Pollination

January 9, 2023

Overlooking my garden from the porch balcony I can see the steps down are in dire need of repair. The rotten wooden treads slip underfoot in the morning dew.

At the foot of the steps lies a brick-paved courtyard. It’s encircled by a low garden wall of reclaimed cobblestone, brick, and concrete which retains the roots of fruit and flower trees, herbs, and bulbs. In the morning it’s ripe with petrichor. A tangle of poison ivy and morning glories begins to choke the rose bush. I look back at the open screen door. I have an everything bagel from Knickerbocker in the toaster.

The courtyard bricks are cold under my feet, just as the wooden porch was cold too, but it doesn't drain the heat from my feet like the brick does. I should be wearing shoes and not just socks. The townhouses keep the yard shaded and cool until lunchtime when the sun arcs over the rooftops. Spring bulbs are in bloom; tulips, narcissus, and iris; in abundance. The roses are blooming. Perfect pink long-stemmed buds on red-tipped new growth branches. This rose bush is the tallest thing in the yard at fifteen feet of wild thorny glory in every direction. It is the only large plant I left when I removed the overgrown and broken trees that inhabited this space before. I think a rose can live up to 100 years? This is one of the largest and oldest roses I have ever seen.

I set my coffee mug down on the iron bench under the rose bush. The strawberries are flowering. There are dandelions and purslane in the cracks of the brickwork. Morning glories are sprouting everywhere. I begin to slowly unwind the tendrils of the morning glories entangling the rose bush. I have to be gentle or I will cut myself on the thorns of the rose; like knives. Even worse, I could damage the rose leaves and tender shoots if I pull too much. It takes a few minutes to do the work of disentanglement.

I love these plants. Many of them I have been tending for over a decade, even though I have only been at this house for just under two years. I relocated much of my garden from the last one with cuttings and roots and potted plants. The last truckload that left my last home was all potted plants. I was so tired that day. Having lifted so much already, the last of these were so heavy I had no tools for leverage. There wasn't a lift gate or a ramp for the truck, and I had to slowly walk and lift each of the largest pots into the truck. My irises, lilac, and moss. The soil and the planters were so heavy. I couldn't take them all. I ran out of time and energy.

A mockingbird is at the highest point on the block. It calls loudly. It wants me to know that it is the yard boss; all of the backyards together. About half of these yards are unused, not gardens. So many people live here. I wish they would take care of their yards. I can see their problems beginning to encroach into my space. In the corners are poison ivy, Virginia creepers, morning glories, Tree of Heaven, and other invasive problematic species. I pull them back as much as I am able. I wish that I could access the next yard over. Maybe after I fully train and tame my own yard, I'll look into expanding into the neighbors' neglected area.

The potted plants in my yard were cultivated from cuttings from a neighbor's yard years ago;. The moss collected from sidewalk cracks; The iris rescued from under a small hedge on a lot to be demolished…. These were some of my favorite plants. Now here, in this garden, they have been replanted and are growing and blooming vigorously. They are so happy here, as am I.

I should get upstairs to the studio. I have a bunch of cadmium chartreuse squirted out on my marble palette. It’ already blended with linseed oil and cold paste wax. It's been there for days and should be close to the right consistency for the next color layer.

An airplane whines through the sky on its approach to Laguardia. I forgot about my bagel.

Two of the series. Sold at The Other Art Fair Spring 2022. At collectors home.

“Beach House”, 48 x48 inches, Oil on canvas, 2022

Escape

October 16, 2022

When I was a kid back in the 1980’s my Grandparents generation of middle-class folks would rent a home on the Jersey Shore for a few weeks each summer. We lived close enough to make the dive in a few hours. Going there felt so different from home. We had friends who owned a small bungalow. Other more distant cousins would come. The kids would all sleep in old brass beds on a sandy wooden floor upstairs among stacks of well-read beach trash paperbacks. We would watch Godzilla movies between going to Skipper Dipper for ice cream cones, and the beach for sunburns. We smelled like sunscreen and citronella candles. There was a rusty garage full of bikes and surfboards, a hammock and picnic bench under a scrub pine. It was wonderful.

All of the people of that generation are dead and buried. The house has been sold, torn down, and replaced with a much larger home. The distant cousins are more distant.

I live in Brooklyn now. We spend most of the summer here in the City. Governor's Island, Coney Island, Central Park, etc... I take my kids out to Fire Island each summer. We rent an old cabin with no television that’s within walking distance to the beach. It has six small bedrooms so we invite friends to join us. I cook and there is an outdoor shower. It's perfect .

I found a recipe for Clam Chowder in a very old book in the kitchen of the beach house. It was published here on the island and has two versions of the soup: one to be cooked on the beach over a campfire; the other a stovetop version. I have my fishing licenses and would be able to light a beach fire, but I’m not sure how the constable would actually respond to that.

We bring our fishing poles to the beach and cast into the ocean hoping for some late summer fluke with spoons, spinners, shrimp and squid lures. I don’t see any of the other people fishing with a campfire. Afterwards we go to the market to get clams for dinner.

The quahog clams I get are large and full. Gray outer shells with pure white interiors and a big bright purple spot, their flesh is a light golden yellow. To open them and get their flesh I steam them until they release, just a few minutes to keep them tender. Quiet stubborn clams hiding complicated relationships. Uncomplicated animals. One of my friends is allergic, a clam could kill her. I pry open each of the steamed clams to reveal their soft interior flesh.

There are sixteen friends and family gathered here tonight at this long table at the beach house. I made a huge pot of pasta with clams and broil the fluke. The house smells like the ocean was boiled with garlic. Broad yellow semolina linguine has soaked up the white velvety sauce and in it are nestled white pearls of garlic, golden bits of clams, green flecks of fresh parsley, and black specks of peppercorn. We eat all of the pasta, fish, salad, and garlic bread.

After dinner we go to Beaches and Cream to get Dole Whip for dessert. The frozen whipped fruit melts in the heat. A drip of sweet pineapple juice runs down my arm.

In the morning it’s very quiet; bugs and birds. Chirping and whistling. Neighbors starting their morning. Cicadas in the trees. My son rouses me from my early morning nap.

It’s raining hard. A large storm has hit the island. We’re trapped together in this house while it rages outside. It calms a bit and I go for a walk in the drizzling rain. I don’t have an umbrella. I walk over to the market in Ocean Beach. Everything is closed. It’s a Tuesady. The season is over. We should have left yesterday. I walk to the Seaview Market in the next town over, they should still be open. I’m the only person here.

I take the kids down to the water so we can see the erosion on the beach. The waves cut deep channels in the beach creating tidal pools with sand cliff embankments about two feet deep. The storm is off the coast, we can see the thunderclouds moving swiftly along the horizon. The sky is a million different colors of gray.

Preparation

April 13, 2021

My last garden was pirated.

A neglected property with an abandoned house set deep on the lot. It was secured from the street with an 8’ chain link barbed fence installed years ago by the owners when people were dumping garbage on the property. They hung a sign on it. No Trespassing.

The lot was typical in size for the neighborhood at twenty-by-one-hundred feet. It is unusual in that there is a shell of a house at the rear of the property leaving a large front yard. It was home to a small magnolia, huge, blue spruce tree, rose bush, lilac, lily-of-the-valley, spiderwort, boxwood, and arbor vitae. A concrete sidewalk divides the space into two long areas which are overgrown with wildflower weeds, viola, lily of the valley, asiatic lily, chrysanthemums, dandy lions, poison ivy. milkweed,...

The first years I watched this yard grow to a height of seven feet before landscapers suddenly appeared to noisily reduce it back to bare earth and minor stumps each autumn. On one such occasion the property owner was attending the operation and by chance I was as home at the time and was able to introduce myself.

She explained the condition of the building's foundation was making the renovation difficult hence the appearance of abandonment. The interior has been gutted to the frame. A mere shell.

She then offered me to use as a garden, with the caveat that construction would commence in the spring and may start without much warning. She gave me a set of bolt cutters.

I was glad at the offer but it being late in the season I felt it made little sense to spend any amount of effort that year. The next spring brought a similar defeat, armed with the knowledge that construction would begin before summer, it would be folly to invest in the plants only to have insufficient time to bring the crops to maturity.

But then something happened. The construction didn’t begin. and late in the Autumn when the day laborers appeared to clearcut the land I was devastated. A whole growing season wasted. I vowed to plant in the spring.

That winter I squirreled away every seed that passed through my kitchen not destined for the cook pot. planning and scheming nightly for the coming bounty, I investigated and observed the plot to determine the prime location for each planting.

When the snow melted I tended to the strawberries and herbs I grow on my patio. Once these were firmly established I turned my eye to the neighbors yard. Storms and litterbugs had filled the yard over the winter with tree limbs and trash.

I gathered and the garbage and debris was cleared the land. I turned over the area closest to the side of my house and sifted through the soil to remove glass and debris. I used some pavers and bricks I found there to make a path.

Patrick Keefe, Oil Painting, In Preparation of Spring (Diptych), 26 x 24, 2022
Sold from the studio to a collector while curing.

I walked the mile to the local garden center and bought all the plants I could afford. Four beefsteak tomatoes, four early girl tomatoes, four eggplant and four basil.

I planted the tomatoes deep so that only the top of the plant was uncovered by earth. The Basil and eggplants get buried to the soil line.

The next area I turned over the next weekend, and planted it with butternut, watermelon, cucumber, and cantaloupe and kobocha seeds that I had saved.

Every morning my routine included spending time watering each plot, and walking between the gardens picking out glass and weeds and training the plants. Large areas of the yard I left fallow. I thinned the existing plants to those that were of a more manageable height and those which provided benefit to and attracted bees and butterflies.

By June the peach tree I had planted four years prior was beginning to yield fruit. I reckoned forty Peaches, each stolen just prior to ripening by neighborhood vagabonds.

The kabocha seeds I planted grew vigorously, until a powdery mildew killed them all in a week.

I wasn’t ready to start harvesting the food. I honestly didn’t really trust it. I took soil samples and sent it to the Environmental Laboratory at Brooklyn College. Since I was sampling I decided to grab a few from around the neighborhood as well. I also sent the lab “Tissue samples” which was just fruit in this case from the tomato, peach, and a nearby mulberry tree. The Mulberry tree’s root section I suspected intersected with the chemical plume under the roadway at the corner of Franklin Ave and Dupont St and I had seen people eating the fruit.

I took 3 locations’ sample sets in total each where a fruit was growing. Sending the laboratory peaches, tomatoes, and mulberry fruit and soil samples. The mulberry tree was the worst of all of them with high levels of lead and other heavy metals in the fruit and the highest of over 1000 ppm lead in the soil. The tomato also contained toxic levels of lead. Only the peach tested clean. Despite the soil being heavily contaminated around 600 ppm lead.

We never ate anything from the ground here except for a few peaches, but even those we ate sparingly.

The next season I planted wildflowers and used the space for garden parties. I hosted my friends and family out there for five years.

My son and I turn over the pavers on the pathway to look for bugs together. We would always find snails and slugs and their eggs; centipedes and millipedes; worms, grubs, ants, and roaches.

Detail from “In Preparation of Spring Series”

Years go by. Season after season I care for the garden. Pruning the lilac; training the rose bush; discovering underground rhizomes and roots of neglected perennials. I take cuttings for my small plot and planters from some of these.

The chain link fence is replaced with a wooden construction fence painted green. It has a sign on it advertising the new condominium that will be erected on the site.

Early in the spring only lichens and moss are green; along with the very tips of buds and eyes of rhizomes peeking through winter’s detritus.

The insects are still asleep in the soil. Grubs, and other larvae, unhitched eggs.

Snails slowly patrol the landscape hiding from the starlings and sparrows.

It was the beginning of 2020 when they clear cut the lot. They crushed the rose bush under the wheels of a dump truck. I went into the yard and gathered the roots of the roses, the bulbs from the spiderwort, and the hydrangea, I potted them.

Construction began abruptly. There was indication that all unnecessary construction would be halted by the Department of Buildings so they were planning to do the excavation as quickly as they could. An open pit is a safety concern so would set the project into necessary territory by making it dangerous to leave unattended.

There is a snail crawling on the stonework on the base of my home. It’s eating the lichens growing there. It’s moving slowly. Like you would expect a snail to move. Its body stretches from its translucent green-yellow and black spiral shell as it glides over the rough dirty surface it’s eyestalks and antenna probe and explore.

Painting

December 15, 2020

My oil paintings have a natural aroma which is very strong when they are curing. They are composed of turpentine, beeswax, damar resin, linseed oil, lavender oil, safflower oil, and pigments. The pigments are mineral and without scent, but the carrier mediums are all organic and each naturally have a uniquely complex scent.

The linseed oil becomes rancid as it cures developing a light, pleasant, warm, oily, rotten smell. Damar resin is piney, delicate and floral with a smokey tone similar to mastic and frankincense. The turpentine used to dissolve the damar and the wax is terebinth pine essence, its floral astringent woodsy smell is hot and ephemeral. Beeswax has warm sweet floral honey bready animal notes.

Most of these are benign. Except for the turpentine, which in concentration and chronic exposure can lead to very bad health outcomes; memory loss; skin and kidney damage. Ive had to greatly improve the air handling at my studio to mitigate this.

When I am painting these aromas saturate my studio. It envelops me and I become it wherever I go. The scent of the studio built over time. As the amount of curing paintings increased in storage the smell of the linseed oils became more prominent against the hotness of the turpentine while I am applying paint. To capture this scent I developed a cosmetic fragrance which I titled Painting.

After months of research and development; I used the essence of pine, beeswax, choya ral, ambroxan, rose oil, and oak moss; to recreate the nostalgic fragrance of a master painter’s studio.

This cosmetic fragrance is perfect to wear to a gallery opening or other public event where you would want to be “clean” but also smell like you have been putting in a hard day's work at the studio making your latest masterpiece.

Safety

September 7, 2020

I must have painted her a dozen times with watercolors.

She wore her bike helmet as a prop. It made her seem even more naked and her body more vulnerable with just her head protected. “I like to be safe.” She lies to me. I have often given her a hard time for not wearing a helmet when she rode her electric scooter. I think she only wears it when she comes to see me.

“I would be embarrassed for you to see me dance for the first time.” she tells me.

Her face is half hidden by the fur trim on her hood. I say “I almost can’t believe you have never been out to dance before.” she corrects me ”No, I have never danced before.” “Not with anyone?” I ask, “No, not even alone.“ she responds.

We went out dancing in public for the first time at the Bushwick club Elsewhere. We arrived early. She checked her fur trimmed coat and went inside. The opener’s DJ set was just going on in the Main Hall. It was a big dark room and we were the first ones there. They had a disco ball hung on the ceiling radiating golden light throughout the room. We danced together with our eyes closed until the room felt full enough to be anonymous.

Wealth

February 3, 2019

The soil in North Brooklyn is toxic.

Almost all of it.

There are large plumes of chemicals that exist underground.

When I planted my garden here I had the soil tested to see just how bad it was.

One of the things I was told to watch for when I was purchasing land in Greenpoint was contaminated soils from all of the industrial properties that permeated the neighborhood. My plot, as far as I understood, had never been an industrial lot, nor any of the immediate adjacent lots. But there was heavy industry not far from the house, merely a block away from the Nuhart Chemical plant with its notorious toxic plume beneath the ground, the result of decades of slow leaks.

I had the land surveyed to ensure it sat on a slope away from this toxic site to ensure that the migrating chemicals would never come beneath my house. But that didn’t save the soil from the settling of air pollutants. The top foot of all soil here is contaminated with lead from car exhaust as well as the factories of that era.

The sudden rapid rise in property value in Greenpoint was fascinating. Values were rising so quickly in neighboring Williamsburg that despite all of the environmental and geotechnical issues in Greenpoint, it was still desirable enough that people with the means to purchase, would do so. Everyone who was getting squeezed out of Williamsburg. Anyone who intended on raising their families in the city sought affordable homes any where they could be close to their communities. It was the height of Brooklyn gentrification.

On the side of the neighborhood by the Exxon spill. It seemed like people didn’t care about any of it.

The land here really isn’t even all that accessible. There are a few gardens but most of those are behind fences or in rear yards that have no visibility from the sidewalk. Most of the tree holes have been paved over with bricks or are densely landscaped.

The value of this weird mixture of poison that we’re standing on was phenomenal. I used to spend my days in a geotechnical laboratory in Virginia testing, and classifying soils for construction, reading geotechnical maps, blueprints, preparing for construction … I was well versed in geology.

I began to take samples of the soil I could reach and samples of fruit from the trees and I delivered them to the Environmental Testing Laboratory at CUNY Brooklyn College for a full spectrum analysis. This tests for chromium, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, and lead. They also have the capability to further test for nitrate, ammonia, and phosphate levels to determine agricultural suitability. And a micronutrient test for boron, magnesium, aluminum, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, Iron, and manganese was also available but I was more concerned with contamination rather than nutritional value. They had no tests for PCBs, or phthalate available but I did find a laboratory located in Europe who could do the test but at a such a great expense it proved prohibitive. There were so many limitations to the available testsI knew that I would only be able to perform the tests my self by acquiring the proper reagents and developing my own methodology for a replaceable and verifiable test method.

I began to take test samples of soils everywhere I went. I was fascinated by the matrices produced by the city. Urban geology is such that natural soils are seldom accessible, paved by concrete, asphalt, or flagstones and replaced by imported engineered medium. Even the planting of new trees and conditioning of old garden soils replaces and changes the native matrix.

The New York City’s subgrade is a patchwork of river sediment, bedrock, engineered soils, and unconditioned garbage fill, varying greatly wherever one looks. This combines with erosion from buildings, sidewalks and roadways, tree and wildlife remains, and the detritus of humanity to create the native topsoil.

It was a desk job. My office at Creative Capital was on Maiden Lane in the Financial District. I had to wear a suit and tie. I would travel throughout the financial district on lower Manhattan to work on my acquisitions. The soil derivatives. Erosions from the institutions housing the finance sector. I needed the essence of the wealth built here, the real dirt.

The World Trade Center is still being reconstructed from 9/11. I was able to reach my arm through the construction fence to acquire a sample of the native sub-grade beneath the new erection. The rich brown soil was blushing grey from the new foundation’s concrete runoff.

I walked to Wall Street. I stand in line and touch the bull’s balls for good luck. The buildings here have no gardens that reveal the earth. The only natural soil here is composed of the erosion of the city and the buildings, hair and skin flakes from people and their pets, bird droppings, tire and brake particles, food scraps, garbage bits, shoe leather, dislodged sequins, earrings... I used the spoon to scrape soil from the places it accreates. On my hands and knees in my suit, I tuck my tie into my shirt to keep it out of my work area. It takes many micro-transactions to amass sufficient sediment to invest into portable real estate. I should have worn an orange vest for safety.

My weekend trip to Coney Island yielded white sands mixed with with microplastics. The sand here used to be so valuable. Using a large plastic cup from Nathan’s I scoop up plenty of beach. Fire Island was much more difficult to get a piece of.

I developed a way to bind the soil in a medium that would be flexible yet strong and produce a finish that is similar to the soil in nature. This I mount on pure cotton rag watercolor paper and the calligraphed with it’s sampling location.

I showed this body of work in 2018 at an art and fashion show in midtown for The Set which benefited victims of child trafficking.

Prices are derived from the average cost of land in the locality from which the soil was excavated.

One Square Foot of Manhattan Soil : $1851

One Square Foot of Financial District Soil $1158

One Square Foot of World Trade Center Soil $3194

One Square Foot of Williamsburg Soil $1107

(Prices as of 2018 :: subject to market conditions)

Observation

February 2, 2019

Watercolor has been foundational to my practice. When I was a kid the first watercolor paints that I had were a gift from my grandfather in 1985: 10.5 ml tubes of Pierrefeu Maxi Tubes. Aquarelle from France. When he passed away in 2019 I found the same set in his collection. It seems he purchased one for himself at the same time and it had been stored in his studio relatively untouched.

By the time I was a teenager I had a wide variety of watercolor cakes, tubes, gouache, brushes and papers. I created my first compositions relying on pictures in magazines for source material. I remember finding stacks of musty National Geographics, boxes of Mad magazines, and issues of LIFE in the neighbor's trash. It was a bonanza.

I painted lighthouses, people, flowers, animals, boats… anything that looked interesting. I was trying for accuracy and spent a good amount of time mixing color, learning how to mimic each tone I encountered as closely as I could. I didn’t like what I saw in my surroundings so I would often draw imagined landscapes pieced together from memories and dreams. I began to illustrate my favorite characters from games and books, it was my childhood obsession.

When I first returned to New York, I had no space in my tiny apartment for a proper studio. I saw another artist showing tiny paintings at a small gallery and thought that it was a great idea. They were very affordable and I figured that If even I had enough wall space to hang such a tiny painting surely anyone would. You could place one almost anywhere. I figured that I would be able to work at this scale.

I began painting at home at night on my coffee table. I had returned to New York City with new eyes after a decade of living in southern states. The city was very inspiring. The sunset views of the city over the BQE were the first views that inspired me. I started with compositions consisting of the low rooftops of North Brooklyn fading into the distance with the rainbowed sky behind it. I used mainly aerial perspective to imply distance and abstracted line to imply the rooftop horizons between each block. I began painting more and more. I used snapshots of any composition that was of interest to me. I painted a few iconic landmarks, but mainly stuck to the smaller streets of my home neighborhoods Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick, and the places on Long Island I would visit to see family Stony Brook, Fire Island & Oceanside.

Iconic elements began to draw my attention: billboards, radio towers, bridges, water towers, architectural elements, windows, trees, fencing, graffiti, roadways; the city had such a rich texture. I painted hundreds of compositions. I will occasionally lead a group to a location for plein aire, but still will work mainly from photography when commissioned for a landscape.

Around 2009 I began regularly attending figure drawing groups in Brooklyn and settled on the Drink and Draw that met Wednesday nights at 3rd Ward which was free with a membership. This group expanded and contracted over the years. I ran it for a little while during interim periods as the group transitioned from its home at 3rd Ward to Triskellion Dance Studios for a short while, until restarting at Bathaus in Bushwick; and later relocating to its current home in Williamsburg. After over a decade of working with this group and over 12000 watercolor drawings I have developed my own unique style of rapid gestural watercolor capture of the human figure. My style uses a mixed media approach with foundational sketching in pencil; watercolor washes to create form; with ink and oil pastel highlights. This space became my third-space, a home away from home.

I began showing small works at Bushwick Open Studios in 2015 and have shown works from this continuing series as recently at the Other Art Fair in 2023.

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