Day 3453: Paul

 

"Paul Schlesinger": photo, collage & digital.

 

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2GN2S ...

Artist Peter Schlesinger video calls from his studio in Manhattan’s Flatiron district. The building dates from the 1910s, and the place where he’s sitting used to be a girdle factory.  Since 1979, however, when Schlesinger and his partner, the photographer Eric Boman, bought a whole floor of the building for a knock-down price, there’s been a less painful kind of smoothing and sculpting. Half of the 4000-square-foot space is their home; the other half is Schlesinger’s studio, where he makes ceramic sculptures that have a timeless quality: elegant, idiosyncratic, infused with art history, but carrying it lightly.

 

Schlesinger works mainly alone, without music on, keeping regular office hours. He enjoys a drink to unwind in the evening, but not while working the clay. His studio has northern light, “but there’s a building opposite—if the sun’s out it reflects off the building and into my studio so it’s quite good light. In the winter it gets a little dull.” He points his camera out of the window to illustrate—opposite is another handsome former factory in the Garment District.

Schlesinger—who is also a photographer—describes himself as a “medium prolific” sculptor whose output increased during lockdown, mainly due to the lack of distractions. He handcrafts his ceramics: “they take a long time to build, they’re a little slow at the moment because they got bigger. If you use a wheel that’s much quicker. I like the slow process of it.”

Schlesinger at work in his studio.

Schlesinger starts prepping a new piece in his studio. Photographs by Nicholas Calcott.

 A selection of work made in the past two years is now on show at David Lewis gallery in New York. Four pieces are shaped like trees; the other eight are vessels, just under a meter—the largest size his kiln can take. “I like the references to the language of ceramics,” Schlesinger says of his pieces. “There’s a language to a vessel that is figurative, they’re called feet and neck and body, and I like the endless variation, the way you can play with different proportions and the different elements and civilizations that have used it.”

 

Surfing is an apt word, given that Schlesinger will be forever associated with California, even though he left the West Coast over half a century ago. He was born in Encino, in the San Fernando Valley. In 1966, at 18, he took a summer drawing class at UCLA. The teacher was the then-emerging British artist David Hockney; he and Schlesinger became lovers.

The tanned, floppy-haired Schlesinger became Hockney’s favorite subject—emerging naked from the water in “Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool;” staring off a balcony in sheer white pants in “Sur La Terrasse,” and fully clothed poolside, looking down at a swimmer thought to be Boman, in “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures).” This last painting, from 1972, sold for $90.3 million at auction in 2018, a remarkable event that had little impact on its subject. “It’s not about me,” Schlesinger shrugs. “It’s so long ago, it’s like a different person.”

Schlesinger trained as a painter, studying at The Slade in London after he relocated to the U.K. with Hockney in 1968. However, he says, he turned to ceramics as “I think I didn’t like paint, the actual oil paint. I hated cleaning the brushes.” These days, sculpture is a two-stage—and two-location—process. The making happens in Manhattan, and then each summer he and Boman load up a station wagon with sculptures and take them to their other home and studio, in Bellport, Long Island, to be fired and glazed. “It takes two or three trips to get the stuff out there,” Schlesinger says. “We stay for five months or something. Our Manhattan apartment is not air-conditioned, so it’s pretty miserable in the summer.”

 

 

Update ...

 

cruise con·trol

/ˈkro͞oz kənˌtrōl/

noun

noun: cruise control; plural noun: cruise controls

1. an electronic device in a motor vehicle that can be switched on to maintain a selected constant speed without the use of the accelerator.

   "I set the cruise control on 63 mph"

   • used in reference to actions performed with little effort.

     "the team went on cruise control during the second half"

      

     

Cruise control. Do you have it on your car?  I don't on my little 12 year old, economy hybrid, squirrel-powered Honda Insight. But, I have before on fancier cars. I guess it's convenient, especially on long trips. But, I once had it not shut off as I was leaving a freeway. Luckily it was later in the evening, and there was less traffic. Near panicked, I had to use both brakes & hand brake to stop before running into traffic. A good warning for me.

I have been thinking about how many of us might be in cruise control with our lives? I think I have been guilty of being comfortable in a relationship to the point of perhaps cruise control, thinking it didn't require my full attention. As above, a big mistake.

Now I watch the successful marriages, family relationships and even friendships, where there is no cruise control, and instead full attention. I think they are the lucky ones. Just sayin'.

 

 

 

 

A sweet 3-minute video, baby elephant, here.

 

Just because ...

 

Oriental dwarf kingfisher

 

 

Smiles for Tuesday ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                               Thanks for coming by today.