Cathleen Cueto and Long Time No See!

I am a bad person. I've said it before but I don't remember if I've said it here; anyway, there it is. I'm a bad person. I'm a lousy husband, an incompetent father, an unworthy son, a faithless friend, a mediocre artist and at best a middling writer. And, worst of all, I haven't posted a word here in, according to Technorati, 84 days.

For this I have reasons but not excuses. A lot's come up in the last 76 days including a drop into the deepest crevasse of despair and the intrusion into my life of a PC capable of running Crysis along with a copy of Crysis, which enjoyable waste of time has eaten a fair amount of my life so far. In fact I'm seeing the game when I close my eyes, which is a good sign of having played it way too much.

In the meantime I've gone to a few art events and totally failed to write about them. What can I say? I've let you down. I'm a bad person. I can't make it up to you -- I can't make it up to anyone, ever, that's part of being a bad person -- but I can try and make amends like the friends of Bill W. say. Let's start now.

The first event I didn't get around to telling you about was the group show Another Last Year held by Ad Nauseam Lyceum. I was invited by Cathleen Cueto, with whom I became friends at the School of Visual Arts. I hope she didn't invite me because she hoped I'd bring lots of visitors to the show, because it's over now and you can't see it. Hell, I barely saw it, because the opening was so crowded it was almost impossible to see the art. I've never been asked to move over so someone could see something behind me at any show, but it happened here.

From what I could see it was a groovy show. Cathleen had a single elbow in it. She had made a cast of her own elbow and from that a plaster sculpture which she set on a square mirror atop a waist-high plinth. The elbow was bent and only showed from a few inches up her arm, so if you looked at it quickly you might think it was a knee or something more private, but an elbow it was.

Aside from Cathleen's, I only got a good look at a couple of other pieces. Due to the show's being nearly completely undocumented online, I can't figure out who made them or what they were. I'm pretty sure Brent Birnbaum had a really excitingly colorful wall/ceiling hanging thing with beads and sequins and gewgaws all over it. I wanted to get a better look at it but didn't. Matt Broach had a neat-looking animation up, something dark and landscapey going by a car window, maybe. Hard to tell. And there was another video whose creator I wanted to talk to, because they'd made a video of one painting being painted, followed by another painted on top, followed by another, over and over, until the canvas is painted white and the loop begins again. All this was projected onto white canvas, so it was like a moving painting, and it reminded me of one of my favorite movies, The Mystery of Picasso. And I think I met Brent's girlfriend, who has a tattoo of a Georgia O'Keeffe painting covering her upper arm, which is very cool.

I'd only gone for Cathleen and her elbow and would've left pretty quickly but then a bunch of other people I knew from SVA showed up and we stood around talking and I realized I was an idiot for not inviting them to the opening of the Blogger Show. If you'll permit me to name-drop, I met up with Steve DeFrank, Josh Harris and his girlfriend Cameron, Marcos Chin and his boyfriend Mikee, and Pooneh Maghazehe. I'd forgotten how much I love all these people -- is it love if you can forget it? -- and I plan to keep closer in touch with them from now on.

Next up: An art movie!