The past couple of years I have spent a summer afternoon in Astoria Queens, New York at the Musical Saw Festival watching Natalia Paruz, The Saw Lady and musicians from around the world of all ages playing the musical saw. And when I say musical saw some people have custom made musical saws and others perform with saws that they literally purchased off the shelf at a hardware store. Natalia’s saw doesn’t have teeth because the New York Police Department won’t let her play in the subways with a toothed saw because “it can be used as a weapon.”
A week from now, Saturday, August 7 will be the 8th annual Musical Saw Festival. Each year she also has a small art exhibition focusing on the musical saw, which includes a painted portrait that I did of her playing the saw.
I first met Natalia back in 2008 when I began working on a series of photo essays and paintings of street musicians. Last year at the Musical Saw Festival I watched as she and 52 other musical saw players played their way into the Guinness Book of World Records for the “Largest Musical Saw ensemble.” That night I pulled a saw out of my tool box and gave it a try. I didn’t make what I would call “music’ but it was certainly playable.
As a painter my productivity ebbs and flows like a tide.
As I enter into what is becoming the third most productive painting period in my life, I reflect.
Back in mid 90s I began taking my painting seriously but, I felt isolated as an artist and wasn’t growing at a satisfactory rate. I decided that I needed to “learn how to paint.” My mother was quite happy when I was accepted to the University of Miami’s MFA program. But afterward she said they ruined my art. While there I truly began to explore art. To the point of one evening with several other artist literally slinging gel medium at the walls then admiring the artistic quality of the forms.
I think I did some of my best work during that period and I certainly grew and changed the most as an artist then. I worked a full-time job, but outside of work my life was painting for three years.
My second period of great productivity was my time in Japan as an assistant English teacher. During the summers I had several months off to explore and paint in one of the most artistically inspiring places I have known. When I arrived in Japan my paintings were dark. When I left I was painting in bright vibrant colors.
Now as I enter into my third period of high productivity I am beginning to see how out of practice I was. It is more difficult for me to see in my more abstract works, but oh too clear in the little still lifes that I use as my training ground.
As my painting kicks into high gear I am finding the black re-entering my canvases. I was fighting it, trying to hang onto bright cheerful colors, but the black clearly wants to assert itself once more.
Busker Series: Just completed this painting of a pair of street musicians I came across in Boston last summer, who kept a small group entertained with traditional Irish music.
Today almost no one feels shored up. Today artwork does not emerge from a secure common ground: the bison on the wall is someone else’s magic. Making art now means working in the face of uncertainty; it means living with doubt and contradiction, doing something no one much cares whether you do, and for which there may be neither audience nor reward. Making the work you want to make means setting aside these doubts so that you may see clearly what you have done, and thereby see where to go next. Making the work you want to make means finding nourishment within the work itself.
Yesterday I stumbled across Victoria Rose Martin’s name on Facebook, an old friend and extremely talented artist that I knew from my time at the University of Miami. We lost touch years ago, but I have always greatly admired her beautifully sculpted ceramic work. But after I friended her on Facebook, I became increasingly self-concious and hoped she didn’t find her way to my blog to see that I have strayed from fine art and that I am now posting art here that is not always of the greatest quality (my Creative Calamities).
She responded to me with such word of kindness, encouragement and a real faith in my talent as an artist that I began to feel that I that I have wasted so many years not developing the talent I have been given. Today I feel like I have passed a cross roads in my commitment to being an artist.
Below is a quick study that I did tonight from a photograph I took of the singer Key Appleseeds.
While working at my last newspaper job, I got wind of a day-long multimedia seminar being held for the photo department. I was tipped off by a photographer on staff and I finagled my way in.
Few people there knew that I worked as a photographer when I was in college. I went to the Northern Star shortly after classes started freshman year and worked there till I graduated.
When it came time to decide if I was to be an artist or a photojournalist, my decision was easy. After photographing a 19 year dying (after collapsing) in DuSable Hall, I broke down crying in the stairwell before taking more pictures as they brought his body out. I knew then that this wasn’t my first choice for a career. But I loved taking pictures and I worked for the student newspaper till I graduated.
For years I worked as a graphic artist at newspapers while my old 35 mm Nikons collected dust.
But the day I sat in this seminar listening to Brian Storm (of Media Storm), it sparked a fire in me to take pictures again. So I bought a digital camera and an audio recorder. When the idea of this project came to me I was ecstatic because it gave purpose to a revived passion. And while the Internet has indirectly cost me my job it has also opened new avenues for creativity. I didn’t have to sell this project to anyone or convince anyone that it was worthy of space on the world wide web. I just started working on it and and sharing it with whom ever cared to look and listen.
These are the two latest photo essays that I have done for this project.
She described him as a young thin Japanese man with a heavily accented speaking voice. But she said if you came across him playing in the subway and only heard his voice rising above the crowd, you would swear he was an older African American man from the deep south.
Key holds down a full-time day job and takes the day off to rest on Thursdays so that he can perform four hours or more well into the night on the L Train, First Avenue platform.
He performs on a long wooden waiting bench on the platform right in the midst of passengers. He doesn’t perform during the summer because he says people can get irritable in the heat and “playing in the subways is like playing in a battlefield, you never know what’s going to happen.”
When I entered the subway at 10:30 one evening, I didn’t know what to expect from Key and I certainly didn’t know what to expect from the late night crowds on on the platform. Nervously I descended into the subway . . . in the distance I could hear a harmonica and a guitar. And then there was this wailing of the blues resonating through the tunnels . . .
A couple of years ago I found myself struggling to find inspiration to paint.
Then one day as I was passing through Penn Station I came upon the cellist Ming Jun playing in the crowed station. Being moved by his music I scooted up close to enjoy his performance. It was there that I had a rush of emotions when the idea first flooded into my mind to do a series of photographs and paintings about street musicians.
Initially I tried to speak with the cellist but I found it difficult communicating with him since English is not his native tongue. I figured I would go home and try to find him on the internet and send him an email to ask permission to photograph him one day.
This search lead me to Natalia Paruz’s blog, The Saw Lady’s Blog which chronicles her life as a musical saw player and subway performer.
I sent her an email and she ageed to allow me to photograph her as well as introduce me to other street musicians.
So one morning I set out to Union Square to meet her. I hadn’t taken serious photographs since my college days. I had also recently purchase a digital SLR and a digital audio recorder. I was rusty and nervous.
I met the Saw Lady and began my work.
I have long admired street musicians and I always wondered what made them put it all out there for people who might ignore or praise them, or applaud them or harrase them.
My first experience was not entirely what I expected. I was immediately taken in by the many smiling faces as they passed. I could clearly see why she chose to play in such an unpredictable environment. Many people passed by in a hurry without taking a second to notice, but when you see the faces of the people who’s hearts are taken with her music and spirit it is easy to understand why she does what she does.
