Notes on Another Night in the Ruins series
Making art is propelled by a kind of hunger. It is a walk toward the horizon– a horizon that everyone sees but no one can reach. There is an urgency to keep walking toward it, in spite of all the evidence of its intangibility. There is a paradox in aiming for something we cannot achieve– for example, I want to saturate my paintings with sound. I want to make paintings that have notes. I want a painting to be like a song you cannot quite remember, but when you hear it, feel like you have always known it.
On Painting
Painting is popular, and that puts it in danger of becoming trite. In contrast, I refer back to our oldest paintings-the ones in the Chauvet caves, and marvel at the unity and sparkle, the gestural integrity of the line, now, over 40,000 years later. No separation between spirit and animal, between writing and painting, or the artist and the shaman. The painting is the story. The cave painting shows the masculine function (whether we are male or female) of navigating the external world, of the hunt for what will give us sustenance. The feminine function is shown in the small sculptures of women found on the floor of the caves, holding the moon. The notches in the moon demonstrate an awareness of cyclical time. For how long has the moon been appearing, disappearing, and coming back again? In this day it is easy to have forgotten the sky, and the miracle that the moon mirrors the same cycle that is in our female body. And what about the stars- some shining down on us now in spite of the fact that they have died millions of years ago? This is a powerful image of the paradox of timelessness and brevity- reminding us that we are all made of the same (star)dust, and will return to it. Why do people go to see paintings?
Spontaneous Poetry and Calligraphy at Naropa University
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp5UOD-gmYwHere is an eight minute video of the annual tradition at Naropa University with a short talk
Grief Cry
Yesterday I heard that the small cafe near Sandy Hook School had its blackboard sign in front, and it said only: say a prayer. For those of us far away, it is a terrible feeling to imagine so many dead children and stricken families, combined with the paralysis of what to do. All the ancient universal questions of where does evil come from rise again. We need a handle to make sense of our experience. How does one go forward? There are stories of heroes emerging- the first grade teacher who hid all her children in the closet and the cabinets. When the shooter arrived she told him they were all in the gym. He shot and killed her, and left for the gym. All of her children were saved.
In the Early Morning
Vertical trunks of nightstand in snow all around the mound where we saw the fox go.
It is two years past the Thanksgiving when my mother laid on a hospital bed, both thin as staves.
We had a party the night before wine and orchids- singing and mourning lifting the bare room's coma.
Teaching at the Women's Prison
I didn't know what to expect. It took some effort to be able to become a volunteer, and I was refused the Kentucky grant I had applied for. The first step was to get cleared by security. The last time I had a security check I was refused entrance to the White House – in spite of having an appointment with the Correspondence Secretary for Cheney- so I was a bit apprehensive.
Once I passed security I was enrolled in a mandatory training program for anyone teaching at the prison.
Before Dawn
I. Before dawn this morning the last firefly of summer sails by the window like a star.
II.
This morning before dawn before trash trucks or lawnmowers- before birdsong; the last firefly of summer soars by the window
Art classes at the Women's Prison
This morning I am up early, I need to be at the Women's Prison by 7:30 with my approved list of supplies for the students, ready to go through all the locked gates. The women are beginning to tell me more stories- about their families, what they lost, and what brought them to prison. There are women that test at the fourth grade level and there are college graduates. When I arrived for my weekly visit, Cathy arrived a few minutes late to class. She had just emerged from "Medline" and could hardly keep her head up. "Will you tell us a story?" she asked. I have been telling them tales of women who have lost everything- like Psyche, just after she was abandoned by Eros and fell hundreds of feet, alone, into an unknown country. To find her way back she had to perform four impossible tasks. I tell them, in the stories the tasks are impossible because that is just how it feels when we find ourselves in an untenable human predicament. There doesn't seem to be any way out. How do we find the willingness to go inward for answers that have nothing to do with logic? How do we know what we need to take with us? How can the struggle we find ourselves in, the loss, lead us closer to who we are, to what we are here to do?
Artist statement for painting exhibit at Swanson Contemporary Gallery
Painting is like poetry, an attempt to say what cannot be said.
I wish to communicate moments of fluidity between this world and the world of dreams. I want to share the sense of confirmation that happens when a dream steps right through the daytime door.