Pollock’s The Deep Staple gunned canvas Plenty of bristles Forever floating In a vanilla Milkshake sea Protected long After Jackson’s Death by a polished Aluminum Kulicke frame Likely welded by So-called minor Artist Robert Kulicke Himself Pollock makes It obvious He is painting Not on the floor With a stick Using a bargain House painters Brush for Do it yourselfers Horse hairs shed Everywhere Deliver an overt Message: "I can Paint also With a brush" Looking closely at Jackson Pollock’s 1953 painting: The Deep In the collection of the Centre Pompidou. visit Sandy Kinnee.com

Clement Greenberg Wearing a Helmet (or the conversation he and I never had) I, too, would be skeptical of the following tale if this hadn’t involved me. This event I am about to describe took place back in the 1970s while I worked at a college art museum. The curator of modern art, whom I very recently spoke with (2018), remembered this visit, but not the purpose. There was no talk, event or exhibition. My role was to drive Clement Greenberg to the airport. During the drive we talked mainly about Picasso’s death and his late work. I, unfortunately, remember no details of the conversation except that neither one of us cared much for Picasso’s late work. I believe Greenberg said that someday in the future people may give the paintings more consideration. I wish I had thought to record our conversation and I most certainly wish that I had at that time the knowledge and interest, which I now have in Pollock, so I might ask the questions that I would like answered. In particula...

Snow Day Pagan is such a strange word for you to use in connection with snowmen. I expect you intend something such as pre-Christian or pre-Muslim or pre-Organized religion. Snowmen are connected to those cultures and peoples who live in climates that have snow and especially have a history with the Ice Age. Those who stayed in place during the harsh winters rather than migrating great distances can relate to the snowman. To others the snowman is a game or curiosity. Is my book based upon fact, complete with smoking gun? No. Have you ever made a snowman and six months later examined the remains of what had been the snowman? When was the last time you ate a turkey for Thanksgiving? Where are the remains that prove you ate the bird? I have no proof that Ice Age humans made a decision to substitute human sacrifice with symbolic snowmen. But, when you look at any ancient children’s game you will find a darker origin that has been sanitized during the past hundred or so year...

Today I Will Not Buy a Bottle of Ink I have a brush and a bit of dried ink in the bottm of my inkwell If I dampen the hairs of my brush resuscitate the residue I may not need to go buy a fresh bottle of India ink So what if the ink dries Gray not black visit Sandy Kinnee.com

Found a Cave We found a cave Well maybe some credit to the dog He was chasing a rabbit Fell in Barked and barked We came to his rescue Deep hole Ran home to the tool shed Came back with rope Tied one end to a tree Got the dog out While in the pit Noticed it ran off Into pitch black Sprinted home again For a lantern This time Caves are like Halloween Night minus Moon and stars We crawled then Walked Crawled on our knees Do you know the smell Of kerosene lit Dank dirt? Imagine trick or treat After midnight No one comes to the door We pass through What we later call Galleries Stone chambers Convoluted Contorted walls Here and there Marks that Seem animal-like Might be depictions Of creatures Yet lack frames Silly scratches And smears of pigment Upon the rough surface We go back to The shed returning With chisels and hammers With great effort We plumb the walls Make a fine wine cellar Painted the walls mint green Maybe...

Ugly Art He Said Brian wondered how I could spend so much time making ugly art when there is so much beauty in the world to paint Why not paint the lake in the morning? Roses and marigolds in a vase? Or the way sunlight makes a halo out of hair if you stand in just the right spot in the late afternoon? Brian was an old man I was a kid fresh out of art school Years passed And then Brian became an older man and didn't sleep anymore After his wife Lilian passed away she the one whose hair looked like a halo in the late afternoon Brian set up a studio in his basement A horizontal sheet of plywood covered his pool table A slab of Sumi ink, brushes, paper He promised to show me what he'd been doing down there alone and I promised to go look He said I'm sorry for what I said about you wasting time making ugly art It isn't ugly at all once you look at it instead of hair glowing in the late afternoon light "It is it...

Would You Toss Me a Fish? What I write often begins as a mental burst that I must immediately jot down or lose. If paper is available, I scribble the thought. If not, I put it on my phone. Yet, even if the note is recorded on the phone, it is essentially a scrawl or doodle. Typically, the initial idea is a kernel. If I know I am going to have to wait to sit at my laptop, I usually write something title-like, as a mnemonic device. The thing that got me wanting to write can then be recalled at the appropriate time. Maybe the core is a phrase or simply a topic or a sensation. Like most things summoned by a mnemonic key, there is frequently also some older memory evoked. Whether given the opportunity in the moment, or later, I record my thoughts quickly. The words tend to come to me in a stream. In a manner of speaking, it is the reverse of bailing out a leaky boat. I scoop up the thoughts by the bucket load and pour them into my dinghy. I dump them as scribbles using the ...

A Reading in a Gallery It was the first and only time I read my pieces in public. Lucky for me the attendance was sparse. What the small number of people meant was that I tortured fewer people than I might have. The venue was adjacent to an art gallery, a small hall. There were chairs and a lectern and a microphone. So, the trappings looked serious. The idea was, simply put, listening to what I had written would open doors for those who looked at my visual work. The short pieces, poems, and dream recordings stood on their own, not illustrations for visual art. Nor was the artwork an illustration of the writing. Each piece was short, but many short pieces added up. Still the reading might help understand my work, which has often been described as visually poetic. So, I recited one little piece, and like eating potato chips or peanuts, read another. I asked how long we had the room. The room was mine as long as I wanted. After a few pieces I asked if I should continue. Th...

On the Naming of Paintings You would think that that guy who writes poems would want to name each of his paintings (which are in fact visual poetry) with individual and interesting titles. Certainly Erato, the muse of erotic poetry might whisper a whole string of suggestions as she licks his ear but he has more or less silenced her except for that tiny bit about her tongue probing his ear. He has a particular muse in mind to assist in the naming of paintings She has yet to figure out how this might work visit Sandy Kinnee.com

Looking for Needles It helps to know what a needle looks like, even if you don't know shit about sewing. Knowing what hay doesn't look like is another way to go about it.

The Boy Who Painted Blue Elephants He was an optimistic and hopeful young artist with buckets and buckets of promise. But at age 24 an ancient Roman elephant fell on him, breaking his only left leg and radically altering the remaining seventy-six years of his artistic career. From that day forward the focus of his paintings was the depiction of Evil and aggressive Elephants. Between 1971 and 1980 the elephant paintings were all limited to shades of blue. Art critics and historians suggested a link to Picasso’s “Blue Period.” However, the sad truth is he never really fancied and therefore did not want to emulate Pablo Picasso. Instead, the leg broken by the elephant event caused him to limp so severely that he veered toward the left. In the art supply store, where he purchased his supplies, colors were arranged with reds on the right side of the display and blues on the extreme left. No matter how much he might have wanted to buy a tube of cadmium red or yellow ochre, his l...