Friday, July 27, 2018
Translocation
It’s been a week in the new place and I’m still turning to
the wrong side to get toilet paper, reaching the wrong way for my teacup, and sent
a beaten egg in a glass measuring cup crashing on my tile floor, knocking it
over because it wasn’t supposed to be there. I unpack something and put it away
but with no familiar places, can’t remember which of the unknown drawers and
cabinets it’s now hiding.
The behavioral patterns built in one location don’t match
the new one. The first few days are disorienting when what should feel normal
doesn’t. The whole process of moving to a new home is much more complicated
than I expected.
Just like the moving out of a place is a discovery of how
much stuff you have, moving into a place is a discovery of how you want to
live. The choices in how things are organized create the routes for future
behavior. Before I can start working I have to find an arrangement of things
that facilitates what I want to do.
Changing a home base has many levels. The level I kept hidden
in a black box was emotional, my sorrow at leaving a place I’d loved, the regular
and familiar providing stability for the unknown and risky decisions of art.
I was reminded of that level by a former student and TA,
Destiny Belgrave. After moving from her close college community, she then went
back to Brooklyn and had to move again from the home neighborhood culture she
loved. She pointed out that how draining it was depended on the level of
attachment. This insight opened my black box and I saw the emotional strain
kept at bay by the physical. Our peregrinations are peopled and alive, whereas
in the new place, connections haven’t been made, proximities are all different
and the only word for the feeling is loss. The irritations of moving are partly a cover
for the sadness at what’s past.
One way I hung on to part of myself was to set up a work
area, one corner at a time. My first corner, the one I’m facing now. has a big
window to my left with a sizable chunk of sky to watch the crazy rain come and
go. With everything unfamiliar, it made more sense to draw what was out the
window, to get to know the place and take it into myself.
The corner wasn’t mine until I put art on the walls to claim
it. The first thing on my studio wall was a beautiful collage drawing by Dan
Dudrow that always makes me think, is philosophical in its reference to sky and
sends my thoughts in new directions every time I look at it. Then on the other
wall of that corner my favorite of my newer drawings, “Causality”, a visual
idea that reminds me of the limitations of thought. The choice of pictures creates
a visual climate crucial to future ideas. Every picture is a place in itself,
offers another world to inhabit and the thoughts it generates. Now that this
room is starting to feel like my studio, my mind can get back in action.
Having given so much thought to how locations shape
thoughts, how the visual qualities influence the metaphors we use, I wonder how
the implications in the new space around me will shift the expression of my
ideas. The clouds feel closer to me here so analogies to atmosphere and
uncertainty will thrive and hopefully remind me that change is the unfolding of
forward.
Saturday, June 30, 2018
Moving
Moving takes too much time to write an essay,
but if you happen to be in Baltimore on July 1st,
I'm trying to get my art and books into good hands.
So stop by between 1 and 4 pm and give me less to move.
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
Universal Vision (To the Class of 2018)
In the most diverse classes I’ve ever taught, multiracial,
multicultural and from different national and economic backgrounds, there was
never any problem understanding each other’s art. The expression and feeling in
visual form engages a universal response system. From the beginning of life, we
learn the ups and downs of navigating our world using the same systems of
response to space as everybody else. This specific and highly nuanced relation
to surrounding territory sees the state of balance and the trajectories of
moving objects and anticipates what to do in relation to them. Awareness of the
body’s adjustments to these expectations creates the feeling we experience
consciously. Just because we’re not conscious of the first part doesn’t mean it
doesn’t exist, perception is always guiding conscious attention to the needs
that demand it. From infancy, we learn the way the world behaves in a commonsense
physics that becomes so automatic it’s taken for granted, yet it’s a complex
multifaceted intelligence that scaffolds conceptual knowledge. Art stimulates
visual intelligence stirring feelings with essential form based on the
relationship with space we share as a species. Cultivating that level of understanding is a
way to build on our commonality. Human differences are just the skin of who we
are cloaking the outside of the core understanding we share.
The particular
details of every person’s life are varied, but they are structured by universal
human needs. The locations of our memories may look very different and school
particular sensitivities, but the routines of living are basic to us all. The
patterns of home, school, work, social gathering, create common circuitry
through the way we function within them. Beneath that is the hardwired response
to gravity, movement and balance. The ability to discern significance can be
developed by looking at art which reinforces essential relations. This builds
the circuits of visual sensitivity and triggers personal reflection that builds
on human meaning structure. It needs no translation and creates bridges where
words cannot.
With new graduates coming into the workforce, employers
would be wise to recognize that art students have concentrated on training
their perceptual intelligence and this attunement to the big picture can apply
anywhere. It’s a way of thinking that’s been neglected by education and those
who have immersed themselves in it at an art college have cultivated their
ability to cut through the mountains of information to see what’s important.
That combined with the practice of their creativity offers an exceptional
resource for the future.
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Ten Years of Seeing Meaning
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| "Material Dimension" Most viewed image on blog |
I launched this blog in April of 2008 and it’s been a
pleasure to share thoughts and images that express my sense of what a picture
can show about what matters. On the
occasion of this tenth anniversary I want to thank everyone who has stopped
here to read or look, and think about how meaning is expressed visually. By
showing what’s significant, art expands perception Developing the wisdom of the
overview will be more useful to a rapidly changing future, than preset ideas. To
trust what we see puts universal values at the core and takes every situation
for the unique experience it is rather than filtered by labels and categories.
Having readers from ninety countries shows that these are
ideas that resonate all over the world. There is a global shift of
consciousness that is spreading as the necessary foundation for effective
future thought.
To celebrate my ten years sharing these ideas, here are the
links to my five most popular essays in order.
‘
Here are the top five images.
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| "Heaviness" |
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| "Restraint" |
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| "Cool Under Fire" |
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| "CoCausal" |
What a pleasure it’s been to emphasize a shift to perceptual
thinking that feels necessary and that uses an untapped capacity it’s time to
put to use. Hopefully more will share their ideas on the same concepts, and if
they do, in the future I will take advantage of the opportunity for dialogue
and comment back.
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