August 9th, 2010

My finance and I sponsor an exhibit space for local artists who are not represented in Santa Fe galleries.  We do not jury the shows or try, in any way, to dictate what art is.  People show in groups on a first come, first served basis.  Each group hangs their own show, promotes it and staffs the space during their show.  This is a free, gorgeous, 2000 sqft gallery in a great location and the artists take 100% of any sales. 

I was in the exhibit space this afternoon with my photographer doing a shoot for the invitation card for my show at the gallery.  Some of the pieces were too big to photograph in my studio and the exhibit space has really high ceilings and clean walls.

One of the artists participating in the next exhibit space show was there also, hanging his work.  I asked him to help me hang a 4 x 4 painting on the wall.  He looked at the 3 paintings I had there and commented, “Oh, are those supposed to be art?”   It was pretty comical, and also a bit sad.

I don’t really know why I’m telling you this.  Somehow, it got to me.  Artists, I think, are supposed to be open.  They are supposed to look deeper, feel more, and, if nothing else, support the creative process wherever they find it. 

His comment made me so instantly angry that it took every bit of self control to not squash this guy like a bug.  I wanted to ask him how many pieces he’s sold this year, or last year, or in his entire life.  I wanted to ask him why he’s hanging in our exhibit space and I’m getting ready for a solo on Canyon Road.  I didn’t.  I told him instead that my paintings are decorative table tops.  Then I told him that I liked one of his pieces.  These comments made him happy. 

The last show in the exhibit space was the life time retrospective of Dean Howell.  Dean’s an amazing guy who continues to alter my reality in subtle and profound ways.  I keep accusing him of corrupting me.  He’s in his 70′s and he is an artist with a capital A. 

Dean’s show was dark.  His work was amazingly well executed.  Some of it was downright scary.  I told him this.  He chuckled at me like I was a little kid.  Then he said, “This work isn’t dark.  Its honest. ”  His work, he explained, is about being fully human.  He wants us to be allowed to show, feel, live in all parts of our humanness.  “If we were able to be fully ourselves all the time, wouldn’t that be wonderful?  Then, we wouldn’t have to feel so bad all the time.” 

I’m wondering, if I had showed my full humanness this afternoon and let out the full range and power of my emotions, whether or not that other artist would be still be standing and whether or not I would feel better or worse for having done so.  His over inflated ego and obvious insecurity made me a little more conscious of my own and I ended up wondering about honesty, about what Dean is referencing, about humanness.  That other artist, I am sure, felt he was being honest.  But doesn’t honesty require openness, curiousity, a willingness to look at what’s beyond the surface?  At the end of the day,  I ended up feeling like honesty isn’t about immediate response.  It’s about what comes after the examination of that response.   And I think, if I have to be honest, what I found was compassion for this man.  And for myself.

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The next show

July 27th, 2010

Why is it that the more exhausted I am, the less sleep I am able to get?  Here I am, at 4 am, desperately wishing the full moon weren’t so bright and my mind would quiet enough to let me sleep a few hours more.  Instead, I am trying to put a show together in my mind that doesn’t (from the visual end) want to go together.

September 3 is the opening reception for my next solo show at Winterowd Fine Art in Santa Fe.  September 3 is also just past the deadline to have 13 finished sculptures up to Denver for installation in the new 4 Seasons Hotel.  September 3 feels like it is tomorrow and I am awake because I do not know how I am going to put my sculptures and abstract landscape paintings next to where the work has moved now — urban landscapes that are dynamic, architectural and bold. 

I wish I had a huge space.  One that would allow me to show the evolution of this work and the dialog in my mind.  The color field pieces are like nature itself.  Huge, powerful, so immense that in spite of their inherent movement, and energy, they are still.  Or maybe, they render me still.  I get lost in them.  I am overwhelmed, small and irrelevant.  They make me feel like I am in the woods or a busy field or in a storm and remind me of my own fragility.

 The urban landscapes are different.  They are about constructs, the inate human desire to be important, to have an impact, to control or block out the force that is nature and to render ourselves, even if only for a split second in time, as powerful.  Interspersed throughout are are the sculptures.  Snap shots.  Punctuation marks.  Poems. 

So how do I show these works and have them make sense in a small Canyon Road gallery?  How does anyone understand that all three “bodies” are interrelated even though they look like they come from three different artists?  And why does it matter so much its interfering with my sleep?

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Painting with Acid

May 13th, 2010

 It is late afternoon and I am listening to Beethoven.  The gardens are watered, and though they are filled with weeds and gopher holes, there is promise in them.

I have been working for the last three weeks on totally new art.  I am painting with acid on steel canvases.  A painting, for me, is more like a novel while my sculptures are like poetry–lyrical and immediate.  In my paintings, the narrative is slower, more layered.     

I have yet to aquire the skills to work competently in paints.  Patina acids are a different story.  I have years of experience with them.  I know how they will react with each other, the colors they produce cold and hot, how to layer, blend, and achieve a surface at once smooth and full of depth. 

So I’ve been playing, enhancing the patinas with paint where necessary and learning how to create a desired finish.  My studio is sticky, toxic and totally mesmerizing.  I have found myself spending hours looking at these pieces, taking them in and getting lost.

Ideas for sculptures are stacking up, gestating while I learn these new techniques and break myself of my own habits.  My vocabulary is growing and I am like my gardens– full of weeds and gopher holes, and the promise of new life.

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Minimalism

April 23rd, 2010

It snowed last night.  The cold creeping, insipid in the dark, through the quilts and the tangled bones of memory reawakened.  We gnawed on the marrow of old wounds.  Shivering.    

We don’t have quilts.

Or memories that we share. 

Or enough silverware anymore.

In the cold and toxic dark, our words ripped through each other like angry animals desperate for sustenance.  

I love you.  Art matters. 

Where the fuck did all the forks go?

I am thinking about minimalism.  Stripped bare.  Bones, invisible in the dark. 

Letting go.  Holding on.

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The First Step

April 21st, 2010

The thing about not traveling all the time is that the movement becomes internal.  An undulating river of emotions, ideas, fleeting thoughts, flashes of possibilities.  Sometimes its hard to know what’s real, what course to follow, where to go and even how.  Its easier, I think, to have a deadline, take the necessary steps, and arrive at the destination to encounter mostly what you expected. 

I have a friend who has spent most of her life internally.  An artist, a writer, a beautiful soul who beats herself up incessantly because somehow she has not “arrived” in the world, or achieved the external accolade she expected she would.  She called me this afternoon, from our local art supply store, asking me to validate her decision to spend a ton of money she doesn’t have to buy art supplies and an easel so she can make the work that will get her into a gallery. 

We talked then, about making a commitment to the work, the lifestyle, the promise of manifesting a particular future.  Somehow, you do have to make the commitment, put yourself at risk, be willing to fail, to lose it all, in order to get whatever it is you desire. 

My friend is making the commitment to sell her art and make a living doing it.  I’m committing to myself — to the mystery, the unknown, the life without a specific focus or goal, to exploration and the ability to leave my studio at two in the afternoon so I can come home and write a blog post about drifting. 

Instead, I’m writing a post about action, goals, commitment and the fear associated with them.

I am guessing my friend is loading her car right now, berating herself for being less than frugal, and smiling a little at being daring enough to act on a desire instead of merely wishing for it.  I am guessing that as she contemplates this first step, the blank canvases and the sacrifices that will have to be made to accomodate them, she is feeling a bit small, lost and out of control.  I am also guessing that as she puts the car in gear she will crank some of her favorite music, lean back in her seat, and feel a large amount of hope.  Because this afternoon, when I left my studio, walked away from deadlines and work ethic, and all the rest,  that’s what I did.

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New Work

April 19th, 2010

The incorporation of organic media into the work has opened some new doors in my metal sculpture.  These are some of the pieces I have been talking about in my last few posts.  To see the difference between these works and previous works, visit my web site.

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Sedona

April 13th, 2010

We ran away this weekend.  Fast, hard and with the inevitable collisions.  Against red rock and grey stones and the light, fresh green of new leaves, we walked the river, picked our way through boulders and logs, and lava shaped round and soft by a river ages old. 

We talked.  We fought.  We made love and held hands.  We were intimate — away from the deep pulls, the running pressure of our turbulent lives — sane and real. 

I am always surprised that passion and intimacy are so linked though perhaps I shouldn’t be. Still, when I think of it, I imagine intimacy as a kind of quiet, a stillness in time.  The latin root of passion is: suffering.  The roots of intimacy are: put or pressed into (with a sense, from a slightly different root, of inmost).

Suffering, pressed into, inmost.  Suffering the beauty of color.  Suffering the weight of love.  Pressed into a place, a time, a history, the inmost, tenderest parts.  The smallness of us.  The hugeness of us.  The rolling, sliding, rushing, calm, mysteriousness of it all.  And is there a point?

This was what we pondered in the abstract and in the deeply personal.  We wrestled philosophically and emotionally with all the tools at our disposal until finally we were so spent there was nothing left to do but play cards, drink wine and smile at each other.   

I have spent most of the last 30 years trying to find a point.  The art has been about going far enough in to find something that somehow makes sense, resolves the questions, formulates a philosphy that answers not only why, but how to live.  And the funny thing is, right now, I’m pondering the point of that. 

Its so easy to get trapped by a doctrine, stuck in a belief, encapusalted in conviction.  Now, I am finding that the convictions and beliefs, the constructs of safety and order I have created are only boats, frail ones at that, down a wild river.  They are the leaf, the twig, and the plastic bottle floating with the current until the inevitable log dam or waterfall catches them, crushes them, or rips them apart. 

It seems that inevitably, I find myself either stuck or in the water.  Do I try to catch another leaf, another twig?  Or, in this moment, wet and shivering and gasping for air, am I a part of the mystery and force of this river.  Am I then, outside the constructs of safety and order, simply finding a way to be.

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New Directions

April 5th, 2010

I’ve been missing for a while.  Pulled in different directions and, truth be told, burnt out.  The work felt redundant, tired, and well, like work.  So I took a break.  4 months later, I am back in my studio full time.  And its better.  Somehow, the work is going deeper.

In a nutshell, I think that if art is like meditation (and I am assuming it is though I don’t meditate) then the first thing we do as artists is learn how to clear the clutter from our hearts and minds.  Once the clutter is clear, we can focus, hone in, distill the essence of a particular experience and render it with conviction and precision.  That’s where I was.  I didn’t know how to go farther so I thought I had to switch media again, start from scratch and come at the ever present questions from a new direction.   

Since  my break,  it feels different.  Its as if the continued meditation, process, what have you, has progressed from clarity into mystery.  A door has opened out of myself and the universe is waiting.

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ART = What?

November 29th, 2009

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.

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Changes

October 22nd, 2009

In September, my love and I visited Italy, France and Spain for the first time. It was incredible, empowering, transforming. For the first time in my life, I did not feel intimidated by the weight of history. Instead, I felt a part of history, at the cutting edge of it, and most importantly, I felt relevant to my time. It was thrilling.

The trip helped me to solidify some feelings I have had about my life. As a result, I am making some changes. I have decided to get off the road for awhile, let my galleries to most of the selling, and create some time to do all the things I have been wanting to do but never have the time to explore. I am ready to experiment more in different media. I just finished two paintings that I love. I’ll post them as soon as I can get some decent photographs of them but I am anxious to do more. They combine acrylics on canvas with steel frame and I am so excited about their potential.

In addition, I am finally going to put some energy toward all the people out there who are looking for sculpting tips and advice. I just finished the redesign of my web site, http://www.destinyallison.com/, and have included a section called, “Sculpture How To.” In this section, sculptors will find my ebook, “The Language of Sculpture,” regular sculpture tips, and a sculpture critique opportunity for those of you who want a one-on-one critique of your work. In this way, I can offer the help people are looking for and keep my metal sculpture blog relevant to my creative process and intellectual pursuits. I hope you will take a look at the new site and new section and let me know what you think.

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