Pablo Picasso Month

People have been posting about things they are thankful for this month.

I've agreed with many of them, liked many of them.

I'm adding – I'm thankful for Pablo Picasso, whose words made me think hard all month long. I've learned some things that I wouldn't have without his words... most of them about myself.

Pablo Picasso Month - Day 21

It's the subtleties in our lives that speak to our inner being.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

~ Pablo Picasso

A life lived only aware of things easily noticed is a pretty mundane existence, a life easily controlled by the agendas of others.

I need to work harder on noticing the not-so-obvious things in the world around me.

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Why Pablo Picasso Month?

Pablo Picasso Month - Day 19

The first part of this quote seems obvious, the second... not so obvious...

The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.

~ Pablo Picasso

It seems obvious that once you have mastered your technique – and know you've mastered it – it doesn't get in the way as much as it does when you are still learning. But I think there's more to what he's saying than the obvious. I think this goes back to an earlier quote that I posted... when you've mastered the technique for your art you can take shortcuts or even ignore/break the rules and dependably come up with some spectacular work. It sometimes happens when you're still learning, but it's usually a happy accident at that stage.

Learning how to minimize the effects of mastery without affecting the quality of the work we do is the real challenge. How to make the amazingly difficult, complicated things easy and simple – to clarify the method and the results – that is the step beyond mastery. Mastery can sometimes be achieved reasonably quickly... to go beyond that is a life's work.

The second part of the quote is telling me that when technique is glorified above the rest of the components of the work the results are often not what we would hope. Sometimes the purposely technically perfect ends up being sterile or contrived or trite or even merely consumer goods (think Thomas Kincade... a man whose mastery is obvious and whose work is pretty much meaningless, emotional drivel...).

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Why Pablo Picasso Month?

Visitor to Beelandia

Sometimes a very simple thing can make your day...

This Swallowtail came to dine in Beelandia.

I hope she returns and brings her friends...

Dali Lami, Darwin, and more

Listening to Tadie and Abelisto last night set my head to spinning.

If there were more hours in a day, I'd take some more philosophy classes, some more history classes, some more theory classes, so that I could more fully participate in the discussion. But there isn't, so I'll concentrate on the things I must know, instead of the things I'd like to know.

Life is interesting. Each choice we make both expands and limits our horizons. Well, each choice has the potential to do so. Some merely limit us.

Another Labyrinth

Today I took part of my lunch hour and helped Eileen & Tadie recreate a labyrinth for the graduate program course that Eileen teaches. It was our 4th labyrinth together. Tadie took some photos and perhaps a video of the making of it. If he sends it to me I will post it here later.
Here is the first one we did - I think it was 3 years ago. It is nearly perfect. We have the best process for painted labyrinths...

Eileen measured the space we had to work with - an 80' diameter circle (or 960").

I took an image of the Chartres cathedral labyrinth into Illustrator as a background image.

I then drew concentric circles , lining them up with the 11 circuits of the unicursal labyrinth.

I added the lines for the switch-backs and the gaps for the pathway and then grouped all the elements so that they would stay in the same relative positions, and deleted the background image.

I set the base measurement in Illustrator to points, and enlarge the grouped graphic to 960 points in diameter.

Now I could use Illustrator's measuring tools to determine the all the necessary measurements.

Since there was a 10" diameter tree in the center of the area I took 5 inches off of the radius and then took a copper rod and bent it into a circle that we slipped around the tree.

Using a 1/4" rope, we placed a tab of masking tap at intervals matching the dividers for the 11 circuits.

We then painted the straight lines and plotted where the curved lines began and ended, where the switch-backs were and where the entrance was.

Then using a athletic field painting handcart, we walked backwards, spraying the paint, using the rope as a spoke as we went round and round creating the circuits.

Once those were finished we added the center and outer lunettes, and the curved corners at the switch-backs.

We learned that the labyrinth would last through two mowings, although it would need retouched fairly soon after the second mowing. We kept it up for several months and then repainted it the next spring.

The one we painted today is a bit mis-shapen due to being on the side of a hill, but it will still work. Instead of a tree in the middle, we tied the rope to a large screwdriver and stuck it in the ground where we wanted the center of the labyrinth to be.

Lunar Eclipse

My attempt to photograph the lunar eclipse. It's not real crisp (but the night was) probably due to the fact that I was using the Subaru as a tripod (quadrapod?) and it was so cold it was hard not to shiver. Maybe I will try when it happens again in 3 years. Maybe it will not be 15 below zero at 2:00 AM on December 21st, 2010... hmmmm, better not count on that.

It was - however cold we got - a wondrous site. You can see how ancients would assign portentous omens to an event like this. Rightly so, I would say.

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A Father Story - Transcendence

My father and I sat in the van, in the pre-dawn twilight at the edge of the ocean, on Daytona Beach. We had driven all of the previous day and most of the night to get there. It was the last family vacation we took together – I was nineteen and had already moved out of the house (not on the best of terms), within a year I would be living in the commune, and all communication between us would cease until my first child was born.

I get motion sickness in a vehicle – car, bus, airplane – it doesn’t matter. If I am not the driver, I am ill. When my father is in the car he always drives. Always. On the trip from Indiana to Florida I decided to take medicine to keep from being carsick. I slept through three states and woke up somewhere in Georgia. Everyone else was asleep and my father was alone as he drove through the darkening evening. I crawled out of the pile of bodies and up into the passenger seat and watched as the roadside scenery flew past, briefly in and out of the illumination of the van’s headlights.

Along towards morning we arrived at our first destination – Daytona Beach. In 1977 you could drive out on the beach, right down to the ocean’s edge. We pulled up to the high-tide mark and turned off the engine. I closed my eyes and leaned back, deciding to try to sleep until daylight. Almost immediately my father nudged my shoulder, pointing out over the ocean. The band of sky just above the dark water line had turned from the black of night to a vivid, iridescent, dark turquoise. You could tell that the sun would soon be up.

Except for the gentle lapping of the waves, it was totally silent on the beach. As far as I could tell, there were no other people on the strip of sand stretching out into the darkness on either side of us. I watched as my father lit his pipe, tobacco glowing brightly as he inhaled, inhaled, inhaled – he always takes three deep puffs to light his pipe. When my night vision returned and I could see out into the darkness again, I saw a strange orange glow far out in the water, looking for all the world just like the glowing tobacco embers in my father’s pipe. I rubbed my eyes and blinked several times, unable to figure out what I was seeing. As we watched it became apparent that we were seeing the sun, seeing it shining through the water. We were seeing the sun before it rose, seeing it through the ocean, visible to us because of the curvature of the earth and the clarity of the water. For a few fleeting minutes it seemed like the ocean was aflame. Then the sun crested the horizon and the day was upon us.

At nineteen I was still far too self-absorbed to notice very many things beyond my immediate wants or needs, but sitting there on that beach it became evident to me that I was observing something outside of my normal daily experience. It felt like something that had been happening for millions of years, something that happened for the first time at that very moment, something that happens again each time I think of it.


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Transcendence

The opening sentence of my artist statement states: I am an interdisciplinary artist examining the transcendent in the light of the connection between the ancient and the contemporary.

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So, how does one examine the space between the ancient and the contemporary in the light of the transcendent?

Transcendent, fancy word, complicated idea... The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as going beyond the limits of “normal or physical human experience.” I’m still working on my definition – some days I think I’m almost there, other days, well…

Why is it that people try to isolate the transcendent from the ordinary? It seems to me that they are two parts of a whole. Doesn’t separating them destroy both of them? Render them weak and unremarkable?

I think that life is, by its very nature, transcendent. I think it happens aljavascript:void(0)
Publish Postl around us but we often don’t realize it in our fragmented existences. To be present in your own life is to connect with the self – the I AM. From that place, from that self-awareness, comes the ability to recognize the transcendent. I don’t mean self-centeredness; I am referring to self-knowledge. When we do not know ourselves we become ineffective, insecure and fearful, easily swayed, easily manipulated. Because we do not know what we are truly capable of, all tasks seem impossible, all obstacles, insurmountable and our awareness is trapped in the normal, everyday physical life. I think most of us get glimpses of transcendence now and then, usually when we least expect it, during moments of peaceful acceptance or hard-found resignation.


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An Examination of Transcendence

Okay, my Artist Statement says "I am an interdisciplinary artist examining the transcendent in the light of the connection between the ancient and the contemporary."

So, how does one examine the space between the ancient and the contemporary in the light of the transcendent?

Read more...
Much of my work has its origins in the ancient or traditional. It is inspired by the everyday articles that were created to make survival easier, ritual meaningful and environs pleasurable. There is a continuity to be found in working with fiber, with sculpture and with story that springs from their antiquity as focal points for human activities. This continuity both informs my practice and is expressed in my work, sometimes becoming the message of a piece or the vehicle for the message. An examination of the historical context of the work of fiberists – my word for the individuals that create articles (decorative, household, personal, industrial) using weaving, felting, sewing, knitting, et cetera – has become a significant part of my praxis as well as one of the inspirations for my personal theory of art, helping me frame my position that art is giving ideas shape. I don’t believe that having a practical use prohibits an article from being art. I have seen exhilarating, breath-taking weavings that could have been used for a number of practical purposes, and probably were. Purpose is as much “in the eye of the beholder” as beauty.

Examining the practical, utilitarian aspects of fiber work allows me to bring this aspect of the craft into my practice, both as a study of methods and as inspiration for contemporary work. I am most interested in the artifacts and techniques used to create them, from earliest known examples through pre-industrial revolution fiber work.

I think that one aspect of the exploration of the transcendent relates to Time – chromos time versus kairos-time – or time as moment-to-moment and time as eternal. Madeline L’Engle has the best explanation that I’ve run across:

Kairos. Real time…That time which breaks through chronos with a shock of joy, that time which we do not recognize while we are experiencing it, but only afterwards, because kairos has nothing to do with chronological time. In kairos we are completely unselfconscious, and yet paradoxically far more real than we can ever be when we’re constantly checking our watches for chronological time… The saint in contemplation, lost to self in the mind of God is in kairos. The artist at work is in kairos. The child at play, totally thrown outside herself in the game, be it building a sand castle or making a daisy chain, is in kairos. In kairos we become what we are called to be as human beings... (Walking on Water 109)

A friend of mine explained how she sees kairos time – God’s Time she calls it. Her explanation revolved around one of the spiralcut magnets from my practicum. She picked up the spiral from the centermost point. The spiral spread out vertically, resembling a curving, sloped walkway up a very pointed mountain. “Here,” she said, pointing to a given spot on the climb. “Here is where your great-great-grandmother was born, and here is where she died. And here,” as she pointed to a spot farther down the spiral, “is where you were born. This place on the spiral represents your allotted time. This is chronological time, time as we know it. But this, this is God’s time.” And she promptly dropped the spiral flat, flat onto the table top, reducing it to a two-dimensional plane. “In God’s time it’s all one. You always were, your great-great-grandmother always was, from the beginning to the end in God’s mind.”

I’m not a religious person. I don’t go to any church, haven’t been to one since racing motorcycles became more interesting than Sunday school, back in seventh grade, but her explanation struck some sort of chord in me, something that has resonated, deep inside, coming to the surface at odd times... I’ve wondered, ever since that simple but profound illustration, if we sometimes skip across the void, skimming into times outside of our own allotted time like a flat stone thrown skipping across the river. Could that be the source of our strangest dreams, the sudden inspiration, the feeling of déjà vu and those unexplained moments of utter calm or utter terror?

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