Pablo Picasso Month - Day 18

This is absolutely the way I work.

You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.
~ Pablo Picasso

I make sketches and plans. I set out specific stone and glass. I test how things are going to fit together.

But all that changes once the mortar is on the board...

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Why Pablo Picasso Month?

Pablo Picasso Month - Day 17

I'm probably taking this one too literally when I tell myself I must be contributing to my art practice everyday.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

~ Pablo Picasso

Perhaps instead Pablo meant that we should be expressing our thoughts and feelings in our art – documenting our experiences in our art, our pain and joy and what we see and what we think.

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Why Pablo Picasso Month?

Pablo Picasso Month - Day 15

I probably don't ask "Why not?" enough.

Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.

~ Pablo Picasso

But I think I make up for it by almost always asking "What if...?"

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Why Pablo Picasso Month?

Pablo Picasso Month - Day 11

We often defeat ourselves with our own words and worries. I am always amazed (and not in a good way) at the abundance of people whose first response to any challenge is "I can't..."

He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.

~ Pablo Picasso

We shouldn't Pollyanna our way through life, but we need to push back against the urge to "I can't" ourselves out of new things. I've been there too, though. So tied into what I thought was inevitable that I couldn't see there even were other possibilities. It can creep up on you, that "I can't" mindset, that feeling that you aren't very good at something, anything...

My mother would always tell us that if we started out with "I can't" we most certainly cannot. [She actually used to say "Cain't never did nothing," – used to drive me crazy.] As kids we weren't allowed to say "I can't" until we had given it our best attempt, at leasttwo or three times. It's not that my parents were task-drivers, or harsh; they were very caring and supportive. They just thought that we shouldn't take the easy way out, and to them "I can't" was taking the easy way out. And the result of that was that all of us kids – and most of our kids – are very well equipped to take on the challenges the world throws at us.

I think all the "I can't"-ers would benefit from living with my mother in their formative years.

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Why Pablo Picasso Month?

More to ponder as the school year begins...

A friend of mine sent me a link in response to my last posting. 

Like Lilly Like Wilson by Taylor Mali

Thanks Dirk. The poem made me smile. I loved the story it told.

Something to ponder as the school year begins

Overheard as I passed a classroom last semester:

"God, I hate this. This class is so stupid..."

"What makes you say it's stupid?"

"It just is!"

"I've found that people often say a class -- or anything else, for that matter -- is stupid when in fact they are simply uncomfortable with the ideas being examined.

My job here -- the entire purpose of higher education -- is to challenge your comfortable life. To get you to think about the uncomfortable things in the world. And perhaps most important of all, to help you develop a mind that is open to all the conceivable possibilities. Because if you're not open to all the possibilities, you'll never understand the questions, let alone find the answers."

Dedicated with deepest respect, love and appreciation to every teacher, every professor, that made me think about the uncomfortable things.

Sustainability - Problems & Solutions

One problem with talking about sustainability is that it is an overwhelming idea. There is great resistance to changing our lives, especially if we think it means deprivation of any kind... even inconveniencing ourselves is sometimes more than we can deal with. I admit it - I have those days.

Another issue is that it is so very difficult to know when we are hearing/reading valid information, and when what we are hearing/reading is just sales hype - just Greenwashing.

A third major problem with sustaining the sustainability movement is it is so DAMN expensive to go green - or at least it feels like it is. Products seem to cost so much more when it bears the label - "Green."

And one last issue (at least the last that I can think of right now) is that there is not much solidarity in the movement. So many people are doing so many different things. I know that there rarely is the unity in a social movement that people think there is, but I cannot help thinking that a bit more unity and common direction would help considerably.

So, we are adding new sustainable ways to our lives, one thing at a time - CF lightbulbs, buying local produce, using cloth tote bags, riding bicycles whenever possible, driving less, investing responsibly, using fewer toxic chemicals and trying to talk more with people about sustainable living.

I have to think about all the work it takes incrementally or I will give up on it.

Helen Levitt, Photographer, 1913-2009

Interesting piece.

I especially appreciate the observation that we tend to suppose a genius to creating art, a master status for an artist. There isn't, you know... neither genius or master. You just get out there and do it. If anything sets an artist apart from others it is a trained eye (ear) and an obsession. Like anything else, if it is important enough, you do it over and over and over - looking for ways to do it better. Some of us read every book and article on art like ours. Some of us make and make and make, honing our skills, practicing our praxis. Some of us study the HIStory of the art we do. Some of us strike up conversations with every other artist we encounter, picking their brains for ideas and inspiration. Some of us experiment and push boundaries - our own boundaries, our audience's boundaries, and the boundaries of the media we work in.

Some of us actually do get better. Some of us become masterful in skill and expert of eye. Not Masters, but masterly.

It's not as special as you might think.

Anyone can do it, with enough passion, enough work. Some do it better than others (and therefore are able to sell/show work - although much of what sells isn't particularly better than that which never graces a gallery wall or floor, just better marketed).

More thoughts later...for now you should watch this video.

Perhaps A Foundling

Last Friday, Abelisto and I took the train from Winona to Indianapolis. We were going to visit with my mother and drive back in our Taurus station wagon (so we could be a bit more sustainable in our driving - it gets between 24 and 27 mpg, while the truck, well, I have been afraid to test it - I do not really want to know how bad it is...). We left the Taurus there back in November when we brought my dad's pick-up truck home with us. My brother had been checking over the Taurus for us - it had a few problems.

On Saturday, my brother stopped by to tell us about the things he found out about the car that needed our attention once we got it home. We ended up talking about politics, the environment, and some social justice issues. About halfway through the discussion, I asked my brother if he was libertarian. He said except for drugs and prostitution, he is one.

My sister and her husband are probably republican. My other brother, is definitely conservative, I do not know if he is more likely to be republican or libertarian and to the best of my knowledge my mother has always voted republican, although this time she may not - she is disgusted and disquieted about the condition of the world and our government's abuses. She, at 72, is probably far more liberal than my siblings, far more open to ideas and the views of "the other."

Where did I come from? Or maybe a better question is how did I get to where I am? I told my mother I felt like a foundling, like a misfit in my own family. She said that I have had a "larger life" than my siblings. I have lived more places, had more education, experienced more hardships, been abused, isolated, marginalized - and survived all of it, fairly intact and sane.

Maybe she is right. I think that I have not always been as liberal as I am now. In fact I know that I have not. For most of my life I did not even allow myself to express my thoughts or even know what I thought about a great many things - at least on the surface. I think that over time, I began to collect ideas and opinions which I hid away in compartments in my head, taking them out to study them when I could, when it was safe.

Does one need to experience injustice, poverty, abuse, and conflict in order to understand its impact? I think some people may be able to intuit the magnitude of these violences. But I was an extremely self-centered child/adolescent/young adult. I guess I had to live in it before I realized the weight of violence and abuse and how it pressed me down, made me tired and weak and powerless.

And I had to feel all of that personally, deep down in my bones, before I could develop any empathy for others, any understanding of privilege and lack, any passion for social justice and critical thinking. Before I could learn to be kind or to stand up to violence and injustice.

Of course, I am still working on it.

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Turning our yard into Beelandia

Beelandia - with Top Bar Hive Metpropolis

Today we did some more fencing. With major help from #2 son, Abelisto & I all but finished the section of the yard we are planning to fully enclose for the bees. It is actually about a third of our yard in all. There is some yard in the front that is not fenced at all, and there will be about the same amount in the back as the fenced portion that will only have a dividing fence between our yard and the next house. We are waiting for people to remove a boat and RV and a dog kennel and a stack of firewood that has encroached into our property over the last couple years. The guy with the boat and RV did ask us, but the dog kennel guy did not and I have no idea whose firewood it is - it just appeared one day while we were at work...

We still have a bit more to do on this enclosure - one section in the front to put up (the post is set in concrete since it was next to the house - and it needs to set for a day or two before we hang a section of fence on it) and the rear gate (which would be immediately to my right as I took this photo). The section of the fence that will be the gate needs trimmed with the skilsaw in order to fit in the space allocated for the gate. We will do these two things one night this week.

Abelisto has already started the digging for the various plantings he has in mind. Once the fence is finished I want to remove the screening from the side porch and build steps from it down to the side walk. Then I want to get some nice chairs for the porch. Not a swing - those things give me motion sickness...

Next - the ROOF!!!

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Interstices - Part 5

Took the show down on Saturday. Now all the art is back in our house. I found wall space for all the paintings and photographs, and I filled the corners of the front room with sculptures. Some items (like Glimpses in Time) will have to be rolled or folded up and put away. Even if I had room to hang a 5' x 8' x 8' sculpture in the house, the cats would destroy it... not on purpose, they just love fabrics and hanging fabric is their favorite.

They are pretty tough on window blinds too. They have made cat-sized holes in the blinds on a couple windows. They simply walk through the ends of the blinds (bending the individual plastic strips out of their way) to get to the window sill, and after enough bending and folding even the toughest plastic will crack and break off. I have some 14 ounce canvas that I plan to use to make some roman shades. I figure that it is tough enough to stand up to five cats - it is the same fabric that is used to make commercial tents and awnings (minus the plastic coating that makes it weatherproof).

Anyway, the art show was fun and frustrating. The fun part was that I got to speak to so so many people about art in general, about my art, and about art education. The frustrating part was (and is) that I do not have the wherewithal to just do art, or even do the kind of art I would really love to do. I would love to do really large sculpture work and/or public art. I want to cast Communion Circle in ductile iron or soft steel and set it outside to rust. I want to do some work with oxyacetylene welding. And I would love to create some large clay sculptures.

I sure get tired of saying to myself, "Well, someday..."

However, I really should not complain. After all, I did not even step onto this road until just a couple years ago. You would think that by this time I would have learned patience. Perhaps I am just feeling mortal these days.

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