Category Archives: my own work

Day of Fire

John Valadez is new to me. His concerns are the dissipation and the distractions of contemporary (Southern CA) culture. His skill is brilliant. This piece, entitled “Pool Party,” was one of his strongest for what I read as a sober warning. The piece is arresting, or it should be I would think, if you still allow yourself compassion and an honest alertness for the dangers (metaphorical and real) we live in, for the people caught clueless when hell breaks loose. Look at these young girls, enjoying their candy colored lives, oblivious to the inferno about to overrun them. A writer I came across recently said that the time we are in now is like being sheltered in a basement during a tornado, where we are all screaming but the noise outside is so loud that no one hears even his own wide open scream. Valadez takes a calmer view. He has his characters playing through shallowness, while he clues the viewer that there is much more going on. This is maybe the California version of Munch’s “The Scream,” that ensign from another anxious era.

The local University art department where I live is sponsoring an exhibit this month called “The Day on Fire.” I guess they want to join the fun with all the 2012 apocalyptic talk going on. In fact, interest in the foreboding is happening everywhere. Prominent Galleries in NYC and London have had shows recently titled “Abstraction of Destruction,” and “Those Who Remain.” The jurors for our local fire show were shocked at how many entries they got from artists all over the nation wanting in on this subject. My entry, “Appointed” did not get into the final show. So goes it. I wonder if John Valadez’s piece would have made it in. My guess is no. He too takes this subject too seriously.

Emily Dickinson is another who took such things seriously. Here she is in her poem simply numbered #530:

You cannot put a Fire out —

A Thing that can ignite

Can go itself, without a Fan —

Upon the slowest Night –

You cannot fold a Flood –

And put it in a Drawer –

Because the Winds would find it out –

And tell your Cedar Floor –

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Go Forth, Abraham

I was awakened one evening long ago. My young Jewish friend wanted to talk about Abraham. I listened out of respect, surprised by her wonder, startled actually by her belief. This was a fairy tale to me, but she held onto it as if it were true. We took many steps that night, one foot in front of another, hiking around a lake, high in the Colorado mountains. I was quiet mostly while she spoke. But that night, something ignited in me because of the words she exclaimed about one man, long ago, who simply decided to trust what God had told him. “how could that be?!” I wondered.

“Go forth, Abraham” is a piece I finished this year. It is an emotive response from 40 plus years of steps for me, in which I have been reminded so very often of Abraham’s example.

I don’t think it is a very pretty piece, and therefore, to me, it is all the more true.

Abram, (renamed Abraham by God), was a real man, a very unique man. He listened. His radar was tuned for wherever there was God-frequency. And when he heard what God said, Abraham took it seriously and he stepped it out. If you read of his life in Genesis 12-25 you can actually follow the learning curve of this man’s developing trust in the One he was aiming to follow and learning to love. Though a Mesopotamian ancient, culturally distant from us, the human-ness of Abraham’s growing trust comes through. It was a real-time process that took decades. And God did real time revealings and interventions into Abraham’s process. The key throughout though is this verse: “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him therefore as righteousness.” Abraham was not righteous, as his history only displays. But God made a call, based on Abraham’s distinguishing characteristic: and Abraham simply believed what God said. This is big. It was Abraham’s believing that accomplished righteousness. This believing Him is a big deal with God; it is defining for us.

Abraham lived according to the promises given him. These promises came in clear when they came, but they did not come often. And so there had to have been so many steps where Abraham was just putting one foot in front of the other, trusting, trying to remember what he had heard, relying on the character of the promise giver. That is what I was thinking about when I made this piece. This is a linear picture of all the heavy steps being made in desert sand, as Abraham moved out trusting. This piece looks at his whole journey. High in the stratosphere are markings: recordings of the words that rumble in his memory and bring light to his heavy soul. There are shining bits that come on the ground: the epiphanies he would tell us of if we could hear his whole story at the end. But a lot of the steps for Abraham as he lived them out, I expect felt dry and hard and shifting under his feet. Each step was consequential. And there is this dark hovering cloud overhead. It is not one that brings rain, but one that brings only darkness and static. Discouragement is hovering not far away.

You will be hard pressed to find a better example of a mortal who risked it all to believe the One he heard speaking. It was not a pretty thing, but it was true. And it ended up being amazing.

I am delighted therefore to highlight this piece for it has been selected to be part of a traveling show called “Scribes of Hope II” which will be making the rounds in the coming couple of years. An artist whose work I have admired, Timothy Botts, was the juror. This is cold wax with metal filings embedded, using also sumi ink and gold leaf; it is on a panel 19×15”

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award of excellence

The juror for the Appalachian Art show this year was previously at Wellesley College as museum curator and also lecturer in their dept. of Art. David Mickenberg also had professional experience at the Louvre, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among other things. This interested me and so I selected some things to enter that I hoped might catch his interest. One piece I entered didn’t even make the show (so it goes) but this piece won an award of excellence, I am glad to report.

 Like so many for me, this piece is marked out not with any message intended, but rather as a physical response to all that rumbles within. And there is a lot rumbling within. It surprised me when it got done. I started it last summer and fine-tuned it just last month. There is one collaged phrase that is embedded in other text-like markings: “pray for Jerusalem’s peace.” Again, I emphasize, this piece was not a pretext to say that, but rather a natural and right seeming way to finish what I was looking at. There is a lot of energy in this piece, layering, piercing and shroudedness. I showed it to a friend who is very bright but very un-artsy and he said before seeing the text fragment “it looks like a swastika.” Ridiculous! I went home and did some research on that symbol and then became even more interested in that strange possibility, especially that in my case the symbol is definitely broken up at its core. I say all this to try to help the reader understand some of what happens in art making: it is a duet, it is intention made visual, it is something that goes beyond the artist. It can be deadly or it can be good, and often is maybe even both. Such it is for things that come from our hands and our hearts. Such it is when even these things can go beyond our hands and our hearts.

I’ve been doing some reading this month also in a fine book I got from one of my daughters for Christmas: “Objects of Grace; Conversations on Creativity and Faith,” by James Romaine. In the great interviews he has here he often discusses with the artists the idea that art making is a form of prayer. I never, ever thought of that before. I am not sure I even agree, for prayer as I practice it is much more proactive, it is also much more specific. But there is some parallel in that with both prayer and artmaking there is an extravagant use of time and trust, of faith and practice. Today, as Purim is being celebrated, I offer this prayer, entitled “Fight Unseen,” with prayer.

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Spending

I reorganized my studio a couple weeks ago, clearing away mess, finding some old gems in the midst (that started sparks), setting up an ideas parking spot, better configuring cords and other safety issues, making a wider work area. . . it has been pretty liberating and the hours I have spent there so far have been fruitful and hold promise for more. This is one of the prevailing ideas for this year: “SPEND IT” Spend the time, spend the risks, spend the agony at wondering what in the world I am really doing. Spend the materials, just use them up! Don’t leave them in drawers, they are waiting for something to happen. Spend all the over-thinking and the self-critiquing, just spend it into more work that needs to be thought out and critiqued. Work bunches at a time, something is going to happen.
Here is one successful result, done primarily with cold wax. It is called “The Fields are White”

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the wonder in not knowing it all

I’ve been reading several things lately about the surfeit of information available, which consequently causes people to be dabblers or skimmers without any sense of surety. One book suggests that the true future leaders will not be those who know the pertinent facts but rather know where to find them.

When I talk to the Apple help guys about some tech problem that has me flummoxed they try steps toward a solution until they find something that works. I inevitably ask once it’s all solved “but how did that problem happen in the first place?” I’m looking for one action that caused one problem. I want to reflect on cause and effect so that I can understand better. They of course have no clue — there’s any number of ways both to get into and apparently out of a problem. We live in quantum times not linear times and my mind is still adjusting. But the implications are fascinating. One such implication is that every move, even of minute factors, such as the flap of a butterfly wing has consequence on the entire system of organisms that may or may not be measured, yet is sure. Looking for surety? Every move made is part of a complex whole that is constantly in flux, constantly has potential. It seems that while living in this kind of quantum whole, that poetry reaches and soothes our finitely glutted senses far better than any instruction manual can. And some visual art is poetry. There is something that captures my attention with a gestural stroke far better than a detailed drawing. There is a wonder and a surprising beauty with how ink lays down on surface that draws me into the journey. I am no longer after perfection. I am after participating in the wonder, and wonder leads me to the answers my soul has long craved. If on the other hand I just manage life as an information arbiter, I have resorted to being only a button pusher, a mouse clicker; I am just skimming through. There is a poverty in this kind of thin external living that is soul deadening. I will never know all I need to know, and the illusion that I ever could is just as damning as the alternative. But wonder, child-like, is the beginning of something else.

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