Dreams of Hemingway once
sufficed -- my battered old copy of Islands
In the Stream still travels everywhere
with me, and I promise myself
frequently, I’ll read it again
soon.
Halcyon days they were, when visions of expatriates sipping
anise on the Left Bank and signing on
with ambulance crews to prove
their devotion to a cause could extend past
paint or canvas
moved me as much as the words they called their own.
At 18, I dreamed
it was enough to flee one’s homeland
and cluster abroad in pockets of conscience
to retrieve one’s life
from a predicted, prescribed fate.
At 18, I planned to travel
widely and leave
all calculation behind.
And at 20, I did.
24 June 2009
Commute
The world goes silent
as the train rolls in -- traffic stopped
at the crossing, cars idling in patient
resignation till the bells sound again,
the crossbars raise,
and their trips work-ward can resume.
Along the platform, we
wait, heads turned away
from dust blown up by the wheels and wind,
steeling ourselves against one more day,
as resigned (but not quite so patient)
as the sedans and SUVs lined up
on either side of the tracks.
Where will this day take us?
The train eases to a stop -- the open doors
at the next platform down from where
all of us have gathered.
Silently, we file down, climb aboard past
the conductor, our thoughts already well into the day
that takes us far from this silent place.
as the train rolls in -- traffic stopped
at the crossing, cars idling in patient
resignation till the bells sound again,
the crossbars raise,
and their trips work-ward can resume.
Along the platform, we
wait, heads turned away
from dust blown up by the wheels and wind,
steeling ourselves against one more day,
as resigned (but not quite so patient)
as the sedans and SUVs lined up
on either side of the tracks.
Where will this day take us?
The train eases to a stop -- the open doors
at the next platform down from where
all of us have gathered.
Silently, we file down, climb aboard past
the conductor, our thoughts already well into the day
that takes us far from this silent place.
18 June 2009
I am not a pretty girl : an online art installation in the works
Some months back, I created a painting on cardboard in a series of deliberate steps. And as I went, I took pictures of each stage of the painting, with the intention of eventually creating a sort of narrative about this creation.
And then I got busy with job stuff and tucked it away in the back of my mind.
Well, the other night, I was showing my work to friends, and I pulled out this finished piece and showed it to them and explained the process I'd gone through to create it. And they thought it was way cool.
The piece I'm going to be displaying in the coming weeks is an end-creation of a deliberate process. A narrative in color and paint, if you will. An experiment in textures and merging of phases. It's the story of a life -- a life of a woman, growing up from a young girl to a full-grown woman.
It's starting out as an online installation, then I'll be turning it into a full-color book.
I hope it will be enlightening and thought provoking. Barring that, I think it will be fun to create. The painting surely was.
More to come...
And then I got busy with job stuff and tucked it away in the back of my mind.
Well, the other night, I was showing my work to friends, and I pulled out this finished piece and showed it to them and explained the process I'd gone through to create it. And they thought it was way cool.
The piece I'm going to be displaying in the coming weeks is an end-creation of a deliberate process. A narrative in color and paint, if you will. An experiment in textures and merging of phases. It's the story of a life -- a life of a woman, growing up from a young girl to a full-grown woman.
It's starting out as an online installation, then I'll be turning it into a full-color book.
I hope it will be enlightening and thought provoking. Barring that, I think it will be fun to create. The painting surely was.
More to come...
15 June 2009
How -- and why -- (visual) art suddenly matters
Actually, art has always mattered. No doubt about that. Art (of many kinds) and music have been staples of human experience for as long as we've been able to draw figures and sing and dance and make stuff that is not only functional but also beautiful. They're staples of the human experience, and they have a way of getting to us in ways that only they can.
I'm going to talk about visual art, here. Much as it dovetails and consummately integrates with visual art, music is a whole other massive world unto itself, and I'm going to leave it alone for the time being.
There's a reason that art collections, whether corporate or personal, grow over time. There's a reason that art has become increasingly valuable over the past years. It's not just about art portfolios out-performing stocks and bonds and real estate in long-term appreciation of value. It's not just about striking a pose and chatting about your latest acquisition at a dinner party thrown for the parents of the kids your child goes to private school with. It's not just about making a good impression when you're standing in front of a piece at the MFA or MOMA or WAM and some good-looking (and apparently single) individual stops beside you to admire it.
I've been working with colors and lines and light for decades, now. I've been doing it in the privacy and comfort of my own home workspace(s), building pieces out of whatever was available, and being alternately surprised/dismayed/pleased/distressed/annoyed/encouraged/invigorated by the results. I haven't had a lot of formal training -- almost none, if you must know the truth. I've had a sort of "fringe" arts education -- hanging with people who have had the means and the opportunity to receive formal training, who assured me that what I was creating was every bit as inspired as what they came up with.
But I never really took it to heart. Art for me was always something that was, well, for me. A sort of poor-woman's therapy that kept me going through thick and thin.
And while I haven't shown a lot of my work to a lot of people, I have had a lot of time to think about art and light and color and lines... not in the context of a formal educational environment, but in the context of my own life, my own art, my own impressions. And the ideas and approaches and attitudes I've developed around art and its place in the world have had the freedom to grown and change in a sort of hermetically sealed one-way mirrored container of sorts -- always looking out, always looking out... reading various things along the way, contemplating those things, changing my views, adjusting my attitudes... all along the way...
And what this isolated thought process of mine has come up with, is that (visual) art is, in its purest form, simply information. Its lights, colors, lines, textures, shapes... it's all information. And it is non-verbal information that is actually a synthesis of and extension of verbal information -- a visual-spatial "echo" of the linear-sequential info we are constantly taking in, which sends out ripples of effect throughout the whole of our lives, the whole of our world. What's more, color and lines and shapes and textures enable our brains to synthesize the linear-sequential information, so that it can be integrated into our whole selves, and so inform our own growth and evolution.
Visual art, to me, is a complement and logical extension of this linear-sequential-information-rich modern world we presently inhabit. Each and every day, those of us who are connected with computers and other media are bombarded with information at a dizzying rate that probably would have driven our great-great-grandparents over the edge. We can't possibly take it all in. We can't possibly make sense of it all.
Unless, of course, we use art.
I'm going to talk about visual art, here. Much as it dovetails and consummately integrates with visual art, music is a whole other massive world unto itself, and I'm going to leave it alone for the time being.
There's a reason that art collections, whether corporate or personal, grow over time. There's a reason that art has become increasingly valuable over the past years. It's not just about art portfolios out-performing stocks and bonds and real estate in long-term appreciation of value. It's not just about striking a pose and chatting about your latest acquisition at a dinner party thrown for the parents of the kids your child goes to private school with. It's not just about making a good impression when you're standing in front of a piece at the MFA or MOMA or WAM and some good-looking (and apparently single) individual stops beside you to admire it.
I've been working with colors and lines and light for decades, now. I've been doing it in the privacy and comfort of my own home workspace(s), building pieces out of whatever was available, and being alternately surprised/dismayed/pleased/distressed/annoyed/encouraged/invigorated by the results. I haven't had a lot of formal training -- almost none, if you must know the truth. I've had a sort of "fringe" arts education -- hanging with people who have had the means and the opportunity to receive formal training, who assured me that what I was creating was every bit as inspired as what they came up with.
But I never really took it to heart. Art for me was always something that was, well, for me. A sort of poor-woman's therapy that kept me going through thick and thin.
And while I haven't shown a lot of my work to a lot of people, I have had a lot of time to think about art and light and color and lines... not in the context of a formal educational environment, but in the context of my own life, my own art, my own impressions. And the ideas and approaches and attitudes I've developed around art and its place in the world have had the freedom to grown and change in a sort of hermetically sealed one-way mirrored container of sorts -- always looking out, always looking out... reading various things along the way, contemplating those things, changing my views, adjusting my attitudes... all along the way...
And what this isolated thought process of mine has come up with, is that (visual) art is, in its purest form, simply information. Its lights, colors, lines, textures, shapes... it's all information. And it is non-verbal information that is actually a synthesis of and extension of verbal information -- a visual-spatial "echo" of the linear-sequential info we are constantly taking in, which sends out ripples of effect throughout the whole of our lives, the whole of our world. What's more, color and lines and shapes and textures enable our brains to synthesize the linear-sequential information, so that it can be integrated into our whole selves, and so inform our own growth and evolution.
Visual art, to me, is a complement and logical extension of this linear-sequential-information-rich modern world we presently inhabit. Each and every day, those of us who are connected with computers and other media are bombarded with information at a dizzying rate that probably would have driven our great-great-grandparents over the edge. We can't possibly take it all in. We can't possibly make sense of it all.
Unless, of course, we use art.
More work from last year
I'm working my way through my drawings and paintings from the end of last year, digitizing them and posting them. Eventually, I will get around to posting them individually with information on their media and original dimensions. The colors don't always translate exactly, but I'm pretty happy with how they've come out.
Here are some more:
Central Sun (October, 2007)
Circus (October, 2007)
Double Fuse (October, 2007)
Feather (October, 2007)
Gemini (October, 2007)
Green Fuse (October, 2007)
Gridlock (October, 2007)
K-Type (October, 2007)
Mountain Air I (October, 2007)
Mountain Air II (October, 2007)
Mountain Air III (October, 2007)
Ode to Kandinsky I (October, 2007)
Of Earth (October, 2007)
Omen (October, 2007)
Piet I (October, 2007)
Ringlet (October, 2007)
Self-Portrait (October, 2007)
Splay (October, 2007)
Stormy (October, 2007)
Suess (October, 2007)
Sundown (October, 2007)
Swept (October, 2007)
Treetops (October, 2007)
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