Decision Time
December 1, 2009 by Steve

 

"Destiny" 30"x40" oil painting by Steve Alpert

"Destiny" 30"x40" oil painting by Steve Alpert

 

 

Grand Canyon, June 1972.  It was a hippy happening at the South Rim campgrounds.  Along my hitchhiking trip I arrived with my two new buddies from U of Illinois I met at a campground in New Mexico, mentioned in the previous post on this blog.  Tom was a young party hardy dude and his buddy, whose name now eludes me were doing the cross country thing, joining the legions of long hairs who took to the road that summer.  We stayed in Las Vegas, New Mexico for a few days.  They had a pal just home from Vietnam and the party was on.  One night we went to a roadhouse honky-tonk out in the desert.  Tom offered a challenge to his army pal; bankroll the shots of tequila and Tom would down one a minute for fifteen minutes.  Seemed like a good idea at the time.  Tom got to number thirteen and then barely made it outside to purge himself of the poison.  A good time was had by all.  Funny, the more we drank, the better the band got.

            Couple of days later, the Grand Canyon.  About fifty fellow travelers of all shapes and sizes equipped with substances of all shapes and sizes gravitated to this one sprawling campsite.  The fire burned for days and nights, singing and reveling.  The smells of the Douglas Firs mixed with smoke from burning Pinion Pine and mesquite were intoxicating enough.  But of course, there were other intoxicants of the day.

            A few days in, a group headed out to a shangri-la spot somewhere in the depths of the canyon.  A big party deep in the recesses of a remote area of the Grand Canyon replete with crystal clear travertine pools, as turquoise as the Caribbean.  Sounded very good.  I was invited.  I said I would join them on the second day.  How do you get there, I asked.  Oh, go down Hermit’s trail and at the bottom there’s a fork in the path, go left and it will take you there.  Being nineteen I didn’t write anything down, just had a visual picture in my mind, such as it was.  I would find it.  Solo.

            The next day I managed a ride to the trailhead of Hermit’s Trail, a few miles west of the campground along the South Rim road.  I had my fifty-pound pack with me.  First but not last mistake.

            Down the steep and treacherous switchbacks for one mile to land on the first plateau.  A dome of deep smacking blue sky, cloudless.  Sun moving to the top, early summer heat radiating off the rocks.  Two hours in I reach a fresh water wellhead under an overhang of red rock, naturally hollowed out by eons of wind.  A well-worn fireplace next to it.  A good stopping place for a lunch of whatever I had.  It was quiet out there, God was it quiet.  Like you had the best headphones on kind of quiet.  All you could hear was quiet.  No wind.  The sun was really working now, heat waves blurring the narrow trail heading north toward the Colorado, still another few miles down. 

            Picked up the heavy pack and off I trudged looking for the fork in the trail.  Another hour or two passes and I am noticing how really alone I was, really deep in this canyon.  No fork, yet.  Arms and legs now covered in sweat and thin films of desert.  A fork!  Make a left.  They did say a left, didn’t they?

I took the left; only this left trail was going into a narrowing canyon.  Beautiful young Aspens all along shimmering in the sunshine, sending it’s light signals back to the sun.  Caves up on the cliffs.  I know this is not the correct way.  And then I heard it.  A sound I will remember forever.

            It was an animal, a big animal communicating to me that it was not pleased with my visit to its very own turf.  It was the roar of a big cat.  I’m not talking a Maine Coon kitty cat; I’m talking Mountain Lion, Puma, or some damn thing like that.  I never saw the beast and I chose not to investigate further but to take Leo up on his offer the get the hell out of Dodge.

            Decision time.  High noon.  Sun beating down.  Three choices. Continue on, try to find the trail that some stoned out hippie told me about?  Good luck. Backtrack and spend the night at the well, alone.  That seemed like a tough call.  There’s that big kitty cat out there, even though I knew the critter was probably more frightened of me than me of him.  Did I really want to be thinking about that through a night alone a mile away from Whiskers? Or, bag it — head up and out of the canyon, more than arduous at best, more like Herculean given the heat, fatigue and that freaking pack that seemed to weigh one hundred pounds and would have to haul it up one mile up those steep switchbacks in the late afternoon sun with the canyon heated enough to bake bread — oh Man!  And my depleted supply of water in my canteen.  There’s the real clincher.

            Interesting lesson.  To be so incredibly unprepared to just wander into a very wild place figuring I would just wing it.   To be young and stupid!

            Stay tuned…

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HIGH TIDE, LOW TIDE
October 20, 2009 by Steve

 

"The Adventure Begins" 40"x72" oil painting by Steve Alpert

"The Adventure Begins" 40"x72" oil painting by Steve Alpert

Two years ago my wife Dorothy met a woman, a lawyer who worked for the organization that administers the famous aircraft carrier Intrepid, now a museum at Pier in the Hudson River in Manhattan.  Next thing you know, I’m in Dorothy’s friend’s office offering to make a large painting of the Intrepid for their fundraising efforts, and also hoping to put a deal together to sell posters in the on-site museum store.  All sounds so good on paper, yes?

This was a year after I had completed the large painting, Legacy, I’ve written about in past posts.  Legacy still lives in my storage cubby after much talk from lots of folks who wanted to utilize Legacy.  Being the habitual dreamer/fool that I am, I had high hopes for a large painting of the Intrepid, and thought it would be lots of fun to make.  Fun, that’s the key that opens the door to commitment to make a painting no one is paying for, up front at least.  Artists are the ultimate entrepreneurs.

The Intrepid is a large subject, just physically sitting there at the pier, it’s beyond huge, a monster.  At that time, Intrepid had been moved to Staten Island for installation of new exhibits.  I was granted access.  All I needed was an idea of what the painting would be.

I began research in the library but found nothing particularly interesting.  I requested permission to board the great ship.  March of 2008, on a day as cold and gray as the Intrepid itself, I was shown around by Exhibit Director, Chris Malanson, a bright and creative professional who was going to make magic in this unique museum experience.  Chris told me much of the ship’s fascinating history.  I took lots of photos.  When I got back to the studio, my mind was as blank as that large canvas staring me in the face.  I went back to the ship a second time.  This time I wandered around on my own through narrow rabbit warren compartments in the bow section.  Imagining what it was like in the Pacific, Japanese fighter jets buzzing and bombing, the chaos, the loss of life, the months and years of war and peacetime,  thinking about the life of the ship and all the men who served and endured.

What would the painting be?  Still clueless.  I’m talking about nothing, nada.  I hit the bookstore looking for picture books of WWII aircraft carriers.  One book had an image of the USS Enterprise, another carrier of the era and the image was a dark and beautiful painting.  This was it – I would model my painting after this one.  I needed to latch onto something and I was taking it and running with it. 

Then I did something that was really weird and uncharacteristic.  I hired another artist to render the image of the big ship onto this big 40”x72” canvas.  It was an odd choice for me, and one that would prove to keep me away from working on the painting for one year.  For a while I felt I was cheating, that the image wasn’t mine, that I was, “producing” the painting.  But there it was, and Sarah did a fine job complete with figures of sailors I would later obliterate.  In Sarah’s rendering the Intrepid was tied up and being boarded by her voluminous crew.  It felt static to me, maybe the choice of image was wrong.  I didn’t know but the whole project became stuck in the mud.

Intrepid felt like inert, a gargantuan hunk of steel looming above a pier.  There was nothing exciting to me about it at all.  I hated it.  The canvas went into the storage cubby sitting next to Legacy.  Let them lean against each other and talk about nothing.  

Then, the economy tanked and my art selling business came to a grinding halt.  There was no reason to continue making paintings although my new dealer, Alan Blazar had spread my paintings around galleries all over the east coast.  Nothing was selling.  Not only was the Intrepid docked, so was my painting career.

For four months I didn’t go into the studio.  Never turned the lights on.  After eight years of continual development, putting in my ten thousand hours in front of hundreds of canvases, it was time to put the brushes down.  I was angry and disgusted at nobody in particular, just the world that pulled the rug out from under me.  I knew I was not alone, there were many others suffering a hell of a lot worse.  Time to hunker down, let it go, do other things, work in video or whatever I could.  The painting career would be put on ice until the thaw, whenever that would be.  Life is like the tides, they come in and they go out.  In time, things would change, but Americans were in for a long winter…so was I.

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IN SEARCH OF THE ART HEART
October 16, 2009 by Steve

 

"At the Watering Hole" 16"x20" watercolor by Steve Alpert

"At the Watering Hole" 16"x20" watercolor by Steve Alpert

A close friend, we’ll call him DC, was describing his dilemma.  A dilemma of his own creation– aren’t they mostly always?  DC is an accomplished executive producer and administrator of creative work at a major corporation.  A most talented professional, DC is in the business of  communicating ideas and concepts for clients, assigning the creative team, and sending them out to do it.  When the creatives come back with something for DC to see, he suggests, tweaks and cajoles, always making the product better, ultimately making the client happy.  Nothing better than a happy client and this is DC’s stock-in-trade.

DC is an undisputed master at what he does, more talented and intuitive than anyone I have ever worked with, and I’ve worked with scores of ‘em.   My dear DC suddenly is harboring an inner desire to know himself better  through his own individual artistic eye.  We’re talking photography.  DC wants to explore himself as an artist with a camera.

DC decided to take a Sunday jaunt, solo with his camera.  He climbs into the car, but then all the negative thoughts download into his consciousness.  “What am I doing here, I don’t know what I want to shoot, I don’t know…” and so forth.  All that thick mental junk us artists have to wade through, especially in the beginning.  He had an idea, a little spark telling him to drive down to the docks.  As a child his father would take him down to docks in a different city, just to be there, walk around smell the air, change it up.

DC began the short trip.  All the “stupid balloons” like cartoon character  dialogue appeared over his head, “What’s the purpose of this, this is stupid…”  DC got to the docks.  Walked around, squeezing off a series of shots.  Was there any great revelation or epiphany on that Sunday down at the docks?  No.  But, it was a beginning.

I suggested to DC that Sundays could be his time for his solo adventures, at least for now.  Take a few hours for yourself, just you, to be with your camera.  Let the clock tick.  Allow something to happen.  Keep at it and allow free will to guide you – by far the greatest benefit of being an artist.  Eventually, when you least expect it, you will find something, or really more to the point, something will find you.  Now we’re getting somewhere.

The tool and materials;  paint, film, lenses, pen and ink, shutter speeds, apertures, clay, whatever.  We all love the gear, the smell of oil paint, how a certain camera feels in the hands, the satisfying click of the shutter. But, materials are immaterial as this is the hunt for what’s inside the heart of the artist.  

It  all begins as play, doesn’t it?  Play, as in tinkering, being open, breathing, slowing it down, allowing your life experience to idle in neutral.  Allowing yourself to play as you did before the school system screwed everything up into rigid, linear work.   I remember playing with clay in art class back in second or third grade.  I had this handful of clay that suddenly appeared to me like a rhinoceros.  Once I saw it as a rhinoceros, I made a few more squeezes here and there, then glazed it.  When it came back from kiln and brought it home, it got my mother’s attention.  She was a classically trained fine artist, so her praise got my attention, but even more than that, I recognized that it was damn good.  I wasn’t trying to make a rhino, making a rhino never occurred to me but that rhino found itself in the clay.  All I did was identify it and then encourage it a little bit more.  Some fifty years later I never consciously planned to make all the military images in oil paint that continues as I write this, but all those images found me.  I didn’t even know what these military images meant for me, until very  recently, which I will deal with in a future post.

DC is very impatient to learn all the tools of photography.  That’s good, his fire is lit and knowing your tools is important.  But, the glowing jewels of the art heart lay beyond tech specs and gear — in the soul.  I think the way to get to the heart and soul is through regular exercise.  So, I wish DC well in his Sunday jaunts in discovering his big heart and kind soul I have known for a long time.  Sounds like DC is ready to exercise his considerable creative mind to seek the silent riches within and in doing so, make the world a better place.  I’m excited for him!  Bon Chance!

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MOUNTAINS MOVE
September 16, 2009 by Steve
Cliffs of Mohr

"Cliffs of Mohr," 30x40 oil painting by Steve Alpert

MAKE A COMMITMENT, THE UNIVERSE SHIFTS TO SUPPORT IT.  I had heard and read that over the years.   Guess what, it’s true.

Once you commit to something and you direct your energy, you begin to somehow attract what you are seeking.  I am not sure how this works exactly; I only know that it does.  That first winter of painting I spent day after day, night after night working at the easel, cycling the canvases around the room –I usually work on six or seven pieces at a time — gradually building a body of work and a foundation for the career I was soon to have.

Full immersion.  Subscribed to three monthly art magazines, read ‘em all each month, talked to other artists, joined the local arts organization, submitted paintings in competitions listed in the back of those magazine.  In all that activity I found the great source of art supplies, Dick Blick.  I love Dick Blick. Dick Blick is totally customer service oriented, they will send you a replacement item before you even return it and they ask no questions, just like L.L.Bean.  I am a Dick Blick sycophant.

Mentors and muses will help guide the way.  Just ask ‘em and it doesn’t matter if they are alive or dead.  Can I tell you how many times I’ve listened to Beethoven’s Third, “Eroica?”  Can you wear out a CD?  Being a lifelong jazz fan I rediscovered my long love for classical music and am still exploring composers I did not know about.

The meditative state that occurs when you are immersed in something is truly amazing.  Like driving long distance without listening to radio or CD’s, just letting your mind idle, amazing what things you remember and associations you make.  I was reminded of my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Levin.

From the first day of September to the last day of class in June, Mrs. Levin played classical music on a little portable record player.  She played the music all day long, every day.  On Monday mornings Mrs. Levin would say, “Ok children, this week we are going to listen to a composer named, Josef Haydn.  He lived in Vienna and he composed one hundred and four symphonies.  His most famous is the Surprise Symphony and we’re going to listen to it this week.”  Mrs. Levin played Haydn’s Surprise Symphony over and over throughout the day, spelling, arithmetic, history, English, all of it.  And, Mrs. Levin informed us that there was a theme to each of the four movements on the Surprise Symphony.  On Friday, Mrs. Levin would go around the room and ask a student to stand up and hum the theme to a particular movement.  Incredible!  By Christmas we all got over our embarrassment to sing solo in front of others.  Amazing.  Mrs. Levin introduced all the maestros; Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Bach, Brahms, and many others.   What would happen to an elementary school teacher trying that today?

There I was painting away, remembering what an astonishing gift Mrs. Levin brought to so many of us.   I hadn’t remembered the last time I even thought of Mrs. Levin!   God bless her!  It reminded me how grateful I was for being given in this life the opportunity to develop myself as an artist, as a person, to become who I was meant to be.  The world conspired to closing me in this little room filled with paints and canvas.  I had but one thing to do, pay it back by making the best paintings I could.

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ALL IN
September 12, 2009 by Steve

 

"The Way It Is" 14"x18" oil painting by Steve Alpert

"The Way It Is" 14"x18" oil painting by Steve Alpert

When I was 26, I had a good job, a great job– film editing at WCBS-TV News in New York City.  Interesting, great pay, high pressure, and fun.  I had to get the hell out of there as soon as possible.  I didn’t want to be stuck in an editing room the size of a Subaru for the rest of my life.  I was young, restless, ambitious.  The way out was to produce a film on my own.  

I spent the next ten months making a half-hour documentary film about four people participating in a 26.2 mile marathon in Johnstown, PA.  The story of the making of the film is its’ own story but bottom line I committed all of the $11,000 I had in the bank, maxed out on my credit card.  I volunteered for the dreaded 4-midnight shift at CBS for all those months (a very popular move with my colleagues), and worked on the film every day for ten months.  And was in training for the New York Marathon and then Boston.  I got my miles in after midnight in Central Park escorted by my ever faithful pooch, Bert.  Crazy.

So, I’ve done this crazy kind of thing before – commit myself to something I really want and willing to throw it all up to the stars.  Sleepless nights but keeping my head down and focusing on the work at hand in the moment, and always believing in myself, that I can do it, stubborn enough to stick in there and get it done and pray I won’t embarass myself with the finished product.

This was how it was holed up in that bedroom making the paintings after September 11, 2001.  I kept my head down, a head that vascillated between massive self-doubt and saying to myself that I was given this opportunity to make paintings as I was meant to.  The big difference between making that first film and now was twenty-three years.  I was now forty-nine, married, a step-son, two mortgages.  Life was much more serious, now.  I couldn’t decide whether I was more resilient now or less so. As a producer, I felt I was now washed up, over the hill.  May not have been really true but it felt true enough for me.  The self-doubt was around me like a sweater, those friggin’ chattering monkeys in my head, but once again I put my head down, focused on the work at hand, and believed in myself with all my might.  I was committed, all in.  No turning back.  Big risk. Wasn’t thinking about the rewards.  Praying for survival.  It was like running in thick fog, able to see the road one footfall at a time and having the faith that the road would be there for each additional footfall.  

Flashback to the first Saturday in October, 1978, day of the Johnstown Marathon finally arrived.   It took three of us filmmakers five full days in a hotel room plotting the shooting logistics  to follow our four participants in the 26.2 mile point-to-point marathon run through the Western Pennsylvania landscape.  Success or failure hung in the balance on that one day. Risking it all.  The day went well.  But now all that film had to go into the lab.  You had to wait a week to see what you had.   I made the six hour drive home from Johnstown the next day with the stack of film cans of exposed negative in the back seat.   I hit a heavy rainstorm near Altoona.  Later, the sun came out.  In the distance was something I had never seen before — a rainbow and next to it another rainbow, a double.  It was my sign from the Heavens — the film we shot the day before would be fine, and the whole project would be a success.  Crazy.  

A friend once said, “You ain’t lived ’til you been crazy!”

“Marathon Fever” was indeed a success, winning awards including a Cine Golden Eagle, and airing on a brand new cable TV outfit called, Home Box Office.  One year later I received a job offer vaulting me out of the editing room.   Belief in myself is what ultimately got me through, which is all any artist has.  I think that belief in oneself is the biggest tool in the box.

 I sweated out the making of “Marathon Fever” and was now sweating out another one, becoming a professional artist twenty three years later…

How much do you believe in yourself?

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Patience & Wisdom
September 3, 2009 by Steve

 

It's All About Choices

It's All About Choices

CHOICES.  We all make ‘em.   They define us.  September 11, 2001 sent me into a spin, along with the rest of us.  Never felt unsafe anywhere in my life until that day.  I had already made the choice, assisted big-time by my wife, Dorothy, to make a career change to making oil paintings.  I had made the choice to leave the medium of my era, television, and travel back through the centuries to wielding ground-up minerals, arranging them on a canvas to make a single image.  In my early twenties I worked as film editor in local news in New York City, became a producer/director of television documentaries, then moved into the exploding world of videos for corporations.  Traded in sophisticated cameras, computer driven edit systems, for oil paint, brushes, canvas.

I was now standing in front of a single easel, a small radio/CD player, our dog, Pepsi sleeping on the floor outside the bedroom I had commandeered as a studio.  Oil painting is a messy affair.  Paint has a way of finding everything around it, clothing, walls.  I kept Pepsi outside the open door.

It was a tough choice this self-imposed isolation.  Long days/months/years in front of that easel.  Constantly rotating the canvases, as I always work on about eight pieces at any one time.  Never know how long a piece will take to complete.  Twenty minutes, three hours, five year, nywhere in-between.  My head, my body, my being was in the process.  Ordering canvases, buying more paint, brushes.   

Months went by.  Day after day, watching the leaves turn, fall, watching the rain, listening to the jazz on the radio, then classical music on CD.  My all-time faves; Beethoven, Mozart, Dvorak, Lizst, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, et al.  Phones didn’t ring.  Choice I made to paint meant a new start, and no business activity that I had been used to for so long. Making cold calls, going to meetings, hiring crews, shooting, editing, client hand holding.  Weeks went by without a phone call. Devastating.  All that business activity drained away to stand at the easel – sitting at the easel in the night sessions for more detail work. Ideas for paintings in my head before bed, waking up to a way to solve a problem going on with one or more.  In the morning going to inspect what had gone on the day before, to see with fresh eyes, ticking off in my head the changes that needed to be made later that day on a each piece.  Focus on the work, the paintings.  Thinking about them but not thinking, making them.  Ordering more supplies.  This was Heaven!  Painting, painting, painting.  Wondering what would happen, would anybody buy these things when summer came?  Am I going insane here at this easel?  making no money.  ”You have to suffer for your art…” my friend, The Big R would tell me, that phrase reverberated around my head like a bad movie.  It was Heaven and Hell both at the same time.  

I was in.  Taken over this bedroom with a vengeance, strewn with canvases and paint all over everything.  Committed like a halfback who cuts left thinking there might be daylight…and, feeling like this was my destiny.  Before my death I did not want to look back and say, hell, I didn’t have the guts to try!  I’m not having that conversation. .  Friggin’ chattering monkeys in my head, my worst enemy, self-doubt — a form of quitting.  Trying to make me feel like a damn fool!

I told myself my job was to have faith in my ability — that I possessed the wisdom to choose the right path — becoming an artist, and to have the patience to allow the process to unfold in its’ own time.   The events of September 11 made it clear to me that this is what I had to do.  Hoist another canvas on the easel, squeeze color onto palette, turn up the music and keep it going…

Stay tuned…

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Rich Rewards with Your Art
June 1, 2009 by Steve

Lascaux Cave Painting 15,000 to 10,000 BC

Lascaux Cave Painting 15,000 to 10,000 BC

Old adages become old because they are true.  What Goes Round Comes Round, As You Sow, So You Shall Reap…we’ve all heard them since we were children, and we pass them on to our children.  The Lascaux cave drawings survived 10,000 – 15,000 years to tell us their many stories.

As artists our job is to reveal ourselves through our work, what is happening in our lives,   and how we feel about it.   Our work has a job to do, a story to tell.  Your job as an art maker is to make art.  Sorry to tell you this but it doesn’t end there.  Although you might think you “own” your work, this is but an illusion.  It is more like we are stewards of our work.  We make it, and we must release it to do its’ job in the world.

When we give our work to the world, to friends, family, to causes/organizations we believe in, we change the world in profound ways.   We honor the efforts of others, and by giving them our art, we honor them in a huge and very unique way.  What’s in it for you?  Good advertising, maybe articles in local, regional, national press.  More important, you have utilized your creative talent to participate in the world in a significant way.   The richest reward is the knowledge that you have contributed to the world doing the thing you love most.

So, if you have not already done so, this is what you can do;

1)    Identify a cause or an organization you are passionate about

2)    Contact them and ask if they have a fundraising event

3)    Make artwork to donate to that cause/organization

4)    Suggest making a poster with your image for them to sell

5)    Follow through.  Non-profit orgs have varying degrees of professionalism, be persistent and patient.

6)    Reap the rewards.

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Paint the wide open spaces
May 31, 2009 by Steve
"Journey's End" Steve Alpert Painting August '08

"Journey's End" Steve Alpert Painting August '08

“I ache to paint the wide-open spaces, the vast prairies, the desert lands and the naked sea and sky. These are the places that have given me serenity in my life, the gift given to me and my way of passing it along.” – Steve Alpert

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Finding your own path
May 10, 2009 by admin

You and I look at an urban landscape and see buildings, railings, fences, abutments, steps and the myriad of other functional and decorative elements made from steel, brick and concrete.  Artist Danny MacAskill sees the urban landscape and sees pathways.  Young Danny is a master artist.  His medium is biking.  Watch this video and you will marvel at his vision and physical mastery as he and bike become one entity vaulting and looping around his city.  Crazy, inventive and beautiful.   We know Danny has paid with pain to be able to do what he does in this incredible exhibition.

Danny spies an awning and intuits a way to cross it.  He sees a bridge and a grassy knoll twenty-five feet below and they become Danny’s launching and landing pad.  Incredible.

A staircase becomes an excuse for going airborne while twisting in a complete revolution and landing effortlessly at the bottom, like a feather.

Danny MacAskill shows us how to look at something familiar and experience it in a totally new way.   We can do same as artists, in fact, that is what our job is.   So next time you are in the city, look around, what would Danny MacAskill do?  And what would you do?

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