In the Beginning

I began this blog on a Sunday afternoon, June 17, 2007. I'd been reading about blogging and had an inkling that the best way to learn about a thing is by doing it. I had no idea where it would go, but when your inside the maze you simply need to keep moving forward if you want to know where it goes.

My initial blog entries were text based, but eventually I began to illustrate them with photos and art. Little did I know how many pictures I would be making. It felt good to see the ramped up output as I strove to meet daily deadlines. I began to understand how Gary Larson (Far Side) or Charles Schulz (Peanuts) might feel, trying to come up with something interesting or meaningful on a daily basis. For those guys, though, it was a full time job. I was trying to squeeze the creative juices out of me each morning before heading to the office.

Eventually I'd produced enough work to have last year's show at the Venue. (The photos here are from that event.) I'd also began to learn how the other social media can work together... and how international it is! Friends have emerged in Italy, Germany, Australia and other points Stateside that I'd have never encountered ever in a traditional manner.

One of my current dreams is putting together an art show in Europe, an idea that would have never entered my mind two years ago. I am thinking Torino or Marseilles. Or both. It's on my bucket list anyways.

Here's that first blog entry, a happening you most likely missed.

One Small Step for a Man, One Giant Leap...

The purpose of this blog is as yet undefined. Perhaps to share art, to share philosophy, or most likely to share insights from 30 years of journal writing. The hardest part is to begin. This little paragraph seems so small, yet it serves to set a tone. We're creating a first impression. And what, pray tell, will it be?

On my wall is a quote from Bruce Barton. "Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things... I am tempted to think there are no little things."

It is my hope that this blog site -- though at first a "little thing" -- will grow to have tremendous consequences. I will sow my seeds and hopefully someone will read them in a manner that somehow, in some way deepens their life understanding. And in that manner they shall make a difference in another's life.

Onward, then, fellow travellers, pioneers in life's great adventure. Discover yourselves and change the world.

Round and round and round it goes.... where it stops, nobody knows. Thank you to all who have been travelling along with me here. May 2011 be your best year yet.

On the Road to Find Out

My freshman year at college was a year of new experiences for sure. One of these experiences was an album by Cat Stevens called Tea for the Tillerman. Jon Brite, an artist in Scott Quad where I roomed at Ohio U freshman year, made the introduction. And while listening to a portion of it last night, as I do from time to time, the music and lyrics still hold up as the classic it was.

The thought I had, however, was how targeted this album was at the time it was written. It was an album from the point of view of youth, directed toward youthful seekers whose life quest was just unfolding. No wonder Stevens went on to sell 25 million albums. We hear the generational dissonance in a song like Father and Son. And in this song, On the Road to Find Out, we recognize the inner flame of the hero's quest.

Well, I left my happy home to see what I could find out. I left my folk and friends with the aim to clear my mind out. Well, I hit the rowdy road and many kinds I met there. Many stories told me of the way to get there.

And what young person has not experienced this chorus?

So on and on I go, the seconds tick the time out, there's so much left to know, and I'm on the road to find out.

To some extent, this attitude is what keeps us going, isn't it? At what point do we stop questing? At what point do we stop embracing life? Is that not the first signal that a coffin is in the next room waiting for us?

Then I found myself alone, hopin' someone would miss me. Thinking about my home and the last woman to kiss me, kiss me. But sometimes you have to moan when nothing seems to suit yer, but nevertheless you know you're locked towards the future.

Locked toward the future. At what point does this shift? For some, like Goldmund in Herman Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund, the rockets flare out. After a lifetime of embracing the fullness of experience, he returns to the beginning. Life has changed him, and a lifetime of experience has been absorbed into him, thus preparing him for the task he was not really capable of at the beginning. Goldmund, the artist, has toured the world and learned its deepest lessons. Ultimately he returns to the monastery and completes the work for which he was born.

Then I found my head one day when I wasn't even trying. And here I have to say, 'cause there is no use in lying, lying. Yes, the answer lies within, so why not take a look now? Kick out the devil's sin, pick up, pick up a good book now.

In the process of making art, the attitude of discovery is pre-eminent. At least it seems so for me. Every project is a voyage into the unknown. Sometimes you discover miracles. Other times you only catch glimpses of something escaping on the run. But it's always an adventure.

If you're interested in an evening of first hand encounters with 130+ pieces that I've created as an ever questing artist, I invite you to The Venue @ Mohaupt Block in Duluth's West End. My show, FIRST HAND EXPERIENCES, will be hanging there till July 31. The Open House is next Tuesday from 6 - 9 p.m. on the 21st.

Blue Van Gogh

"Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of color to express myself more forcefully." ~ Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Theo.

We remember him as somewhat of a madman. And to a certain extent his behavior warranted this. He cut off his ear, for love. A bit excessive, though it made for an interesting self-portrait afterwards. On another occasion he was determined to see the girl he loved but her parents would not let him in. To show them how intent he was on seeing her, he held the palm of his hand over the lamp flame and said he would not leave till he saw her. The smell of burnt flesh was not very convincing and ultimately he passed out from the pain.

This story reveals that he was indeed a man of intense passions, which poured out of him into his works, works now valued in the millions of dollars. During his lifetime he sold almost nothing, and died in a mental institution in his thirties by his own hand.

As for the source of his mental illness, psychiatrists by the score have studied his behavior and his work to identify its root causes, whether from schizophrenia or syphilis or some other variety of experience. What we know is the notion of "artist as eccentric" found a home in the pop psyche, a notion that treats artists as kooks and social misfits.

Dorothea Brande, in her outstanding volume Becoming A Writer (1934), assaults this notion head on. "The picture of the artist as a monster made up of one part vain child, one part suffering martyr and one part boulevardier is a legacy to us from the last century, and a remarkably embarrassing inheritance. There is an earlier and healthier idea of the artist than that, the idea of the genius as a man more versatile, more sympathetic, more studious than his fellows, more catholic in his tastes, less at the mercy of the ideas of the crowd."

OK, so Salvador Dali comes along and portrays this vain child-madman to the extreme and makes a fortune doing it. No comment. Brande went on to explain that there really is "an artist temperament" and it is not the same as the accounting mindset. The book goes into detail about left brain/right brain thinking, a concept which became excessively popular in the 1980's and has filtered its way into business books, consulting, education and psychology. The notions have been with us a much longer time than many folks realize.

What Brande argues is that you do not have to be mentally unstable to be creative. In this instance she is speaking to young writers, but the same applies to creative souls in the visual arts or music as well.

Vincent Van Gogh once said, "A good picture is equivalent to a good deed." I'm hoping that if you are in Duluth this month you will stop by The Venue @ Mohaupt, 2024 West Superior Street, to check out my show, First Hand Experiences. Of the more than 130 works, I am hoping you will find at least one "good deed" among them.

The picture at the top of this page is titled Blue Van Gogh.

Haiku You, Too

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry which consists of 17 syllables laid out in three lines of five, seven and five syllables each. The poem's structure is a form, but the attitude of haiku creation is the more important feature of haiku. It is the end result of a contemplation.

So it is that some of my art is created in a momentary burst of energy which I strive to collect within me and push out in a rush. A couple of years ago I was fascinated with Japanese characters (the written script) and attempted to reproduce the effects in a vertical stream of brush strokes that conveyed an implied communication, but was really nonsense. I titled this series of pieces Haiku, and a number of them, framed, will be on display at my July art show here in Duluth at The Venue @ Mohaupt.

I've been asked many times if they mean anything. When I am in the mood to be completely candid, I admit that they have no real meaning whatsoever.

I do enjoy the process of writing poetic verse, and the constraints of the Haiku format have a certain appeal to me. Here are some lines which I found in a poetry folder while looking for some other pieces I'd written while in the Black Hills a number of years ago.

18

From depths of darkness

Light filtering through the mist...

Orpheus emerged

19

Mountain lake mirror

Introspective living force

Home of Narcissus

26

It's said that angels

with flaming swords stand guarding

Eden's gate. Not here.

28

everything floating

spellbinding picturesque dream

we drift in stillness

29

The darkness threatens

but cannot overpower

the luminous dawn.

33

with weary hunger

the longing heart savors hope;

dreaming, believing.

41

Spread your wings, little bird,

Follow your heart's tug;

The sky's your limit.

Hanging Out at the Venue

“The most important tool the artist fashions through constant practice is faith in his ability to produce miracles when they are needed. Pictures must be miraculous.” ~ Mark Rothko

It’s official. My work is now hanging on the walls and in the halls of The Venue @ Mohaupt, in Duluth’s West End. The show is titled First Hand Experiences and for the next couple weeks, till the opening July 21, I will attempt to explain (from time to time here on my blog) some of the sources, stories and meanings behind a few of these paintings and drawings. First off, I will comment on the naming of the show.

Naming can be one of the most enjoyable or challenging parts of any creative endeavor. Several discarded names for the show preceded this one, but when it hit there was a sticktuitive quality which inspired me.

First Hand Experiences not only speaks of the process of creation in which every work is a first hand experience of the artist… but it also points to the interactive first hand experience of the viewer who participates in the piece as he engages its features and forms.

My artistic influences include Dali, Matisse, Duchamp, Picasso, Magritte, Rivers and Rauschenburg among others. The other day I mentioned several personal influences and would like to add to that list Mr. Sebes, my high school art teacher at Bridgewater-Raritan West in New Jersey. During two years of art tutelage I gained exposure to a wide range of creative expression. I also learned a few techniques with regard to my painting. As for my drawing, it developed on its own up in my room after my homework was done.

Possibly my strongest influence at that time was a painting by medieval Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch, a peer of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Bosch’s tryptich The Garden of Earthly Delights had a profound impact on me with its depictions of the Garden of Eden, the earthly delights and of the darkness of Hell. The latter appeared on an early Deep Purple album called Tetragrammaton, a reference to the unpronounceable name of God.

As my imagination entered into the Bosch depictions on this album, they were translated into my own striking pen and ink drawings. What I lacked in skill was made up for in imagination at this time.

There is possibly no greater joy than the act of creation.

As for the show, consider yourself invited!

Fine Arts

I was recently contacted on Facebook by an artist I went to school with at Ohio University, Kim Abeles. Kim was a fellow art student at Siegfried Hall whose innovative work showed that she clearly had a future in the arts. My recollection was of a number of very talented young people who seemed exceedingly committed to new visions, not simply getting a grade. It was a fertile time for releasing the powers of imagination. The energy was such that I believed a movement was being germinated. But alas, upon graduation we splintered in an array of directions. Ultimately, art remained important to all of us.

Kim ended up in California and somehow, undoubtedly by means of the emerging Internet, I contacted her again in 1996. She responded by sending a book titled Enciclopedia Persona, which had been published in conjunction with the Museo de Arte de Santa Monica. Kim's work was being exhibited throughout South America.

I visited Kim during my first business trip to California in 1998 or thereabouts, and had the privilege of seeing her studio. Impressive! Some of her work included etchings made solely by placing glass on the roof and allowing the L.A. smog to do the etch. One of these was a collection of dinner plates that had portraits of U.S. presidents from McKinley to Bush in the center of the plate with historical quotes declaring a commitment to the environment on the rim of each. The power of this collection was that each image had been created with about a week's worth of Los Angeles smog. I kid you not.

During our visit I lamented privately that I was somewhat envious of her output and her life of ongoing creative expression. She encouraged me to re-connect with my roots in the arts and not give up.

After more than twenty years in advertising, I have always been grateful at the opportunity to make a living and provide for my family by means of applied creativity. There are, however, other creative disciplines that have value as well. To some extent making art -- painting, drawing, sculpture, etc. -- is therapeutic, and to some extent it is an exploration of possibilities. While I am reluctant to call our visit "the" trigger event to push me back toward a more earnest commitment to the fine arts, it was certainly one such prod.

This past week I have been in the process of framing drawings and paintings, preparing work for a first show, at The Venue in Duluth's West End. It's an adventure, and if you are in the vicinity I invite you to partake of it. I will keep you posted of the details.

Of Kim Abeles, her newest adventure will be a show in China. I'm confident it will be a thought provoking experience for anyone who takes it in.