Tree Painting

At a gallery called The Proposition in the East Village of Manhattan, I saw a masterly work by William S. Stone, from his show "The Rough Stuff."  It's a painting 12 1/2 inches by 22 inches, but there is no paint -- only pine bark.  Actual pine bark, removed from a tree, and mounted on three pieces of plywood glued together.  The piece is untitled.

How did Stone make bark -- which is inherently curved -- so pleasingly flat?  How did he choose this size, so much like a Holbein portrait?  Stone's idea is so simple, simple as a tree, yet I've never seen it before.  And maybe it's never existed before!  Some ideas are so obvious no one has ever thought of them.

Looking at bark cut into a perfect rectangle, one is struck by its aesthetic complexity.  One message of the piece is:  God is an abstract artist often mistaken for a realist.

Stone's painting, or sculpture (which the pricelist calls a "Wall Hanging") is funny, but like most jokes, also has a message.  For example, this joke:

Two bored casino dealers were waiting at a crap table. An attractive blonde woman arrived and bet $20,000 on a single roll of the dice. She said, "I hope you don't mind, but I feel much luckier when I'm completely nude." With that, she stripped, rolled the dice and yelled, "Come on, baby, Mama needs new clothes!" As the dice stopped rolling, she jumped up and down and squealed: "YES! YES! I WON, I WON!" She hugged each of the dealers then picked up her winnings and her clothes and quickly departed.

The dealers stared at each other dumbfounded. Finally, one of them asked, "What did she roll?" The other answered, "I don't know -- I thought you were watching."

It's message is: "The dumbness of blondes is a convenient invention" (at least for the nameless star of this joke).

[Incidentally, The Proposition has a wonderful address: 2 Extra Place.  It's an alley off 1st Street, between the Bowery and 2nd Avenue, behind where CBGB's once existed.  http://www.re-title.com/public/newsletters/6_July_10_-_The_Proposition_gallery_re-opens_in_NYC_William_S._Stone_The_Rough_Stuff_0.htm]