Raising the Cups: the Cups Take Off

Cups of the day #72

Gwyneth Leech, the Cup Drawings

goes up in the Fashion Center Space for Public Art

215 West 38th Street, NYC, off 7th Avenue

February 28 - April 1st.

Shouldering my Ikea bags full of cup drawings at the end of last week, I wove my way from my art studio on 39th Street, through the trolleys, dollies and racks of clothes that are still trundled across the sidewalks in the Garment District. At #215 West 38th Street, men in boiler suits on a morning break let me into the back door of the Fashion Center building. I unpacked my stuff onto a table in the unused shop space behind the window gallery and rolled my sleeves up. 

 

Arriving at #215 West 38th Street

The exhibition packs up small but this is only part of it.

The giant Ikea bags are inside already.

I then spent hours looping, tying and stringing cups together on clear fishing line before anything appeared in the window.

  A few trial cup sets go up.

By the end of the first of my two hanging days, I had a lot of cups suspended and the window was beginning to have the explosive quality I was looking for. I dreamed of tangled lines that night.

End of Day One.

Day two was a race against the clock - looping, tying, stringing, up and down on the step ladder, in and out to the street to check the hang and to document the process.
People were beginning to stop and take photos with their cell phones.
A mother and son came by.
"Mom, Look at all the coffee cups!"
"Yes," said mom. "See, there's Starbucks and Lenny's and Bread Factory and deli cups. She drew on every cup".
She turns to her son. "You could do that!"
 

The side view into the window from the stoop.

I continued to string cups in the space behind the window. The street door was closed and the boiler-suit men stopped there on breaks for a smoke, as did security guards and also staff from Ben's deli next door. They had a close up view of the cups through the side window and I overheard an exchange:
#1 "I never understand what they show in this space."
#2 "Well, read the description in the window."
#1 "I never understand the stuff they write there".
#2  reads the panel out loud.
#1 "But it's just coffee cups."
#2 "No, they aren't regular coffee cups. Look, each one is different."
#1. "Did she design them?"
#2. "She must have, like fabric.
#1 Oh, OK. That's a lot of cups of coffee.

#2. Understand now. Capisce?

#1. Yeah, yeah.

 

The view from the Hypergraphic's seat. 

At 5:00 PM  I was out of cups - they were all hung every which way, filling the space delightfully - and my time was just about up. I placed my chair - a small armchair with a wooden fan back which came from husband's grandfather's house in Scotland - then set out all my saved-up empties and my drawing materials. Monday I will start five weeks of sitting in the window every week day from 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM drinking my coffee or tea, drawing on empties and adding to the installation. Everyone is welcome to come and have a coffee break with me through the plate glass. But please don't smoke, I beg of you!

The view of the window from the street at the end of hanging.

A year's worth of cups. I drank and drew all that!?

Just before it was time for the security gate to come down at 5:30 PM,  I took a last look at the window from the sidewalk, nearly staggering with exhaustion. A man carrying messenger envelopes stopped. "I saw you working on the window all day," he said. "The way the cups hang at all those different angles is so cool. This window is great. It's like art, or something."

Gwyneth Leech, the Cup Drawings

 February 28 - April 1

Fashion Center Window Space for Public Art
at 215 West 38th Street

Monday - Friday 9:00AM - 5:00PM

 The artist will on site drawing and adding to the installation

Monday - Friday, 11:30AM - 1:00PM 

 

Buongiorno Espresso: Sunrise in Midtown

Wednesday was meant to be a Snow Day. The private schools got one, but in the end the public schools stayed open. Thus, the lines of children trudged along the slushy sidewalks, rather despondent dark figures against still-crisp snow banks as the garbage trucks fitted with plows made their way up 10th Avenue. 

Cup of the Day #60
Blizzard in Midtown by Gwyneth Leech

Gel pen and brush pen on Blue and white printed cup, 2011

It was rather lovely early on, each tree branch and building-ledge trimmed in white. I had been looking forward to a day sledding in Central Park. But you can't do that if you don't have a kid with you, can you?

I decided that the Not-a-Snow-Day was actually a reprieve and I headed early to the painting studio, so early that it was still time for breakfast. My husband and I stopped in Buongiorno Espresso Bar, a sweet little Italian coffee bar opened just a year ago. The owner, Liliana, is Greek but the house coffee beans are imported directly from a roaster in Italy and the crisp croissants are baked on the premises. We settled onto stools at the window counter, our very authentic Italian china cups bright in the morning sun streaming in from the West.

Greeting the morning sun in the West!?

Buongiorno Espresso Bar,  
New York City,  January 2011

Wait a minute - how is the sun streaming in from the West at 8:30AM?

Only because it is bouncing with laser-like intensity from a new glass tower over on 10th Avenue. Weird, but we could almost feel heat in it!

9:00 am saw me in the studio embarking on what turned into a five-hour session, painting high contrast abstractions from the snow-edged panorama outside my window.

Going home I detoured along 48th Street past the Clinton Community Garden. On the other side of the tall black fence the beds and shrubberies were shrouded in white, clean and still. At any time of the year it gives me a thrill to turn my key in the gate and walk in, stepping out of the city into a parallel place. I tried to catch that feeling in a video short I did a few years ago, shot during another January snowfall. The music of Martha Sullivan caught just the right mood and it was a pleasure to find it and watch it again today.

Snow Garden, video by Gwyneth Leech

Music by Martha Sullivan

4 minutes and 12 seconds, 2008

Lifting a Cup to the Tavern on the Green

Living in New York City one must not repine over the closing of a restaurant or shop, the changing of a landmark, the rising of a new building. This place is a work in progress, always in flux, never finished. Still, it was weird to find myself outside the Tavern on the Green in a snowy Central Park the other day and to realize that the Tavern is gone. Literally. I was standing on a snow-covered cement slab that was recently the floor of one of the many glasshouses which had been attached to the original 19th Century structure, now restored by the Parks Department.

Cup of the Day #59

by Gwyneth Leech

Whiteout pen  and 

white gel pen on grey cup

I confess that I never ate at the Tavern on the Green, a famed and latterly rather infamous (for labour relations) destination dining spot in the city. But it was always a favorite rest stop during days with my children in the nearby playgrounds. The Ladies Room was a confection of pink and white tile. An attendant held onto the soap bottle and dispensed scooshes onto small hands, then handed over a crisp white napkin. Her tip jar stood ostentatiously by the sink and we dared not leave without dropping in a dollar.

Before returning to the mundane world outside the Tavern doors, I would wander the labyrinthine mirrored hallways with the girls, admiring Tiffany glass ceiling lamps, framed paintings and stunning stained glass panels of entwined peacocks. We peeked into the frothy glass-house dining rooms filled with wedding and Barmitzah parties and tourists enjoying lunch beneath crystal chandeliers and frescoed ceilings. Outside the windows, fairy lights twinkled in the trees and the topiary all year long.

Tavern on the Green interior 

with frescoes by Richard Taddei, 1984

The non-glass walls of several of these dining rooms were covered with trompe l'oeil frescoes. My downstairs neighbor, Richard Taddei painted amazing murals on the these walls in the 1980s. Good thing he took gorgeous photos which can be seen by clicking here. The whole place was a rather rather frenzied fantasy of luxury and high living.

Back to the reality of this frozen January day, what remains is the undeniably-lovely, faux-Gothic, curved building which was a sheepfold in the park over a hundred years ago. Part of the interior is now transformed into an unlovely and generic visitors center and several units are empty, awaiting a summer food court. In the meantime, specialty food trucks are parked here. Today it is a Van Leeuwen espresso and ice-cream truck, usually found on 5th Avenue. The price of the single-source, pour-over Ethiopian specialty cup of coffee was certainly worthy of the old Tavern, but the ambience was just a bit different.

Snowman, Central Park, NYC

Photo by Gwyneth Leech

Near Misses: A True Musician's Tale

Cup of the day #50

Connections Cup, 2010

by Gwyneth Leech

India ink on white paper cup

Chris Smart was late for choir rehearsal on Saturday morning, arriving breathless and a little pale, clutching his travel coffee mug tightly in his hand. At the break we quizzed him; What on earth happened?

"Well, I am playing a concert tonight Uptown," he said, "and I was carrying a lot of stuff. I changed trains at Astoria Boulevard on the way here. One stop later I made a horrible discovery - I left my oboe and english horn on the subway platform!! That's $12,000 worth of instruments. And the english horn is borrowed."

"The subway door closed just as I realized. I had to wait another stop, then run six blocks back up Broadway with my bag over my shoulder and my tux over my arm, pushing people out of the way.
I hammered up the steps to the platform and ... there they both were, untouched, on the bench!

We gave a collective gasp of relief; New York City and no one one took the instruments.
"Yeah," said Juliana. "I have lost my wallet twice in the city and had it mailed back to me both times."
Come to think of it, I mailed back a wallet myself once, though I have never gotten any of my own lost wallets returned (three, but that was pickpockets).

"The dark brown instrument cases looked just like the wood of the bench. They kind of blended in, so I guess that's why. Though as I came up the platform, I could see people were looking at them, but from a distance."

Of course, we exclaimed, "if you see something say something!" Everyone is afraid of the unattended bag in the subway. Good thing you got there before the bomb squad. How would you play your concert with a pile of instrument shards?! Chris gave a rueful laugh and after stashing his instruments under his chair, headed off to Starbucks to refill his travel mug.

Staying, Not Going: Artists Loving New York City

There was dire and somewhat funereal news from Crain's Business this week in an article called Artists Fleeing the City. It paints a depressing picture of a future New York City with no practicing artists, turned into a shopping-mall art center showcasing only artists from out of town. 

 Cup of the Day #46

Dark Cup by Gwyneth Leech, 2010

Sumi ink on white, encasustic treated paper cup

It is true that the cost of living is high and buyers scarce. Yes, the city has gentrified and those derelict neighborhoods which artists have so successfully pioneered are few and far between. Long commutes and job juggling are exhausting realities for many and can surely interfere with the regular and high level production of artwork. Consider my portfolio of paid jobs since coming to the City: university teacher of digital movie-making, professional choral singer, portrait painter, maker of commissioned videos for artists, census worker, music librarian, writer, movie extra and, last but not least, exhibiting painter (yes, even some commercial gallery shows and art sales).

But this is the sentence that lost me:  "Though the nation's bulk of the art galleries are still here, artists and other creative workers say the feeling of community that used to exist in New York is gone, and with it the spark that fueled ideas".

Really? They must be living in a different city from mine.  I can't go anywhere around New York City without falling over artists I consider part of my community. These are not just visual artists, but choreographers and dancers, writers, video artists, actors and musicians of many stripes. And none have plans to move. Yes, we complain and we do talk about real estate a lot, but the exchange of art ideas continues to be vigorous and fruitful and fueled by the unique character of the city. We just have to keep thinking broadly, creatively - and collaboratively to get the best out of this town. 

Back in the 1950's, what was the New York art world? Fifty men hanging out in the Cedar Tavern and  five art galleries galleries to show in. Now it is thousands upon thousands of us, of all races and both genders, crossing paths in every neighborhood. And what is the secret to hanging on, staying motivated and keeping the artwork flowing? Strength in numbers: getting together in groups large and small to drink coffee, pool our resources and share what we know. I do this literally, several times a month. Generosity is the key, and despite its cut-throat reputation, New York City artists are the most generous people I know. 

Yes, times are tough and money is tight - but the abundance is real.

Cup of the Day #47

Burgeoning, by Gwyneth Leech 2010

India ink on white and green printed cup

Breakfast on the A Train

I was on my way downtown, bleary-eyed, to attend a monthly meeting of artists at breakfast time. I stopped on the way at Amy's Bread on 9th and picked up an oat scone studded with golden raisins and walnuts (amazing, always) and a Twinings English Breakfast tea in a white paper cup.

Cup of the Day #46

Networks, by Gwyneth Leech

Colored ink on white cup, 2010

At 8th Avenue and 42nd Street, I boarded the A train and got a seat.

Eating breakfast on the subway train always feels a little weird, but I was hungry and my scone was calling out to me. Surreptitiously, I opened my paper bag without crinkling and then maneuvered the tab on the cup lid without spilling or elbowing my neighbor. Having accomplished these difficult tasks, I looked around and took a quick survey:

3 starbucks drinkers,

2 deli coffee drinkers,

1 Amy's cup (me),

6 wearers of Ipods  with identical white cords and earpieces,

3 newspaper readers,

1 book reader,

1 young person desperately trying to finish writing an essay,

And 4 people asleep.

The woman opposite me with the heavy makeup and tired eyes had a laptop case at her feet. She was juggling an Ipod, the New York Times AND a Starbucks Vente coffee. 

Clearly for some people, sleeping on the way to work is not an option!

Sculptor Bernard Klevickas

Waiting for the subway 
with his morning brew, NYC

photo by Stanley Klevickas

Cinnamon Apple Crisp with Coffee: Chickens Coming Home to Roost

I came across an apple sale on 9th Avenue the other day. 43rd Street Kids Preschool were raising money with a fine selection of New York States apples - Macoun, Macinstosh, Honey Crisp and Empire. I am a sucker for apples generally and the New York State varieties are terrific in season. I staggered home with plenty (watch the elbow!) and now need a recipe. I am still dreaming about a dish of hot apple crisp and a hearty cup of coffee I had with it at the 165th Annual Dutchess County Fair not too long ago.

Cup of the Day #43

Strutting Cup by Gwyneth Leech

Colored ink on white cup, 2010

I was there at the tail end of the summer with my sister, her husband Scot and my younger daughter. Kitty and Scot have a farm in Dutchess (Scot is a Timothy Hay farmer among other things, but that is another story) and they go every year. There are animals, agricultural exhibits, carnival rides and food, food food. Where to begin? How could anyone eat their way through it? We did our best, and here I am two months later still thinking about that apple crisp. 

On the animal front, there were cows, pigs, sheep, goats, rabbits. All highly entertaining to the seven year old member of the party. Being a city kid, Grace usually only sees these in books.

Cup of the Day #43

Strutting Cup, Verso by Gwyneth Leech

Colored ink on white cup, 2010

Towards the end of the animal exhibits we entered a large hall - chickens and roosters! The fancy breed poultry!! The cages in rank upon rank took me straight back to the first time I saw this type of exhibit - 1983, the Royal Highland Show outside Edinburgh, Scotland. I was an art student. Those birds were heaven-sent. At least five years of poultry-inspired art ensued: paintings, drawings, sculpture and videos. There is something in the shape of a rooster as it cranes and struts that has persistently fascinated me. Generally, I don't use chickens as subject matter anymore but an underlying form is still lurking in my artwork and pops out when I least expect it. Why, a veritable flock of chickens appeared unexpectedly on this cup drawing just the other day.

They reckon dinosaurs looked a lot and walked a lot like chickens (and ostriches and Emus). I like that thought.

La Poule, Video Installation by Gwyneth Leech 1988

With a 2008 Soundtrack by Martha Sullivan

inspired by Jean Phillipe Rameau's 

18th Century harpsichord piece, La Poule
(Paolo Bordignon on harpsichord)

Tuba and a Latte Redux

I was down at Stuyvesant High School this morning tagging along after my ninth grade daughter on Open Class Day. Other parents were in evidence, though fortunately not all the possible 7000+ parent body. Those of us sitting in on my daughter’s classes looked a little shell-shocked as we tried to process long-forgotten lessons in Spanish conjugation, congruent angles, the human digestive system, sentence patterns, blind contour drawing, Plato’s Republic and a debate about censorship by the Philosopher
King.

Cup of the Day #41

by Gwyneth Leech, 2010

Sumi ink on white cup

Between classes was not-so-rapid transit via escalator and stairway from fourth floor, to tenth, back down to third, up again to seventh and finish on first (four minutes allowed for each transition). A typical schedule, but the Friday before Halloween, not a typical atmosphere as bewigged and costumed students thronged by.

The highlight of the day for me was band class. A parade of rather dented brass instruments came out of the instrument closet, crowned by four wonderfully battered tubas. My daughter perched on her chair, dwarfed by her tuba and pulled from her school bag the mouthpiece bought just weeks ago. With no fanfare, Mr. Winkel raised his baton and 60 instruments began a cacophony that resolved quite quickly into a note. B flat scales were requested and played with increasing accuracy and ensemble. Then, briskly, they were on to page 16 of the band book. Was it? Could it be? Did I recognize the Jet Blue March? (All right, I have never heard it before, but it was definitely a march).

“Ok”, said Mr. Winkel, “bass line only, please”. 

And the oompah pahs of the tuba section shook the rafters!
I was proud, and granddad smiled down from trombone heaven.

Really, I am impressed. Take 60 bright kids, add 60 instruments they have never played before, put them in a room with a skilled music teacher and stir. Six weeks later you have the makings of a real concert band.

The latte this time was bought after school, a few blocks away in the World Financial Center, at the end of a breezy walk along the stunning Hudson River esplanade in Battery Park. I stopped into Financier Patisserie and ordered a decaf Columbian/African blend. It came in a paper cap with a Solo Super Traveler, slide-open-and-close, patented plastic lid. Truly, the world is full of wonders. 

The Esplanade, Battery Park, NYC
Photo by Alistair McMillan

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alistairmcmillan/35731721/

A Latte Under the Golden Trees

Cup of the Day #40

Midtown Grid by Gwyneth Leech, 2009

Colored ink on white paper coffee cup

Here's the thing about New York - this big beautiful city stretches away in every direction, a vast candy box of delights - new sights and sounds to be had by walking just a little or taking a short subway ride to a new place. Yet, we run like hamsters on our usual routes until we don't see the exrtraordinary ordinary any more.

Kimon Nicoliades, in the Natural Way to Draw, sets the advanced student on a quest to train the eye - go out and look, come back and draw. My mother was a great adherent and did some of her most marvelous travel paintings after she got home again.

Julia Cameron, in the Artist's Way makes the Artist's Date a central tennat of her work book. Go forth to do anything that pleases you once a week, but keep your eyes and ears open. Once back in the studio the ideas will flow.

Well, my Artist's Date right now is a twice weekly trip to Columbus Circle for physical therapy on the left (drawing hand) elbow - now finally on the mend months after the grocery-carrying tendon strain. Here in the offices of Professional PT, deep in the bowels of the Time Warner building below Whole Foods, I submit to the strecthing, pummeling, weight ligfting and icing by a team of therapists and assistants.

Then aching and exhausted from supination and pronation wrist exercises and biceps curls with giant weights (OK, 1 lb in each hand) I stagger across Columbus Circle to buy a croissant and a latte from Café Ferrara's kiosk outpost at the entrance to Central Park. Then I wander with eyes lifted up to the magnificant trees and across the green lawns carpeted with golden leaves where figures seated on rocks and benches give a great feeling of depth and distance.

30 minutes later, brimful of ideas, I am ready to take the subway down to the painting studio for a day in front of the canvas.

October Day on the Mall

Central Park, 2010

Photo by Gwyneth Leech

What is Your Luxury? A Healthy Dose of Art and Coffee

 
I have been getting some flack lately about the money I spend on fancy coffees. Well, it is only one a day. My nerves can't take more than that. OK, maybe throw in a deli cup of tea in the afternoon. I feel rich when I drink my brew out in the world, which I wrote about in Café Saltz. Today I walked to an appointment, 12 blocks each way - not spending $4.50 on public transportation - and bought a fancy Organic Rooibos Ambrosia cup of tea for $2.00 on the way back. See, I am actually saving money.

  Cup of the Day #37

by Gwyneth Leech, 2010

Sumi ink on white cup

Honestly, a girl has to have some luxury and what else can we afford in this crazy expensive city?

It's me and Holly Golightly drinking coffee from a paper cup in front of Tiffany's. I love the opening sequence from the Audrey Hepburn movie, by the way. And yes, I do walk up to to 57th Street and 5th Avenue to look at the windows of Tiffanys - and Bergdorf's - on a regular basis. Because if you love installation art those windows are where you can get a regular dose of the best.

So, the truth is I am a penny pincher and hate to spend. Which is why my experience down on the Lowers East Side at Alix Sloan Gallery the other day was so strange and unnerving: I almost bought a painting! I went for the opening of Mia Brownell's show Stomach Acid Dreams and fell in love with a small painting in the rear gallery called Still Life with Helix. Like the other paintings in the show, it is a luscious mix of bravura still life painting technique, abstraction and science. Oh, the shining fruit! What grabbed me was a delicate strand of DNA twisting through the central axis, made up of brilliantly painted grape stem.

Against all reason, I wanted that painting. And at under a $1000 I could conceivably buy it. All I would have to do is cancel our family's self-employed person's health insurance plan which drains well over a grand from our coffers each month, maybe go to one of those high deductible plans where you pay as you go and gamble that your health costs are less than $20,000 a year. Think of the art collection I could have. Think of the artwork I could have amassed by now, if it weren't for 10 years of NYC health insurance premiums.

Throwing caution to the wind, I actually went to the desk to tell them to put a red dot on it -

but it was already sold.

"Still Life with Helix" by Mia Bownell
2010
11" x 9"
oil on canvas

in  Stomach Acid Dreams

Doing the Rounds: Espresso on the Lower East Side

 Cup of the Day #37

Wheel cup by Gwyneth Leech, 2010

Colored ink and white-out pen on brown cup

I stopped by Cheryl McGinnis Gallery on 8th Avenue and 38th Street the other night for the opening of Radial Patterning, an attractive show that appeals to my own off-beat patterning tastes. The Full Brew  recommends it.

While there I ran into W., a mom I see in the neighborhood and know from Preschool days 10 years ago, but who I have never seen in an art gallery before. She is a friend of April Vollmer, one of the exhibiting artists. W. and I had a friendly chat about life and public schools and then I went on my way.

Next stop was a couple of gallery openings on the Lower East Side, half of Manhattan away - A train to the F train to the Delancey Street stop. I went to support Mia Brownell and Judith Page, artist colleagues both having solo shows in that 'hood.

On the way down Orchard Street for Judith's show, I noticed the Tenement House Bookstore all lit up. A book reading had just finished and a crowd was milling about inside. Hm, I thought idly, I will step in for a minute. Maybe I will see someone I know? Not likely because I really don't know anyone in the booky set.
But as soon as I enter I see... W's identical twin sister! Literally.
"Oh," I say, "I just saw your sister at Cheryl McGinnis Gallery!"
"Yes," she said, "she went there tonight and I came here."
So what are the odds that in this city of 8 million I would run into both sisters on the same night, miles and a culture world apart?
It really is just a village.

After the openings I stopped at Orchard 88, a pleasant café which opens airily onto the corner of Orchard and Broome Street. There I was happy to see no one I knew. While sipping a pepperment tea, I fell into conversation with the manager about their coffee specials. Too late in the day for me, but I am going to go back soon to try their Frozen 88 - vanilla gelato, caramel and espresso, the coffee roasted locally at Irving Farms.

Orchard 88 has been there seven years. Big gentrification is afoot down on the LES. Back then, it was one café in a block of brassiere vendors.
Now that would have been a sight to see.

Kosha by April Vollmer
in Radial Patterning at the Cheryl McGinnis Gallery

From April: "this is woodblock and mixed media on washi, mounted on a 12 x 12 x 2 inch wood panel. Kosha refers to the layers of the self in Indian philosophy, and the work is made from multiple layers of slightly transparent Japanese paper.
It is a series of 12, some include drawing, some include offset printing on washi, but I tried to get some woodcut in all of them."

Click here to visit the exhibition website 

Tuba and a Latte To Go

OMG, my teen daughter has decided to take up the tuba! She is in a band class at Stuyvesant, her new high school, and trumpets being a dime a dozen, she and five boys have volunteered to be the tuba section.
"Do they teach you to play?" I ask, trying to imagine the first rehearsal.
Shrug of the shoulders.

Cup of the Day #36

Black and white cup by Gwyneth Leech, 2010

Sumi ink and white-out pen on white and brown cup

We are walking across midtown on Saturday to buy her a mouthpiece. 48th Street right off Broadway is still the home of instrument stores: Sam Ash, Manny's, Rudy's Music Stop, 48th St. Custom Guitars chief among them. But we turn into the first open door - New York Woodwind and Brass Music Corp. A smooth trumpet sound greets us; a client is trying out a new instrument in the cramped aisle. A man called Bill leans relaxed at the counter, ready to answer our questions to the backdrop of the trumpet riffs. He has everything we could possibly want in tuba mouthpieces. I ruefully hand over $43 and Megan drops the hefty piece of metal into her purse.

While looking into the glass cases, flutes catch my eye, shining silver against the blue velvet linings of their black boxes. I used to play the flute, a lot - first there were years of lessons, then in marching bands with my dad (he on trombone), in community orchestras around Philadelphia, in the pit for shows at the University of Pennsylvania, even in Edinburgh community orchestras when I first moved to Scotland to study art.

Then I gave it up for singing and painting. But the instrument is still under my bed at home, pads and joints leaking after years of inattention. On an impulse I decide to go home and get it and bring it back for an overhaul. I am going to play again!

When I return to the store the trumpeter is gone, but behind the counter Bill is noodling sweetly on the sax. He pauses long enough to take my flute and give me a repair ticket.

I am feeling a little overcome by my two walks across Midtown and decide I need a latte to restore me. But where to go between here and home for an interesting cuppa?
47th and Broadway - Starbucks. No thanks
47th and 8th - Starbucks. Nope
49th and 8th - Starbucks, x two. No thanks, neither
47th and 9th - Starbucks. No!
OK, this is ridiculous.

Finally I detour to Nook on 9th and 50th. It is really a sit-down cafe, brunch underway. But they are sympathetic to my need. Phoenix coffee, latte foam just right. I take out, go sit in the Clinton Community Garden on 48th and listen to the fluting of birds while sipping my coffee and planning my instrumental come-back.

So, are there any duets out there for flute and tuba?

Remember to Buy Teabags

Twyla Tharp has some great things to say about memory (the Creative Habit, chapter 4). In the headlong never-stop culture of New York City, memory is something we forget all the time. I mean, we aren't looking back. People, events, movements, art forms, jobs are a rushing river carrying us along.

Cup of the day #35

Ice Coffee Cup by Gwyneth Leech, 2010

Colored ink, Black Sharpie and Whiteout pen

on clear plastic cup.

Getting back to my studio after a summer hiatus I am initially adrift. Where the heck was I? The paintings are there on the wall, but somehow seem finished to me. I did a painting workshop at School of Visual Arts a few years ago. The teacher (whose name I forget) recommended that at the end of each painting session we write on a post-it what we intended to do next and stick it right on the painting. It is actually very useful as a kick start next time you come in. Of course, I don't remember to do it.

Today, other habits save the day. Art and Fear  by David Bayles and Ted Orland is another book that is right on about habit and memory. I do some things automatically without having to think about them. When I arrive I sit down at the table by the window, and pull out a fresh loose sheet of cream colored laid paper from a box. I pick up a Faber Castelli brush pen and I start to write scraps and lists of ideas in a large loopy handwriting, rather like drawing. A few sides of paper, my memory is jogged and I am on to cup drawings. This is an Artist's Way kind of approach - writing a few uncensored pages, every day. It works for me. And my sheets of paper and cup drawings contain the genesis of whole painting series and large scale projects.

From drawing to painting is one more difficult step. To get there I have an awful thing left to do - put on my painting clothes. This can be the hardest part of my entire day. With overwhelming languor, and much sighing I accomplish it - and then, excited I reach for the oil paints. The painting day is underway. As Twyla says, eventually you just have to stamp your feet and start.

Hours later, I remember that this is a still not a usual school week and I get to Grace's school just in time to meet her new 2nd grade teachers. Back home, I congratulate myself on a great start in the studio. Only thing is, I forgot to buy the teabags, again.

In the Studio, about to draw

September 210

the Art of Procrastnation: Caffeine on the Couch

The girls are finally back at school. The oldest took herself early by subway. When the door shut on my husband and younger daughter at 8AM, I grabbed my tea and sank down on the couch for the best hour of the day. Silence descends and I come to myself. First day of my Fall art making season!

Cup of the Day #33

Ebullient Cup by Gwyneth Leech, 2010

Colored ink and white-out pen on blue cup

For days, in free scraps of time, I have been cleaning out filing cabinet drawers, sorting through piles of papers and mail accumulated over the Spring and Summer, shredding, updating my e-mail address book, scrawling ideas and plans on the back of envelopes and looking longingly at my art materials and piles of blank cups. Now a whole day stretches in front of me. I am happy. I am excited.

Actually, I am terrified.

How will I get back in the groove? 

I start with a quick review of my current read: Twyla Tharp, the Creative Habit. (Simon and Schuster, 2003). I am only a few chapters in but this book speaks to me. I have read a lot of these sorts of books: the Artist's Way, Art and Fear, I Rather Be in the Studio. They all have something to offer the artist stumbling through a morass of life obligations that seem to keep us from our work. Why is it so hard to put art-making first?

Twyla is fierce and indomitable. I am absorbed in her first section on preparing to prepare, about the rites and rituals we put in place to get ourselves in front of our work habitually. She starts her days by working out from 6-8 AM. Her ritual is the getting into the cab to go to the gym. Too hard for me! I keep reading. Page 17, she describes a California author who can't write indoors, so his ritual is the carrying of a mug of coffee to an open porch where he works every day. I am so on board with that one! Once I am down the street and buying that cup of coffee in a paper cup, I know my feet will take me straight to the studio and the rest will happen.

Now all I have to do is get off this couch...

Trash Talk

Cup of the Day #29

by Gwyneth Leech, 2010

Green India ink on white Cup

The High Line Park, that extraordinary oasis atop an old elevated rail line in Chelesea, is looking lush and gorgeous right now. The plants are acclimatizing well since the park opened a year ago and it feels more and more like the urban nature preserve of many imaginations, albeit with comfortable places to sit, amazing lighting at night and spotless, litter-free walkways.

There are also lots of trash cans - not found on the old High Line of course - and giving into my trash picking artist instincts I peeked into many during my walk there the other day, doing a quick survey of the contents around noon on a weekday. Far and away, there were more cardboard coffee cups than anything else: Joe's Coffee, Ninth Street Coffee, 'Wichcraft, Starbucks, 7-11, anonymous deli cups and more.  'Wichcraft sometimes has a coffee cart up here, but not today. These are all carry in, and leave behind.

The High Line Park on a June morning, 2010 

 

Is it a New York City thing or is it everywhere, this walking with a coffee cup? Time was, everyone had a cigarette in mouth. I looked around - no cigarettes, but almost everyone had a cup in hand. Someone told me recently, "I love my coffee in a cardboard cup. It means I am out somewhere, doing something, on the move." It has an irresistible appeal, but doesn't it add up to an awful lot of cups? A few days later, my friend Christian sent me a photo he took during the inauguration in DC last year. Ah yes, a lot of coffee cups.

Back on the High Line, I have to admit, I couldn't resist picking out two empties: a Joe's Coffee cup in tender pale blue, and a Ninth Street Coffee cup, all-over black with a crisp white silhouette of a cup on the side. They went into my bag to be drawn on later. It's a slippery slope, this trash picking, but I took the chance.

 

Guest photo

Discarded coffee cups

Inauguration, DC, 2009

by Christian Smythe 

Keeping it Light

Cup of the Day #22
by Gwyneth Leech 2009
colored India ink on white cup

I am sitting in the front room of my 5th floor walk-up on West 47th Street between 9th and 10th. The air is clear and a fresh breeze is blowing in the windows, carrying the scent of irises blooming in the community garden a block away.

I am in digital mode today and another New York artist Ula Einstein is assisting me. Ula is being  objective and helping me to complete a delayed drawing project which involves scanning, manipulating and uploading 150 images to my website. To set us up I have made a pot of Scottish Blend tea, which she drinks black with honey and I take with just milk.

While we work we discuss our preferred art-making methods and materials. Making art on the go comes up. Time was I used a sketchbook, but for some years now I have been focused on the ubiquitous cardboard cup as my favorite drawing surface. Ula uses a wider range of ephemera and cast-offs in her stitched and burned artwork. Trader Joe coffee cans and the round aluminum skins that seal the ground coffee are useful to her, as are small odds and ends, such as napkins and balloons that she can carry in her bag. So, as she says, she always has something to work on while traveling from place to place. Ula's process is described beautifully in a recent article in Dvisible magazine, online here.

My mother Louise Leech, also an artist, made sculpture incorporating cast-off objects in her younger days, so I come by my impulse to recycle honestly. However, when my parents moved in 2004 from a large house they had lived in for 50 years, my sister and I cleared her basement work rooms. Out came broken umbrellas, candelabras, heavy picture frames, dismembered chairs and tables, trunks and boxes, bicycle frames, doors, and a chipped bowling ball, heavy as lead.

I think it was the bowling ball that finished me off. As I hauled it last of all up the basement stairs I resolved then and there to be an artist who travels light. Being inclined to paint on stretched canvas, I am still working to keep that resolution. But with cardboard coffee cups I am definitely on the right track.

Renewal IV

By Ula Einstein
mixed media sculpture installation

©Ula Einstein 2010