Dance with Me, No. 1 (2003). Oil on canvas. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.
That move, where she turned away in sync with the key change and a stole furtive glance back, it got me every time. The haze from the smoke machines masked the neon dance floor in pastoral veil, and for a while it seemed we were in an English romantic novel – her white blouse a beacon in the countryside entreating her darkly clad lover. Just as such words on a page would be, the mind’s image of this is eternal, and even if the meaning of the moment may diminish with time, the intensity of the memory may still burn.
She would turn back to me, and away again, following the prompts of the music, the momentum of her body, and the instinct of her mind and soul, and I would do the same. Perhaps that is why we returned over and over, to the same place to the same music, to the same dance. Perhaps it was a way, maybe the only way back then, to feel completely, and safely, in sync with and within someone else.
Sci-fi Special (2021). Acrylic on board. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.
Into the vortex they ran, in to an extra-dimensional world where they all wore long tweeds, like it was a 50’s episode of a sci-fi serial. They ran willingly, purposefully, like reporters to a schoolhouse fire; or maybe not ran – can they run here where there seems to be no ground? It looks almost like the floor of a meadow, but it is kinetic, moving clockwise, here, reversing there, ebbing and flowing here and away. It is so strange in here, but then there are familiarities in the beings that suddenly appear, and themselves: the cut of the hair, the harried looks, like hoods on the run. familiar sights indeed, every noir story has them, but what of this setting, what of the vortex?
Perhaps they are to continue in this struggle. Continue to run to assist others, to explore the frightful unknown, to set worry aside and go…go.
As they made the second turn an untraceable sound descended on them, high pitched but full, and a light shot through the space they inhabited. They felt that light surge through their bodies. Then all was black for a moment or maybe a hundred years, and then when they once again became aware, they were floating in a celestial wonderland, until they turned their heads and they were in a 1970’s den, sinking their toes in shag carpet. Elton was on the stereo system. Levon sells cartoon balloons in town. Turning away, they are bathed in the galaxies. turning back, Levon likes his money…
The Hardie Boy and Alec (2010). Ink on Board. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.
They’ve both been gone 30 years now, and the store’s been gone 20. When we worked there we represented three different generations, and presented three radically different stories. The Old Bagel was born in Manchester, the one in England, at the turn of the last century. He was well educated there, but he immigrated to Chicago after the great war to work in one of the great, old, clothing houses. The Hardie Boy was a street kid from a dirty neighborhood who didn’t like school much, so he joined up with the army and served on a Mekong gunboat. He was working at the store because he could, in sales, just as he might be selling cars, or carpets. Not much of a vocation, just a job. I was the kid. I swept up, ran the errands, and learned through their stories about the world that once was.
The Old Bagel had invented a shipping box that his best friend co-opted and used to make a fortune. None of this bothered the inventor – he slept like a baby at night, and napped daily in a corner chair behind the size 42 Regular suits. The Hardie Boy was an insomniac, unable to sleep ever since his gunboat was boarded in the black of night. The desperate shooting; he grabbed the deck-mounted machine gun and started blasting into the darkness, may or may not have left some dead sinking into that river.
One was laconic, the other was caffeinated; one was erudite, the other was colloquial. They managed to laugh a lot, and make us laugh with them. Through their idiosyncratic banter they became such a part of the place that I always imagined them hanging around even in death, waiting for me to bring back lunch from the Greek, or beer from the liquor store at closing time. The Old Bagel lived to a ripe old age, but the Hardie Boy died young, of his own demons, in a shrunken space not unlike that gunboat. The space between their deaths was likewise brutally close, but it allowed us to mourn them together, as forever linked, in a way that two souls so different might never be. Even now, it is hard to think of one without the other, and then of the rest of us, making sport of each other, laughing, and finding our way together through a busy Saturday afternoon at Christmastime.
Sand and Sea (2018). Acrylic on wood. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.
Sand and sea, the colors of life, of everything. The sand is the product of the life in the sea, and the sea finds its rest in the billows and hollows of the sand. Their colors compliment each other like beloved friends at a ceremonial toast. They are the best set. The tan suit in the closet seems to spring to life when paired with that variegated blue shirt. Let’s place this blue rug under this tan sofa and see if it reminds you of something. Yes, it’s the beach, and the holiday, but also something more vestigial; it’s the place we all come from, where everything comes from.
That tension on the waterline, that connection of blue to white, is the crucible we all crawled out of.
There is a certain feeling these colors create together that they fail to create alone. Perhaps they gratuitously provide that lesson to us, about ourselves and our bonds with each other, a lesson that transcends their aesthetic splendor. Or, perhaps not – transcendence may not be for everyone, so let the resplendent visual joy be enough for those that seek only beauty. Like those transcendent souls, the sand and sea await them too..
The Confirmation Bias (2020). Acrylic and ink on paper. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.
Continuing the expeditions of Jeff MacNelly, James Kilpatrick, and Eugene McCarthy, with apologies.
The Confirmation Bias
A short creature with a short right leg, this bottom heavy being is always veering off in the direction of its defect. Nearly blind and unresponsive to anything but familiar sensory attractions, it lives an unenlightened existence, ambling in spirals of self affirmation and conspiracy theory. Its acceptance of ignorance borders on gluttony, and it drinks of the empty rhetoric until it is permanently inebriated, pickled even. In this way the wretched creature whittles away its days, until it suffers the mortal wound, inevitably at the hands of its vestigial enemy, the Empirical Analysis, and falls, murmuring outdated dogma, in front of a television blaring an advert for stair lifts.
Summer Stroll (2023). Acrylic on cardboard. From my book, Out in the Street, available at Amazon books. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.
Blast furnace heat. Thank the gods for baggies. Loose linens and the errant breeze make the walks tolerable, and walk he must. Not cut out for sitting in an air-conditioned office, he’s outside wandering, or at least it looks that way, even when he’s on his way somewhere, he has the mindset of a nomad. Weather can be challenging and heatwaves of summers past taught him to plan for these weeks in the midyear. The difficulties of being a dandy were ever-present, just different in summer. “As baggy as I can get without looking like I’m wearing someone else’s pants” he told the salesman. “Fabric light as air, and colors like tinted cream” he continued, “I have to walk out there…”.
Wilted collars mandate beat-up hats, both being closest to the face, and needing to match. The pressed poplin chemise won’t last the five blocks to the office in this humidity, so let’s roll up, unbutton, and get comfortable here. If we are lucky, that faint breeze will broaden the trousers, and penetrate enough to provide the sensation of seaside relief, though imagining an oceanside promenade might be counter-productive here – let’s keep our minds in the game. Trying to look good under this dome of hot air takes some concentration. Which side of the street has building shade? How far is it to the park? Is there a way to carry my jacket so that it won’t crease?
He turns a corner and out of nowhere a cold gale smacks him in the face. He grabs for his hat, just like he does in the winter when that north wind barrels through the grid. He is reminded of the dandy’s problems during those months; the unflattering bulk, the need for sturdy and weatherproof soles, etc., but just then the blower cuts out, and he’s back in the broiler.
He’s out of buttons to undo. It’s summer, so it’s either this or the A/C. Walk he must.
–Danny Grosso
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Sunday League (2008). Acrylic on wood. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.
I meant to go home early last night, but then the D.J. played my favorite song and this girl whom I’d seen before cut her way into my little pod of dancers. Coming in closer, she spread the pod girls out with her hands while her eyes were closed and her chin was up and it was like she was hearing some other music, because she was moving just a little bit slower then the rest of us. Yet, she kept the beat, and when she opened her eyes to me again I saw some fire emerge from that serene moment. We went on and on on that lighted floor for almost an hour before I asked her if she wanted a drink, and she said “Let’s just get out of here…” – because she had to work in the morning, some weekend job downtown or something. I drove her home in my jalopy, and on her porch, where her dishwater bob looked iridescent under the strange light, she turned and kissed me for a long, soft moment. “I gotta go in,” she said, giggling as I tried to reach around her waist, “see you back there some time.”
I was not gonna keep this from my friends – I’d like to have found out if any of them knew her, but when I got to the diner they were already in the middle of a muddle, something about Morris Day going off on his own, or maybe it was Jesse Johnson, I wasn’t sure, they were all talking at once and filling the air with cigarette smoke, so I had some coffee and laughed at the histrionics. More friends showed up, one booth became two, and another table beside. When they started quoting movie lines and arguing about them, I summoned another cup and settled into the booth for the rest of the show.
The birds were already chirping when I left the diner, and my short drive home brought me to my stoop just as the sun was rising, and it was beautiful, like her, I thought, so I sat out there and watched the sky redden and then fade into a baby blue silk. Unfortunately, none of this fatigued me; there was the coffee, and my ears were buzzing from the club, and the diner, and, well, everything else, so that when I went in I didn’t go to sleep, I just laid there for a while replaying the short film that was the night, staging in my head that slow, walk up moment, with her center stage, from different angles so I could relive it new, again and again.
A lot of nights are like short films now, they even fade to black…
I woke up with a start a couple of hours later, saw the time and hustled into the shower. Early game today. I kind of jumped into my softball pants and socks. I’d carry my jersey, and my spikes were in the car, so I ran out, and seemingly a minute later I am here, ensconced in another serene moment, under the blue summer sky, leading off, watching the world quiet and slow down once again, as I wait for that fat, new 16″ clincher to come down off its long arc.
Yellows (2015). Acrylic on Paper. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.
Alone on the branch, these two find some measure of calm, at least as much as can be, with little birds. Their heads flit back to forth, wings shivering, but they stay a bit. They are two dandies on a runway, in dangerous territory, finery on display. Lit up and glistening against the fading light, like candy, they catch the eye and engage other senses as well. Down through the ages, they’ve learned to move around quickly, to observe furtively, to love desperately.
They are aware that their shine makes them attractive, and that it also makes them targets.
This and That (2023). Acrylic on Board. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.
Remember this? This and that? Everyone together talking about this and that? She would make this and bring it along, even to a restaurant, because she wanted to show how she loved getting together. Her friend would order that for the table when they arrived because it was the perfect complimentary dish. He would pour and pour, champagne he could not really afford. Another girl would save up for that dress and risk the wine spill. That guy over there would store up jokes for weeks so he’d have enough to last the night. We all did this and that once. We all may do it again, or not, but in the meantime, the artists will endeavor to remind us that this, and that, used to be our reasons for being.
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