no.226 | Ziggy Ice Plant, Marfa, Texas, March 13, 2024
Bowie Eyed Cat Makes NYC Gallery Debut and Divine Modulations of Sonny Rollins
Pretty Exciting!
PSO, along with this cat picture, opened a solo show at Klaus Gallery in NYC on Friday!
I will attempt to post new PSO works every week during the run of the show and here is the first one. 😅
For Spring Break this year, the family went out west to the fabled art town of Marfa. We love it there, despite, and because of, all its bougie changes.
Ann and I took our first trip as a couple there way back in the mid-90s. We went for Open House during grad school. It was freakishly cold and everyone bought these cheap feather boas to keep warm.
In those days, they served free BBQ and Shiner beer to the whole town. There were picnic tables that encouraged group seating. Ann and I arrived early and sat down on a long empty table. And then John Waters sat next to us! He went on to hilariously hold court all evening, spinning yarns about Divine, Pia Zadora, and his art collection. He described a Mike Kelley piece hanging in his bedroom that spelled out phonetically, as if pronounced with a lisp, “Thsay You Love Thsatan.” It was as magical as you imagine it to be.
Speaking of Mike Kelley, here is a detail of Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites 1991/1999 currently installed at MoMA, which I saw this week.
We didn't have any celebrity encounters this time, except running into the Queen of Marfa, JD Difabbio, which DEFINITELY counts, and this feline David Bowie doppelganger with one blue and one yellow eye.
Here is an installation shot, showing the cat in context.
Here is our star up close…
VINYL ALERT!
NEW PSO LIMITED EDITION LATHE-CUT RECORD
AVAILABLE AT KLAUS GALLERY and DIGITALLY ON BANDCAMP
For the show, I made a new lathe cut record Here it is laid on top of one of the adhesive-backed photographs from the show. As of this writing, it's only available for pickup in NYC, but you can get the digital version on Bandcamp.
It is not available on any streaming services.
The album includes the accompanying tunes for 8 of the 9 images in the show along with a suite of audio works recorded in Marfa, including this week’s PSO piece.
The front and back covers are open-editioned inkjet prints. The back features a crop of this week’s image.
This first edition is limited to 20 lathe-cut records in white vinyl. Lathe-cut records are individually cut and have a unique sound and more shallow grooves than traditional vinyl. They can be played on any turntable. You may need to add some weight to your tonearm, and sometimes the needle doesn’t find the groove perfectly on the first go, but it will if you just try again.
The digital download includes audio from all the pieces.
RECOMMENDED READING
The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins published by NYRB
After a tour of Europe and seemingly at the top of his game, the great saxophonist, Sonny Rollins all but disappeared from the scene from 1959 to 1961. He didn’t vanish; he was practicing, outside, sometimes all night long on the Williamsburg Bridge. Jazz was at a crossroads, paths from hard bop were leaning toward electric rock sounds (Miles Davis) or towards freedom (Ornette Coleman) and the spiritual (John and Alice Coltrane). Rollins was trying to figure out his place and wrote volumes in the process.
Here is an insanely resonant quote from the book:
Experiences while open-air practicing have been many and numerous. One case comes to mind. It seemed that I suddenly found myself really “vibrating” musically, sounds and tones and rhythms, and I was falling right into ideas and perfectly executed sequences and into divine modulations. And I would then get responses from the birds who are really quite good musicians and willing and anxious to join your orchestra as well!!!
It’s a lovely and sometimes lonely and revealing ride into the mind of a true great.