KIKI & SETON SMITH: A SENSE OF PLACE

The artist Kiki Smith and her photographer sister Seton grew up in the same town I did, South Orange, New Jersey, but are younger than I am and their home was in what was a wealthy neighborhood of big old Victorian houses when I was a boy, as opposed to mine which was in what was then a working-class neighborhood of mostly immigrants. I had no idea back then that their father was the internationally renowned sculptor Tony Smith.

I hadn't heard of him when I left home in 1960 but certainly learned about him and his work in my self education over the years that followed. I met Kiki later in the 1970s, briefly, when a composer/artist friend, Bill Hellerman, brought her and several other young women to my 35th birthday party which had mostly ended by the time they arrived in the apartment I rented in what by then was becoming known as Soho.

I don't think I ran into Kiki again until after I'd moved back East from L.A. at the turn of this new century. I doubted Smith, or her sister Seton, who I met briefly once years ago at a function, remembered who I am, but I kept up with their art and certainly knew who they were. But just as the local library and book store had no idea I had written an award-winning series of sonnets about South Orange back in the 1960s after I'd moved away, many locals had no idea who Tony Smith or his daughters were, back then or even today (in recent years one of Tony's sculptures found a permanent home in the main park in South Orange and many locals don't know what it is or who made it).

But that was partially remedied yesterday at a ceremony to honor the Smith sisters on the state, county and town level, including declaring yesterday Kiki and Seton Smith day! in what had been the local college when I was a boy and is now Seton Hall University. It was in the Walsh Gallery in the university's library at the opening of an exhibit of Kiki's art and Seton's photographs (it's all art but I'm trying to make a distinction to differentiate between the sisters).

The latter are monumental in size and people-less portraits of houses and other structures that haunted this viewer and evoked a sense of place so definite it made the title of the exhibit imperative. Kiki's small sculptures of birds on hands, or lithographs, prints, collages etc. of trees or insects or abstractions etc. express her unique vision so unobtrusively you can almost miss the subtle depth and resonance of their power.

Neither the impact of Kiki's art or Seton's photographs can be captured in reproductions, so if you're anywhere near South Orange from now until December 9th, check out this show, and if you can make it, there will be a discussion with the artists moderated by the equally unique writer Lynne Tillman in the same space on December 6th at 7PM.

As we used to say in the downtown Manhattan scene in the 1960s and '70s, be there or be square.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"As my cousin, Pamela Merchant, wrote: Who is James Comey and why is he pulling this October “surprise?”
As some of you know, I was a federal prosecutor for many years and was at USDOJ during the Whitewater era. James Comey was a Whitewater special counsel.
I’m appalled by the 11th hour gamesmanship by Comey. The US DOJ and FBI have a longstanding policy of NOT interfering in elections. It’s unheard of for a federal prosecutor to pull a stunt like this so close to a Presidential election. It is especially absurd where there isn’t a suggestion that anything is wrong – just that there is another laptop that might contain e-mails that might have issues. I don’t buy for a minute that this isn’t partisan – or that Comey is the guy keeping his head down ( as some suggest in the attached article).
This isn’t the first time that Comey has violated DOJ/FBI policy in connection with the HRC e-mail investigation. This summer, he held a bizarre press conference where he announced that the FBI could not find sufficient evidence to indict Hillary Clinton in connection with the e-mails – but went on to state that Hillary Clinton and her staff “were extremely careless.” Declining to prosecute and then issuing a statement characterizing evidence in an investigation violates DOJ and FBI policy. There are strict rules that state that the DOJ and FBI may not comment on an ongoing investigation - let alone comment on a closed investigation. If the investigation is over, it’s over – there isn't a roundabout provision for mud slinging.. Comey was roundly criticized by legal scholars and former prosecutors for this stunt.
So, who is Comey? He is a U. of Chicago trained attorney and registered Republican until recently (during the afore-mentioned press conference he stated that he is no longer a registered Republican). He started his career at the white shoe firm Gibson Dunn before joining the Whitewater team. As we know, the Whitewater investigation didn’t uncover any wrongdoing on behalf of the Clintons in the financial fraud arena, but it did ‘unearth’ the Monica Lewinsky ‘scandal’ which led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment. Although Hillary Clinton was cleared – lots and lots of mud was slung.
Comey then joined the US Attorney’s Office for the SD NY where he worked on the investigation into Bill Clinton’s controversial pardoning of financier Marc Rich. The investigation went nowhere - -but – again - lots of mud was slung.
Comey ultimately became the US Atty for the SDNY and was lead on the celebrity Martha Stewart prosecution.
In 2003, during the GW Bush administration, he moved over to the Justice Department where he was #2 to John Ashcroft and, among other things, signed off on the use of water boarding, wall slamming and other forms of torture. [See the ACLU’s website for a good summary of Comey’s role in the various torture memos. aclu.org/blog/james-comey-two-thumbs-waterboarding].
In one bright spot, as Acting Attorney General, Comey refused to sign off on Bush’s mass surveillance and wiretapping program which had been justified by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez. Comey and then FBI Director Robert Mueller, threatened to resign unless changes were made to narrow the surveillance program. This incident is the one that Dems use to justify supporting Comeys elevation to FBI director.
When Gonzalez was promoted to Attorney General, it was time for to leave the government in pursuit of a more lucrative private practice. So, Comey spent five years as General Counsel and Sr. VP for Lockheed Martin (2005-2010) (the DOD’s largest defense contractor) and then joined an investment management firm. He later moved over to academia (Columbia Law School) and joined the board of one of the world’s largest banks, HSBC.
In one of Obama’s efforts to ‘reach across the aisle,' in 2013 he nominated Comey to become head of the FBI to replace Mueller. This was a tremendous disappointment to the human rights community because of Comey’s role in the torture memos. But, this would give him another opportunity to participate in another politically motivated Clinton investigation – this time into e-mails. Are you beginning to see a pattern here?
Today Comey has sent this extraordinary letter based on a new investigation grounded in a sex scandal involving Anthony Weiner. Oh, and they haven’t looked at the laptop yet-- More mud anyone?"
—Charles Walsh

THIS IS SO FECKIN' SHAMEFUL

IN THE DAY

Me and my oldest son, Miles, when it was just the two of us living in Manhattan back in the 1970s...he turns 47 next month!...and remains a beautiful person (ps: he grew out of needing glasses a few years after this was taken)...(pps: my old-man, post-op brain can't remember the full name of the photographer, Beatte, which hurts because she was a close and dear friend for years, may she please forgive me if she sees this...)

YEP

This.

TOM HAYDEN R.I.P.

I met Hayden back in the '60s and encountered him over the years. We had a few differences, some that led to arguments. Sometimes he turned out to be right and me wrong, sometimes vice versa. Though I doubt he'd remember them as I always did. He was one of the few national stars of what we called in the 1960s The Movement. And there's no denying the impact he had on our generation, from the Port Huron Statement onward. if you don't know who he was, or much about him, here's the NY Times obit. My condolences to his wife, whom I also knew and admired, Barbara Williams.

MIDDAY REMINDER

So there's a lot of real and faux outrage over Rump's threats to not accept the results of the election if he loses, with even the implication of violent resistance to that outcome. And a lot of that outrage posits that this is the first time in our history since The Civil War where that may be the case.

But, may I remind us all that in 2000 when the networks and voting results all called Florida for Gore, Bush Junior phoned his brother in a rage wanting to know how he could have let that happen and ordered him to make it unhappen.

And as part of the recount that was called as a result, Republican functionaries collected a crowd of out-of-state other Republican functionaries and bussed (or flew, I can't remember that detail) them down to Florida where they staged a white collar faux riot that intimidated the vote counters and the local and state authorities into caving and letting The Supreme Court overturn the will of the people.

Nothin' new under the sun as they say...or at least not much...