MELISSALAND

“The fucking regret, and guilt. These things - Don’t let anyone ever say to you, ‘you shouldn’t regret anything’. Don’t do that, don’t. You regret what you fucking want. Use that regret, for anything, anything you want - you can use it, OK.”

Use it to wake up tomorrow and do things better.

I have this really great drawing by Roy Bautista I bought - it hangs across from my bed and when I fall asleep it is the last thing I see. It is a maniacal drawing of hands, faces, lines - a mess of graphite. You can just barely make out the lettering in the center of this gigantic drawing (it is over 5ft long):

“until the sun sets I reset sin”

I love it.

Every morning it reminds me - I have 24 hours. I have 24 beautiful hours to be human. To make mistakes, to learn from them and to, hopefully, get one more day…..to try it again.

You need to see Dan Auerbach perform live.

A big thank you to Glenn for scoring last minute tickets to Dan’s sold out concert at the Bowery Ballroom on Tuesday night - it was amazing. I miss seeing intimate shows like this one, and it was just the type of thing I needed to hear. Powerful blues with an unbelievable amount of passion. I cannot get enough of the lovely lullaby, “When the Night Comes”

I came across a post about passion that I thought was super inspiring, and I could easily relate to it:

“I spent a large chunk of Tuesday in a car with a friend driving up to Manchester. He and I were at the University there in the 80s and we were driving up to spec out a project for later this year. He’s a record exec (of course! which of your so-called friends aren’t? I hear you crow). His job requires him to be constantly in contact with people who work with and for him and so I sat in the passenger listening to his speakerphone conversations: lawyers telling him how he was “their guy” and how and they honestly wanted to sign to him, American executives telling him how genuinely excited about their projects they were , new employees telling him how sincerely they were looking forward to their job… It was a veritable sea of love and sincerity. It reminded of my A&R days and how so much of what got people out of bed depended on passion. It may sound like they’re being insincere but you do really need to tap into some emotion to get through all the pain, rejection and terrible midweeks.“

Working with/for people who spend their entire lives creating something so personal, so extremely intimate and close to their hearts - you find yourself wanting to do nothing more than feed that passion. You become addicted to just being around it. You want to be reminded that you are not half-alive. And in order to be more than half-alive you need to work at it - every single day. You need to make a real effort.

I like being around those who make an effort. Those who show up daily, who are always learning, who own their lives, who try harder, who confess their love, who take action….

“but who can say what’s best? that’s why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. my experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.”
-haruki murakami norwegian wood

I went and visited David Lebe’s studio last week and all I can say is: impressed. I made the visit specifically to pick up some older hand-coloured photographs of his (the dates from these photos span from 1980-1987) - they are absolutely gorgeous. I sincerely wish I had the money to purchase one right now.

I spent the better part of a day going through and photographing the work for the website and color correcting each file (I only had my little point and shoot). Visiting David’s studio made me wish everyone could have an opportunity to do so. You really come to appreciate an artist much more when you get to witness how they work, see what is important to them, and how this informs what they create.

There is a great interview online between David and another photographer, Richard Kagan, and Richard asks David if vulnerability is important in his work:

“I think artists have to be vulnerable. There are artists who put up armor and they are great artists, and they do wonderful work, but in some way they don’t even realize they’re being vulnerable. They’re letting us in, even if they think they’re not. You have to be out there–if not consciously, then unconsciously. For art to happen, somehow you have to put yourself out there and open yourself up. You have to let others look inside.” - David Lebe

I’ve thought about this before, and it is of course, a very hard thing for most people to do, myself included. If I take a look at all of the writers & artists I’ve admired (Paul Monette, Miranda July, Peter Gabriel, just to name a few) - they are all extremely genuine, authentic and original individuals who created highly personal work. I’ve always respected people who could do this.

David and I discussed possibly recording some video of him in the studio and the idea of shooting and compiling video of many of the artists the gallery works with. I really love the possibilities of a project like this.

Promise to keep you updated

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Image above:

David Lebe, Self-Portrait 11:38, 1981, hand-coloured light drawing, 16 x 20 inches

View more work by David Lebe

Tell me this is not the coolest damn thing you’ve seen in a long time:

http://marcobrambilla.com/civilization.html

I mean, holy shit. Stravinsky, the insane imagery, I could sit in front of this thing for days and still be completely on my ass in awe. You can bet your life I am going to try and get this in the gallery….

Civilization (Megaplex), a metaphysical journey from Hell to Heaven, is portrayed by computer altered found footage. The journey begins under Kurosawa’s “Dreams” volcano, then rises through a purgatory populated by images of suburbia, demolition derbies and shopping malls, finally soaring towards a paradise of beauty contestants, cherubs, bodybuilders, then past the peaks of Mount Olympus to a cosmic portal inspired by Gustav Dore’s paintings, as reinterpreted in the movie, “The Fountain”. Civilization (Megaplex) is an epic video mural containing over 300 individual channels of looped video into a multi-layered seamless tableau of interconnecting images. - ARTnews

Link: Marc Brambilla’s website

My first curatorial efforts at the new gallery – hope everyone might be able to make it to the opening – Saturday November 29 from 6 to 8pm. Formal invites in the mail soon!

Photo by: Vincent Laforet, Grand Central Station

The inaugural exhibition at Carrie Haddad Photographs borrows its title from The Postal Services’ song, Such Great Heights. The song romantically proclaims that, “everything looks perfect from far away” and the six photographers featured in this show explore a world seen from this same spectacular vantage point. Whether they attempt to transmit a narrative or not, they radiate a sense of great magnitude; the world appears immense and yet wholly intimate and personal. Standing on the edge of the photograph, the viewer feels fierce and full of possibility. The unbounded horizon has always stood as metaphor for the limitless nature of personal experience, inviting explorers and wanderers betokened by the grandeur of the expansive landscape.

The song, Such Great Heights, speaks of an idyllic euphoria, a dizzying love affair, always aggressive, leaving you on a peak you are reluctant to depart: “They will see us waving from such great heights/ ‘come down now,’ they’ll say / But everything looks perfect from far away, / ‘come down now,’ but we’ll stay…” . The photographs included in this exhibition share this same intoxication.

In his essay, ”Truth and Landscape” Robert Adams states that landscape art is important because it can meet our need to experience the world as comprehensible: ”We rely, I think, on landscape photography to make intelligible to us what we already know. It is the fitness of a landscape to one’s experience of life’s condition and possibilities that finally makes a scene important or not.”

Photo by: John Griebsch

John Griebsch photographs of American aerial landscapes depict the pattern, color and design of natural and manmade landforms. Most of the aerials have been made from Griebsch’s vintage 1952 Cessna 170B aircraft. He explains, “I find the need to make geographical sense of the earth, as well as the need to make visual sense of a photograph. I work with ambiguity of scale, and the strong graphic quality of nature, and the hand of man on nature. These characteristics have motivated my work from the time I started flying and photographing as a teenager.”

Photo by: Jefferson Hayman

Photographer Jefferson Hayman’s New York City sky is punctuated by a lone dirigible or airship floating, dreamlike, almost as if pulled from some noir film. Hayman says, “I tell all of my friends in NYC, whenever you see one, call my cell phone and tell me where it is. I then go find it and wait for it to fly into a proper composition, and hopefully I get the shot. I sometimes try to sound intelligent and liken this process to Ahab chasing the great whale.”

There is a certain romance and adventure around airships and Hayman’s photographs evoke a nostalgic journey to an obscure and imperceptible time period. Inside his world, the viewer dreamily contemplates the comfort and resonance of the images which induce inexplicable moments of déjà vu. The frames that Hayman creates are almost as important as the images they contain and are either period or reflect the designs of the early 20th century & late 19th century American aesthetic.

Photo by: Kahn & Selesnick (click for larger image)

Photographers, Kahn & Selesnick have been collaborating to produce multi-layered exhibitions for the past 20 years, and their most recent project Eisbergfreistadt, tells the story of the post-World War I Baltic port town of Lubeck, which was struck by a monumental iceberg in 1923. Townspeople imagined the eventual flooding, thought it was a sign of the apocalypse, and created Eisbergfreistadt, an “Iceberg Free State.” In their signature style, Kahn and Selesnick tell their story by blending together fact and fiction in masterfully staged photographs. Two large works (7 feet long by 1 foot wide) will be on view. Their odd proportions, coupled with such fantastical imagery, make for larger than life dioramas of fictional horizons.

Photo by: Vincent Laforet

Vincent Laforet, a New York based commercial and editorial photographer, previously recognized for his striking aerial shots, has been trying out a new technique utilizing tilt-shift lenses. A tilt-shift lens allows the photographer very exacting control over the depth-of-field in an image, much more than any regular lens could provide. Focus can be restricted to a single, narrow band, with everything else rapidly blurring away. This distorts the appearance and makes the eye think that distances are far smaller than they typically are. When applied to a large scene like a city or a museum, everything appears miniature.

Bathtub II from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Also employing this same approach, but this time in motion, is Australian photographer Keith Loutit. His recent videos featuring the Sydney Harbor and its environs have garnered much interest through such websites as Vimeo, and YouTube. Loutit says, “By combining tilt-shift & time-lapse photography I help audiences to distance themselves from subjects they know well. My goal is to present ordinary subjects, which once treated by this technique become more curious. My process combines thousands of photographic stills into short films that each last less than 3 minutes.” On exhibit will be both Loutit’s video works and still photographs.

Carrie Haddad Photographs is located at 318 Warren Street in Hudson, NY.  For more information please call the gallery at 518-828-7655 or email melissa.stafford@carriehaddadgallery.com (please note: the gallery does NOT officially open until the 29th of November)

This is where I will be nightly over the long winter. Hopefully, making some very cool things. I love seeing where people work - one of the perks of working for a gallery is getting to visit all the wonderful artist studios - they are always so inspiring. One site which shows some fantastic studios and homes is Todd Selby’s The Selby. It is a voyeurs delight. Be sure to check it out!

“Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.”

Canon Dance - A musical composition in which the voices begin one after another, at regular intervals, successively taking up the same subject. It either winds up with a coda (tailpiece), or, as each voice finishes, commences anew, thus forming a perpetual fugue or round.

(Image: Canon Dance by Robert & Shana Parkeharrison)

I can’t help it, I’m excited. The Nutcracker. New York City. December….

When I was a little girl, I used to have a small collection of Nutcracker dolls. My father started this and used to give me a new one each Christmas. I also had a collection (a much larger one) of musical snow globes which I completely treasured. I haven’t gotten a new one in years, and desperately need to retrieve all of them from my parents basement. For a while I was feeling I had outgrown the fascination, but tonight I am realizing I still very much love what they represent.

(photographs by Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz)

Next week I start installation on our exhibit with painter Harry Orlyk, whom I have always adored. This afternoon I photographed over two dozen works to be included and have picked some of my favorites to share. The one above is titled Christmas Trucks and Tractor painted last December up by Salem, New York where Harry lives.

“Sitting in the cold in a traditional way, I paint what is before me, sometimes as still as the Eskimo who earns his family’s meal by waiting and watching and thinking. He kills an animal; I make an image. We are linked together by our years of long studied views across a common land. I am so cold sometimes with the windows of my black Dodge van rolled up tight (I never turn on the engine once parked to paint, afraid of carbon monoxide). In a cold-induced trance, painting continues all by itself. Often the final dim presence of light exits while both hands are still at work and I do not know what I have made until the painting is brought into the light of a room.” - Harry Orlyk

I love this one because it is rare for Harry to include text in his work, but you can just make out the wandering letters at the bottom of the piece: “Someday a cold winter wind will come to take you down”

Garden in Mid-Bloom, 2008

Farm Pond, 2008

I imagine if I were to ever move away from this area, that I would like to own one of Harry’s paintings as a nice reminder of how absolutely beautiful New York is. Harry’s New York especially.

If you would like to attend the opening, it is taking place on Saturday October 18th from 6 to 8pm. For more information visit www.carriehaddadgallery.com or email me