(photos by Jon Waldo)

A very good friend, Jon Waldo, has a show opening this Friday in Chicago at Linda Warren Projects. I love his work and how he talks about it:

On Sundays, when my father brought me to church, I could rarely stay focused on the mass. Instead I'd stare at the stain glass windows and paintings. The canvases usually contained figures placed centrally, without context, floating on monochromed fields of gold. The Nave seemed to flash and float with color and light.

I grew up Jewish in an Irish Catholic town and used to go to Midnight Mass with my friends. I'd sit in the pew and look at the paintings and stained glass, awed. It was a visual explosion, so foreign; it was storytelling about death. Jon brought me right back to it.

When I draw I look for objects that resonate. The subject of each stencil are not static because they can be recreated at any time, free of contextual restraints. I found that memories could be transformed by repeatedly recalling recollections.

See why I love the guy and his work?

A friend, Collin, who had studied theology with a specific interest in Native Americans told me that I was essentially doing what the Shamans do - traveling back in time to fix the past and change the future.

For me, there is a simplicity about my subject matter and the relatively uncomplicated manner in which the subjects of my paintings are depicted. As a native New Englander, I have long been interested in the 19th-century Transcendentalist thinkers as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who called attention to and celebrated the extraordinary nature of the ordinary.

These paintings exude the pop art feel of 1970s rock-album cover designs, but without any of the self-conscious irony that has become so common in a lot of contemporary art that makes such references. Responding to the tenor of these times, I believe my newest paintings express a certain sense of urgency about just how worthwhile⎯or necessary⎯it is or might be right now to pay attention to and recognize the value, in many senses of the word, of everyday experiences and the most familiar objects and events of daily life.

If you're in Chicago and see his show, let me know what you think. If you want to see more of his work, www.jonwaldo.com.

Thank you. Email me for where to ship.

I'm not on Facebook much. When I am I always like when friends who don't know each other and are from very different times in my life, i.e. high school versus now, post the same thing. Like this.

(photo by Mark Ackermann)

After I moved to New York and got a job with the ex-Rockette, I had to look for a new job one year later when her business closed. I had no savings and started applying for anything that had 'entry level' in the title. My favorite place to job hunt was a bank of phone booths in back of the Time Life Building on 6th Ave. and every day I'd put on my one suit and matching shoes and hoof it on over. The phones were private yet thick in the hustle and I had enough room to open the New York Times or Village Voice and make notes. I had a dream forming in my head: I wanted to wear high heels and hear them clack clack clack across a marble floor in a skyscraper where I hurried to my windowed office because my job was important yet creative, like maybe a photo editor at Life Magazine. At the time I was taking a lot of photos, but I was overwhelmed with still being new to New York. Less than a year out of art school, when to paint or even what to paint was white noise with no discerning sound.

I interviewed with a headhunter, with a belt maker, with a salesman who sold boxes, then saw something for a 'creative type' at a pre-press house in Hell's Kitchen. I got an interview and met with the secretary, a 30-something curvy blond with soft eyes that held hurt. She told me the company was owned by a Brit named Mike, a genius she whispered, a man transforming the way images were reproduced. Moments later Mike entered, a chipper 50 y.o. who never stopped moving. The way his secretary looked at him told me they were sleeping together. The wedding ring on his finger told me it was an affair.

The company prepared print material for advertisers and books (back then it was mostly still done by hand) and after Mike gave me the tour we walked back to where I entered. Here, an alcove held a very clean table with three computer terminals on it. Mike looked at the terminals lovingly, as if they were his children, then turned and stared at me for a long moment. "Have you ever heard of Scitex?" It sounded like a bra company and no, I hadn't heard of it. "We're -- I'm funded by them. I'm creating imaging software that will revolutionize the way pictures are created and reproduced."

I didn't know much about what he was talking about , but since I needed a job asap I smiled, wide, hoping I didn't look stupid. "I'm looking for a few new employees I can teach the basics to, then you'll find your own level and see where you fit. I don't manage. I want you to manage yourselves." It was a perfect Lord of the Flies opportunity and without asking me a single question he offered me a job. I must have looked surprised. He grinned. "I read people extremely well. You'll fit fine."

Print images are made up of thousands of dots. Depending on size, shape and placement, the dots create the image as well as effect color and tone. Three of us had been hired and within a few weeks we learned all the stations of Mike's cross. That's how we saw it, since not once was he in front of the computers. Instead he was always furrowed with his secretary, her office door closed, though from my seat I could see them gesturing anxiously through a window.

The other hires weren't interested in managing the work flow or dealing with the sales guy so I was organizing and distributing the work and handling the long term projects. The day I started a new Garfield cartoon book came in and I learned how to cut rubylith, work the darkroom, make films for printing, check color and fix color. I worked on watch ads, crappy catalogues, Chanel print ads and learned to dot etch, burn and dodge to soften lines, take elements out of film and put elements back into film. It was a sweet job since I had no boss, lots of freedom, liked my co-workers and loved cutting cartoons. As long as jobs came in and went out on schedule, the sales guy and Mike loved me.

"Think it's shady?" Another new hire was a girl named Martha, a chain-smoking beauty who dressed like a boy who had a boyfriend who dressed like a girl. She was at my desk watching Mike frantically gesture with the secretary who was trying to calm him down. Martha was from a wealthy Main Line family and her father ran a top Fortune 500 company, something almost no-one knew. (I found out when she asked me to finish a project for her. Her father was being honored by a museum, a museum opening a wing with his name on it and she had to leave work for the ceremony.) Martha and I were the same age, both art school grads new to New York, and though she had a boyfriend and best friend neither of us knew many people and spent a lot of time alone. Her best friend Jeff was gay and single and would come and meet us for lunch, and in short time we were all becoming friends.

Jeff was a member of a gay club called The Saint, a giant club in the old Fillmore East. I had never been -- I had barely been anywhere -- and one night he asked us to go dancing with him. Martha and I dressed up in chains and lace, I put on pointy leopard print shoes and ate a quick peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then close to midnight we met Jeff.

We entered the Saint and walked passed what looked like standard ticket windows for a theater or concert hall. We then went through a large set of doors to the dance floor. Disco was pounding, but it wasn't like anything I had heard on the radio. Nor was the dance floor like anything I had ever seen: it was huge, bigger than a skating rink, and it was covered by a massive dome. In the center of the dome was a pole that held a sci-fi looking contraption filled with lights and it slowly moved up and down projecting stars and swirls and blasts of color onto the top of the dome. Hundreds of men, mostly shirtless, many in leather, danced packed in.

We worked our way to the corner of the dance floor and danced for a while, then I left to check the rest of the club out. I had been to a couple of dinky discos outside of New York, but this - this was out there. Off the dance floor it was dark and made my way to the bathroom, figuring I'd freshen up a little. Right when I entered I saw three bear-like men near the sinks, wearing leather vests and chaps. One held a small metal gadget to his nose and was inhaling a popper, one was laughing, and the third was giving a blow job to the guy laughing. I tried to look casual, like I see this on the subway all the time, and nonchalantly walked to the first stall. In it two men were jerking off. Looking unfazed I walked to the next stall. It was filled with cocaine and cocks and for some reason I nodded hello, my face a blend of boredom mixed with did we go to Hebrew school together? I suddenly acted like I forgot something and strolled on out.

I roamed through the club to a metal spiral staircase and climbed up. This floor had an industrial staircase to the side and I climbed that. Up here it was dark, the music was pounding and I stepped onto a landing to adjust my eyes. Around me I could make out chunky benches that in the dark looked like blocks. I suddenly remembered an art history class about ziggurats, which is what they looked like, but carpeted.

The dome on the dance floor opened and light shot up through the club. I glanced around to better see where I was. Everywhere around me men were fucking and sucking and man handling each other with a practical determination of getting down to business. This wasn't romance or urgent release and I didn't even see lust. One guy saw me and smiled, friendly, kind of like 'welcome' then turned back to the four-way he was part of. I stood there looking around awed, my cool gone. I was still frigid then and sex was complicated, but around me it was as uncomplicated as sex could get. No hang ups, no cares, no anything. This was fucking, straight up, as far as I could see.

The dome closed, the lights dimmed and I headed back downstairs. I found Martha and Jeff and we danced till the next morning. I was heavier on my feet, stomping them into the dance floor, being a part of something that was so foreign to me yet felt like home. Some time later I went to work one morning and couldn't get into the office: Mike had driven the business into hell, absconded with the funding and left the country to avoid arrest. The secretary was devastated, positive he was going to leave his wife, desperate since he had been paying for her apartment. Martha and I looked for new jobs and kept going to the Saint. I found another club, Area, and started going there. A lot of artists seemed to be at Area and I got a glimpse of the art world. It gave me the same feeling The Saint did, of being foreign yet so familiar, so right. I lived in a shit hole and was broke, but New York was starting to feel like home.

A friend of mine sent me a link to an artist he discovered named Henry Flynt. I never heard of the guy and looking around I found this invite from 1961 inviting people to hear music at Yoko Ono's house. The list of people performing is incredible, but what's more fascinating is how they all must have known each other. This is why I love technology: what museums used to do - show me 'x' across a room from 'y' in a way that lets me make associations - is now what the internet does. I can research almost anything and surf my way into far out ideas and connections. Granted, online content is still fueled by humans, but hopefully science is working hard to change that.

(photo is from Area's photobooth)

I love seeing patterns on the street. Not in the design sense (I do, but that's not what this post is about) but in the people sense.

I've always seen patterns and started noting them a few years ago when the tranny hookers at Christopher Street and Hudson began to look like they had just gotten the baby to sleep and were dashing out to pick up a jug of laundry detergent. They'd be wearing gray collegiate sweatshirts that read Dartmouth or Yale, beat up pale pink sweat pants, and their hair was haphazardly tied up in a scrunchie. The kicker was they wore no make-up. I loved it, found it conceptually fascinating, and then poof! Make-up and size 12 stiletto's were back on the corner.

Then it was blind people. I saw them everywhere, for three days. Then people missing a limb; an arm, one leg, a hand. I'd see them all over town so it wasn't like there was a prosthetic convention going on in the neighborhood.

One of my favorite things to see is a tourist window shopping around the corner on Prince St., say - maybe their bag or coat caught my eye - then six hours later I'll see them in Chelsea. Sticking with tourists, I've had a week where all I saw were tourist couples arguing loudly. No-one swears like the French and I don't need to speak it to know that.

Occasionally the patterns show me things. This summer I was walking through Tribeca late at night and passed a woman outside Nobu wearing a micro mini paired with red-soled 8-inch heels. This isn't unusual to see since it's everywhere, all the time. This night though it hit me that she couldn't run if she had to. 8-inch heels and cobblestone streets don't mix well and if she was chased she'd surely be caught. Maybe New York is getting safer.

The pattern I see now is a broader one, not yet defined. It mostly involves people in their late 20's to mid-30's and it has to do with a desire for an '80's kind of decadence. Desire is the key word, since what really seems to be desired is a simulated decadence, a decadence that's safe and without an edge. Granted, I'm talking about a sliver of this age group: the sliver with money. Interestingly, in the actual 1980's this group made a bundle of money on Wall St. With this new faux '80's sliver, their parents - youth of the '80's? - make the money and support them.

What fascinates me is how accepting and even hopeful this group seems to be about being part of the status quo, the mass appeal. Even the hipsters, moneyed or not, seem eager to define their personalities through fashion that advertises brands from the 1970's, or their clothes co-op an entire ethos and lifestyle of a past generation -- any generation -- except their own. Their clothing choices isn't political: it's as if commercialism and identity have happily merged. The individual is no more.

Over the last five or so years a private club scene has blossomed here. The application process to join paints a picture of exclusivity, one where artists and creative types romp freely, yet this isn't the clientele and members know it. Anyone can join these clubs, something also known by members. The decor is simulated chic, the art offends or excites no-one, and even the personality of the crowd has a consistently homogenized tone. (Soho House is the one private club I've been to that has personality, plus they throw fun parties and from what I hear have a great breakfast scene.) These clubs do reach out to creatives with free memberships, but the comps I know are home watching Netflix or getting ready to take the dog out. (The art world has been turned inside out and culturally neutered, too, but that's a longer discussion.)

In the east village I'm seeing '80's hairstyles and dye jobs; fur is back on the street; drugs are being sold openly; there's a pile of new shows and movies in production that take place in the '80's; and music, even some EDM has hints of a Flock of Seagulls. All this isn't the point I'm writing about. What is, or what congealed all of this and turned an intuitive 'is it the '80's?' cog inside me was a company called Reviv.

A close friend spent the New Year at a fancy hotel in South Beach and one afternoon around the pool he noticed men and a couple of women sporting colored arm bands. Some had more than one arm band on. He asked his date what they were and she told him they had seen 'the doctor.' The doctor?

My friend wanted to better understand what she meant so his date took him upstairs to a lavish suite. Inside it had been turned into a spa, or more appropriately, a med-spa, called Reviv. Every bed and chair had a (mostly male) 30-something hooked up to an IV. Hot nurses tended them while a doctor casually roamed the room. Each client was receiving a personally tailored infusion, a doctor-concocted blend of saline and multivitamins and medications - some were getting oxygen - for whatever ailed them. All ailments were gotten by partying too hard.

Run by an ex ER doctor who threw around terms like 'Hydrating therapy' and 'MegaBoost' and 'UltraVive,' this was the womb you went to if you drank too much or snorted too much cocaine or needed to sober up so you could start drinking again. This struck me as real decadence, nothing simulated about it.

My friend isn't much of a partier and back down at the pool his date called over some of the armband wearers. This crew -- all trust funders -- ignored my friend and spoke to his date of how they wanted to start their own Reviv and make it global. My friend listened quietly, since he recently helped build a global brand which he sold for a huge chunk (and now heads another global brand). It was like this crew was playing at business, acting out what they'd do knowing full on they never would. And it wasn't because they didn't have to; talking about it was satisfying enough. Fantasy success has a built in safety net -- you never have to lose or fight for something. What struck my friend was that this crew showed no desire to go for the real thing. Simulation is sufficient.

I find it all disturbing. I know that change, ultimately, is good and I love when I see signs that we're moving into the future. Right now I can't understand or find purpose in how this sliver moves our evolution forward. Sometimes we gotta go back to move forward, so I'm hoping this sliver is the equivalent of an algae bloom, one that will eventually block its own sunlight and cut itself off at the legs.

In the summer of 1997 I was getting ready for my first solo show and a heat wave hit. I had been in group shows and two person shows, but this was the first time I'd take over a whole gallery. The show was set for October and though I had finished the paintings I still needed to varnish them. The humidity was making things too sticky, so I couldn't work until the heat wave passed.

I paced around for two days, agitated, and then from nowhere - to this day I don't know why or what came over me - I decided to write a screenplay.

Though I had watched a lot of movies I had never seen a screenplay nor had ever tried to write anything. Two uncles were writers, one crazier than the other, and after seeing what writing did to them I wanted to flunk English and go straight to art. Writing wasn't just something I hadn't done; it was something I didn't want to ever do. But there I was, sitting at the kitchen table, opening a notebook. What would I write about? An image came to mind of the Paula Cooper gallery on Wooster Street. I wasn't interested in writing about her gallery or people I knew, but I saw I did want to write about a world I knew. That was enough. I started writing.

It was like I was possessed. Eight days later, barely eating or sleeping, I had a finished draft. It was a love story about failure, set in the art world, a blend of comedy and drama. Half way through it a title came to me, BIG WORLD. Painting had always gripped me, but the specificity of words was a whole new thing. Writing was as satisfying as painting.

I had guessed at screenplay format so I ran to B. Dalton Books. There was a book of screenplays by William Goldman that seemed good and since I had never seen a screenplay I didn't know that he was the only screenwriter ever to use his own format. When I got home I dragged out an old IBM Selectric and over the next two days transposed my notebooks to typed pages. I didn't know how to type and went through two boxes of correction ribbon, and when I was done stared pleased as pink at the first draft of my 185 page screenplay.

By this time the heat wave had lifted so I went back into the studio and finished the paintings. I also signed up for a class, Directing the Actor, since I was going to make the script myself. The 6-week class started in August and during the first half of the class I rewrote BIG WORLD. I also burned out the Selectric and bought a ProWriter, a typewriter that could remember about 40 words and had built in correction tape. Goodbye correction ribbon.

The new draft had a gaping hole I didn't know how to fill, so I put the script down since I had an idea for another. This new screenplay would be set in the mall I worked at in high school and would be a story where the bad guy gets away with it and the bad guy's a girl.

When my show opened a classmate of mine from the acting class came to the opening. He was producing an indie he co-wrote and I told him my new idea. Right then he optioned it. It meant I'd get paid to write it. While he went into production on the indie I wrote a draft and while he was in post production I showed him the finish. He loved it, I was happy with it, nothing could happen with it until the indie finished completely, so I went back into BIG WORLD.

Synchronicity is a wild thing. Right then I got called for jury duty and brought a copy of it with me since there'd be a lot of idle time. I read it while sitting in the jury pool area and noticed the guy next to me kept glancing at the script. We started talking, his name was Jim Denault, he was a D.P. (Director of Photography) and I told him I wanted to direct the screenplay. He suggested I crew to learn how a film set worked and gave me the name of a producer crewing up. I called her, she had nothing available, I asked her if she could suggest anyone else I might call and she gave me the name of a production designer, Sharon Lomofsky. I called a few times and found out Sharon was crewing up for a movie called BAD MANNERS. "I'm an artist and I can make anything out of string and duct tape," I begged and she brought me in as an intern, an on set prop assistant, unpaid.

Shortly after that film wrapped the indie producer's film hit the festival circuit and started winning audience awards. He got a big agent, moved to LA, and was going to remake the indie into a big budget movie. When the option on my script came up he didn't renew it and I started throwing it over the fences of production companies. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was doing it.

On the set of BAD MANNERS I noticed this girl, Jessica Lichtner, was always huddled close with the director and producers, was front row for watching the cast in action, took notes on every shot, remained on set when the set was cleared, etc. Her title was script supervisor and I started talking to her during meals, asking her about her job. This girl knew her shit and let me tail her one day so I could watch what she was doing. When filming ended she took me on a two day gig she was doing pro bono for an MFA student at Columbia University and after the first day she turned it over to me. That job led to other student films, then back to low budget features. Here and there I'd day play as a grip, a production manager, a location scout, set dresser, etc. but mostly script supervisor.

For three years I crewed and the most important thing I learned was someone had to have a clear vision for the project. If a director or producer didn't, the project always bombed. (The indie producer's big budget remake never happened, despite his having a very clear vision. I was also starting to learn all the ways a project can derail.)

Eight months after the option expired on my script I contacted a production co. with a first look deal at Sony. They agreed to read it, they liked it and I started rolling my rock of Sisyphus forward.

Yesterday I finished a deadline and today I'm giving Bucky the Albino Woodchuck a good cleaning. I love Bucky.

Every so often I dig through the settings on my phone to get to my personal dictionary. This dictionary saves 'my' words - words I text, email or use to search - that aren't in the established dictionary. It saves misspells, too, which is why I go in now and then to clean it out.

I'm always surprised by how revealing the word list is. This week was a self-portrait: Amex, because I got hacked; Abeille is a restaurant where Dawn and I recently had breakfast; Addidas because I need new sneakers; blunch because we couldn't decide on breakfast or lunch and split the difference.

Scrolling down the list, ass is followed by asshat and I can't wait to get to shituation because I'll have to pass pooblem, a dictionary favorite. These etched their way in when I was struggling with something I was working on and texted Brian, a fellow writer:

Me: 'I have a pooblem.'

Brian: 'A shituation?'

Me: 'Deficately'

Brian: 'Ass me anything'

Me: 'I tip my shat to you'

I'm elegantly redeemed by Nauman, Guggenheim, Didion and DiSuvero, but barely, since suddenly there's fuckle. There's also Falafart, farted, Farticle, farting, Fartis and Harrfart. Stuck in the middle of this, next to Frankenstein, is Fluffyllis. I don't know what a Fluffyllis is, but I'm keeping it.

Chemo is still there from when my mom was still alive.

Dupchik is from THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN, LoM is for the American TV version of LIFE ON MARS, there's NUMB3RS and FREAKS - egad we watch a lot of TV. And we eat: avocado, Babbo, Citerella, cockles, cupcake, donut, edamame, greenmarket, hummus, lychees - I hit rigatoni and still, the food keeps coming.

CAA, WME, Miranda, ProdCo and FTVS let me feel optimistic workwise, as does shortlisted. Musicality makes me feel smart, but then there's narraring. Prunes makes me wonder how old I am, but craption tells me it'll all be okay. It's a curated document of a life, this dictionary. It says I like to eat, work, watch TV, read, look at art, make up words that celebrate bodily functions, and spend time with my beau and friends. That's pretty much right on the truth.

I moved to NYC over twenty years ago and immediately noticed all the hand-painted billboards. A lot of artists used to earn a living painting them and for a nanosecond it was my fantasy job. Custom billboards are now a rarity, but I noticed this one on my way to a meeting midtown.