bars | The Direction of Intention

Meet Sketchy [on KS Friday]

Posted on February 10, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

One of my favorite budding traditions is our Sunday walk with Brad and Jen followed by a foray into a sketchy unknown bar for an end-of-hike-drink. We live in Wisconsin so there’s no end of sketchy bars to explore. Many sit close to trailheads so our options are abundant.

Years ago I participated in a similar tradition though I can’t remember what we called it. Dubious lunch? Someone in the group chose a suspicious lunch spot and together we’d give it a try. Very few diners lived up to their facade. Most were terrific discoveries. Diamonds in the rough.

Our post-hike-sketchy-bar-tour has produced surprisingly warm memories. Treasures in coarse wrappers. The cliché is, of course, to never judge a book by its cover and, as is always the case, what we consider “sketchy” says more about us than the roadhouse we’re dubious to enter. Ultimately, our fear is the that the good folks inside, the regular customers bellied up to the bar, will look at us and think that we are sketchy.

And, so far, that has been true! They do. And, we do. Sketchy meets sketchy. It’s like the moment in the movies when the cowboy enters the saloon and the music stops. Eyes narrow. Scrutiny abounds. And then, the tension breaks, the music picks up where it left off, and everyone has a good time. The cover of the book disappears when the saloon doors swing open and everyone shares a tiny-bit of their story, sketchy together, under one roof.

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about OUR TRADITION

Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Seeing, Story, Surprises | Tagged: artistry, bars, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, memories, roadhouse, sketchy, stereotypes, story, studio melange, the melange, traditions | 1 Comment »

Break It [on KS Friday]

Posted on April 8, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Breaking space with a line changes the dynamic of the entire composition. I played with those dynamics for years. Vertical breaks. Horizontal lines that read like confused measure bars, segments of inconsistent time. Sometimes the lines tilted and pulled to the past. Sometimes they leaned into the future, urging the image forward. All of those interpretations were, of course, in my mind; I have no idea how others interpreted the lines on my canvases.

We are in the season of fog. Sometimes it’s so dense that we stand on the rocks and cannot see the water. Lake Michigan is hard to hide! The fog is a worthy magician.

The fog-magician also has the capacity of pressing three dimensional objects into seeming flat two dimensional images. The sudden silhouetting of the world pulls Kerri out onto the deck every time. “Can you believe it?” she asks, grabbing her camera and stepping through the door and into the fog. Dogga and I watch. We are happy in three dimensions and resist the call of stepping into flatland.

When she returns to our dimension, she shows us her photographs. “I love this one because the wire made a line,” she says. “It breaks the image.”

I smile. Vertical breaks in the composition. I say, “It reads like an abstract painting.” Three dimensions becoming two, a line breaking space, capping or pulling or simply interrupting.

Jackson Pollock believed his paintings were recordings of movement. Paint dancing. Who really knows how others interpret his paintings. Beyond the curator or art historian, who cares, really? The relationship between art and audience is meant to be direct, pure. No third party interpretation necessary.

“What do you think?” she asks.

“I love it,” I say. “It makes me want to paint.”