Joe Glasco

I met the artist Joseph Glasco when I was studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  One break we drove to New York with some friends for my first visit.  A friend from my home town, Houston, had given me Joe's name so I could look him up when I got there.  I had no idea who he was.  Joe was living in the heart of Soho on Greene street that was his home and studio.  We met and it was the start of a friendship that lasted until his death in 1996.

Below is a polaroid I took of Joe back in the 80's that captures some essential aspects of his personality and taste.  He had a love for water and equated it with the essentials needed for survival, imparting it with an almost mystical importance akin to what one might read in the Tao.  For though water is without shape it has the ability to erode solid stone and assume any shape it desires.  He drank it religiously as an essential ingredient for his health but it was also symbolic of other virtues he admired.  He had a beautiful carafe that was the receptacle of this elixer.  Also consistent with Joe's nature, was that he only drank tap water- he always repeated the fact that New York City had some of the best tasting water in the world.

By the mid 90's he had left New York and was living at his other home and refuge in the city of Galveston, Texas.  He had a spacious studio on the main drag in Galveston called the Strand where he could be close to the ocean and away from prying neighbors. He also had a home in the Victorian section of Galveston that had beautiful stained glass windows throughout and fine hard wood of the period.    

In the Summer of 1994,  my grandmother, who lived in Houston, and I visited Joe with my Mother.    He had a genuine affection for women of her age and experience.  She must have reminded him of someone important in his own life and the simplicity of life in the Southwest.  My grandmother had an innocence and lack of guile that was refreshing to Joe who had risen in the ranks of people like Clement Greenberg and Jackson Pollock.  She brought back memories of his roots in Tyler, Texas, Joe's version of Orson Welles and "Rosebud."  It was during this visit that Joe gave the painting pictured below to her, which he let me pick out.

This painting was atypical for Joe as it was not a collage and was painted with oils.  It still bore many of the traits that were characteristic of his style that was partially a result of his friendship and influence of Jackson Pollock, in particular the All-over style and fluctuation of foreground and background.  Joe was equally comfortable working in the traditional heroic scale of the Abstract Expressionists or his more intimate version as this painting illustrates, being only around 8 x 10 inches.

Poetry and Painting

Wasn't it nice when artists could be this sincere and heartfelt with simplicity of means?

Joan Miró 1925

ipad Paintings

The paintings below were created on the iPad during a period of approximately 4 months.  I have completed these while also working with gouache, watercolor and oil.  Although I was initially reluctant to use the ipad for "fine art" it became apparent after some experimentation that it allows you to do things not possible with traditional mediums.

I've certainly met with some resistance from artist friends who are in the Luddite camp, although the hostility against computer technology is understandable as computers have become commonplace since Thomas Pynchon wrote his article in the New Yorker in 1984 on the advancement of technology.  He predicted that the next big thing would be when the "curves of research and development in artificial intelligence, molecular biology and robotics all converge".  We haven't quite reached that state, and painting on the iPad probably won't get us any closer.  But there's a need for many, including myself, to find a refuge against the encroachment against ubiquitous technology and old fashioned paint is the perfect foil.

But, the iPad does offer some seemingly minor innovations that are occasionally worth the trade off to the tactile nature of traditional painting mediums.  One of the unique features gained by use of this new technology is the ability to zoom into details.  Now the whole notion of scale and micro vs. macro can be nullified.  On the iPad you have the ability to zoom into a minute detail, making it the macro section and reversing roles.  

The other technical innovation is the access to layers.  This allows one to go back and forth between foreground, background and in areas in between.  It also allows the ability to adjust transparency and move the layers at will so that they aren't static.

Creating the "original" work of art certainly brings to mind the ideas of originality and authenticity first written about by Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.  These ideas were carried one step further by John Berger who stated that "For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free."  My work is in a traditional painterly area, but it does place this work square in the arena talked about by Walter Benjamin since there's no one "original" and thus no one piece has the aura of authenticity.  They have no "unique place where it happens to be."