About 25 homes in the Ponckhockie neighborhood in Kingston are participating in this community yard sale. Sellers are donating some of their proceeds to People’s Place, a thrift store, food pantry, wellness empowerment center and community café in Kingston. I will be donating 20% of my proceeds to People’s Place.
I will have available for sale a large number of older artworks large and small, greeting cards and a smattering of non-art, household items. There will even be some free items!
So, if you are in the Kingston area, stop by 43 Ponckhockie Street between 9am and 1pm, tomorrow, October 3.
About 25 homes in the Ponckhockie neighborhood in Kingston are participating in this community yard sale. Sellers are donating some of their proceeds to People’s Place, a thrift store, food pantry, wellness empowerment center and community café in Kingston. I will be donating 20% of my proceeds to People’s Place.
I will have available for sale a large number of older artworks, greeting cards and a smattering of non-art, household items. There will even be some free items!
I need to make room for new art, so it would be great to find new homes for these artworks! This is your chance to make an offer on some great art! If you are in the area this Saturday, please stop by!
You can find me at 43 Ponckhockie Street, Saturday, September 26, 9am to 1pm.
I hope to see you there!
]]>It’s been a busy month, and I don’t want to miss the opportunity to announce my newly updated website front end, and give a recap of significant art sales of the past year.
New Website!
I’ve been dabbling in html coding from the beginning, since the mid-90s. My fine art website has existed in some form or another for at least 20 years. I’ve used various means to build it, from writing the code myself to using various WYSIWYG page builders (R.I.P. Adobe Muse). The wysiwygs are mostly dead and the coding has just gotten too complicated to keep up with.
So I’ve found a worthwhile use for AI.
I’m not a fan of so-called “Artificial Intelligence”. I could wax philosophical for some time on the various non-salutary effects this is already having on the human species. But I won’t. I will merely state that I highly dislike its use in creative activities. Heck, I can hardly stomach non-AI computer art. To each their own, I suppose.
But writing html code: this is a good use for AI. It is instantly verifiable (it works or it doesn’t) and strictly limited in scope.
So, for my new website front-end (the index page), I asked Claude AI to generate the code to my specifications, then I took this code and edited it in Adobe Dreamweaver (a miserable app, which, thanks to AI, probably won’t be around much longer). I especially needed help creating a slide show that was also responsive to display sizes from phone to desktop.
I’ve also set this up so that I can easily swap out the images in the slide show without any code changes.
I’m pleased with the results, and take full responsibility for any design shortcomings (yes, the link to the rest of the site is “below the fold”, but I’m fine with it. If someone can’t spend the extra seconds to explore the page, then I don’t really care of they go any further).
The website home page can be accessed here.
One last parting philosophical shot: remember, there is no such thing as “technological progress” — only “technological change.” Discuss.
Recent sales!
It’s been a banner year for oil painting sales. I’ve announced these on Instagram as they’ve happened, but I thought it best to give you a recap here, and remind everyone of works still available. Sales of these oil paintings clears up space in my studio and provides funds to make more art.
So below are photos of these recent sales:
I’ve created a Flickr album featuring paintings for sale. The list there isn’t exhaustive, so feel free to contact me.
Enjoy your summer!
]]>Now suddenly it is July. In my haste to get and spend, I risk missing nature’s steady march through the seasons.
What have I been up to? Frankly, for the last several months I’ve been spending most of my limited free time gardening: having acquired a little workman’s cottage in Kingston, New York with only the barest beginnings of a garden, it has been hard work but also a joy to exercise the creative urge in cooperation (we hope) with nature. My goal here is to get native perennials started and create a natural, organic, chemical-free haven for my non-human neighbors.
It’s been slow going, but things do seem to be coming together. Perhaps I will post further details about the garden in the near future.
I’m much inspired this week to begin reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s book you are here (2001/English translation 2009):
“The first miracle of mindfulness is our true presence—being here, present, and totally alive. Then, if you are really here, something else will also be here: the presence of the other. You are here and the other is here. What is the other? It could be your heart; your eyes; your body; or your in-breath. The other is the sunset, the song of the birds. Or it could be your lover, your partner, your son, your daughter, or your friend.”
Among the many others I am seeking to be present for are the hummingbirds visiting the feeder I put up. Now I must be responsible! There are beaks to feed!
All this is inspiring new artistic activities.
In January and February, before the garden chores really took off, I took a couple of short classes at Kingston’s Neighborhood Print Studio! Great fun, and also challenging: the woodcut typography class was inspiring and difficult, as I had not really done any kind of art involving typography before.
I’m continuing with the watercolor practice, and I think some new oil paintings are on the horizon.
While engaged in the meditative calm of painting the garden fence, I’m also wondering what sort of mural trouble I could get into this year or next?
I’m slowly refreshing my website and other online presences. Instagram, for better or worse, remains the most current source of updates on my comings and goings. I also use Threads frequently. I would be happy to have you follow me there!
But being present, bearing witness, to the beauty all around us, is of first importance. Let’s all take Thich Nhat Hanh’s wise words to heart:
“Being truly here is very important—being here for yourself, and for the one you love. How can you love if you are not here?”
In this season of reflection, I am slowly developing ideas for artistic next steps. Well, since art is life, next life steps.
Of course, relief printing is at the top of the list. I’m very much hoping I can get involved in some manner at the Neighborhood Print Studio in Kingston.
But one thing that has been intriguing me (something rather hard to ignore, alas) is the ever-growing presence of AI in daily life. And in art, literature and all manner of writing.
Perhaps you have seen the very interesting article in the New York Times by Sam Kriss (“Why Does A.I. Write Like … That?”, December 3, 2025). It appears that A.I.-generated prose is beginning to pervade everywhere. The most disturbing thing about this is that, as Kriss notes, since humans are natural mimics (I’ve observed this in myself), AI writing tics are going to start showing up even in things humans write. Yikes! Armed with some awareness, I am now studiously avoiding em-dashes and the verb “delve”. Will I succeed in sounding sufficiently human?
I have not been very interested in AI up until this point in time. I recently posted my opinion on Bluesky: the emperor has no clothes. Artistically speaking, it is boring: boring to use and boring to look at.
But I’m afraid it can’t be avoided. What are some genuine human artistic responses to all this slop? This may be among the artistic questions that engage me in 2026.
And, perhaps spurred on by more reading (Patti Smith’s new book is just mind-blowing) and by the unwelcome presence of AI, I am becoming re-interested in writing per se, so perhaps more blog posts will be forthcoming in 2026? We’ll see how things go. I think the name of the game for 2026 will be: Dare to be human!
Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year!
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Hello everyone, it is that time of year once again: summer draws to an end and leaves fall. Old lives depart and new beginnings approach.
Once again, as a culmination of the 2024-25 art year, Gowanus Open Studios is happening October 18-19, 12-6pm.
This year’s Open Studios is special for me, as it will be my last.
After nearly 36 years of living in Brooklyn, it’s time for me to say farewell. I’ve moved my residence to Kingston, New York and my art-making practice will soon follow. This is very bittersweet for me, as I love Brooklyn so much! But all things change, and new horizons await!
At this year’s Gowanus Open Studios, I will have on hand various works I’ve made in Gowanus over the past 15 years, plus new work as a part of my ongoing “Time-Being” and “True Refuge” series.
In the spirit of new beginnings, I would really like to not have to haul all this great art to Kingston – so make me an offer! Now is your chance to own some original art at a price you can afford. Everything is for sale!
If you would like to get a preview of the works on canvas I will have on hand during Open Studios, please visit this Flickr gallery I’ve made for the event.
Gowanus Open Studios happens Saturday and Sunday, October 18-19 12 to 6pm. My studio is at Trestle Art Space, 62 18th Street, Brooklyn.
Join me in commemorating my Gowanus years and to celebrate new beginnings. Follow me on social media to stay informed of future developments!
The event is happening Saturday and Sunday, October 19-20, from 12-6pm, with additional events happening in the evening. You can read all about the weekend and access the map and artist profiles here.
I’ll have my studio open at Trestle Art Space, 62 18th Street, Studio 1 (on the first floor). I’ll have on hand various artworks in oil and watercolor. You can read about my “Time-Being” project in my previous post.
You can also visit my “Lifeworlds” mural at Nevins and DeGraw Streets — all seven Arts Gowanus murals can be visited over the course of the weekend!
I hope to see everyone over the weekend!
Very recently, my thinking on this series has coalesced around the concept of Time as Being (or Being as Time). What follows is the Artist’s Statement for this project.
Artist’s Statement
This series of artworks explores the basic equivalence of time and being. The artworks arise from a near-daily practice of working with watercolor, a notoriously mercurial, elusive and time-dependent medium. Date stamps are added to emphasize the temporal, and temporary, fabric of being. We commonly think of time as a container or a line, with events, things, people happening within the container or along the line. This makes it easy to imagine ourselves outside of time or somehow in conflict with it. But what if these moments aren’t separate from time but actually expressions of time itself? In this case, the container and the line are within the moment and the moments flow and shift from one to another endlessly. Each artwork is a moment, and is subsumed into every other moment. From these, after the fact, a timeline is arbitrarily constructed. In focusing on the moment, we see that we are neither victims of time nor its conquerors.
See these works and many more at this year’s Gowanus Open Studios, happening October 19-20!
There will be printed maps of the event available across the neighborhood, but if you want to start planning in advance, you can find a directory of all the participating artists here. Hope to see you there!
I’ll have selected works on view in my studio, including works on paper (above) and works on canvas (below)
You can also check out the very large mural I did in the neighborhood, at Nevins and DeGraw Streets — all of the Gowanus murals are included on the Open Studios Map!
Stay tuned for more details about the weekend, including previews of work I’ll have on hand and hours I’ll be open.
The feature archive treasure for this year is a painting I did in early 2010 (amazing that it was that long ago): I will plant companionship thick as trees (Calamus I) inspired by the a poem by Walt Whitman, “Calamus 5”:
“I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the /rivers of America, and along the shores of the great /lakes, and all over the prairies, /I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other’s necks.”
-Walt Whitman, Calamus 5, 1860.
I’ve been thinking of this series of Calamus paintings I did in 2010 a lot lately. It’s in these paintings that I first started exploring the motif that is a key part of my big mural on Nevins and DeGraw Streets, completed this past summer.
It’s nice to take this painting out of storage and give it a chance to breathe. It looks just as fresh as ever.
Be sure to visit me at Gowanus Open Studios this weekend. I’ll be a Trestle Art Space, 62 18th Street, on the first floor. I hope to see you there!
