Tag: art

The Limelight Shows

Untitled (1987). Oil and acrylic on linen. From my book Club Kids, available at Amazon Books. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

They let me transform the place back then, and I hung paintings on the rafters, and huge linen backdrops like boat sails along the stage. Tony and I choreographed the models and Richie gave them some cash. Stevie made a cassette tape of runway music. The first song was The Cure’s “Push”. It was 1987, after all.

In the vestibule, when the Limelight’s own models were twisting and pouting for the crowd trickling in, my old neighborhood friends repelled with confusion – or was it fright? In its first years, the club used to house the posers in glass boxes. The transparent cells fell prey to ridicule, but the over the top makeup and suggestive body language endured. Alarming stuff for some who rarely ventured into the city.

Before the show got started I had one more run through with the girls, on walking; one foot directly in front of the other; shoulders back; sway the hips. I checked each one of the outfits I had designed, for the second time. I had gone through them before the girls slipped them on but they always needed tinkering when worn. I reviewed the order of appearance once more, and changed a bit here and there, and then lined them up and waited. a few minutes later I popped my head from behind one of the painted sails and nodded up to the D.J. booth. He announced the name of the line, and me, and then they were off down the shiny white runway, skinny reindeer gliding over Christmas snow, complete with oversized eyes, thanks to our ambitious makeup artist.

Most of the shows proceeded just like this, excepting minor changes and occasional minor tragedies. Sometimes a model would show up too high to perform. Sometimes a model would faint during rehearsals. Making them eat was a battle. So dedicated they were to their wire hanger figures that stumbling off the runway in a daze was an acceptable risk. We coaxed them into eating a little something, we had Italian food standing by, and they confessed that they mostly got by on stimulants and cigarettes.

We all got by on a lot less back then. The lean hungry look was not a pose for us. We were in a moment, and then another, and then many more, fully engrossed, not thinking of eating, or sleeping, or anything but the creative orgy we’d engaged ourselves in.

The lights would come up and we’d go out for a bow. Throwing logo tees out to the cheering crowd, I’d reach down here and there and be handed flowers. As confetti fell about, I backed down the runway slowly, so I could take it all in. I’d learned in my neighborhood; in my house, that these moments are fleeting. Still, it was all very glorious. As close to being a rock star as I could get back then. At the curtain, I clicked my heel on the stage and pirouetted backstage. Some tees that were not tossed to the crowd were piled up on a chair. Everyone was rushing down the stairs and into the crowd where the dancing was starting. If anything the room was getting louder after the show, but back here around that chair, there was a capsule of quiet, for just a moment.

Someone slapped me on the back, another hugged me, and a third joined in to lead me out into the burgeoning party. A girl pulled a piece of pink confetti from my hair. She held it up to show me, and I took it from her a souvenir, and tucked it into my pocket. It was no longer there the next morning when I went through my pockets.

–Danny Grosso

Instagram @artispolitics

Buy Books! My Amazon author’s page: amazon.com/author/dannygrosso

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Mud People, No. 25

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Mud People, No. 25 (2019). House paint on paper.  From my book, Chicago Gothic, available at Amazon Books.  Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

His leather looked liquid, like the Pennzoil he put in his motor. He had the faintest scent of gasoline about him, just enough to make it alluring. He worked out in the cold so he was always scarved, with an uncle joe cap on top that fell over his eyes with exercise.  He was soft spoken, but his voice was deep, gravel but not loose, fused like it is after a rain. When he drank he drank good whiskey, and he held the shot delicately, like an egg between his insanely beat-up fingers. If you caught him there he’d buy, and not say much, like he was glad for the company but understanding of its limits. In those days the taverns kept a window or door cracked to provide an exit for the stogie smoke, and he always sat near a window or a door. I guess it makes sense then, that I never saw him without a jacket, without that jacket I’m sure, the liquid black Pennzoil wrap that took him with it as it disappeared into the darkest part of the night.

 

-Danny Grosso

Amazon author’s page: amazon.com/author/dannygrosso

Instagram @artispolitics

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Wet

Wet Streets, Night (2020). Acrylic on sketchbook paper. From my book, Out in the Street, available at Amazon Books. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

When the lights come up in the grid and the evening sky seems lighter than the day sky, the colors, and the eyes of streetwalkers bleed on wet nights. The neon sign up high is also down low, in the puddle, in reflected gritty beauty. Her eyeliner runs down both sides of her face, though she’s not crying, or maybe she is, or will be when she gets to a mirror. It’s 1984 and the bulky yellow cabs are blocking the traffic, red brake lights dripping into the wet wake of asphalt. I was supposed to wait for her on the corner, but instead I’m under the marquee, drying off, with a blue light above me that makes me look like a ghost. Shiiiiish go the tires in the rain, above the low applause of the drizzle. She will sound frazzled, even breathless from her gallop her through the elements. She will feel that she’s not at her best. She will be inside herself, receding from the damp, receding from me. I will wait here anyway. I light a cigarette, because it’s 1984 and we all smoke, and then I light another, to warm her, to welcome her, because I see her splashing up the sidewalk toward me.

–Danny Grosso

Instagram @artispolitics

Buy books! My Amazon author’s page: amazon.com/author/dannygrosso

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Moda IX

Donegal Blanket (2022). cut paper and acrylic paint. From the book Barefoot and Other Stories, available at Amazon Books. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

The thing was so big he thought he could wrap it around himself twice. Indeed, he was glad the belt had extra length to accommodate the bulk of crumpled fabric when he tied it at his waist. Like a giant robe, or a great donegal tweed blanket, the thing enveloped him, and carved out a new shape to be set against the silver clouds of winter. “If we get lost on the Great Plains, we could make that thing into a teepee,” she said, upon seeing him drape himself in the thing for this first time. It was true that it was oversized, and maybe even ostentatious, with its wide lapels and near-duster length, but it fit well over the layers he wore in winter as he slogged through his day in the city. A dressed up warming device, was how he thought of it, and he wore it often, even while he was looking for a salt and pepper cap to pair with it. When, after disrobing, he threw it onto a sofa, it made a substantial sound that he quite liked, as if the noise attested to his accomplishment of undergirding that woolen mantle all day. He often had to wear it over a suit but he secretly liked it best when he could wear it over thick, dark sweaters and jeans that were tucked into his black, 18 eye Dr. Martens. On those nights you could see him running through the alleys, sloshing through the snow, those long coat tails aloft behind him like some great speckled bird.

-Danny Grosso

Instagram @artispolitics

Buy books! My Amazon author’s page: amazon.com/author/dannygrosso

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Out in the Street V

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Untitled (2003). Ink on board. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso. From my book, Out in the Street, available at Amazon Books.

The memory is lost in time, like a lot of memories, over time, but also differently, because time is sometimes hard to place in cities. Part of the scene could have been Victorian. Crumbling brick facades, a long-locked, frock-coated man running the snowy midnight street, chasing somebody, maybe a lover, maybe Jack the Ripper. One might expect a horse-driven cart to appear around the next corner. However, looming in the distance is the modern city, all aspiration, skyward and projecting, its lights visible for miles but its menaces hidden. The foreboding captured in the image that does not fade with memory and is not lost in time.

All of us have lived in interesting times. The Roaring 20’s were great, unless you were poor, or black, or a woman trying to work. Try to find a seat on a bus if you are black, living in the south, and it’s the 1950’s. Images and memories can be timeless, but so can kindness which is a form of courage, and integrity, as a form of respect, and all of the things propelling us through the nighttime snow to chase somebody else, or ourselves.

-Danny Grosso

Instagram @artispolitics

Buy books! My Amazon author’s page: amazon.com/author/dannygrosso

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Out in the Street VI

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Untitled (State Street, 2007). Oil on canvas. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso. From my book, Out in the Street, available at Amazon Books.

In the springtime, the afternoon shadows would conspire with the lake breeze to divide State Street in two, with the shady side ten degrees colder. Prematurely optimistic girls in airy white blouses would navigate the hot-cold, hot-cold walk to the train beside guys in leather jackets, bundled up for the shadows and bounding out of the alleys. The boisterousness of the season would get the best of some of them, and they’d jump around on parked cars like children on playground sets. Unwittingly, they were creating diversions for the real shadow people of the city, who were filling white vans with burgled goods in quiet, workmanlike fashion. They’d finish quickly and dissolve into traffic, losing themselves within another hundred white vans, chasing the sunset down the Kennedy.

-Danny Grosso

Instagram @artispolitics

Buy Books! My Amazon author’s page: amazon.com/author/dannygrosso

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Book News

Out in the Street, available now at Amazon Books. Thirteen artworks, along with (very) short stories or verse derived from them, gathered around a theme of being out there, in the street, observing, playing, loving. From a city alley that floods with water and emotion, to a long country road bordered by bending green grasses and stoic red barns, this book takes one on a journey through the inner and outer spaces of a city and its surrounding outlands. There are teenagers visiting street-bound ethnic festivals, office workers gazing out of office windows on stormy days, and joyous dancers careening about the plazas. Full of fun and memory. Lots to see here. Take a look.

My Amazon author’s page: amazon.com/author/dannygrosso

Instagram @artispolitics

–Danny Grosso

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Another Political Bestiary, Ep. XLVII

Cloture (2020). Acrylic and ink on paper. From my book, Another Political Bestiary, available at Amazon Books. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

Continuing the expeditions of Jeff MacNelly, James Kilpatrick, and Eugene McCarthy, with apologies.

The Cloture

Robed in a Byzantine frock, Book of Spells in hand, the Cloture haunts the aisles of legislative chambers and holds enormous power. The Cloture can, with a mere whispered incantation, rob the legislators of their reason for existence, the continuing dalliance and debate of matters on the floor. This blunt power is all the more hard for the elected to take because it emanates in short order from this soft spoken and opaque creature. The Cloture’s deed is devastatingly quick and lethal, and invariably leaves one side of a legislative body panicked, frightened, traumatized. A friend to the majority, mostly, the Cloture can be vexing as it sometimes switches sides in times of crises or need, proving that it has no ideology but its own mystery and power. By that infidelity, the cloture is at times the ultimate foe of elected officials who, left unable to speak on the matter at hand, are left to cry about it on the prime time opinion shows.

-Danny Grosso

Instagram @artispolitics

My Amazon author’s page: amazon.com/author/dannygrosso

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Glare

Glare (2012). Watercolor on paper. From my book, Opening Acts and Other Stories, available at Amazon Books.

Excerpt – Happens every year. That first sunny and warm day in February, that false spring, is the one that captivates enough to distract everyone from the reality that this thaw is fleeting. Office workers head to lunch in shirtsleeves.College boys run to class in shorts.Dapper men of ambiguous means, unwilling to disrobe, unbutton their topcoats as they make thier rounds.

Carlo turned from an alleyway onto the sidewalk.The sun coming from the west blinded him. This happens often when a city’s street grid lines up just so. But no one ever gets used to the several seconds of sightlessness and glare, all while moving with and against the flow of pedestrian traffic. Shoulders bounce off one another, folded umbrelas get caught in briefcase handles, packages get knocked to the pavement.Sunglesses might help, but Carlo won’t wear them because they hide his green eyes. Of ambiguous utility is the shield of the gloved hand, which just exposes the elbow, and a strangers head, to damage. Still, the sun is welcomed in winter by everyone, and some tempt fate by closing their eyes and tilting their heads up, as if to catch a quick walking tan.

Carlo had only taken a few steps from the alley, so he was still blind when he heard the POP!

It was a backfire, some old car, but Carlo was jumpy. He’d had threats all week from the family of his ex. Now he remembered how one of her brothers used to make a sound like that backfire in grade school, by stomping on a closed but empty carton of cafeteria milk.

Carlo had started up with her for the same reason he chased the others – blinded by beauty. She was a stunner. He disregarded the instant notion that the exit from this one might be a little sticky. In addition to her clinginess, he has been shilling for the legit side of a guy that was opposed to her family, and her brothers knew this. Could get ugly.

–Danny Grosso

Instagram @artipolitics and @altoegovintage

Amazon author’s page: amazon.com/author/dannygrosso

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Mud People, No. 24

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Hardie Boy- Mud People, No. 24 (2020). House paint mixed with mud, on paper. From my book, 37 Mud People, available at Amazon Books. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

The Hardie boy is waiting for me. It is 9:14 am and I am already late. The Hardie boy is waiting for me in a place he is sure will allow him to be the first to see me. Leaning against the wooden display case, he has an unobstructed view of the double front doors as I swing them both open and scurry into the foyer. He sort of slides, like a skinny snake, up to me, really up to me, his face a few inches from mine. “Um hmm!” he says, accenting the second syllable with vigor. I try to say “What!” but nothing comes out – my voice is hiding itself – I haven’t spoken since the night before, or rather a few hours before, when it was still dark, and I ran home from the clubs to change clothes.

He is staring at me, only for a second, so I will look at him – he needs me to look at him so he can complete the gag. I do look up, laboriously – I’m bloodshot from the smoke, the drink, the lack of sleep. His crows’ feet spread into his temples. “Close your eyes or you’ll bleed to death,” he says, and then turns on his heel to go fetch me some coffee.

His time on a Mekong River gunboat made him hate tardiness. His time with me made him more accepting of those whose lives sometimes overwhelmed the need for punctuality. He was regimented about everything but me, sort of, but then, he seemed to accept it as his duty to make me laugh, constantly, Reveille to Taps.

He left too early, like a lot of people back then, chasing some demon he had seen before, one that woke him up on that gunboat in the middle of dark and hot jungle night.

-Danny Grosso

Instagram@artispolitics

Author’s page: amazon.com/author/dannygrosso

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