handsome hitchhikers outside the galleryHELLO!
It’s day #29....the final day of my visit to St. Barthelemy in the French West Indies, but I’m not leaving today as scheduled. I’m leaving Monday. We named the show in the gallery after the title of the blog, but altered a bit; “Exactly 29 Days (32 Days)” on account of the extension of three days to my visit. The opening last night went really well and it was an enjoyable time. Everyone had their billowing, light colored, comfortable island clothes on, but with just a little bit of added flair....it was an art opening after all.
For instance, Monique wore an all white, 
dress that looked fantastic. I wore PANTS for the first time in over a month, but they were light, seersucker slacks, you know - baby blue with white pin stripes and a David Hockney T shirt advertising his exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London that I was lucky enough to see (I bought the T shirt in the gift shop, and almost bought the mouse-pad too, crazy). It was nice to have a touch of Hockney as part of the evening. Martina had on a longer dress, with shades of brown that was also beautiful. I think Douglas was wearing some light colored pants that had an interesting camouflage pattern on them. He went all the way and opted for sneakers, I wore flip flops. I couldn’t bring myself to put on shoes or sneakers just yet, no way. I’ll save that for when I get back to the city. 
Marc, one of the two directors of the residency, who flew in just for the evening and flew back to New York today was wearing a nice, off-white (?) jacket and jeans, I think. There were quite a few people there from town, some of the usual characters like Christoph the Macintosh specialist on the island who has tended to all our computer needs, namely the modem that was on the blink around the house. Suskia was there, the woman who works down the street from the gallery in the upholstery shop where they sew sails for boats and who was the woman that was going to help me sew the ‘outfits’ together, that I didn’t have time to sew, but they are in the show. Serge was there, a guy who writes for a French magazine. He interviewed me today to write a review of the show, more on that later. John Shenke (sorry John, I don’t know how to spell your last name and I think you’re sleeping right now) was there, a friend of Douglas’ that arrived from New York yesterday. He’s staying with us at the house for a few days. He’s a real sweet guy, nice to have him here. There was a man there who owns Maya’s restaurant that we’ve been to a few times. I forget his name but I had a nice conversation with him. He’s originally from Nantucket Massachusetts, so we talked about New England for a bit. He said he’s been living on the island for 30 years, I can’t really imagine that. There were various other folks there whom I didn’t know, milling about.Placing the entire blog on the wall in the gallery was a great idea and everyone enjoyed reading it.
It was great to have something huge that people can stand around and read. It created a nice, community atmosphere, kind of like standing around one of those announcement boards you find in town squares or when you go into grocery stores, where people pin up handmade signs offering pets or lawnmowers for sale, or people looking for baby sitting jobs. Having all 29 days glued to the wall created a very big space to stand around and read. I’m amazed at how much space it actually took up. You could read day one and jump to day ten, or back and forth and not feel crowded like you were bumping into someone else that was reading. Sharing an entire month, in it’s entirety, all at once, was interesting. Even though I did all the writing and posting, I like that it became a group effort with people commenting in the blog, so it wasn’t just my work on the wall, it was the work of many people. When more and more guest writers partake in the blog, it will be even more of a group project, and that’s exciting.
The opening ended at 9pm, we locked up the gallery and went to Le Soreno for dinner, just six of us; Monique, Martina, Douglas and John, myself and Marc. The perfect group of people. Le Soreno is right on the water. The table at which we sat was round and the seating was a rounded couch. The tables are on a roofed deck with mesh, see-through curtains they roll down if it rains or a shower passes through, which happened while we were eating. It’s not a dense mesh though, so when a big shower passes through, you still get an errant raindrop here and there landing on you, it’s nice. I think we all ordered the same thing, which was some kind of salted fish. I’ll have to ask Douglas the name, it’s something in French. The waiter brought out this large platter that had this mound of huge, salt crystals, toasted to all manner of browns and tans, it looked like dirty snow, but shiny and sparkling, and under it was the fish. The waiter smashed at the mound of salt crystals with a wooden hammer until he reached the fish and then placed it on our plates. It was delicious. I don’t have a photo of it to show you, I wish I had. Next to the fish was placed a few, baby tomatoes.We got back to the house around 2am and jumped in the pool for a while. The moon was very bright. After cooling off we set up the table and computer and watched, “F for Fake” an Orson Welles documentary, of sorts. I think it was from 1974. It featured a rotund Welles hiding under various capes and hats mumbling lines through an ever present cigar hanging from his bearded maw. Wells weaves two high profile stories about forgery together narrating the story of Clifford Irving who wrote the fake “Autobiography of Howard Hughes” in 1971 with that of the famous forger of paintings in the 60’s / early 70’s Elmyr de Hory.
The movie was a mishmash mess but a total delight to watch, especially the bad lip syncing of Orson Welles in various restaurants on the island of Ibiza, bantering on about these two, sensational stories. His complete fascination with the topic and his ongoing blather about the two forgers was really fun to watch, and since it was made in 1974, it was full of odd, and meandering segways that bordered on the surreal....It was a psychedelic collage of film masquerading as a documentary in all it’s 1974 glory.
At one point the movie wandered off into a story about Picasso renting a studio on some random, beautiful, eccentric, wealthy island (a lot like St. Barth) and in that studio on that island he became fascinated with this beautiful woman as she passed by his window several times a day on her way to town, or to the beach. Well, they illustrated this scenario of the beautiful woman walking up and down this street ad nauseam - each time dressing here in a new outfit;beautiful woman walking by Picasso’s studio window in mini-skirt, beautiful woman walking by Picasso’s studio window in black bikini, beautiful woman walking by Picasso’s studio window in tube-top, beautiful woman walking in a head to toe blue chiffon wrap,....it went on and on....and each time they showed her walking by, they would cut to a stock photo of Picasso looking out a window staring at her with those huge, black eyes he had.
Anyway, I swear this went on for about 10 minutes and the three of us, Douglas, Monique and I started nodding off. Eventually Picasso gets her attention and she, of course, poses for him and the story wanders on about the paintings being forgeries somehow, which is never fully explained.
I don’t know if that description of the movie made any sense, but I recommend renting it, if only for a good, confusing laugh. We had a good time talking over most of it, laughing and marveling at it’s 1974 atmosphere. The stoies of Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving and their respective fakery really are interesting though. I’ve heard bits and pieces of their stories, but now I want to learn more. And speaking of Picasso, look at this nice drawing:
Ok, moving on....which brings me to today, Friday. Monique and I woke early. We had little sleep which I’m paying for now. A bit of chocolate that I found in the fridge is doing me just fine though, giving me a tiny boost. We woke early to get to the beach one last time together as Monique left today. She flew to New York for two days and then to a connecting flight back to San Francisco. We went to Saline beach, took some pictures and did some swimming, at my favorite beach, and then drove to Gustavia for Monique to get a couple T shirts to take back. I got Jonathan a secret gift too, which I think he will like. We then went to the tiny airport where Martina met us so she could also see Monique off. We were sad to see her go. The time here has been really special, over a month for me and having Monique here for a decent amount of time made it extra special here at the house. Thanks for coming Monique and see you soon. At least she’s flying back to what I think is the most beautiful city in the United States, and that’s San Francisco.
When you check your check-in to get on the tiny, six-seat plane that takes you off the island to St. Martin to the bigger airport for connecting flights, they ask you your weight. That’s how small the planes are.
After saying good by to Monique and taking some great pictures of the plane’s departure (I’ll email them to you Monique) I went to the gallery as I had to meet with this guy named Serge for an interview for the French magazine he writes for. Even though I was tired, this turned out to be a really great experience. He speaks French with very little English and Martina who served as our translator is from Vienna and speaks German with some knowledge of French, but she’s not fluent. So getting through this interview was a nightmare for Martina, but really fun for me. He would ask Martina a question and then she would feed it to me but with missing information, so hammering out a conversation was a real task. I can only imagine what how the final article will read. I’m very excited about it because the language barrier will probably create quite a distortion in his interpretation of the work. At one point we were talking about working on the island, vrs in the city and what that meant and how it did or didn’t effect the art. I started talking about
Marlon Brando’s reclusive, eccentric retreat to the island of Tahiti and Jim Jones and his followers moving from San Francisco to Guyana, South America in 1977 and other thoughts on working, living (or dyeing in the Jonestown case) in a remote location away from a metropolis. Anyway, with the language barrier the discussion became more and more confusing and magnificent. Martina did her best with translation. It was fun to watch her try to figure out what he was asking and then get that information to me. I even tried to decipher what he was saying through body language, facial expression and the bits and pieces of English he would use when trying to speak to me directly. At one point I took Serges’ pen and wrote down, “Jonestown / Jim Jones” near the notes he was taking, in hopes he would
google it and then try to figure out how this was connected to anything we were talking about. I also wrote “Charles Manson” for good measure, to see if he could do anything with that. Good luck Serge.After the interview I went back to the house and tried to take a nap, but alas, it didn’t work so I started on today’s writing. It’s now 9:38PM and a rainstorm just passed though and it smells really nice. I wish I could take a picture and place it here to show you what it smells like....wet dirt and palm fronds mixed with large, prehistoric sized plants hanging low with the weight of rain water, mixed with the wet sheets on the clothesline.
I briefly looked at the news today, online. Went to CNN quickly and NY-Times online to see what was happening as I’ve been in a bubble the past few days (like Brando, although much thinner). I saw that there was some sort of an attempt at a bombing in London, a car bombing. I also see that the immigration reform that Congress has been batting back and forth is now dead again. This is incredibly depressing and totally fucked up. Every member of Congress that has stood in the way of bettering the lives of the thousands and thousands and thousands of men woman and children caught in between SHAME on you. “Shame on you” doesn’t quite cut it, but it’s all the energy I have right now. This is incredibly sad. And shame on the men and woman who work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement who go around arresting people and tearing apart families and relationships and lives.
I have many photos I want to post for today’s writing so I’m going to get to work on that so I can hopefully have this posted by the midnight deadline. I hope you are enjoying your Friday evening.
