Imaginary Compact Disc Cover #1

T. Renner, "Imaginary Compact Disc Cover #1," 2010, acrylic on paper, 6" x 4".

Imaginary ECM Compact Disc Cover

T. Renner, "Imaginary ECM Compact Disc Cover," 2010, acrylic on paper, 4" x 6".

Imaginary Paperback Sci-Fi Book Cover

T. Renner, "Imaginary Paperback Sci-Fi Book Cover," 2010, acrylic on paper, 6" x 4".

Another imaginary paperback book cover, this time for a sci-fi novel.

Imaginary Paperback Book Cover

T. Renner, "Imaginary Paperback Book Cover," 2010, acrylic on paper, 4" x 6".

Thinking a lot lately about commercial uses for my work, and this piece just looked like a paperback book cover.

Homage to Mel Cheren

T. Renner, "Homage to Mel Cheren," 2010, acrylic on paper, 4" x 6".

Here's some information about Mel Cheren from the painter Michael Davidson:

Another album cover painting that piqued my curiosity is featured on Archie Shepp’s Fire Music (1965). After inconclusive polling of the “experts” and unanswered industry inquiries, I gave up and bought the damned thing. I discovered that it is a painting by Mel Cheren. The “who?” lead me further, and as I discovered that Cheren continues to paint, but in the 1960s worked for ABC-Paramount and Dunhill Records before starting his own disco label in the 1970s. He now manages a small hotel in Chelsea and continues to work as a gay rights advocate and activist. Cheren is not encoded in the canonical history of art, not even that of a regional, New York history, but like the [Ornette] Coleman's painting [The Art of the Improvisers], created a still-useful sign that is kept alive — owes its freedom of expression — as long as the Shepp record is in production.

And here's Mel Cheren's obitutary from the New York Sun, December 11, 2007:

Mel Cheren, who died Friday at 74, was a founder of West End Records, a spearhead of disco from the mid-1970s.

As a producer for another label, Scepter Records, Cheren was credited by Billboard magazine with inventing the 12-inch single and the purely instrumental b-side, which allowed a DJ to extend a dance song infinitely.

At West End Records, which he co-founded in 1976, Cheren released some of the formative singles of the disco era, including "Hot Shot" by Karen Young and Raw Silk's "Do It To the Music." He also backed a memorable nightclub, the Paradise Garage, where disco dreams played out in the fabulous late 1970s and early 1980s. A 2006 documentary about Cheren's role in the music's early days was titled, "The Godfather of Disco."

All too notoriously, the predominantly gay social scene of early disco burned out in the face of the AIDS epidemic. Cheren became a leader in that cause as well, holding the first fund-raisers and donating the first office space to the Gay Men's Health Crisis in his Chelsea brownstone, a renovated SRO. After GMHC outgrew those quarters, Cheren converted the brownstone into a gay-oriented bed-and-breakfast, the Colonial House Inn.

Born January 21, 1933, in Everett, Mass., and raised in nearby Revere, Cheren got his first job in the record industry at ABC-Paramount Records, where he rose to head of production. Hot acts on the label included Paul Anka and B.B. King, but Cheren left when ABC-Paramount moved to Los Angeles, in 1970. At Scepter, he pioneered long-playing "danceable R&B" formats, and shepherded early disco hits including "Do It 'Til You're Satisfied" by B.T. Express. Scepter folded in 1976, and Cheren and another Scepter executive, Ed Kushins, founded West End Records. The label's first release was a long-playing disco version of an Italian film score title track, "Sessamato," famously used as the first record scratched by GrandMaster Flash. There were other connections to the later hip hop styles, including Taana Gardner's "Heartbeat," a West End hit that has become one of the most sampled tracks.

In 1977, Cheren and his companion, Michael Brody, opened the Paradise Garage, a seminal nightclub on King Street in the West Village in a former parking garage — a ramp led up to the dance floor. Smoke machines and music videos lurked in the corners and one of the most sophisticated sound systems in the city pumped out DJ Larry Levan's selections. As it was a private club and sold no alcohol, the dancing could continue far into the night, sometimes even until noon the next day. The endless throbbing at Paradise Garage is often cited as a precursor to house music and similar modern styles. Despite the onset of AIDS and the "death to disco" or "disco sucks" movement of the early 1980s, the Paradise Garage managed to stay open until 1987. Today it is again a garage.

Cheren first opened his home for GMHC's offices from the organization's founding in 1982, and sponsored its first fund-raiser, at the Paradise Garage. He remained involved, and last January celebrated his 74th birthday as a GMHC benefit. He was also an important benefactor to music industry AIDS charities, including 24 Hours for Life and Lifebeat.

An accomplished painter, Cheren's art was featured on the covers of ten albums, including John Lee Hooker's "Urban Blues" and Sonny Rollins's "East Broadway Run Down." Other paintings, many lit by black lights to bring out the fluorescent paint, lined the halls of his B&B, which remains open.

In 2000, Cheren published a memoir, "My Life and the Paradise Garage:Keep on Dancin': " In the book's prologue, he wrote, "This is a story of my gay generation, the world we built, and the world we lost."

He died of complications of AIDS.

Imaginary Landscape #10

T. Renner, "Imaginary Landscape #10," 2010, acrylic on paper, 6" x 4".

Imaginary Landscape #9

T. Renner, "Imaginary Landscape #9," 2010, acrylic on paper, 6" x 4".

Originally posted November 29, 2010.

Mentioned on the B.E.L.T. Blog

Photo by Toby Weiss.
My piece, "Venus di Milo," (the painting with the red, white, and black stripes in the above photo) was recently mentioned on Toby Weiss' B.E.L.T. blog in a titled, "St. Louis Holiday Shopping? Buy Local." Toby says,

Take a look at the vignette above in one corner of my dining room. On the right is “Venus de Milo” by Tony Renner. It’s part of his Birth of the Cool series, 12 paintings inspired by the Miles Davis (a St. Louisan!) album of the same name.

I still have a few paintings from my Birth of the Cool series available for purchase. They are acrylic on canvas, 18" x 24", and I am selling them for $300 each.

Even Dreams Must Fall To Rules So Stupidly (for Richard Butler)

T. Renner, "Even Dreams Must Fall To Rules So Stupidly (for Richard Butler)," 2010, acrylic on paper, 6" x 4".

We Will Live Our Stupid Dream (for Richard Butler)

T. Renner, "We Will Live Our Stupid Dream (for Richard Butler)," 2010, acrylic on paper, 6" x 4".

We Are So Stupid; We All Dream (for Richard Butler)

T. Renner, "We Are So Stupid; We All Dream (for Richard Butler)," 2010, acrylic on paper, 6" x 4".

Improvisation for Derek Bailey #8

T. Renner, "Improvisation for Derek Bailey #8," 2008, acrylic on coated card stock, 7" x 5".

[originally posted 1-9-2009 and re-posted 11-24-09]

City of Refuge

T. Renner, "City of Refuge," 2008, digital photograph.

City of Refuge Christian Church, 1208 North Sarah, St. Louis, is presenting a poetry reading on Saturday, November 27, at 7:00 p.m. The reading will feature Brandon "Poet Xplicit" Thornton, Mikka Rogers, Iggnyte, Taylored Poet, Lisa M., Honey Luv, Lavita, and the host will be Aja La'Starr. Admission is $5.

Composition for Josef Albers

T. Renner, "Composition for Josef Albers," 2009, oil on paper, 4.25" x 5".

One of the books I most looked at a couple of years ago when I was in the library trying to avoid actually working on my Master's thesis was Albers and Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World, edited by Achim Borchardt-Hume. This book so inspired me that my first completed painting was an homage to Albers. This blurb from the publishers web site tells the tale:

This beautifully illustrated book highlights the contrasts and correspondences in the lives and work of two of Modernism’s greatest innovators, Josef Albers (1888–1976) and László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1947). Beginning in the 1930s, Albers and Moholy-Nagy each developed a rigorously abstract language that condensed art to its visual fundamentals: line, color, texture, light, and form. This language experienced a creative explosion during their Bauhaus years, when both artists moved freely between media and disciplines. Essays by leading scholars follow the artists’ separate paths through to their emigration to the United States, where each continued to push tirelessly the conventions of artistic practice—Albers at Black Mountain College in North Carolina and then at Yale University, and Moholy-Nagy in Chicago at the New Bauhaus School and the Institute of Design. As highly influential teachers, Albers and Moholy-Nagy became important catalysts for the transmission of Modernist ideas from Europe to America.

Running Up That Hill

T. Renner, "Running Up That Hill," 2008, gouache on paper, 7" x 5".

(Originally posted 4-19-2009.)

Improvisation for Roscoe Mitchell

T. Renner, "Improvisation for Roscoe Mitchell," 2009, oil on paper, 7" x 5".

ECM Records has recently released a new compact disc by Roscoe Mitchell called Far Side.

From the ECM web site:

A live album from Roscoe Mitchell and his exceptional Note Factory band, Far Side features bracingly adventurous music from a performance at the Burghausen Jazz Festival in southern Germany in 2007. The Note Factory offers an uncompromising exploration of the levels and degrees of sound inside Roscoe Mitchell’s panoptic compositions, and the constantly-changing music harnesses great energies inside its broad structures.

“Far Side” is the second ECM disc from Mitchell’s Note Factory ensemble. Roscoe described the first, 1999’s Nine To Get Ready as “the coming together of a dream I had many years ago of putting together an ensemble of improvising musicians with an orchestral range.” The dream now a solid reality, Mitchell has continued not only to blur demarcation lines between composition and improvisation in this group - as he has in other bands before it - but also to inspire a generation of players. Far Side features a particularly gifted cast of young trailblazers. Trumpeter Corey Wilkes, and pianists Craig Taborn and Vijay Iyer are meanwhile all established as bandleaders in their own right, and playing with Mitchell has been a priority for each of them.

Craig Taborn explained why in an interview with Nate Chinen: “The kind of things that Roscoe works with [in the Note Factory] have to do with developing your ideas within a certain space, to make it as three-dimensional as possible. To make it full of activity and different currents so that it's a really deep structure, as opposed to being a one-dimensional structure. He likes a lot of depth. The meaning stems from the multiplicity of ideas. But coming out of that, the possibilities of sound change, because you're forced to evolve your sound, your ideas and everything on your own in that context... It really forces you to listen to everything almost with more clarity. You become really aware of the texture. Instead of focusing on one idea or one line of improvisation, you're focusing on this unified space in which all this stuff's occurring. Playing with Roscoe has made me hear that kind of space differently.”

(To facilitate soloist identification amid the flow of things on the present recording: Vijay Iyer, Jaribu Shahid and Tani Tabbal incline to the left side of the stereo panorama, and Craig Taborn, Harrison Bankhead and Vincent Davis to the right.)

Born in Chicago in 1940, Roscoe Mitchell is one of the innovators in creative music of the post-Coltrane, post-Ayler era, and one of the outstanding composer-leaders to have emerged from the ranks of the AACM. He founded the Art Ensemble of Chicago (originally the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble), whose ECM legacy includes the critically-lauded albums Nice Guys, Full Force, Urban Bushmen, and Tribute To Lester. More recently Mitchell has co-led the Transatlantic Art Ensemble with fellow saxophonist Evan Parker. Roscoe’s album with this conglomeration, Composition/ Improvisation Nos 1, 2 & 3, won an Album-of-the-Year Award (Choc de l’année) from France’s Jazzman magazine – one of many honours bestowed upon Mitchell. In addition to his touring and performing activities, Roscoe Mitchell currently holds the position of Distinguished Milhaud Professor of Music at California’s Mills College. Far Side is issued shortly after his 70th birthday.

Craig Taborn can currently be heard on Michael Formanek’s new album The Rub & Spare Change, and he’s just recorded a solo piano disc due for 2011 release on ECM. In 2005 he played on David Torn’s album Prezens and with Roscoe appears on the aforementioned Nine To Get Ready and the two Transatlantic Art Ensemble discs – as do bassist Jaribu Shahid and drummer Tani Tabbal, who have been part of Mitchell’s music for more than 30 years.

Dynamic young trumpeter Corey Wilkes has also recorded for ECM with the Transatlantic Art Ensemble and filled Lester Bowie’s vacant seat in the Art Ensemble of Chicago since 2003. He is widely regarded as an important player for the future of jazz and funk and hybrid forms in between.

Vijay Iyer, Harrison Bankhead and Vincent Davis all make ECM debuts on Far Side. Iyer, very much an improviser of the moment, was recently voted Musician of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association. Bassist/cellist Harrison Bankhead and drummer Vincent Davis have toured together with the Roscoe Mitchell Trio. Perhaps best known for his work with the late Fred Anderson, Bankhead has played with Oliver Lake and Joshua Redman, as well as the groups 8 Bold Souls, Frequency and the Indigo Trio. Vincent Davis, previously a member of the trio of Malachi Favors Maghostut, has also played in groups led by Craig Taborn and Billy Brimfield.

Shroud (for Patti Smith)

T. Renner, "Shroud (for Patti Smith)," 2010, monotype on newsprint, 9" x 12".

Congratulations to Patti Smith for winning the 2010 National Book Award in the memoir category for her beautiful book Just Kids.

From the National Book Award web site:

In Just Kids, Patti Smith’s first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work—from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.

Patti Smith is a writer, performer, and visual artist. She gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary mergence of poetry and rock. Her seminal album Horses, bearing Robert Mapplethorpe’s renowned photograph, has been hailed as one of the top 100 albums of all time. She has recorded twelve albums.

Smith had her first exhibit of drawings at the Gotham Book Mart in 1973 and has been represented by the Robert Miller Gallery since 1978. Her books include Witt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea, and Auguries of Innocence.

In 2005, the French Ministry of Culture awarded Smith the prestigious title of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, the highest honor awarded to an artist by the French Republic. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.

Untitled Sketch

T. Renner, "Untitled Sketch," 2010, charcoal on paper, 9" x 6".

Improvisation for Richard Fortus

T. Renner, "Improvisation for Richard Fortus," 2009, acrylic on paper, 7" x 5".

Originally posted November 16, 2009.

Lemp Sky

T. Renner, "Lemp Sky," 2008, digital photograph.