I'm on artaculous

I just signed up with Artaculous, an international art networking startup that seems to be kind of a combination of Facebook and Yessy. I'm still working my way around it, trying to find out how it all works -- and how I can integrate it into my other social networking sites -- Blogger, Wordpress, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter... and more. All this social networking stuff gets to be a bit overwhelming at times, but that's probably due to my borderline-OCD obsession with detail.

I am a very detail-oriented person. Problem is, it can all get to be too much.

Anyway, here's what I posted over at Artaculous. It's a start...

About me

I am a mixed media artist and writer who has been creating abstract expressionist art for over 20 years. I have been working in solitude for most of that time, and I only started showing other people my work in the past 2 years. I'm a firm believer that art is created first in the cauldron of human experience, and only when it is completed there, should it find expression through the media we use. Whether we are using paint or pastels, clay or colored pencils, I believe the true measure of our work is not our facility with our chosen media, but our familiarity with our own souls.

That being said, I consider myself an artist first and a painter second. My life is my art, and I use whatever media seems apropos to express what I am experiencing at the moment. I work with acrylics, oil pastels, watercolor, gouache, colored pencil, marker, crayon, graphite... on paper, cardboard, canvas, canvasboard, and wood.

I have invested a great deal of my life in mindful meditation -- seeing what the true essence of a moment is. I have also studied the approach of artistic masters who devote countless hours not to painting or drawing their subjects, but to experiencing them, getting to know their essence, and reaching a place of innate, intimate understanding... before they ever start work.

Along the way, I have held a large number of jobs -- from working the graveyard shift at a styrofoam cup factory, to tutoring art history, to doing temporary legal secretarial work at some of Philadelphia's largest law firms, to supervising word processors, to building websites. I am currently engaged in the financial services industry, implementing emerging technologies at the enterprise level.

As far as my artwork goes, I am a firm believer in the ability of art to inspire and motivate... to transform the energies of human-inhabited spaces. I also believe that, in this day of exponentially increasing information, art embodies an essential way of communicating informational richness to the broadest audience possible. In "encoding" information through the use of color, shape, and light, an artist can both enlighten and unify the viewers in ways that connect the many seemingly disjointed aspects of our modern world. At no other time in history has art been so important -- particularly corporate art and art in public places. We all crave unity, we all crave connection. Art lets us do it in both highly sophisticated and lightning-fast ways. Art truly is the "written language" of our emerging world.

My art has been the one constant in my life, through the years, and given the enthusiastic responses I've received from folks who have seen my work, it's now time to make it available to the rest of the world. I've loved what I've created, and I've loved creating it. Now it's time for the babies to leap from the nest.

Meditations on vastness

Just under 4' x 8.5', Because Blue Always Forgives Red is the first large-format painting I finished last fall. I had a couple of other large canvases -- Blue Flame (4' x 5') and Rain At Dawn (4' x 9') -- in the works at the time, but this one I finished first.

I painted it for my sister, Carrie, who passed away in 1996 from cancer. It pretty much sums up how I knew and understood her to be -- carrying a great deal of weight and troubles, but still able to flow through it all with remarkable energy and grace.

Until last year, I had never seriously considered painting on canvas. It always seemed like such a big deal to me. And messy. And where would I work, anyway? But I got all fired up when my friend and fellow painter extraordinaire Stone Riley prodded and cajoled me into at least trying it.

So, I did.

I went out and bought some supplies, trucked them home, and we threw together some frames, stapled canvas onto them, and gesso'ed the heck out of them. Then we let them sit, and I started work on them a few weeks later. What came out of it all both surprised and frightened me a little. What I got was a wide swath of abstract colors, and two intensely dark works that just exude vastness.

I'm not sure where these two dark works "came from," but standing in front of them makes me want to fall to my knees in that abject sort of veneration I imagine the ancients felt in the face of Great Mystery. Whenever I show them to friends, they are moved -- sometimes to tears.

I, myself, am sometimes moved to tears. The depth is just so ... there. I simply procured the supplies, put myself in the mood, and then showed up with the intention to serve whatever Goodness chose to manifest itself through me. I'm sure it sounds all mystical and whatnot... and it was.

I really can't explain it. You'd have to see it for yourself.

To date, I have yet to stretch the canvases. I have them rolled and I haul them around to show friends and acquaintances, when I get the chance. I'm always interested to see how people take in the big, deep ones. Sometimes they're afraid. Very afraid. And they either freeze... or they back away and leave the room.

I still have to get pictures of Blue Flame and Rain At Dawn. It's pretty tough to photograph them without proper lighting. In any case, they are much better experienced in person.

And that's what you have to do with them -- not look at them, not intellectualize about them, but experience them.

And the vastness.

Loss – No. 1

It’s 6:00.
Where are you?

It wasn’t every
day our paths
crossed, but it was often
enough
to turn seeing you into a habit.
A comfortable, comforting rite of my pass-
ing day, a marker
that told me how well my week
was going
and made many things right
just by right
of your being
there.

What is this odd-strange world that makes friends
of virtual strangers, simply
by rights of habitual proximity?

What is that weird pen-
chant I/we/some people have to turn
acquaintances
into fixtures that fix
our wandering gazes just long
enough to hold us
close — all eyes and ears — close
enough to make us
feel
this must be something more
than accident… and no,
this was not some trick of chance log-
istics — it was
…
more.

Surely, we must be
connected… Or is it little more than
chemistry, instinctive cerebroglandular en-
thusiasm pumping us full
of what passes for contentment
impelled by nothing
more than
familiarity? “Nothing more than…” I say?
I don’t mean it, of course. I know better. I know…
at the very heartroot of familiarity is
“family”.

Routine relates us.

But now that is broken.
And so am I.
That little part of me that hates to admit to limit-
ation, to begin
with, is abashed
at how little it takes to throw
me off
…
way off.

Have I told you lately how much I
hate
this?
Of course not, you are nowhere
to be found, and I am dis-
traught over —
what?
A fracture in my routine
that my heart takes personally?
What?!

It is 6:20.
And it’s been weeks since I last caught
sight
of you.

I am a fool.

And would have it
no other way.

Going East to Look West

I see it all more clearly from a great, wide distance --
the speed, the urgency, the mad dash to whatever
grabs our attention
and holds it tight - tighter- tighter, till the sheer force
of centrifugal speed breaks the grip of compulsion.
From a great, wide distance across the sea,
the Way Things Are
becomes almost comical, when stripped of daily context
and the collective, assuming mind
that conditioning lulls.
GET AWAY! cries the voice I usually drown
with coffee and the flow of a carefully packed schedule. GET
AWAY
to where they can't' see you to assign one more task, to where
you can't see that side of you
any longer
that's arranged by the clutter of expedience. Get Away
to where you recognize, there is more to life
than billable hours, allocated resources, status checks. Get Out
to where milestones still are lumps of granite
nestled in a wild tuft of grass by the side of a well-worn path.
And there
in that place, look back over your shoulder, catch
a glimpses of the old heads-down world
you put behind, for however long you can afford to, and know
in your bones
all that which a 6x6 foot cubicle
cannot encompass.
Know the feel of the grasses crushed underfoot, the cool
packed earth of that old path, the coarse
solidity of this honest-to-God milestone marker.
Breathe
deep.
But do more -- live
more deeply.
And believe.

Poems for those who pass through

I have had a lot of people passing through my life, of late. People I haven't seen in years who suddenly show up... people who I've known for years who are moving on. It seems to be going around... I've been hearing a lot of stories about people losing friends to suicide or retirement or relocation or career changes or starting a new family. Either way, change is change, and it puts us through our paces.

People come, people go, and as the world is in such flux, these days, it seems only right to, well, write about it.

Verse is really the only thing that's making much sense to me, these days. Prose just ends up glomming up the pipes. So, I write poetry. And it helps.