Alan Arkin is one of my favorite actors. I just saw a note that he passed away yesterday.

I expect I’ll look like him when I lose my hair since he looks like my dad. And every time I see Alan Arkin, I think of my dad.

If you see me driving my Jeep around Boulder, I just gave you a hint about what my license plate (ARGOFY) means.

Rest in peace, Edwin Hoover.

Amy and I have been collecting contemporary art since we started dating in 1990. Every morning at our place in Aspen, over morning coffee, we get to enjoy this amazing piece by Julie Maren.

When I wrote the original post, I got a short email from Phi Pham.

I hope you’ll be mindful of collecting art from Black and POC artists too! 

My response was:

We have some, but not mindfully. For example, we are a huge collector of Emilio Lobato.

It’s a good reminder.

Do you have any recommendations for artists in the Western US who are Black or POC?

A few months later, I got another email from Phil with an amazing list that was compiled by Phil and his sister with help from Hannah Leathers and Solomon “Solo” Muhammad,

Thomas Evans- detour303
Moe Gram- mi_moegram
Jaime Molina- cuttyup
Gregg Deal- greggdeal
Rogelio Muñoz-Vargas- rogeliomunozvargas
Danielle SeeWalker- seewalker_art
Pol Corona- polcorona
Giovannie- justcreatedit
Myah Mazcara- myahmazcara
Chelsea Lewinski- chelsealewinski
Diana “Didi” Contreras- didirok
Alicia DeOlivera Cardenas- tribalmurals
Santiago Jaramillo- santixochitl
Anthony Garcia Sr.- birdseedanthony
Casey Kawaguchi- caseykawaguchi
Sasha the kid-sasha.the.kid
Solomon Muhammad
Kesia King
Demetrius Lazar Williams

Phil, Hannah, and Solo – thanks for the great list.

Amy and I have been collecting art since we first got together in 1990. My mom, Cecelia Feld, is an artist, and I have been around contemporary art my entire life. We prefer non-representational art from living artists. While we have paintings, sculptures, and photographs from artists who live all over the world, many of the artists are from the Western United States.

We first met Julie Maren through a gallery in Boulder on the Pearl Street Mall called MacLaren Markowitz Gallery. When the Internet and telecom bubble collapsed, the gallery ran into trouble, so Amy and I invested in it to help support it and keep it open. We met many artists in the ensuing years and expanded the Colorado artists we were collecting. MacLaren Markowitz ultimately closed, but many friendships remain.

We’ve been slowly putting new art in our Aspen house. We didn’t want to fill it quickly, but rather savor the space and get comfortable with contemporary artists from the area, along with ones from the Western United States that we already collected. We have several beautiful pieces hanging from Mark Cesark (Carbondale) and Christopher Martin (Aspen). And, when you are on a Zoom call with me, you are looking at a piece by Clay Johnson (Laramie, WY).

Julie installed her piece on Leap Day 2020, just before Covid hit. We were planning to be here for the summer but stayed in Boulder instead. We saw the installation in person for the first time a week ago, and it blew our minds. I’ve been spending a few minutes with it each morning.

Given all the stress in the world right now, I’m looking for moments of beauty every day. Art has always been a source of it for me. While I don’t have any talent as an artist, I have enormous appreciation for it and for what it takes to create art. So, I thought I’d share a moment of beauty with you today before the holiday weekend in the US.

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for dragging Daniel and me to endless museums when we were kids. And thanks, Amy, for loving art as much, or maybe even more, than I do.

If you are looking for something powerful, creative, provocative, and beautifully done, go look at True Blue by Eliot Peper and team.

In 2017, I wrote a post titled A Clever Short Story About Discrimination about the short story that Eliot had written. It was an idea that David Cohen had. He shared it with Eliot, who then wrote the short story. David then funded a project for Eliot to turn it into an “internet public art project.”

Eliot describes how they made True Blue. It’s a fabulous integration of story, illustration, and design on the web.

Independent of the beauty of the project, the story is a critically important one for today’s society. While a cynic will say “same as it ever was“, consider if eye color (instead of skin color, or gender, or ethnicity, or sexual orientation, or …) was a key “categorizer” in our society.

I love a Haiku
My mother is an artist
Haikus in winter

My mom has started a haiku project. She takes haikus that friends write and turns them into a collage.

Following is a haiku I wrote after my mom sent me an email asking me for one.

Yes, I was in Charlotte, North Carolina at the time. I’m on the board of AvidXchange and this likely was written the night before the one board meeting a year I attend in person. Charlotte is a nice place, so this is less about Charlotte and more about me.

Here’s the painting that resulted. 

I love it and asked my mom if I could buy it. She said no because she wants to exhibit them as a collection first.

She did create another print for me of this, so I’ll get it, but I really want the original in all its glory. So, if you are a curator at a museum and you want to do me a favor, drop me a note so I can get these exhibited so that I can then buy them. And yes, I’ll underwrite the exhibit, unless my mom won’t let me.

If you’ve got a haiku that you want turned into a collage, leave it in the comments or email it to me.

Amy and I have started to buy some video art. I’m personally fascinated with the interactive stuff and am starting to learn more about different video artists. Here’s an example of one – Rafael Lozano-Hemmer – that my dad aimed me at.

If you have ideas of folks I should look at, can you toss them in the comments? Oh – and I’m also looking for giant sculptures of monsters, like the one I have of the predator in my backyard, which I’ve named The Shrike.

Yesterday, the Shrike paid me a visit in Boulder.

That’s Cooper hanging out in the backyard with his new friend.

Now, before you go all serious movie history on me, I know it looks like a predator. But it is the closest sculpture to a Shrike that I’ve been able to find. So, even if it’s a predator, I’m going to call him Shrike.

If you happen to know of an artist that has done a life size Shrike sculpture, please hook me up as now that I’ve managed to convince Amy to let me have one Shrike in my backyard, I’m pretty confident that I can get another one approved by my art procurement committee.

I love my mom’s art. If you aren’t familiar with it, following is a piece that will be at her exhibit starting next week at CU.

The opening reception is going to be at 6pm on 8/27 at Andrew J. Macky Gallery in the foyer of Macky Auditorium Concert Hall, University of Colorado Boulder (285 University Avenue, Boulder).

I’ll be there along with my mom, dad, Amy, and a bunch of other friends. Come join us. For a taste of what else will be there, here’s another piece from the exhibit.