tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-322009302011-12-17T10:29:24.295-05:00I make 'book art'. The contents of which contain the same themes pertaining to issues of identity, the so many aspects that I think are cultural, archetypal, may be perceived by the prurient as impermissible. This blog is an ongoing log of an 80 year old artist who loves drawing, writing, and is still being asked to mentor and teach. This blog has in the past been about my ruminations as to what is appropriate to ruminate and express in public as to our sexuality our shibboleths and taboos.Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.comBlogger401100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-70116796801364647742011-12-16T11:59:00.013-05:002011-12-17T10:29:24.300-05:00

I had the help of my daughter Nancy Kaye in selecting the web host powweb and downloaded some software with 'Fetch' as my essential tool. I wanted to convert my original iweb Apple site into one I could view on powweb. The site provided me with tech support guidance. Accomplishing this followed easily. I was being allowef a very limited window for accomplishing this. Apple charged me nearly 50

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-36086156503652441902011-01-27T09:44:00.017-05:002011-01-27T13:23:30.150-05:00

The blizzards of December and January made these months seem actually to speed by. It gave me a reprieve from the world and more time for drawing. The storms kept me from the appoinments scheduled. Scheduled and rescheduled: appointments with my doctors, my Apple store for mentoring sessions, my senior men's meetings at the the Senior Center.I'm scanning some of my drawings of December and

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-7399701270124927302010-12-20T20:31:00.013-05:002010-12-23T15:32:16.732-05:00

I've been scanning my most recent favorite drawings from my drawing/ log books this past month. They range back to the algorithmic drawings that I found in my 2007 drawing book collection. The drawings I made this year, 2010, contain a preponderance of studying the Poincare' topology defined as 'manifolds'. Alternating with my 'manifold' motif drawings are those that begin with closed

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-63882671502119304712010-07-24T11:15:00.011-04:002010-07-24T17:11:32.952-04:00

The fantasy foremost: is I am still at it, making my drawings, living the life of my ostensible identity, doing what I do, being who I am: an artist. August 2010 approaches. And so too September, the month of my birthday, my 82nd year. The momentum of this daily work I engage are stylus pen drawings made in my store-bought drawing books, acid free, archival -filling pages of what are pictures

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-56409610034685310382010-04-03T14:56:00.000-04:002010-04-06T07:54:47.792-04:00

I downloaded many of El Greco's painting reproductions from the internet. I've with each and all done what you see on this reproduction. Before going into cyberspace, I used tracing paper over printed reproductions I got hold of. Of the ones I copied and of the versions I analyzed using straight edge and compass, the composition you see her gives testimony as to El Greco's keeping it secret. It

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-3249471760903851592010-01-08T19:50:00.000-05:002010-01-08T17:01:42.879-05:00

In every painting I've investigated by the artist, El Greco, a 16th century Spanish painter I've found these hidden grids determining the proportions of his canvases. Seems that this grid making was this extra step he took. No other artist did this. Not to my knowledge. In my readings about El Greco I've found no scholars taking notice of what I've found. I used reproductions, tracing paper,

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-14633113399665361192009-11-13T12:48:00.002-05:002009-11-13T14:54:16.677-05:00

There are things I've been years at doing that I'm now thinking of I ought to quit, stop doing. I'm reminded of the time I quit smoking. It took me years to get fed up enough to give it it up. I remember the resolve took years before I finally quit smoking and stayed off the habit. I'm contemplating quitting 'making art'. Or maybe thinking that the drawings and what-other things I make is

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-63054581506807486432009-10-20T10:30:00.000-04:002009-11-13T12:48:45.154-05:00

I call such drawings 'algrorithmic. I work with a felt tip pen and fill pages of my drawing books with closed loops right angled polygons. Most especiqlly pentagons .I design patterns to fill the insides and see what happens. The most interesting patterns I get with pentagons and right triangles. Right triangles work with squares rectangles, triangles and also pentagons.I avoid the edges of

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-174231522122719152009-03-30T04:39:00.000-04:002009-03-30T05:03:18.753-04:00

New skills, ambitions, fantasies. I am thinking now of ways to build web galleries, sites, that will empower me to share the works I've made to a wider audience. Till now, I've been giving it away.Perhaps I can allow myself, give myself permission to put a price, a monetary value on the things I've made. It will entail web pages that have to do with buying and selling. Hmmm.

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-81817150181932628532009-02-09T07:46:00.000-05:002009-02-19T11:34:40.830-05:00

Since childhood, I've come to see myself as 'On The Outside', an 'Outsider'We had no such word for it in the decades of the 30's and 40's. Back then, the word that worked was 'Rebel', as in 'Rebel Without A Cause.' The title to a star-making movie with James Dean. If I thought at all about defining myself, it was as 'The Rebellious Adolescent'. My parents could connect with that. Also as I

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-17764472101654409632009-02-06T13:59:00.000-05:002009-03-31T13:55:27.413-04:00

Just when I think I'm in the clear, I've disengaged from the last brambles, I am humbled, learned humility: I collide with clean glass doors, my faced dented by the metal frames of my glasses. I forget things, my keys, my wallet, my cell phone. Blood breaks the skin in two places. Dries about when the ambulance drivers arrive. The rat poison I take every day prevents the blood that is beneath

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-35370158323219202322009-01-19T21:13:00.000-05:002009-03-31T14:25:31.976-04:00

"Travails." "Ordeals."Moments, days, weeks, I'm talking about experiences with this work I do. Talk of "My work makes me." (Owns me too. ) It was more than a year since I made this drawing. The illusion is that these polygons are 2, 3 layers deep, and behind them is an infinite blackness, an abyss, a vast darkness, a cosmos. As to what I was doing, thinking, feeling I can't recollect. Not

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-12676734367011773572008-10-12T08:29:00.006-04:002008-10-12T10:13:47.887-04:00

I bring to my drawings my fantasies. I have thought and now think of myself as an artist who is an illustrator. As a child I loved making comic strips and full page comic books, I still bring that same laying out of picture fields to what I imagine I am depicting here. I've done work like this hundreds of times. Only now the pen drawing lines are not about humans but about 'cosmology'. I want

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-16403701216123645532008-02-10T15:30:00.000-05:002009-02-21T06:53:51.815-05:00

I'm encouraged by the news that at long last a publication like the New Yorker magazine has a story about a well known and established artist exploring the inconvenient truths as to his own sexuality and making art that is 'pornographic'. (The reproductions that I had placed here were excised / deleted. The image of Curran the artist and the painting in question was too objectionable be permitted

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-67659145707966328512007-11-27T11:10:00.000-05:002007-11-27T13:06:26.514-05:00

The American school child learns early on to ‘tell the time.’ -That is, read the dial positions and the numbers on the clock. Not much is said about what Time is actually. Why 12 numbers? Where did all this start? What the narrative as to units of measuring of something we can't touch or see? Seconds, minutes, and hours? I am convinced that we are missing a terrific opportunity not taking the

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-82328013281949715812007-10-13T19:01:00.000-04:002007-10-13T19:23:41.773-04:00

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-29251739795226222142007-09-09T10:04:00.000-04:002007-09-09T11:23:34.717-04:00

Sunday Morning, 10;18 AM, September 9th 2007 Am sitting in my Manhattan studio, uploading some images on my hard drive. Dates range between the years of 2003 to 2006. Some are recent. My work has taken me onto the streets, the internet, the communities that include the neighborhoods I've been trqadding these recent years... working at curating ongoing works (my book art) and works I'd thought

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-75471013989442609262007-05-15T06:30:00.000-04:002007-06-03T09:57:17.243-04:00

We're on Ninth Avenue on the southwest corner of W27th Street in Manhattan. I'm using a digital camera that belongedto my daughter. I think this was in the spring of 2006. I'm heading toward the gallery district down a street (I don't know exactly which one) one that has these lovely brownstones -when this flowering tree stopped me and I took this snapshot. I approach 10th Avenue a few blockes

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-40571873894431934912007-04-18T17:41:00.000-04:002007-04-22T03:16:13.793-04:00

These dated drawings were made in 2006. They were 'free-hand', playful and 'these are just for the heck of it' pen drawings that were not about any kind of polemic or ciphers to be read as tea leaves. They were not 'departures' but 'returns', goings back to my years of being an artist making his daily bread teaching.These are made in a black store bought drawing book. About 5 and a half inches by

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-5318248405648672052007-03-31T04:27:00.000-04:002007-04-03T13:55:55.378-04:00

My recent and new drawings are about my facination with the pen lines, the calligraphy of the seismic line as it reports on the state of my physical me at the singular time, actual intervals of my engaging with the making of it. I focus on the crawling point of my stylus pen -and the sloww path trail of ink that it leaves the page of paper, slowly extending an accrual on the whiteness of an image

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-88658664554105821212007-02-26T10:40:00.000-05:002007-12-03T14:56:58.557-05:00

It is as though in processing I'm unwrapping old, crumpled papers and having to smooth out and reread them. I find new dots among the familiar ones. It's an ever-so-subtly-altering constellation of dots I'm connecting... epiphanies and revelations, such that astonish and amaze me. Each time I go at it is another way of grappling with having come this far, having become who I now am, and

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-87720239291418709272007-02-11T20:18:00.000-05:002007-02-11T17:07:35.759-05:00

What is hard for me and perhaps easier for you, Rachel, editing this, accomplishing with mywriting what photographers do in the dark room with the printing of their negatives: including cropping it. What I think is needed is your doing a Reader's Digest bit of condensing this blog.Read below and tell me what do you think. Edit it if you think it needs it.'On the crude side of looking at

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-61570763621749212122007-02-01T17:15:00.000-05:002007-02-01T14:23:07.347-05:00

Who was this man? This lone man making shameful drawings, rendering with pen and india ink on paper drawings depicting comic book panels and the antics of heroes and villains grotesquely engaging in sex? The usual fisticuffs and mayhem and murders were replaced with impermissible partnerings.He was making a kind of home made pornography, indulging in a kind of Gilbert and Sullivan Innocent

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-77446182917051122782007-01-30T06:13:00.000-05:002007-02-02T07:17:24.372-05:00

[Being in The Here and The Now] I've been downloading all kinds of found jpgs from the internet. Yesterday I found one and began playing around with it. (My thanks to Autumn Sunnichsen & Evelyn Dubla.)I work with Adobe photoshop filters and tools to copy and paste, make collages.There are tools for rotating the entire image, for adjusting colors and warping and distortions.I'd like to say of

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-17749930343822740962007-01-23T13:53:00.000-05:002007-02-11T08:28:42.858-05:00

"On the crude side of looking at pornography, given that most people find interest in it seeing it as that which is not "meant" to be looked at, I say it is destructive....."The above statement is a paraphrase, a strand of an ongoing forum discussion at another website.The argument is right (to my thinking): pornographers do intend being transgressive. They're not presenting 'erotica' which in

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-70243131606882181462007-01-06T03:33:00.000-05:002007-02-11T08:27:58.031-05:00

I do not now speak for anyone -as to the what of 'outrage'. Only as to myself. I do not go so far as to think beyond today. There were yesterdays I believed I was The Everyman" but not now. I do not infer a truth for me representative of all humanity. So then to speak of outrage", it is to say I have dissected it out for myself. The roots of my outrage follows vectors spun from forgotten but

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-1155993184732308442007-01-04T08:14:00.000-05:002007-01-07T03:31:42.777-05:00

During my 'learning how to draw' years (1960's) my first erotic drawings were done in pencil - and lots of erasing. Worked me to an erection. It was a damned good way to learn.Drawing is a reinventing of the wheel. I found I let my imagination go, and in the now of full focusing. The human figure was a thing I was touching as I drew. Tactile. In my case it was prurience, curiosity and, yes, the

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-91056821869862821912006-12-30T07:11:00.000-05:002007-01-05T03:55:35.210-05:00

'This post is a rambling meandering one, a Valentine, Thank You letter, End of the Old and In With The New Year thing.Much has transpired this year. Were I to characterize it, I'd say it was one during which I met a lot more people than usual, interesting people. I found people who became my resources, advisors. Some were 'guns for hire'. Brainard, an artist was the one who had the idea of my

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-38455801532139636012006-12-11T05:25:00.001-05:002006-12-11T05:27:33.141-05:00

Where does ‘outrage’ come from? Is this the right question? Can you answer it? I say: “I'm outraged!” But where does it come from? I mean the roots of it -- the deepest tendrils from which I make my art. I do not now speak for anyone as to the what of ‘outrage’. Only for myself.  I do not go so far as to think beyond today. There were yesterdays when I believed I was “The Everyman,” but not now.

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-65247544143942593562006-12-07T11:01:00.000-05:002006-12-07T12:16:50.281-05:00

I date my drawings knowing that any one of them might be copied or scanned, appear anywhere else, other than in the drawing books I work with. The store-bought books are those hard cover black ones you find in any art supply store. I've for decades been using these drawing books logs, keeping the drawings and jottings of my thoughts as my journals. I've come to regard drawings as a form of

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-86440824136328017172006-12-02T04:54:00.000-05:002006-12-02T05:39:45.032-05:00

Todays NY TIMES (12/3/2006) front page headlines tell a most terrible story as to the state of women in Africa. Child abuse is rampant there. Girls are raped by their relatives with impunity. The culture and the laws all conspire to protect the men from prosecution, or for financial liability for the harm they have caused. Only yesterday, Annette and I were viewing a CD of a movie made in India.

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-50078473480563641362006-11-21T04:24:00.000-05:002006-12-10T13:40:36.876-05:00

"Erotica. (noun) literature or art dealing with sexual love." "Pornography. (noun) obscene literature, art, or photography, esp. that having little or no artistic merit."I quote this dictionary -the one I've had in my studio since 1969. It is unabridged, the Random House Dictionary of English Language copyrighted as early as 1966. Mine was the 1969 edition.Art galleries and art museums shun the

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-80905215637306324562006-11-10T03:36:00.001-05:002006-11-13T06:37:53.041-05:00

I read a lot. Always have. I do it these days in the dark hours before dawn. I wake up and head to the john..(this being the 2nd, maybe the 3rd time)... go back, lie down, shut my eyes. I savor the part of the dream I'd interrupted, attempt emptying my mind so I'd get a smidgen more sleep.Failing that, I am sitting here at my Powerbook G4, assemble, put together strands -pearls that pop into my

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-34297357710309976332006-11-02T16:58:00.000-05:002006-11-03T14:16:59.873-05:00

It is the wee hours of the morning (4:00AM) and I am posting what I hope will be the first of a series of assorted jpgs of my collages and drawings. I actually select them at random. Serendipity has its way of doing my work better than I could. The first jpg is of a collage. The original is a drawing I've cut out, but never actually pasted down. I sleeved it inside a 3 ring page protector. When

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-1162144976644915172006-10-29T12:56:00.000-05:002006-11-02T12:51:32.604-05:00

I've been exploring blogs on the internet and came across an image that I liked and downloaded. What you see here is one of the permutations I made with it The original was a photograph of a beautiful young woman smiling seductively and nakedly displaying her charms.I work with Adobe Photoshop tools and filters. This is the kind of art I've been doing for some years now. It is a matter of taking

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-1161446612880789572006-10-21T11:59:00.000-04:002006-11-01T05:06:14.055-05:00

I would say of the drawing you see here that it is 'a drawing about drawing'.It is one of several, of a series, the motif being about how I can compose panels with a single line, a continuous line, a line of changing directions, a closed looping line. It is also about rendering the interiors and exteriors, shapes and fields, panels as in comic strips, a set of panels with one continuous picture

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-1160304404781347572006-10-08T05:51:00.000-04:002006-11-06T04:05:08.713-05:00

It is a month gone by since my last posting. I've been at work retrieving vintage books of the past dozen or more years that I'd like to post and feature on my web site . The underlying motif and most persistent is what I've come to grasp and understand about gender as to sex and identity.My voyage has been one in which I sought my Who's I had been, sorted through them (known, unknown and others

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-1157121530043927692006-09-01T09:17:00.000-04:002006-11-03T14:20:49.613-05:00

If my book art be prose, then my "Waste·Not·Want·Not" books arepoetry.  Decades ago, my tools were exclusively a pen, an electric typewriter, and a copying machine. Each two-page spread began as a collage of typewritten text and my pen drawings that, with a copier, would be reduced to fit on a standard letter size paper. Then, I'd assemble four to six sheets to be folded and sewn to form a

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-1155196406394335022006-08-10T03:47:00.001-04:002006-11-03T14:25:17.593-05:00

Monday, August 07, 2006 posted by Norman at 10:01 AM 0 comments Saturday, August 05, 2006There are premises that are alluded to but never quite spelled out in the discourses I've been reading in the Blogs about 'Art' and 'Pornography.' What Art is and cannot be if it is Pornographic. I am pleased to read the bloggers who do their homework, cite and quote in scholarly fashion the writings of

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32200930.post-1155141114118003822006-08-09T12:31:00.000-04:002006-11-03T14:23:22.606-05:00

It seems to me that there’s a lot of that: sex without love, love without sexNot here in Manhattan, not just in the U. S. of A. It’s a guess. I’ve not done any research, can’t say I’ve looked it up statistically, found authoritative documents and all that. It’s a gut feeling. It could be a hair brain notion like phlogiston, or the hypothetical ether in outer space which was proven didn’t exist.

Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179508357047919004noreply@blogger.com2