November in the Adirondacks is winter, no matter what the calendar says. Snow came regularly and didn’t melt. We’d been open for a couple of months, and a lot of women drove up from New York City to spend weekends with us. One couple volunteered to drive me to Poughkeepsie to see Sara. I called her and she said to come down because her husband was working on a construction job in the city for the weekend.

This is not  a memory I’m proud of or that I like to dwell on. It just happened. Nobody won, and I think everyone lost something that night. Until that night, I never saw myself as a bad guy.

The women I rode with were the first couple I’d seen who had been together a long time. I sat in the back seat and watched with envy as one reached over casually to touch the other’s leg or hold hands. They discussed places they’d been and people they’d known over the sixteen years they’d been together. Sixteen years. It sounded like an impossible dream to me.

Sara picked me up at the bus station in Poughkeepsie and drove me home. Her town was enjoying a true fall, cool, crisp, and colorful. Once we were in the house Kyla ran to me, grabbed me around the knees and called me Doody. I adored her.

I’d visited once Sara once before, but had slept on the sofa. Her husband was there, but we didn’t have a lot to say to each other. Sara and I had rebuilt her Dodge’s carburetor. After that, Sara told him that she was involved with me, and he said if he ever found me there again, he’d kill me.

But I loved her, and when she wanted to see me, I would do whatever it took to see her. It was very odd to be with Sara in the house she shared with her husband. I think she was glad to see me, but I spent the whole time feeling like I was going to throw up. She made my favorite food – fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, but it felt like lead in my stomach. The whole time a little nagging voice in the back of my mind kept saying “what are you doing here?”

The phone rang around 8pm. Sara’s husband decided to come home for the night and would be there in between 11pm and midnight. Panic set in for both of us. She called every motel in the area, but it was hunting season, and the hunters had packed the rooms. Every passing minute was scarier than the last. I volunteered to sleep in the back seat of her car, but it was going to be a cold night and she wouldn’t hear of it.

Finally, she took me down into the basement and made up an Army cot for me. She said he wouldn’t come down, because he’d have to get up early to get back to the job site outside New York. I had brought a book, but wouldn’t turn on a lamp of any kind for fear he’d see the light under the door.  So I lay on the cot and waited. I heard him come home, around 11:30pm, heard their muffled voices. I’m amazed I could hear anything over the pounding of my heart. Our biggest fear was that Kyla might inadvertently say something about me.

After what seemed like a long time, Sara and her husband went to bed. He went to sleep, but I heard her pacing off and on all night, the floorboards creaking with every step. At least they hadn’t had sex. I didn’t think I could have taken that, but, of course, I would have. I didn’t have any options.  I knew she was sleeping with her husband.

I dozed off and on all night, dreaming over and over that he came down to the basement and found me. I must have had that dream ten times that night, and in every one of them he killed me. When I heard the stairs creak, at first I thought I was dreaming again, but then realized the door was opening and someone was on the stairs. I looked around to see if there was a gun he might use – that was what happened in one of the dreams – but didn’t see one. For about 30 seconds, I thought I might die. I could never have explained that situation to my parents, even in the afterlife. I couldn’t rationalize it to myself.

When I looked up at the stairway, I was relieved to see Kyla. She ran over to the cot, hugged me, and told me breakfast was ready. I didn’t move until I heard Sara call down that her husband had gone. Sara apologized profusely for putting me such a terrible predicament. Over the years, we’ve only talked about that night twice, once on the phone and once this past summer. She is embarrassed that it happened, as am I.

She was preparing to take care of her mother-in-law who was dying, and we weren’t going to be seeing each other for a while. That night was to have been our last hurrah. I didn’t know if I’d ever see her again when I left that afternoon. She had made a commitment to her husband and was honoring it. I knew she loved me, but they had a history together and a child. I didn’t think her love for me was strong enough to break that.

Her mother-in-law died Valentine’s Day morning, 1975, the same day I received the documents for my divorce. When I’d told my husband that I was moving to the retreat, he asked me if I was ever coming back to him. I said no, and he said he was going to start divorce proceedings. Connecticut had just put through the no fault divorce, so he didn’t have to give any details and I didn’t contest it.

The day the documents came, I drove off by myself to read them. I hadn’t fought the divorce and knew I wasn’t going back to a straight existence no matter what, but there was something very painful about reading the words that our marriage was over because we had irreconcilable differences. I thought about our wedding and how much I loved my now ex-husband, and sat alone and cried.

My life was not going as I ever would have imagined it might. I was in love with a woman who had gone back to her husband. I was living a frozen land – and it was going to get colder before it ever got warmer – alone. I couldn’t go back to my husband – at least I’d had the option before – and I couldn’t go forward with Sara. There wasn’t going to be a happy ending for us.

©2009 jgschenck

Whenever I think of that frozen winter atop Moose Mountain, New York, I find myself wondering about the children. There were seven adults and eight children which is why we never put anything to a vote and did not call the collective a democracy. We couldn’t afford to. The kids were all bright enough to organize and out vote us.

They ranged in age from 18 months to fifteen years – quite a spread. Sara’s daughter was the youngest, so I got to spend quite a bit of time with one of the most amazing kids I’ve ever met. Sara believed she was too timid and hesitated to take on challenges that required her to stand up to people. It wasn’t how I saw her, but what mattered was how she saw herself. As a result, she was determined to raise Kyla to be fearless. Kyla, which means victorious, wasn’t afraid of anything and looked on everything as a challenge. Sara and I went to Sears to look at a snow blower one time, and within seconds of her putting Kyla down we heard the PA system announce there was a toddler stuck inside one of the snow blower models. We quickly extracted her and left the store.

Malia had two children, Cheryl, 9, and Becky, the oldest of the children at 15. Cheryl was the whiniest kid I’ve ever known, and I sought for redeeming features in her to no avail. Becky was a sweetheart. Of all the kids at the retreat, I think she must have been hardest hit by the experience. She was sensitive enough to come home crying when the kids in high school called her a lezzie, but strong enough to be herself in the midst of all our chaos.

Marta had three children – Nula, 10, Marina, 8, and Debby, 4. Marina, the middle child, is the one I think about the most. She was incredibly sweet, but there was something else there. Years later, Marta told me, when she moved to the San Francisco area, Marina chose to stay with the women in the Vermont women’s collective they had lived in. I’ve heard from Debby, and apparently Marina never reconciled with her mother after that move. Nula was years older than her age and even then suffered bouts of depression that frightened her mother. Of all of us, Marta was by far the most politically inclined, and I wonder how that affected her children.

Whenever I begin feeling sorry for the kids who lived at Athol Women’s Retreat, I think back to what it was like growing up in the Deep South with religious parents and a father who took unpopular stands. No one gets a free pass. We all have to make the best we can with the issues our parents have, just as they did the best they could with their parents’ issues.

Wendy had two children, the only boys. Andy was 7 with red hair and freckles, one of the most likeable kids you’ll ever meet. His younger brother, Mitchell, was 4 and had behavior issues. That means he screamed all the time. He also had a habit of trying to pick none existent things out of the air. Malia told Wendy she thought he was autistic, not really something a mother wants to hear. He was so out of control that none of us was surprised when she took the boys and moved back to her home near Poughkeepsie. I did miss Andy though.

One of the bad decisions made regarding the kids early on was when the mothers decided it wasn’t fair that they had to deal with their children, plus handle duties in the collective. So each afternoon when the kids got home from school, they were assigned to one of us until supper. Not being a mother and never having wanted to be a mother, I didn’t really have many creative ideas for expanding their little minds. I did, however, have chores that needed to be done, and had the kids help me with them – like raking leaves in the fall or doing poop patrol to find where the dogs had pooped. It only took about three weeks before the kids went to the adults and asked not to have to spend “quality time” with me.

I don’t think anyone who was there will forget the day we wall went to Warrensburg and registered the kids for school. We were all in mountain dyke chic – blue jeans, work boots, and flannel shirts. Even I felt sorry for the kids, who were clearly embarrassed by our presence. It would have been enough for them to have everyone looking at their mothers, but to have the entire collective show up was more than most of them could handle. In our defense, I can only say it sounded like a good idea when Malia suggested it.

In November, a young woman showed up who said she would be in charge of the children in exchange for room and board. The vote to accept her was unanimous, and thus Carolinda came into our lives. She was 21 and a graduate of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH, fresh-faced, funny, and surprisingly steady, a welcome addition.

Following graduation from Antioch, Carolinda moved to Virginia Beach and worked for the Edgar Cayce Institute. I have no idea why she left the institute to stay with us. If she was like most of the women we met, she was facing a life of expectations other people tried to put on her and needed time to think.

She was great with the children, and always came up with creative things for them to do, even organizing homework sessions in the dining room with the older ones helping the younger ones. She helped the older ones, and if she got stuck she’d call one of us in to assist. Since my strong point was making people laugh, she didn’t need my help very often.

After Sara’s initial departure for a couple of weeks, she and Kyla came back to AWR. It quickly became clear that she needed more room than the tiny room next to mine afforded. I’m not sure how it happened, but we ended up moving into one of the cabins which was larger than our two rooms together. There was an alcove for Kyla’s baby bed, and we had our own bathroom.  We had a screen porch where I put my yellow bean bag chair.

Despite my inability to provide a mother-like influence on the kids, they liked me. My favorite thing was how they liked to shovel a path from the main house to my cabin, a very big deal when your average snowfall is between one and two feet.

A final story. One night I let Sara talk me into going to the drive-in to see a triple feature of horror movies. I NEVER see movies like that. I didn’t even see “Jaws” when it came out. Ah, the power of love. We saw the original “Night of the Living Dead,” one I don’t remember, and “The House on Horrible Hill.” That one was about a van full of homicidal children who escape from a van when it skids off the road, an accident they caused. They go to a house on a hill and proceed to slaughter everyone. Lots of gore and blood. Yech.

The next morning I went around to every kid there and was nice to them. I mean, there were eight of them. It was a remote location. There were saws and things in the barn. It seemed prudent.

I think about the kids, now into their 30’s and 40’s – hope we didn’t wreck their lives – and wonder if they think about us.

©2009 jgschenck

It seemed like a must to attend Art Basel this year in Miami. Just about everyone involved within Graffiti or the so called “Street Art” scene was in attendance. There was so much going on during the week that I barely had a chance to see it all. I feel that the work that was going on in the street was much more interesting than anything on display in the galleries.

I would have to say this was the best art event I have ever been to. No fights or unnecessary drama, just positive attitudes and top notch work. Much respect to Books, Typoe & Slow for helping to make this year a success.

A rough sketch of the “South Beach Savior”

Rain Delay

I decided to try another Graffiti piece. The letter combination is a real challenge. It is suspected that Miami style Jesus is blessing the piece with cocaine ala Scarface (see Sever’s)

The Witnes

Steel

Sever

Taboo

Kem5, Rath, & Prey

Daks

Push

Custom sketchbooks personalized by SABER.

* 8.5″x11″
*Canson basic black hardbound sketchbook. Sewn binding. All-purpose white, 65lb, neutral PH, good for pencil, crayon, ink, charcoal and pastel.
216 pages.
*Spray painted cover
*Each with Saber Tag and Bubble

Comes in 3 sizes — available here.

via

HENSE – THE 7TH DAY PROJECT

MSK and The Seventh Letter showcase artist HENSE from Atlana. Amazing talent relaying what it takes to live the life of an artist.

These photos are a slight preview of a video I shot of Revok painting a billboard the other night right on the Sunset strip in Hollywood. Working on the edit right now and should be up soon. This image I purposely shot out of focus. I have been interested in seeing how far I can go with shooting stuff out of focus while still maintaining a solid sense of composition without compromising the story telling of the photo.

for a few more in focus photos, click for…

Revok painted this billboard for the Hip-hop artist, Charles Hamilton aka Sonic the Hedgehog.

<a href=”http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/1171514/rozesareredwordpresscom?claim=qaddugqtq2c”>Follow my blog with bloglovin</a>Of course FOX is on some more bullshit as usual…

Find out more at: SaberOne.com

So last spring I started a what I thought was going to be a 150′ fill-in on the Los Angeles River (Frogtown section). The first night, I rolled out 3 gallons of black/brown which only got a skinny outline done. It was more like the sketch so I’d know where to start filling in the next night. Well I couldn’t get back for the second session for a few days, but I figured “no biggie”; this was gonna be a big project and gonna take many nights.  So I stroll up there a few nights later to start the filling in, and um…. I could swear I started it earlier that week. …Where was it?!! …Buffed?!  What?! But the Saber piece was running for years. The MTA piece was just done. WTF?! Why me?!!! Little did I know, this was the beginning of something big. Or should I say the REMOVAL of some things big…

Turns out that even with these crazy economical times, they’ve come up with $837,000 to start to buff the Los Angeles River.  Now if you don’t already know, the L.A. River is not exactly a beautiful “river”, but actually a literal drainage ditch with 60′ cement banks running through industrial and unvisited parts of Los Angeles. One of the only things the river has offered has been the enormous canvases for some of the largest murals on the planet.

the “SABER” piece. 60′ x 250′, 1997
(check out Saber himself siiting in the upper left part of the “B”)

“SABER” buffed September 2009 (above 4 photos: Known Gallery)

Then, last week, they had the US Army Corps of Engineers buff the MTA piece. Yup, the Army is now working to buff graffiti. Must be a national security issue. Gotta get the army to fight art done without permission. In related news, they’ve arrested 10 of the alleged MTA crew, and are charging them for the graffiti. They claim it took them 400 gallons of paint and 4 nights to do it. They also might be seeking to charge the crew the clean-up cost of $3.7 MILLION to buff it ($38 a square ft). What The Fuck?! Sounds like the Army Corp are the ones cleaning up. I’ll do that shit for $1 million. Fuck.. even $100,000.

“MTA” Piece, L.A. River, 60′ x 1700′, 2008

(above 3 photos: LaTaco.com )

“M” of the “MTA” buffed (photo: fotograffia.com)

MTA piece buffed, 10-11-2009 (photo: jondoeforty1)

]]> http://jerseyjoeart.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/the-exchange-group-collaboration/ Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:06:25 +0000 jerseyjoeart http://jerseyjoeart.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/the-exchange-group-collaboration/

Here is a recent wall I painted in Los Angeles with Ewok & Pose. For this wall we decided to take The Exchange project in a slightly different direction. We showed up to the wall all late and with no sketches, our plan was to bounce around and contribute a bit to each piece on the wall.

We decided that each of us will sketch two letters of each others name. What I mean is:

For EWOK – I painted the initial sketch of th E & W, then POSE sketched his O & K

For POSE – EWOK sketched the P & O. Afterward, I stepped in fucking around with my left hand (bad hand), setting out to do the goofiest sketch possible.

It ended up looking really cool in my opinion, but wasn’t right for the wall. So I buffed it our and resketched the S & E

For RIME – POSE sketched the R & I, followed by EWOK’s rough sketch of the M & E

Overall this was an interesting experience. It’s been a while since I tried painting a capital “I”. If you look close you can see how each of us changed what we were given and in that process, making it our own… Word-

Find out more at: SABERONE.com

The Loss Prevention blog buttons.

Also see more photos of the show at KNOWN GALLERY

For exclusive first look pictures of NORMS SOLO SHOW AT CANVAS LA GO HERE…ENJOY!!

This is the first video installment of many. More to come from Los Angeles and Australia for Clash Of The Titans Graffiti battle. October 31st 2009, Melbourne, Australia…

Came back in town just in time to work on the second one….

THE DECLARATION- HAND TOUCHED: SABER ONE

I usually steer away from having a political edge in my art, but inherently the act of Graffiti alone is a political act, and recently I’ve found myself being pulled strongly in that direction. So I think it was the natural next step for me to want to combine the textures I use and see in the urban environment, with American icons.

In this print you see the Washington Monument. The image, at first glance to has an apocalyptic vibe, but looking further you see that the essence is actually from deconstruction, and is a way to test revolutionary ideas through the safety of visual media. All of the names scrawled into the crumbling obelisk are of those who broke the status quo with their determination to make their mark on society, rejecting existing traditions of artistic expression.

To help represent this idea, I chose a line from the Declaration Of Independence that seemed to fit the current frustrations.

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government” (World).

Available for purchase at: HECHO CON GANAS

This article of mine was first published late last year in The Australian Wood Review, and so I can now reprint it here on Stu’s Shed (as per a specific arrangement with AWR).

———————————————————————–

It is a well-known aphorism that first-impressions count, and both the designers, and manufacturers of the Excalibur EX21 Scroll saw knew this very, very well.

A scroll saw is not something that needs to look like a prop from Star Trek, or  encased in plastic to such a degree it disguises its real form. This scroll saw looks, and feels serious, and it has a price tag to prove it.  The whole unit has a very utilitarian design:  you need a flat working surface, so there’s a large flat surface of plate steel.  A frame and base – more plate steel bolted together.  A rack and pinion system to make angled cuts – even more plate steel.  The machine is solid, and well engineered.

Excalibur

For angled cuts, the EX21 uses the same concept as a increasing number of scroll saws, in that it tilts the blade (and mechanism) over, rather than angling the base.  From an operator’s point of view, this means your workpiece remains on a large horizontal work surface providing ideal access and control, even when performing cuts up to 45 degrees to either side.

Angled Cuts

To tilt the assembly over, the EX21 uses not one, but two rack and pinion mechanisms at either end of the tool so the mechanism is smooth and solid.

Rack and Pinion Mechanism

Underside Showing Tilt Mechanism Rod

The motor protrudes out of the side of the tool, and connects directly into the oscillating mechanism, rather than relying on belts to transfer the power from the motor. The motor is also direct current, so it retains full torque throughout the variable speed range of 400 – 1550 strokes / minute.

Protruding Motor

Direct Drive

If you strip a scroll saw down to its fundamental principle, it is to take a fine blade, and oscillate it rapidly up and down, and even here the EX21 is a superior machine.  The drive is transferred to the blade via a twin parallel link drive, so instead of having a long arm top and bottom that oscillates (and due to that length sacrifices a huge amount of the power developed by the motor in getting it to the blade), this has two links – one for the top of the blade, one for the bottom that delivers the power right to the end of the arm before it is converted at that point through a couple of very short arms to produce the oscillating blade.

Upper Blade Arms

The actual speed of oscillations is the same as other machines, but the difference in developed power is substantial.  For an operator, this means a difference between stalling the machine, or having it to continue cutting even in trying circumstances (such as thick stock (up to 53mm), and/or tight corners) and in difficult timbers.  Also, it is claimed to reduce overall vibration of the machine, and while this is true throughout the majority of the oscillating speeds, vibration became quite noticeable at the highest speed settings.  Having the scroll saw clamped down to a solid bench, or the separately available stand should reduce that considerably.

A obviously common task when using a scroll saw is changing the blade, and particularly feeding the blade into the middle of a pattern for an internal cut.  The blade clamping mechanism and independent tensioning mechanism makes this task a breeze.  The overall blade tension is set by the knob at the back of the machine, and it allows a significant amount of tension to be exerted on the blade, which will optimise its performance, both in quality of the cut, as well as its ability remain on track and cut straight (vertically), without the blade trying to squirm during the cut.  However, there is no need to wind off that tension for a blade change, as the blade clamping mechanism independently releases and reapplies that tension with its “flip tensioner” during a blade change.

Flip Tensioner

The actual clamp itself is also very simple, and importantly, tool-less.  Finally, the top arm lifts well clear of the work (still with the blade attached at the top point), making it very easy to feed into the next hole for another internal cut.

Raised Arm

The arm can remain in the raised position, but I did find the method to achieve that a little questionable.  It relies simply on a bolt passing through the housing to rub on the arm, and the friction to keep the arm up.  I would have thought a more positive method for locking the arm in the upper position would have been preferable, and sometimes found that resorting to a block of wood provided a more positive (although undesirable) solution.  If the arm is lifted too high, it actually impacts on the threads of another bolt that holds a side-cover on.  Do this too hard (or incorrectly lift the saw by the top arm), and there is a risk of damaging the threads of this access bolt.

Raised Arm Restraining Bolt

The work-holddown seems to have been a bit of an afterthought – not that it is incorrectly positioned, but it has not had the same amount of precision engineering treatment that the rest of the saw has benefited from.  Also too, the very standard concept of the air pump produces very little airflow (no worse than other scroll saws), but again I would have liked to have seen a better solution.  A light source may have also been a sensible inclusion, particularly if it was on a flexible arm utilising fibre optics, or modern LED light sources so it can be positioned where required.  At least there is no laser!

Blower & Holddown

The bottom line: This is a well engineered tool, and really sets the standards for scroll saws.  It is a very expensive bit of kit, but if you are serious about using a scroll saw, this is a serious, uncompromising machine.

These types of people are always around town, filming and taking photos in front of our walls.

SFO, changing table /sharps…

Here are some finished shots of a wall we attempted to do during the heatwave that went down here in LA. We tried showing up early enough to get shade and struggled through to finish with the sun beating down on us (it sucked). I brought a few sketches for this wall but ended up getting into a groove and freestyling. It’s good to see Witnes out doing his thing again!

The infamous LA riverbed piece done by Saber of the famous AWR, MSK and Seventh Letter crews was buffed (painted over) by the city of Los Angeles. The work had a huge piece of history in the graffiti world for being one of the largest illegally painted pieces of graffiti in the world, taking 125 gallons of roller paint and some spray paint, being completed in 1997 after taking over a year and a half to complete. This particular piece was also a facet in the cityscape of L.A. as it was visible from google maps and from the sky when flying in to LAX.  It is such a shame to see this iconic piece of graffiti be painted over by the city of Los Angeles, taking away a piece of their cities history forever, removing a spectacular piece of artwork and leaving another horribly ugly ‘buff’ mark in its place. An interesting point was made on the Known Gallery blog about the fact that the city of Los Angeles is in a deep recession and can’t afford new text books for their schools but can afford to buff the largest piece of graffiti in the world, nice to see that their priorities are in order…

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Images: Know Gallery