Tag: noir

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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A Christmas Phantom

Christmas Eve (1980-?). Acrylic on cardboard. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

Back then, when the tree sellers closed their businesses for the season on Christmas Eve, they would abandon their unsold inventory on the otherwise vacant lots. The hawkers of balsam and fir had no use for their wares after December 24, so the trees stood alone in the dark, like pilgrims queuing up for a shrine. In our neighborhood, late at night on that twinkling holiday, a liberator would appear, dancing through the snowy and quieted lots. The legend has it that he would take the forsaken tannenbaums, throw them into the back of his drop-top sled, and deliver them to shut-ins, leaving the evergreens on front porches for Christmas morning discoveries. The recipients were easily chosen, for in that era, most neighbors commiserated with one another, and one might easily determine which of them were unable, due to illness, poverty, or other misfortune, to venture out and deck the halls.

This was much spoken about for some time, and the mystery surrounding the identity of the benevolent phantom was never convincingly solved. Over time, as often happens, people turned to speculating about other, newly discovered intrigues, and interest in the phantom waned. Yet, even now, we are greeted each winter, in one or two pieces of holiday correspondence from the old neighborhood, with news of Christmas trees being left anonymously on porches.

All legends die hard, especially those grounded in the time of willing hearts and kind intentions.

Welcome Yuletide.

–Danny Grosso

Instagram@artispolitics

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Flick

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Flick (2019). Acrylic on paper. From my book Trouble is Trouble, available at Amazon Books. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

Excerpt:  “Flick.” He didn’t so much say it a mouth it, as he snapped the cigarette from his fingers. He did not wish to break the serene, crystalline silence of this typical winter midnight. The blanket of snow and the cold added soft pressure to the gathering hush, and he thought he could hear the butt sizzling as it spiraled into its powdery grave.

“I’ll bring you a friend a little later,” he thought, silently communicating to the discarded cig.

Up ahead there was a door with a blue light, and beyond the door, a visit he must make. No snow days with this work. When he gets the call he must answer or there will be no more calls, no more anything. Maybe not even the black of the night without the blue lights. Nobody knows. No matter what they say, nobody knows.

When he reached the vestibule, he stamped the snow off of his feat, and then he froze, realizing he’d broken the silence. The light went off above his head, inviting the darkness to surround him. He stood there waiting, listening to his breath, visible in the cold. He didn’t turn around.

–Danny Grosso

Instagram @artispolitics

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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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Neighborhood Royalty, No. 1

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This Guy (1998). Oil on Canvas. From my Book, Trouble is Trouble, available at Amazon Books. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

Excerpt:  “This guy, this guy over there says this thing is gotta get done, and I mean gotta. You get me? This is no joke no more, everybody’s fed up and it’s not good for anyone when the old mustaches get fed up, or even when they hear that everyone around them is fed up. It’s just no good to make waves, and this could be an ocean of ’em if you don’t take care of this thing.” Vince was agitated, walking faster than his normal stroll. He was making his point, making his plan, appointing the contractor. His walking partner hesitated to respond, eyeing the parking meters, then the van on the corner before Vince ushered him around the corner and into a storefront vestibule. “Look at me, Charlie,” he said, and waited to catch his eye. Then Charlie nodded, turned, and walked back to his Seville. He pulled a u-turn into traffic and sped away.

-Danny Grosso

Instagram @artispolitics

Amazon.com/author/dannygrosso

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