Giant Spiders

The Generosity + Curiosity of a Legend

This Wednesday is sporting its hump with contempt.

The husband is downish with a twisted ankle, and the mother-in-law had a fall last night (or early this morning). So scary. She is ok. Just a bit bruised up. Earlier this afternoon, our mancat Henry delivered a dead chipmunk, perfectly intact, with a soft expression on its face, to the front porch mat right about where a human would step. A painting of mine that sold a few weeks ago that I shipped didn’t show up when it was supposed to so I spent a bunch of precious time on the phone with Amber, then David, and then Martin at Fedex. 2 out of three of these people had distinctive Filipino accents - not that it matters, but it does make me feel comfortable, like a kid (growing up on Maui many of my closest friends were Filipino, all of whom I’ve lost touch with since they married and took their husband’s last names). Since our last humpday, the water at my home/studio stopped working, and then Ona, our 17-year-old daughter’s, car stopped steering. It also started billowing smoke from the hood while she was driving (fast, knowing her) on the highway in the darkness of night. This was before the twisted ankle, so Marshall promptly went to rescue her in the middle of a dinner we were hosting. It was 19 minutes of high anxiety for me that resulted in a bit too much scotch. The next afternoon, while I was mowing our ever-shrinking lawn (one of my favorite non-art jobs), I saw the biggest spider I have ever seen in the Hudson Valley. Similar to the enormous Cane spiders I grew up with on Maui. It was brownish grey, about the diameter of a hockey puck. I spied it climbing over a thick patch of white Dutch clover that I planted earlier in the spring and gasped. I did not run it over.

This chain of events made me think about Louise Bourgeois. Maman by Louise Bourgeois, in particular. The ominous, miraculous, and terrifying but graceful and beautiful nature of this giant metal sculpture hovering above you is just impossible to ignore or take lightly. Maman was part of my inspiration for Jetsam, (image below), especially the way the front feet make contact with the ground. Pointy-footed approaches to sculpture work particularly well at the scale of Maman, but smaller, not as much. I always thought Maman was perfect. It is about Louise Bourgeois’s mother, a weaver. I think it reflects the awe and power that a “mother” contains, a human making a whole new life inside their body, accommodating this foreign new life for 9 months, and then making food with their body for this new being for years afterwards. All of our first homes are our mothers. So many male artists have historically made giant public metal sculptures, so seeing such a monumental, motheresque majesty made by, of, and about a woman is deliciously refreshing. Female power sublime.

In my late twenties, I had the great pleasure of spending some time with Louise Bourgeois in her home in Chelsea. She opened her home to young artists on Sundays at 3 pm. You had to get a phone number from someone who knew about it to call, so you could attend. I was fortunate enough to know someone. The savvy knew to bring her whiskey and chocolate, which I did. It was a crisp fall Sunday, drizzling. Her front entrance hallway was dark grey with hooks at all sorts of radically inconvenient heights to hang your coat, hat, or umbrella on. The hooks were all empty, mismatched. Everyone was gathered in the room at the end of the hall, around a low wooden table laden with whiskey and chocolate. I added my offerings and took a seat. Around the table, we all sat looking around and surreptitiously at each other. Making small talk (or small torture) if you are me. There was so much to look at. Postcards from Andy Warhol tacked to her walls, sculptural objects, books, catalogues, archives, all manner of impressive art-world paraphernalia. She finally emerged from an adjacent room, taking little steps with her walker. Diminutive in scale, her eyes shimmered like sharp black diamonds. Deep. Focused. Sparkly. I was barely able to breathe. I was so enchanted, enamored, completely in awe. She barely said a word to any of us but went around the room, inviting each of us to show her whatever we brought. I brought printouts of some of my (then mostly metal) sculptures in a black portfolio folder. She appeared drawn to one that was a 7’ tall skinny cone that I braze welded like a patchwork quilt out of thin mild steel and spray painted barbecue black. It had a functioning cartoonish propeller on the top of it that rotated, making a gentle breeze. Inside the body of the sculpture was a cassette player that played a recording of me making loud, whooshing wind sounds. She pointed at the printout of it and looked at me and said, “What is this?”

Jetsam, 2015, Injection welded post-consumer and post-industrial plastic, paint, and hardware ~ 6’ x 7’ x 6’ | 1.82 x 2.13 x 1.82m

All the humpnesses of late have been doing a fine job of distracting me from the good work that I am excited to do. Promoting the exhibition opening at Kaatsbaan this weekend, promoting Monstrous Wicked, preparing materials and components for my upcoming residency in Japan, and prepping sculptures to exhibit at Threshold (Upstate Art Weekend in Cornwall). I will do these things.

PRODUCT RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK
To reduce your plastic (and carbon) footprint

Zen Bamboo Electric Toothbrushes. My family and I have had each of ours for 6 years now. They have different settings, the replacement heads are not expensive, and overall, they do a great job. No cavities for ages around here. Only the heads are bamboo, though; the base is faux bamboo (i.e., plastic), which is obviously less than perfect, though certainly better than the disposable full plastic industry standard. (All steps count in my opinion). Over the past three years, a new contender called the Suri has come out, but since ours still work perfectly fine, we haven’t tried the Suri yet. If the time is right for you, you can get a Suri for 15% off at the moment. They are pretty fancy and intriguing.