FROM POINT A TO POINT B-C-D

Dearest Readers,

Last time we talked it was Easter Sunday and I was riffing on the ups and downs of verticality and descent. The open road beckons me now, with its fears and freedom on a ribbon of horizontality. The Scion’s tuned up, with new shoes and juice. Dog Etta James senses the excitement.

Tomorrow we begin our slow road trip to my heartland of Rutland Vermont, unwinding the string from here in Georgia to way up there, with stops at the home of artists Ann Cowperthwaite and Mike Parker  in Raleigh, and a week in Brooklyn with my daughter Semra Ercin, her partner Erik Proft, and dear grandson Roman. Then three months of simple living, painting, writing, drawing, quilting and keeping cool in an unfurnished apartment in the Green Mountains near old friends and relatives.

I’m anxious about the journey this year. Will I be lonely? Will I get too tired along the way? 

Last summer I discovered my driving limits as I traveled around the country returning Hand to Hand artworks. I know what scares me, and I’m afraid I may get afraid, even though I’ve made this south-north trip many times. I went into a tizzy last week when my Vermont housing plans fell through, but then friends helped me find a new place. Nevertheless I came down with a cold and mental exhaustion. I'm amazed how much I like control and certainty. I say this out loud for my own sake. Etta and I will get behind the wheel and clamber up on the back of the road anyway, despite the jitters inside. Last summer I dubbed this panic “The Road Demon”, and kept right on moving. Rest and self-compassion seem to be the key.

 

This impending travel reminds me of an earlier car trip from Georgia to Rutland that Mom and I took back in June 1989. Tiananmen Square was erupting on the motel TV news, as I was carefully returning Mom, 81, the vortex of my life, back to her hometown comfort zone in rural Vermont, after eight years of trying to fit into Southern living. That little car became an intimate northbound space frame, bundling and hurtling the two of us together, then apart.

RISING AND FALLING

Noel Coypel,The Resurrection of Christ, 1700

J.H.Draper, Mourning for Icarus

Dearest Readers,

It’s Easter Sunday, and I’m thinking about the vertical, both up and down. This day is a celebration of rising straight up, outside the flat line of time, entropy and gravity. The premise of this day offers the craving body the possibility of avoiding dissolution and surface transportation, with all the annoyances of driving around an obstacle, instead of simply rising above it.

There is a vertical landscape above our normal horizontal plane of length and width that for me aligns the spirit with earth and sky. It’s the third dimension that rises from the ribbon of two-D, and offers a bird’s eye view of our journeys from here to there. This up and down line of being makes life interesting. When bent, this dimension gives us mass and shape, volume and heft. Thoughts too seem to hatch out of the fullness. In recent blogs I’ve talked about my desire to fly, which represents a curiosity about the spiritual self. I’ve drawn wings as tools for transformation, and ladders emerging from holes.

This isn’t an Icarus thing of hubris and descent. I’m creating contraptions on canvas for accepting eventual death.

Author Rebecca Solnit talks about taking a leap in her 2005 book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost–meditations on journeying outside our comfort zones. Yves Klein, the French conceptual artist took such a leap from a wall on a quiet Parisian street in October 1960. All that we have of the performance entitled Leap into the Void is a photograph* taken as his body arced upward, arms outstretched defying the pull of earth. I love the possibility that Klein and his dematerialized self made it up into the sky. The bicyclist pedaling by in the picture does not even notice Klein’s escape.


Solnit also explores falling, the literal downside of ascension. The 1958 movie Vertigo is about the fear of falling. Alfred Hitchcock creates a dark psychological landscape with a tower, twisting stairs and windows high above the city streets that beckon the characters over the edge.


Physicists have tackled the subject of gravity too. It’s a force field that is everywhere around us, keeping our bodies planted on the ground, drawing matter to the center. It can bend time and space. Black holes have so much of it that all light that gets too close is pulled inside. The Big Bang theory postulates that for a few seconds at the beginning of our universe, gravity reversed itself and exploded outward pushing particles rapidly through space. Then gravity reverted back to its old attractive self, leaving the universe still in expansionist mode.

Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos, 2005

Whatever the scientific theories, I know I am an earth-bound groundling on this planet for a short moment in time. As I walk on the surface, I mostly look down, scanning the ground over the top of my progressive bifocals to guide my footsteps around objects in my way. I’m often lost in tunnel vision, and thoughts of social relationships or obligations. I notice the ground a lot. Lately I've been practicing dropping the personal story lines through the tool of meditation. Sometimes I experience a crack of understanding. Sometimes not. I’ve learned that it’s not easy to fly, or to let go of the handlebars and stretch out into space.

I leave you, dear readers with two of my drawings that play with verticality. One is a fanciful Flying Asparagus from 1992, the other an Attenuated Nude from 2009.

DIGGING DEEPER WITH HEARTS AND WINGS

Dearest Readers,
Heaven and earth fascinate me. So do life and death. I’m intrigued by quantum mechanics and cosmological theories of the origin of this universe. I’m enamored of digging through soil, tunneling below the surface, and the idea of sailing into deep, eternal space.
I own one standard shovel, and a small trowel about the size of a pointy hand. I haven’t dug myself to China yet, or fashioned a pair of wings from feathers and wax, but recently I’ve painted fanciful flying gear, and floating hearts on paper and canvas. I’ve had fun imagining holes underground, under water and in the sky. I’ve acted out Flying Lessons that I’ve given to myself to embody desire for flight. I haven’t given up hope!
Somewhere on my 65-year journey I’ve picked up the image of the heart to represent the self living on earth, and wings to symbolize soaring beyond the places we know. I keep digging down within these two metaphors to see what I might discover. I haven’t found God yet, but I have located a shining something within me. Today’s blog is the story of two new paintings from a nest of five that I thought I had finished in 2008 during a month long artist retreat at the Hambidge Center in the Northeast Georgia mountains.

Meet Thing One and Thing Two, my affectionate nicknames for Heart of Gold, and her sister Hearts in Space.
Thing One’s been on a longer journey, or perhaps I photographed more of her makeovers.





In the fall of 2008 at the Hambidge Center, three odd-shaped hearts in an isolated city emerged untitled as an 11” x 17” drawing in charcoal, ink, conté and oilstick on paper.


During the same residency this drawing became the study for an acrylic on canvas painting entitled Hearts in the City, 30” x 40”. I look at the slide now, and see that I had created a bright, 2-D world, still missing inhabitants, but decidedly more ominous. The hearts are scarier and their location in space is uncertain. I’m not sure what was happening in that cityscape, but I put her aside until 2009, when she traveled back to Hambidge with me for another month-long painting residency.


I had a glass of wine for dinner one night, returned to my studio cottage and courageously painted huge swirling circles of white paint across the canvas. It was a relief. I was thrilled with the intervention and my bravery, but I did not know how to proceed with the imagery that was still visible.

This February, two years after the act of creative destruction, I pulled Thing One out of the basement and put her back on the easel. I reinstated some of the hidden imagery, reduced the scope of the white circles of paint, and added new red striations underneath.


A week later I cloaked the checkered hearts in shrouds of whitewash. I wanted to honor their presence without them dominating my new conversation.


I added one realistic heart astride a set of ribs, and the outline of the horizontal clavicle bones. I think I was bringing the human body into the scene.


I refined the color,


added wings, and renamed her Heart of Gold.


Thing Two has a shorter story. The journey was as long as Heart of Gold, but I was not as diligent in photographing her phases.

In the fall of 2008, during the same Hambidge Center residency, I made the initial sketch for the then untitled Hearts in Space, with flying eyes I called harpies. Like the previous sketch for Hearts in the City, the drawing is of three isolated, odd-shaped hearts at 11” x 17”, executed in charcoal, ink and oilstick.


The imagery in the later acrylic painting of Hearts in Space, 30” x 40”, appears cartoonish and buoyant, but two-dimensional again, with one story to tell. I love the gray roiling storm clouds, but something was missing.


In 2009 I brought this painting to my second Hambidge residency a year later. I unleashed three wide white, pink and light blue painted circles across the canvas, leaning my whole arm and body into the action, with the wine glass in the other hand. Then I didn’t know what else to do, except be relieved, and happy. She rested in my basement for two years until this January, when I brought her upstairs and began painting. I shrouded the old balloon hearts in translucent white, reduced the number and importance of the eyes, and created a night sky. Over the month I added bubbles on either side rising from (or going down into) dark holes in space. I added and removed tiny constellations along the bottom of the piece, added an outline of feathered wings across the white hearts, and then covered most of the feathers in a wide span of butterfly wings. I painted three translucent, realistic hearts connected by dots, redrawing and refining them several times. I reduced the width of the 2010 invasive circles, now comfortably letting them swirl in the cosmic background. This is the mature painting of Hearts in Space.

I am indebted to my four artist friends in two creative critique groups who have helped me dig deeper and fly higher. Thanks to Ruth Schowalter, Lynne Moody, Susie Winton, and Mary O'Horo.

WOOD LOGIC

Dearest Readers,
Trees are on my mind. There’s a creative convergence going on that began last week in my own condo courtyard. Sadly, or happily, a big, dying box elder was removed by our tree service as approved by the condo board. I’m a member this year, and this was my project. Here she is, naked and sorrowful before the cut. Our arborist, Mike Kenton, pronounced the tree to be fungus and insect infested, dropping limbs and bark, with rotting roots and a long vertical split up the trunk foreboding imminent collapse.


The tree was the feeding body for “box elder bugs”– hoards of slow-moving beetle-ish creatures that manage to enter the condos through sunny windows and cracks in the warm brick. Every day this winter my kitchen has been the playground for about 10 of these insects. They live only three days, but reinforcements arrive daily. With the tree gone, this should gradually come to an end. That’s the happy part. The sad part is that the old tree had guts and gumption. It probably could have hung on for a few more years bravely pushing out a wide canopy of leaves that shaded the courtyard.



This is a picture of the elder tree in better days from the spring of 2010. I’ve outlined her former self in red hidden behind the bushes.

The tree cutting process was a methodical dismemberment that whacked and sawed on from 9 am to 6pm with a crew of six brave, strong tree climbers, cutters, chippers and haulers. It was dangerous yet thrilling to watch, ending in a lump of woodchips over the cavity where this gnarly dowager had called home–too close to our homes.






I’ve noticed a number of creative tree-themed happenings around Atlanta this week. Tree thinking is in the airwaves.


The Swan Coach House Gallery in Buckhead announced the opening reception this Thursday evening of “Trees”, featuring the work of nine Southern artists who interpret trees though the mediums of painting, photography, and printmaking. The painterly promotional image used on their website and invitation is by Lillian Garcia Roig. http://www.swancoachhouse.com/art_gallery/current_exhibition/trees_2012.aspx



The Lorax movie is now out in theaters around town. Remember the Lorax? The protector of trees? It’s an adaptation of the Dr. Seuss classic tale of a grumpy forest creature who tries in vain to save the mop-topped Truffula trees from corporate destruction. The animated adventure turns the original story into a suburban love themed journey of hope. The movie artists brightened and rounded out the scruffy old Lorax. He’s fatter and cuter than the Seuss version. You can check out the 2-1/2 minute trailer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_PZr1rqOR0


I prefer the book. I’ve got a copy at home to read to my grandkids. It’s a grittier and more honest plot with Dr. Seuss’ weirdly unique illustrations. Life in the Lorax book is bubblegum cheerful, and ecologically diverse until the opening of the Thneed factory that makes knitted sweater-thingies from the silky haired Truffula treetops. Relentlessly the corporate monster machines chop down all the trees despite the Lorax’s attempts to convince the greedy, reclusive Once-ler character to stop. When the last Truffula falls under the ax, the factory is abandoned and the corporate goons skip town, leaving behind a bleak, gray, stinky wasteland of tree stumps and bare ground where forest and woodland creatures had once thrived. Even the tree-keeper Lorax “lifts” himself outta there. Dr. Seuss ends with one drop of hope–The reclusive Once-ler tosses the last remaining Truffula tree seed from his boarded up window to a visiting boy below. We are never sure if the kid was able to regenerate the trees.



I keep a boxed set of The Lord of the Rings trilogy on the same shelf as the kids’ books. Yesterday I re-read the chapter on Threadbeard and the forest of Ents in the third and final book, The Two Towers. Ents are a race of giant woody beings in J. R.R. Tolkien’s world of Middle Earth who closely resemble trees. They are ancient shepherds of the forest and allies of the Free Peoples of Middle-earth during the War of the Ring. They are a dying race that has lost the female Entwives. They are without hope for regeneration. The old remaining Ents move and speak slowly, finally agreeing to carry two hobbits, Merry and Pippin to Isengard to help attack the evil, life-destroying, tree-chopping dark lord, Saruman. It is implied in the novel that all the Ents eventually settle down in one place, grow roots and leaves, and essentially become trees, ceasing conscious thought. There is talk that the director of the movie versions, Peter Jackson will be making them again in 3D. The Ents will be walking right out of the forest and into our laps!


So, I’m sorry old box elder tree for assisting in your demise. The condo association will use your chipped mulch and sigh for your sheltering arms when summer arrives. A cherry tree will take your place. We won’t miss the hoards of dim-witted elder bugs or the potential for harm that your presence posed. Please give me compassion points, oh pagan gods of the ancient forest, and The Tree of Life. (Also the title of a 2011 Brad Pitt movie out now on DVD).

CALMLY DRIFTING

Dearest Readers,
Leap Day is coming...slip-sliding into our lives on Wednesday February 29th. It’s a gentle fabrication poked into our schedules every four years to let the world and calendar makers get square with earth’s 365 and ¼ day annual circuit around the sun. Some might call it a day of cosmic drift or a 24-hour free ride in deep space. Slippage corrected.

My friend Ruth Schowalter will be in the art show, “Correcting for Drift” with the opening on, you guessed it, this Wednesday, Leap Day at Georgia Perimeter College in Clarkston. http://www.facebook.com/groups/76015195632/doc/10150568020720633/



Ruth’s eponymous piece, “Correcting for Drift”, reveals a threshold into a dreamy oceanic world of biological and mythical beings. I thank her for tickling my imagination about this cosmic day.

Earth and I will be calm on Wednesday. Relaxed. I expect we’ll glide smoothly through the day–Me with some meditation, dog walking and the glacially slow, balanced moves of Tai Chi, and Earth with the precise mathematics of matter, velocity, and gravitational pull. Happy Free Falling Day!

PRESIDENTS’ DAY BOREDOM

Dearest Readers,
It’s a pretty dull day when I turn to contemplations of boredom, but over my past twenty-one years of art making, boredom has become a useful friend. On this pre-packaged, two-for-one presidential shopping sale holiday, I thought I’d share some artwork steeped in boredom or its process. Last week I pulled out another of my 89 daily bathroom mirror portraits of feelings. This photo was Day#1–Bored, and with it the embroidered hankie version. Not much life in these two, but a valid lack-of-emotion worthy of depiction. Last week I painted an oil stick portrait of my boring face–a winning trifecta of feeling dull.

When inspiration escapes me, I’ll often use the method of boredom to break through to wild mind. Here’s how it works. 1.Pin up a dozen or more sheets of paper on the wall.
2.Spread out a variety of drawing and painting media at easy reach. 3.Determine a subject to draw and stick to it. 4.Set a timer for a few minutes...maybe 5 or 10, and hit the start button. 5.When the alarm rings, I must move to the second sheet of blank paper, reset the alarm, start a new drawing, and so on until I am thoroughly bored, and frustrated with the short time-frame, and the repetitive subject. What invariably happens is I begin by drawing familiar images, or sometimes small, controlled and logical images. As I am forced to leave each piece when the bell goes off, I grab different media and gradually begin to try new approaches and more daring colors. Usually by the last sheet, I’ve moved out of the area of boring to a bigger field of creativity by just surrendering, and letting it rip. I did not invent this. Someone explained it to me in the early 90’s. I am indebted to their boring brilliance.

Here are eight drawings of holes or tunnels that I drew last summer using my breakthrough boring method. I’ve numbered them 1-8 so you can see the progression of loosening up. It works better than a glass of wine. My question to myself is, do I like the first one, last one or someplace in the middle?

Number one:


Number two:


Number three:


Number four:


Number five:


Number six:


Number seven:


Number eight: