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Eaten by the Tyvek

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

August 3, 2008

old house new underwear

OK, it's actually Typar, apparently a relative of the ubiquitous Tyvek, but Tyvek sounds so much scarier, like a dybbuk. Kind of... Don't you think? But I digress. On June 18, after visiting Provincetown for the first time this summer, I photographed PTown homes for a blog entry featuring houses before and after gentrification. And I used this house as the before picture. In-bleeping-evitably, I found last week that this very house has been invaded by the Tyvek. The new owner, who happened to be there as I surveyed the scene, assures me that he intends to be true to the original. I weep for the loss of the raffish, the raggedy-ass and the broken down, devoured in the maw of the Tyvek.

Are You Listening, Comcast??

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

Aug 2, 2008

I recently read in the New York Times that Comcast has a group of people whose job is to monitor cyberspace, including such insignificancies as this blog, for angry references to the company. They then personally contact the pathetic whiners and try to mollify them, or at least give them the feeling that Comcast is not all a huge unresponsive monolith, but that it is made up of human beings who feel your pain. Well, having recently emerged myself from over 5 weeks of Comcast Hell, the details of which I will spare you, let me just add my pain: FOR A COMPANY IN THE COMMUNICATIONS BUSINESS,YOU DO A CRAPPY JOB OF COMMUNICATING AMONG YOUR OWN VARIOUS INTERNAL PARTS. That is in capitals because if I were saying it, I would be saying it VERY LOUDLY.

We had multiple visits from multiple Comcast contractors, each with an opinion different from the last, and multiple phone calls to Comcast employees and each and every time was like beginning anew. There was so much misinformation, miscommunication and malfunctioning that we sometimes thought that we were part of a CIA experiment testing the limits of human endurance. The CIA should use these people to do enhanced interrogation of the prisoners at Guantanamo - Osama himself would say anything to make it stop.

The bright spot is Comcast's well-trained customer service reps - the folks you get forwarded to when the other folks detect the trembling in your voice that is about to explode into CAPITALS. They are polite, patient and often even helpful. But, if you're listening Comcast, you could save a lot of money hiring and training (and no doubt replacing) those customer service reps if you just figured out HOW TO GET THE CUSTOMER SERVICE RIGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE. This rant is over, Are you listening, Comcast??

Another Amazing Week at Camp FAWC

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

July 31, 2008

Vicky T. at the press

Just time for a quick word now - more when this week is over. It's Thursday and my ass and all other pertinent parts are dragging so bady that when I got home at 3:30 from the Fine Arts Work Center (aka Camp FAWC), I fell into bed like the dead. This is Vicky Tomayko's monotype workshop. I have written before about her amazing imagination paired with impeccable technique, the little gleefully grotesque monsters and their lush environments. Here she is with a piece that has just come off the press for the fourth time (or perhaps more), as color after color has been added.

I'm doing nerve cells myself. but that's for tomorrow.

The Whole Damn Hopper Thing, Abridged

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

July 24, 2008

Hopper's South Truro Hills

I have until now shown remarkable restraint in not unloading on this subject, but no more. Cometh the screed here. For the last 30 years or so of his life, Edward Hopper lived and painted every summer in a small (by today's steroidal standards) cottage on top of the dunes behind the ocean in Truro. His famous painting, "South Truro Hills" is the view from his studio. When Hopper's wife, Jo, died, she left the house to her caretaker, in whose family it still remains. Amazingly, the house has been virtually untouched by time; while they have not opened it to the public, the family has preserved the house and its furnishings in very nearly the exact condition it was when Hopper lived there. Perhaps even more amazingly, the view from the studio, known as the Hopper landscape, has been very little altered. A number of Truro residents, supported by lovers of Hopper's art, have over the years been able to slowly purchase and protect much of the land against development by placing it in a conservation trust. Until last summer, when a parcel directly between the house and the ocean, including much of the landscape represented in the painting, were sold for $7 million to a couple proposing to build the ultimate trophy house of 7,000 square feet with a 6-car garage, reflecting pools, etc.etc. right in the middle of the landscape.

A legal battle ensued, which I will not detail and which is not yet completed, but construction has started on the house while the appeal is being heard and that gives me a very bad feeling. If all proceeds as these things usually do in this country, money will trump all other considerations - they have it and we don't. Even if the town were to reverse the decision allowing construction, which they should and may, they will be sued by the property owners until the last dog dies and this little town of 1500 flat lacks the resources to mount legal battles against pockets this deep. And that's what it so often comes down to; people with deep pockets twist the zoning and building codes sound in the knowledge that they can last the town out.

That's all for now.

"Artists Respond to War" at Castle Hill

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

June 23, 2008

Time of War: After the Incident

Daniel Heyman, a well-known printmaker in the Japanese tradition and teacher of many workshops here on Cape Cod, was the juror for this show, titled "The Artists Respond to War", at the Castle Hill Center for the Arts. My piece is a drypoint embedded in wax from the Time of War series. called "After the Incident." The show is quite interesting and very varied. My personal favorite, which I sadly could not manage to photograph acceptably, is a dense, explosive painting on paper by Julia Salinger that manages to convey fear, confusion and untethered violence.

Robert Henry at the Provincetown Art Asso. and Museum

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

July 20, 2008

Voyeurs I

Voyeur II

The Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM), a venerable but up-to-the-minute institution, hosted a memorable opening Friday night for a retrospective of the work of Robert Henry. Bob, and his wife, artist SelinaTrieff have been mentors and inspirations to a couple of generations of working artists here on the Outer Cape and in New York where they lived during the winters until just a couple of years ago and Bob taught at Brooklyn College, Immensely generous with their time and insights, the couple were both students of Hans Hoffman after WW II and while their painting styles have little apparently in common with each other or with Hoffman, for that matter, both share with him a dedication to the life of art and to passing the light on to future generations.

Be Calmed

Bob's painting has never stayed still for long. He has moved from the abstract to the figurative to the symbolic and back, avoiding pigeon-holing. The PAAM show spans several decades and all of those genres, although it is, really, genreless. My favorites are probably the "Voyeur" series, paintings that show groups of people peering in through the brightly lit windows of a house at an interior that cannot be seen by the viewer. While the subject matter could easily be frightening in a spooky science-fiction kind of way, to me they inspire pathos. The voyeurs are the eternal outsiders drawn to a life they can never have.

Looking and Listening

Many of Henry's paintings have involved water and he has a wonderfully facile way of working the surface of the painting to create the illusions of roiling waves. In "Be Calmed", a boatsman rests deliciously, oblivious of the mayhem breaking around him but, somehow, not touching him. It's a wonderful sentiment: we have it in our individual power to shut the mayhem out.

This show should be seen by anyone near PTown - or anyone who can make it.

Jen Bradley at Schoolhouse Gallery

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

July 2, 2008

Jen Bradley

I love this work, at the Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown. Jen Bradley starts with toile. Never heard of the stuff? Well, if you were not in Barbara Bush's class at Smith or are not a devotee of haute WASP Upper East Side interior decoration, you may be excused. Toile (that's "twahl", since it's French) is a pattern found in fabric and wallpaper, often in blue and white, featuring images of 18th century upper class women and occasionally men in romantic pastoral settings or refined drawing rooms. So Bradley starts with these and quietly inserts images of gorillas in exactly the same tone and color, as if they were just coexisting in the same space. So you have the hyper-refined ladies (swoon) confronted by their evolutionary ancestors. To me, the message is that we are less separated from the gorillas than we would like to think, but there are other possible ways to look at these, too. Are they a comment on the artifice of art? (It's no coincidence that the two words share a common root.) On the thinness of the veneer of civilization? Your thoughts?? And by the way, Barbara never graduated from Smith (my alma mater,I will confess) - she dropped out to marry W's father. What a throwback.

The Abdominal Treeman

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

July 4, 2008

I see all

This guy lives in the front yard of our vet's office in Eastham, MA. We differ on this: Mr. Weiss finds it cute/child-friendly and I find it nightmare scary. This undoutedly reveals a great deal about our psychological health. Your vote?

A Regular Painting

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

July 1, 2008

Desparately in Search of Title

This is the closest to a regular painting I've done in many moons. Meaning, it's oil paint on canvas, with a few embellishments like shredded cheesecloth, but that's tame by current standards. As you can see, I have been infected by seaside colors, or maybe I just like blue and green and sand color.

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