The posters were all over the campus student center, ‘ORGIES MYSTERIOUS’ 7:00, bring musical instruments. Nobody knew what it was but on a college campus in 1970 we were up for anything. I was there early waiting for my girlfriend. They wheeled in a cart with what looked like large containers of blood. Then what looked like a dead calf , more boxes, a PA...
Learn MoreThe other day two women came to my house. One dragged the other to ‘buy a painting ». They are both from Norway. One is a tall blond ex-model, warrior viking. She bites the ear of her monster dog to discipline him. (god knows how she trains her four daughters, three horses, two cats, twelve goldfish and lawyer husband.) The other was a classy, frail, elderly woman...
Learn MoreHe had a mouth full of tacks and never stopped talking. Miraculously, between each sentence he would bring one out standing straight up on the tip of his tongue. He would adroitly catch it on the end of a small tack hammer and bring it down onto the edge of the taut canvas where it stood up straight, just the tip sunken in the wooden stretcher. He’d flip the hammer...
Learn MoreWe left the highway and headed west until the road ended in a dead end. Before us was 5000 sq miles of everglades. Eager to see birds and alligators the first wildlife we saw were the numerous Harley Davidsons with radios blasting above the motors. Perhaps a new addition since the TV series I’d seen in the early 60’s about the everglades . Your basic police...
Learn MoreJeffrey Hessing is in a group exhibition at the Shun Gallery, titled « Eroticism « . It started on March 1 and has been extended through the first week in April 2014....
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VIDEO – Five weeks living in a big house on Dianshan lake one hour from Shanghai, chine, Surrounded by tradition chinese gardens and ancient buildings…
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With $400 in the bank and no clear plan for the future I quit my job at the restaurant and decided never to work again at anything but my art. I was twenty six years old. I spent days and weeks working in my crummy apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, dreaming about my stay at Steepletop, and wishing I could go back. I could see myself gallivanting about the fields...
Learn MoreMost exhibitions are a year or two in the planning. One day in December 2004 I received an email, shortly after a phone call, then a visit. Six weeks later I was on my way to Shanghai for my first exhibition there. This typifies my impression that anything is possible in Shanghai. My first impression was of some futuristic fantasy world. I never imagined modern...
Learn MoreTwo weeks before my twentieth birthday I finished the credits for my diploma from the State University of New York at Binghamtom and headed straight for the altar with my high school sweetheart who was also studying art. She majored in welding. My mentor in college, Aubrey Schwartz, had suggested that we contact our most revered living artist and study at his side....
Learn MoreIt was my first exhibition in Vence at the Chapel des Penitant Blancs in the spring of 1981. In walked a tall man, about 55 years old, dressed ail in black with a black Borsalino, a neatly trimmed white beard and white pony tail. He walked around slowly, carefully examining each of the miniature landscapes. They averaged about three by five inches and cost a mere 700frs,...
Learn MoreH.M., Hisayo, and their two daughters lived in a little ramshackle bouse on the top of a hill in upstate New York. They’d gone through a lot of changes since H.M. had organised my exhibition in Japan three years before when I’d stayed in their lovely, traditional bouse in Yokohama. This evening they had planned an extraordinary dinner for me to meet the...
Learn MoreIn late summer the Baskins returned from thier sabatical in Devonshire, England. I had been house-sitting for about six months. Working in Leonard’s studio, plowing through his art collection. They were quite shocked to find that it never occurred to me to mow the lawn and the grass was waist high. We didn’ t have lawns in my neighborhood in Brooklyn and I was much...
Learn MoreA friend who runs a small art school in Nice called one day to ask if I would give one of his students lessons in landscape painting. « You know I dont teach » I told him. I never taught, never was taught, painting. He said, I think you really should meet this guy. He is someone important. I didnt really know what he meant by that but I needed money so I said I’d...
Learn MoreIt was the last ride of the Southern Crescent. Trains were no longer making a decent profit, and this particular old fashioned one, with its run between Boston and New Orleans, was to be discontinued. They loaded my black streamer trunk filled with paint, canvas, and supplies on to the train. I was settling in as it moved slowly out of the station. I worked my way to the...
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