Random Musing No. 1

The human eye has a range of 120°, mostly peripheral vision, compared to the camera’s typical 200° or more. That is why the figures sometimes seem distorted at the edges of a photograph. We make up for this seeming deficit by moving our focus (in movements called “saccades”) around a scene to build up a gestalt awareness of its appearance.

A painting, curated by human intelligence, is superior in every respect to a photograph, except for how long it takes to make it. If cameras took three hours to create the exact same image as they do now in a split second, there would be no question as to which medium people would choose when they needed an image recorded.

Panhandlers Show at the Democracy Center

It’s been a long time since I posted here and with good reason. The GoFundMe campaign was a success, the paintings were framed, the show went up, the show came down—two days later and I’m still exhausted.

The GoFundMe Campaign was a Success

Kinda… I raised $1400 (and that mostly through the generosity of my brother Eric), far below the $2500 I thought I needed. Luckily a friend turned my on to Franken Frames (http://www.frankenframes.com), where I was able to attractively frame the paintings for about $21 each. I can heartily recommend them.

The Paintings were Framed

It took a while but everything got framed, wired, wrapped and ready to go. The next step was to track down some food for the opening, and here I’d like to thank Otto Portland (http://www.ottoportland.com/) for their donation of five large pizzas. The pizza was delicious (mashed potato and bacon, anyone?) and a considerable number of the local homeless population got their pizza on. We also had veggie, fruit and dessert platters. The homeless folks who stuck around to the end left with quart baggies of leftovers.

The Show Went Up

Saturday was incredibly hectic. The show had to go up and come down the same day—there was going to be a punk concert the following night, so leaving it up was not an option. So step one was to pick up a rented van, which I did at 8 am. I drove it home, we loaded it with paintings and other stuff, loaded up the car too, and headed to Cambridge. We were lucky enough to find two parking spots outside the Democracy Center, where we were met by director Vero Smith and daughter Sara. We unloaded the car and van and started unwrapping paintings. At a certain point it became necessary to move the car/van to avoid a ticket. Vero had validation tickets for a nearby parking garage, so I first drove the van over there… and the entry was too low. I ended up parking the van in the hotel parking garage across the way. I then walked back to the Democracy Center, picked up the car and brought it to the first parking garage. When I got back the second time my brother Eric, his son Dave and a friend had arrived. I took them to the first garage and gave them the second parking validation I had, then walked them back to Harvard Square, gave them a brief tour and left them at Leavitt and Pierce while I headed back to the Democracy Center.

In my absence the hanging had gone exceedingly well. Each painting was hung with a brief description of the panhandler who had posed. We were actually done by 3:30 and were able to relax a little before the opening.

Here’s the food:

You can tell I was pretty exhausted by the time I took these photos.

People started to arrive. Special thanks to Elena, Ian and Olivia, denizens of the Monday night figure drawing session at the Democracy Center, for coming. Also Dennis, who had been extremely helpful in getting the word out to the homeless community in Harvard Square:

and his wife Kelly (who was not really enthusiastic about having her picture taken):

Dennis became quite emotional by the end of the night. He told me, sadly, that Sean, pictured below, hadn’t been seen in a while and he feared he was dead. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s extremely difficult to find information or statistics about deaths in the homeless community. Unless there is something unique or odd about them or their demise, they merit neither a news article nor an obituary. Here is the portrait I painted of Sean in 2011.

I also chatted with the owner of Grolier Poetry Shop, who was equally concerned about Gary and Whitney, neither of whom had been seen in the Square since last fall. Both are Harvard Square regulars, so their absence reflects either extremely good news, or extremely bad.

Alistair did show up around 5 and left at 6. He said that 6 pm was “rush hour” for him and he needed to get back to his spot in front of the Harvard Book Store in order to panhandle. Alistair also corrected some mistakes I had made in my description of his paintings. The scars on his face were not from fights; they were spots where he’d had tattoos removed.

Here are some more pictures of the show:

I spoke with a lot of people, received a lot of compliments and was literally reeling with exhaustion by the time 8 pm rolled around. Now it was time to take down the show.

The Show Came Down

I would like to especially thank, in addition to Vero Smith, my wife Joanne and my daughter Sara, Michael and Rachael Peckar, my step-brother and sister-in-law, for sticking around to the bitter end and helping take down the show. Once the take-down got started, I walked back to the parking garage (for the fourth time that day), picked up the van, and was very lucky to find a very illegal parking spot in from of the Democracy Center. We loaded up the van, I said my goodbyes, then drove Sara back to the garage to pick up our car, sent her back to pick up Joanne, and drove back to Mansfield.

It was a crazy, exhilarating day. Next on the agenda: getting the paintings down to Washington!

Kickstarter Failed. On to GoFundMe!

Well the Kickstarter campaign was a failure. My daughter said to me, “Why are you using Kickstarter? Use GoFundMe instead.” I said, “But isn’t that for racists and homophobes whose businesses are failing so they drum up support on GoFundMe by saying they won’t serve pizza at gay weddings?” and she said, “Oh Dad…”

Anyway, I’m on GoFundMe now. The purpose of the campaign is to raise money to frame my “Panhandlers of Harvard Square” paintings for a one day show at the Democracy Center in Harvard Square. Then the paintings are being put on permanent loan with the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington, DC. It’s a really worthwhile cause and if you stumble over this page, your contribution, in any amount, would be greatly appreciated (considering the subject matter, I’d actually prefer to get 2,500 $1 donations, but too late for that; my family and friends, and a few very kind strangers, have been very generous and I’m halfway to my goal). The GoFundMe page is here:

http://www.gofundme.com/sg5yb4

In addition to the info on that page, I’ve posted a couple of videos. I pulled all the paintings together for some photography, and took the opportunity to display them here, in all their unframed glory:

And I’ll also be posting little video vignettes about the panhandlers as well. Here’s the first one, about Frenchy and Ken:

More will follow. Incidentally, should the GoFundMe campaign go over the amount I’ve set, any extra money will be used to buy food for the opening or be donated to a worthy cause. Here’s a good one:

http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/hshs/

Thanks for your interest, and your help, and if you happen to be in Harvard Square on June 6, 2015, between 5 and 8 pm, please come to show!

Best wishes,

Marc Clamage

Self Portrait 2014

 

I set up a dingy little studio in my basement and did my annual self portrait.

Generally speaking I am not one of those “If I didn’t do art I’d kill myself” types—I find painting deeply satisfying, but hardly therapeutic in a clinical sense—but I’ve been pretty down in the dumps lately and doing this did make me feel better.  I’ll try and get some more painting done this winter, maybe set up some still lifes.

On the panhandler front, the weather has been mostly miserable for the past few weeks, alternately rainy, snowy and ice cold. I saw Justin and Lauren (“The Lovebirds”) last week and asked how they were doing. They were very excited about moving to Michigan—Lauren’s mom was taking them in and had sent them money for bus tickets. Justin insinuated that they were somehow “pulling a fast one” on Lauren’s mom, but whatever floats your boat and if their self esteem requires them to downplay or trivialize Lauren’s mom’s generosity, I’ll be happy to be grateful to her on their behalf.

Maria

Maria was eating an apple outside the Coop. She was wearing a hoodie and, incongruously, a mink coat. A gentleman with a Duck Dynasty style beard, Indio, was introduced to me as her husband. “You’re her husband?” I asked. “I take care of her,” he said.

Because of the paucity of shelter caused by the closing of the Long Island Shelter, I asked Indio what their plans were for the winter. “Heading down to Raleigh,” he said. Apparently Raleigh, NC has an enlightened attitude towards the homeless. “Maybe out west.”

I didn’t get a chance to talk with Maria, who didn’t seem to be the talkative type anyway, because as soon as I set up a drummer of the plastic bucket and miscellaneous cooking utensils variety set up behind me and starting banging away. He was quite good and some of it reminded me of gamelan music. After I finished painting I chatted with him a little bit and asked him if he’d ever heard of John Cage. “He wrote a lot of music for prepared piano,” I said. “What’s that?” he asked. I said, “He put little bits of metal, forks and washers, things like that, under the piano strings and then played the piano. Your music reminded me of his a bit.” “You’re shittin’ me!” he cried. “What do they call that kind of music?” “I guess it’s classical, but back in the day it was called ‘Avant Garde.'” He found a John Cage video on his smart phone and started to watch. “His most famous piece is called 4’33,” I said. “The performer comes out and sits in front of the piano for exactly four minutes and thirty three seconds without playing a note.” “No way!” he exclaimed.

 

Frank

I buy a Spare Change News from Frank almost every week. He was standing in front of my office last Saturday when I came out and eagerly agreed to pose.

Frank is 63. He told me he had been an artist himself but nearly tore his thumb off when he punched a wall in a fit of rage and he could no longer draw. His brother, he told me, is a well known artist, and indeed he is–a successful comic book penciller when I looked up his name on-line.

Frank was in Viet Nam and spent several years as a POW. We discussed his career options–he had been offered a job handing out the free Metro newspaper, but preferred “making my own hours” as the much-less-lucrative Spare Change vendor. “Plus they check up on you. The manager comes around and makes sure you haven’t just ditched your papers.” Like John, he was intensely interested in and (from what I could see) unwelcomely forthcoming with his compliments for passing women. Frank didn’t like his portrait.

A Few Panhandler Updates

No new paintings to show, but an update on some issues that have concerned me. As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the panhandlers told me that a dozen homeless had died in 2014. I found that shocking; on top of that I could find no evidence on line about anything: no statistics, no listing or summary of homeless deaths in Cambridge. The other day I spoke to Ken and Frenchie, whom I are more reliable, and they thought the number was closer to half a dozen. One recent death was the murder –murder, actually–of Bob Shea, or he was known,”Jumping” Bob Shea. I asked Bob to pose for me once and he said no. Anyway, I didn’t really know him but it seems he had quite the reputation, living on the streets of Cambridge since 1985. Here are two well-written encomia for Bob:

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20140905/News/140908397

http://bob-shea.tumblr.com/

I also spoke with Justin and Lauren (see April 27th post) yesterday.. They proudly told me they were married, two weeks ago Sunday. Justin filled me in on what they’d been up to. For a while they had been making and trying to sell jewelry, but they’d lost money on the deal and were back to standard cardboard sign panhandling. Both waxed rather indignant on the vagaries of the market, with Justin particularly offended by Etsy’s betrayal of its trust to sell only handmade goods, and then revealed his plan to create a web site to compete with Etsy. I changed the subject and said, “It’s going to be cold soon, I hope you guys are getting a line on some housing.” Justin told me that once Lauren got her Section 8 paperwork, their married status would make finding a place easy. Lauren assured me her sleeping bag was rated to 20 below. I said, “Yeah, you should really start looking for  place to stay.” Justin has spent the winter on the streets before but this will be the first time for Lauren.

Here’s the portrait from earlier this year.

A New Panhandler Portrait and the Finished Norris Children Commission

Here are two recent paintings. I was able to finish the portrait commission of the Norris children a few weeks ago, after three sittings. Here it is:

Dylan, the youngest, was the last to pose. He actually grew a few inches between the start of the painting in early summer and completion in early September.

I also painted another panhandler painting. This is John, or as he prefer to be known, Mars.

Mars took the name Mars because he was, he told me, fascinated by the planet Mars. Mars has a distinct southern accent. He told me he and his brother flipped a coin when it came time to make a decision about where to go after leaving Kentucky, and the decision was Boston. His brother is gone, but Mars loves it here and has spent several years in the Harvard Square homeless community. He left an ex-wife and a daughter down South. Mars had originally gotten work as a tattoo artist, but was told his work was too old-fashioned and not up to Massachusetts standards, and so he ended up on the street.

Gary and Whitney have been hanging out outside my office. They still haven’t found a place, although they seemed to have a few leads. Gary almost gleefully told me about another Harvard Square panhandler who died, a young women I haven’t met who worked mornings at JP Licks. That brings the total of premature deaths I’m aware of to three, although Gary claims there have been at least a dozen. I haven’t been able to find any confirmation of this or statistics on homeless death rates in the Square. It’s been a tough year.

 

Ashanti

I received a paycheck from a client for a side job I’m working on (here’s a preliminary “cartoon” version of the animation if you’re interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShqMXhH1-ds&list=UUr9lZ1yohWyc0PadP-yqo4w) so I’ve been feeling a little more financially secure and, hence, generous. On Saturday I came into Cambridge and headed over to where Erich and his wife hang out, hoping to make good on my promise to paint the wife; they weren’t there, though. I wandered around a bit looking for a suitable model and handing out cash to the regulars: James, Jim, Michael, Susan. I gave Michael a dollar and he said, “Oh, you must have gotten a residual!” Then I gave Jim a dollar too and Michael shouted, “Don’t give him money! He’s a fraud!” I answered, “So are you.”

I found Ashanti sitting next to the CVS where I’ve painted so many panhandlers in the past. She was more than willing to pose and I started to set up, at which point she said, “Would you mind giving me the ten dollars now?” I said, “I’m sorry, but in the past when I’ve paid people in advance some of them have bailed on me before I finish. You aren’t going to bail on me, are you?” She said, “I’m worried that you’ll bail on me.” I pulled out the ten dollar bill I had on me and said, “Ask anyone, I’m good for it. There’s no way I can sneak away, either, it takes me ten minutes to pack up my stuff.” She said OK, but about five minutes later asked for the money again and I gave it to her after making her promise not to leave early, a promise she more or less kept.

I now make a point of holding off on drawing the portrait until I have a pretty good idea of which way the model habitually looks. After I set up my easel to one side of her Ashanti immediately started to look away from me, a problem I’ve encountered before. So before I started painting I moved my easel so I was standing directly across from her, waited for a typical pose, and started working. As soon as I had the drawing down she immediately started looking in the opposite direction, and ultimately I had to break one of my cardinal rules and ask her to look to her left as I had in  the drawing rather than catching the pose on the fly. That was so successful I asked her to hold her arms still so I could catch that gesture too. Eventually she got up and sat down on the bench next to me, because, she told me, someone else had started panhandling down the way and two of them weren’t allowed to do it at the same time. As promised, she didn’t leave; she just stopped posing and I had to finish up her pants and arms from memory.

The pickings seemed pretty slim for Ashanti. Several people gave her money, but it looked like, at most, a quarter. One guy chatted with her for a while, left and came back from Starbucks  with an iced coffee. Later, when she wanted to leave, she told me she had to go to Starbucks because he’d gotten her order wrong, then asked me for an additional two dollars. I gave her the sole dollar bill I had left in my pocket, and we each went our way.

Some Recent Paintings

Here’s a little landscape I saw in Cambridge. This is what I was on my way to paint when I ended up painting Erich.

Cambridge Common, 5 x 3.5

I brought my paints into work on Friday and left early to do a panhandler painting; and once again there was nobody new to paint. This is starting to piss me off. I chatted with Keith, who is not doing well physically, then kept looking unsuccessfully. Eventually I ended up in front of the bank next to my office. There were Gary and Whitney. They practically begged me to paint them so I ended up doing my third do-over portrait of the season.

I’m not really that happy with it. It’s more about a set of circumstances–two people who once again are homeless and now drag all their belongings around with them on a cart and in various bags and backpacks–than it is about two people. I’m unhappy with the portrait but reasonably satisfied with the genre painting.

I guess I should relate their story, which goes like this: they were staying in a room provided by an acquaintance who had lucked into a home by marrying an alien seeking a green card who was willing to pay to marry an American citizen. Once her residency was established she flew back to South America for a visit and it was while she was away that their friend invited them in. There they had provided their friend with necessary medication (I’m not quite sure about this) at their own expense and to the tune of $2,000 when the wife suddenly came home and threw them both out. Needless to say, they are furious about this.

On the plus side, Whitney is in remission from her cancer and looks very healthy. She was trying to pin down a shelter and needed to make a phone call at a certain time, but the battery in her phone was dead. So she needed to go into Panera to plug in her phone, but the manager at Panera was very rude to her and followed her around everywhere, even into the bathroom, when she came into the store. They made a point of buying a cup of iced coffee there each day so they could establish themselves as customers.

While we were painting a personable young Asian woman came along and offered to buy Gary and Whitney food. She soon came back with a meal and sat down with them to eat. She is one of those rare but charming slacker Asians, completely Americanized, casual and aimless; an indication of what the children of today’s obsessive Asian overachievers will be like.  Eventually another panhandler of the “grubby youngster” variety arrived, complimented her, and took her off with an offer to introduce her to the other Pit denizens, with all of whom he was friends. “He’s not friends with them,” Gary said after they left. “She should be careful around him.” However, she came back about an hour later, none the worse for wear. Then a young man stopped and asked them if they needed foam cushions to use as bedding. He also provided blankets. I later saw Susan at the T stop with a new pillow still in its packaging, which I assume came from the same source. I’ll have to find out if this was fairly typical of the largess the good people of Cambridge bestow upon their homeless population.

We were also joined by Joe, who had suffered either a stroke or a head injury–I’m not quite sure as this information was conveyed in a whisper by Gary–and certainly his speech had a characteristic halting quality. He was very interested to pose and so the next day I came back and painted:

Joe was not very forthcoming as a conversationalist. At the same time, he managed to extract from me quite a bit more information about myself than I was able to get from him, which was, as I said, zero.

At one point I pulled out my box of baby wipes, which I use to clean paint off my hands. “Can I have one of those?” he asked and I said of course. He proceeded to wipe his brow and his head and I soon offered him another one. By the end of the painting session he’d used four or five. When I was done I handed him a ten dollar bill and said, “Her’s your fee.” Then I handed him the box of baby wipes and said, “Here’s your tip.”