Hi There!

Hi There,

It has been half a year since my last report. Thankfully it has been one of the most productive spells ever. Thankfully life is good in New York, and my sculpture studio has been busy with visitors and new work alike!

I have finally completed my entry at the Park Stewardship Through the Arts website. You can see what I was up to in the Mojave Desert last May at http://www.artmojave.org/polumbo.html Don’t forget to scroll down and see the art after my sun-baked manifesto on recycling US history. While stationed at the incredibly beautiful, and remote “Lost Horse” ranger station by myself for weeks, I mastered the art of casting mosquito hawks in sold gold among other things.




I also saw some big rattlesnakes, melted down numerous hockey trophies and spoons into little silver sculptures bejeweled with 100mg Viagra tablets, and mastered the art of making “hides” the Native American way with only salt, some baking soda, and the sun, but using the heroic medium of chicken skin. I credit this program with getting me interested in crafting metal and glass items from scratch, and thinking about the recycling in my work more symbolically, although I do use a lot of deceased electronic items and trash.










I am headed up to Yaddo tomorrow, where I first started making intimately scaled, sputtering solar sculptures in 1997. For fun check out www.yaddo.org This place is incredible, not unlike going to heaven for an artist. They give you an amazing studio, a warm bed, and feed you, allowing for concentrated bursts of productivity with no distractions allowed during the work day. In the evening you rub shoulders with incredible composers, artists, and writers. Each week is a feast of new creative work when a composer might premier a work in the formal living-room, a painter might open their studio, or a writer read a small peace hot off the press. The list of amazing work created at Yaddo really floors me. Remember to check in the dedication of new books, they often benefited from a residency and thanks might be offered. I can be seen in the Yaddo news with my friend, amazing musician and composer, Queen Esther in my 40 year old, $20 Ebay jacket at ftp://ftp.yaddo.org/yaddo/newsletter-fall2005.pdf.

I have discovered that almost everything I need for either art materials or necessities is available on Ebay for <$20. If anyone else is having trouble getting slightly broken in size 13 shoes, at the double digit price point, that is where you want to be looking! I am excited about this weeks Yaddo mission, last time having discovered an almost impossible method of primitive glass casting. I discovered annealing (the art of cooling the cast glass product slowly) by blowing up a couple of pieces and picking glass out of my skin for two days. These kind of lessons are always the easiest to remember! Here is my favorite very simple, non electronic glass piece. It is cast from an actual baby bottle out of SOLID cobalt glass I harvest from crushed telegraph insulators.



The most excellent news is that more exhibits of work are happening this year pretty regularly. I had work at SCOPE LONDON last week with the Nancy Hoffman Gallery, and they were kind enough to put my work up last night at the AAF (Affordable Art Fair) too. This is a cool event at the Pier on 12th Avenue and 52nd Street. The AAF is open for the rest of this week, and my work is right up front on your left. You can read about and sign up for information about SCOPE at http://www.scope-art.com/main.php It is quite an event, usually taking place in a hotel, with each curator, or gallery taking a room, and hanging art cheek by jowl, salon style even in the bathroom. I really enjoy the density, and intimacy! In London I understand my work was featured in the medicine cabinet, among other places. Check out the grid paintings made of melted crayons based on genetic algorithms by Rick Purdy also at AAF. I found it necessary to get one of these to hang up in my kitchen, they are hot. http://www.nancyhoffmangallery.com/purdy/2005.html. Rumor has it my work may be featured at SCOPE MIAMI as well.



Other great news is that 31 Grand Gallery sold two pieces to an important collector (Blossom, pictured above,) and he has commissioned two new works. This is one of my favorite galleries and can be seen at http://www.31grand.com/ on the waterfront in Williamsburg. As with the Nancy Hoffman Gallery, and Yaddo, I cannot believe the great artists I am allowed to occasionally rub shoulders with!



I am working on crazy device to recycle human liquid waste (yes, pee) into high end coffee product. Here is a sketch of my device, with a urinal at one end, some interesting and Frankensteinian parts in the middle, and a coffee machine and native grass leaching field as outputs. This is being considered for an exhibit in NYC, and if not there I may lug it to California this summer and see if Don and Gretchen of the remarkable 29 Palms Creative Center will let me show it there. They rule the desert, and have a great site at http://www.29palmscreativecenter.com/ . They and resident print maker Deborah Iyall http://www.iyall.com/ make some extremely compelling work!! Another desert favorite is my friend Shari Elf, painter and rockstar who has art and music at http://sharielf.com/ . My daughter and I cannot stop buying ELFS off her website. They are like potato chips. She also makes her work solely from trash and credits the places she finds materials on the back, like a homespun recipe. Paul Villinski had one of the finest shows I have ever seen in NYC which sadly closed this week. You can see his work at http://www.morganlehmangallery.com/dynamic/artist_artwork.asp?ArtistID=19 and perhaps again at http://www.gallery138.com/g138/g138.swf where the show just finished. Here is a desert landscape from amazing landscape painter Diane Best, another luminary of the Mojave who just finished a handsome show in LA. http://www.metrogallery.org/



My website remains at www.polumbo.com and the link to my occasional blog is there as well and is where I will put new work. If you are in the neighborhood, visit the studio on South Street downtown a few feet from the Brooklyn Bridge. If you hurry you might see a blue crab walking up the street as the Fulton Fish Market is still apparently NOT LEAVING!! (I really like it and will miss it, but not everyone will miss the smell)

That’s all for now!! Thanks for your support and interest.

Best,

Randy