Our Daily Dead

NY Times
Alan Shields, whose radiantly colored, sewing-machine stitched, three-dimensional paintings made him prominent in the New York art world of the 1970’s, died on Tuesday at his home on Shelter Island, New York. He was 61.

Mr. Shields was being treated for emphysema and died in his sleep, said Marla Gagnum, his companion.

A tall, athletic man with a pierced ear, shaved head and full beard, Mr. Shields simultaneously resembled a harpooner out of Melville and a hippie from central casting. He burst on the scene in 1969, with a show at the Paula Cooper Gallery in SoHo, with a style of counterculture modernism that became so popular its sales supported the gallery for several years. By 1973, his work had appeared on the cover of Artforum and been acquired by numerous major museums in New York and across the country.

Mr. Shields’s work combined expanses of gorgeous stained color, reminiscent of Helen Frankenthaler’s canvases, with the humbler crafts and a Gypsy sense of portability. Mr. Shields was a Post-Minimalist, but his work had a joyful quality at odds with his many of his more cerebral contemporaries.

His unstretched textilelike paintings conjured up tribal non-Western cultures and undermined notions of painterly machismo. They could resemble pliant mandalas or sky maps with stitching and beads for constellations, be elegantly tie-dyed structures reminiscent of small tents, hanging labyrinths, or simple strands of beads or strips of canvas.

Mr. Shields was, as the critic Robert Hughes wrote, a brilliant bricoleur who could, and often did, make art out of just about anything. In the early 1990’s, when his teenage daughter asked him to stop painting his fingernails, he started painting wood beads and making necklaces. He collaborated on handmade books, excelled at watercolor (usually two-sided, often woven) and became an innovative printmaker, experimenting with handmade paper and turning out editions in which each print was unique. Recently, he had become interested in animation.

Born on Feb. 4, 1944, in Herington, Kan., Mr. Shields grew up on his family’s farm doing chores, learning to sew from his mother and two sisters and assimilating a strong work ethic and penchant for tinkering. He studied engineering, then theater and finally art at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan., and by the time he left (without a degree), was making three-dimensional paintings with a sewing machine. He had seen very little contemporary art firsthand.

Although it was linked to Pattern and Decoration in the late 1970’s, Mr. Shields’s his work dropped from view in the onslaught of appropriation art and Neo-Expressionism in the 1980’s. Nonetheless, his work is a forerunner to a host of younger artists using bricolage, craft, strong color and non-Western references, among them Jessica Stockholder, Jim Lambie, Jim Drain, Xenobia Bailey and John Bock.

Our ODDguest today Mr. Alan Shields was said to be a Post-Minimalist. Who exactly makes up these art categories anyway?

“Post-Minimalism” - Although minimalist art of the 1960s had a stripped-down, prefabricated look, striving to be free of content (free of allegorical qualities), art with minimalist tendencies from the 1970s onward typically became more content-laden.”

Wikipedia says that “The keystone of post-minimalism is the often distinct references to objects without direct representation.”

Thus it is that we strive today to be free of content.

I wrote a verse, I chose a rhyme,

My words spoke all my thought.

“Come death, for I have conquered time,

‘Tis all I sought.”

My former voice seems out of chime,

My future words all dumb,

Yet I have conquered death and time,

Let what may come ~~”The Road to Sinodun”, George D. Painter, Biographer of Proust whose principal career was as a distinguished incunabulist at the British Museum.

Oh to be a distinguished incunabulist.

NY Times
Joseph L. Owades, a biochemist whose recipe for a light beer, among other contributions to the science of brewing, made him a leader in the industry, died Friday at his home in Sonoma, Calif. He was 86 and also had a home in San Francisco.

The cause was heart failure, his family said.

Dr. Owades (pronounced oh-WAY-dees) became involved with brewing by way of his research into the properties of yeast and the starches found in malt. He was looking for and found an enzyme that prompted yeast to digest all of the starch.

His discovery resulted in a beer without residual carbohydrates and with fewer calories, or what became known as light beer. Such a brew using his enzyme was first mass-produced by Rheingold Brewing, his employer at the time, which marketed the low-calorie brew under the Gablinger’s label. Years later, after the Miller Brewing Company bought Gablinger’s, it became Miller Lite.

His process for making low-calorie beer gave rise to many successful specialty brands from new and independent smaller breweries. In 1975, he became a consultant to this growing part of the business as the founder and director of the Center for Brewing Studies in Sonoma, Calif.

Joseph Lawrence Owades was born July 9, 1919, to immigrant parents on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He graduated in 1939 from City College.

An early interest in chemistry led him to Polytechnic Institute, now Polytechnic University, in Brooklyn and a master’s degree in 1944 and a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1950. His dissertation was on cholesterol.

After serving in the Navy during World War II, he began as a research chemist working on fermentation for Fleischmann’s Yeast in 1948. From 1951 to 1969 he was a vice president and technical director at Rheingold in Brooklyn.

He held similar positions at Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis until 1972 and at the Carling Brewing Company in Boston until 1975, when he founded the Center for Brewing Studies, originally in San Francisco.

As a consultant, he advised clients like New Amsterdam Brewing in New York, Anchor Brewing in San Francisco and Boston Brewing, where he assisted in the introduction of Samuel Adams Lager.

NY Times
William J. Oswald, a scientist who pioneered ways to use algae to address immense human problems - including treating sewage, increasing food supplies, generating energy and facilitating voyages into deep space - died on Dec. 8 at his home in Concord, Calif. He was 86.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, said the University of California, Berkeley, where Dr. Oswald was a professor emeritus in civil and environmental engineering.

Dr. Oswald promised miracles from the humblest of plants and proceeded to perform more than a few.

He developed a system of ponds in which algae eat and purify wastewater, and built more than 100 around the world. The algae could then be harvested using his patented process as protein-rich food for animals or people able to ignore its provenance. The leftover water, now cleansed, could be used for irrigation, as a coolant for engines and even, with more purification, for human consumption.

The sludge from the bottom of the pond could be added to the soil as humus, he advised. Methane gas produced by the algae could be captured and used. The per-acre yield of protein is 10 times that of soybeans, and algae suffer from few of the diseases that affect other crops. Since algae can do all this work in seawater, more precious freshwater can be conserved.

“It is technically feasible to apply controlled photosynthesis to reclaim and reuse our wastes an indefinite number of times and in so doing to produce unprecedented quantities of food, water and raw materials at costs within the economic reach of most societies,” Dr. Oswald said in a speech in 1960.

Many of these concepts were realized in experiments or actual projects. Dr. Oswald’s ingenious idea for having astronauts take along some algae to treat their waste, while producing oxygen and water, has so far been tested only with mice, successfully.

Treatment systems designed by Dr. Oswald or patterned after his design are now in use in Bolivia, Brazil, Greece, Mexico and South Africa, as well as in the United States.

Dr. Oswald was particularly interested in applying his ideas for simple, affordable, sustainable wastewater treatment to developing countries. In recent years, he worked with the government of India to develop a way to use algae ponds to purify the Ganges River.

In a 1998 article on this Ganges effort, The New Yorker declared, “Oswald is to algae what Michael Jordan is to basketball.”

As we understand it algae is algae unless it is cyanobacteria, and yeast is a type of fungi. These two microorganisms figure prominently in the lives of today’s ODDguests - Mr. Joseph L. Owades and Mr. William J. Oswald. Mr. Owades (middle initial L. for Lite Beer) worked with yeast and Mr. Oswald worked with algae.

Since we ODDones are never far from beer let us take yeast excrement to start. Actually Mr. Owades discovered a wee enzyme that ‘prompted’ yeast to eat everything on their collective plate - that is to digest all available starch. Why was this a big deal? The process produced a beer with reduced carbos and fewer calories and started a cultural revolution called The Light Beer Commercial. No end of beer commercials now make up the genre called Classic Commercials.

Think you are just the smartest? Then sashay over and take the Beer Church Beer Commercial Quiz. And after your quiz workout raise a toast to Mr. Owades won’t you?

Algae gone wild produces everyone’s favorite spring time treat - pond scum. We know Pond Scum isn’t as sexy as Light Beer, but understanding pond scum is every bit as important as understanding yeast excrement. Mr. Oswald perfected methods that used algae to clean wastewater and built more than 100 such cleansing ponds around the world.

And if you still lack for inspiration you can try Pond Scum Art - “…is an entirely flowing universe, a miniature ecosystem that our hands gently pulled from the tight-knit rocks.” Uh, what?

I’ve had enough, I’ve seen enough, I’ve had it all, I’m giving up
I won the race, I broke the cup, I drank it all, I spit it up
Yeah, atomic, supersonic
What a joke, I’m dumb
See ya, don’t wanna be you
Lunch meat, pond scum

My head’s on fire in high esteem
Get drunk and sing along to queen
Practice my t-rex moves and make the scene
Yeah, I’d rather be anywhere doing anything ~ “The Wake-Up Bomb”, REM

LA Times
Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, the powerful New York mob boss who avoided prison for decades by wandering Greenwich Village’s streets in a ratty bathrobe and slippers as part of an elaborate feigned mental illness, died Monday in prison, federal officials said. He was 77.

Gigante died at the U.S. Medical Center for federal prisoners in Springfield, Mo., prison spokesman Al Quintero said. The cause of death was not immediately known, but Quintero said Gigante had a history of heart disease.

Dubbed “The Oddfather” for his bizarre behavior, the former Genovese crime family head, an ex-boxer whose lengthy string of victories over prosecutors ended with a July 1997 racketeering conviction, finally admitted his insanity ruse at an April 2003 hearing.

After nearly a quarter-century of public craziness, Gigante calmly pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for his deception. He then chatted amiably with his son, shook hands with defense lawyers and even laughed at one point.

“God bless you,” he told U.S. District Judge I. Leo Glasser, offering a broad wave goodbye before leaving the Brooklyn courtroom. Gigante was jailed in the medical ward at the federal prison in Springfield — the same facility where rival mob boss John Gotti died.

Denying that he was a gangster, Gigante wandered the streets of Greenwich Village in nightclothes, muttering incoherently. Relatives, including a brother who is a Roman Catholic priest, insisted Gigante suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Authorities charged that it was a brazen act to avoid the law — although it wasn’t until 1997 that a jury agreed, and it took six years for Gigante to concede his subterfuge. At the height of his power, Gigante’s empire stretched from the booths at Little Italy’s San Gennaro Festival to the docks of Miami.

“The ‘Looney Tunes’ act served Gigante well — it kept him out of prison for 30 years — but in the end he was the victim of his own crazy act. He never had a chance to enjoy the fruits of his plunder, and he told some people that, if given the chance, he wouldn’t do it that way again,” said Jerry Capeci, a Mafia expert and author of six books on organized crime.

For the man described by the New York Times Magazine as “the last great Mafioso of the century,” his admission was the final act in a 50-year career embracing the era of old-time “Mustache Petes” and the modern Mafia of Gotti.

Gigante looked the part, a stocky figure with a pugilist’s face and 1940s pompadour. Mob experts called him a traditional boss, trusted by others, who settled issues by whatever means — verbal or violent — were required.

His fall from power was sealed in a Brooklyn courtroom where a parade of six turncoat mobsters, led by ex-Gotti under-boss Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, described Gigante’s power in the Genovese clan and the Commission, organized crime’s ruling directorate.

Today’s ODDGuest Vincent Gigante wandered the streets of Greenwich Village in a bathroom and slippers for decades, but everyone said he was just faking it to avoid prison. You do have to wonder at what point the act becomes reality for the actor. In the end Mr. Gigante wound up in prison eventually anyway, but at least he earned himself a catchy nickname - The OddFather. You know we here at ODDcentral certainly like that moniker.

Faking it has a number of adherents of course. You might be surprised to know that many cell phone users are apparently faking it. Next time you find yourself cursing at the bozo in the car next to you just remember that they might be in it only for the look you give them. That is just a touch bizarre in our book.

Faking it gets great airplay (so to speak) in the music industry too - recall Ashlee Simpson’s lousy job of faking it. Come to think of it both Simpsons do a lousy job. The other Simpsons have vastly more talent and import.

Seeking a cure for
faking it again, we remain…