Lunch is an escape from the 10’ x14’ room and my fellow trainees who are sucking back their snot and chewing gum out loud. We’re given directions for fast food and lunch wagons in either direction, but I bring my own. All I need is a place to park and eat. I know the Stewart Airport National Guard air base (enormous C-5 Galaxy aircraft) and Orange County Choppers are to my east, so I explore west. 2 miles down the road is a huge warehouse.
Around the corner, outside in various stages of completion, are things like this:
Thinking about the beginner’s mind, spaces in between, the need we never lose to be held, stillness, the memory of objects, everything is a narrative. Day 21- non-smoking.
Week 2 of the semester, I began reading Jane Hirshfield’s book of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. I tried reading the chapters consecutively, but I’d grasp an “aha” moment and then lose my way in her prose. Now I access it randomly and repetitively. The slivers of my understanding are finding their expression in 3 current paintings:
A Small Part of the Pantomime – mixed medium on plywood, 12” x 24”
Titled from Wallace Stevens’s Thirteen ways of Looking at a Blackbird, section III:
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
Hirshfield’s essay, Two Secrets: On Poetry’s Inward and Outward Looking, utilizes Stevens’s poem to view the inward and outward looking modes of poetry. The poem’s perspective continuously shifts; similarly, the perspective of the painting shifts from looking at, to looking down on, from 2D to 3D. The realms of nature and human are meant to exchange perspectives by using organic and man-made materials and forms.
Another influence of imagery in this painting comes from a translation by Hirshfield of Ono No Komachi’s poem:
Longing,
fiercely longing—
To dream of him
I turn my bedclothes inside out
this dark-husked night.
Metaphorically, there is an intensely personal and private struggle exposed on this substrate. Some dilemmas cannot be resolved, yet in knowing them better there is a gain. My intention is for the imagery to be allusive enough to generate your response, engage your narrative, without needing to know the details of mine.
The Sweet Hell Within, The Unknown Want- mixed mediums on plywood, 16” x 24”
At the end of her book, Hirshfield talks about “stepping past what we already think we know and into an entirely new relationship with the many possibilities of being.” The title for the painting comes from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, 1900, 212. Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, section 9. The innuendo of the sphere could be Whitman’s moon, repeated throughout the poem:
From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen as if with tears,
O, under that moon, where she droops almost down into the sea!
O brown halo in the sky, near the moon, drooping upon the sea!
The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of the sea almost touching;
By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon,
The shell has a feminine form and posture and reminds me of Boticelli’s Birth of Venus painting. I liked the contrast of black hematite on the white shell, the orb referenced again within the metal snap ring circle, within the feathery enclosure of a rusted tuna can...so many circles and layers! I say, begin with the imagery of birth and death and continue from there…The rhinestones, difficult to see in the pics, are in set in a metal bale component that mimics goggles. Or breasts. I like the juxtaposition of rhinestone and metal with the organic white ‘innocence’ of the shell.
Notes on Hematite: In Western Astrology, Hematite is associated with Capricorn, Aries and Aquarius, all signs whose supposed personalities are in need of a good, calming and grounding stone. Saturn rules the stone in astrology, but in Roman Myth, Hematite is a symbol of Mars, their incarnation of the God of War. It also symbolizes the hour of 2 a.m. Because of its powers to calm and reduce stress, Hematite is often recommended by Crystal Healers as an aid in bringing about sound sleep by creating a calm, meditative state within in the mind. Further, they credit it with eliminating worry. The ancient Egyptians used Hematite in the creation of their magical amulets some of which were treatments for madness and inflammation.
The Greek word haima, which means blood, is the root of Hematite’s name and originates from the stone’s dark red streak. Hematite relates to the Mars, the Roman God of War. The Romans glorified Mars more than the Greeks did, who loathed him and knew him as Ares. Warriors in Roman times used Hematite as protection during battle. So strong was their belief in the power of Hematite to protect them that they thought it could even make them invincible. Some cultures even believed Hematite formed from blood that had fallen on the ground of a battlefield.
In modern times, the powers of protection applied to the stone has expanded into the spiritual realm, where it is believed that Hematite can transform or absorb negativity or evil. It is also a worry stone with excellent emotional grounding properties that calm the mind and clears it of the distractions of stress. In this state, the person is ready for exploration of higher levels of consciousness. With this calming effect, they consider it helpful in meditation leading to astral projection and the communication of love’s energy. Further, they say that Hematite is a lawyers’ stone that brings positive judgments in legal matters and it is a stone that helps one remain true to his or her inner self. Hematite is associated with the Wicca Sabbats of Imbolc, a celebration of the approach of Spring and Samhain, which is Halloween, the Wicca New Year. The number 4 and number 7 vibrations correspond to Hematite.
Silence, Exile and Cunning – mixed mediums on plywood, 11” x 34”
The title for this painting came from Hirshfield’s opening paragraphs to the essay, Poetry and the Mind of Indirection, a motto which she states, made it’s way from the Carthusian order of monks to Balzac to James Joyce (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). I continuously strive to create a glimpse of life in this world from an indirect place.
Looking through the notes I took during Art 21’s Memory and Structures segments, several artists repeat the phrase the “memory of objects”. I frequently find/impose pathos in the discarded yard sale items I bring home; the psychological analysis of my response is so rudimentary, I’ll fast forward to the present. I found these Linguaphone Spanish course 78 rpm records at a yard sale in a moldy case. They’re probably 50+ years old, but are still glossy (hardly used), sturdy and appear serious. They were shifted around in my shed for several months, waiting soundlessly.
Records are difficult to work with as a collage element; they have overwhelming associations and a distinctive form. Still, I hear my mother’s phrase, which I’ve channeled from time to time, “What am I? A broken record?” I wanted to address the complexities of of repetition, sounds, silence, fragmentation and being ignored.
The metal “ribbon” is actually a piece of hacksaw blade, but its active form reminded me of Basho’s frog, a poem repeated (and translated) over and over again, like a haiku anthem. There are dozens of pages devoted to dissecting this frog poem—what I am referencing in this painting is the aural significance of the poem.
The broken records pile up to forms of stylized fan shapes, or stylized flower shapes, or the pre-digital silhouette of a radial guage in the dashboard. I’m happy with any and all references, hoping the viewer doesn’t get stuck with the just the record material. To seduce you further, the colors are intentionally vibrant and I’ve been using metallics—in this case it’s gold—to further the glow. It’s not unlike the common make-up artist trick of dusting shimmery powder on cheekbones, shoulders, and cleavage for a luminous appearance.
The palette of colors used in these paintings was inspired by James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s “Nocturne” paintings (1871- 1877). His belief that paintings should exist for their own sake was radical for his time. A quote attributed to him, from the website http://www.ibiblio.org: `Art should be independent of all claptrap-- should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it, and that is why I insist on calling my works "arrangements" and "harmonies".'
I agree with his motivation for independence, initially. I am OK with a response to my work that only relies on the simple pleasure of its colors and textures. My working process begins with the play of color and texture and typically doesn’t develop a conscious narrative for me until much later; sometimes not until its naming! However, I don’t believe we can ever really escape a narrative, no matter how abstract the approach or view, because our neurology is wired for storytelling, language-making, and creative patterning. Isn’t it an effort, requiring daily “practice”, to remain in the present moment, still and aware, observing, without thinking of the story unfolding? Beyond the dissections and discourse, I am making art from a fluid and shifting realm which offers many metaphors and none of them can be completely trusted.
Poetry: I do not intend to give up the visual poem explorations. They feel like they may be leading me to explore how to compile them in a 3 dimensional “book” form.
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