Living Details

A thank you note.

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:56:13 -0700

Dear Reader,

I want to take this post to be thankful to any and all of you who read my blog whether occasionally or regularly. I realized that I have been writing this blog for nearly two years. I honestly can’t believe that much time has past, I can’t believe all the writing I have done here. I don’t think of myself as a bona fide blogger but rather an artist and writer who simply wants to share ideas, thoughts and knowledge. Quite honestly, working as an artist you mostly work alone, so this blog has been a branch that I climb up to and out on once a week to get a wider view and scribble my thoughts, then blow them out into the world like a leaf set free.

I am grateful to those of you who stop by. When I learn that someone has found something useful or interesting it is pure and utter delight. I was pondering starting a new blog with a full-on blog server, that would have links and banners garnishing the margins and all sorts of bells and whistles, but it just hasn’t felt right yet. Perhaps people don’t find me as easily but this is a quieter space I feel. I like to think of it like a special place that you drive out of your way to get to.

There are moments when I think, oh why bother? But then I’ll get an email or comment from a fellow artist, or someone mentions in person that they enjoy my writing. And then I think, oh yeah—that’s why I bother! And of course, the mere act of writing is a joy in and of itself. But it’s nice to know your voice is being heard. So my deepest, most heart-felt thanks to you, my readers.

Yielding

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:52:31 -0700

Just like that the weather broke, like an egg cracked first thing in the morning on the rim of a bowl, freeing the warm, yellow yoke. June Gloom wore out its welcome as soon as we flipped the calendar to July, so now finally, at mid-month, we are catching up with summer. And it feels amazing….

One benefit (the only one as far as I can ascertain) of grey and damp days is that I tend to get a lot more done. By nature I am a pretty industrious person, but sunshine plus a choice of patio cafes and beaches is a dangerous cocktail, making it tough to be diligent all the time. So I need to be on top of that.

A new trajectory of painting has been yielding some things that feel fresh and exciting. Several more in progress but this one is just completed. It’s called Scirocco. I have been returning to the naturalness of the landscape (and consequently the materials) as I once did, taken of course by this new land I now call home, and that has been clearing a path into new fields that include more sculptural kinds of pieces too…can’t wait to share, but I did figure out a new paper flower form that I am loving. Though a botanist might cringe, I call these Page Peonies.

Also wrapped up a large freelance design job which included doing this illustration for the play, Oedipus. Always love illustration….

The Book is wrapped up! and I will call it by its proper name now: The Repurposed Library. It goes to print in a few weeks when my editor gets back from her honeymoon. I can’t wait to hold it in my hands and smell the ink!

All artists are thieves

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:49:23 -0700

I think it was Picasso who said that. And he’s right. Everything created is an amalgamation of something already created. And everything to me is fodder for art making, whether it’s tangible materials or abstract thoughts. So a Sunday in Santa Barbara was a tree ripe with fruit, especially since I visited the botanical gardens there. After you drive up and out of town just a mile or so, past neighborhoods of tile-roofed homes and lush scapes that made me think I was in Italy, you get to the gardens.

The marine layer that hung closer to the water’s edge was not here, higher up on this slight slope, so the sky was bluest blue and the sun was warming everything. A winding path lead you into the sanctuary, rife with native flora and little lizards that dart over the path. Orange poppies. Yucca. Giant redwoods. Through an open field and then down into a crevice along a creek. A large boulder precariously protruding out from a bluff over the trail. A japanese tea house set amid the landscape.

It was an intimate, lovely exchange, but what made it that much more pristine was the grand backdrop of the Sierra Madres it lives among. Fractals of delicate nature, with the light sounds of ruffling leaves and trickling water, was counterpointed with brazenly bold peaks. Soft and small set against muscular and vast.

I picked some little souvenirs up along the way to bring home with me. I have been collecting boxes to make more of my scatole contemplative (“thought boxes”). I can just see these little specimens set within. I pocketed a perfectly rectangular stone about a half-inch thick, a cuff of mossy bark and a lichen-covered twig. We weren’t sure if it was all right that I lifted these little things from the grounds so I held them discreetly down when I walked through the gate like they were contraband.

Cross Pollination

Wed, 7 Jul 2010 07:12:16 -0700

Sometimes when you do many different things, as most artists do, you might feel spread a bit thin. However when you stop and look, you realize that all the things you do, in all their range, actually have many commonalities and so there is a cross-pollination of ideas and, in turn, a cohesiveness to your oeuvre.

One of the projects I designed and wrote for The Book (the title is nearly final!) is the “Lettered Wreath” -- a wreath form composed of 200 or so paper rosettes and leaves made from book pages. I loved making that paper flora so much I revisited it as a technique afterward. I wanted to see what could bloom from these forms. I took those same forms and added color and texture and placed it into a different context. The rosettes and leaves I stain with paint, cover in beeswax and then place into arrangements. I just last night finished some more of these little ‘bud vases’: the simplicity of a single flower set into a little jar. Then there’s the ‘rose bowl’. And various ‘flower boxes’. I’d like to make an entire site-specific garden you can walk around in.....Visit Shophouse to learn more.

Home Free

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 11:04:21 -0700

As of yesterday I am quite literally home free. I no longer own east coast property. After a long, arduous, and oblique journey, I closed on the property I had previously possessed, keys were handed over to the new owner. A downward market, four buyers, five months and scant understanding of the cryptic intricacies of real estate law, and I made it to the other shore. The left shore, the west coast. Not that I let this plight stop me from leaving--I landed in Venice with a thin scarf of faith wrapped around my neck that it would work out.

So now, this land is my land, fully.

If you saw Up in the Air you might remember the version of “This Land is My Land” at the beginning of the film that was performed by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, who I saw this past Saturday at the Wiltern Theatre in downtown LA.

First let me rave about the Wiltern: a relic from grandiose theatre-going days, the theatre is a huge sky blue Art Deco monument standing amidst newer, drab buildings, like a wizened elder. The entrance at the sidewalk has an ornate glass and metal ticket booth that stands like a brooch at its neck, and the ceiling of the outside entry is all carved flora with light bulbs set inside the heads of flowers. Inside, the atrium is broad and tall and dressed with vertical Art Deco trimmings that wed the organic to the geometric. The theatre itself is in its original state with every surface embellished and the ceiling, so high above, sheathed in large wooden polychrome fronds. Chandeliers, at once old-fashioned and modern, make a twinkling necklace around the back edge of the balcony.

When the curtain rose, hanging against the backdrop were four, large, san-serif glittering letters in white: SJDK. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. The show began with the Dap-Kings, a melange of characters who you might not normally put together, but who crystallize into a single, audible strength. A lead guitarist, a second guitarist, electric bass, a drummer, a percussionist, keyboards, trumpet, sax, alto sax, a string quartet and two back-up singers. What commenced was an engine of music locomoting right off the stage, out and into those of us in the crowd.

Then they turned it down, and slowed it down and beckoned Sharon Jones to the stage. Out struts this phenom of a woman, a high-contrast, high voltage priestess, gleaming--not from the sequins on her snug aqua dress--but from some vigor within. The stage lights revealed the features of her face, her sharp eyes and strong cheekbones. Not only does she have a voice beyond envy that springs from her like an audible layer of her soul, holding open long notes one moment then in the next breath compressing a string of lyrics together into a golden nugget of vox, but she never stops dancing. She moves as if it is part of her singing, as if stomping, shaking, shimmying, twisting and turning is part of channelling out the steam of her song. With robust, curvaceous calves shod in strappy gold sandals she commanded the stage.

And she didn’t stop for what? two hours? Never paused for even a sip of water. When the Dap-kings took a break mid-show, she kept the lead guitarist with her and sang some more.

She never stopped because she was rapturous, she was doing what she loves, giving what she has to give. The euphoria I saw on her face when she did finally release and tether the show up and thank the audience was so profound, hard-won and pure I knew this was not work for her. All the exertion and effort is not toil but joy. That is something I know to be true for myself, and I recognized it in her.

If you get a chance to go to SJDK, go.