Invocation to the Night
This morning the full moon is on the floor of my sitting room– making me reluctant to turn on any lights. There is no other light like moonlight.
I look forward to this time of year, heading toward the winter solstice. It is the pull toward night, seeing the stars and milky way, and the silence of the desert that draws me back to Ghost Ranch, where I have been going for over twenty years.
In Honor of Galway Kinnell
Galway Kinnell died this week at 87, in his home in Vermont. His death was the same day as the birthday of my best friend from first grade, and the birthday of a student who just had her second baby. It is the anniversary week of the death of my friend and mentor, Angeles Arrien. Birth and death. They are the same door.
Why Make Art?
Why make art? This is the question that was posed for a group of us who met for lunch this week:
Two poets, a composer, a psychotherapist, a sculptor, a graphic designer, a drawing professor, a painter and a calligrapher. It was such a lively conversation! There were many different strands to our talk, so I will take just one today.
One of the people in our group had decided to quit making, and caused me to ask myself again: Why am I a maker?
But what does it mean?
Last night we got to hear Tin Can Buddha in Frankfort, Kentucky. There were 17 musicians and perhaps one rehearsal before their performance at The Grand Theater. They played music– (and were so playful together)! The spontaneity, skill and liveliness was intoxicating. The joy from the musicians finding their way with each other in the moment infused the audience with their exuberance. We did not want it to end. To stop and ask what it all meant would have deprived us– we were in the experience (of whatever it meant) with them. We were "inside the song".
Let the Image Find You
When I am beginning a new series of paintings, I struggle to find an image, a theme to ground me and tie the pieces together. I get impatient, and wonder at how long it takes. I feel an urgency to go out and seize an image, to make something happen. I remind myself that it works better for me to be indirect, to allow an image to alight and make itself known. This is not as esoteric as it may sound. I set an intention to be receptive, to show up each day, and begin. I pay attention to dreams, and to waking life as if it is a dream. Each detail is important. What captures my imagination? I took a walk in the woods and carried paper and a chunk of graphite. I began rubbing the bark of elm trees. There were figures in the bark. I let images suggest themselves.
On Time: It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all. –James Thurber
Perhaps a more accurate title for our class in Italy would be: Sketching, Watercolor, Wine and Loafing. This photo is taken on the streets of Orvieto, as we sat and listened to these lively musicians, sipping our cappuccino. We were stopping along the way to the duomo, which has (among many other overpowering delights) a black and white zebra pattern to the marble.
Wandering in Umbria: A workshop at La Romita School of Art
The sense of local, of what is particular to a place, along with the absence of chains, of Starbucks, in itself is a delight In these small Umbrian towns. Back home, I am longing for my coffee to taste like it does in Italy- and to have the sense of history, art and time that is embedded in stone here.
Drawing With Both Hands
I was looking through a book of Dale Chihuly’s glass art, which includes his drawings. As always, I am attracted to sketches and writing– even when I am in a museum or gallery. If there is a sketch next to a painting or sculpture, that is where I go. I love seeing the process that leads us to our "final project"– whether it is glass or paint or sculpture or weaving. It is often more alive and transparent than the final project. To have this quality of transparency not be lost in my paintings is something I strive for. It requires the willingness to play all the way through– having no designated outcome.
King Minos and the Minotaur
When I was nineteen I had the opportunity to take a break from my studies and travel to the Greek Islands. I arrived by boat on a misty full moon night in March. Off the coast of Santorini they were digging for the “Lost Atlantis”. My studies of mythology, and how it is mixed with history, came alive– and I felt myself to be in a story (that was then and the feeling hasn’t left).
The Taste of the Apple
The taste of the apple does not reside in the mouth of the eater– neither is it in the apple itself. It requires the exchange between them.
–Jorge Luis Borges quoting Bishop Berkeley
This quote captures the essence of the creative pattern.
The muse, as creative inspiration, enters. She is not in us alone, or in our work– but in the mingling between the two. This adds a third aspect, the other, and the creativity of the number three– as indicated in the painting you see.