artists setting sail on seas of trash

(image: Brooklyn artist Swoon floats into the Venice Biennale uninvited on a ship of NYC trash)

A small version of myself one day heard-- at school? on television?--about the problem of trash-- extensive landfills, toxic waste, plastic islands. This version of myself was grief stricken, panicked. She sat wide-eyed in bed trying to come up with a solution to our world's throw-away problem. She winced anytime she had to toss something in the trash, because she knew it wouldn't just go away, as she had once thought. Since that time, the many troubles of the earth's balancing act in response to humans' ridiculous tendency toward imbalance have remained a central concern in my life. (Even prehistoric farmers over-farmed!)

Of course, as an artist, this preoccupation often slips into my work either as part of a loose narrative or as an admiration of the patterned interconnectedness of nature (the whole series Solving for Pattern is named for environmentalist/poet Wendel Berry's call to more deeply understand the patterns of ecology in solving environmental problems, e.g.). I avoid taking up any deeply felt cause as a guiding force in making a piece of art, however. Perhaps it's because I'm not convinced that art is the strongest voice for persuading or converting in a direct way. Perhaps I've seen too many bad examples of art that pleads for change. I tend to agree with a comment I read on a different blog posted by Jim Bovino: "When artists allow their politics to guide their creative choices it normally results in ham-fisted gestures and flaccid aesthetics." But are there exceptions to this tendency?

There are artists who deal directly with the modern trash dilemma. At a recent Society for Photographic Educators conference that I tagged along to, Edward Burtynsky spoke, and showed a career's worth of photographs documenting the vast effects of human consumption on the land and sea (Burtynsky is usually associated with his ship-breaking images, which are incredible, but click on Urban Mines on his site for even more of a direct connection to this post). While his photographs are stunning, they strike me as more documentary than anything. Chris Jordan's work, because of its clever mathematical or pictorial reorganization, carries a few more angles, but still serves relatively simply as aestheticized mental models for contemplating mass (curious about his event at Western Bridge on June 29th-- did anyone go?).

I know my requirements for art are idiosyncratic, and that there are as many functions for pictures as there are for words, but in a fine art context, I look for complexity, mystery, conundrum, ineffability. I look for a mental world with some swimming room. Swoon's prankster act at the Venice Biennial (pictured above) does more for me on this front. From the New York Magazine article:

Swoon and her group are emissaries from a specific underground culture: the bike-riding, Dumpster-diving, anarchist street-art movement that has flourished in Bushwick, Greenpoint, and areas near the Gowanus Canal over the past decade [...] For them, scrounging is a kind of religion, and the boats are an embodiment of that aesthetic. They’re not interested in expensive green technologies or recycling programs—the point is reuse, to breathe new life into the city’s detritus and build a new, separate world from those remains. “We’re not perfect,” Swoon says. “How much jet fuel was used to fly all of us here? But we’re not going to let being imperfect stop us. If you are too rigid in your ethics, you undo positive action.”

The life-as-art approach is age-old, but in the context of consumption and waste, this band of rebels leads by example. There's also something very Mad Max about the effect, becoming a picture of the global profligation and unconscious exchange of trash on every level. And then there are these unexpectedly hopeful observations on the human condition embedded in the work as well: “You start to build something like these boats, and you can’t believe it yourself, but enthusiasm has a way of sparking other people,” [Swoon] says. “What this project has shown me is that there is no place for pessimistic disbelief in the world; it’s just not useful. Once you’ve decided to be on the side of audacious wonder, beauty, and joy, you can’t go back.”

A useful tool, this wonder, when faced with information like this:


When I saw this last night, all of my childhood dreads and devotion came rushing back. I looked around at my plastic-y environment with awe. How pervasive this stuff is! I resolved to emphasize the Reduce and Reuse side of the RRR mantra, without relying as much on Recycling. Even if the problems are planet-sized, small steps en masse become large ones. (If you're in Seattle, here's an easy one-- vote in August!)

As for the questions raised about art exacting change, the jury's still out for me, and the discussion is likely to continue... I'm using this space to think out loud.

body fluency

Debra Baxter
Palate Cleanse (big dumb heart)
Alabaster, steel
24 x 8 x 7 in
2009

There's a streak in art that I'm sure has been explored deeply by many (if you have names, lemme at 'em), but that I find I'm always referencing. I'm very often drawn to artists who deal with the human body as the central metaphor. I want to call it something fancy like Corporal Proclivity or something. Body Fluency. And this is funny because the phenomenon is essentially non-verbal. It's related in some way to the impulse to dance, to create physical theater or performance, even to gesture with your own body and face, in order to communicate something beyond words. And the body itself is only another vehicle for accessing things less corporeal.

Seeing Debra Baxter's show at Howard House sparked these sensations in me, several times, even in the unusual Seattle heat of the evening, even with a sweaty baby strapped to my chest, even at an art opening, for goodness sake (I marvel at the cursory glancing done at openings, compared to the attention we're able to give art in less social settings, but still enjoy the energy of those nights). Maybe it's because I was in the setting of an art opening, where tongues wag and wander, and we spill out weird small talk in between observations and catching-up, but the tongue pieces spoke especially loudly--and ironically--about being at a loss for words... about wanting to start over-- peel it back, cut it off!-- in a mixture of desperation and hope. All this to say, Debra's work, which I've liked ever since I was a new transplant trawling the internet for interesting work in Seattle, is especially powerful in person. While not all of her work is body-related, much of it resonates with either a muscular physicality or the ephemeral and delicate constant of breathing. (For those in Seattle who haven't seen this show-- my write-up is very late-- the show is only up for two more days!)

Dust Mask (Catching My Breath)
Alabaster, sterling silver
5 x 4 x 2.5 in
2009


Time Out
Glass, sand, sterling silver, african wonder stone
14 x 13 x 10 in
2009

On the subject of the body speaking, I just returned from an engaging and exciting work-in-progress viewing of Jillia Pessenda's Force Feed (v. 1) at the Henry Art Gallery's Open Floor series. The bodies of Jillia and partner Jim Bovino were buried, rolled, hidden and interrupted by a shopping cart, an enormous rug, a garden hose, a vacuum cleaner and plastic detritus as they struggled through a domestic relationship built of poetic gasps and quotidian lists that seemed to spin off of each character into the void. I found myself covered in persistent goosebumps several times, especially in response to the more physical representations of the relationship that was being portrayed. I can't wait to see the extended version-- my main critique is that it was too short!

hungry and fearless and thirsty and supple

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

{e. e. cummings}

{drawings: aleksandra kopff}

i'm so glad i saw this

Life with a newborn and two active older brothers dictates that my "alone time" means trips out with said newborn, who is still very dependent on me (a revisit to Dr. Sears' Baby Book reminds me of the transition that this little guy is making-- from womb, where all needs are met without communication, to this wide world where his needs are met only by learning to give cues. What a leap! Newborns have to do a version of talking from the moment of birth...) The other day, on one of these escape trips to Ballard, I was so excited that I caught Supramundane at Ambach and Rice a mere few hours before its disassembly. I went mostly because I wanted to see Robyn O'Neil's drawings in person, and those were fantastic. But it was Whiting Tennis' Coulda-shoulda-woulda that really moved me.



This grid of sculptures, each about the height of a hand span, were a materialization of synthetic thought...quiet connections between abstracted forms and figures and architecture grouped into a believable family of structures that read like scale models of temples-for-one. The single readymade component-- a metal garden spray head-- along with the humble piece of paper that had been crumpled into a cone to echo the forms of its other, more constructed counterparts, were category-challenging, and produced a delightful variation on the theme. A quieter message comes through these misfits that fit so well. It seems to me to be the sculptor's acknowledgment of the relative power of modest objects that can, when selected and displayed, add an important piece to the dialogue between his more-labored experiments. There's a humility in that, I think, and it shows in Tennis' interview, in which he describes his deep connection to inert objects:



I like this review of another of Tennis' shows as well...

phantasma

Edward del Rosario

Zack came across this review that plays up some of the more monster-like aspects of Overgrown. I find it fascinating, this take, since the creatures, if they have any conscious symbolic content in my mind, are about the unknown, the unclassifiable, which is, indeed, frightening sometimes. It reminds me of this perverse fear-giddiness I get when I can't tell if a head in the back seat of someone's car is a dog or person.

newness and freshness

^image: by the illustrious Jen Corace^

I've updated my website to make room for some of the work in Overgrown that was shown at 4culture in April.

And, over at Asthmatic Kitty Records, I've posted a new art (review? not really...) meandering thought chain. I'd been thinking about things I'd recently read about bibliovores (people who literally eat books) and the phenomenon of relics (both sacred and profane), when I saw work by Laura Mackin, who is showing in the gallery/project Half/Dozen where I'll be having work this August. And it all kind of knit itself together into a post about proximity and the idea of objects being infused with some sort of power through being touched by famous or holy people. And the flip side of that-- which I feel is present in Mackin's work-- ignoring the associations that history stains an object with, and trying to make stuff just stuff.

Here at home on week three of three sons? In turn: exhausted, grateful, teary, aimless, amazed, amused, claustrophobic, overwhelmed, poetic, despairing, touched, confused, panicked, comatose, adoring...

big sigh

Kate MccGwire

Rick Beerhorst

i want to make drawings that feel like this music

{The video itself is not much to look at. Close your eyes for full effect, or surf around with the music in the background. Also works best in a quiet room, since it gets hectic and can be the wrong sort of thing to compete with other noises. Now my listening instructions are complete. Ha!}

psst

eyeteeth

tabula rasa

First things first! Caspar Robert Bent made his way into the world on a gorgeous Seattle spring morning (May 9th). Just like his brothers before him, he spared no time making his entrance. At 3:30am, I looked out the window at the full moon in a clear sky, and thought, "I think I'm in labor." Got down on my knees in the quiet dark living room with a full heart and head (and belly!), and it was less than 6 hours later that I was holding little Caspar, long fingers, long toes, serious expression, reddish-blonde hair. It should be said that we didn't know he was Caspar until the next afternoon. We had a short list of names that we wrestled with, trying them on this new creature like temporary tattoos, until settling on this name from nativity folklore. It's a variation on a name given to be one of the Magi-- a king who is also humble enough to be a seeker and gift-giver.

At five days old, Caspar has proven to be a pretty mellow baby, though persistent when hungry and clear about his dislike for diaper changes. But the little guy smiles! A lot! This is somewhat new in my experience of newborns, who always fool you with their serious demeanor before breaking into grins at about three-four weeks. He even laughed in a half asleep state last night. So I hope this bodes well for his entry into a lively lively world of two older brothers.

I don't know that much about symphonic music, but my father and his family are literate in classical music, so I get trickles of knowledge. It's almost like having a parent that speaks a mother tongue, and growing up without learning much more than basic greetings and a handful of nouns. I picked up some favorites along the way, mostly as a result of me asking my father at least three or five times about the same piece of music that would strike my fancy (he did the same thing with us kids and our music-- he must've asked seven times about Nick Drake). One of the composers that has stuck with me is Arvo Pärt. This morning, I listened to Pärt's Tabula Rasa, mostly because I had the phrase in my head. It means "blank slate," and is most often used as one side of the nurture-nature debate. In other words, do people start as blank slates or are they predisposed, predestined, to be a certain person? As a mother of now three, I can attest to the ridiculousness of this notion, at least in an extreme. You cannot help but notice obvious differences in children from the moment that they are born-- in fact, even pre-birth movement in the womb is different. But there is a sense of a clean slate, in many ways. A child comes into the world with all sensors pitched to collect and process, and the extraordinary amount of receiving and building of the brain within the first year is staggering.


In any case, reading a little bit about Pärt this morning was fun (just so you know-- babe sleeps, eldest at preschool, middle child at store with dad, so I've had some nice quiet time). An interesting quote on his creative process (taken from this biography):

"To write I must prepare myself for a long time.
Sometimes it takes five years,
And then I come up with many pieces
In a very short time."

Fratres, Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten, [and] Tabula Rasa came out of Arvo Pärt's creative silence in the years 1974 to 1976.

catching up with inka

Inka Essenhigh
(American, born 1970).
Deluge, 1998
Oil enamel on canvas, 72 x 72" (182.9 x 182.9 cm.).
Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery.
Sarah Norton Goodyear Fund, 1998.

I think the first time I saw an Inka Essenhigh painting was in Buffalo's Albright Knox Art Gallery, when I was going to graduate school (Deluge-- above image). It was one more inlet of inspiration along the illustrative, pop-street style that I was flirting with cautiously, after having studied under painting teachers who were largely under the influence of the tail end of Modernism... who nearly gagged on their tongues when something got too decorative or narrative. I enjoyed the way Essenhigh seemed to capitalize on the recognizable structure of confident animation lines-- as if she'd whipped up a Disney film hallucinogenically into a rubbery storm of almost-characters.

Supergod 2004, oil and enamel on canvas-- Saatchi

In 2004, she was still stretching and morphing in this general direction. So it's with a bit of surprise that I have just encountered Essenhigh's more recent bodies of work, which are more influenced, it seems, by John Currin or Lisa Yuskavage than Disney (though less obviously sexual in nature than either of these artists of pornographic exaggeration). I can even see links to post-surrealist painters like John Wilde. Essenhigh's still warping off of an ideal, but now everything's gone soft and wickedly smiley, seasonal and almost pastoral, but not without an eerie light that forbids you to become too comfortable inside the swooping creamy lines.


Setting Sun
2005
oil on canvas

The work feels like it has moved more toward what, in Seattle, might be best suited for a venue like Roq La Rue, alongside artists like Travis Louie, or Marion Peck. And this is a full-circle, I suppose, since I am still a border-sitter in my interest between the contemporary art sanctioned by a sort of current academic ideal and that world of highly-polished illustrative imagination (among other camps).

I'm still not entirely sold on this new approach for Essenhigh, but fascinated to see an artist with an established name break with the form that put her on the map.

mythos

A strikingly poetic post as my 4culture show draws to a close from Regina Hackett of the very recently un-papered paper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, on her new blog Another Bouncing Ball. And for those of you who may have been bounced here by her link, my website proper is galabent.com. Cheers!

Tomorrow, Zack and I do a little tango, so that his show can go up in the same space. This Thursday, Buffalo Trace opens (the link will connect to my info now, but will soon switch to his).

In the midst of all of this, I enter my 39th week of pregnancy, feeling expectant and mostly relaxed, but sheepishly asking the fellow to wait until after Thursday to join us in the air breathing world.

post script

Case in point: From the time of my post a few minutes ago, I ran across this artist: Danielle Rante, who is showing with an old classmate of mine at Mt. Comfort in Indianapolis. And my heart says, yes yes! And my hands itch and my pencil twitches! And the edible tactility of paper remembers itself to my imagination.

why we fight (for it)

{image: Yayoi Kusama, from here.}

A conversation that my husband Zack and I had a while ago comes back to me all the time when we are navigating the waters of being artists at this time in history. Actually, we've had many versions of this conversation. We agree that success for its own sake is an old awful human foil, and press one another to answer why we do it otherwise. Why do we forsake other sorts of stability or respectability in favor of this often-absurd practice? For me, it comes down to a few lodestar reasons. One is that my life has been moved and touched, shaken and cleaved, made more vibrant and meaningful, by the work of other artists in every medium. A simple formula, really, but something that helps me realign the compass when engaging in this self-directed, ambiguously-shaped "job." Imagine your life without the music, films and books that have hedged it. The word inspire has been overused, but when I think of its etymology (as I have before on this blog) I love the image of being breathed into. The most fitting response has always been to exhale.

the earth breathing

{above: Childe Hassam "The Goldfish Bowl"-- this painting is a tad too prettily ideal to fall into the middle of my taste, but I've always loved that light-filled orb and the sense of the open window letting in the smell of new spring. It reminds me of the cover of Sue Monk Kidd's "The Secret Life of Bees," a novel I wanted to like, maybe more than I actually did, because I loved the painting of the honey jar.}

Thank you Shawna, for being a more savvy googler. And, in Seattle today, where the yellow-green leaves are swaying against a blue whose name is fresh, this poem is even more potent:

This fevers me, this sun on green,

On grass glowing, this young spring.

The secret hallowing is come,

Regenerate sudden incarnation,

Mystery made visible

In growth, yet subtly veiled in all,

Understandable in grass,

In flowers, and in the human heart,

This lyric mortal loveliness,

The earth breathing, and the sun.

(From "A Bravery of Earth" by Richard Ghormley Eberhart)

the fever

I'm having the strangest thing happen... I have a clip of poem in my head today, and I don't know if it's memorized, or if I wrote it years ago. I've googled the portions I remember, and nothing's coming up. I actually thought it was an e.e. cummings phrase, which would be easy to find, I'm sure. Anyway-- has anyone heard anything like this? ...because now it's gonna drive me nuts:

It fevers me, this sun on green, this *** *** ***, this newborn Spring.

The stars are not curses, or as far as I can remember, they're not... just three syllables I can't recall. And that part drives me nuts, too. I'm 80% leaning the direction that I didn't write it.

art appreciation

It's been a joy working sporadically with Asthmatic Kitty Records over the last few years. The whole lot of them that we've had the pleasure to know are simply good people, with clear vision and derring-do. They've just posted a kind news item about "Overgrown," to which I say thank you, and thank you.

The images above have nothing to do with me or AK... they're Alison Saar sculptures. I suppose I could form another post, but they're pretty eloquent on their own. All I will say is that I haven't seen her work for a while, and am excited about the newer work. She seems to be resonant with one of my favorite artists, Kiki Smith, but has her own voodoo-feeling spin.

seattle weekly shout out and two life-giving africans

*An "I saw this" little feature by Adriana Grant at Seattle Weekly...

*On a suddenly sunny day, I often only want to listen to Ali Farka Toure. The first time I heard him was riding in a back seat years ago looking out the window at an Illinois farm field at purple dusk that was filled with the streaky yellow arcs of fireflies. One of the best parts of the Midwestern summer, and so far from Mali, but the memories are linked for me.



*My last post was a burning in my bones, and maybe came out a bit more dour than what I feel. I saw an amazing documentary last night about Nobel Prizewinner Wangari Maathai, whose efforts toward the re-greening of a tree stripped and ecologically pained Kenya have had massive implications, socially and politically. A striking story of redemption and interconnectedness, and full of the sort of struggle that joy loves to shine against. And that, I think, is what the most difficult tasks allow, whether it's mothering or overcoming illness or any other hard part of life. A picture of a life that does not include this tension is unreal to me.

*In the Wall Street Journal article linked in the last post, Pamela Tanner Boll, the director of "Who Does She Think She Is?", has this to say:

When I had my first kid, my world changed. That happens to women and we never hear about the positive. We hear about how hard it is. We create a dichotomy between work and family. For women, they’re woven together in a way that’s different than for men. The best work comes out of that loving presence where you’re really paying attention to the people that you love. That gives you energy.

I have to say that this is my experience as well. I think, since the burst of growth and work at the end of my undergraduate years, when things started to click for me as an artist, I've done my best work after having two kids.

a film about mothering artists...

"WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS? examines some of the most problematic intersections of our time: parenting and creativity, partnering and independence, economics and art. The film follows five women artists as they navigate the economic, psychological, and spiritual challenges of making work off the map of the elite art world."

This film looks fascinating, especially, of course, from my perspective. And it's playing in Seattle at SIFF:

SIFF CINEMA
Weds April 22nd, Thurs the 23rd 7:30pm
Director Pamela Tanner Boll in attendance
321 Mercer Street at 3rd Avenue, McCaw Hall
206-633-7151 for tickets
http://www.siff.com

The only thing I don't like from the NYTimes review is the implication that the pressure is just too much-- mothering and being an artist. One who seems to be holding it together, "Janis Wunderlich [...] seems cheerfully adept at managing five children, a husband and a successful career as a sculptor. Only when we examine her fantastical, disturbing figures — often with rabbit ears and tiny, toothy creatures swarming over them — do we see explicit evidence of her internal conflict." Mothering and anything is difficult. Mothering is difficult. But hang on a second. Isn't life pretty difficult? I have yet to have a heart to heart with anyone who can say, frankly, "Life is a breezy thing for me." Often, when someone asks how I do all the things I do, I think about, say, pioneer women, who not only raised multiple children, but had to work on bare subsistence against awful odds and extreme challenges. This basic struggle is still a part of thousands, millions, of people worldwide. And even those of us in a modern world who have the time for such luxuries as art and literature are still racked by existential dilemmas... life and death, cruelty and injustice, depression and poverty. Yep. Things seem to be pretty challenging for the lot of us. The shots of joy and peace that we receive in the face of it are as welcome as water to a parched throat. The laughter that bubbles up saves our hides. And so my life as a mother and artist and teacher, while it IS hard, is also full and satisfying at the end of the day. Take a look at my weeping beasts and bent over wounded soldiers, and I guess you just see something other than a cheek pinchin' reality. But that reality has never been anything but a pale dream.

An interview with the director at the Wall Street Journal here.
An article at Psychology Today here.

orienteering

(gyroscope image found here)

(doll map of acupuncture points found here)

At these late weeks of pregnancy, I was just made aware that my fellow traveller is sitting up straight-- head under my ribs. This is comforting, thinking of him staying close to my heart, and it's fun to know that when I feel around for the shifting bumps under my skin, the tennis ball shape that I can cup and pat is my son's crown. But it's also time, they say, for him to flip head down before he runs out of room. I'm pursuing treatment under a branch of acupuncture called moxibustion, which has been known to flip breech babies with high success. It's non-invasive-- actually just a stick of herb burned by the pinky toe (!).

First of all, I love the word moxibustion, though it's close enough to combustion and "you got moxie, kid" to make it feel like it's lighting a firecracker at the baby's feet-- "pow!" But this and the other suggestions (downward dog, swimming somersaults) have also reignited my wonder at this crazy process of carrying a body in my body--the ways he is part of my electrical-biological system, the ways he's independent, even now. I think of myself as the outside of a gyroscope now, turning myself in order to allow his sphere to spin in new directions.

link back

Drew Kelly for The New York Times

A great article about Nick Cave, sculptor, here at NYT. His larger than life costumes have been a strong brew of inspiration for me. And I wasn't entirely aware of his background in dance, though I knew the suits were wearable and shakeable. Just makes me love it even more.

"Overgrown" hits the shelves

If you live in the Seattle area, I'll be having an opening at Gallery4Culture (101 Prefontaine Place South) this Thursday, April 2nd, 6-8. A new set of drawings called "Overgrown." Actually, I'll be having the opening even if you don't live in the Seattle area. What I mean is, come out if you can!

On other artists... I've been digging on Shannon Eakins' and Mark Dombrosky's collaborations. The image below is one of them-- a grid of sweaters gathered, in further collaboration, with the help of Tacoma Goodwill Industries.

I especially appreciate the tactile and site specific smartness of their work. It reminds me of one of the things that art does best. As University of Washington's Ellen Dissanayake puts it: art "makes special," drawing our attention to small or large things that we might overlook in the shuffle.

con text

The last post was a bit incomplete, but it just kept hanging there in our sick house not getting published. Since the previous post, our family is still on the up-and-up, notwithstanding some additional emotional and physical setbacks. But we've had painting sessions at the dining room table and laughing fits that turn into hacking coughs. We've had face-offs and exhausted tears, ear infections and returning little-boy energy that tests the walls of our house. But let's get back to the Indian art :)

Context. Literally "together with a text" Or, from the online etymology dictionary:

1432, from L. contextus "a joining together," orig. pp. of contexere "to weave together," from com- "together" + textere "to weave"

Hmmm. The Indian court paintings are especially linked, woven, by a consistent text. The Bhagavad Gita, or a text like it, might have been the actual book reference, but an overall cohesive weave dominates that is borne of a more homogenous culture than that in which most of us find ourselves. And the paintings are even more focused by a single central commission- the royal court of Jodphur. What happens is that there's a style that transcends the individual creative viewpoint and becomes a collective vision. Innovation is important more as a means to new understanding than as a way for a single artist to show off his or her creative prowess. As a result, I found myself thinking very little about the individual artists who would have been enlisted to do these extravagant paintings, and ended up thinking much more about the central ideological aims. There was something intellectually calming about this.

In my world, countless texts overlap-- both actual books of text and CONtexts. Individual aesthetic innovation is prized highly-- from style to thought. Looking at work by fellow contemporary artists can be like flipping through radio stations-- especially the way we used to do it with a rotary dial that would chaotically zip through white noise to oases of sound-- each station a different voice or set of instruments, usually in progress as a series of non sequiturs. So it is with art these days; I flip and plow through white noise and unlinked imagery until something sinks in, and then I take more time with it. Its context must be assessed by whatever trail of crumbs I'm given, and I attempt to weave that person's work into the texture that makes up my own understanding. This is vigorous and engaging at best, alienating and listless at worst. And the internet amps this up, as we all know. It has beautiful international-intellectual linking properties, but also presents us with the challenge of finding and establishing context continually.

So these are some of the things that "Garden & Cosmos" have brought to mind. There's something strikingly metaphorical about those orderly walled gardens, within which hierarchies are clear and the rhythms of ritual are understood and shared.

in sickness and in health

It seems strange not to mention, even though this isn't a diary, per se, that my whole family has been under the massive fist of a monster respiratory flu. Gone are the days of sicknesses that were secretly welcome in their cycle of enforced retreat and return to health-- the ones that I could count as sabbath, cessation, reboot. Well-- maybe I speak too soon, since my chest still feels bruised from coughing and my womb feels like it might spring a leak, letting one of these especially kicky little feet emerge far ahead of schedule. But it's also the incredible craziness of taking care of sick little kids while you can just barely take care of yourself that really makes times like these rough. Tell me it all comes out in the wash as character and gritty love. I'll believe you, especially as a balm to my current weariness. Did I mention I'm 7 months pregnant? Sigh for me while I throw an arm over my forehead.

Alright, so, before this all hit I was so so pleased to finally see "Garden and Cosmos" at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. I knew it was an in-person show, and that fact was proven by the catalog that was placed at the end of the exhibit, which, seen out of that context, would have seemed like a garden indeed. But after seeing the creamy smooth gouache and hair-width delicate lines and fields of gold and silver leaf over which floated, walked and swam endless Indian profiles and flora and fauna of every sort.... well... a printed book just doesn't compare. I've been an admirer, though not especially well-informed, of Indian painting, but I think this may be my first interaction with work of this caliber in person--certainly in this volume. I woke up in the middle of the night seeing seas of faces in profile with "further eyes" (a term I just learned, and believe I'm using correctly, for unforeshortened eyes in Indian painting).

Because of my continued fascination with the ways that we try to picture the unseen, or map things that are elusive, this is the part of the exhibition that was especially engaging for me (text taken from SAM's site):

Man Singh commissioned more than 1,000 paintings expressing the sacred power of the Nath mahasiddhas and their metaphysics. Garden and Cosmos includes about two dozen of these spectacular paintings, which present intense, almost hallucinatory images of enormous conceptual sophistication [...] Monumental paintings in this section of the exhibition represent profound subjects with visionary intensity. Large fields of gold map the cosmos and its emergence from the formless void in some works, while others incorporate intricately realized bodies and cosmic landscapes with shimmering silver rivers.

nick cave and the soundsuits

These "Soundsuits" by Nick Cave (not of the Bad Seeds) capture my imagination. I clipped out an image years ago of one of Cave's suits made from twigs, honestly thinking it was an Ann Hamilton piece, but his work is much more shamanistic-feeling, where Hamilton--and other artists-who-costume like Rebecca Horn--seem to be referencing more specifically Western and perhaps gender based conventions. I'm always drawn to costumes that become extensions of the human form-- causing the anthropomorphic base to stretch and exaggerate.

{Bauhaus Dancer's costume}

art fanship

I've written art reviews (or maybe they should be called art appreciations, since I'm more of a fan than a critic of most of the work I write about) for Asthmatic Kitty Records' sidebar for a while now (I just realized my first post was November 1st, 2006 when I scrolled back into my author archives!). I love to have a place to formally think out some of the ways that new work is moving to me, and to share my discoveries with others. And I'm a big supporter of the way that the label champions art in general, in all its forms.

This week, my review of Amanda Hamilton's work goes up. I got to see Hamilton's short film Beautiful Terrible and artist's talk at Seattle Pacific Art Center earlier this year, and she gave me so much cud to chew. Her view of the world is such a potent mixture of dreamy and honest, and I loved hearing about her process. Read the review for more information and thoughts!

the same gentle reminder

From an interview with writer Michael Lewis. Link found on the ever thought-productive Kottke:

I've written in awful enough situations that I know that the quality of the prose doesn't depend on the circumstance in which it is composed. I don't believe the muse visits you. I believe that you visit the muse. If you wait for that "perfect moment" you're not going to be very productive.

Here here.

I traded aerobics instruction for a portrait of my instructor's nephews when I was in graduate school. I've been thinking about how needs-exchange simply doesn't disappear, no matter what happens in the economy, and wondering about a return to bartering. Ran across this article.