Gertrude Abercrombie, again maybe, plus

Yesterday I included a bunch of stuff after those Gertrude Abercrombie paintings, but then it all got lost somehow. I will try again.

Those two paintings posted below were not included in the excellent show of Chicago artists (Ivan Albright, Roger Brown, Jim Nutt, Ray Yoshida) I saw at PAFA last week, I found those two pictures after looking her up. Abercrombie was represented by Self-Portrait of My Sister, 1941 and Girl Searching, 1945.

I also took crummy illicit cell-phone shots of the Suellen Rocca and Barbara Rossi paintings. Mike Martin, you would have liked that Barbara Rossi; it's acrylic under plexiglass, with many many little dots and dot-lines painted on top of the plexiglass. There is space between the plexiglass and the painting, so all the tiny dots cast tiny shadows. Kind of Jonathan Lasker, kind of Jovi Schnell, in braille.

It is nice to return to a city you haven't lived in for many years and run into people everywhere. Chuck More was sitting on the steps of the PAFA Museum, waiting for a friend. His gallery has closed, I think he is now dealing privately or something. It was SUPER to see my old figure drawing teacher from PCA, Al Gury, inside the museum. I hadn't even noticed him, he was walking by and recognized me. Al was an EXCELLENT teacher, so encouraging and supportive. A favorite. Al is now the head of the painting department at PAFA! Wow!! Al said that another one of my favorite teachers from that time is also teaching at PAFA - Renee Foulks. The title is not quite correct (unless she changed it) on her gallery's website, but that's me in one of those drawings! That's weird to see.

Also ran into Lamont Steptoe on the street and learned that he was a 2005 American Book Award recipient! Lamont and I made the pilgrimmage to Ground Zero together in October 2001. Lamont has been at it for a long hard time. Congratulations to Lamont!!

RELATED: Roberta's post on the show here, curator Robert Cozzolino's response here.