyone a very bumpy ride. There are some dark secrets but happily we are not hit over the head with obvious plot devices to make us feel confident and comfortable in understanding this complicated woman and her relationships with her husband, son and the people of the town.
              The film goes back and forth in time and characters who were children in one episode are suddenly grown in the next, which kept me on my toes sometimes in following the story, but that’s a small quibble. Also in the cast is Richard Jenkins as her husband who is also superb, and too brief turns by Rosemarie DeWitt, Ann Dowd and Bill Murray along with a longer appearance by Zoe Kazan. There are incidents that are zany; an emergency stop over at a hospital turns into something unexpected along with sudden deaths and lots of despair and depression. I also liked all the rich small details in the film including the art direction and the clothes, check out Olive’s homemade dress she makes for her son’s wedding and the beautiful score by Carter Burwell and the elegant cinematography by the great Frederick Elmes.

Christopher Lee 1922-2015




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