Mormon Cricket

Mormon Cricket, Hulls Gulch Reserve, Boise, ID

October 9, 2009

Most of these massive insects had long since swarmed their last in Boise's Hulls Gulch. As we hiked we primarily found them chewed up and expelled in great piles of desiccated coyote scat. My brother-in-law snagged this dark lady from the trail side as we meandered back through the sage and bottle brush.

It is easy to imagine how horrifying it would be to experience them in the thousands: swarming over every surface, always on the move to avoid being bitten and consumed by the hundreds of thousands that are behind: the hundreds of thousands that are anxious to devour the weak and the slow. . .

It started over the ridge.

It started over the ridge. 2009

acrylic, leafing, toner, and wax on panel

10.5" x 10.5"

Click on image for larger view.

I used to hike to this small canyon near our house in La Canada and, on the ridges that surrounded the shaded glen, there stood some monumental electrical towers. When I hiked beneath them my body would quiver from the buzz of electric current coursing through the cables far overhead. You could tell from the lack of scat underneath them that the deer had an aversion to the power lines. I suppose, had I more sense, I would have heeded such a sign and steered clear of them myself.

But one cloudy day I stood below a tower with the seed of a headache forming and the hair on my arms being coaxed upward by the electricity. In the distance stood this bleak little tree silhouetted against the dismal sky. And it struck me that to a person standing off some distance from me, I would be no more than a silhouette as well. Just the form of a man standing on a ridge that could hide anything on the other side of the slope.

Divination Rod

Divination Rod, 2009

acrylic, leafing, toner, ink, and wax on panel

7.375" x 7.375"

Click on image for larger view.

Forgive my absence. I've been away for about two weeks on a silent meditation retreat in Washington. Ever since my return friends and family have all been asking the same sorts of questions:

What was it like? Was it worth it? Did it help? Why did I do it?

The answers to these questions are neither short nor simple, so I will wait until more time has passed before I share more about that particular experience. Needless to say, it has been difficult to return to the bustle and frustration of a city after ten days of silence on a 40-acre parcel of wheat fields and evergreens.

* * * * *

Divination Rod derives from an image of a spray-painted branch I discovered on Bainbridge Island this past Spring. For some reason or another this branch, along with a scattering of stumps and leaves, had been sprayed a metallic blue color that looked most incongruous among the deep browns and greens of the woodland. A contented squirrel sat a few feet away from me gnawing on a nut as I searched for the right angle to capture this knobby wooden talon. It looked in every way like an object with some mystical power, glowing as it was under the overcast sky of the Puget Sound.

Months later, when the image was transferred atop the silver leaf, I was pleased to see that the same sort of luminosity that had been a by-product of the spray paint was evident in this little waxed panel.

The Sentinel

The Sentinel, 2009

acrylic, toner, gouache, and graphite on paper

23" x 32"

Click on image for larger view.

Time constraints necessitated that I throw over tea-staining this week in favor of gouache. As you can see, this results in a much higher level of coloration across the entire image. Gouache (which is essentially a more opaque watercolor paint, for those who might not know) has another distinct advantage over tea: it can be reactivated with water and pushed to greater or lesser levels of opacity. This flexibility allowed me to reclaim some of the waterfall highlights in the background and create some selective areas of bare toner throughout the composition.

I almost entitled this Colter's Hell as it is derived from a photograph I found in a junk shop that has the word "Yellowstone" neatly written out on the back of the image. But, in the end, I decided it would be best to emphasize the act of standing rather than a place. This tree seems very stoic in the face of such majesty, and it has undoubtedly been so for many more years than I will ever see on this Earth.

Titling Artwork, Pt. 1

It leaks out., 2009

acrylic, tea, toner, and graphite on panel

12" x 24"

Click on image for larger view.

I imagine there are about as many answers to how you title an artwork as there are artists willing to sound off about it. The process for finding a title is often as personal as the process that shaped the artwork, and there is undoubtedly some correlation between how an artist titles and the intangibles of their creative vision.

Most professional artists, when pressed, will state that titling is important. Those same artists, when pressed further, may be unclear as to why they believe it to be important. At that point some small warning bells might go off about how galleries need to sell artwork to the public. Titles offer an avenue for the layman's entry into the "intangibles" of an artwork, which may explain why there are many creators who are aggressively disinterested in titling, resorting to the trusty Untitled #____ for the duration of their career— they don't want the title to be a Cliff's Notes addendum to their vision. They want the public to work for a connection. They want more than just consumption from the audience.

I'm not going to be so crass as to suggest that titling only serves to sell artwork. Judging by how obtuse some titles for artworks happen to be I also believe that titling offers the artist an opportunity to season their creation with another level of meaning. The title can be a red herring or it can provide contextual support for the image/object depicted (or experienced, as with installation or performance art). The title might also be a process that brings about closure for the artist. It becomes a finalizing statement that releases the artwork from the hand that birthed it and proclaims to the artist, more than anyone else, that their time with this work is done.

* * * * *

More on titling tomorrow. . .

* * * * *

It leaks out. was derived from a tiny little silver gelatin print of a somber field that my wife gave to me for Christmas. While not evident in the drawing above, the source image had quite a bit of underexposed detail in the field that flanked the small stream. When I began to work on it however, three things caught my attention and led me to disregard a great deal of other detail:

1. The rips in the image that occurred during the transfer process were so pronounced that I felt they had to become an integral part of the image.

2. The soft horizon line of bare winter trees and bramble cut an interesting shape against the sky.

3. The stream's appearance out of the center of the field, with no indication that it began elsewhere, had a sinister quality to it. It was like the field was being bled to do away with an infection. And while that may sound terribly melodramatic, it was the impression that took hold of me when I picked up my assorted graphite pencils.

Lonely in the Snow

Winter Phoenix, 2009

acrylic, toner, and graphite on cheesecloth wrapped panel

6" x 6"

I didn't grow up with snow. Only in recent years have I had the opportunity to traipse about on mountainsides amidst snow flurries and I find the experience, for lack of a better word, chilling. Something about the silence of the snow enthralls me, but keeps me on edge. I cannot shake the awareness that this simple solidification of water has the power to bury the trees and smooth out cliff faces. 

My voice seems an ineffective tool against so much mass and, as I stand next to 100 foot tall conifers that have seen the first fifteen feet entombed for the season, I'm reminded of just how small a man is in the face of nature's simplest processes. 

* * * * *

I photographed this tree as it fought against the diminishing horizon line outside of Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. While it may have seemed lonely in the snow, there was something defiant in its shape. Perhaps experience had taught it that winter was transitory, and survival the norm.

Scratching the Sky

Tease and Tremble, 2009

acrylic, toner, leafing, graphite, india ink, and wax on panel

7.5" x 7.5"

I've returned to torrential downpoars and oppressive skies. For the past three days I was at the Oregon coast, which is notorious for foul weather, and nary a drop of precipitation sullied the trip. It just goes to show; in western Oregon, no matter where you are, it's only a matter of time until you get wet, and you can't predict the where or when.

* * * * *

A year ago I stood alone in a large field outside of Grant's Pass. Just out of sight ran the Rogue River, which put a murmur and birdsong in the morning air. I came across a stand of thistles and spent some time watching them waver in the wind. To me, they are a most aesthetic plant, with a linear nature that always cuts a dramatic silhouette against the sky. I never tire of photographing them.

That morning I was feeling a bit pressed for time. Soon I would have to be back at camp and packing up for a day on the river. I shot a few careless images as the clouds gathered overhead. I thought to myself, thistles are how we should card the clouds of the sky, and then I walked away.

The PITT

April 7, 2005

My wife and I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon working in an artist's studio on Bainbridge Island over Spring Break. I devoted my time there to experimenting with my new favorite pen: the Farber-Castell PITT artist pen with a brush tip. This little baby puts out a lovely variable line in waterproof india ink and might just be the answer to all my fears about inking a comic book. With enough control, and a bit of forethought, I bet I could eek out one page per pen and rarely (if ever) have to resort to brushes or other technical pens. This works out to about $2.50 per page to buy the PITT pen, but could save upwards of ten hours in work time: a fair trade even by the impoverished comic book artist's standard.

The first thing I did with the PITT is quickly ink over the very loose sketch I did from memory of a short-tailed weasel eating a squirrel. Do you remember that day? I do. I still think about the way that squirrel's eye looked at me without really seeing me. The drawing doesn't really capture much from that moment— it really only indicates that my memory transforms weasel heads into the shape of tiny bear craniums. Oh, and that I have no sense of proportion for weasel limbs.

Cherry Canyon

March 28, 2005

I have been away. After tallying up the number of years I've been married and comparing that sum to the number of times my wife and I had taken a vacation together I determined that we were long overdue— so we left for Seattle and spent the week not thinking about work, blogs, computers, or creative commitments.

* * * * *

When living in California I would often feel the need to escape into some natural setting. The closest bit of nature that you didn't have to pay to enter was a spot called Cherry Canyon. It was a scrubby little canyon amidst the La Canada hills that housed not only a few majestic oaks, but the hulking steel towers that supplied Glendale with its electrical power. When standing near the welded legs you could hear the buzz of power crackling through the thick cables overhead. It seemed a peculiar edition to the dry grasses and crab apple trees. 

Tension, Polaroid photograph, 2004

I often went to Cherry Canyon to take photographs and, in theory, my familiarity with the place should have led to ever more confident and subtle images of that locale. But this never quite happened. Instead I developed a mish mash of stills on a variety of films; all of which look like the work of an ungrounded personality flailing about for some sense of peace.

Sunburst, Polaroid photograph, 2005

Founts

February 27, 2005

I believe this fountain is in the Descanso Gardens in La Canada, California. It is one of dozens of fountains I've photographed in the past decade:

A fountain silenced for the autumn in McMinnville, Oregon.

One of many ornamental fountains at the Huntington Gardens in San Marino, California.

The fountain outside of the Santa Barbara Mission in Santa Barbara, California.

The Trevi Fountain tourist trap in Rome, Italy.

I don't quite know what it is I'm trying to capture when photographing a fountain— something about the play of light on the splashing water combined with the more tactile qualities of sound and coolness I suppose. I haven't really succeeded yet, but that hardly discourages me from continuing the quest.

I'll close with this image of a small pond at Descanso Gardens. For some reason it manages to convey a sense of stillness and chill that transcends the flattened photographic format. It was an effortless photograph that received very little of my compositional consideration, which is undoubtedly why it's so much more successful than any of the images above.

The Form and Function of Place

February 22, 2005

It's amazing how differently a place can present itself. Equally amazing to me is the differences within ourselves that can transform the way we receive a place, or a moment in time. During this visit to Boise the skeletal trees along the river seemed more alive to me than if they'd had all the budding greens of Spring atop them. At one point a fierce storm rolled toward the setting sun, and the whole copse along the shore erupted into a firebrand.

The splendor of this moment burned itself in my mind. But, when it came time to translate it as a drawing, with months of time and hundreds of miles between the now and then, a different sentiment emerged. It became less an expression of color, and more a reflection on sharing in that dramatic tableaux with my father. Somehow the color became irrelevant and only the sharp contrasts between black and white remained. That, and the drifting into shapelessness away from the center of our perception.

Timber, Oil, Gum, and Resin

Some drawings seem as if they'll never end. This one has been in progress for so long I began to suspect that was its only state of being. But this week brought about the end, and I feel that peculiar combination of relief and doubt that always accompanies the conclusion of an artwork. This is a fleeting sentiment however; one that is quickly consumed by the compulsion to create something else. In my mind I already have grand plans for silver leaf, waterfalls, and the elusive texture of fog.

Natural Children's Theater Design

February 20, 2005

For the past week I've spent many hours working with volunteers to fabricate a forest— having designed a few sets for children's theater in the past I can safely state that nature is the most difficult environment to construct. Castles, planets, Grecian ruins; these things are far easier to form because they can easily be shaped from flat sheets of plywood and cardboard. In fact, most set designs that I've encountered resort to painted flat sheet goods, even for their depictions of trees or bushes, because they are just that much simpler to construct. I've certainly gone this route myself, such as in the second incarnation of my adaptation of Aesop's Fables:

Aesop's Fables stage set, 2006

cardboard, lumber, primer, black latex paint, rope, paper, fabric, hardware

Now by the time I designed this simple set I'd already staged Aesop's Fables once and had spent hours upon hours constructing a 3D tree out of cardboard tubes (mailing and paper towel), newspaper, and papier mache. Not only was the tree in that first production structurally unstable, but its spindly brown limbs and sparse canopy cast a funerary tone on the entire production (which is not exactly the spirit you're hoping to engender in a children's theater production). This incarnation was much more successful as it not only felt more playful, but also emphasized the vivid colors of the costumes that the students wore. My golden rule for stage design is that it should compliment, not overwhelm, the performers.

* * * * *

Building nature in three dimensions for the stage requires a few key elements: soft materials, soft edges, a tonal palette with tremendous variation but only a few colors, variable verticality, asymmetry, and a daunting amount of simple repetition. 

While Mother Nature can be horribly inhospitable at times, our subconscious tendency is to equate the outdoors with the softer elements of Spring and Summer. Because we think of leaves, grass, moss, and flowers before we consider icy climes or volcanic cliffs, it makes sense to design with an eye towards the more pliable and comforting elements of the natural world. Cotton dyed green can become a leafy canopy and the scratchy weave of burlap can simulate dirt. Cardboard can be softened to form the gnarled trunks, roots, and branches of old growth forest. In order to lend an air of believability to all of these elements you must remain conscious of the repetition inherent in the natural world and commit to the idea of creating the same element in vast multiples. This tends to be the stumbling block for most students, as it can be difficult for them to visualize just how all of this repetitive labor is going to net a rock wall or oak tree.

There seems to be a paucity of useful information on the internet about cheap and effective ways to construct stage sets and props with students. If all goes well in the next month, I should have at least a couple decent tutorials to post this summer on the creation of fake rocks, starry backdrops, and flowering bushes. At this point I can state that no matter how ambitious your natural stage setting may be, you're going to need a significant stash of the following items: toilet paper, cardboard, masking tape, muslin, duct tape, assorted lengths of 2"x2" lumber, a cordless drill, zip ties/twist ties, and a group of dedicated parents itching to use their vast collection of tools. When Boy Scouts go into nature they take their Ten Essentials, but when you want to create nature for the stage, I'd encourage you to heed the ten essentials listed above.

Eating Squirrel

On the hunt for a letterbox last weekend at the Audubon Center in Forest Park I heard a peculiar squealing ahead of me on the Woodpecker Trail. It came in spurts and had the high pitch of an animal in extreme fear or pain. I moved slowly down the trail toward the noise until I saw a spastic burst of writhing fur in the ferns just a few feet ahead. Each fit of movement would immediately be halted and then the horrible noise would ensue until another flurry of movement sent the furry bundle scurrying erratically through the underbrush. I briefly considered that it might be squirrels mating. After all, I could clearly make out the bushy brown of a squirrel's tail whipping around, but the sound seemed too deathly to be anything that might contribute to further life.

I stood very still for a minute or two trying to catch a clear view, and eventually the squirrel rolled onto the clear patch of trail a few feet ahead of me. It lay there panting, with a horrible glazed look in its eye, already clearly past the point of saving itself. From its back sprang a spry little short-tailed weasel. The weasel had been slowly killing its prey with a bite to the neck; even as it pinned the squirrel's franticly kicking legs with its own small limbs. The weasel was clearly startled by my presence and it stood stock still for a moment to consider what threat I might pose. After only a second, before the squirrel could do much more than roll his eye imploringly in my direction, the weasel seized upon it again and yanked it into the ferns. The death cries continued with less urgency, and I walked on.

* * * * *

I decided to tell the docent at the Audubon Visitor's Center about what I'd seen. After relating that I'd accidentally interrupted a weasel taking down a squirrel she stopped me abruptly and asked if the weasel had gotten away with the squirrel. I assured her it had. She breathed a small sigh of relief. 

"It would have been tragic for all that energy to have been wasted." she said.

Letterboxing

I'm going to describe something to you and you're undoubtedly going to think it very quaint. Nevertheless, I'm a bit of an old soul in an increasingly vapid world, so nostalgic adjectives are rarely a negative with me. I'm going to tell you about something I was introduced to a few weeks ago that has flitted about my mind ever since. It is called letterboxing, and it has produced an entire secret world that exists all around us everyday.

Letterboxing apparently began on the bleak moors of Devon, England that are now part of Dartmoor National Park. Legend goes that a Victorian-era gentleman out walking the soggy ground placed his calling card in a bottle one day and left it to be found by other hikers who also placed their cards in the bottle. Slowly, this singular act, gave birth to an eccentric pastime wherein modern letterboxers create personalized rubber stamps that they carry with a small logbook and a set of clues. The clues, which can range from straight forward orienteering directions to cryptic stories or puzzles, lead to small water-tight boxes that also contain a carved rubber stamp and a small logbook. Upon finding the box the letterboxer stamps their book with the stamp found in the letterbox, and then they leave an impression of their personalized stamp in the logbook found in the box. In this way, both the letterboxer and the box contain evidence of a successful deciphering of clues. The letterboxer goes home with another stamp that will serve as a snapshot of their time that day, and the box carries a record of all those who've visited before.

In essence, letterboxing is an amalgam of hiking, orienteering, craft, and problem solving. It is a treasure hunt that permits the hunter to also create their own treasures to hide. Many letterboxers not only hunt for stamps, but also fashion their own letterboxes to stash away at favorite locations. Clues in England are apparently much more closely guarded than clues in the States, where simply visiting www.letterboxing.org allows one to search for boxes state by state. The stateside letterboxing phenomenon is very young and can be traced back to a 1998 article in The Smithsonian about the hard-core letterboxers of Devon. 

While American letterboxes might be more free with their clues, most do still abide by a set of principles established by our friends across the Atlantic. In short: letterboxing should follow a 'leave no trace' policy in order to protect the natural world, private property and hallowed grounds should always be respected, and spoilers who post pictures of stamps from various locations deserve no less than to become pariahs of the online letterboxing community. Furthermore, every letterboxer should take care to protect the secrecy of box locations, even to the point of lying to other hikers who may inquire about what you are doing sitting in the middle of a muddy trail making rubber stamp art. 

As I'm relatively new to the hobby I feel that I should honor the mildly goofy entreaty for secrecy and avoid posting my actual stamp and trail name with this entry. Instead I will share with you this awesome drawing from our household collection of juvenilia. If you can decipher what would happen to this flightless bird were it to go on a hunger strike you'd have the key to my secret identity.

Haiku By Way of Explanation

The season turns and I'm called back to work. I've started scheduling meetings and shaking hands. The phone increasingly intrudes upon the daytime hours. After many afternoons of sorting, my files are now in order. Among the stacks of lesson plans, student work, and handouts, I ran across a rumpled sheet of copy paper with a few mediocre haiku dated 4/13/2006. 

Footpaths for people

converge at a driftwood sign,

pointing towards stables.

I remember this day well. My camp name was Pine, and I had led a handful of 6th graders into the scrubby woods that competed with the coastal dunes along the Pacific Ocean outside of Lincoln City, Oregon. None of these students came from my class. They were public school students enjoying a week of outdoor education. I was charged with teaching poetry in the wilds. Haiku made sense: simple syllabic structure, short length, an obvious connection with the natural world. But in other ways, haiku did not make sense. How does one teach subtlety to a twelve-year-old? How do you explain time and it's passing in seventeen syllables. I can demonstrate the form, but I can't impart the art.

Many paths crossing,

but few footprints step away

toward the gray mountain.

Reading over these haiku now I realize that many aspects of my life will mimic the structure of this poetic style. The structure of my days will seem simple, but there must be an underlying subtlety if they are to be successful. I must be obsessively cognizant of the present moment. There will have to be a distillation of personal experience.

I suppose this is all a round-about way of saying that you'll be hearing from me less frequently now. As a chill creeps into the mornings I will be afforded less time to sit and reflect. In no way does this mean I'm abandoning my posts; it simply means that their frequency must fall victim to a greater good. I must attempt to inspire more 6th graders now, and that task can occasionally take all the subtlety I can muster.

Art vs. Hobby

Comments are a pretty rare thing on this blog. I have a few hypotheses as to why this might be: readers are afraid I'll chastise them and launch a tirade about the Internet diluting the collective intelligence of mankind if they type something utterly inane like "LUV it!" (I might), nobody 'luvs ' anything I write (quite possible), or perhaps nobody reads this blog (the most likely theory). So when a comment does appear it is a puzzling moment for me. I ask myself, "Why would someone take time out of their precious life to sit down and type their thoughts on to a computer with the sole intention of tossing this information out into the electronic ether?"  Then I have a 'one hand-clapping' sort of moment.

A good friend of mine posed a series of exceedingly thoughtful questions in his comment to my post about the real world struggles of exposing a piece of artwork to a greater public. I've included an excerpt from his comment below:

While I'm not trying to be facetious, as I read this post I couldn't help but think that if you had replaced 'art' with music or sports or fishing or gardening that you would simply be describing a hobby. Yet most people don't associate hobbies with being activities that "stamp meaning onto their mortality." I'm wondering what, for you, separates making art from being a hobby and being an activity that instills meaning in one's life. Where do you draw the distinction between the two? Or, even if you're willing to call art a hobby, do you think the significance it brings to the artist's existence is less if not recognized publicly? How is the meaning stamped exactly?

These questions have scratched away at my waking hours for the past few days and caused me to seriously consider the origins of some personal beliefs regarding art and the making of art. I must confess that upon seeing the sanctimonious station of art hypothetically dropped to the corporeal realm of hobby I grew a bit offended. Countless people have joined me, and will continue to join me, in significant monetary debt to attain a college degree that certifies them as a professional artist. I don't see anyone seeking out a BA program in model railroading. Nor can I conceive of anyone accruing as much financial burden in order to push for a monumental scale to their macrame projects (and, if someone did, they would be labeled an artist anyway). But such a visceral response falls prey to a cultural value system that erroneously correlates monetary worth with spiritual/societal/personal merit. It is this cultural value system that has isolated art from the general public in the first place and contributed to the ivory tower that I'm so quick to initially defend. However, if the importance of art was based solely on capitalist dogma then I would feel little compulsion to classify myself as an artist, so I can't rely on my degree to create the dividing line between art and hobby.

Perhaps it is easier for me to dissect the idea of a hobby then it is to directly quantify the essence of art. I have fewer assumptions about hobbies and hobbyists than I do about art and artists. A hobby is something that a person pursues in their leisure time because it brings them some joy, satisfaction, or proves distracting. Many hobbyists regularly engage in their past time of choice after the other obligations of life (employment, family, social service, etc.) have been met. Like artists, hobbyists tend to enjoy relating with other people who share their particular interest, and more often than not, the hobby itself requires a special set of tools and/or skills. So on the surface, there are many similarities between artists and hobbyists.

* * * * *

It is the way that an artist perceives the "other obligations of life" mentioned above that begins to separate him/her from the hobbyist. For the artist nothing trumps the compulsion to create. The making of art usually precedes some, if not all, the other obligations of life. For example, creating art is the only employment an artist ever feels at peace with because it is the thing that holds the majority of their attention. An artist might have a perfectly well paying, socially respectable, job with good benefits, but if that job isn't the making of art then it will always be viewed as a barrier to making artwork. For the artist, 'art work' transcends our narrow cultural definition of work (i.e. the simple exchange of time for money): it is imbued with a spiritual fulfillment that a simple paycheck will never be able to provide.

Many people go to college to become nurses, firefighters, social workers, teachers, engineers, etc. because they have a deep commitment and passion for their particular industry. These people are allowed to work in the field that inspires them and receive a straight-forward paycheck because society happens to value their work. Undoubtedly, some of them will have hobbies as well, but they aren't looking to overthrow the source of their paycheck with their hobby because the hobby isn't what fulfills them spiritually; that's the role of their job. 

I think most artists would be over-the-moon if society would afford them the opportunity to pursue their passion with a bi-weekly paycheck, but this has never been, and I suspect never will be, the case. Instead, truly committed artists are forced to scrimp and show; always on the lookout for handouts from the public or donors, while trying to market themselves to galleries that promise a periodic sale. This is an exhausting way to survive at the poverty level, and it comes as little surprise that some of our best contemporary artists entered the art world with a healthy trust fund to feed them as they created— they became influential and culturally important because of, not despite the fact, that they had the luxury of time to develop as artists.

While I've fixated a bit on employment here the desire to devote oneself to art doesn't just affect perceptions of monetary labor, it can also impact decisions made about family and social service. Certainly there are many artists who manage to have families as well as make art, but there are reasons that Michelangelo referred to his artworks as his children, and this directly correlates to his prodigious creative output. Many of the artists I know do have meaningful relationships but I bet that most of them would also refer to their creative practice as a sort of relationship: one that will span the entire course of their life.

As for social service, well, herein lies the greatest difference between the artist and the hobbyist. In the 2oth century, with the rise in academic opportunity across the class divide in first world countries, a new sort of perception about art began to take root. At the outset of the 1900's the artist was no longer a valuable provider of a requested commodity: photography had taken over the role of physically fixing time and place in tangible form and the painter/printmaker/draftsman was left with a skill set in need of new meaning. The artistic world fended off redundancy by responding to, and exploring, new perceptions of time, space, and emotion (specifically within the Cubist, Futurist, and Dadaist movements). Larger than life personalities like Picasso and Duchamp came forward to champion an expressive depiction of reality that cameras couldn't manage and almost overnight art became the purported world of cultural visionaries. Instead of being a product of culture, like nearly all art prior to the 20th century, artists became instrumental in producing culture, and this message got disseminated through colleges until it became part of public perception. So today, whether or not contemporary culture has any interest in what artists are doing (which, I must be honest, is highly debatable), the artist continues to operate under the assumption that the proper role of the creative individual is to work towards shaping culture— hence the perpetual push to show artwork to the greater public. The hobbyist has no such social imperative to share their hobby or have their hobby challenge the status quo.

* * * * *

But what do I mean by art "stamping meaning onto [an artist's] mortality"? The answer to this question would undoubtedly vary by artist, but for me it has nothing to do with public vindication or financial success— I seek those things out of obligation to that perceived societal expectation mentioned above. Rather, making artwork focuses my complete attention, in fact my whole being, on a single moment or perception. As a thunderstorm is raging outside at this very moment it seems fitting that I use the image at the top of this post as an example.

Long after my father and I stood on his tiny balcony in Boise, ID and watched the sunset turn the bare branches of a quivering copse of trees a fiery orange against the roiling black of a summer storm, I sat in my studio and relived that moment hour after hour. As I worked on this drawn recreation of that experience my thoughts wandered all the tangents that erupted from that one instant. I found myself pondering the effects of time and distance on parents and children. I considered the Biblical story of a burning bush. I contemplated the effects of contrasting extreme lights and darks and then I teased that metaphor out farther. I remembered other storms that had rolled through my life and I anticipated storms to come. In short, I completely altered any future complacence I might have experienced towards storms, sunsets, groves of trees, visits to Boise, and prophetic visions. In developing this drawing I had developed myself and made my own experience of reality deeper and more magical. 

As the sky bangs and cries outside right now some part of me is still out on a little deck considering the majesty of nature with my father. My life has been stamped with this impression, and it is only one moment of thousands that I will ink in my lifetime. 

Borrello Black

I love the work of Brian Borrello. My first years of art school I struggled with the seeming inferiority of charcoal, my preferred art medium. Charcoal had none of the cache of oil, the "nowness" of acrylic, or the elitist credibility of mixed media. In fact, it was looked upon as a colorless tool for helping artist newbies learn the fundamentals of shading and contour line work. Relegated to a perfunctory role in the design of a larger artwork, charcoal never took center stage. I made many excuses for its use in my pieces those first years until I came across Brian Borrello. With one look at his stark motor oil and charcoal botanicals I knew that, from that point on, I had an irrefutable argument for charcoal.

Borrello, like many a Pacific Northwest artist, creates unashamedly beautiful work inspired by the forms of regional flora. As Portland likes to tout itself as a mighty progressive city, it comes as no surprise that Borrello uses the presentation of his iconography to critique the pollution of our natural resources. His drawings are stark silhouettes of leaves, twigs, roots, vines, and the like. They are shaped with a velvety black derived from a combination of india ink and charcoal. It is a living black, for it rolls and broils with tiny plumes and clouds that suggest a depth beyond the surface of the paper. It is a black that captures the imagination, and I've often thought about it when letting my mind wander at the studio. Perhaps the closest equivalent in nature might be the charred remains of a recently burned forest. That is Brian Borrello's black.

Many of Borrello's botanical forms are centered upon a stark white substrate— this comforts the eye with a composition everyone equates with stability, comfort, and religious importance. But that comfort can be short lived when one considers the brownish halo that surrounds the dark forms. This unnatural brown serves as an irregular median strip between the clean white of the canvas/paper surface and the black vacuum of the imagery. The brown is derived from motor oil and as it surrounds the drawn form a peculiar effect occurs. Suddenly, your eye perceives the image as a burned impression; as if the paper had been branded or the natural item had grown so hot it had scorched its way through the substrate and left a charred opening into a vast inky space. Simultaneously beautiful and unsettling, an entire show of such imagery tends to remind me of the reliquary room at the El Santuario de Chimayo in New Mexico. While Borrello's chapel is far more austere and aesthetically micro-managed there is, in my mind, a similar sentiment: hand-made representations of the affliction are put up on the walls with the hope of a miracle. 

Since he occupies such a venerable place on my personal path to becoming an artist it was hard for me to admit that there was something amiss at his most recent show. Ars Brevis, Vita Longa at Pulliam Deffenbaugh Gallery was just as lovely an exhibit as Borrello has always put on, and I suppose that was the problem. This show seemed not at all dissimilar from the first Borrello exhibit I saw over seven years ago. If anything, the current work had a more diminutive scale by comparison. The imagery was indecipherable from pieces done nearly a decade ago and the only obvious evidence of Borrello branching out existed in the unsettling use of an eerie yellow-green as the background color for a few paintings. I left the show disappointed with the work for not providing the same sort of elation it had in the past. What had seemed important in terms of medium and message then seemed safe and predictable now. The motor oil had lost its burn and the forms had become simply decorative silhouettes instead of openings to the void. To be fair though, perhaps what bothered me the most had little to do with Borrello's work, for it hadn't changed over the years— what bothered me was that I had.

* An amateur interviewer is saved by Borrello's expressiveness and enthusiasm. This video is worth watching if you've never seen any of Borrello's work before, but isn't recommended for people who find morning talk show-like questions to be the scourge of journalism.

The Company Shoots

My weekend consisted of three days filming with The Company in the foothills of the Oregon coastal range. Thus far, The Company consists of only four diverse dreamers harboring the vision of a full length movie. Nevertheless, I suspect it will bloom into many more folks than that by the time we’re through. Grandiose labors of love tend to attract other dreamers. The various trials and tribulations, from the screenwriter’s perspective, can be followed at I’m Not Arguing That With You.

For my part I was asked to get lost. I lay down in spider webs and organic detritus. Dirt was kicked upon me by those closest to me. I was made to cry.

And this was just the test footage.

Slush

I returned to Timberline last weekend and spent one day being abused by the slopes and the second day contemplating their rough beauty within the lodge. There were times that first day, while sliding through the driving snow, that I felt horribly lost— there were no landmarks and there was no horizon. The sky and ground were equally cold, hard, and grey.



Whiteout. That’s how my students referred to it.

* * * *

From within the lodge it seems less menacing. Around you people laugh and chatter, oblivious to the fact that the snow presses twenty feet up every side of the lodge. The windows on the first two levels are darkened by the wall of snow, its wooly grey giving way to blue as it thins towards the third floor and the wan daylight begins to sift through. People sit by the highest bank of windows and watch as the weather is thwarted by thick glass and thicker walls.



From this vantage all the flurry is just confection. A television dribbles out the news as pop songs bounce against the timbers. A few sniffling skiers sit at the bar getting sloshed.



It seems less menacing but I can’t concentrate. The wind is still blowing. The trees are bent under a terrible weight. The white noise doesn’t warm me.

Were I to stay longer I don’t think the snow would stop. It would rise like a slow tide over the lodge and all the trees. The white would consume everything on land until there was no land left— just a vast emptiness between heaven and earth: a whiteout.