Oddball Magazine

A new Oddball with my artwork. check it out.
https://oddballmagazine.com/2017/06/28/poem-by-rose-knapp/

Summer 3. 2017

One Person's Trash

Pleased and proud to be part of this literary journal that is about the homeless. They published some of my photos of the homeless and you can view them and the stories at this link.
https://www.onepersonstrash.org/?lightbox=dataItem-j22a5qkh2

Days Without End

Just finished this novel today by Sebastian Barry and it is a memorable story beautifully written about two young men who meet in the wicked west before the civil war. Teens when they meet they become cross dressers in a mining town which for a living they dance with the men of the town. They fall in love and spend their lives together winding up in fighting in several wars including the Civil one which is told in brutal descriptions. One of the young men takes to dressing as a woman more and more and they even get married. The twists and turns are many and the author creates a vivid landscape of the 19th century frontier. The sex is there but is as lyrical and brief as the many storms and traumas that they face "and then we quietly fucked and then we slept" pretty much sums it up. The language is plain yet poetic and the passing characters and scenes stay with you. This would make one hell of a film if the right director took it on.

Student exhibition

We had a lovely exhibition of my student work at the homecrest senior center yesterday. There were several ass'ts to congressmen and council people there along with many of the seniors and they put on a swell table of goodies. The work looked wonderful.

Summer 2. 2017

Summer 2017

Otto Warmbier 1994-2017

Jim French 1933-2017

Attention must be paid. Jim French, the renowned male physique photographer known for his hypermasculine imagery of muscular and sometimes hairy men has died at 84.

oddball Today

https://oddballmagazine.com/2017/06/14/poem-by-lynn-white-2/

Click on the link to read the poem and see this image

Edit DeAk 1949-2017

Adam West 1928-2017

Glenne Headly 1955-2017

Elena Verdugo 1925-2017

Loved her tv show meet millie when I was a kid

The Loved Ones 2009

Harsh and scary. I had never heard of this Australian horror feast until I read through my latest issue of Film Comment and an interview with the director Sean Byrne. The author Laura Kern raved about The Loved Ones, so I thought what's good for Film Comment is good for Ira Joel. I did some more research on it and found a 98% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes which is very impressive so I ordered it through Netflix and watched it last night, and promptly had vivid nightmares. This is not for the faint hearted or the squeamish, but die hard horror freaks should get a bounce or two from it. It's like eating way too spicy food, you love it, but later on the acid reflux hits you in a big way. The plot is simple a young attractive male teenager is in a car accident and there are rough patches for him after that including being kidnapped by a very disturbed young woman and her really sick dad. References abound and bounce off the walls including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Carrie, and even those silly light hearted teen comedies made by John Hughes in the 1980's. The film is mean and nasty but it is also funny and smart and thankfully its short because I was very stressed out by it. So did I like it, yes I did. See it but be warned this is not a day in the country, a picnic by the lake. You can almost smell the blood. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Notebook drawing June 2017

Roger Smith 1932-2017

Florine Stettheimer. The Jewish Museum

This seems like the perfect show for spring in New York. I went yesterday when the museum is free, and I think this is the best deal in the city simply because the other exhibitions on view are hardly worth the 15.00 entrance fee. But hey I went for Florine and I was not disappointed. Even though the show is small and a little cramped her paintings drawings and collages were magical and beguiling. I've always loved her quirky work. The paintings are full of busy twisty little figures, the creme de la creme of high society and artistic circles of New York City that once was. Stettheimer was rich and privileged and was known for her mix and match parties and social gatherings. She painted her mother and sisters over and over along with some noted folks of the time including her good buddy Marcel Duchamp. The textures and colors of her works are bright and flashy with built up surfaces and textures here and there. They pull you in, you stop and stare, a smile crosses your face and for a while you are happy again. For a little while that is, until you remember that there is an orange monster in the white house. She also made her own frames and the one she made for her Duchamp painting is a doosie. The paintings have a sophistication but also might be mistaken for a self taught artist living their days in a mental hospital or a prison up on the Hudson. There were many new discoveries here for me, the small works with collaged material were especially good, and all the stuff on her theatrical collaboration with Virgil Thompson for the opera 4 saints in 3 acts was also a welcomed treat. See this one, but again take advantage of the free day on Saturday. This is a pretty museum but their exhibitions can be overworked in the curatorial dept. with cramped and busy installations like the two dreadful shows up on the 2nd floor.

Seven Days In May 1964

Watched this relic of the cold war the other night, and although not very good, it does have things in it that are way too close to our current political situation and delivers a kick or two. . Directed by John Frankenheimer with a screenplay by Rod Serling its a cheap looking thriller about the take over and take down of our country by the military. Led and run by the granite like Burt Lancaster who has it in for the president played by Frederic March who has just signed an arms treaty with the soviet union. Burt doesn't like that, and starts a covert plot with other army brass to take it all down. The plot is uncovered by Kirk Douglas who is his assistant and is also made of granite, but is not a traitor and brings the news of the plot to the president. There are stock cardboard characters including Edmund O'Brien as the alcoholic southern senator who is a close friend of the president and who helps save the day, the good ole boy. Also there is Martin Balsam who once again meets a bad end as the loyal friend and confidante of the president and best of all there is Ava Gardner as an aging Washington D.C. gal about town who has been around the town more than once and has some dirt on Burt. The film looks cheap as if it's made of cardboard but it works, if not as a great work of art or even a very good film then as a document of a time long long ago. And there are all those phones, television sets and other quaint things from the early 60's to give one a chuckle or two, plus there's Ava a little worn and blowsy but still very lovely.