A Cool hand...

J. and I watched Cool Hand Luke Saturday. (Sorry about the long quote)

“Anybody here? Hey, Old Man. You home tonight? Can you spare a minute? It's about time we had a little talk. I know I'm a pretty evil fellow... killed people in the war and got drunk... and chewed up municipal property and the like. I know I got no call to ask for much... but even so, You've got to admit You ain't dealt me no cards in a long time. It's beginning to look like you got things fixed so I can't never win out. Inside, outside, all of them... rules and regulations and bosses. You made me like I am. Now just where am I supposed to fit in? Old Man, I gotta tell You. I started out pretty strong and fast. But it's beginning to get to me. When does it end? What do You got in mind for me? What do I do now? Right. All right. [Gets on knees, closes eyes and begins to pray] On my knees, asking. [Peeks up with one eye, waits. Then opens eyes and crosses arms] Yeah, that's what I thought. I guess I'm pretty tough to deal with, huh? A hard case. [Clicks tongue] Yeah. I guess I gotta find my own way.”

I love this movie. I enjoyed the irony of showing up the church the next morning only to discuss Job in church class. Luke is a kind of modern day Job.

I vacillate between feeling disappointed and feeling like none of it matters. I find solace in making art and have been on a tear, painting large canvas and small alike with passionate abandon.

I think the message is we don’t get to know why we suffer.

Someone once told me that suffering is a symptom of our spiritual separation from god.

I focus on the four noble truths
1. Life is suffering and 2. Suffering is caused by desire or attachment but that 3. It is possible to stop suffering 4. There is a path to get you there. And that suffering will decrease the further along the path you go (though it may take many life times)

I tend to blame others for my pain. It is easier that way

“Smite me oh mighty smiter”

Freud talks about his patients as people who are unable to see that part of their life that is causing them pain. The long and short of this is, we dwell in ignorance of ourselves.

The further from pain and suffering I feel, the less I blame others.

It is in these moments of clarity that the truth reveals itself. Suffering is not something to be endured. The realization hits me like a ton of bricks.

Rumi of the day

Walk barefooted on the ground and make it giddy,
pregnant with joking and buds.
A Spring uproar rises into the stars.
The moon begins to wonder what is going on

turning lemons... to paint

So, I didn’t get the job I wanted. J. pointed out that this experience was a good way of lining up our lives with God’s will for us. I definitely had the “I want’s” when it came to having steady, full time employment with benefits, and as the Buddha says “Suffering is caused by desire.” Sigh. There are so many spiritual platitudes to get me through my trials. Still, I get to keep my adjunct status which means I am teaching so there is some money coming in, and it gives me more time to focus on what I want which is to paint, to get into shows, galleries, juried exhibitions and, in short, to be an artist, not a teacher. So today I pulled myself up by the proverbial bootstraps (which incidentally is where we get the idiom “to boot up a computer”) and made a painting. It was fun, it was gloriously messy, and it was mine. So I put it up here for y’all to enjoy, and please, no sad “I’m so sorrys” we are well past that now… But if you want to shamelessly heap praises on the art it is much appreciated :)



These works are a continuation of themes executed in paint over the past few years. In these works, the layering of images and painted swatches adds both a physical depth and a sense of romantic mystery. The painted swatches of canvas come from my own recycled paintings what have been cut and reassembled here to form a new body of work while collaged images come from prints scanned from a series of books handed down to my by my grandmother. These images are transferred directly onto the canvas along with the adhered swatches of painted canvas creating works which effectively acquire layers of meaning and age represented both by the history of my own work and the family history associated with my grandmother’s book collection. These images are, paradoxically, depersonalized and isolated, yet also universal, demanding quiet contemplation by the viewer.

Simpsons Intro

Meditation

“Within my body, Arjuna, see today the whole universe, including everything movable and immovable, all in one, and whatever else you wish to see.”

“ O god! I see within your body the gods, as also all the groups of various beings; and the lord Brahman seated on his lotus seat, and all the sages and celestial snakes.
I see you, who are of countless forms, possessed of many arms, stomachs, mouths, and eyes on all sides. And, O lord of the universe, O you of all forms, I do not see your end or middle or beginning.”

Sitting in the sauna I began to think about these lines. I thought about how one goes about meditating on the infinite. I thought about the Christian God being as vast as the East is to the West. I wondered, am I meditating? Am I clearing my mind of conscious thought? No, there is always that one persistant voicve, the overlord of voices that keeps saying “O.K. now we are going to do X and Y. I thought about this for a while.

it reminds me of the mantra "Ohm Mani Padme Hum" for which there are a million translations. I had a book that did a fairly good job of explaining it, but I can't find it, anyway I didn't have it in the sauna with me. I'm not one to meditate, unless there is beer involved of course but these thought in my held swirled and overwhelmed me.

Centering

took a breath, "Ohm" I whispered, then I said it again, i delighted in the way my lips and teeth vibrated, the way the breath sank back into the depth of my throat, "Ohm" I said, filling myself with ohm.

Self

I know I am supposed to be clearing my mind of thought, but I can't help but visualize, I am very visual. I thought about the soul, the spark that was breathed into Adam, that part of us that is also part of God, a little piece of the infinite. I thought about how looking through this lens I was looking at the infinite. I wondered about how tiny I was, in comparison to all things, like a cosmic Where's Waldo.

Unfolding

There is this great Simpsons episode where the camera pans up over the family sitting on the couch up over the house, above the earth, through the solar system, galaxies and into the infinite blackness only to emerge in the pupil of homers eye. “Holy Crap!” I imagine myself containing the infinite, only to emerge as myself again. Another visualization came to me as Elle sat on my lap, one full of potential, the other the seat of creative power, ready to have a new family, the child emerges as the adult that returns to the child.

Jesus said, "The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live. –Gospel of Thomas

Hum- The arrival

I feel this amazing sense of calm and satisfaction, I sit peacefully within myself, the universe both unfolding and contained, hum is the ohm, we have arrived full circle, the process begins again…

(All in all a great day for taking a little steam)

applying for a job

waiting to find out if I got the job, a job I have been doing for a year now mind you, is a tedious, painful affair, a lot of, looking at the faces of your co-workers, wondering if they know something you don't. Figuring it is a shu-in... other times feeling the abyss opening in front of you... I can't remember feeling this way before and yet I am certain this is how I have felt every time I have ever applied for a job. it is a little like this:

Homer: Uhh, I’d like to buy this doll.
Shopkeeper: Take this object, but beware it carries a terrible curse!
Homer: Ooh, that's bad.
Shopkeeper: But it comes with a free frogurt!
Homer: That's good.
Shopkeeper: The frogurt is also cursed.
Homer: That's bad.
Shopkeeper: But you get your choice of toppings.
Homer: That's good!
Shopkeeper: The toppings contain potassium benzoate.
[Homer looks puzzled]
Shopkeeper: ...That's bad.
Homer: Can I go now?

New Sculptures

I am often asked why do I make art? The answer is simple, and hard. Art is my chosen language of expression. It is the lens though which I view the world, the sum total of my experiences.

It is a fragmented language, one in which many of the terms seem difficult to define or appear contradictory. I work in the language of contemporary abstraction trying to make sense of the seeming randomness of my myriad experiences. A difficult task as the bulk of painting in abstraction is largely seen to have split into two branches, formalist and conceptual approaches.

Conceptual artists stress the fact that their art works are abstract, in the manner of language, rather than representational or figurative. At the same time, formalist painting utilizes abstraction by emphasizing compositional elements such as color or line, rather than realistic depiction of figures and appeals to the viewer through gesture, scale and the physicality of paint.

Why should we care? Who would even recognize this split? And what does it have to do with art making? The answer is not simple, but art is often seen as a struggle to synthesize opposites, and in so doing helps me not only to better understand art, but better understand the world around me. As Kandinsky once said, Art is the child of its age and the mother of our emotions.

My own work seeks to build on the explorations of both conceptual and formalist abstraction, borrowing the framework of conceptual art, the stripe and the grid, while incorporating the formalist imagery, using reference to earlier art, found images, clip art and text. This juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated figures, texture, and pattern creates a kind of ambiguity of imagery comparable to the conceptual underpinnings of minimalist and post minimalist art, bridging the gap between the two interpretations of abstraction.

In a similar way my sculptural works appear as eccentrically shaped, modestly scaled abstract sculptures with crusty surfaces. They are made of plaster, papier-mâché, wire, fabric and other ordinary materials. But their surfaces reflect the evocative brushwork of the American Abstract Expressionist with their loaded brushwork, the whiplash line, poured paint, and the palette knife. To the Abstract Expressionist distinctive gestures mattered. The mark of the artist was as distinguishing as the artist’s signature, thus the mark becomes a kind of figure. In this way the sculptures reflect the anti-form movement of the post minimalist artist like Eva Hesse joined to the formalist trends of Abstract Expressionism.