Winter’s Cloak
Winter is a time for night and dreams to sustain us. There is always a message waiting at the edge of your dream. Something more is always possible. This series of paintings was inspired by winter, the necessity of the “bigger picture” in times of darkness, and the poetry of William Wordsworth — “Something evermore about to be”.
New Exhibition: Winter Seeds Promise
I thought about not posting today, not on this election day in the USA, (my practice being the first Tuesday of the month ), but then I thought what better time to hear Denise Levertov’s poem Concurrence that she wrote during another time of cultural upheaval — the Viet Nam War? What better time to be reminded that while there may be “madmen at the wheel” there is also the timeless faultless blue of a morning glory, or a bluebird, or sky. There is comfort in unexpected outbreaks of blue — like now, three bluebirds checking out the bluebird house — or a poem that takes hold, or returning to the mystery that holds us all on this giant ball spinning on its axis in endless space. There is comfort in the harvest moon that has returned for billions of years without hesitation or concern for our trials. There is possibility in every first sunlight.
Each day’s terror, almost
a form of boredom—madmen
at the wheel and
stepping on the gas and
the brakes no good—
and each day, morning-glories
faultless, blue, blue sometimes
flecked with magenta, each
lit from within with
the first sunlightConcurrence |Denise Levertov
Tales from Tuscany
I can only give you a glimpse of our time in Tuscany, and that is how it is for all of us. The greatest things cannot be told. And the photos don’t convey the people, the laughter, or how they take such good care of you. Or the full moon rising on our first evening.
I am on the plane home now, and everything is fresh, and so I want to give you a picture. I was with my dear friends Birgit Nass, Mari Bohley and Massimo Polello. And Massimo’s husband, Domenico Quaranta joined us, with the hope and miracle of keeping us organized.
We worked with a couple poems for the week, which Birgit had designed and ready for screen printing. The first one, Prayer, by Galway Kinnell, became a favorite:
Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.
Such a short poem that keeps working on you like a Zen koan. Perhaps he titled it “Prayer” because it’s a perfect aim and such a far reach, to pray for what happens. It’s a vision that can change the way we respond to our work, and to whatever crosses our path. This is my grail too, my knight-seeking thing . Whatever what is is is what I want. As William Stafford once said, everything is practice.
Experiments with “Calligraphic Still Life”
I promised in my last post to share ideas about these “calligraphic still lifes.” Many of you will have experimented with these tools, but perhaps not all together on the same surface, or as an exploration into still life. It’s only the beginning. I plan to go much further into abstraction, and into lettering and landscape. My aim is not to have products, but to play. This is working (I mean the part about playing.) My other aim is to have my students playing with tools they may not normally use, and to have tools that fit into my carry-on like crayons, oil pastels and watercolor. (I am sticking with my Mary Poppins effort to have all my clothes and tools and cosmetics for three weeks in Italy fit into one magic bag. At the moment I am in a room with art supplies, clothes, notebooks, journals, pen nibs, thread, soap, vitamin C and shampoo scattered across all surfaces.)
I made a couple short videos to share my process of experimenting with calligraphic still lifes:
“After the final no there comes a yes”
“After the final no there comes a yes, and on that yes the future world depends.” — Wallace Stevens
Last week I wrote myself a letter and mailed it. I just got it back, and as I write this, have not yet opened it. Ok, I just opened it. What is the part of me, I wonder, that waits to open it until I am writing to you? I think it is the same part that reaches, in a myriad of ways, for the sustaining sense of otherness. But when I wrote the letter I was depending on the four-year-old me who says “write this letter as if it is from the kindest-wisest most encouraging person you know.”
Maker is both a noun and a verb
“This morning my assignment is pleasure.” I wrote this in my sketchbook today as a remedy for the many hours I have spent agonizing over a painting, or a piece of writing, or one letter. The struggle is, in part, “the nature of the beast” — the uncertainty and self-doubt involved in the decision to be a maker, the conflict of leaping ahead instead of listening to what the work wants. The shift to plowing through any conceptual road blocks and doing something is a key. But the real guide for me is to work with some tool or surface or color that gives pleasure — even if what you are looking at, as I am now, is an immense pile of imperfect paintings or a tall stack of (mostly) unpublished writing.
Over and again I'm reminded of what I know, of what you know. I mean the most important kind of knowing, the kind that gets lost when I'm busy or distracted — for example, today, remembering when I take my small sketchbook with me, when I mark something down, even one small thing in a day — how this keeps me as a plant watered, rather than wilted. How this one mark can baptize everything that happens in a day.
Martin Ray Young-At-Heart Scholarship
What we want to do is use our “hearts and hands and tools to fashion something unseen into a new thing in this world.”
— Martin Ray
Our scholarship fund is named in honor of my dear friend and student Martin Ray. Today marks the third anniversary of his death. Martin brought brightness into the room, and somehow added space when he walked in. He was a focused and inspiring student to have in class. He worked intensely from morning til night, imbibing the atmosphere of the room and the thin air of the high desert. He was a man of few words, but when he spoke, we listened
Here are some examples of his work, and also one of the scholarship recipients:
“Cast upon yourselves a spell against stagnation.”
How is it that some of us go forward with vigor and adventure to the end, and some of us wither? Or, most likely, we have both qualities but wish to increase the former — the vitality that is connected to hope and self-confidence. How do we free ourselves from the mind-weeds and negativity that are obstacles to renewal? How do we cast a spell against stagnation?
The challenges will keep coming. Here in the desert, having time before class begins, I am making a list of things that are antidotes to ossification, the word itself reflecting the rigidity of bones. Here is my list so far:
Sit alone next to a tree, a place where you cannot be found except by the tree.
Turn left instead of right.
Reach out to someone you don’t like.
Stop thinking about your work and do it.
Stop thinking.
Make room for serendipity.
What follows is a week of serendipity and exploration in Taos, with wonderful images from the student work.
The Third Thing
This post is about the magic of number three, and how it applies to makers.
My online class, A Grain of Hope, just finished. We talked briefly about the numbers 1, 2 and 3 — the unity of one, the duality of two and the possibility of breakthrough with three. I will focus on three, the third thing, and give some examples, but first I want to lay the groundwork with number two:
Two brings both relationship and the trap of dualistic thinking. Two deceptions that we makers, and probably most humans, fall into are perfectionism and comparison. That is, how trying to be perfect, or comparing ourselves with others, leads to endless unresolved spirals in the mind. In this setup, we are never good enough, or even when we are, it’s only for brief moments. These mind-weeds leave no ground for the third thing. We get stuck in the thicket of good-bad, right-wrong, and pretty-ugly tangles in our mind. It is tiring. These mind-weeds stop us in the studio and at our writing desk.
What follows are some examples of puncturing duality with the third thing.
Images from “Winter Seed’s Promise”
I have just returned from a week in Taos, New Mexico, where I taught “Winter Seed’s Promise.” The students collected seeds over the winter, and also on walks on the grounds where we all stay in Taos. The seeds became images of promise, possibility, fragility, curiosity, secrets, and time. Seeds were the inspiration for writing, drawing and painting from beginning students to professionals. There was an international atmosphere in our classroom with French, Italian, American and German students.
Below are lots of images inspired by seeds, and further down is the work with alphabet variations: