Friday Night

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Monday

Larry Wolf (2023)

Riso Calling Card Zine

Larry Wolf, Pink and Blue (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Made at Lillstreet in a workshop with Matt Davis of Perfectly Acceptable Press. Color separation by Spectrolite.

Feedback!

I can’t remember, now, where I read or heard it, but Jean Cocteau said, “Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like—then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.”

Jennifer Lunden at Poets and Writers (sent to me by my artist buddy SEL)

Larry Wolf, Feedback! (1978/photo 2023)

March 1978

Some works held my interest and envoked feeling or questions

You centered the skull! ... I see pure white and no real textured black ... you seem to save it with your presentation since it is slightly off center  ,,, keep working

As a set they speak of a tense look at human interactions, even the tender moment "the Kiss" is really a seemingly violent last embrace

The images are strongly personal

You've changed

I'd like to see a series with more contrast

The playground is the least noticed of the group and I find it extremely striking

Is there an "in between?" Black-White, Man-Woman

I wish there were more

Happy... cool... frightening... I like but don't ask me why

I also like the very erotic man in the mirror with a camera for a penis ... the collection of people here tonight says a lot for the artist

I see that you look closely at detail and tiny shapes and spaces ... your surprise portrait of the man in the bookstore has a real invitation to create the story of the moment and the stories of his life

Some fade away from lack of contrast... I found the matting monotonous - it appears perfunctory and does nothing to enhance your photos ... Sontag On Photography "The camera as phallus is, at most, a flimsy variant of the inescapable metaphor that everyone unsefconsdiously employs. However hazy our awareness of ths fantasy it is named without subtlety whenever we talk about loading and amining a camera, about shooting a film

I didn't stay long Monday eve. I left feeling sorta ripped-off. Nine prints and I failed to se how one lapped into another. The only thing they have in common is the mounting.  ... It shows talent but you stopped before you finished

Keep shooting

I'm really intrigued by your selection of photos ??? keep going

The lighting is bad - your work is strong - you've got it - the trick is to keep it - I hope you do

Untitled

Larry Wolf (2023)

Adams and Wabash

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

see also Lygia Pape: Tecelares at the Art Institue

Self 1978

Larry Wolf (1978/scanned 2023)

Larry Wolf (1978/scanned 2023)

Larry Wolf (1978/scanned 2023)

The Reproductive Structure of a Fungi

Larry Wolf (2023)

see also The Mushroom at the End of the World

Notes from July 1978

... at the Maine Photographic Workshops with Ralph Gibson (23 - 30 July 1987)

Larry Wolf, notebook from
March 1977 through July 1981
(photo 2023)

Sunday - 23 July 1978

3:37 ... after 5 years (more?) I'm wearing a watch ... $20 TI LCD black band [because I am starting a program where I will be on my own to get places on time]

3 Q's

Where are you now?

Where do you want to be?

What's stopping you?

Monday - 24 July 1978

Sketch

Safe / Scary

3 hours spent with best piece (quietly in a chair)

Well seen ... Well translated (through 1 generation of film and paper)

POINT OF DEPARTURE

"the creative potential of his own ambivalence" Ingmar Bergman

[Do] less good work ... there's potential ... these are too easy

Develop an idea

Tuesday - 25 July 1978

Listen to your own work

Inventory of unknowns

Break a rule and get a page in history

Lecture

"I want photography to show me something that I can't see any other way." 

Friday - 28 July 1978

Recurring forms

Saturday - 29 July 1978

"There's nothing to talk about until you have a dummy"

notan - Japanese theory of black on white field

Sunday - Portland Airport - 30 July 1978

Presence

Bounded by darkness (a cave)

Tonal balance

Turning Point - 1978

One day

Larry Wolf (1978/scanned 2022)

and the next

Larry Wolf (1978/scanned 2022)

In 1978, I was immersed in 35mm black and white photography. It was more than a hobby, but what was it? I spent a week at the Maine Photographic Workshops, an intensive of camera, film, chemicals, darkroom, prints and reviews. I came home to Burlington Vermont, where my home darkroom had taken over my bathroom and kitchen. I continued at that pace, carrying a camera with me all the time, even into work meetings, doing my day job writing software and the rest of the time photographing and processing and not getting much sleep. I was 27. Who needs sleep? 

Then one day the computer screen I was looking at, writing code, stopped being characters in the syntax of a programming language and was simply pixels of light. 

My visual mind had taken over my analytic mind. It was a profound shift in perception. Years of training to turn pixels into characters and characters into language and language into algorithms had been overridden. I was simply seeing what was before my eyes without the mediation of all those concepts. Wow! Yikes! Oh no!

I grappled with the choice: Do I open to this new thing or to set it aside and do what I had become a master of? 

At that time, I was not willing to walk away from the good job, the great team, the amazing visionary work, and become, I didn't know what: an artist living in a stream of visual perceptions. How does one do that? How would I do that?

Now 45 years later, I have returned to that choice point. The past four or five years have been a  renewed connection to photography and art making more broadly. This year is a fuller nurturing of that way of being. A new immersion. Different daily demands to be a responsible adult and also the time to explore being and seeing and feeling and making. 

It is scary and unsettling and exactly what I want to be doing; how I want to be. Who knows what will come of this?

At 71, every day is precious. The journey continues.

Eye in the Sky

Larry Wolf (2023)

from 1978

Larry Wolf (1978/scanned 2023)

Redbud

Larry Wolf (2023)

Nearby

Larry Wolf (2023)

Pause

Larry Wolf, untitled (2023)

Coffeehouse Collaboration

Levi Shand & Larry Wolf (2023)

Photoshoot

Larry Wolf & Jasper Goodrich collaboration (2023)

5 Ton

Larry Wolf, untitled (2023)

Misty

Larry Wolf, untitled (2023)

Thursday

Larry Wolf, untitled (20230

Larry Wolf, untitled (2023)

True Beam

Larry Wolf, Personal Beam (2023)

Light Beam

Larry Wolf, Beam (2023)

At a Museum

Larry Wolf, At a Museum (2023)

Challenges --> Incendiary Fuel --> F***ing Amazing

Fri, Mar 10, 8:40 PM 

Hi Jeff -

Thanks for sharing your accounting for time. 5-Year Projects. 20 Summers. Very focused ways to make time real. And for the personal and family health heritage that makes this important to you.

All the best on this amazing adventure,

Larry 

Sun, Mar 12, 9:41 AM 

Larry,

Great to see you on Friday.  I’m glad you were at the opening ....  I am grateful that you are part of our community.

Thanks for sharing the drawings you’re making.  Please keep making them!  I love the ideas you have for sharing your talents and wisdom through your ... crew.

Use the near-term challenges you face as incendiary fuel for making something f***ing amazing.  When you’re free and clear of all of this, you’ll have a body of amazing work that can help others in ways you never imagined.

Best,

Jeff

The Drawings

Biopsy (December 2022): https://www.larrywolf51.com/2022/12/biopsy.html

Drawings (2023): https://www.larrywolf51.com/p/watercolor-drawings-2023.html 

Discoveries - John Daido Loori - 1971 - 72

John Daido Loori (1971?)
Mountain Record

May 28, 1971

Learning how to turn the conscious thinking mind off and let the inner mind, the feelings, work free and open seems to be one of the major keys to heightened awareness.

July 9, 1971

I must continue to allow the “inner self” or “inner mind” to lead and let happen what may.

July 14, 1971

I have learned to be quiet with myself, and thus have discovered camera. Camera has shown me light making love, from this I learned that I no longer need to “take” pictures for I now know how to make Images. My Images have opened my inner self and thus I find my Images are becoming spirit.

Now I wish to discover how to make my Images disappear.

I am seeking Imageless Images.

August 1, 1971

My Images are an act of discovery not creation. Much the same kind of creativity as I used in science.

The subjects of my Images no longer make the picture. The viewer makes the picture by the combination of his inner self and my image.

August 9, 1971

Is-ness and else-ness direct themselves to the rational thinking mind.

Nothingness speaks to the spirit.

September 6, 1971

Today I photographed a feeling that I did not understand for which I received a gift of a place I’ve never been. 

April 19, 1972

I think the searching is over now, for awhile. There seems to be a path to follow. What’s needed now is time to work and patience to wait.

Source

Selections from John Daido Loori Journal Entries 1971-1974, Mountain Record, Zen Mountain Monastery Archives

the library roof magically expanded

Larry Wolf, Currently On Loan from the Chicago Public Library (2023)

From The New York Times - A Love Letter To Libraries, Long Overdue

It’s easy to romanticize libraries. But, the fact is, they’re not “just” about the written word. Were they ever? As local safety nets shriveled, the library roof magically expanded from umbrella to tarp to circus tent to airplane hangar. The modern library keeps its citizens warm, safe, healthy, entertained, educated, hydrated and, above all, connected.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/books/review/library-public-local.html

 

making love to this emerging tender indestructible being

Making art
Making love
Making life

Coming
One breath
One stroke
Simultaneous

No past
Except 
The vast past
Here
Pregnant 
Now

All identities
All ways of being
Now

No self
No not self
No other
Not one
Not two
Being
Now

As the old ends, 
nothing works
As the new begins, nothing works
In the moment, 
just the moment

The subtle bold exertion of intention

to fail
queerly
tenderly 
lovingly

to make love 
in the moment
to make love 
to the moment
to make love 
to the art as it emerges
to love whatever emerges

coherent thought falls apart
metastatic
no center
no hold

this touch of 

hand 

of body

this touch of 

pen

pencil

marker

brush

And then

water

pigments

All flow and bleed and blend and move
Energy
Alive

Grief and joy in the same breath
Heartbreak in the flowering
To be new is to kill the old

no center
only fringe

passing sucks
pleasing sucks
covering sucks
let go of normal
be divergent

let go of scenery
let go of realism
let go of making sense
let go of a lifetime of becoming

nothing to work
nothing to achieve

desire
objectless hunger for life
breathe
listen
this moment
this experience
let go of the tight shoulders
let go of the crossed knees
let go of the urge for another gulp of water
let go of yet another book
let go of yet another idea
let go of yet another human to connect with
let go of fear of missing out
let go of fear of missing
let go of fear
let go
let
be

Slow Release Disruption

Larry Wolf, ADT (2023)

Crucible x 2

Larry Wolf, Crucible of Attention - Cool (2023)

Larry Wolf, Crucible of Attention - Hot (2023)

A crucible that holds our attention protects and nurtures fresh modes of being.

Our attention is the energy that transforms and extracts essential elements.

What the Living Do

Marie Howe, What the Living Do (1998)
Photo Credit: Bill Jacobson

Poems and Fragments

For Three Days

For three days now I've been trying to think of another word for gratitude 
because my brother could have died and didn't

 

Rochester, New York, July 1989

music would sometimes drift up through the floorboards,

and he might doze or wake a little or sleep, 

and whoever was with him might lean back in the chair beside the bed 

 

and not know it was Chopin, 

but something soft and pretty -- maybe not even hear it, 

 

not really, until it stopped 

-- the way you know a scent from a flowering tree once you've passed it. 

 

 The Last Time

The last time we had dinner together in a restaurant

with white tablecloths, he leaned forward 

 

and took my two hands in his hands and said,

I'm going to die soon. I want you to know that.

 

And I said, I think I do. 

And he said, What surprises me is that you don't.

And I said, I do. And he said, What?

And I said, Know that you're going to die.

 And he said, No, I mean know that you are.

 

The Cold Outside

Soon I will die, he said, and then 

what everyone has been so afraid of for so long will have finally happened,

and then everyone can rest. 

 

The Kiss 

When he finally put 

his mouth on me -- on 

 

my shoulder -- the world 

shifted a little on the tilted

 

axis of itself. The minutes

since my brother died

 

stopped marching ahead like

dumb soldiers and

 

the stars rested.

His mouth on my shoulder and

 

then on my throat

and the world started up again

 

for me,

some machine deep inside it

 

recalibrating, 

all the little wheels

 

slowly reeling then speeding up,

the massive dawn lifting on the other 

 

side of the turning world.

And when his mouth 

 

pressed against my 

mouth, I

 

opened my mouth 

and the world's chord

  

played at once

a large, ordinary music rising

from a hand neither one of us could see.

Untitled x 2

Larry Wolf (2023)
[at Wrightwood 659]

Larry Wolf (2023)
[at Wrightwood 659]

Radiant Bones

Larry Wolf, Bone Scan (2023)

Excreted tracer is present in the urinary bladder.

Crucible of Attention - a mindful viewing group

This will be offered through Latitude starting February 5, 2023

A crucible is a container of energy within which substances can be transformed. We bring our attention, our awareness, into this group with a commitment to be present for each other, to allow for the possibility of change in how we perceive art and, for those who are artists, how we make our art. 

What happens as you spend time with a work of art? When you discuss that art with a trusted circle of other people? 

Participants in this workshop will: 

• Meet every other week to discuss an image of their choice. This image can be a part of a personal project, an image they have encountered in a book, or one from social media.
• Learn to talk about their own artworks and respond to the work of others.
• Get feedback from peers.
• Be provided readings to expand on ideas brought to the workshop by the instructor and peers. 

This is an experiential, participatory program. It builds on approaches of slow looking and appreciative inquiry. We’ll begin each session by establishing our container, welcoming each other, and then take a few minutes to further settle, to be present to our minds and our bodies. There will be a short teaching segment about looking at art and how we interpret it. Each of us will bring art, whether created by us or by others. During each session, we will spend fifteen minutes with each artwork.

We each offer the gift of our attention. From this place of not-knowing and discovering, surprises of all kinds may arise.

This class will be meeting on Zoom on February 5th, February 19th, March 5th, and March 19th from 2:00pm-5:00pm!

Space is limited to 10 participants total so grab your spot!

Questions? Contact us at education@latitudechicago.org

Register at Latitude

Across the Caldera

Larry Wolf, Across the Caldera (2000/2022)