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Jazz-fueled artist drums up his blues period Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Dan Stephens paints on Plexiglas - Jackson Pollock style - using jazz music as rhythmic inspiration in Ashland on Saturday. Stephens puts on another "action painting" display for the public today. By BILL VARBLE Pop, pop, goes Dan Stephens' paintbrush on a big sheet of Plexiglas as Art Blakey wails on the boom box and a cloud of blue explodes on the glass. Pa-bop, bap bap. More blue bursts. Action painting was good enough for Jackson Pollock in the 1950s, and it works for Stephens now. It's the first of two afternoon sessions at JEGA Gallery in Ashland. He'll be back today from 2 to 4 p.m. Changing brushes, the 60-year-old Grants Pass artist flings swatches of burgundy across the blue clouds. Maybe two dozen people have gathered to watch. A chilly wind off the mountains whips through a parking lot warmed by the April sun. Stephens, a former professional musician, started dabbling in painting in the late 1960s, but he never really settled on a style, experimenting with this and that. In 1987 he saw some paintings by Jackson Pollock at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and they made a lasting impression. Pollock painted in a wildly gestural way, flinging and dripping paint at his canvases. Actor Ed Harris' new movie, "Pollock," in which he stars as the painter, tells the story. Stephens remembers standing there in MOMA with Pollock's "White Light." He remembers thinking it felt like the wild painting was emanating energy. Finally, in 1999, Stephens started making like Pollock. Throwing paint, flinging and dripping and dribbling it. "It just came to me," he says. "It just popped in." Stephens next had the idea of taking his work outdoors and painting on Plexiglas and filming each painting from start to finish from under the glass. Photographer Hans Namuth had filmed Pollock painting on glass in 1950, a one-time event. Stephens built a 6-foot platform for the Plexiglas. He needed to allow room for the camcorder lens to zoom out far enough to take in the 4-by-3-foot surface. There's nothing new about painting on transparent material. What's new is Stephens' videos of paintings taking shape as sunlight and sky above add light and depth. Stephens called J. Ellen Austin at JEGA, one of the more adventurous gallery owners around. "Yeah," she said. "Bring it on down." A video of Stephens at work is showing inside JEGA. The viewer seems to be looking up at Zen-like blobs of color with a guy dancing around with a brush and behind him clouds and sky. A long-time professional drummer, Stephens likes to work with modern, post-bop jazz. He's currently finding inspiration in Blakey, or Miles Davis, or John Coltrane's classic 1961 recording, "The Paris Concert." Stephens says that under the influence of jazz, his style has diverged from Pollock's practice of simply throwing paint to one of rhythmic contact with the Plexiglas, popping and bopping along. He even handles the brushes like drumsticks. Once a Stephens' painting is finished, he takes it like a Tibetan monk who has created a sand mandala and destroys it. When the deed is done, the original piece no longer exists, and the artwork that's left is the video, which can then be exhibited. Thus is a television monitor turned into a sort of framed, electronic canvas. Stephens visualizes them hanging in galleries and museums, just flat monitors showing the video. Hey, Jackson Pollock never did that. "Happy birthday to a late bloomer," Stephens' wife wrote on the card she gave him for his 60th birthday last month. Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.