ART = What?

It is almost 3 AM. Snow was forecast, but instead, a sloppy rain, the hint of winter coming.

Slowly.

I spent the holiday in California. On a beach, by a pool, in the arms of my love. The first such holiday without my children, who are becoming adults and making their own decisions. The first without a turkey, the cranberry/orange relish I make with Grand Mariner. I spent it dancing to bad 80's music, laughing, thinking little. Reading a great deal. I have been awake for 23 hours (mostly) between planes and airports, rushing deadlines and the wayward acts of a child I hope will soon become a man. I am avoiding ART. I am creating something new. I am redefining, for myself and those who know me, what it means to be an artist. A woman in love. A mother. A member of the world.

Art (dictionary definition): 1. the production or expression of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

What does this mean? I was looking for the etymological significance of the word. Words are usually pretty tricky. I didn't find anything. Latin. Ars. Skill, Art. Not much help as I focus on my current creation of, of all things, a shopping center instead of a sculpture, painting, or even a blog.

Turnbull, about Fitzgerald, said something about a life being a work of art. Implying (maybe even stating) that Fitzgerald's life was somehow more relevant, more profound, than his literature and I am thinking tonight about my last post, Dead or Alive, about living and breath and above all, personal responsibility, non-situational ethics, the pain involved with doing nothing and the pain involved with doing too much. I am thinking about pain, about happiness, about the irrevocable, brutal intertwining of both and how I am never content. I am thinking about what is new. Can we truly reject the pursuit of power, or the pious ablution of that pursuit through an homage to fear?

Another definition. I love this.

Human: Originally spelled Humane. Humane has been restricted in its use since 1700 and takes into account only the nobler aspects of man. Whereas Human, in its current and original forms, speaks to the whole spectrum from weak and pathetic to benevolence, compassion, and refinement. Don't you love it? Keep the word, restrict the meaning.

As artists, it is our job to be "fully human." Fully alive. Suffering. Wise. Creative. Flaky. Insightful. Substance Users. Substance Abusers. Aloof. Leftist. Against God. Talking to God (s) and/or muses. Chroniclers. Mystics. Psychics. Insane. Sexual. Deviant. Passionate. Intolerable. Good god, what we are tasked with! And god help us if we truly take it into the world. Make the world our canvas, our raw metal on the ground -- bringing order from chaos, breath into a day, creating something new (a shopping center, a baby, a garden, what have you?) with the palette at our finger tips and the possibilities in our hearts. This would be better written in the morning. Tonight, in the dark, with sloppy rain falling almost wetly in my desert, it seems that Dionysus will have his way.

ART gets sacrificed, at least tonight, for LIFE.

Dead or alive

I am thinking tonight about Charles Bukowski, Janice Joplin, freedom. Freedom to write, to sing, to walk away. Bukowski said, "An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way. An artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way." A friend said recently that art exists on three levels. The first is when you're learning your media, your techniques, your tools. The second is when you have bonded with your media and are focused on design, composition, etc. Most art is at these two levels. But basically, these levels are like dead bodies. You can dissect them, examine and classify them, use them as examples. You can even rearrange the parts to create something new because it doesn't matter. They're dead.

The third level is when the work comes alive. It breathes. Then none of it matters. It could be severely disabled, or radically beautiful, or unbelievably intelligent and its all the same. It is what it is. It is alive. At this stage, technique, composition, everything goes out the window because, finally, all these things are irrelevant.

This is a great way to look at it-- a complicated thing said in a simple way. Either its dead or its breathing. Which of course throws a great deal of my ranting out the window. Dead or alive. Pretty simple.

But here's the thing. In this world of sterile, condescending museums, decorators and fabric swatches, the inevitable exclamation of "Oh, these are beautiful. I love these. They're my colors exactly," and intellectuals who wouldn't know a new idea if it smacked them across the nose, does it matter? My kids love Zombies. Even the thought of them gives me nightmares. Don't you have to be alive to recognize life?

Years ago, some friends and I would wander up Canyon Road in Santa Fe. We would get to the top and drink several margaritas so we could be sober enough to walk back down. We talked about creating Baa (Bad Art Association). We would have little stickers of black sheep and every time we saw a work that was terrible, or an environment that killed good art, we would tag it. No explanation. No justification. Just Baa. Like sheep. But then, finally, we didn't have the guts. We decided it wouldn't be fair to all the artists who were trying their best. We wouldn't want to undermine their creativity.

Then, Friday this week, at an opening of particularly good work, I talked with a gallery owner/artist about the show, the business, about work that breathes. We talked about the economy and its affect on the business, and how all the hangers on (artists and galleries), all the ones who jumped on the band wagon, are going to fall by the wayside and only what is good will survive. He talked about February this year and how he never wants to get that close to the edge again. Said where he came from (Cuba, I think) every day was February, 2009 and if you weren't good, "I mean really good," you didn't make it.

OK. Bukowski. Bobby McGee. Breathe.

Time....

Time gets away from me and as it slips, so do I. A running battle between will and the inevitable but my will seems to slip as fast as the hours. It could be enough sometimes (I think) just to tend my gardens. But that, like most of what I wish for, is fancy, not tethered in earth, not something which can be grown, harvested, consumed.

Other things:
The full cover and 4 page spread in Sunshine Artist Magazine was awesome but I keep forgetting to show it to people or order more copies.

Direct Metal Sculpture (for the persons out there seeking definition) is when one works to manipulate metal into sculptural form without benifit of casting. Fabriction, forging, and assemblage all qualify.

There is little more satisfying than harvesting your own vegetables.

A plasma cutter and a pipe can wreak havok on the blessings of a metal brake.

Everyone says how much they love the color of my patinas. Everyone also says they would like to see more color.

I am ready, again, to do something new.

I wish I could go to Africa and talk to the rape victims.

I would be afraid of the soldiers.

I am often afraid.

What is it that people are looking for when they google "Sculpture Blog?"

At what age to children really become adults? And how does one manage to recognize it and react appropriately when it happens?

Ah, for the cool of the woods, a really good book, enough time to do nothing.....

To be self-contained...

Complexity

Home today with the beginnings of a cold, I finished a book called "The Age of the Unthinkable," by Joshua Cooper Ramo. It dealt with complexity, old ways of thinking, and the absolutely improbable declaration that contending with, and managing our world today must fall first (and possibly permanently) into the hands of revolutionary individuals. It advocated distribution of power, resilience as opposed to dominance, and the imperative to create a world in which individual creativity on a global scale is not only permitted, it is essential. Most importantly, I thought, it talked about how our world is dependent on our relationships, not on our objectives. I was particularly intrigued by Ramo's allusions to Chinese philosophy and culture as a model through which we might be able to revolutionize our own ways of seeing and thinking. I have been exploring similar paths in my work. I too am wondering if we took the time to focus on our environment instead of our objective, we might see or understand more. What are the layers of experience and relationships that give rise to our respective identities, knowledge and beliefs? How does our cultural disposition to act hinder or help our relationships? In short, I am looking at the layers and the currents of my experience as more important than what I think I know. This photo of "To Understand...." is my most recent attempt to express these ideas.

Time for a new arts movement?

It surprises and angers me that the art establishment places so much value on the meaningless manipulation of material as if the application of media in new or different ways can, by itself render the media into art. New does not always equal innovation, and innovation by itself does not equal art. Art is the emotional and intellectual expression, and subsequent personal revelation, of individual experience. The focus has moved from developing depth and honesty in individual expression, to celebrating innovations in material and technique that seek simply to shock, disturb or confound the viewers without taking them further into themselves or their world.

Throughout history, artists have manipulated media in response to their need to express more fully and with more depth that which they needed to communicate. Generally techniques and material innovation derived from the artistic process of self-exploration. It didn’t happen the other way around. Consequently, innovation does not necessarily equate to good art and just because one can make something doesn’t necessarily mean one should. What is cool is seldom profound and technology can not substitute for authentic human expression.

Unfortunately, this emphasis on new media and techniques has replaced the emphasis on content and in the process, we have lost our value for the aesthetic which, while we have tended to relate the word to beauty alone, also means perception. For me, art is that which gives voice to things in ourselves we do not know. It expands our consciousness. It resonates deep within us and soothes us through the honesty with which it reveals the world around us, our common experiences, and the value of our individual journeys even as it validates our yearnings, desires, hopes and dreams.

Art should never just be a commentary or a political statement. In the same breath, art should never be merely sentiment or raw emotion. Instead, art should create a dialog through which both the emotional and intellectual response to experience is revealed. In that instant of expression, all we know of an object, a subject, or an abstraction of them -- the individual, the historical, the present moment – is translucent, revealed to us through the vulnerability and courage of an artist who is willing to be fully honest. Then, as viewers, we can discover that in anger there is both love and fear, that hope comes from loss and is only sustained through determination and self-actualization, that our memories weave the fabric of our present, and that every one thing we thought we had defined has myriad parts yet to be discovered.

It is time for a new arts movement; time for artists to collectively define the direction we take in the 21st century. It is time to focus on those works which embody authenticity of expression over material manipulation, depth over observation, beauty (which does not mean pretty) over disturbing, clarity and insight over shock and confusion. Our continued willingness to support works whose meanings exist only through the interpretation of curators (whose jobs depend on the fact that the works require interpretation) condemns us. For if, as a culture, our highest accolades are reserved for those who seek to shock, destroy, and manipulate as they deny the breadth of our experience, then all our culture can aspire toward is more of the same.

Instead, we must inspire the art establishment to value once more that which is both perceptive and beautiful, regardless of media or subject matter. For too long we have lived under the umbrella of our recent history. There is no truth to the conviction that bad work sells and good work gets hung in museums. It is time to eradicate the myth of the starving genius and the wealthy sell out. It is time to lay to rest the notion that if you can’t understand something, then it must be good. Finally, it is time to help our world heal through works and exhibitions that value human endeavor over human despair. Each of the major movements leading up to and through the 20th century were created by just a handful of committed artists. Can we not do the same? Truly, if we lead won’t the world follow?

Cause for celebration

We were driving Sunday, running errands, finishing our holiday shopping, spending time together and there was a hush over the city. The sky was grey, striped here and there with thin blue veins and there were few people out. Even the parking lots at the mall were mostly empty and we didn't have to wait in line anywhere. It was calming. For the first time in a long time, the world felt sane.

It surprised me. All of the worry about the economy, the stress of building sculpture for deadlines, the urgency of making sure all of our six children are adequately spoiled with tons of needless junk for Christmas went away and we were left with a focus on quality, on time, and on the space around us.

That mood has stayed with me and this morning, when I woke to an unexpected foot of snow on the ground, the world white and still, I felt especially blessed. Perhaps we are all taking a deep breath and the slowing down is good for us. Maybe we will spend more time with our family, friends and neighbors around meals we cook ourselves. Maybe we will move away from cheap disposable goods to a renewed focus on quality and durability. Maybe there is something really good in this period of our collective history. A new beginning. A quiet joy. A cause for celebration.

Conceptual Art

Sometimes I get so frustrated. Reading essays today on Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman and others, I feel like screaming. What is it in our world that values derogatory social criticism and horror so highly? The "real" it seems, to me, is too obvious. Certainly death is real, and commentary on it has been a staple of western tradition. Still, morbidity, exploitation, dissection and dissemination are so easy that I am repulsed by the contemporary art establishment's thrall.

Lying awake tonight, trying to understand the energy given to sadistic and horrific ejaculations, I ended up envisioning my own "outrageous" exhibit. Admittedly, it was fun. I imagined the exhibit space down to its last detail--a beautiful room, replete with aesthetic art, furniture, rugs, but scattered throughout with my own particular social critique. There would be an enormous mirror layered with shards of other mirrors, one on top of the other so that all one would see in the reflection would be fragments of self, repeated endlessly. No full, complete view would be forthcoming. Interspersed in the mirror shards would be fragments of text from letters, newspaper clippings, old photographs, sundry household effects. I would call the piece, "Introspection divided by obsession = Narcissism." Then there would be a mannequin, or maybe two, completely wrapped in computer and electronic wires holding blackberries or the equivalent. One would see their eyes, which are down cast and focused, but nothing else human. This piece I would entitle, "Email me." There would be a pair of lovers, so completely involved in a kiss that they are oblivious to their surroundings. Encircling them would be several nay-sayers, holding up screens and smirking. This piece would be called, "Get a room," and would be a commentary on the hypocrisy of our society that makes the porn industry more successful than the mainstream film industry while it shuns natural and beautiful affection. Finally, in the corner, would be an expensive toilet. When the viewer flushes it, it would peal with laughter--a commentary on the value of "potty humor"in today's society which, when all is said and done, contributes exactly as much as a laughing toilet to human endeavor.

Finally, I got out of bed, poured a very stiff drink, and started to write this because if I succumb to what is easy (and contemporary art as it is revered is as easy as a simple landscape delivered with a little aplomb) then I forsake everything I value in art. For art, metal art or stone, oil or pastel, music or literature, must give you more than what you can read in the newspaper (or on the Internet) on any given day. We are so good at recognizing, and accepting, what is wrong with our world. We so seldom focus on what is right. How does one know love? Certainly not through sentimental film or literature. How does one know beauty? If we are looking to art to help us understand that which makes us recoil, then how is it that the mainstream news media is not being auctioned at Christies? Today's news headline "Aunt arrested in chained teen case," and its accompanying photograph, is certainly as shocking and socially revealing as a cow sawed into sections and preserved in formaldehyde. For me, art has to be about the things we know but can not articulate. Death is easy. It happens to us all. We know what death is. But can we define love? Or faith? Fear or joy? Art, I think, must attempt to describe and deepen our understanding of the things we know but can not define.

It would be fun to let go, to absolve the frailty and banality of what is human in techni-color, to finally free myself of rage and horror as I make metaphors for the most low in human experience and celebrate myself as one who has the "balls" to be honest about it. Ultimately, that endeavor would prove as mundane and worthless to me as it seems to have done to those who came before me and are finally settling down to raise their kids, sobering, finally, after too long an adolescence. Instead, I try to articulate that which is as real as death, but more rewarding -- I try to articulate the components of life that defy definition and are as individual as they are inspiring.

Waiting for the storm

Like the sky today, I am leaden with promise. There are new images in my mind, new materials. I want to try different things, to work in wax and wood, combining textures and forms with the metal for depth, variation, subtlety and shock. There is a storm brewing in me. But I am also leaden with the storm brewing in the world, trying hard not to let my fear of it be the impetus for my creative release.

I have been thinking a great deal about fear lately, how insidious it is, and relentless. All of us seem to be waiting for a storm of unreal proportion and for me, the waiting is the worst. Not knowing wreaks havoc with any sense of power or control so I find myself planning -- worst case, best case, everything in between -- and imagining all the various scenarios.

I used to play a lot of chess. Focusing not on the board in front of me, but on all the moves that might be made, I plotted action and reaction to any number of potential strategies. I live my life that way too because, in spite of all my best attempts to fully embrace the alternative, it is more natural for me to live in my memories and imaginings than it is to live in the present.

Strangely, it is the present that I sculpt. Through my art, I am fully present in my life and when I am working, I am content. I am thinking that I should take a lesson from this, focus on my every day life and leave the storm to do what it will. Still, this storm is so big, and the anticipation so intense that I feel lost. How do I work toward my ideal when the world feels so dark? How to I not let current events pull me into their winds? How do I turn fear into beauty this time?

Sandstone Sky

The brilliance of fall, of cottonwoods and aspens alight against a deep blue sky, the warm flow of blood through my legs in direct contrast to the sharp bite of wind on my face, the smoke from my burning weeds graying the clouds, their flames dancing in the bin, the deep exhalation of everything that has grown, fulfilled itself and is finally spent consumes me. I am drawn to the ordered chaos of the world around me. Broken sticks on the ground in the forest, the perfect graduated color palate of the Bosque, the sandstone textured clouds of the sunset last night inspire me and I have been thinking that I should sculpt those downed branches or mimic the texture of that sky. But these thoughts beg a question. How, if I am mimicking in my art a world that already exists, am I truly creative?

To create is to bring into being, or cause to exist. I do not cause the sky. I do not bring those downed branches into being. If I were to recreate the beauty of the natural world, I would be able to freeze it, know it again and again from different times and parts of myself. But in doing so, I run the risk of rendering me merely a spectator by objectifying and reducing that which is so fully alive, so huge, to something manageable and separate from myself.

Art, for me, must be something that is itself huge and fully alive, something that I not only witness but also interact with, something that, like nature, has the power to transform me. In spite of all my yearning toward beauty, the sculpture must also have meaning, its own ordered construct where the random textures and smooth colored swirls speak to a whole that is at once recognizable and new. That, for me, is the creative process. Out of the vortex of myriad sensations and drifting thoughts as I revel in a sandstone sky comes the mysterious allure of texture and color, light and shadow, feeling and idea that are not themselves objects but instead are the gestating parts of a whole not yet formed, only promised.

Dave Hickey and a walk in the woods

In between shows, frantic, frazzled, trying to sustain a semblance of normalcy and just managing to keep fires to a simmer, I find myself checking out, searching for something that can calm me, reading trash novels, and indulging in memories of a well know trail through meadows and creek crossings, where wild strawberries are hidden in the shadows of the pines, tiny, brilliant and infinitely sweet.

Silver nitrate stains my hands black. My back is almost out again. There is a large gash from a piece of sharp metal on my shoulder. There is an ache in my heart. I have turned myself inside out so many times over the last several months that I feel there is nothing left. A writer friend of mine wrote me recently and talked of the muse who had abandoned him. In her absence, he felt a kind of peaceful serenity and in someways, was glad she is gone. "She was a bitch," he said and I burst out laughing as I read the email. Aren't they all?

So today, waiting for my love to finish errands so we might actually go for a hike on that remembered trail (the lastest works are drying, but there aren't many so I ended early and have a little bit of time) I finally finished reading Dave Hickey's, "The Invisible Dragon." He implied that real art has to exist in a real world (institutions being emphatically not real) and that its power to communicate must, inherently, come from beauty for beauty is the language that transcends the middle men of politics, religions or institutions. In someways, he sounded like Martin Luther demanding a one on one relationship with God. He ended the last essay with, "As (George Bernard) Shaw pointed out, institutions collapse from lack of funding, they do not die from lack of meaning. We die from lack of meaning."

I found myself thinking about the irony of searching myself and my life for the things which challenge me to produce works that have meaning, works that stimulate and provoke me visually, emotionally and mentally while holding to an ideal of allusive -- a viewer recently described my sculpture this way -- beauty and what I want and need more than anything else right now is a walk in a beautiful wood. I would gladly, at this moment, trade meaning for beauty.

My father used to tell me that the beauty I recognized in the world was the beauty I knew inside myself. A beautiful sunset is only beautiful when it triggers an unspoken knowledge of myself. I think art does the same thing. Like Hickey said, "The rhetoric of beauty tells the story of the beholder who... contracts his own submission -- having established, by free consent, a reciprocal, contractual alliance with the image." Meaning delivered outside the "rhetoric of beauty" is dry, dead, cold. Beauty puts life, and the meanings we subsequently derive from it, in context. Today, I want to be the viewer. Take it in. Submit. Let go. I simply want to eat the strawberry in the cool of the woods and hold my lover's hand.

Wall Art

Why is it that art takes you? It's like a lover sometimes who, with a gentle stroke along an innocuous body part, sends tingles through you and totally changes everything you thought you were doing into something else, or something more. Everyday I go to work. The studio is littered with yesterday's debris, metal cutouts and grinder dust, empty water bottles and sanding discs. I never have enough strength at the end of the day to clean it up and I never, at the beginnning of the day, feel I have the time. There is an ache in my bones, the inevitable metal sliver lodged between a callous and the tender skin on the tip of my finger that nags at me but is too deep to remove with the heavy tools in my studio. I feel the weeks of build and grind in my back, my shoulders, behind my eyes and deep into my sinues. Still, I begin. And I think I am going to do something, turn out a small standing piece because that is what is lacking at the moment and there is little time to fill the demands. I start to move toward the metal, the long strips of four inch that look like tounges sticking out of the mouth of the garage door, licking the stones of the gravel driveway. But I am distracted. There is gentle touch, a tremor, and suddenly I am digging though my scrap pile, shoving plastic bottles and discarded discs out of my way, clearing the rubble to find my tape measure, soap stone, eye protection. Because somehow, I am somewhere else, deep into a new piece of metal wall art, moving round and round, cutting bits here, adding bits there, kicking myself. Now I am another day off my build schedule and one short of the number of small pieces I need to meet the next deadline. There is no order to it, no reason. Still there is the tremor, the beginnings of something new, the sharp points of the form careening like daggers into space and across time. Today, yesterday, there appeared the abstraction of morning, the collison of dream and reality, the sleepy, one-eye-open taking in of the world that was finished this afternoon in red and black and silver. Hardly morning colors, or exactly morning colors. Dawn, promise, harsh reality and caress of sleep, the body stretching before it remembers the aching muscles. I don't know how creativity happens. Its as improbable as a kiss while you are doing the dishes and just as dangerous. Because if the kiss is good enough, the dishes don't get done. And my standing pieces aren't getting done. Its funny how it shifts. The standing pieces are so intuitive, emotional. The wall art is different. First, like the metal sculpture, they are a mood, a feeling, the hint of a memory. Then they shift, my mind is engaged and I am looking at that mood from every angle, trying to capture it from every perspective. In one instance, my favorite position, the piece is sleepy, tender, open. In another, it is sharp, edgy, tensing already against the onslaught of the dogs who need to go out and the email that needs to be answered. Still again, it is spreading, flying, full of inarticulated and out of control promise. This is what I love about the wall art. Its like taking a photograph of a moment from every angle simultaneously so that ultimately, if you take the time to look, you can see the whole thing.

I have thought for years that art should transcend politics. For me, metal sculpture has been about creating a window through which one can view the ideal, or know a moment when time stops. The concept that art should be about ideas immediately relevant to an historical context seems somehow static. And yet, faced daily with the financial news, an unprecedented presidential election, the prospects of global warming and the inevitable transition of my children into young adults, I am thinking that my sculpture needs to be exactly that. I think there is a hunger in the world for something of substance. I know so many people who believe in doing the right thing, who want a greater good, who love with all their hearts, and who stop to watch a sunset. But so much of that kind of thing has been sentimentalized or politicized that we no longer cling to it as a necessity. I think we lack a movement that demands these aspirations from each other, from our leaders and our media, from our educational and governmental institutions on a daily basis. So how does one transform a quest for beauty into a political statement? How does one make the pursuit of the highest attributes of humanity a daily reality? Should I, as a metal sculptor, and should my colleagues in Santa Fe and artists globally start using our art to talk about where we want to go instead of merely commentating on where we are? Can you imagine what an impact we could have?

Compulsion to work

I am trying to learn how to appreciate down time but its not working very well. In the month since I broke my hand I have commissioned a new web site, written four chapters of a new book, driven to Tucson for a solo show, and developed new marketing strategies.

You would think I would go outside. Walk. Breath clean air. Cook sumptuous meals and discover new pairings. But I don't. I sit in front of my computer. I clean the house. I sit in front of my computer some more. I don't even read. It has been said, mostly by my children who are too young to appreciate these things, that all I ever do is work. True. I made the doctor cut the cast off so I could do patinas.

Yet it is the work that I love. The everyday dirtiness of it. Noise and dust, sparks flying, sweat and cuts, the all too many cusswords everytime I burn myself or can't get a piece to make sense. In that environment, I am free from my mind. And in the work there is quiet that can not be obtained anywhere else. In my studio, I am alone with everything I know, everything I feel, everything I want. And it is this mix of images and memories, dreams and desires which stirs and stews until they become a vision and finally a sculpture. Then, there is a beauty I can touch--a sunset that doesn't fade, a flower that never wilts, a universe or a poem. When I'm walking, I am always going somewhere. When I'm working I am still.