longevity
I am maybe a little preoccupied with the idea of artistic longevity. It’s gratifying to watch people who push through many stages as artists– visually, musically, or otherwise– but it can also be painful to watch a favorite go through awkward transitions. I was a devoted Cocteau Twins fan in high school. When I was in college, Elizabeth Fraser started commanding her angelic and passionate secret language into a sort of canned therapy session (“Are you the right man for me? Are you safe? Are you my friend? Or are you toxic for me? Will you betray my confidence?” ugh), and the music followed suit. I lost interest. After that, the only thing I remember hearing and liking was a guest spot with Massive Attack (the instrumental part of which opens House M.D., if you swing that way). So when, a couple days ago, I heard the above song, Moses, on the radio, I thought, “This is really great, but that singer is a total Elizabeth Fraser rip-off.” Later (hooray for KEXP playlists online!) I checked, and it was the lady herself!
Any artist who works over decades of time seems to be required to have awkward stages, and often publicly. If they don’t take big embarrassing risks, they tend to go soft and mediocre. But you and I can probably think of many artists who have walked out of either spot to make more fresh and engaging work after a period of turning over the soil (or letting the ground lie fallow).
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to what listens
I come to it again
and again, the thought of the wren
opening his song here
to no human ear–
no woman to look up,
no man to turn his head.
The farm will sink then
from all we have done and said.
Beauty will lie, fold
on fold, upon it. Foreseeing
it so I cannot withhold
love. But from the height
and distance of foresight,
how well I like it
as it is! The river shining,
the bare trees on the bank,
the house set snug
as a stone in the hill’s flank,
the pasture behind it green.
Its songs and loves throb
in my head till like the wren
I sing– to what listens– again.
{Wendell Berry}
{sculpture: Virgil Scripcariu}
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come true
I had a recurring dream for years before moving to Seattle. It was discovering, to my great surprise, that I had mountains right in my backyard. If I just walked the right direction, across the right field, and down some hilly wooded paths, the foot of a mountain would appear in front of me. I would scale it and look over into a breathtaking valley where snowy-sided mountains stretched out into the distance. I don’t have the dream any more, maybe because it happens to me here! In the winter, the Cascades and Olympics are a peek-a-boo affair. On days like today, their unlikely mass, high contrast with white snow and deep gray rock, appear to be right on top of me, and I gasp at their perceived nearness.
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Naoko Ito’s “Ubiquitous”
(thx ms. arnold)
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Tags: inspiration
bumbling toward humble
I will admit that the debate I’ve been having in my mind seems younger than my age, but it’s a tempest in a teapot, and where do you go to release these squalls? The blog, of course! I have, at this juncture of my life, the welcome dilemma of being friends with people of widely varying world views. It’s always creeped me out to spend too much time in a place where everyone thinks alike. I have an unusual past, religiously, that makes me especially suspicious of any demand to toe the party line. But we, as people, are such truth seekers, and wherever we find ourselves in our own journey, we are looking for a set of precepts to settle on and live out of. Finding people who share our values is a given in the socialization process. We concur, we prune, we adjust, we realign, based on information we glean from others. And then we decide. Even the most agnostic of us make decisions about how the world is made and what laws govern it… who’s in control and who the enemy is. And the more confident we become in whatever conclusions we make, it seems that our arrogance grows.
My conundrum is this: is it possible to have confidence in your beliefs and remain humble? I wish I had more examples in my life of this picture of grace (and there are examples), but usually the two increase in kind… the more firm the conviction, the more forceful and unyielding a person tends to become. Whether it’s about politics or food or child-rearing or God… money or art or beauty or media. I count myself in this number. When I am undecided, I can have much better conversations, free of the ache to convince or convert. But I am always intent on deciding, and building a structure to pragmatically choose how to live. And as soon as I do that, I’ve also chosen against a set of propositions. These propositions are ones that others are employing, and the mind belittles the other possibilities in its wake. There is nothing wrong with the process, but it’s the attitude that comes with it that I’m finding so problematic. None of this is as acute when you’re hanging out with a bunch of people who agree. The “others” are an abstraction, and the sting of difference is dulled.
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new city catalog is available…
The catalog for my last show at Half/Dozen in Portland is available here! It’s 42 pages, and includes installation shots and an image of each piece with details (very nice for obsessive line-laden drawings).
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incomprehensible sparks
I’m teaching a painting course this semester, for the first time in a while. I must be in the right place, because I feel like I’m sticking my paw in a honeypot every time I have to prepare or research. Spending your time with this sort of thing can feel really… dumb in a particular light. Compared with other pursuits, choosing to spend your life making drawings is pragmatically absurd. Sometimes I can’t even conceive of the fact of it, but then it draws me in so deeply and holds me.
Music is dumb, too, in that pragmatic sense. But oh how I need it! It is one of life’s greatest joys. In the middle of any ridiculous dilemma, say, traveling with three young boys for a gruelingly long day, music can pop in and make the day livable. At the baggage check, waiting for my husband to park the borrowed car with my oldest son, and juggling an 8-month-old in a stroller, a three-year-old who is already whiny, and 6 bags of different sizes, a Sergio Mendez song comes into my head. I sing it quietly to the little ones, who get calm and happy. One of the airline workers must know it, because as we’re walking away, I hear him whistle some bars. I can’t tell you how many times a song makes a rough moment passable, whether coming from my brain’s jukebox or the car radio. In its best moments, art makes life bearable. It reminds us to think, reminds us to look, reminds us to listen, and think again. And think again. And again, getting our heads above the fog of the everyday. Okay, it’s a good job.
(Featured above and below… two good sparks… sculpture by Christina Bothwell, music by tUnE-yArDs)
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7 little drawings drummed
For the Drum of the Draw event, I prepared way too many surfaces to work on (4 hours goes soooo fast!). In the time since then, I’ve continued to work on these 5″ x 7″ -ish sized sheets. In the spirit of the evening, I’ll send one to you for $50 + $5 shipping if you’d like to call one your own. Whaddya say? Yeah? Okay, just email me and we’ll work out the details {galabent(at)gmail(dot)com}. You live in Seattle? Well, just come pick it up! Yeah! See all seven (Weepin’ & Singin’ through Emergency) on flickr.
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I saw this painting by Cat Balco the other day and it stuck in my head. It’s magical and rare for a pared down gestural abstraction to hold weight against masters like, say, Robert Motherwell. I don’t know the name of this piece, but I love the way it’s full of centered energy, bordering on figurative or symbolic without being too heavily figurative or symbolic. It also reminds me of the full body gasps of painters like Arnulf Rainer. Bet it would be nice to see it full size.
{Arnulf Rainer Untitled (Body Language) circa 1973, Tate Collection}
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the immersion factor
{Lake George, Adirondack Mountains, upstate New York… photo via}
If I visit a body of water, I don’t feel like I’ve actually been there until some part of my body has touched it. It helps to dip my hand in, to wade a bit, but the best version is swimming, of course, if it’s an option. It was in this way that I felt very connected to Lake George in upstate New York when I worked up there for two summers during college. Nearly every day, rain or shine, balmy or chilly, I would jump into that lovely clear green mountain lake and somehow try to comprehend the mass of its depths and the history of its shores. A kind of knowing emerges that only comes through slow, physical, patient immersion and observation. Even then, I only scratched the surface of this giant’s secrets. It’s a picture to me of the process of seeking truth and looking for the contours of the universe from the perspective of my humble size. Even if I know I won’t grasp the depth and breadth of it, it’s so satisfying to swim rather than standing to the side of it, detached. Writing and art-making are also like this for me. Both help me to more fully experience life as it whizzes by. If I can focus and immerse myself in some corner, within the hum of serious play that children model so well, I am perhaps at my best.
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