If only I could be a fly on the wall.... Dylan's Drawn Blank Series Now On Display in New York City

Actually, it might be dangerous to be a fly on the wall at a New York gallery. So to tell you the truth I would rather be a fly on one of Bob Dylan's paintings. I mean, they might try to shoo me away, but they certainly won't try to squash me.

Tonight at The Ross Art Group's Midtown gallery the media will be gathering for a private showing of Dylan's Drawn Blank Series exhibition. When I received my RSVP media invite, I had to decline as I had other commitments in Denver. My apologies. Just one more example of the benefits of cloning, though the downside of such photocopies of ourselves has been demonstrated in the Michael Keaton film Multiplicity.

Though I wrote about this collection of paintings and drawings last August, this is the first time The Drawn Blank Series is being shown in the U.S. The media invitations were sent for tonight's viewing from 5-8 p.m., so the event is underway even as I type these words, letters, punctuation marks and spaces.

It's interesting how the GRAMMY photo exhibit in Hibbing and The Drawn Blank Series were introduced overseas before being brought ashore here in the U.S. I think here of how Jimi Hendrix built his band and persona in England before making his States-side re-emergence.

The invitation notes that this event is being launched with the cooperation of the T.J. Martell Foundation for Leukemia, Cancer and AIDS research. It additionally stated:

The exclusive exhibition is the first major showing of Bob Dylan’s Drawn Blank Series artwork in the United States. Based on drawings and sketches made by Dylan while on the road during the period of 1989 through 1992, the paintings in The Drawn Blank Series visually echo the stylistic hallmarks of Dylan’s prose, poetry, and music. The Drawn Blank Series has resulted in a collection which is at once a significant independent achievement and a fascinating extrapolation of themes and images which haunt his music. Bob Dylan has sold more than 110 million albums and performed thousands of shows around the world, in a career spanning five decades.

For a preview of the show, here's a video you can watch. But if I had my druthers, I would prefer to be a fly in the room, listening to the buzz, anticipating tomorrow's headlines, enjoying the atmosphere while feeling -- up close and personal -- the brushstrokes, lines, chromatic dispositions and luminiosity of each region of each painting and representation.

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Meantime, art goes on all around you. Get into it.