Art Books, FOFOA and Guns!

Three small items merit a blog article!

My brother and part of his family were just in town visiting us.  We took them to a touristy part of town, and while there I visited a specialty bookstore (Taschen), all their books are printed by the German piblisher Taschen as are all essentially art-related.  I had visited once before (months ago), but was not able to see their book on Symbols, as they had closed when I had finished eating...

THIS time though, we all went inside...  Quite a place...  I found the book (The Book of Symbols), edited by Ami Ronnberg.  It is almost 800 pages of almost incredible archetypal images.  And only $40.00.

"An opium den of a bookstore"

L A Weekly


I need some balance for my normally analytical / numerical mindset!  The book will probably even help improve my blog...  Visit them:

www.taschen.com

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FOFOA has a new piece up at his blog.

He essentially further builds his case that the era of the US$ supremacy is over.  He studies the international monetary system starting right after WW I, when the Europeans created a "gold-exchange standard", which worked more-or-less OK until 1971 (when Nixon said No Mas! to foreigners wanting gold for their dollars). And afterwards the US$ STILL reigned supreme, as exporters (as a group) had to allow us trade deficits for them to be able to export more to the US than they imported (which was their desire).

That all started to change (for the worse) in 2005, when the effects of US .gov consumption starts heavily weighting the balance towards doomsday...  Uh, no, the end will not be pretty for some...

READ all about it, and see the fun video at the end:

fofoa.blogspot.com

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As I mentioned at the top of this piece, my brother was in town, with his wife and 16-year old son in tow.  Most of their time here was spent on doing the usual touristy stuff in my city, but I offered the two guys to join me at the range to shoot my guns.  My nephew has been over-exposed to women most of his life, and I figured that he would like that (and the fact that he follows military and geopolitical topics, he was the one who showed that there was such a thing on cable TV called "The Military Channel", your ever-clueless author never knew).

Those of you who have followed my blog for a while know that I like guns, but that I am no expert and certainly do not own an armory worth bragging about.  So, off to the indoor range (much closer) where we gents had our fun (with my semi-auto AK-47 and my 9 mm Beretta).  They had not shot those weapons before, and so actually had a new experience, fun!  Of course my nephew kept the "Mutant Zombie" target that he shot a magazine (thx Jay!) from each weapon at.  I told him to bring it to school to show his friends...

When we went to pay, I asked the Operations Manager (a patient man, bravo and + 1 to him) how to put the AK back together again after field-stripping it.  For whatever reason, I had had trouble not being able to re-assemble a gun specially-made for teenage morons...  So, he showed me EXACTLY how to do that (I had been having trouble placing the "piston" in there correctly).  We all conversed about guns in general after that, especially about the .50 caliber BMGs he had sold.  It is a very heavy gun (45 lbs), and whenever someone wanted to see it, it was heavy and difficult for him (or any of his employees) to take the beast down off its wires (how it was displayed).  But, one day a customer just took the thing with one hand and played with it like it was a plastic picnic knife...  Turns out he was a WWF wrestler!

So there!  That's how the past few days have been for me!

Robert Goes To An Art Exhibition!

We were invited to come to an art exhibition by the owner of an art gallery, our friend Naydu Commenoz.  Her Commenoz Gallery has been in Key Biscayne longer than we have been living here in South Florida.  She specializes in Contemporary Art.

Please allow a disclaimer: My knowledge of contemporary art is almost zero.  Another disclaimer: Me at an art exhibition is like throwing a fish into the boat, I almost do not know what to do other than flop around…

The exhibition (called “Travel Tales”) was to promote two artists: painter Joaquin Gonzales and sculptor Phillip Stapleton.  The exhibition took place on Thursday, February 9.  If I had to guess, I would say there were something over 60 people there on a gloomy and rainy evening.  Here is a photo of the artists and Naydu:

From left to right are Phillip Stapleton, Naydu Commenoz and Joaquin Gonzalez.

Below is a photo taken when there were a bunch of people looking around:

Hey, single fellas!  More women show up to art exhibitions then men do, hey, ya know just sayin’…

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The exhibition was a great success…  Naydu herself told me that she sold some pieces that very evening.  Moving product, now that is success!

The Art Critic for “El Nuevo Herald” (the Spanish edition of The Miami Herald) even came by.  Mr. Carlos Luis (the critic) wrote a glowing review of the paintings of Joaquin Gonzales.  Mr. Luis has followed this artist for some time and liked what we saw that evening.  Mr. Luis wrote about all this stuff HE saw in Gonzalez’s work that I missed, but he IS an art critic…

Gonzalez paints abstract paintings about things he sees in the eastern Peruvian jungles and essentially all of them were his takes on the natural beauty he has encountered there in the Peruvian Upper Amazon.  The below photo shows two of his pictures (“Musica Amazonica” (right) and to the left “Pesca” – latter means “fishing”):

Soon after securing my first glass of wine, I went to examine the art on display.  At that moment, I knew nothing about either artist.  Eventually I arrived at a painting called “Rio Ucayali”, a major tributary of the Amazon (in fact, the name of the Amazon River “starts” where the Ucayali and the Marañon join near Iquitos, Peru).  Seeing that name “Rio Ucayali” sent a jolt through me, as I had been on that very river in 1981 during my first trip to Peru (same trip where I met the girl who went on to become my wife).  I immediately thought: “man, do I need to meet this guy!”  So, I asked Naydu to point him out to me.  And then I went over to converse with Mr. Gonzalez.  We talked in Spanish, and I told him about my experience on that river.  He then replied that ALL of his paintings there were about nature in that part of Peru.  And that he spends lots of time there.  He and I then shared a smile when I told him about how pretty I had found the native Shipibo women were back in 1981…  We went on to talk about Peru and various things he looks for to inspire him in his work (one of which is legal in Peru, but let’s leave it that, OK?).

The below picture shows three more of his paintings: “Mujeres” (“Women”, so yeah I believe him when he said he thought the locals were pretty…), “Calor” (“Heat”) and “Rio Ucayali”.

That picture “Rio Ucayali” may not look much like a river, but it is of course my favorite, having brought that trip back to life for me from over 30 years ago…

If you look at his paintings, there are certain motifs that recur.  These are natural phenomena (birds grouping together in the evening) and instruments (fish traps for example) that the natives there use.

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Also introduced there at her gallery were some sculptures of Phillip Stapleton (hey, Steve, Vicki and Caroline, I did not get a chance to ask him if he was one of “those Stapletons”, LOL…).

Stapleton (who was not discussed in Carlos Luis’s review) makes creations out of old appliances and other familiar objects, here is his “Cricket”:

He also had a fun “Dragonfly” on display, but I do not have that picture.

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Any of you coming to the Miami area and who are interested in art should consider a short trip to Key Biscayne to see these artworks.  The show runs until March 15.

Commenoz Gallery

328 Crandon Blvd., # 218

Key Biscayne, FL  33149