I just finished a small series of pieces illuminating some favorite poems I have been finding in Emily Dickinson’s chronology of work. Here is one for your pleasure too:
How much the present moment means
To those who’ve nothing more–
The Fop–the Carp–the Atheist–
Stake an entire store
Upon a Moment’s shallow Rim
While their commuted Feet
The Torrents of Eternity
Do all but inundate–
ED, 1876, #1380 according to Johnson’s Chronology
Yesterday as I was driving, the BBC was on my radio with more details about the despair of nations. I have not watched the video of a man’s beheading, and I will not. But I have seen enough still shots. And I was hearing on the radio the voice of a mother pleading for another son who is being held captive. These killers have power for a time. What interests me is that they are keeping their heads covered. If they truly believe that what they are doing is right. . . then why are they hiding behind face masks? It would be good to think about that.
This is what I know. God (if He is true, by definition, to His name) is not absent. He is aware and He is moving. The same Master Creator who hovered over chaos many times before and from the beginning, is at work still. I am hearing those stories too, but they don’t make the main press outlets. They will not.
This image, which is the last in a 4 part series (still hanging at the Reece Museum on ETSU’s campus) is a visual glimpse. There are two parts to it’s form: a wispy cloud-like from in the upper horizon, and a more grounded darker mass. Both these forms show movement in one direction, and they are moving together that way. The bottom form is enclosed, and seems to be a holding place that is dynamic and not completely shut. This is a picture of fearful grace. Fear must come first for grace to even be a topic of concern. Both these ideas are glimpsed here. I could say more. I would be interested in how this image affects viewers who may well see more, or who may see what I did not intend as this gets viewed and judged and passed over as part of the public record. For me, as I made this, and as I still muse on what dried in front of me with the inks settling: this is a glimpse of hope that still hangs in time.
As the BBC carried on, I looked up and noticed the cloud forms far above the highway. Wispy and delicate they were, so beautiful, so available for any to enjoy with just a glance in their direction. The view settled my heart, and aided my prayers so that I could keep on moving.
In Philadelphia’s Museum of Art there hangs one of my favorites. Henry Osawa Tanner painted this image of the surprising encounter Mary had with the angel Gabriel. This visitor to her chamber, rendered as ineffable light, is speaking. He is announcing the Messiah’s entrance into matter. Of all the attempts to visualize this wonder, this to me is the best. Mary looks as she certainly was: frightened, young, simple and Semitic. She was no blond Italian (in Renaissance finery) blandly receiving such news. Such news. People still think it impossible. Tanner did not.
My Incarnation is the third in a present series (shown until September ’14 at the Reece Museum, ETSU). My rendering is meant to look as moonlight over part of the circumference. The hues are not dramatic, and not surreal. Light is reflecting quietly over matter, like a very purposed hovering over chaos.
But look more closely. A detail of the moon face shows the entrance of life in seed form. Soon a crowd of angels would break their silence when this baby would arrive full term. But even that arrival was surprising, only a few even “got it.” His own Mother, who witnessed it all would treasure up all these things, pondering them in her heart.
It all began here, tangibly speaking that is. In time, in a certain fragile space, the One who “is before all things, and in whom all things hold together” reduced Himself to the same dust we are made of so that He could justly win for us the only way out of this ground of dust. He came “all in” to both life and death as we experience it. And He purchased the way into the Life our hearts somehow know to yearn for. We are more than dust, because He became dust for us.
To have a sense of character, one has to spend some time observing and experiencing. We make decisions on character based on what we see, sometimes quickly, sometimes considerably. When someone then does something “out of character,” we state our surprise according to a prior set of expectations, coming out of some kind of history. Shift to the realm of ideas. When it comes to knowing or recognizing what is good and what is truly evil, it seems to me that we have lost our way. We have given up caring to know. Discernment is hard to find in a culture which denigrates any reflective judgement.
I decided to name these two pieces (last post and this image). “The Nature of Evil” and “The Nature of Good” because of their complete contrast in visual character. These two serve as a primer, using symbolic imagery to introduce the notion that there are two material poles: one is good, the other is fearfully evil. And if this reality is even remotely true, being alert to the character of these poles would be a significant pursuit.
The first image, that of evil, called Abaddon, is dominant and encroaching, seemingly boundless and fearful. The second image is much quieter, gentle but life-giving, boundaried but free. It penetrates the ground rather than taking it over. And it is rimmed by this mysteriously fragile red enclosure. When I made this second image it was after studying some illuminated manuscripts from a book a friend had given me. The first image, as I wrote earlier, took over when I made it, surprised me, troubled me. But it seemed necessary to consider. This second image was planned more carefully, but its making also involved some serendipity. I used a brayer to lay down the veils of blue watercolor, loving the delicate surprise in the markings that resulted, and that were still “in character” with the quiet beauty of good.
This from Art & Fear, p.103 “What Science bears witness to experimentally, art has always known intuitively–that there is an innate rightness to the recurring forms of nature.” If you are able, please come see these pieces along with work from several other fine artisans at the Reece Museum on campus of East TN State, until September 12th, 2014.
This is where I get to live! My husband and I still revel in such a place to be. He loves the quiet the most. I love the long views. I grew up in flat lands. I was always looking out the windows though, searching, even as a child for something (I knew not what to even call it). I just remember the ache and the longing. And I especially was enchanted by the lines that seemed to point to horizons. Now my horizons are much more enchanting, irregular, changing, suggesting deeper promise.
This small representation is called “Beauty’s Kiss.” It is an attempt to show the incredible response on the land when light enters and embraces the contours. There truly is a very tangible ache in such beauty. The land responds to its maker. We can/I can so easily miss this in our own preoccupations. Isaiah says that one day these trees will clap their hands for what they are waiting for. Paul in Romans says that there is a groaning going on in all this waiting. But meanwhile we get treated to glimpses like this!
Achor, a Hebrew place name, literally means “disturbance”, or “trouble” for the town named with this word was in a border valley toward the wilderness that was often vulnerable. There was a reason in Israel’s past why the town was originally named “trouble”, and there is reason given by the prophet Isaiah for the future when the town will no longer be a place of trouble. But between that past and our future there is the plodding forward in our own valleys of trouble. We seem to have many of these valleys, and they seem to be claiming more of the landscape of our souls. Do you sense the growing dis-ease? Many I know are forcing smiles while privately worrying. The times we are in are remarkable. A plane goes missing in Malaysia and is immediately assumed the casue when a building explodes in New York. People are on their edges.
Hosea, another Hebrew prophet spoke of Achor too. He proclaimed that God was saying that for those whom He/God would draw out into Achor, that the place of trouble would become “a door of hope” (Hosea 2:15). What is happening on the ground, that you see and you feel is not the only reality working. In fact there is a super reality working even as I type. And it was working as I painted this piece. I started this panel in 2012, and it sat as an idea but an unresolved composition. I had to sit with it, not despise it, consider it and wait. Then this Fall, after seeing another visual prompt that moved me, in a burst of action my own work came to completion. I knew immediately when it was done.
Enid Williams juried the Appalachian Art Show this year. Her statement about her own work is interesting: “I rely on a complex ordering of form and color to create elaborate visual scenarios that appear to be in continual flux. There is little evidence of pictorial hierarchy, instead the optical effects create an ambiguous space, both undermining and heightening our desire for logic and order. Although historical and cultural influences inform my work, charts that test for colorblindness served as my initial inspiration. I find a certain irony in this source, as the charts are quite beautiful in their own right, and the viewer is persuaded into a longer examination in order to”read” their content.
Fortunately for me, Enid spent time with one of my entries in this year’s regional show, and gave me an award. She had this to say at the end of her juror’s statement:
“Finally, Mary Nees’ ‘Achor,’ creates intrigue and mystery through a complex networking of marks and densely layered inner structures. There is something very satisfying in works that are carefully titled, (and) can be interpreted in more than one way. Place is no longer literal in Nees’ modestly scaled panel, and this is part of it’s strength.”
Here, both my entires are being viewed by another artist friend, doing what he does well: spending good time.
I am thinking often these days of the prophet Habakkuk’s dilemma. He cannot abide what he sees around him, and when he complains to God he gets an answer right back. “Look… Observe! Wonder!” because I am doing something in your days. “You would not believe it if you were told.” God’s reply to the struggling seer opens a world of potential. It is there for the asking.
This exchange calls for some humility however, at the very least. If a Hebrew prophet, with an up close and personal relationship with Creator is told he would not believe specifics as to what God is presently up to, how do any of us think we can assume otherwise? The wonder here to me is that this clueless one gets an answer. There is wonder even that he had the temerity to ask and to expect an answer. There’s wonder in that he is given then a lot of detail, and when he asks for more he gets it. God does not wait for the prophet to have it all together before God lets him in on some of the wonder-workings. And wonder, this pregnant tension, is admonished by God. “Wonder!” Take time, while you still have it (it’s a gift), look around you (there’s much to see and learn from). Observe and be astonished, for Creator still exists and there is very much yet going on right now on this breaking ground.
This piece is entitled “Wonder Working.” It is one of my favorites from a series of monotypes I pulled out in December. It reveals the dynamic tension, the surprise midst the darkness, the softness hovering, and the entrance of the unexpected.
I have been back to reading Emily Dickinson. My vain resolution is that if I simply read 5 of her poems a day, I can get through the complete collection in a year. Try me.
She has a similar aesthetic sensibility to mine, though from a much simpler time, I am afraid. She worked in words, but called out imagery. She looked hard, she mused deeply and she took great courage from simple glimpses out in the natural world (landscape). Her hopes and her struggles were anchored, again and again in her childlike, sometimes whimsical trust in the Words of her unseen Father. I have actually been mining some of her apt phrases for titles of my own images. Here is one, “The Twilight Spoke the Spire”
Here is that whole poem, #1278
The Mountains stood in Haze—
The Valleys stopped below
And went and waited as they liked
The River and the Sky.
At leisure was the Sun—
His interests of Fire
A little from remark withdrawn—
The Twilight spoke the Spire,
So soft upon the Scene
The act of evening fell
We felt how neighborly a Thing
Was the Invisible.
I shot an image yesterday as I was hurrying to pack up and deliver some work to a gallery. I did not want to bother un-framing it, so I just snapped a quick pixelated record through the glass. What is cool though, is that you could see me shooting in the reflection; it’s as if I live in this piece and indeed I do. This is a simple sumi ink drawing, entitled “Between Heaven and Earth.” It shows the far horizon, it shows the expanse of air and ground, compressed symbolically on a 2D surface. it shows the tangled vista that must be got through before the horizon. It’s all there; it seems always to be there.
2013 was a very strange year for me emotionally, there are reasons for that, but to me the more important thing to talk about (and to do in my art) is my response with what is all broken on the ground. How do I see clear? A couple times this year, I heard myself slowly saying out loud “I do not know how to think about that…” Indeed. I can think a lot of stuff through but some deep things are beyond thinking and full understanding. Maybe this is where art becomes such important language for me, even as I grab and go with it sometimes (like in this quick shot).
If my little drawing sells, I am in trouble for I do not have a good enough image of it. But I do have this image and for me, this is pretty poignant.
“What do you see, Jeremiah?” (Was this the first teaching using a visual aid?) God gets Jeremiah’s attention. God, the original socratic prompter puts His young prophet in the uncomfortable position of having to search out an answer. Jeremiah blurts out the obvious. (Were they literally having a conversation, did Jeremiah hear audible words? All I know is there was a very specific dialogue going on, and it is important enough to have been recorded.) Jeremiah answers, “I see a rod of an almond tree.” There was something physical they were looking at then. Jeremiah needed help understanding. Maybe there was a pause; pauses are pregnant with God. Maybe Jeremiah kept looking at this almond branch, wondering to himself “what in the world…” God breaks in then “You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to preform it.” And that is all we have in that beginning of their long relationship.
God makes His point with a simple natural object. The almond branch is a symbol that signals substance. And with this frail object, God offers an incontrovertible guarantee. I so love this, for pregnant are His words still remaining, yet He is watching over every one. There is so much that Jeremiah heard and reported from what God said to him, and so much of that is even yet to be seen on the ground. There are hard words and there are amazingly hopeful words, “to build and to plant,” “to give you a future and a hope…” But this first assurance clearly puts God in the driver’s seat. It puts God taking the responsibility for the faithful executing of every word He has ever said. He is clear that He is actively watching over the sprouting of His consummating work. Long after Jeremiah’s time then, I sit pondering the faithful words, from the faithful word giver. From these amazing assurances does my hope come. I did this monotype in ’08, “Sign of the Almond Tree.” It just came back from Philadelphia. I am so glad to see this again.