ESSAY/THOUGHTS while traveling

 Thursday, July 26, 2012 – Page 1

Crossing the Range of Light today to the Eastern Sierras

“Mr. Pereira is far from alone in finding the time ripe for spirituality. In Ms. Moss’s case, at Lincoln Center, spirituality is merely part of a larger concern: transcendence, looking inside yourself.

“There is a huge hunger for more human connections,” said Ms. Moss, who describes herself as “a secular mystic.” “People are looking for larger experiences in a cyberworld” that becomes ever more “like eating candy.”

“Music,” she added, “is going to end up being the only live experience left in the world.’” - NY Times, review of spirituality as a theme in classical music programming.

Conrad writes that the heart of the twentieth century is black. 

Maybe it’s that the hearts of men that are always black, at least compromised and paralyzed to choose the good, the kind, the beautiful, the unique.

Another terrible public massacre in a movie theater in Colorado - is there something about that state that I don’t get?   Yes, it’s  a wild west gun-toting, water starved, fire-scorched state with lots of primitive disenfranchised homophobic white males moping around feeling falsely entitled.  It’s also cleaved by its close ties to the military-industrial complex, like much of the interior West, which results in a mind-set of defensive protectiveness, economic self-interest, and a hatred of federal government intervention.

VACATION: The Sierras, Hetch-Hetchy Reservior

Our Sierras Vacation Begins: Groveland, CA

A pleasant chatty drive up the central valley and the flank of the western Sierra Nevada to an old western gold-mining town to rest for our first visit to a remote part of Yosemite National Park.  We are going to Hetch Hetchy, a name that is deeply shamed in the water wars narrative of the West, a twinned atrocity to the Owens Valley succubus that the city of the Angels wrought. I gaze through the breakfast room window’s wavy old glass at this town where the construction crews and office housed to build the O’Shaughnessy Dam.  

When it was completed, the Tuolomne River filled the magnificent granite domed valley called Hetch-Hetchy,  a small twin to Yosemite Valley.  If it had been saved, it would have been one of the anchor jewels in American’s crown of national parks, so unique were the geological events that shaped its splendor.  But it was sacrificed for the “greater good”, acquired by the growing city of San Francisco for its eternal water supply after 10 years of intense political and legal battles.  Woodrow Wilson finally permitted the city to claim the water, and by 1924, the dam was built, in just 3 ½ years.

A short but tiring hike along the shore of the O’Shaughnessy Reservoir, viewing the present day beauty of the drowned valley. Kolana Dome, one of three magnificent formations visible from the dam, stands 2200 feet high above the original valley floor.  The maximum water depth is 312 feet, but I think that it probably was about 280 or so today, guesstimating only.  So much more of the granite formations  was visible than I thought. That said, what is gone is sad to think about: the beauty of the Tuolomne, meandering between the valley walls,  all mute and glowing evidence of earthly time’s powerful inevitability to make long slow change.  

The waterfalls were not submerged, and the “bathtub ring” so ugly at Lake Mead, Lake Isabella, and other lakes isn’t unsightly here.  The water itself is bottle green/black, so deep is it, and with sides and bottom of granite, little blue can be reflected from the sky above. We will never stand on the valley floor, eyes raised to geologic forever, to know the intimate and unique forms of this drowned place.   

Wildlife SightedToday 

Black-headed grosbeak, acorn woodpecker,  black-throated gray warblers, California sister butterfly,  purple finch, female mule deer, California ground squirrel.  I was very pleased to have seen the California sister butterfly, a new species for me.  We saw quite a few of them.  The wings folded look very different than when open.The doe was a lovely sienna orange, small and delicate. The grosbeak is also new for me - I thought it was a towhee, but it had that strong beak and less black on its head.

ART: Jeff Brows Exhibit

 As a self-described "visual anthropologist", Brouws recognizes that photographs exist within a socio-economic, political, or historical context. Every landscape can be read as a "field of information" revealing evidence of the external forces that have shaped them. From his Franchised Landscapes series, Brouws references and complements the photography of the New Topographics movement of the 1970s. In addition to studying the newly constructed suburban world, as those artists so eloquently did, Brouws explores terrain vague inner city areas and considers how racial segregation, white flight, disinvestment, corporate takeovers, outsourcing, and other factors have reciprocally shaped urban, suburban and even highway spaces. As he clearly demonstrates, The New West has become a "non-place" landscape comprised of big box stores and fast food chains with their glowing, corporate logos mounted atop skyscraper-high poles. 

The poet Gary Snyder referred to these signs as "...skinny wildweed flowers sticking up...in the asphalt riparian zone." Brouws creates single images and diptychs, as well as typologies such as his Signs Without Signification-portraits of light-box signs from once thriving, but now abandoned businesses that reveal Capitalism's cyclical nature and it tendencies toward "creative destruction."   (from Artweek LA website)

ESSAY: The Lovely Summer Begins/Transit of Venus

Celestial Delights Aplenty

The blessings of having grandchildren are many; but who knew that astronomy and physics would present themselves for my tardy consideration?  In my own long-ago childhood in the rural Midwest( seems like yesterday) we were guided to attend the natural world, waiting on the northern lights, an eclipse viewed through candle-smoked window glass, The Milky Way every summer night, picking out the easiest constellations, watching to see if the North Star would move after all, the impossibly luminous October moonrise. How far off I sat and wondered.  

 Now an insistent child clamors for information about almost everything, and I have time; the inclination to listen, arriving late in life, leads me to a thoughtful response.  And so we go to see the annular eclipse, the Transit of Venus, the unusually large moon.  They open the universe to him and to me, a second latency period settling upon me like Harry Potter’s invisible cloak.

Annular Eclipse

In May we went to Canyon de Chelly Arizona, and on a high bluff overlooking that quintessential Western canyon, watched a full eclipse.  The late afternoon sunlight assumed a subtle pale golden gray tone, as the shadows lengthened across the warm sandstone. 

How time did seem exactly perfect - we sentient conscious beings aligned with it rather than running it ourselves.  Waiting, watching, slow time, easy time, inexorable processes - my realization and experience of them, too.

Transit of Venus 

If the event of the eclipse was not enough, a few weeks later an unusual passage of Venus in front of the sun’s face occurred.  This time Max and I made a special trip together.  At the Griffith Park Observatory we joined thousands of Angelenos to watch the arcing slow journey of the tiny black speck.  How delightful it was to see him come to understanding, climbing the stepstools to peer into the telescopes, asking the assistants questions.  

The God Particle

Now news comes that a existence of transitory atomic particle has been further proved.  A $10 billion linear accelerator has been used to perform an experiment that the Higgs-Bosun particle performs as hypothesized - it accretes matter as it moves through space, possibly explaining how mass and matter came to visible form as planets, stars, and galaxies.

So now I attend to celestial news to share with the little eager manchild in my life. We draw pictures of galaxies, read books about black holes, look at the full moon through my large bird-sighting scope (works as well as a small telescope), talk about what it would like if we could see The Big Bang, and whether there is a God or if God caused the Big Bang.  

Fulfillment

To be fully filled, to the brim, and above the brim.  A word from the glossary of ancient spirituality, sought by the early mystics.  St. Teresa of Avila, St. Francis of Assisi, fulfilled, without doubt.  Joseph, the fulfilled parent, The Blessed Innocents, a fulfillment of blood.  St. Thomas Aquinas, pierced by longing, fulfilled in death to eternal life.  Now, fulfillment is grotesque - a conclusion after Amazon and FedEx whisk your order to your front porch, the last event in a chain of aquisition: desire-seek-anticipate-buy-use-novelty exhaustion-throw away.   

Think of the gifts of God - Miriam got a baby, perfect and destined, to delight in.  The lilies of the field, loaves of bread, 10 rules to live by, a promised land delivered, a lost lamb found.

ART: Lorraine Lubner

Lubner writes, “In this body of work I began by making a few fundamental (and at times, contradictory) decisions; one, to infuse color into a basic form, a horizontal but of differing widths. 

 Two, that the form be de-skilled, not ruled or taped. 

Three, that the color be prompted by my intuited need-desire by an adjacent relationship (not by color theory). 

 Four, that the total variety of singular colors produce for me, an “eidetic” image of differing powers and individual lives. 

 Fifth, that the immediacy of the layered paint surface reflect the constant change of color sensitivity-saturation allowing its neighbor its place in the sun.  Differing perceptions of color are due to lighting, pigment or binder.  My “eidetic” (mental image that is actually visible) image reflects the singularity of the oil pigments I use, my binder and the light in my studio.  Whereas my past work was infused with aspects of landscape forms these paintings have no narrative but are an experience.”

TRAVEL: The Eastern Sierras

A Los Angeles painter who taught public school!  A colorist adstractionist - when he began painting seriously after an early retirement, he went on to become a professor at Claremont and focused on color and its relationships.  I can see myself doing that and using abstract forms to deal with color relations.  For me, the beauty of the paint surface on the canvas is everything:  the application of it, the texture, the glowing quality, the moment of contrast revealed after I apply another coat of paint or place a loved color next to another.  He’s inspiring - I see myself traveling possible roads which other painters have already discovered, but they seem important to do, even though I re-invent the wheel daily.

FiLM & ART: Gerhard Richter, Real Memories This is an insightful, truthful film about making art, the best one I’ve ever seen about the artistic process. There’s a wonderful moment when Richter approaches two wall size white canvasses with a large bucket of bright yellow paint and a large housepainter’s brush. The anxiety of the white room, the blank page. Then he gashes the surface with giant arm-waving slashes of yellow, followed by red, blue. Later, he pushes and pulls giant “squeegees” over the surface. They look like huge scrapers or a cement mason’s hand floats. He applies paint along the edge, or not, and scrapes away and overlays the past with present meaning, sometimes many times. . He waits, hours, days, goes back, reworks: if it isn’t “good”, it will get painted over again. It is finished when nothing is wrong with the painting, he says. He is a deeply focused, compressive, detached, and humane presence: if I were told he were a New Englander, a Vermonter, I’d believe it. His words about painting sound like what I think Robert Frost might say. Richter has a unique historical position from which to paint. A German post-war artist in East Germany, he escaped to West Germany, became a political refugee, and never saw his parents again. The early Social Realism he painted there is buried now, and Richter’s oeuvre is broad. In the 1980’s he returned to East Germany for an exhibition, welcomed as a “favorite” son, no longer a prodigal. It’s fascinating, the spectacle of government repentance. Repressive regimes are sterile, implode and then struggle to recover what they rebuked and scorned. Ai Weiwei, Wu Guanzhong, Shostakovich come to mind. Germany wins the prize for the worst history to live down, but we do have our own atrocities on our national conscience, it’s well to remember. In one scene Richter muses over old photos of his childhood, and considers destroying them. He has few real memories, only photo memories, and their elusive relation to his past. His small son, clad in a bright yellow rainslicker, peeks into the studio inquiringly, then turns and scampers away. This is an insightful, truthful film about making art, the best one I’ve ever seen about the artistic process. There’s a wonderful moment when Richter approaches two wall size white canvasses with a large bucket of bright yellow paint and a large housepainter’s brush. The anxiety of the white room, the blank page. Then he gashes the surface with giant arm-waving slashes of yellow, followed by red, blue. Later, he pushes and pulls giant “squeegees” over the surface. They look like huge scrapers or a cement mason’s hand floats. He applies paint along the edge, or not, and scrapes away and overlays the past with present meaning, sometimes many times. . He waits, hours, days, goes back, reworks: if it isn’t “good”, it will get painted over again. It is finished when nothing is wrong with the painting, he says. He is a deeply focused, compressive, detached, and humane presence: if I were told he were a New Englander, a Vermonter, I’d believe it. His words about painting sound like what I think Robert Frost might say. Richter has a unique historical position from which to paint. A German post-war artist in East Germany, he escaped to West Germany, became a political refugee, and never saw his parents again. The early Social Realism he painted there is buried now, and Richter’s oeuvre is broad. In the 1980’s he returned to East Germany for an exhibition, welcomed as a “favorite” son, no longer a prodigal. It’s fascinating, the spectacle of government repentance. Repressive regimes are sterile, implode and then struggle to recover what they rebuked and scorned. Ai Weiwei, Wu Guanzhong, Shostakovich come to mind. Germany wins the prize for the worst history to live down, but we do have our own atrocities on our national conscience, it’s well to remember. In one scene Richter muses over old photos of his childhood, and considers destroying them. He has few real memories, only photo memories, and their elusive relation to his past. His small son, clad in a bright yellow rainslicker, peeks into the studio inquiringly, then turns and scampers away.

 This is an insightful, truthful film about making art, the best one I’ve ever seen about the artistic process.  There’s a wonderful moment when Richter approaches two wall size white canvasses with a large bucket of bright yellow paint and a large housepainter’s brush.  The anxiety of the white room, the blank page.

Then he gashes the surface with giant arm-waving slashes of yellow, followed by red, blue. Later, he pushes and pulls giant “squeegees” over the surface.  They look like huge scrapers or a cement mason’s hand floats. He applies paint along the edge, or not, and scrapes away and overlays the past with present meaning, sometimes many times. .  He waits, hours, days, goes back, reworks: if it isn’t “good”, it will get painted over again.  It is finished when nothing is wrong with the painting, he says.

He is a deeply focused, compressive, detached, and humane presence: if I were told he were a New Englander, a Vermonter, I’d believe it.  His words about painting sound like what I think Robert Frost might say.  

Richter has a unique historical position from which to paint.  A German post-war artist in East Germany, he escaped to West Germany, became a political refugee, and never saw his parents again.  The early Social Realism he painted there is buried now, and Richter’s oeuvre is broad.  In the 1980’s he returned to East Germany for an exhibition, welcomed as a “favorite” son, no longer a prodigal.  It’s fascinating, the spectacle of government repentance.  Repressive regimes are sterile, implode and then struggle to recover what they rebuked and scorned. Ai Weiwei, Wu Guanzhong, Shostakovich come to mind.

Germany wins the prize for the worst history to live down, but we do have our own atrocities on our national conscience, it’s well to remember.  In one scene Richter muses over old photos of his childhood, and considers destroying them.  He has few real memories, only photo memories, and their elusive relation to his past. His small son, clad in a bright yellow rainslicker, peeks into the studio inquiringly, then turns and scampers away.  aption

Would that it all could be swept away, but the purging leaves its inevitable tracks, like a glacier scrapes the mountainside.  At one point, the squeegee  is so large and heavy he must lean into it with his shoulder to push it across the large canvas. In another, he seems to have left it to partially dry, and he wrenches it loose to continue to pull the draperies over what was before, now only posited by say-so.  

 Despite his star problem, he moves back and forth between the deeply private studio experience and the hysteria of world-wide fame.  His painting remains rigorous and truthful; at 80 he’s not on auto-pilot, no golden age nostalgia has seduced him - perhaps because he remains cool, somewhat detached, the observer hiding in plain sight behind canvas spectacles.