churlish

This blog has a function. I have to remember and remind myself why it is that I side-stream a portion of what would normally be my own journal into this more public sphere, and when I post something like the last one, where I whine about things being “a bore” and such, I also remember what a challenging cross-over it can be. The reason that I publish my thoughts here is that I always love to hear the behind-the-scenes processes of other artists. And if anyone would bother to come here and read, they are probably similar. Countless artists’ talks have led me to appreciate the richness of the thought beyond the objects and the way that the work becomes that much more dimensional. I loved Ralph Lemon’s How Can you Stay in the House… piece especially, the way an artists’ talk was essentially inserted into the work itself, like a poet who writes page-long footnotes for her own poem. But the risk of thinking out loud is that it is piecemeal, truly process writing. Much of what spins out here isn’t thoroughly combed.

So I kept thinking about that weird phrase “a very human ideal of beauty” that I threw out. Funny, because the whole concept of beauty, at least in our conversation, is utterly, inextricably human, no matter what turns we take. More accurately, I’m interested in scooting around and behind some of the more typical landscape formulas, and, actually, discovering other “very human” beauties… along with uglies and inconsistencies and frustrations and shrugs. This might go unsaid, but I am a beauty seeker and appreciator, along with most of humankind. I am, however, suspicious of attempts at beauty that are too tidy, that lack a certain dissonance, complexity or mystery.