L. Joshua Goodman’s Art Blog

My band, the Hazel Hill String Band, played a concert last night. During the course of the performance I messed up the opening riff and several other riffs as well. Nevertheless EVERYbody seemed to have a good time. We got tons of compliments. By the end of the evening we even sold several disks.  Mistakes notwithstanding.

I asked my friend Robert Fuchs, an international level composer and pianist,  if concert pianists make mistakes. He said, “Even Horowitz makes mistakes”. He went on, “A professional knows how to HIDE his mistakes.”

Picasso used to use plate imperfections or other “mistakes” as the point from which to draw beautiful portraits (I saw one like this at the Israel Museum a while back).

In HighTech they say, “It’s not a bug, it’s a FEATURE.”

The Best Laid Plans…

It’s my observation that despite planning, the unplanned happens. I’m by no means disparaging planning, which in many was is the sum and substance of the process of Art. But I think it’s useful to use those “mistakes”.

This could be an “Emperor’s New Clothes” situation, however. In my first art class in High School we had an interim critique of sorts. Each student had to describe the project he was working on. One cheerful fellow said as he held up a block of wood that he was carving, “It’s going to be a ballerina, and if it doesn’t work out, it’s going to be abstract.”

I doubt Horowitz or Picasso ever said this kind of thing. But using mistakes is another matter. Sometimes I stop in the middle and take a fresh look and I see things happening that I hadn’t planned. This has been very useful at times. I used to tell my clients and students, “If you build the system right, all the little things turn out right as well.” This is very important in Etching where process is so very important.

Taking What the Process is Giving

In etching it’s recognizing the developments throughout the process that inform the discussion. I read in Vasari once of an artist who was technically correct in every detail, but his work was dead. Whereas Reubens might have drawn figures with disproportionate limbs but his work flowed with LIFE! (I think this was the subject of a poem by Browning or somesuch, but I’m not sure…it’s been a while). I’ve had this happen to me on occasion, and it is so much fun. Things happen that are fortunately beyond my control. Like getting stuff for FREE!

Anyway, letting the “mistakes” live. I think that’s a Very Good Idea.

Richard Farnña wrote a song, “Pack Up Your Sorrows”, arguably his best and probably his most famous song. He dedicated it to someone “…who was the first to know it’s simple meaning”.Which tells me that there is a simple message here.

Do you ever wish you could “undo” (cmd/ctrl Z) something you’ve just done or said? It happens to me all the time. Not exactly like regret, but something like that. We have a new tool (because of the computer and Apple’s early Developer’s Guidelines).

I think it would be nice to extend the cmd/ctrl Z to all areas of life. Run a stop sign? No problem. cmd/ctrl Z. Say something stupid (”like I love you”)? Not to worry. The press of a simple keystroke combination makes everything right. Just think what would happen to politics. We could eliminate war! Providing of course that people use it.  It’s one thing to be able to take back regrets, but another thing to consider the regrettable to be commendable.

For that we will need “Multiple Undo”

Apple can figure it out for us. Theyve done it before.

Steve Jobs once again to the rescue of civilization with a simple message. Just like Richard Fariña said.

Size: approximately 12.5 x 8.5 in.
(32 x 21 cm)
Technique: Aquatint with special water resist technique

So much of Intaglio is dependent upon process, and this Head is all about the process. This is not a portrait of any particular person. Rather this is a formal study in how to work with color in the etching studio. Along with that, I have used the water resist technique that I inadvertently discovered one day while working frantically in the rain. This came about because one morning I hadn’t finished applying the aquatint (I use spray paint) before the big rain started. The result surprised and amazed me. The upshot was a texture that is both random and exceedingly biological. It simply looks like something from a medical textbook (don’t ask me where, though).

I couldn’t have done it better, if I had tried!

I have many experiments in many different colors. You can write to me for a complete list of colors. Or ask for a photograph. I’ll try to oblige.

Size Varies by paper size.
30 x 22.5 in.
(70 x 50 cm)
Technique: Sugar-lift Etching on Industrial Iron plate with Chine Collé

A print of a drawing of my left hand. I have discussed on a previous blog (what, should I copy/paste??) about my left hand (it’s near to me and easily accessible, always available) and about hammers. I won’t go into all that again. Suffice it to say that I consider this to be something of a self portrait. In that a leaf recapitulates the form of a branch and a branch is like a tree trunk with it’s branches and the whole visible tree has the form of the unseen part of the tree, the roots. In that same way, everything you could want to know about me, can be known by just looking at the hand.

And the hammer? Well, ever since man got tired of pounding tent pegs into the ground with his bare hands, a tool has always been cool.

When I was about fifteen years old, I took the Greyhound bus to visit my Grandparents in LA. I remember this extremely well, because this is where I first had the desire to study “Outside Atoms”.

While sitting on the bus looking out at all the cars below, I was suddenly struck by the fact that the tires of the cars touch the street below. It was as if I was a visitor inside the rubber of the tire (I would have to have been microscopic). Traveling through the rubber, I might come to the edge, to the boundary of where the rubber stopped and the street began. I began to wonder what it was like to be an atom at the spot where the rubber hits the road. How would it feel.

It’s one thing to be an edge, but it’s so much more intimate to be at the atomic level, i.e. to be at the atomic outer edge of the edge.

I have put off grant-writing for this project. I know I would need funding to pursue this project to a successful conclusion. But meanwhile I am content to contemplate.

And besides, I’m not a scientist.