WHEW!

That was a five day conference. Can't hold the art back. Some things to report:

Almost all the good networking was at the art supply tables, where I snagged a bunch of free art supplies, met a few key department heads (incl a guy from SF Art Institute hiring in March), and, oddly, stumbled into a possible minor book deal to revise a work on teaching perspective.

There is at least one, count him, incredible video artist in America, Gary Hill, receiver of my unaccountably delayed MacCarthur Grant and creator of Tall Ships (if you ever get a chance to see this, see it immediately - It is a hall of shades. I saw it once and its haunted me for seven years)

Painting is in a strong, joyful, utterly contemporary revival, shards of apology are gone. You can even look for the return of naked ladies in bronze, thanks to my friend Mike MacGrath.

Which is not to say there is any end of arid, extra dry aesthetic dryness, dry as marble dust, dry as a martini soaked Stephen Fry quip, dry as a stack of 1974 Agricultural Forecast as read in the Kalahair Desert by David Brinkley: I, ROBOT PHASE ONE, dry and horrible and fascinating, like the collision of two Chadian Trains carrying corn flour in August.

A great line from the famed post modern painter Gerhardt Richter: "The theme of all art is wounded beauty." who on the other my former Prof Norm Lundin (nice essay here) describes as doing "decent enough grad student work."

And imagine this job from an art historian I met today, Herb Hartell, who teaches painting history at John Jay College in New York - the school for cops. I would laugh, but since they've got a teaching spot in painting open in New York....