Fall

The nights are cool and it is still dark when I wake up to get ready to go to school. It is harder to walk lately. My feet and legs are stiff and numb. My hip is more painful. The cool weather and Lime's disease have added an extra 15 minutes to get to a functioning level. It is now almost 8 am and I am fine. Moving with ease now, I prepare for my lecture that starts in 10 minutes. Phil, my youngest son 22, is in the hospital in Cambridge. He has been there since Monday. He has e coli virus and is very ill. He will stay there on IV's until his blood count is better. I want to drop everything and be there fretting in real time instead of here, teaching. I am giving a brush making demo this afternoon, and then I will decide what to do. Friday evening two of the exhibitions that I have helped develop will open. Maybe I will take the night owl...
The pull of mothering does not end when children grow up.

Environmental Impact Exhibition Images

Putting this show together gave me the privilege of working with very excellent committed, artists. From my initial proposal of an exhibition that explored the relationship of artist and place, it has been a journey of opportunity and discovery as the connections and conversations of the included works began to emerge more fully as the work arrived.

I am reading Bachelard's, The Poetics of Space, Brook's, The Empty Box as well as other author's who write about psycho geography, the experience and creation of space. At the time we began hanging the show, I was aware of the use of gallery space to produce a specific way of entering or experiencing the art, but this time, I was seeing the whole space as palette. And I had the language to articulate to describe what I was going for. I could more easily explain the idea of an exhibition as a time based experience, shaped by the way the work is hung in communication with another artist's work as well as providing spaces of visual rest. Similar to Pillow shots in film, I wanted to create spaces for the viewer to reflect on each artist's work individually, to create relationships in each body of work and in communication with the whole space.

It was an interesting process to try to orchestrate a fully developed space when you are working in the abstract. Slides and proposals do not really give you complete information as to how the work will occupy or fully inhabit the space. As a curator, I am always very critical and very rarely, have I been 100% satisfied with the result of a group show. Often there is an expectation that might not manifest as fully as I had wanted. This show had many conceptual and control challenges as we tried to accommodate artists whose work is site specific. Insurance forms and safety issues had to wait until the day of installation. The exhibition is in a public space, a thoroughfare that is used by hundreds of students on their way to class, as well as conferences, departmental meetings and public lectures. We had to balance creative freedom with the liabilities of public space.

As the work began to arrive, there was an excitement, a sense that the space was taking off.

The most important thing to emerge from the process was to see the impact of the space as experienced by the students and faculty who walk through every day. The juxtaposition of images of impact and waste with more reverential pieces that celebrate the beauty and poetic experience of the natural world has produced a balance of observation and healing. any students and faculty have commented on the healing power of the space that Tom and I have created. It has surpassed any expectation I had when I first conceived the idea for the show. I am so indebted to the gallery director for his invitation to form this space and his support of the shared vision that exceeded our expectations both in the generosity of the artists who participated and the overwhelming response from the college community.

I have been invited to be part of a college and community panel discussion "The Power of Art to Heal". I believe this is a result of the environmental impact of the exhibition.

The large watercolors were done by me just after 9/11. As I kayaked along the Patuxent River, I was acutely aware that these images might be the ephemera of a post nuclear world. The silence of No-Fly was so frightening. I was accustomed to the constant roar of flights going in and out of Andrews Air force Base nearby. These pieces were done in the silence before the build-up, throughout the military build-up and up to the decision to attack Iraq and the months following the occupation. I had never exhibited these pieces, they do not fit so easily into the body of work. It was a decision Tom and I made the day of the installation to use these particular images of beauty and luminous color. Initially I was going to put in small black and white monoprints, but I began to see the color as something that might dare viewers not to take care of beauty. I am helping to curate two other shows where I declined showing my own work. I am not sure why I decided to put work in this one. It has worked out very well, though it has brought some controversy as well. I have learned that you can not control the perceptions of others.

off running and out of sync

Sometimes, it feels like I can't turn around without knocking something over. Lately, it is more than things are moving at such a pace that I need a score card to keep track. I am starting a new teaching post, at a school 45 minutes from my regular school. So , one night a week, I will be out very late. My regular classes begin at 8 am- 3:30 T TH.. so it is not so bad.
Both art shows that I worked on seem to be in great shape, though I have not had time to photograph them.. Putting together Five syllabus and course outlines has taken up a lot of time. I wish I could say I did a great job, but that would no be true. I am having more trouble than before with organizing schedules.Also, I was denied coverage for my new insurance carrier, so, I will be without insurance for about a month. I was denied due to the reporting of medical conditions that are still not fully diagnosed, so it is hard for me to know what to do. I have the preliminary Neurology workup this Thursday, so I have to go, even though they are just supposed to set up further tests, which actually are not going to happen because I will have no coverage to pay for the tests occurring outside my plan... Duh...
In the mean time, I have had some flashes of insight as to the nature of my sculptural work. It is so strange. I fully develop the work with a specific intent that the figures be perceived as objects. After all, that was the point. As women, when we undergo radical cancer treatment we lose the things that connect us to the world of experience, we become abstract numbers, cases... protocols... even as healing objects, the figures fall more readily into Icon than the more direct political reference that would result from making them life size. So when my adviser suggested I make them larger, I was annoyed. Making them larger, only serves the inevitable Western impulse "Why not make them bigger," as if that will make them somehow better...

When I showed them to my friend from London, she totally got that they were never intended to be adult, or waiting to become life size... they are symbols, not replicas of real life. She also suggested that I should put them around and wait to see what arises. This rush to show, exhibit, and get feedback is not my style. I hold work back for years until I see what must be done. I have only been making these figures in their present forms since Jan 2005 and they need to 'percolate' in their own space. I have shown them and have not been at all happy with the way they were exhibited or the way they occupied the space.

Last night, I had a flash about the difference between exhibiting and living with a sacred or symbolic piece of art. Somehow, the public exposure or valuing silences the piece, or cuts off the subtle meaning that can only come from prolonged viewing or multiple viewings in a space of reception and openness. Art as something that you totally get in one viewing is something I do not want.

Watching the "How art made the world, to death and back again" series from PBS, it occurred to me that art that is meant to reconnect some spiritual lack,has moved out of the places where it is best understood or experienced. 9small gardens. or alcoves in private settings) In "Ways of Seeing", Berger laments that art is out of place by means of mechanical reproduction or replica, but it is also out of place if the work is situated somewhere, where it can not be viewed over the period of time it might take to really experience the work. Like sculpture on the Internet, or postcard, it just doesn't give you the thing that sculpture does best. Occupy real space..

sillibeeees sylibussesss syllabusts

I got a new contract to teach an art appreciation course at a new college for me.. new book new folks..long drive... The book is quite interesting and takes a look at the processing of the work through visual literacy, ideas around processing sign, symbol etc. so in some ways, I like it better that the Gilbert I use for my other courses. It is a little too much for this semester for me to have three Art 101's... maybe Barbara will give me another studio instead. I will find out Thursday evening. Then I will have to reshape my five week syllabus back to fifteen meeting twice a week. It never stays the same... It means I have to read this huge book...
I did begin the syllabus and gave the course outline a shot.. Have a feeling there is a supplemental book with a study guide that they did no give me at orientation that would make life a bit easier..
I have a staff development presentation tomorrow afternoon and at the last minute I was kicked out of the computer lab by this angry tech who informed me that the lab would be down all day tomorrow. So, of course, I do not have my PowerPoint..I do not have my mandala template or handout.. So, instead of teaching without a net, I will be giving a workshop without a net.. or power point.. or handouts.. well, maybe no one will come... or since it is about transformation.. maybe there is some magical.. no not even..

My health insurance is ending on August 31. I have been given totally wrong information and misleading helpfulness. Today, I went to the County Benefits Office and finally have the information I need. It is a weird thing, I can stand silently and get screamed at, lied to, disrespected.. threatened.. and nothing... so today, this man was really helpful and wrote out the document I needed, stating that I had continuous coverage etc, and of course, I burst into tears..

What does that mean?

Tomorrow, before I go to the Dean's Breakfast, I have a followup mammogram. This is the one to see if the lump has grown back from February. I am sure everything will be fine. Hopefully this will clear up that part of my medical history.

Really, I need some time off. Some place quiet. Where someone makes me tea, rubs my back.. tells me everything will be ok..

Tolle says there is no good news, there is no bad news, there is only news...he is wrong about that when it comes to lumps... no lumps is good news.

and will there be time for art?

The Mirror/Metaphor show is shaping up nicely, so I am very proud of that effort.

Environmental Impact

After weeks of planning, the Environmental Impact Exhibition if finally up and lit. I am gratified by the overall quality of the installation. Many hands came together in various way to produce a visual dialogue about the natural world and the ways that we as artists, relate to the changing environment. It is interesting to see the way the work begins to build meaning from the other work in the Gallery until it seems as if it was conceived in itself, a work of art. I was too tired to shoot anything today, but will put up some installation shots ASAP.
I put two pieces in from 2001, work that was done just after 9/11. I found myself unable to do the abstract work that I had been doing. I felt that at any moment, it could all be wiped out. There is a kind of luminous color in the work, as if the threat of going to war again heightened my sense of color. The work is sort of styled in application, as if the natural world is whirling around the viewer, even though there are recognizable trees, water, roots... the sense of it being captured by a hand that might not have much time left and wanted to get in as much as quickly as possible.

Job Search

I have been digging around looking for something I can use to apply for another teaching job. I found these paintings. They are from 2004, the year I began teaching. They are studies from a trip to Provence. I started a series of larger, collage constructed canvases, but never got to finish them. I lost my studio space.

I lost the thread of purpose in these pieces as I struggled to learn to teach painting. I have been teaching for three years, graduate school for two...
I can't see my work any more.
I do work for graduate school, that I exhibit and work I do that comes from the joy of painting...for me... and that is the work that seems remote.

These pieces are 10" x 10", stretched canvas. They are encaustic. To me they are little icons, stylized images of the scale of the cultivated French landscape. They are from sketches I did on a bus traveling 45mph along country roads outside Aix on the way to Arles. The color is more about the memory of lavender, the impossible blue of the French sky and the way it excites the yellowing bean plants. Mt St Victoire. I succumbed to the spell of light and color.

When I critique student work, I ask, where are you in this painting? How do you get in? It is a concept that they don't ask themselves.
Looking at my work, there is a distortion of perspective because I am about 10' above the ground on this giant bus.

We are so used to seeing images that are taken from unusual heights, cameras in the air and telescopic lenses that we forget that as artists, we are always asking the viewer to let go of gravity. Forget about walking into the Last Supper, it can't be done.

These are the kinds if things that wake me up.

We experience the world from eyes at whatever height they happen to be. Our vision is homogenized into ideas about what we see. We enter a visual world self-mediated by previous experience, narratives of belief, memory, dreams. We begin to project and fill in the blanks before we allow ourselves to identify what is actually seen.

Legerdemain.

We might allow space for skepticism.

Cell phones

Just when I thought I had technology lined up with the intent of my day.. life.. morning..
my cell phone began ringing and vibrating. It is a big deal for me to remember where anything is, so the phone is set on high and rings forever, giving me time, plenty of time to find it.
As I got closer to the source of the sound, it sort of faded.. and then disappeared? What the? And then I saw it. It had vibrated off the counter into the cat's water bowl.
This is not good. In fact, I think I can safely say, that, without completely giving over to despair mind, this is a bad thing.
I also missed the call.
I pulled the phone from the water, opened it, and gave it a good shake. I wonder why I thought that would help. I took out the battery and dried it. I pushed a bunch of buttons, orderly at first and then randomly, like a short circuited crazy person. I wonder why I thought that would help. I dried it with the hair dryer. I took it apart and put it back together. I squeezed it. I recharged it. It made a buzzing sound and got very hot. I plugged it into the recharger thing. It got very hot. I unplugged it and took it apart again. I stayed in this first responder mode, trying to breathe life into it for about 20 minutes. Finally, I made the call. One cell phone. Dead at 11:47 am.
Luckily this was a phone and not a person. I wondered about my helpless bumbling in the face of a critical moment. I wondered about my tendency to proceed from somewhat rational responses to declining reason, eventually resorting to bizarre, unproductive measures.
I have seen people unravel at the computer in this short circuit mode, hitting every button and key, long past rational thinking.
When something goes wrong I try everything I know and when that doesn't work, I try everything else. And I find myself asking the cell phone "what should I do? Are you in there?? Help!"

Grapes of Wrath

Watching the opening scenes of Ford's GoW, it is hard not to know what is going on. Black and white, man at a crossroads, alone. Within a few frames we learn this is an angry guy, suspicious and quick to anger. Perfectly crafted, the angry guy meets JC ( now who could that represent), any way we get right away that this nice guy is going to be somehow instrumental in the transformation of Tom, unless Quentin Tarentino steps in to finish the film.
My point is that maybe it would be great if John Ford directed life. Maybe there would be some unified view, a mediated time line that has a perfectly orchestrated arc and we would have big moments inhabited fullt by regular folks, where though times are tough, moms rule, the weak die, those who do not adapt will get crushed... that's better than scripted fear stuff orchestrated by an ex-cheerleader and his friends.

I have gotten off the subject straight into a political rant.

Back to GoW.

Ford is the kind of director that can frame the large situation (often in a door way) and then flesh out the threads of various characters in the smaller moments, light passing across a face, the cry of a dog on the prairie, etc. He is lost and gets bogged down in sentimental scripts but rises large in the hard hitting ones. He is up to extracting every bit that he can get past the censors, who though on the lookout for communist or labor sympathisers, seemed not to have understood the power of Steinbeck's material. Through the power of film, important social issues were free ranging in a larger cultural domain, catalyst to another kind of understanding of the relationship of wealth, privilege, labor and property.
The politics of these two men, is a whole notha thing, as humanists first, I think their politics ran across lines of political to an America inhabited by real people trying to make sense of what was happening around them.
Both address ideas of home... where it is, who makes it, what is home, when does a space become home?
Both seem to deal with ideas around the outsider and whether he can make a deal with life as he finds it and call a space home, whether it is burning, or a truck on the road...
So, I wonder what kind of film would Ford make today? Would he be annoyed that we love his film and agree in principle, but still have homelessness in our country and support actions that create massive diaspora in other countries?

Wall Relief

This is the bottom section of a piece entitled wall relief, 80" x 60", sold in 1989 to a young couple in Georgetown. That is me, adding some pastel marks. I have used the title 'Wall Relief" many times, possibly because I find myself staring at the layering of peeled posters, paint, marks. layers...on the walls of subways as a student outside NY in the 60'sand later, gutters, streets. walls. Any place that has been used to leave messages, posters, announcements... any area that collects the detritus of passing ideas, uses, garbage... the stuff of the presence of humans.
The process of staring at something for a long time has always served as a way of getting in.. into this space of deep seeing... a kind of inner knowing that leads toward something as a descreet space, in and of itself. Nothing more is needed. As a process that begins as building and layering, it soon becomes reducing, removing, excavating , and then I add the last bits of the direct marks.. annotations? Maybe the marks are the faint scratches of meaning, or just wear and tear of the surface.
The idea of the impact of the larger compositional image drawing the viewer into the tiny detailed marks as part of the meditative process is completely stolen from somewhere. The lack of content, other than what is imposed or projected by the viewer is intentional. In the correct sense of the word 'abstract', my work is not an abstraction of a place or person.. it is the abstract representation of the process of seeing and thinking about space, the arena of the plate, the screatio of three dimensions in a two dimensional space, the process of adding and removing...
I work until I am satisfied that there is sufficient information...or until I am too tired to go on. As this image is built, I bury the initial layers. Each layer is like a geological strata, one that holds the expression of that moment of seeing. As each layer is part of a last/next process, a reaction to what has preceded, the choices become narrower as the piece finds its end through induction... to a state of something... a record of me thinking about something?

One time my husband, a highly educated man, who rarely noticed or commented on my work, said "Your titles are really a map of your mind. " I was not sure what he meant by that, but it seemed a good thing so I said thanks. He didn't like to talk much about my ideas. He was sort of an effete aesthete. He felt that there were enough amateurs in the world and depised mediocrity. So maybe I was having a private conversation with myself about what I was reading and thinking about when I was working for hours alone in my studio?

My work is about ideas about reflection and expression of the nature of being, separate yet connected to the world around us. It is about the physical relationship of the scale of my gesture, the reach and arc of my arm to the surface.

Thinly veiled cries for community when I had no one to talk to about things that are happening around me? So I have decided to begin a list of the work I have done over the years ( I started titling things in 1982) and see what I can make of the 'nonlinear' ramblings of an undisciplined mind.

garden

Daily, since my return from Vermont, I spend several hours in the early morning and evening trying to revive, restore, reclaim the garden patches and containers in my yard. Once so carefully groomed and lush, now dry and beaten by the drought and sun. I water sparingly to try to keep a bit of bloom going. Along the North side of the garage, a lovely patch of Heavenly blue Morning Glories have popped up. Volunteers from another year, I guess, for, I did not plant them. I built something for them to climb and with any luck, they should bloom well into October.

I can not be in the sun working for more than one hour without becoming dizzy again. The heat is still intolerable. I hope that this will pass in time. It is 90 degrees by 10 am. Today there is a breeze and I mowed the lawns.

Last night I had a happy surprise in a bloom from Katja's cactus. Katja is my dearest friend and we have cemented our friendship in the exchange of plants for nearly twenty years. She is a master artist and print maker and I had the honor of living next door to her and her sculptor husband Mark when I first moved to Maryland. Her friendship in art, food, gardening and family have sustained me.

One Sunday, we were roaming around the Takoma Park market when we saw this gorgeous cactus. It was similar to a night-blooming variety that we had both wrangled with over the years, an ungainly, heavy, ugly plant that overgrows to the point of exasperation before sending out arrays of large, heavily perfumed blooms.

We obtained a cutting of this new cactus. Purloined. A bad habit passed on by some rogue genetic gardener lineage... The shared heritage of generations of grandmothers who pick off a leaf here and there, proliferating African violets, colleus...etc. I could not visit and admire a plant in a neighbor's yard without being encumbered with cuttings, plants and advice on how and where to plant... the community of shared gardening is a great source of pleasure. Buying a plant for myself does not resonate nearly so much as one given by a friend or neaghbour.

After four years, we have several large plants. It has the same bad habits as its cousin plant, but that is ok. It redeems itself with the offer of peasant blooms.

It embodies something of the nature of friendship, sometimes at the brink of drying up, suddenly invasive and needy, remote, fallow, and then suddenly offering up a most delightful treat. The first set of blooms, ten in all, I missed completely. I had seen the beginning of the blooms but became preoccupied with some other matter. One morning when I went in to water, I saw the spent blooms hanging there, drying. In a moment of carelessness, a friendship can also be lost in this way.

Finding Berringer

While assembling my bibliography for the next semester, I found myself returning to the intellectual territory of trauma, how it operates, pre-post-sub-lingual- liminal etc... and thought... whoa... stop now..
This is so out of balance! How can I incorporate the healing work of my practice in this drama without getting sucked back into the endless stories? The long whine of abuse, guilt....
Being fairly pragmatic (once in a while I am) I decided to do the right thing.. google the words that framed my intention for this semesters work..

And there it was, staring me in the face.. I know these people, their work, their writing.. I am even in some of the books portrayed as an artist doing this healing work. I designed the cover for what is going to be an incredible resource for the very field in which I am engaged.. and yet I have disconnected from it? Deciding not to tease out the why, I put aside whatever keeps me from embracing the work I am doing, and muddle through the fear, the reluctance, the annoyance.. (it is still there) and stay focused on the work itself, the power of it and the spirit of the community where I work. Reading "The Map that Changed the World" helped me remember the solitary path of the one asking the questions, the ones that get the blank look, or 'this is work that is already out there, nothing new..' .. erasure...
Why do I erase myself from the picture? I am where I am, I belong to this place I carry with me, I am with me all along the way...
I may always have the voices that say I am not worthy, good enough...a disappointment, not perfect... they are the arrows I must transform .. Somehow I thought that once I knew they words,they would go away. The anger I feel is more towards my own laziness or resentment/assumption that this is a fix instead of a process.
The subtle message of 'help' is that there is something wrong, bad.. external, that can be seen, judged, shamed... While the work that I need to do is internal, it is leaking out on to the people I care about...
So, I have to get to work on the two workshops that I am presenting. I can not wait to hear if the lump is back...and the process of good clear work, will clear up the lump, right? And I was thinking of dropping my health plan anyway, so the County got there first, what does that matter? And so what if I did have a small stroke and cannot trust my spelling or memory or CLP mechanisms..? This is the field I have chose, and now I am the field work...
Though, I think I should get the documentation about the language processing disorder.. because that will make Devora's job less personal on both sides...

returning home

Thinking I would stop in a hotel on the way home... and then finding no vacancies in Maine, New Hampshire.. I finally settled for some sleeping in my car. Not the best idea. NO pillow. kept losing sensation in legs and arms... needing to find a rest stop.. always a consideration.. I felt closer to the homeless in a self selected, stupid way.. at least I can sneak into a Mc Donalds and not get tossed out... if I can find one open all night... in the end.. they were open for Drive in only.... I fantasized about drive in bathroom facilities.. how would that work..?
In any case, I drove straight through to Maryland, arriving at noon. The full heat of the day took my breath away. My plants in the front yard were dead. The fence around the property is still incomplete. The dust from the cleared lot behind my house hangs like a cloud over the back yard. There are no trees any more. This is something I have a hard time accepting.
I go in through the garage.. The cat's bowls are all empty. I call for Grendel. I hear a faint cry. He is purring like crazy.. He is healing himself from my neglect? Loneliness? Hunger?
He is setting up a huge purr session, rubbing all his ungroomed loose long hairs everywhere. They get in my mouth and cover my shirt that seems to be a hair magnet.

I am numb with exhaustion. I can only do some small things, like bathe... make tea... and go to sleep.
I nap most of the day, noticing there is a growing lack of sensation in my legs. Whenever this happens I look at my legs. They seem larger than I remember. I know this is a projection of my fear around the gradual loss of feeling. Maybe I should measure them. Sometimes after a long drive or a long time sitting, this happens and it goes away after a few days. I believe this will happen this time too. I decide to do some of the sciatica exercises from my physical therapy. After a few sets, my back hurts more and my legs feel less. So , I get some ice and take some more Advil.

I make a start at the bibliography for Devora.. It seems disingenuous... the bibliography has only a tangential reality for me.. I thought I was talking about my annotated Bibliography for my G3 progress report, but it seems 'We' were talking about my bibliography for this G4 semester. I thought I was talking about setting up the frame for my portfolio and nailing down the work that I have done toward completing the degree requirements. But 'we' must have been talking about something else. I thought I was making decisions about how I was going to proceed so it seemed very strange when Devora said, " I am going to hold you to this"... I still haven't completely processed what she meant by that. The lawyer in me wants to know if this has arisen out of some past packet work with my past advisers, or whether this is just something she does... like outing folks on their lack of honoring their word or something...
I had been looking forward to working with Devora... My reluctance about her as an adviser had come from admiration of her expansive mind... and how new lines of inquiry might throw a wrench into the works...but now something new has come up... maybe she is too much of a teacher for me... I am the one who is in control of my work at Goddard.
Or maybe not?

unburdened by the complication of too much thought

having made this statement, I feel the subtle ' that's what you think'...
I miss the doing, the direct response to the plastic materials that are the ultimate arena of y practice. The Alchemy that Elkins describes, pushing the goo, the slickery slime of paint, the responsive clay, the patina of bronze.. in my hands..
Once my adviser is revealed, I will probably shape my work to take advantage of what is possible... I am already exhausted and it is only Saturday. I have begun my study plan in a vague way, selected a few books on film theory, continuing to look at how others have framed their understanding of processing time based signals, intervals, the third eye..