Molly Goatwax

Box Car Willies

Nearly five years ago, Baltimore was capturing the national attention when the derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals caused it to catch fire in a tunnel under Howard Street. The fire took six days to control. On the sixth day these box cars and many others were hauled a half a mile north* and dumped to the side of the tracks near the heavily populated areas around 26th and Howard where, open to the elements, they seeped ashes and fumes abated by nothing but the wind and the rain. No word yet on the class action lawsuit brought against CSX by the residents of lower Remington.

* Two blocks from the public house.

Eternal shades

Earlier today I passed by a house I sold in 1997 and noticed that the bird patterned curtain scraps I stapled up in the basement windows in 1991 were still hung. They came from curtains my mother moved from Chicago and put in one of my sisters' rooms in 1961. She probably made them in the early Fifties, yet they live on, rick-rack, pom poms and all. Monuments are where you find them.

Reading the Reviews

My hat goes off tonight to Duke Riley who, as art, installed an illegal bar under a freeway in an obscure New York waterfront wasteland and had his effort reviewed amusedly but in earnest by the New York Times yesterday. A participant, Nelson Enrique, is quoted with his endorsement; "Any art that involves beer is O.K. by me." It seems as if a good time was had by all. On the other hand, today as I perused the Washington Post* my attention was riveted with sick jealousy and the ensuing seep of cynicism as I read for the first time about the 6 year old abstract expressionist Marla Olmstead. With canvasses signed "Marla" fetching 5 figures each and the artist dancing about the gallery unwilling to comment on her work or her processes, I thought....."Yeah, right." All of which of course, leads even a degreed, professional, some-times galleried artist such as myself to ponder all over from scratch...what is art, anyway?

* A subscription site. This select quote: "Although we had total access, a substantive interview with Marla is not possible. With the assistance of her mother, Laura, we learn that her favorite color is pink (in earlier interviews, Marla had said it was yellow). Her favorite ice cream: strawberry. The artist recently completed kindergarten and is missing her two front teeth."

Rush Hour Traffic

I pressed my left hand into the center of the steering wheel so hard that the springs in my watch strap sprung and it fell into my lap. The nine year old, who had never witnessed me sounding the car's horn, tried to knock my hands off the wheel. Then she looked up through the windshield and saw the car barreling at us the wrong way down a one-way street. It stopped inches away from our fender. Hubby says we could have negotiated a new car out of the mess had I not been so alert. Perhaps another time.

In the News

Photo by Karl Merton Ferron for the Baltimore Sun

The ruins of the American Brewery have caught not only my eyes, but those of the local rag. This gorgeous photograph graces the front page of todays paper as part of a series on the building and the neighborhood. Perhaps there is some hope for the blighted old pile, yet.

Sunday Studio

One morning last week I found a magneto my colleague Chris A. had left for me the evening before. Thank you! How exciting! You see it here at the right of this assembly with panels showing the breakdown of a VW bus in gesso transfer, a drawing of the beer tap pressure regulators and an actual defunct regulator gauge set. All on wood- I wonder if I can hook the magneto up to a plasma ball? Nothing yet is permanently attached except for the inverted, flattened beer cans awaiting some verse punched into them. (Funny, sometimes life seems to have kicked the poetry right out of me.) Now here's another piece that I have been working on awhile, with the image of the brewery finally cut out and glued to its back ground. The color, alas, has been punched up in imaging software (we're getting mighty violent with our language!). I'll have to put more iron oxide on it to bring it up to ideal saturation. This also has some words about the period floral stencil pattern's evocation of a chain link fence.

Grace

It's not indolence or seasonal ennui that has kept me off the internets, I have not yet ventured to Chicago, and was trapped only briefly by zombies in the bar. There have been developments. I attended a lovely housewarming party at a bungalow in a thicket populated by bunnys the size of Volkswagons, installed the nine year old in a summer program outfitted with a cardboard box, procurred for Hubby a wardrobe of Hawaiian shirts from the thrift store for the resort lifestyle he hopes to foster and made several forays to the German part of town for saurbraten, red kraut and marzipans. Indeed, this has been a season of gastronomic adventure with the sampling of new restaraunts and Fabio*'s sharing his excellent experiments in Jerk at Molly's. I have been getting more sleep. Most evenings after a day of hoisting cases of beer  (as opposed to running someone else's banking  in an office) it's hard not to fall asleep in the warm breezes as I sit on my mother's back porch watching the trees wag. And as I listen to the leaves rustle, the mockingbirds tease and the helicopters circle, bathed in a profound sense of gratitude and well-being, I feel unmotivated to climb three tall sets of stairs to the library to describe it on Typepad.

*Fabio has cut off his flowing locks. He will henceforth be referred to as "Viggo".

Summer

Zombie Action

I was going to attend the Zombie Walk, if not to lurch, than at least to look, but....as I was wrapping up a design for a water sculpture involving enameled colandars in my studio yesterday evening I heard a wailing and moaning outside. I poked my head out the window and saw a scantily clad young woman heave, stagger and land on the front steps of my dark and shuttered bar with a volley of curses. Recognizing her from when all the men in the bar were at the front window watching her and a similarly dressed colleague being frisked by the police over the hood of a squad car, I set my brush down and went down stairs. By this time the young woman was screaming and sobbing at an older woman who turned out to be her mother and two patrol cars as well as a prisoner van had arrived. Not wanting to literally step into the middle of the action, I sat on the floor and listened to the whole tawdry tale of sex and drugs and violence through the door, pretending that nobody was home. I was trapped. Mercy, do these dramas get tedious. By the time everyone had concluded their business it was too late for me to chase down the pretend zombies, I had had enough with the real ones.

Mr. Potato Head

Was that mean? Sometimes I feel like I need to be sentenced to perdition for jerks, where Wink Martindale would be the perpetually annoying key keeper, but the guy referenced in my last post has been known to load up my jukebox with twenty dollar's worth of ABBA and Broadway  musicals then buy a round for the patrons who remain. So there.