Tuesday, April 10, 2012

We're all going to die, so please buy my art.



Today I went to the Madden Museum in Greenwood Village, to judge an art show by high school students. The Madden is what they sometimes refer to as a "vanity" museum; in this case, an enormous glass and steel structure built to house the legacy of a rich guy. The building is in Denver's sprawling suburban Tech Center, where gleaming corporate high rises thrust up from the prairie next to an eight lane highway. The name of the building is the Pallazzo Verdi, and the road that leads to it is called Fiddlers Green. Mind you, this is in suburban Denver. All of this would be easy to dismiss as irrelevant cultural grandstanding by yet another wealthy cowboy developer, were it not true that many important museums are vanity projects (think Marshall Field, JP Getty, Guggenheim), and that the Madden Museum houses some truly noteworthy pieces.

Twelve schools participated in the Continental League Art Exhibit, which is designed to showcase and reward excellence in the arts. Settling into the show, I found the usual scratchboard drawings of cats, and melodramatic self-portraits, but also some truly unexpected departures into combined media, and honest stabs at self discovery. A couple of the pieces felt vital, as if they not only mattered to their creators, but that they had the power to matter to passing strangers. It occurred to me that this is the best any artist could hope for.

My favorite moment came when I rounded a corner and saw an especially nice Robert Rauschenberg piece from the Madden's permanent collection that had been pushed into an unlit storage area to make room for the high school art show. I'm not sure if this was some sort of afterthought, or if I had arrived before they were finished moving things around, but if it were my museum, I'd make sure my blue chip art was either on a wall, or safely out of sight. Nonetheless, something about seeing the Rauschenberg there was both sad and wonderful, like the sight of dethroned royalty. The fact that it still projected a powerful presence from its dark corner made me like it all the more. The most surprising thing though, was seeing that the museum was willing to completely redefine itself to showcase the art of young people, many of whom are just beginning to suspect that art might be something of consequence to them.

Whether my artwork, or that of any of my artist friends, or the kids in this show will end up in someone's legacy, or in a thrift store, is anyone's guess. A friend of mine was recently tipped off that a painting by a well-known local artist was available at a certain thrift store for only a few bucks. The painting was quite nice, not to mention large, but whosever hands it had fallen into had failed to recognize anything of value in it. My friend rushed out and purchased the piece, which had the effect of not only restoring the work to a place of dignity, but my friend got a killer deal on it.

I own a bunch of art I'd like to think is notable. I've come to possess most of it by trading my own work with artists I admire. I've also got a couple of pieces I love, whose origins are obscure to me. One is a tiny painting of a face in profile being spoon-fed the word "never." I bought it from a college student who had taken only one painting class. That's all I remember. I liked the piece so much it didn't matter to me that I was pretty sure the girl who made it might never make another painting. It certainly wasn't an "investment."  I bought the painting for the simplest of reasons: it spoke to me. It could be that no one likes this painting as well as I do. Good. Then it has found its home. The best works of art contain their own justification, some little insight, or revelation, or just plain weirdness that will keep them out of dumpsters. This is perhaps more belief than fact, but I'll stick by it.

When I was in high school I made a painting of an old jalopy rusting under a tree and gave it to my Grandpa Baldy for his birthday. This was during my surly teen years, so any form of spontaneous generosity was a huge relief to my whole family. The painting was overtly sentimental and not at all original, but competently done, at least. I forgot about it entirely. At my grandpa's funeral a few years ago, the family presented the painting back to me. They told me it was Baldy's favorite painting (his only painting as far as I know), and then they took pictures of me holding it, which felt especially weird.

It took a few years, but eventually I found the exact right way to dispose of that painting. This is when I lived in North Carolina, where if you want to get rid of anything other than ordinary household waste, you have to drive it to the dump yourself. I used to go there a couple of times a month with various things that couldn't go out to the curb. The dump had an old gate keeper that wore the same brown Carharts every day. His job was to unlock the gate in the morning, keep an eye on whether things were being put in the proper dumpster, then lock the gate up at night. In his little guard shack I noticed he'd rescued a lot of objects: a vacuum cleaner, an old bendy pole lamp, a calendar picture with the months ripped off. On the day that I took the painting, I made sure it lay on the top of the "Misc Non-Metal" dumpster, face up and clearly visible. On my next visit to the dump I was happy to see it hanging in the guard shack, right where the calendar used to be. I knew the gatekeeper and could have just given him the painting directly, but I suspected that in his world, reclaiming the painting himself would have given it the right value.

Remember that maudlin 70's song Dust in the Wind? It's one hundred percent true, like it or not. Sooner or later, you, me, and everyone we've ever crossed paths with is going to vanish from this earth. This won't require an apocalypse, just the normal limits of mortality. In the big picture, this is all going to happen rather quickly. All of the things we've owned and made precious, all of the photos and half finished novels we've boxed away, all of it is going to be sorted through by people who won't have quite as much empathy as we'd like. Even our loved ones are going to throw most of our favorite things away.

The things you create, and the art you own (if any) will survive on their own merits. Some pieces may acquire rich histories and travel the world, others will slowly flake and peel in landfills. Either way, what happens is pretty much out of your control. Maybe you will be lucky and will get to leave a legacy. Maybe you will be especially lucky and have children who give a rat's ass about the same things you do. But for the rest of us, if art is going to matter, it will be right now that it does so. It will be because the things we create, and the objects we surround ourselves with help us discover who we are, while it still matters. So do what you can to buy the art that seems like it should belong to you. Especially if it's something that reaches into your psyche and gives it a good tweak. These are the pieces that will make your life just a little richer if you get them into your home. And some of them are going to keep working hard, delivering whatever experience they were designed to deliver, and will do fine on their own, long after you're gone.

Monday, April 2, 2012

What The World Needs Now...

Is another folk singer, like I need a hole in my head."

So goes the song. And that's pretty much how I feel about entering the blogosphere.

Recently my friends have been encouraging me to blog. I'm guessing this is a good idea since my Facebook posts have been getting rather long. And since most of my friends are reading at work, on their employer's dime, it's only fair to them to let them know what they are getting into. I'm flattered that my meanderings might be of interest long enough to compromise someone at their job. That's something of an accomplishment for me.

When I think about why I write and what I want this blog to be about, I think it can only hope to be about nothing in particular, but that it should be crafted in a way that it becomes undeniably 'something.' I know how contrived that sounds, but it's my mission statement, for better or worse, plus it's the only way I really know how to write. And if it makes you late for a meeting, then I'm probably doing my job. So here then, is a blog about art-making, Dog walking, wine drinking, divine and secular intervention, and whatnot. Especially whatnot.

Also, I've reposted some of the Facebook entries from the past year that I've really liked. Thanks to everyone who has caused me to believe this is worth the effort.

Enjoy.

_m

Date With a Power Saw


In 1985 I painted my first big painting. It was four feet tall and eight feet wide, and weighed close to 60 pounds. I know this because I once put it on a bathroom scale. I made a bunch of paintings like this, all unwieldy and cumbersome, because a college professor had convinced me that painting on wood panels was the best solution for large scale work. Stretched canvas, it seemed, was prone to warping. What he didn't tell me (or I didn't hear) was that I should make damn sure the painting was going to be spectacular before I went to the trouble of making it huge.

Sadly, over time it became clear to me that this painting wasn't very good. But it also wasn't very bad. And so it became increasingly troublesome as I moved from lofts to apartments to houses in different cities and states. I never hung the painting. You've never seen it. It isn't on my website. It lived mostly in a great big shipping box. I'd only look at it once every three or four years when I needed to move. Each time I peeked in its box, I half hoped to be surprised by my creation, as if I would finally discover something amazing that had previously eluded me. But each time it remained a solidly mediocre, four by eight foot, sixty pound thing - now with a light dusting of mildew. So today, while spring cleaning the garage, I decided to deal with it. I un-wedged the painting from behind a stack of ladders and scrap lumber and piles of other not-so-good paintings. I peeled back the U-Haul quilt and exposed my painting to the full light of day for the first time in years. It still disappointed me. The only surprise was that every half-good thing about it had resurfaced in other paintings I've done since then. Finally the thing had no real purpose left. It was time for the power saw.

I know plenty of artists who manage to recycle the work they don't like. They paint over it, or incorporate it into something else, or raid it for parts. Still others find comfort in the idea that all works of creation are part of an ongoing personal journey that has intrinsic value for the creator, regardless of whether the works are 'good' or not. In my case, I may recycle the ideas in a work of art, but find I'm too troubled by the physicality of a mediocre creation to let the work survive another incarnation. For those of you who find the materiality of art problematic (or the proliferation of man made 'things' in general), you'll know what I mean when I say the poor choices that result in a crummy work of art have a multiplying effect on the very materials used to bring the work into existence. These objects resist transformation. This is why I'm happy to own a variety of power saws.

As I halved, then quartered, eighthed and finally sixteenthed the painting with my saw, I found myself cutting the pieces into increasingly irregular shapes, as if to outwit some imaginary trash picker who might be curious about piecing my big failure back together. In my cosmology, this person would somehow have a fine arts degree, and would be bitter about the circumstances that led him to puzzle with other people's trash. From sheer spite, he would go to great lengths to reassemble my object of shame for his own amusement. So for this reason, I disposed of the fragments in separate dumpsters.

And now for the benefit of those of you who may be embarking on a similar portfolio cleansing, I offer the following tips:

Only careful deliberation will make clear which of your 'iffy' works should travel any further with you on your journey. Once you're sure which ones are crying out for the landfill, you'll need a good saw. I recommend the reciprocating type, like a Sawzall. These allow for a variety of curved and angled cuts, and with the right blade you can make short work of even the toughest materials. Plus they are fun to work with.

Before you go 'Shiva' on your inferior creation, take a moment to make peace with it. If its really bad, you may like to forgive it. I'd recommend you have a beer while doing this, but only one, since you'll be working with power tools. If possible, you'll want to set about this work on a sunny day. If it's cloudy you might get sad about your life, which is pointless and undermines the task at hand. Also, don't be listening to the Cure.

Next, to avoid cold feet, be sure to approach the work from the back side as you tear into it.

Finally, once your piece has been rendered asunder, consider disposing of it in a dumpster that will allow some anonymity. You can find these at your nearby mall. Just look for a store that's in bankruptcy, like a Borders. Chances are good there will still be a dumpster round the back.

When you are finally home, try a little light TV watching. You must steadfastly avoid writing poetry, or blogging about your day. These activities could result in something else you will later need to destroy.

For those who find my approach to purging obsessive or melodramatic, remember that the creation of these objects required many hours spent physically manipulating materials. You literally wrestle your creations into being. It's only fitting that the act of decommissioning them as art objects should take a similar hands-on approach. Simply tossing a work into the trash doesn't require the full participation by the artist in one of the most important steps in the creative process. At least this is how I justified taking an entire afternoon to reduce my big painting to what resembled a pile of roofing shingles from a Dr. Seuss house. Besides, It's only by actually taking your work apart that you can talk about 'deconstruction' and have the slightest clue of what you really mean.


One Morning



One of my first jobs ever after college was working as a museum guard at the Art Institute of Chicago. I used to love to get there early before the museum opened and just study the paintings in whatever collection I was assigned to protect that day. Van Gogh's "Bedroom in Arles," (1889) hangs in the Potter Palmer collection there. One morning, while looking very closely at this work, I noticed that a little flake of cobalt green paint had fallen onto the gilt frame beneath the painting. Bedroom in Arles was in need of conservation, but then lots of artworks are, all the time, so museums prioritize which ones get fixed, and when. The triage order is compounded by the fact that certain works - like ANY of Van Gogh's - do the heavy lifting in terms of museum ticket sales. They don't get to spend a lot of time squirreled away in conservation labs getting spruced up. The decision to remove a popular painting from public view is as much a business consideration as it is one of preservation.

On the morning that I found that flake of paint I was utterly alone. I looked at it for a while and tried to find the place on the painting where it had come free. There were several other flakes just waiting to drift off, given the exact right gust of air or too-close wave of a hand. Of course I knew to not touch the painting. The discipline of not touching art was, after all, my job to enforce. Still I couldn't help but think I could very easily moisten the tip of my finger, lean in, and own a little piece of Van Gogh - just like that. There was something utterly narcotic about the possibility. It was then I noticed the flake was composed of two different colors, a green, and a yellow. Now it contained an echo of Vincent's creative process. A green decision and a yellow decision had been made by a master. Was I meant to have it? Had Van Gogh "gifted" a piece of his art to me from beyond the grave? I spent several minutes considering it, but primary-school morality prevailed, and I left it alone.

In subsequent days I mostly forgot about my secret flake of Van Gogh. But occasionally I'd find myself back in that gallery, and I'd go visit it. Just to check on it. To make sure it was still there. It always was.

Eventually I moved on to other jobs, and years later, after I was well-embedded in my advertising career, I found myself back at the Art Institute to attend some private Ad industry event for which the museum had been rented. The galleries were kept open for us to wander, but most folks didn't venture too far from the free catered food and drink, or the people they were desperate to schmooze. As the evening ground along I felt a nagging urge to disengage from the Ad world and disappear into the galleries. It had been a long time since I'd looked at art.

By the time I made it into the Palmer collection I had remembered the Van Gogh, and my flake of paint. Of course it wouldn't be there, but when in fact it wasn't, I felt just a little betrayed. The Van Gogh had been restored. It was brilliant! It had moved on. For a second I felt something had been withdrawn from me, some phantom possibility. Of what? Minor theft? Some imaginary relationship with a dead artist? Then good.

The truth is, my days at the museum were filled with excruciating boredom and aching feet. Mostly I just stood around and offered directions. It was a crap job with occasional moments of transcendence, but almost nothing in between. Looking back though, it was that half hour before the museum opened, when I was alone with whatever artwork needed watching over, that the world of art was most likely to open up amazing revelations. I can tell you there's nothing like having a major collection completely to yourself, if only for a few minutes each day. I feel lucky about that. I'm only now able to fully realize how important those mornings were, even if I never did end up with a souvenir.

Sometimes An Eagle Is Just An Eagle


02/27/2012

While out walking my dogs this morning I managed to get this nice photo of a bald eagle before my hounds barked it off its perch. Clearly more annoyed than frightened, it flew away because the dogs had blown its cover. Most big birds of prey are used to being hassled by other wildlife. Even song birds will swarm and dive-bomb a hawk until it leaves their nesting territory. It stands to reason. To other birds, the sight of a raptor isn't a thing of inspiration, it's a cause for near suicidal terror.

It irked me that my dogs couldn't keep from barking. I wanted them to sit and watch and simply appreciate the sight of such a great creature. I understood instantly this was just my desire to impose human values onto canine behavior, and that this is rarely successful. I have, however, had a couple of occasions of sharing a moment of awe with my dogs. Once while hiking, a huge bull elk crossed the trail directly in front of us. I had seen it first, so I quickly got down on one knee next to my dog, made him sit, and whispered hypnotically to him "Just watch." This was accompanied by something of a doggy massage. It worked. We watched that bull for several minutes as he browsed, and my dog never stirred. Another time involved a white baby bison. In full disclosure, this wasn't a sighting in the wild, it was at a zoo. I'm happy to admit this because I'm thrilled there's a zoo where well-behaved dogs are welcome. It's at the Royal Gorge, in CaƱon City, Colorado. It's the only place I know of like it.

We all know we're not supposed to anthropomorphize, but certainly there are lots of thoughts and feelings that translate directly across barriers between species. That's why we bother to keep pets. The Border Collie is capable of learning over 1000 unique human words. You could argue that the Border Collie has only learned these words to earn approval, affection, food rewards, and so on. But I'd argue that's why any of us has learned most of the words we know.

The real trouble with empathic identification with animals is that people don't work very hard to learn the animal's vocabulary. Our perspective is hugely distorted by our own self awareness and good intentions, which is why every so often you hear about some kind-hearted person living in the woods cozying up to the bears, only to be eaten by one.

The writers of the Bible use the image of the 'peaceable kingdom' to describe heaven. "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them." (Isaiah 11:16). While lots of Christians are happy to take everything in the Bible as literal truth, I'm going to stick my neck out here and guess this is a poetic metaphor for a transformed human reality. It's not about the wolf or the lamb. The minute wolves stop eating sheep it's all over for them as a species. The image of the peaceable kingdom is comforting because we know it's about us finally ceasing to prey upon each other.

When I looked at the eagle I knew we weren't going to be friends, and that though I admired him, he certainly had no admiration for me. It's a tough idea to accept that we are not as connected to nature as we'd like to think. There's this notion that persists from childhood - exploited, but not invented by Disney - that we can make friends with all the animals, and that they are pretty much just like us. Think back to when you were a little kid, and maybe you found a baby rabbit, or duckling, or some other cute thing. Think about how intensely you wanted to possess it. You were going to feed it, care for it, love it. It was going to depend on you, and in return, it would reward you with its unique friendship. Then maybe some parent or other adult told you the baby whatever-it-was really needed to live outdoors, among its kind, wild and independent. Can you remember how crappy that felt?

The urge to connect with nature on a personal level, to receive validation from the 'universe' is powerful business. It may be an entirely romantic view of reality, but the promise of special connections to friends in the forest means we are really not so alone after all. It means the universe has our back. I have a friend who rejects outright, the possible existence of Jesus, or any other manifestation of a 'personal' god. How could a god bother itself with the details of individual human lives? Instead she believes in energy, the pulse and flow of life itself. Fair enough. But this friend routinely (and sincerely) thanks the universe any time she gets an awesome parking space, or if something goes well for her at work.

We're human, we want it both ways.

When I got home and looked at the eagle photos on my computer, I was rewarded with that unmistakably stern glare that birds of prey all share. I don't know whether the eagle was in fact being stern. Probably he looks that way all the time, no matter how he's feeling. Nature has uniquely equipped eagles with a fierce look, clearly designed to scare the bejeezus out of one and all. And it works. Something about this made me really happy. To see a thing for what it is, and accept it, is its own reward. I'm glad the eagle stopped by, but not because I think it had a message, or omen, or had a single thing to do with me, but because I'm certain it didn't, which makes me feel even luckier. Nature may have a lot to teach us about ourselves, but for those of us exhausted or over-saturated with self-discovery, it offers an occasional stern look to remind us it's not always about us. Sometimes an eagle is just an eagle.


There's this thing that happens



It was a small moment. It couldn't have been smaller.
We walked on opposite sides of a street at night. Between us were banks of snow piled up high after the last storm. A rope in her hand angled down beyond my view, suggesting a dog. I knew my dog was also hidden by snow, so I held my leash high, hoping it would explain my spastic movements, stopping, starting again, backing up, lurching forward. We stood briefly facing each other across the street, trading a nod and a half smile while our unseen dogs busied themselves. Each of us was directly beneath a street lamp, in the exact center of the block. I was thinking about symmetry, and how this might look like a modern dance choreographed by dogs. Which it was. And then on cue, we were each yanked back into the shadows, our leashed partners having resumed the ancient, wordless canine business of marking territory, as meaningfully as they could with cumbersome humans in tow.
And that's all it was.

It's a life's work just being fully conscious, staying tuned in to the world around us, but when we get it right, beauty inevitably slips into the mundane. It happens over and over, and is a kind of gift, but it has a terribly hard time making itself known to a cluttered mind. The clarity needed is not unlike what many people experience during moments of trauma. Years ago I was struck by a speeding car and flew through the air before hitting the ground and losing consciousness. Despite the pain that followed, the heightened awareness in that moment was instantaneous and terribly rich with detail. In the days to come, I struggled with the mind-erasing effects of concussion and amnesia, but to this day I can still see the light sparkling through the trees, hear the kids playing in the park nearby, and feel myself floating backwards, then the lung-flattening crunch of windshield against my back.

How many of us ever really know what's happening at any given moment? The knowing is revealed to us in the wake of a thing happening. The experiences that make the most meaning for me are usually visual events, beyond language or quick comprehension. The kind of thing where context and expectation are stood on their heads and you simply live it. It's not that language fails. It hasn't even shown up to the party. Words come later, when you describe a thing to yourself. When you say how it was. You might decide it was your favorite thing, but you have to wait for words to arrive before that can happen. And in the space before language floods the brain with bias, or creative agenda, a moment can expand and possess you, and it's a good kind of possession to submit to wholly, because in a minute you might discover you're simply living. And then it's over. The trick is to cultivate that sort of lucidity without being struck by a car.


In With The New



01/01/2012

It's eight oclock in the morning on New Years day. I'm standing in my brother's backyard waiting for my dogs to pee. The city is entirely silent, it seems, except for the church bells ringing two blocks away. The church has a bell tower, but I'm guessing there are just speakers hanging where the bells used to be, and that I'm hearing a recording of bells rung a long time ago. Probably decades.

As holidays go, New Years demands as much pretense as any of the others. Maybe even more. The effort to summarize a year as if it had a cohesive essence has always been a ridiculous contrivance to me. How can I give a shape to a span of time that only randomly frames the events of my life? The whole situation is a bit like one of those timed tests back in grade school, where you're writing an essay and it's turning out pretty well, but the clock runs out and the proctor shouts "Pencils down!" and you are expected to just drop your thought, right then and there, and to move on to the next part of the test. If you took the time to name the thing that you are feeling, it might be insult.

The dogs finish peeing and chase a squirrel to the far corner of the yard where it escapes over a fence and up a bare tree. The Dogs don't know it is New Years day. Neither does the squirrel. All around me are little brick bungalows with thin wisps of vapor drifting from their rooftops. Wires crowd the sky at all angles. From here to the horizon thousands of hangovers are just beginning to make themselves known.

The problem with deconstructing holidays, or with trying to sweep all traces of superstition clean from your life, or trying to live ideology-free, or with adhering to any strictly rational habit of mind, is that it will lead you straight down a path of total alienation. The onion has no core, and you know that before you begin to peel it. And if you proceed anyway, all you end up with is fragments of onion. So if you're looking for the truth at the center of things, you're going to come up empty, but at least you'll still have an onion to cook with, so to speak.

A few hours later I am surprised to find the church down the block does in fact have bells in its tower. At the moment they are motionless, silhouetted in their little window against the sky. I decide this day is as good as any other to revisit the myth of new beginnings, and to join the many who have once again dared to re-imagine themselves slimmer, healthier, more generous, and more thankful - if only for the next couple of weeks. Whether any of my resolutions actually stick shall remain to be seen. For the moment I can at least say that I'm happy to be welcome in the home of my brother, that I'm blessed by the love of my family and friends, and that I managed to slip into 2012 without a trace of a hangover. That in itself feels like a serious head start.

Happy New Year