pro...these three letters appear as I attempt to struggle through my blogging exercise without benefit of a fully functional 'mouse'...the little 'golf ball' inside the bugger has become weighted, as they do, only had this one a few months, and it's optionally disfunctional (wonder should dysfunctional have a 'y'...looks like it does).
So, that begins the topic of the nature of art..the struggle to connect with one's tools, to enhance the progression of the process, and the basic contentment that the process provides, not unlike a religious satisfaction, that one has met one's obligations in that regard, and lived by that rule, that it is must be done, or else the soul is unsatisfied and does not live in a state of grace. Well, self-indulgent as it may seem, it is essential that the need to produce, to express what is observed (I want to say intrinsically but I don't know the word intrinsic to express just what I am explaining)..observed meaning that every element of one's consciousness is obligated to be part of the process, what one has consumed, physically, mentally, the environment. Without the process of expression, to the artist, well I do think I'm going out on a philosophical limb here which is probably the biggest mountain of all to climb in terms of the right landing place in which to express 'the art'...the artist is somehow stifled, inhibited, ah...ungrown?
Not all of us have a problem with that...nor do I other than to observe my own progress and progression in living with the idea that I am a creative person and I have to be responsible to my need to do that. There are desperate elements to the way we live, there have been since we lived in caves..even that gets argued, did we live in caves and look like monkeys? Or does it matter, what is history anyway? Who's that guy Jesus? So on...better to say my belief is my belief and yours is yours. For the artist, the belief is that there is something going on inside one's head that insists you record what you are seeing and hearing..somehow. For writers it is the story to tell for painters the picture to see for photographers musicians actors same thing different medium.
So I'm a multimedia artist, as I discovered in the days of the artists' cooperative I participated in in Washington DC back in the late 1970's early '80's. I'm glad I missed a lot of the mainstream culture during that time because as I look back on it now, my pinned together tuxedo pants from the '30's and my painted clothing were much more interesting than the heavily padded shoulders and strict lines of the fashion dictates (on the superficial level)...on the more culturally obtuse level, Desert Storm and the rise and fall of intense Republicanism in the Mideast was something that started for me in a rattletrap van somebody had that I rode in so that one of us could snatch the garbage from the back of Henry Kissinger's rowhouse a block over from the White House. Can't be fashion conscious when one of us is getting the goods on a political advisor. Turns out the garbage was chockablock full of Prep H cartons, all empty. Amazing, we thought. Guy must be doing some heavy lifting. It was a good laugh, finding that but one that for the early morning hour it was, eight am or so...and us driving off in a huff with the black plastic bag containing the goods, the definite underbelly of American politics, and one which you wouldn't think would get you in any trouble but the truth was that the neighborhoods like that, just crawling with people representing themselves as National Security types, or what have you.
Washington DC is lovely in the spring and summer. Rather warm come summer but spring is divine, heavenly with blooms and reasonable temperatures. Not like here where one day the rain is enough to drive you inside and the next it's dry and you can finally attack the weeds beginning to assert themselves in the garden. There's not a lot of warm weather here but summer does tend to hypnotize you into thinking it's utopia. Factor in the absence of traffic, overpopulation, crime and so forth and you begin to realize that while you have been exposed to the ultimate population densities of New York and DC and the East Coast in general, not to mention somewhere like Tokoyo or a large city in India like New Dehli where I dreamed I was living in a cardboard box and woke up when it was time to light my fire, hehe...this little town that is my home has got it all..a nice little cooperative grocery down the street from the studio (the Reef is being referred to as the 'little house'...), several well attended churches, a fascinating library that is also well-attended, strands of beach that dispute the notion that we've reached the end of our accessible wilderness and some good food.
People are friendly here in a way that makes you feel you've earned their respect. They're tolerant if gossipy and very considerate. Well, now..I was on about the progression of art and the need to express it if you're of the artistic type and here I am talking about the weather..hehe...what does that connect to it? Ok...you don't have to think of the aspirations of someone like Van Gogh who was very rampant in his need to convey what he felt...gestures and so forth asserting the need for expression (to the max in his case)..but you have to think of the healthy channeling of those creative expressions for if they're not allowed ability to expound, the process of creation is very much disturbed and I would say Van Gogh is a case in point.
How then to breed and foster a creative person? Oh, and I might as well throw this in as well, artists should be in charge of running planets because they're always ahead of their time and have the most benevolent view of their fellow man and his environment. Hmmm...my self-critical process tells me I'm writing from the feminine side but I can't help it, it's who I am. Finding a creative person in our midst, we should be aware that little geniuses like baby Mozart and his twinkling stars weren't just for us but for everyone who comes after us because that music will live on. There's a key there, finding those among us, realizing that while we have a joy in our existence, they know from whence comes that joy and it is a voice inside them. Nobody but Jesus was Jesus I always think so don't pretend you are anything but yourself but these guys, they talk another language and it's all about interpreting who the rest of us are. Fascinating I always think because sometimes they more than anyone else feel the process of the rest of us and what we go through, more than we do.
So it's important these creative sorts are happy because in them is our joy. It's like the Star Wars line '..a disturbance in the force'. Which I think is what happens when someone like Van Gogh gets so overwraught that he cuts off an ear. The motivation behind something like that, or Heath Ledger getting the big o.d., or Elvis or whatever else...it's not cool but it happens so we should be considerate of it, maybe not so tolerant of the indulgences some of the more famous but to be aware of the little ones coming up that may be of this category so that they are aware they need to stick with it and let it speak from inside them so they'll be content in their ability to do this and not be frustrated that they don't understand they can.
Not complicated to me but one wonders why if my son just called with news of some great disaster somewhere that may affect his living in Maui, i.e., the possibility of a tsunami (and here as well he relates)..I haven't dropped everything and flipped on the news on the radio or the tv...well, I left my disaster radio at the studio because I know that if we fiddle while Rome burns, and Nero perhaps was the ultimate identity of the creative process stunted...it's not really going to burn for a little bit and that's how essential the need to be creative is for creative people.
We probably all have a little of it inside us, our ability to make the best biscuit or mow the neatest lawn, yep...we're trained from birth to do well at whatever it is we end up doing for the rest of our lives. Selfdeprecation gets in the way a lot. Art deflects selfdeprecation by getting the mind off the hypercritical aspect of introspection. Art repositions the sense of self-worth in the individual. It makes the mainstream collective consciousness a worthy endeavor the sociological body of man identifies himself through. Not all of us relate, of course. But the more we put art up there with religion and politics the more we'll see that art really does rule better than anything else. Well, next to God there is art. Nice three letter word isn't it?
Hmmm, feeling teary eyed at identifying what it is I believe in. I shouldn't ever expound on religion because that's the truly private domain of the individual and his Maker. Politics I've made a study of and it's all about the great confounding to get the job done. Art is a fluid process that defines all of it, the Pieta talks about the crucifixion more vividly than sermon or biblical text, encapsulating and making material the factors of the event in a way that transcends time and makes eternal our universal knowledge of our belief systems generally. We don't all subscribe to the events that created the Pieta or the need to create the Pieta or even to find it relevant to our daily existence. But enough of us do that the rest of us don't even need to consider it. Those are the artists, they know because through them our life-string is always connected to the theology of existence, the reverence for life and the need to protect it, to shelter it even.
My hands have taken a beating the last day or two. Truly, I am treating the landscape of the Reef like an external palette upon which to create an ongoing canvas of growing things. Starting out I am replanting the original garden and have installed two older rhodies from the yard here on the little ridge in the front yard where it slopes into the backyard. Behind these there will be a riesling to grow towards the garage from the sidewalk at the backdoor, also on the little slope where hopefully it will get nice sun in summer and some beach shells when we get to bringing those home. Right now I've not been to the beach too often but I will. What I've done lately is soak up the puddles where the backfence used to run. That's going to have to go because I'm told the easement that was is no longer and the creeksides are ours to navigate as we see fit. What I see is an absence of nice border rock and a deluge of silt which needs to be scooped out, so that'll come along as I get closer to it. I broke through to the waterside with much effort and found a roll of chainlink fence that I'll have to yank towards the yard probably with a tow line on the truck at some point because it's massive for one person to shift. There are wild roses in abundance and their thorns more than two inches long...like that's the sort of thing you want to get scraped by on the way to the creek's edge. For now I've been cutting back a cluster at a time of those things and there's a great line of brush in the really dripping part of the yard at the back fence. This I call Stalin's mound, not for any reasonable purpose other than to get myself some credit for working diligently at resetting the natural boundaries of the property in terms of enhancing the creative process engaged at it. The yard is integral to that due to its view, its natural aspect, if you will. It's a bit dumpy at present, the fish pond only has sufficient water when it rains heavily and though I bought some 'weed out the chaff in the fry' meds for the water, I haven't used it yet. The pond is only a third ringed with rock and the iris are beginning to come up, as is the blackberry and wild rose and salmon berry. I'm saving the beach grass for now, tall canes it becomes in summer, with a frond not unlike pampas grass. I do intend to mow and there's got to be a place for the dogs to be let loose so they'll be fenced in and not go eating the raptor center's chickens, like I saw one of them do the little brat. hehe..how unforgiving is nature. So I have some fence along the back and the side yards are totally encumbered by encroaching brush and I've gotten six bags of cement to set in posts but it's raining cats and dogs so the cement won't set until it stops raining but there's wire in the garage and beachwood for the rails so I think the materials in hand for the dog fences and I do want a trellis for the rambling rose that grows under the front bedroom windows with some aclarity...is that a long sentence or what...how my mind works, yada and yada...at the back of my thought process is the news about the big earthquake in chile ... 8.9...which I ought to go learn more about or at least find a website here that might tell me something but it's happened and that's about all there is to know at this point...so we'll see...meanwhile, the Reef looks as though it's endured numerous disasters of that sort and all I need is to put pontoons under the house and she'll just float out to sea as nicely as you like...with the moat that occurs in these heavy rains, in the basement, you'd think she was at anchor presently, just waiting for some desperate input like a tsunamic warning. Well, I'd guess that my emergency preparedness training is kicking in and I'd better get on the news channel and see what the alerts are. My son says Maui is sitting tight. I should like to think that we here are too. So what's the point of it all? It's not the French Revolution but I've been through the Sixties Movement and come through to find the light at the end of the rainbow. That light was the double rainbow I saw over Sekiu the other day on the way to my art group. by the time I got to the painting session, a cloud had pushed over and covered the rainbows and dumped rain by the bucket. Didn't matter to me, I'd seen the light.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
doing well blogging
another story of a blogger getting a television series from his writing has come to light. it's the new words without a page, using the blog entry as a journal. I don't really read the entries that are made but I do like to use the medium.
Have been bringing firewood to the Reef. My right wrist is complaining about it. There was one major chunk that will probably end up being the outdoors table, it's so large, the lower portion of a tree, took a big effort to get it on the truck, will have to roll it to where I want it to set. Thinking nice flat stones and then plunk it on those just to keep it off the ground. Need also a fire pit of sorts, so I can start using up the twigs and branches that have been cleared away. Strange how last year it was a bramble mess and now it is showing up with little flowers like grape hyacinth that were there all the time only lost in the clutter of blackberries and salmon berries.
I suppose that nice rocks will be my next scavenge. I found a little dresser when I brought my son's kids over to their old neighborhood last evening. I am visiting until tomorrow morning when I go back to attend the school board meeting and hopefully get in a yoga session. My stomach is like worn out elastic, rather flabby. Shouldn't be too bad with all the labor intensive chores of the Reef and getting settled there but it appears so. The little dresser has veneer issues but all the knobs are there and it was sitting out free in front of the buildings at the entry to the little alley where my son's family lived until last fall. The kids hadn't been back. They did find some of their playmates and as the baby schlepped in her carseat and I discovered two chin hairs in the car mirror, they played.
I debated back and forth with myself about the free dresser. I love to restore furniture but don't I have enough? I wondered. Yes, but the prospect of restoring this piece was too much. We and the oldest daughter loaded it into the back of the SUV and it came back here with us. I'll fix it up, it'll be great.
So the point of this effort is to discuss art and the influence it generates by the visual medium. Still on about that. Have been working on a portrait of my son, myself and our cat, Felix, from a snapshot of us on the front porch of our house in Salisbury, Maryland, where we lived when my son was small. Summers were great there because we were thirty miles from Ocean City, Maryland, where we could swim in the Atlantic to our heart's content. The portrait of the three of us is coming along nicely. I've done a series of sketches so far and have several sizes of canvas that I'm going to use, one or the other, have to get those stretched and sized so they'll be ready when I've finally done the composition enough to feel comfortable about putting it on canvas.
Point of the art? My middle son's kid's are the ages of the older son in the portrait. They're different in aspect, of course, but the age is right. I took a series of snapshots of them yesterday at the park and will take some more before I go I think. It's taken me more than thirty years to get around to the portrait of my son but he never married so this is to capsulize the elements that he might have passed on, but so far has not. He was always like a fairy child when he was small. Sturdy and bright like a freshly bloomed daffodil, sunny and pragmatic, like he is now, living in the tropical landscape of Maui, where he loves the beach. He was engaged once to a sweet girl whose portrait still sits in my bedroom display of family photographs. Of the several he intended to marry, that one was the most endearing, though they were all very nice. I don't think of him as married, with children, because he was all about himself, always, and that's just how it was. He was loyal to me and he loved our home in Salisbury. Part of him is still there, so that's why the portrait now, because he is in Hawaii, not Maryland, not New Orleans where he lived with the dear girl, not Bellingham, where I am now and where he lived with his stepfamily until he came to finish school with me and his younger brother and sister. It's confusing how we extend our families to include everyone we love, but not really, because the time we spend with them is precious and that's the only thing that really matters. So that's the art intent, to record our time in Salisbury, which I know my son loved and cherished ever after as the summers at the beach.
Have been bringing firewood to the Reef. My right wrist is complaining about it. There was one major chunk that will probably end up being the outdoors table, it's so large, the lower portion of a tree, took a big effort to get it on the truck, will have to roll it to where I want it to set. Thinking nice flat stones and then plunk it on those just to keep it off the ground. Need also a fire pit of sorts, so I can start using up the twigs and branches that have been cleared away. Strange how last year it was a bramble mess and now it is showing up with little flowers like grape hyacinth that were there all the time only lost in the clutter of blackberries and salmon berries.
I suppose that nice rocks will be my next scavenge. I found a little dresser when I brought my son's kids over to their old neighborhood last evening. I am visiting until tomorrow morning when I go back to attend the school board meeting and hopefully get in a yoga session. My stomach is like worn out elastic, rather flabby. Shouldn't be too bad with all the labor intensive chores of the Reef and getting settled there but it appears so. The little dresser has veneer issues but all the knobs are there and it was sitting out free in front of the buildings at the entry to the little alley where my son's family lived until last fall. The kids hadn't been back. They did find some of their playmates and as the baby schlepped in her carseat and I discovered two chin hairs in the car mirror, they played.
I debated back and forth with myself about the free dresser. I love to restore furniture but don't I have enough? I wondered. Yes, but the prospect of restoring this piece was too much. We and the oldest daughter loaded it into the back of the SUV and it came back here with us. I'll fix it up, it'll be great.
So the point of this effort is to discuss art and the influence it generates by the visual medium. Still on about that. Have been working on a portrait of my son, myself and our cat, Felix, from a snapshot of us on the front porch of our house in Salisbury, Maryland, where we lived when my son was small. Summers were great there because we were thirty miles from Ocean City, Maryland, where we could swim in the Atlantic to our heart's content. The portrait of the three of us is coming along nicely. I've done a series of sketches so far and have several sizes of canvas that I'm going to use, one or the other, have to get those stretched and sized so they'll be ready when I've finally done the composition enough to feel comfortable about putting it on canvas.
Point of the art? My middle son's kid's are the ages of the older son in the portrait. They're different in aspect, of course, but the age is right. I took a series of snapshots of them yesterday at the park and will take some more before I go I think. It's taken me more than thirty years to get around to the portrait of my son but he never married so this is to capsulize the elements that he might have passed on, but so far has not. He was always like a fairy child when he was small. Sturdy and bright like a freshly bloomed daffodil, sunny and pragmatic, like he is now, living in the tropical landscape of Maui, where he loves the beach. He was engaged once to a sweet girl whose portrait still sits in my bedroom display of family photographs. Of the several he intended to marry, that one was the most endearing, though they were all very nice. I don't think of him as married, with children, because he was all about himself, always, and that's just how it was. He was loyal to me and he loved our home in Salisbury. Part of him is still there, so that's why the portrait now, because he is in Hawaii, not Maryland, not New Orleans where he lived with the dear girl, not Bellingham, where I am now and where he lived with his stepfamily until he came to finish school with me and his younger brother and sister. It's confusing how we extend our families to include everyone we love, but not really, because the time we spend with them is precious and that's the only thing that really matters. So that's the art intent, to record our time in Salisbury, which I know my son loved and cherished ever after as the summers at the beach.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Priorities...in art...
well, I think I've said this before, that I have to get organized when I work on art projects...which means, for me, cleaning, arranging, even waiting for the proper weather on the proper day...I find it frustrating but a challenge more than that...and it allows the creative flow to remain unencumbered because this is the way I have found to permit my thoughts and processes, i.e., painting, writing, sewing, whatever...even culinary effort, to achieve its parameters and not be hampered by self-critique or a disillusion or distillation process...meaning that while I allow the day to day routine to flow around me like a little stream, I also achieve that which it is I am attempting to convey concept wise
and for today, though I have written minutes for meetings that I am secretary to...my creative processes are in the maintaining position, moving articles to the Reef, setting up the transfer of documents and kitchen articles like new plates and a little shelf, while I took a call from a potential literary agent and allowed the dogs to wander for more than an hour, planned how the process of the actual move to the studio is going to take place and no doubt should email the real estate property manager..i.e., hook up some folks to live here while I live at the studio...yeah...now that'll be interesting...
am finding that while the creative process is in full flower at the studio...here is like the protective covering that nutures it...while the dogs were out I thought how nice not to have to clean up their burnt offerings, as I cleaned up the latest batch...chili for lunch, much coffee, probably too much so as I could use a nap about now..am on a sensible kick after watching six disks of Inspector Morse, which I used to truly enjoy watching and am wondering why A&E doesn't have that on its bill anymore (they used to be a wonderful station for British detective series)
no matter, am going to hunt down the book the potential agent was referring to and see what can be done with it as it stands...I'm thinking that painting and writing go hand in hand with cleaning up my office, so I have to see where I'm at with that because I know where I'm at with the office, it's staring me in the face like a muddy car (two of those as well)...not burdened by the process but learning to appreciate the definition of it in terms of where it takes me...well, Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and beginning of Lent, I shall give up anxiety this year, haha...never had it (hmmmm) but a reasonable facsimile there of has been a constant meaning that dumb stuff creeps in and has to be swept up (hence the cleaning gigs)
ok...one final note, put the little Mermaid doll back in the wreath at the Reef after mending her up a bit...will get out the embroidery threads another day, she's been beaded after a good washing up...so, yoga this afternoon, classical music on and on...Mom and I to Port Angeles yesterday for dinner with my brother and his wife...visited Dad's grave afterward, wet feet because I finally wore the patent slides I'd been keeping in their box under the bed and they killed my bunion, owie...Dad's grave is next to brother John's grim day standing there but the knowledge of death, the finality, the temporary quality of daily life that resounds in those tombstones..have to visit daughter's grave in Ferndale while I'm over with Tones...not that it's a fun thing but more of an obligation to oneself for continuity...we'll see...could hardly find the marker last time
and for today, though I have written minutes for meetings that I am secretary to...my creative processes are in the maintaining position, moving articles to the Reef, setting up the transfer of documents and kitchen articles like new plates and a little shelf, while I took a call from a potential literary agent and allowed the dogs to wander for more than an hour, planned how the process of the actual move to the studio is going to take place and no doubt should email the real estate property manager..i.e., hook up some folks to live here while I live at the studio...yeah...now that'll be interesting...
am finding that while the creative process is in full flower at the studio...here is like the protective covering that nutures it...while the dogs were out I thought how nice not to have to clean up their burnt offerings, as I cleaned up the latest batch...chili for lunch, much coffee, probably too much so as I could use a nap about now..am on a sensible kick after watching six disks of Inspector Morse, which I used to truly enjoy watching and am wondering why A&E doesn't have that on its bill anymore (they used to be a wonderful station for British detective series)
no matter, am going to hunt down the book the potential agent was referring to and see what can be done with it as it stands...I'm thinking that painting and writing go hand in hand with cleaning up my office, so I have to see where I'm at with that because I know where I'm at with the office, it's staring me in the face like a muddy car (two of those as well)...not burdened by the process but learning to appreciate the definition of it in terms of where it takes me...well, Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and beginning of Lent, I shall give up anxiety this year, haha...never had it (hmmmm) but a reasonable facsimile there of has been a constant meaning that dumb stuff creeps in and has to be swept up (hence the cleaning gigs)
ok...one final note, put the little Mermaid doll back in the wreath at the Reef after mending her up a bit...will get out the embroidery threads another day, she's been beaded after a good washing up...so, yoga this afternoon, classical music on and on...Mom and I to Port Angeles yesterday for dinner with my brother and his wife...visited Dad's grave afterward, wet feet because I finally wore the patent slides I'd been keeping in their box under the bed and they killed my bunion, owie...Dad's grave is next to brother John's grim day standing there but the knowledge of death, the finality, the temporary quality of daily life that resounds in those tombstones..have to visit daughter's grave in Ferndale while I'm over with Tones...not that it's a fun thing but more of an obligation to oneself for continuity...we'll see...could hardly find the marker last time
Monday, February 1, 2010
room to a view blog...influence of the Kali red in Jasper Johns' influence paintings
it's closing in on Valentines day, one of my favorite holidays..well, holiday in the sense that one has a sweetheart on that day that one is especially fond of doting on, but...I did paintings...and I would have to say that Jasper Johns has come about of an influence on them because of the Kali red I used...and the blue
Johns did mainly mostly flags...but as the color influence asserts itself...to me, the Johns work was about the white, the red and the blue he used...he was confined by his painting circumstances to painting flags...my brother has a friend on the Sekiu River with advanced alzheimers...this guy is the spirit of Johns to me...he sold me a funky air pump for the air mattress I bought from him and though many of us sweated on that pump, we could never get it to fill the air mattress...as I was sweating away...I thought to myself that it was like painting the American flag over and over and over...and would be relevant to continue to try to do so only if you were Jasper Johns...I don't know if that makes any sense..but that's when I realized this advanced alzheimer guy was Johns' spirit...he's beginning to not be able to do things for himself...rather disturbing...but those paintings of the flags...I have to divert my concerns there to the flags and the beauty of their concept..and revel in the colors..like a certain chord in the Bridal March by Lohengrin...the twang of the fallen in the Civil War I felt it conveyed...and not a twang so much as the sound of glass cracking...(or an air pump not filling the air mattress...duhh)...
so about the Kali red...I did an exhibit once back in DC at the Organ...Kali the Hindu goddess was everywhere in it...I had a Greek soldier's fluffy white skirt all dyed briliant reds..well they were pink more or less, I think this particular reddish hue the Valentine color...the sense of love conveyed in color...like how to do pacifcism probably...promote the concept that all is good and all is love and all you need is love...the mantra from the Beatles...it is true though and in the origins of the peace movement, which we all kind of evolved into what with our fringed moccasins and bell bottoms (does still wear those)...so in honor of the Kali influence a couple of my friends came down the street, having taken the Greek skirt from the wall of the exhibit, put it on...donned a few other Kali color display items..and marched a little peace march in the Adams Morgan 18th Street area..one was particularly tall and lithe being a sort of Isadora Duncan and the other was little Kira who lived up off Columbia Road with her parents...one of whom handed me in a cheese sandwich when I was gallery sitting and half starved, wearing my "Miss Whipple" outfit also a hand colored effort and when I walked up the 14th Street corridor I was restored...of course the next hand colored effort was 'thou restored'...and written on the leg of one of the previously starched white pants..actually I don't know if the pants came first or second but part of the art thing with me is coloring clothes and wearing them as an art statement...I'm not sure when I do it what the statement is actually but I know the Kali things were about peace and love...I feel numb thinking any other way about our human coexistence with one another because I know in the nuclear age we can't be any other way because of the 'dos' influence, direct operating systems...auto executor states...animals and so forth, plants, what we consume...I don't think it's so terribly confusing but I know that we don't get buy if we don't respect those rules as they were initiated by the Manhattan project and all the nuclear relevations of that time...well anyway, a bit of hippie art chair philosophy that but so it is...
haven't written much the last week or two...busy PAINTING!!! and yep..that was the point of writing just now, that it was the Kali red time...and the blue which I haven't found as pervasive an influence though the Reef is right across from the water's edge and I should know it...the Kali red comes to me whenever I call it up...if I have to call it up, there it is, perhaps because inside us all is blood and darn I poke my finger now and then but when it dries, that blood is an ugly brown, literally putrid in its effect and so only when it is live from within does it have any sort of grace, though it isn't of any particular warmth to me...the Kali red is that life blood distilled and conveyed as the spirit of man, I think, in its love, well, it's not my favorite color either, as I love them all, but for purposes of purpose, the Kali red does have a singular effect I've found, in that little peace march of Kira and her adult dancer escort, both of them coming down the street all dressed in the Kali reds...a strange configuration..something that until now hadn't been recorded properly and one I am curious to see may come again since I'm in the Kali mode I think...found a can of paint in a cupboard at the reef, I knew I'd brought one in but the anticipated tenant had waylaid it...so it persisted and I found it...just like I find a vat of terrible brown under the sink when I'd had a tummyache ..which I painted a little on the garage with...
So here it is...what, quite a bit later, the Kali peace walk was in the early early eighties way early...maybe before '79 not sure, we didn't keep records but there it was...and here it is again...and this is 2010 and it's not red dye on white cotton, which it was there, and the 'thou restored' was inks in blue and green so I don't know where that fits in but I do know that the color in the pieces I just hung in the front room at the Reef are those Kali reds...and the blue which hasn't any life yet so I'm not done with them but I hesitate to go too far into it until I look at them more..I made two more stretchers from wood my son cut for me...but I haven't put the canvas on them..have some linen to bring there and maybe I'll use oils for a change which I don't know about the sizing part but I guess I could muddle through...we never painted in oils at Madams Organ, we used whatever was sprouting out of the environment...which for me was sometimes music, sometimes writing, sometimes the studio wall itself...but anyway...a few more details and then a hot shower
There is a new visiting resident across the street, another Aaron...there's an Aaron up the alley in Albert's house and he the Albert Aaron was in a guitar band with my daughter when she was in high school..this other Aaron had a look at the gallery but said not a word about my paintings...I explained the neoGerman expressionism movement influence on the lineoleum works but I didn't say anything of Jackson Pollack so I guess I left it to him to figure that part out but it's strange how little people know about art when you think they do especially this other Aaron who is tall and looks like a young Indian brave wearing one of those funny peruvian caps that come down over the ears and have strings hanging (for some reason I used to think of those caps as 'period hats' meaning that either the male in the couple wore one or the woman when she was bleeding...so maybe that was Kali again)
this other Aaron came over Saturday when I was painting...I hadn't started anything and he ran into me when I was coming back from a foray to the Cannery building, which we'd been talking about at a co-op meeting which all of a sudden I'm going to meetings on even though I am part of several other clubs like I don't have enough to do...so this other Aaron looks like my brother Mark in a strange way and he's rather young, like one of my sons...but he's an adult and I want right away to see him as the young Pollock before he gave it up to the alcohol gods (if he did, I wouldn't know I wasn't there) or the Johns, who I don't know but don't have the association with because I have to say the life in Adams Morgan running the gallery there was kind of a strain in weird ways, like having been a conformist more or less and letting it all hang out all of a sudden was cool but stressful thinking about ways to make a living and so forth...I depended on my husband then for the physical support, but not really because I could always make my way and we never sold art...well we could but we had terrible arguments about it...just brutal arguments about how can you make money on something that is going to influence everyone great and small it's like religion...you don't make money on religion...but you have to eat...you have to be able to switch on your television and not have some moron say you can't watch that channel...back and forth...gnarly
so I made these three paintings and have two more to stretch and paint and I told my painter friends that I was going to do realism on these canvasses but it's not looking that way which is a challenge to me in some ways but it's also kind of spooky going to painting circle because of some of the people there, not that they're not nice but some are trapped in the between life phase issues...they paint well but are like the great void in terms of interaction...they're not like they were at the Organ...art as relevant to everyday life...we the great influencers of it with our psychology of color...I don't think this bunch would give it any credence although I have mentioned it to them a time or two...to not criticize either because they're dear to me...sometimes I bring my knitting, or play music in the ballroom upstairs..without the heat on...brrr
so at the Reef Raphael has been coming to help with little things but first off he tore his shoulder up and is wearing a sling at the moment...We went up to Dale's house yesterday after Mass and what a mess the boys left..Dale died a year or so ago, I think of him as Evelyn Waugh (don't I always think of someone as someone, like Art Grossman, Kira's dad..his beautiful wife Marty and their row house in Kalorama, haven't put a tag on the Grossman's yet but I'll come to find out what they art)...when Dale died the boys took over and Debbie got a new partner so she's still around but the place where they lived is like a bomb shelter after the Blitz...Raphael showed me the piles of things and things and things...and I wondered what talisman to take away with me to give good karma to the circumstances...I found a broom, a floodlight and a basket that had been through a fire...what the relevance is I don't know yet, but I'll think of it...realized after we left and came back to the Reef that I needed furring strips for the edges of the canvasses to present a properly framed piece but I can get those elsewhere...Dale's place will be restored (the pants...'thou restored')...one of my little art prayers perhaps...the great mountains of laundry, tools, general litter, motors, dead cars...oh my...well...looks like the Neah Bay dump there without benefit of a tractor to bulldoze it into oblivion...we'll see..several worthy ladders at the bottom of the yard...those I could use on the Reef roof but eh...Susan next door has one
A note on the other Aaron, he has a wife I haven't met yet named Rikki, didn't say anything about her when I met him, so I'm always thinking hmmm...but they told me at the co-op that he did because I stopped in there to tell them the Cannery was open (another place with much flotsam)...so, neither here or there that but the other Aaron isn't married and he looks remarkably like my favorite actor Russell Crowe and is terribly nice but somehow isn't my cup of tea besides being much younger well...not to speculate on the male population or anything because I'm not about that I think..though the Kali influence does wander that way...not like I'm going to worship it or anything because I don't feel that it moves me THAT much...this Rikki lady is newly arrived from the Nepal borders now there is a Kali influence in that as well I think but they're only temporary as Robert and Thu have gone to Viet Nam for a family visit for a little bit and Aaron and Rikki are sitting the very old labrador retriever.
So, I think I've covered all the bases up to date and have been cooking pot roasts and big squashes and watching little children along with the painting cycles and the weather has improved slightly though it's still drearier than Ingmar Bergman. Have added rock to the fish pond at the Reef and contemplate removing the back fence to get to the pond and deploy a lot of soil and turf to keep the water out of the yard...have to take down a great mass of brush yet and can't decide if it should be burned or carted off...have ridden the bicycle george gave me and puffed my way up the hill to the house but flew down again to the Reef, ending the day walking it up the middle road which is much much steeper and not sharing dinner with the neighbors, who went into town instead. None of the kids called today but I did talk to Middle Son yesterday and will go see them with the Valentine presents soon...
dogs are gnawing on their bones from the pot roast, on my second or third coffee and one piece of dark rye..time for a shower and flip on the radio...richstirfry and the jewish lawyer Bob Mackowitz (don't know that Mack is a lawyer but he's probably Jewish with that name)...wonderful Canadian station which I don't want to tout too much or they'll start playing too much Gordon Lightfoot...they had a Kate and Anna McGarrigle hour yesterday in honor of Kate's passing what beautiful music...my relatives of French Canadian descent in Minnesota it reminded me of...I neve rmiss those people but it's like an amputation you learn to live with it...I would have grown up with three hundred cousins but my dad moved us out West when I was still a baby...I've felt lonely all my life
I think that's why
so that's why I wanted to mention the other Aaron staying across the street because he looks very much like one of those cousins..Paul Marlenga for one...at a younger age...and my brother Mark for another...again, at a younger age...
sometime I'll comment on the nature of youth because this other Aaron has it in spades...for now it's about the influence of the Kali red...the little peace walk of Kira Grossman and the adult dancer..Kathy Keefe...upcoming Valentine's Day, mild weather, my three new paintings...two blank canvasses..the white doves from the Reef yard...I do think those are just fo rme but we'll see..have to make them a habitat if they are...
Johns did mainly mostly flags...but as the color influence asserts itself...to me, the Johns work was about the white, the red and the blue he used...he was confined by his painting circumstances to painting flags...my brother has a friend on the Sekiu River with advanced alzheimers...this guy is the spirit of Johns to me...he sold me a funky air pump for the air mattress I bought from him and though many of us sweated on that pump, we could never get it to fill the air mattress...as I was sweating away...I thought to myself that it was like painting the American flag over and over and over...and would be relevant to continue to try to do so only if you were Jasper Johns...I don't know if that makes any sense..but that's when I realized this advanced alzheimer guy was Johns' spirit...he's beginning to not be able to do things for himself...rather disturbing...but those paintings of the flags...I have to divert my concerns there to the flags and the beauty of their concept..and revel in the colors..like a certain chord in the Bridal March by Lohengrin...the twang of the fallen in the Civil War I felt it conveyed...and not a twang so much as the sound of glass cracking...(or an air pump not filling the air mattress...duhh)...
so about the Kali red...I did an exhibit once back in DC at the Organ...Kali the Hindu goddess was everywhere in it...I had a Greek soldier's fluffy white skirt all dyed briliant reds..well they were pink more or less, I think this particular reddish hue the Valentine color...the sense of love conveyed in color...like how to do pacifcism probably...promote the concept that all is good and all is love and all you need is love...the mantra from the Beatles...it is true though and in the origins of the peace movement, which we all kind of evolved into what with our fringed moccasins and bell bottoms (does still wear those)...so in honor of the Kali influence a couple of my friends came down the street, having taken the Greek skirt from the wall of the exhibit, put it on...donned a few other Kali color display items..and marched a little peace march in the Adams Morgan 18th Street area..one was particularly tall and lithe being a sort of Isadora Duncan and the other was little Kira who lived up off Columbia Road with her parents...one of whom handed me in a cheese sandwich when I was gallery sitting and half starved, wearing my "Miss Whipple" outfit also a hand colored effort and when I walked up the 14th Street corridor I was restored...of course the next hand colored effort was 'thou restored'...and written on the leg of one of the previously starched white pants..actually I don't know if the pants came first or second but part of the art thing with me is coloring clothes and wearing them as an art statement...I'm not sure when I do it what the statement is actually but I know the Kali things were about peace and love...I feel numb thinking any other way about our human coexistence with one another because I know in the nuclear age we can't be any other way because of the 'dos' influence, direct operating systems...auto executor states...animals and so forth, plants, what we consume...I don't think it's so terribly confusing but I know that we don't get buy if we don't respect those rules as they were initiated by the Manhattan project and all the nuclear relevations of that time...well anyway, a bit of hippie art chair philosophy that but so it is...
haven't written much the last week or two...busy PAINTING!!! and yep..that was the point of writing just now, that it was the Kali red time...and the blue which I haven't found as pervasive an influence though the Reef is right across from the water's edge and I should know it...the Kali red comes to me whenever I call it up...if I have to call it up, there it is, perhaps because inside us all is blood and darn I poke my finger now and then but when it dries, that blood is an ugly brown, literally putrid in its effect and so only when it is live from within does it have any sort of grace, though it isn't of any particular warmth to me...the Kali red is that life blood distilled and conveyed as the spirit of man, I think, in its love, well, it's not my favorite color either, as I love them all, but for purposes of purpose, the Kali red does have a singular effect I've found, in that little peace march of Kira and her adult dancer escort, both of them coming down the street all dressed in the Kali reds...a strange configuration..something that until now hadn't been recorded properly and one I am curious to see may come again since I'm in the Kali mode I think...found a can of paint in a cupboard at the reef, I knew I'd brought one in but the anticipated tenant had waylaid it...so it persisted and I found it...just like I find a vat of terrible brown under the sink when I'd had a tummyache ..which I painted a little on the garage with...
So here it is...what, quite a bit later, the Kali peace walk was in the early early eighties way early...maybe before '79 not sure, we didn't keep records but there it was...and here it is again...and this is 2010 and it's not red dye on white cotton, which it was there, and the 'thou restored' was inks in blue and green so I don't know where that fits in but I do know that the color in the pieces I just hung in the front room at the Reef are those Kali reds...and the blue which hasn't any life yet so I'm not done with them but I hesitate to go too far into it until I look at them more..I made two more stretchers from wood my son cut for me...but I haven't put the canvas on them..have some linen to bring there and maybe I'll use oils for a change which I don't know about the sizing part but I guess I could muddle through...we never painted in oils at Madams Organ, we used whatever was sprouting out of the environment...which for me was sometimes music, sometimes writing, sometimes the studio wall itself...but anyway...a few more details and then a hot shower
There is a new visiting resident across the street, another Aaron...there's an Aaron up the alley in Albert's house and he the Albert Aaron was in a guitar band with my daughter when she was in high school..this other Aaron had a look at the gallery but said not a word about my paintings...I explained the neoGerman expressionism movement influence on the lineoleum works but I didn't say anything of Jackson Pollack so I guess I left it to him to figure that part out but it's strange how little people know about art when you think they do especially this other Aaron who is tall and looks like a young Indian brave wearing one of those funny peruvian caps that come down over the ears and have strings hanging (for some reason I used to think of those caps as 'period hats' meaning that either the male in the couple wore one or the woman when she was bleeding...so maybe that was Kali again)
this other Aaron came over Saturday when I was painting...I hadn't started anything and he ran into me when I was coming back from a foray to the Cannery building, which we'd been talking about at a co-op meeting which all of a sudden I'm going to meetings on even though I am part of several other clubs like I don't have enough to do...so this other Aaron looks like my brother Mark in a strange way and he's rather young, like one of my sons...but he's an adult and I want right away to see him as the young Pollock before he gave it up to the alcohol gods (if he did, I wouldn't know I wasn't there) or the Johns, who I don't know but don't have the association with because I have to say the life in Adams Morgan running the gallery there was kind of a strain in weird ways, like having been a conformist more or less and letting it all hang out all of a sudden was cool but stressful thinking about ways to make a living and so forth...I depended on my husband then for the physical support, but not really because I could always make my way and we never sold art...well we could but we had terrible arguments about it...just brutal arguments about how can you make money on something that is going to influence everyone great and small it's like religion...you don't make money on religion...but you have to eat...you have to be able to switch on your television and not have some moron say you can't watch that channel...back and forth...gnarly
so I made these three paintings and have two more to stretch and paint and I told my painter friends that I was going to do realism on these canvasses but it's not looking that way which is a challenge to me in some ways but it's also kind of spooky going to painting circle because of some of the people there, not that they're not nice but some are trapped in the between life phase issues...they paint well but are like the great void in terms of interaction...they're not like they were at the Organ...art as relevant to everyday life...we the great influencers of it with our psychology of color...I don't think this bunch would give it any credence although I have mentioned it to them a time or two...to not criticize either because they're dear to me...sometimes I bring my knitting, or play music in the ballroom upstairs..without the heat on...brrr
so at the Reef Raphael has been coming to help with little things but first off he tore his shoulder up and is wearing a sling at the moment...We went up to Dale's house yesterday after Mass and what a mess the boys left..Dale died a year or so ago, I think of him as Evelyn Waugh (don't I always think of someone as someone, like Art Grossman, Kira's dad..his beautiful wife Marty and their row house in Kalorama, haven't put a tag on the Grossman's yet but I'll come to find out what they art)...when Dale died the boys took over and Debbie got a new partner so she's still around but the place where they lived is like a bomb shelter after the Blitz...Raphael showed me the piles of things and things and things...and I wondered what talisman to take away with me to give good karma to the circumstances...I found a broom, a floodlight and a basket that had been through a fire...what the relevance is I don't know yet, but I'll think of it...realized after we left and came back to the Reef that I needed furring strips for the edges of the canvasses to present a properly framed piece but I can get those elsewhere...Dale's place will be restored (the pants...'thou restored')...one of my little art prayers perhaps...the great mountains of laundry, tools, general litter, motors, dead cars...oh my...well...looks like the Neah Bay dump there without benefit of a tractor to bulldoze it into oblivion...we'll see..several worthy ladders at the bottom of the yard...those I could use on the Reef roof but eh...Susan next door has one
A note on the other Aaron, he has a wife I haven't met yet named Rikki, didn't say anything about her when I met him, so I'm always thinking hmmm...but they told me at the co-op that he did because I stopped in there to tell them the Cannery was open (another place with much flotsam)...so, neither here or there that but the other Aaron isn't married and he looks remarkably like my favorite actor Russell Crowe and is terribly nice but somehow isn't my cup of tea besides being much younger well...not to speculate on the male population or anything because I'm not about that I think..though the Kali influence does wander that way...not like I'm going to worship it or anything because I don't feel that it moves me THAT much...this Rikki lady is newly arrived from the Nepal borders now there is a Kali influence in that as well I think but they're only temporary as Robert and Thu have gone to Viet Nam for a family visit for a little bit and Aaron and Rikki are sitting the very old labrador retriever.
So, I think I've covered all the bases up to date and have been cooking pot roasts and big squashes and watching little children along with the painting cycles and the weather has improved slightly though it's still drearier than Ingmar Bergman. Have added rock to the fish pond at the Reef and contemplate removing the back fence to get to the pond and deploy a lot of soil and turf to keep the water out of the yard...have to take down a great mass of brush yet and can't decide if it should be burned or carted off...have ridden the bicycle george gave me and puffed my way up the hill to the house but flew down again to the Reef, ending the day walking it up the middle road which is much much steeper and not sharing dinner with the neighbors, who went into town instead. None of the kids called today but I did talk to Middle Son yesterday and will go see them with the Valentine presents soon...
dogs are gnawing on their bones from the pot roast, on my second or third coffee and one piece of dark rye..time for a shower and flip on the radio...richstirfry and the jewish lawyer Bob Mackowitz (don't know that Mack is a lawyer but he's probably Jewish with that name)...wonderful Canadian station which I don't want to tout too much or they'll start playing too much Gordon Lightfoot...they had a Kate and Anna McGarrigle hour yesterday in honor of Kate's passing what beautiful music...my relatives of French Canadian descent in Minnesota it reminded me of...I neve rmiss those people but it's like an amputation you learn to live with it...I would have grown up with three hundred cousins but my dad moved us out West when I was still a baby...I've felt lonely all my life
I think that's why
so that's why I wanted to mention the other Aaron staying across the street because he looks very much like one of those cousins..Paul Marlenga for one...at a younger age...and my brother Mark for another...again, at a younger age...
sometime I'll comment on the nature of youth because this other Aaron has it in spades...for now it's about the influence of the Kali red...the little peace walk of Kira Grossman and the adult dancer..Kathy Keefe...upcoming Valentine's Day, mild weather, my three new paintings...two blank canvasses..the white doves from the Reef yard...I do think those are just fo rme but we'll see..have to make them a habitat if they are...
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