Miscellaneous work in progress . . .
Okay, I can't resist including another shot from the attic. This one shows another work in progress.
November 06, 2008
November 04, 2008
Studio
My studio (aka the attic).
October 31, 2008
New Website . . .
It's finally here! Check it out through the link on this blog page . . .
October 16, 2008
Khadak & My Re-entry . . .
It has been far too long since I posted here. However, this evening I watched one of the best films I've seen in a while. Khadak has blown me away! In every way moving, even when I wasn't sure what exactly was going on . . . one must "feel it" just as one of the lead characters, Bagi, would say with his very few words. It brings a stunning mix of cinematography, music, visual texts and contexts, and implied narratives all of which drew me into the absurd and beautiful which arises out of the tragic and mundane.
At times the visuals reminded me, ironically, of a famous painting by Andrew Wyeth called Winter, 1946,
only this story takes place in Mongolia in winter. I lost track of time, and was struck by how aware/unaware I was of my perceptions of time solely by my visual interactions. Ultimately it's a film about universal themes such as one's search for meaning, the sanity of what we might perceive as insane; and then more particularly profound issues around the glory and tragedy of the prophetic lifestyle and ensuing revolution!
I find that I'm most often moved by those few films that sparingly use verbal language to convey meaning. The first film that did this to me was Never Cry Wolf (and now as I write that I'm thinking perhaps it's the winter weather in the film . . . just kidding). Or maybe it is the winter, maybe it is the starkness of winters that inspires me. Certainly winter is a metaphor for the paring down of the things that at first appear "beautiful," and in Khadak I felt winter. I'm remembering earth tones with white flecks of snow, ugly apartment buildings standing out on the plain like a sore thumb, the contrasting images of transitory yurts and a nomadic life with the brutality and loneliness of industry, the sublime sensations when a life is saved, and then the tiny bursts of color (red particularly) that remind me of warm flesh.
I'm only able to put words to a small portion of what the movie has caused in me. However, it worked enough magic in me to force my "re-entry" into the blogging world, a place I've been avoiding for a while . . . let's call it a sabbatical of sorts.
It should be noted, though, to all 3 of you who read this blog that in just a few days (and I really do think it's going to happen) my website will be up and running, fully functioning, and a delight to look at. I will be updating the blog with some visuals of my own work, but one can always check out new stuff every few months on the website as I attempt to make art that means to others even a fraction of what films like Khadak mean to me.
May 20, 2008
Tree Branch
Tree Branch
January 15, 2008
Praying Ministers - Prophecy Deliverance
This coming Sunday I'll be speaking about Justice and Race at our church. The irony of my being caucasian and the church itself being primarily caucasian is humbling. In my attempt to wade into this torrent of thought and theology I came across this image of a Jacob Lawrence piece. In the meantime, I've been reading Cornel West's Prophesy Deliverance! which is West's manifesto revitalizing Black liberation theology through the social analysis of what he calls progressive Marxist thought.
But it has not just been the work of African-American thinkers and artists but various others like Maya Lin, John Sobrino, and Miroslav Volf who've been my companions in this journey that I hope will begin a conversation and proactive movement toward a more authentic vision and realization of what the Kingdom of God is meant to be.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to se at liberty those who are oppressed.
- Luke 4:18
October 12, 2007
New Art, Works on Paper
What I've found as an artist is that the glamorous stereotype usually associated with the artist's life is a complete farce. It's an ongoing struggle between life and work and work that one calls art. Sadly, the non-utilitarian nature of art (not that I believe it to be that...) sometimes forces me to work in spurts to finally put into a painting or drawing what has been rolling around in my mind for many months.
The ink painting above is part of a new series of works on paper that will be opening tomorrow night (Oct. 13) at Folktown Counseling in the Ballard neighborhood, Seattle. This one is titled "Prostrate."
I don't have alot of words to ascribe to these pieces, I've simply been visualizing them for quite a while. They do reflect my ongoing obsession with lanscape and figurative work, the "human landscape" as I like to call it.
* Also, now that I finally have some works I feel good about from this last winter and this month you can look for my website to take on a whole new look very soon.
June 08, 2007
Hope
"One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later."
This is from Walter Benjamin's (pronounced Ben-ya-meen) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. A fascinating thought that continues to lead me to consider anew the idea of hope.
Here's hoping...
April 06, 2007
Tenebrae...
This is a painting I completed a few months ago entitled Can these bones live...? which I exhibited at the Mars Hill Graduate School exhibit. It's 8 feet tall and about 4 feet wide. However, tonight we're helping lead a Tenebrae service (which means 'darkness' in Latin) and it is a 'celebration' of what has traditionally been called 'good' Friday in the church calendar. A more accurate name is probably 'dark' Friday given we're remembering and seeking to identify as much as possible with the suffering and death of Jesus.
I will be taking this work above and somehow painting over it with 'darkness' in a live painting experiment. At first I wasn't sure if I should do that, given the 'sacredness' of works of art, but I thought again that it seems almost more fitting for this day that I work with a piece already constructed and composed...an image, perhaps, in need of a fitting iconoclasm. It makes me nervous just thinking about it, but it makes perhaps a more profound and troubling statement.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner...
April 02, 2007
May Lin & my return to landscape IV...
Last Thursday night Mars Hill Graduate School hosted an informal 'closing reception' for my exhibit at the new campus in Seattle. I'm fascinated by the way everyone engaged with the work, particularly the way in which many allowed it to 'interpret' them. So I thought I'd include an image of one of my new experiential works inspired by Maya Lin's Wavefield on the campus of the University of Michigan. The title of this piece is Terrain and they're made of drywall materials and recycled fruit crate materials, each one is 24"x24".
The landscape . . . thank you Ms. Lin.
March 20, 2007
Maya Lin & my return to landscape III...
Okay, so my previous blog entry was a bit heavy. But I believe wholeheartedly that 'good' art and true 'artists' provoke us to take a serious look at ourselves and the culture around us more honestly...
But ultimately for Lin, it is her work that speaks the loudest. I have been reading about the Confluence Project in which Lin has been designing and installing sculptural works along the Columbia River that runs between Oregon and Washington State. What's fascinating is how Ms. Lin continues to live into previous observations she's made about herself and her works. She writes in Boundaries:
I feel I exist on the boundaries. Somewhere between science and art, art and architecture, public and private, east and west. I am always trying to find a balance between these opposing forces, finding the place where opposites meet.
water out of stone
glass that flows like water
the fluidity of a rock
stopping time
existing not on either side but on the line that divides and that line takes on a dimensionality, it takes on a sense of place and shape.
And now, since 2000, she's been working on the Confluence Project. A series that literally exists on a body of water that is a boundary. I have been considering the reality of life on the boundaries for quite some time. The so-called 'inhabitants' of the fringes of culture or the 'hinterland-ers' seem to have a deeper sense of the truth of things. Not to imply that they have it all figured out, but that there is a sense of the profundity and the paradoxical nature of reality that those who risk life on the fringes seem to be more than happy to embrace. There is a playfulness and freedom in the 'in-between' places...the boundaries.
I've been simultaneously reading Mark C. Taylor's book Erring in which he writes regarding this 'liminal' type of existence (you know, the kind where traditional hierarchies are turned upside down and what he calls 'carnivalesque play' inverts the inherited 'values and established meanings'):
Such a body is not merely found along the boundary; it is actually a boundary or margin.
In her own 'quiet' and beautifully strong way, Maya Lin is participating in the play of inversion. It was a group of Pacific Northwest Native American tribes along with some civic leaders who invited her to work on the Confluence Project in order to 'rethink' the commemorating of the famous Lewis and Clark expeditions. Talk about turning hierarchies upside down!!! It's heroic and courageous...
My return to landscape, inspired by Lin's work (I would also include Andy Goldsworthy's work as well) is about the 'thing' that first inspired a sense of awe...the earth that I live on. I'm not sure where this is leading, but I'm delighted to begin reconsidering the possibilities...well, maybe more scared than delighted...but then again, what is the difference really?
March 14, 2007
Maya Lin & my return to lanscape II...
Many reading my previous blog have already looked up who Maya Lin is. Her fame has come from her being the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Historians will recall that a great controversy ensued over not only the design but the choice of the 'designer.' Lin is what we would call a Chinese-American, born to two Chinese immigrants, who considers Athens, Ohio her home. She's an American, born and raised. She recalls back in 1982 during the VVM controversy having sort of dismissed the questions regarding her race and it's influence on the design. She writes:
Eventually, though, it occurred to me to ask the veterans if my race mattered. They seemed embarrassed . . . and it was then that I realized that people were having problems with the fact that a "gook" had designed the memorial.
It left me chilled.
In my readings, even those associated directly with the season of Lent, keep reminding me of this incredible woman and other people of color like her who daily face what she describes in the following story:
Sometimes a total stranger - a cabdriver, for example - will ask me where I am from. I mutter "Here it goes again" or I will respond, "Ohio," and the stranger will say, "No, no, where are you really from?" It used to upset me to always be seen as other - not really from here . . . not really American . . . but then from where? So I used to practically get into brawls with the person, insisting I was really from Ohio. At that point, more than a few have lectured me on how I shouldn't be ashamed of my heritage.. So now, practiced at avoiding conflict, I say, "Ohio . . . but my mother is from Shanghai and my father is from Beijing."
. . . I am not allowed to be from here; to some I am not really an American.
Now I get a little frustrated with folks like me, a white Euro-American, part of the privileged race, seem to get on a high horse about race and say things like, "I'm not racist." I like to think that I'm not, but then I'm immediately reminded of the time when I was in the grocery store restroom and as I was leaving a gentleman with a turban on his head, a Sikh Hindu presumably, and a large backpack. I'm ashamed by what thoughts ran through my head at that moment . . . I'm not sure if you want to know how my pace quickened to get out of the restroom . . . and a Sikh isn't even terrorist material! I didn't necessarily 'do' anything racist or prejudiced, but my mind went to that place, and I think that many Euros like me know what I"m talking about. There still remains a reality of more subtle, but in the end no less harmful, form of racial stereotyping. Then again, maybe I'm the only one.
As great as the film Amazing Grace was, I was saddened by the reality of another film about the white folks saving the black folks. This isn't to take anything away from the story of Wilburforce, it is a great story and one worth telling. But I guess it's my awareness that it was that type of story. I asked a close friend (a brother of color) of mine, Wendell, last week if he had seen the film and what he thought. He graciously affirmed that the movie was a good movie, but he also had to shake his head in the manner that tells me that this is not unfamiliar territory for him, territory where you go to see a movie where 'the white school teacher is the one who leads the black students to discover their ability to succeed (or whatever the particular scenario might be)...' The subtle message is that being a person of color makes that person 'other.' A reality Maya Lin and my friend live with everyday.
An equally harmful phenomenon occurs, though, when people say that 'all we need to try to be is color-blind.' I even hear black celebrities say these kind of things. But that doesn't help either because the implication is that someone has to assimilate to someone else, try to fit into the culture where there is a privileged race. My children, as far as I can see, will probably never know what it's like to be looked at as 'other.' But Wendell dreads the day when his child comes home from school for the first time having been treated differently or mistreated and the viscious awareness of being the 'other' has once again begun to consume a whole new generation. The strange paradox is, though, that I do not truly see my friends of color if I'm obsessed with not seeing their color!!! The more I claim to be 'color-blind' says that I choose to ignore a significant part of who that person is. The more I apologize for offending, makes it all about me again and the story of that friend is lost in my need feel good about myself.
So what's my point? I'm not sure if there is one, but I am aware. Maya Lin's work goes beyond the subject of physical earthly landscapes to the landscapes of our souls. The souls that long to be known. So hopefully this will be food for thought.
March 08, 2007
Maya Lin & my return to landscape...
I don't regret much in my life, but I do regret missing Maya Lin's "Systematic Landscapes" exhibit at the University of Washington's Henry Art Gallery last year.
You can pick up the book by the same title.
More on this incredible woman and her vision in entries to come.