Space

For 2 months, this harpsichord (spinnet virginal, replica of a 17th century instrument) has lived on my work table while I painted the sound board. Normally this isn’t a problem, but recently I’ve had several commissions coming in at once, and I’ve been going crazy.  In the studio I also have a light table and another drawing board, but they were taken up with office and drafting work, so all the other projects  got spread out on the floor or the bed.

I am organising a workshop, and I’ve literally felt that I couldn’t think straight with all the clutter around, and without a clear area to just spread things out to look at.

Well, it all changed this morning. The instrument was picked up at 11:00 AM and I have Space.

Space, I just sit there looking at what seems to be endless acres of fresh, virgin potential.  I fantasize spreading out all my workshop plans on that empty white table, being able to see for the first time the structure of the day and how the exercises lead into each other.  After that is cleared up then I can draw, cut and assemble my craft kits, (soon to be available through my webshop). Oh what a luxury to have everything at hand, all on one table, and pile and stack things according to progress made. And to see in a glimpse what has been done and what still needs doing.

Having my table back has shown me how much my well being and ability to think and organise are dependent on space, space to move and space to think.

 The Dutch have a saying,’ A clean house, a clean spirit’.  That’s sure how it feels today.

Anne Michaels, writing that matters

We have a beautiful modern library in Groningen (NL). The extensive English novel collection has sustained me in my 24 years here.

Reading occupies a large place in Rende’s and my lives, partly because we don’t have a TV.

Every week I go to the Groningen library and search for new books. I walk through the stacked shelves talking to the authors of each book that I pull out. I say, ‘Matter! Write something that matters to you so it can matter to me’. 

I get attracted to titles and colours and covers, but 99% of the books I pull out, I put back. It is such a gamble, spending 200 or more pages with someone, in their head, in the world they have created. Where will they take you? To old grudges of theirs revisited? To a vision of hopelessness? or to a new world of hope and magic.

I’m looking for light and meaning…. and love. And Anne Michaels writes because she cares. What matters to her is the world,  so intensely, it edges on pain:

‘on a table graced with stillness and smells, the wild order of plums’.

 Flat on my back, I dug a hole in the sky. I inhaled the sea until I was light-headed, and floated above the island.
Alone, in space, I imagined the Antarctic auroras, billowing designs of celestial calligraphy, our small portion of the sky like the corner of an illuminated manuscript’.

‘On Zakynthos I tended a garden of lemon balm and basil in a square of light on the floor.’

These quotes are from Fugitive Pieces.

I’m reading Winter Vault  now.  I hesitate to quote from it. All I can say is that each word is charged with meaning and purpose. The language is so beautiful, the sensibilities intense and eloquent. Reading it is like praying.

ok one tiny quote:

‘ Avery leaned overboard, dipped his teacup into the river, then set the circle of water next to him’.

The books I love most leave me in a state of constant gratitude;  thank you Anne Michaels for this,  ’a circle of water’.

Yes we can

I was thinking of the overuse of Obama’s campaign slogan; I just saw it as a heading on an article about creativity. It is , like the happy face, starting to get tiresome.

But no matter what anyone says about this man, he has done something miraculous, he’s rekindled hope.

So many of us, and not just my generation (babyboomer) have been hurt by life and have become cynical.  I was 13 when JFK was shot. My youth was also shadowed by the assasinations of Bobby and Martin Luther King.  And later, much later, like us all, I witnessed the horror of planes intentionally slamming into downtown New York’s buildings.

We’ve had our hopes dashed again and again by corrupted politicians. All of us have wanted to believe in a better world; I left my secure life and good career in the states to spend 6 years living in an international spiritual community, so high was my idealism. Especially my generation of idealists and new agers sincerely believed we could make a difference. ‘Yes we could’. And of course we’ve been disillusioned.

I have somehow found my way back to my early openhearted beliefs in an ensoulled caring world, albeit older and wiser. Granted,  I daren’t believe too much, too hard, too openly, that Obama is who he seems to be. But as he says, he is not going to save anyone, we all have to do it together.

One first step is to start daring to believe again and dropping our protective cynicism.

And I find that creativity is often the means to become engaged again, hopeful, playful and connected to the things that really matter.

LATER: I loved this synchronicity, a friend just mailed me this link to a speech Paul Hawken gave to University of Portland 2009 graduation class.  It is every bit as good as any Ted talk. I know Paul from my Findhorn days and he walks his talk.

Eric Maisel’s ‘The van Gogh Blues’ 2

Continued from Eric Maisel’s The van Gogh Blues 1

If I were asked to single out the one most important piece of advice in this book, it would be that creatives need to take action in service of their creative work.

Anxiety and indecision keep us procrastinating when we could act. Maisel says that if on a day we take one tiny step toward a creative project, then we can count that day as successful.

He emphasizes how we have to do this even when we don’t feel like it!! ( A big one for me). In my own experience, just showing up at the page, or the harpsichord, or the computer even when I feel dull and empty of inspiration, almost always helps.  Maisel says that taking an action, no matter how small, is the one most proactive healing thing we can do for ourselves. And that it will protect us from falling into a downward spiral that can end in depression and creative paralysis.

He also suggests that we know very well when we are procrastinating/just keeping busy, and when we are doing something in service of our art. For example, clearing out old files can be a way to waste time, or it can be the preparation for a new creative cycle. Only you know which one you are engaged in.

Paraphrasing from the book:

You have to risk unleashing your passion even with the possibility you will be disappointed. Creative people can’t resign themselves to postmodern meaninglessness. They always come back to the belief that a meaningful life can be led and they are obliged to at least try.

You decide every day to matter. You decide every day to live authentically, reckon with the facts of existence, and doing so your  truth becomes more eloquent.

Creating, as a life’s commitment, is hard; it is your heroic work. 

When we are not true to ourselves we suffer.
When we are true to ourselves we suffer.

I do my creative work anyway.

Showing up

When my life is busy, I tend to avoid the computer. So I’m showing up on the page here to keep some continuity going.

At the moment I have a lot going on. My large worktable is completely taken over by a small harpsichord (or spinnet) waiting to be painted;  I have a small business identity to design; there is a large art health event coming up in the beginning of October and I’ve done two in the last week; and there is my first ‘Re-enchantment’ workshop coming up.

The last is the fulfilment of a long-held dream to combine consciousness-raising with creativity. There is so much to say about it I will save it for another post. But basically it is about ensouling one’s life through creative expression.

I’m also working on my book about creativity and dementia care, and am finishing up the third article in a series of 3  on the same subject for the Journal of Dementia Care.

All this is so welcome after months of no incoming work. Yet it is also demanding patience from me since I was aiming to get my webshop launched in August and have to postpone that for awhile.

More on my new products in a later post.

Hi to all. Wishing you an inspired and creative autumn.

Tending the soul life

Continued from previous post (Re-Enchantment of art)

And  few quotes from Thomas Moore:

A re-enchanted art would once again use materials and craft as a way of housing spirits that go beyond just the artist’s intellectual or emotional life or ideas and ideologies.

‘In this context it isn’t difficult to see a role for the artist in tending the soul life of a community by giving it powerful images of needed spirit in music, dance, food, painting and architecture- in all the arts.
We might also expand our notion of therapy and see that in presenting objects full of certain spirit for a community’s absorption and consideration, the artist is a therapist and a magus…….

Through a magical, spiritual use of images, the arts nourish the soul creating a richly varied atmosphere, an environment that is not only practical, but spiritually nutritious. In this way, the arts also might enjoy a central role in the life of a community and would not be made marginal, as is the case almost by definition in a disenchanted culture’.

Re-enchanted art

Further musings about why art as product, represented and marketed within the gallery art world is not my begin and end all.  Sure, it is a part of what I do, but not a particularly meaningful one.  It is a bit of an identity problem, though. I make art and enjoy selling it too, but my context is different.

Especially in the  company of other artists who are singularly focused on the business of their art, it is hard to communicate what I stand for. And why I don’t make an all out effort to trawl the gallery venues and events and make a name for myself so my work will sell better.

I’ve run across some quotes from Thomas Moore’s,  ’The Re enchantment of Everyday Life’,   that reflect the aspect of art that really gets my bells ringing and my lights blinking.  It has to do with replenishing our spiritually parched souls, building community, re-enchanting everyday life. And yes, it can go hand in hand with selling one’s work as a product….or can it? Where is there any evidence that NOT selling one’s art  might be a reasonable stance?

Here are a few relevant quotes from a fable I loved by Keith Miller, ‘The Book of Flying’.

‘What do you do with the paintings you complete’?

‘I give them away or keep them if I’m fond of them. Sold art corrupts.
You are a poet, could you sell a poem?’

‘Never’, said  Pico, ‘It would be like selling a child’.

‘Precisely’.

Later  in the book:

Often he wished for the loneliness of the forest, the loneliness that allowed him to place valuable words on paper. He had sold his poems for comfort and he was afraid to enter again the trials of solitude. So he wrote poems that lacked heart, written from outside his skin, written in snatches between ale swilling and lovemaking, and he did not allow them to steep, to cure, but read them at once to his friends for the applause they engendered.

Artist’s statement-what I’d really like to say

Thank you for coming to our show today.

There are two art worlds; The first one  is the world full of hype, attitude, jockeying for position, celebrity artists, and jacked up prices.  There are  opportunists, including many artists,  who have made obscene amounts of money in this arena- Damien Hirst and his diamond skull are one example. But Hirst would not have been able to play his elaborate game, if there hadn’t been a context for it in the insanity of the contemporary art world.

The way I see art has little  to do with this aspect of art as commerce.   Like countless other artists working today, I work quietly outside of the spotlight to follow my inner vision where it will lead.

The majority of artists  work at poverty level, but they keep going. With little or no government or social support of any kind, in a world where art at best is seen as some sort of luxury irrelevant to real life, these people keep on a true course anyway.  What are they doing, why is the strength of their vision indispensable to human society if it is going to survive these times?

In short art is the last domain of the soul in our society. Artists work in order to bring human qualities into this cynical hyper-technical, soulless society- this wasteland we’ve created together.  Every day artists perfect technique, make things that take time, strive for excellence, create meaning, preserve stories, and nourish fantasy and imagination. Are these things not as important as the newest model of the iPod? If there weren’t music there would be no need for new technology to play it!

Life evolves through creative processes. Creativity is what brings change, growth and renewal to individuals and systems. If children learned to think creatively in schools do you think our systems would be as rusted up and rigidly stuck as they are now?

The creative process is finding its way into, among others, the health care systems. Why? Because creativity is in itself a healing process, it makes whole. It continually reconnects us with the best in ourselves that we may recognize and express it. Our economic system tells us we are inherently greedy and selfish. The arts remind us that we are compassionate, and altruistic at heart.  Music, art, theatre, poetry literature tell us that there is greatness  and beauty in humans, in each of us.

When you look around at our art today, you may wonder how you will know it is good. But you do know. Art isn’t good or bad, it is true (or not). Look at a picture and try to feel what was true for the artists, does it speak to some truth in your own soul?

Reclaim your right to determine what is beautiful or meaningful to you, don’t go by some external authority’s word.

You can look at all this work for free. But you can do something fine for yourself and for art if you buy something as well. If you see a piece that makes you light up inside, then buy it. James Krenov, a master cabinetmaker said that buying fine art or craft, you get a piece of an honest artist/craftsman’s life. A slice of their unique story, a gift that has been given to them and now lives on in your life.

By buying an art work that has meaning for you, you are adding to the meaning of life, you are suporting art as a repository of soul and human culture, and you are making it possible for the artist to surive materially so she can keep on working.

Is this art I bought good?

I was invited to donate some artwork to a charity art auction. I gave two rather large pastels, and to my surprise and disappointment, they were returned to me unsold.  The work wasn’t  my very best, but  it wasn’t  bad either. It was certainly many times better than the visual vomit I’d recently seen on some gallery walls.

What was happening here?  The best-seller from the auction was a woman who is always in the local papers with her art.  Other pieces that sold were by ‘names’ known in the art world locally.

Therefore, people only bought art  because they had seen the artist in the media, therefore that was Real Artist, and the work must be ‘good’, or at least a good investment. 

How did we all get to this point? When did art become an exclusive domain where only the initiated few are in the know and everyone else has to trust an expert’s judgement to tell them whether the art they were looking at was ‘good’ or not?

 There is a long answer and a short one. The long one can be read in Suzi Gablik’s,’ Has Modernism failed?’  Here is the short one:

Artists work in the realm of  intangible realities, and these are relegated to the margins in our society (ie, you can’t make money with them very easily, and they have no recognizable function).  Because children get no structural education in creative process, most grow up ignorant of art processes;  then the arts are delegated exclusively to the artists.   

Artists work from an inner vision, rather than an external criteria. Therefore in most cases the authority for judging the work is artist herself, or fellow artists, or art critics.  To people not versed in symbolic language and gesture, much art is incomprehensible using logical faculties. But art speaks to the right brain sensibilities which in most people are underdeveloped.  It takes time and a certain sensitivity to get inside an artwork to the point where it will speak to you.  Very few people have developed this quality of attention. So we get a siutation where the average person is left on the outside of the arts. 

Various sensation seeking  artists have abused this situation in the past, by creating purposely horrible, vulgar,  or vacuous art- sometimes as a statement, but also as a way to shock and gain media attention.  All of this behaviour is supported by our commercial, greedy, sensation-oriented society. If that weren’t in place certain artist personalities couldn’t play into it.

But most artists are dedicated individuals who work quietly in their studios creating beautiful meaningful objects. They don’t make waves, so are invisible.  These artists in the past usually had a few regular buyers, enough to meet their survival needs anyway.

But these days, art is so completely accepted as a product, that unless the artist is adept in business, there is no way to earn even a minimum income from one’s work.

Going back to the auction, the art that sold was by recognized artists because people have abdicated their right to judge whether they find a piece of art good or not.

This implies that other professional artists, as good as or better than the more media -visible ones,  need to work at making a name in order to sell their work. ‘Making a name’  is a dialogue between wallet and wallet. Art is a dialogue between souls.

From Lewis Hyde’s  book, ‘The gift, Imagination and the erotic life of property’:

A work of art is a gift, not a commodity…Every modern artist who has chosen to labor with a gift must sooner or later wonder how he or she is to survive in a society dominated by market exchange .

 

Why I do my Tai Chi

I am currently writing an article for a professional journal on dementia care. It is about the creative process in relation to this area. And I am having a hard time. So much of what I want to say, even though it is about intangibles, has been proven out by my day to day experience as an artist. Yet will require practical reasoned out arguments to explain this to  a scientifically educated public.

What they need to do to understand what I’m saying is not read an article, but pick up paints and tackle a canvas, or move to music, or sculpt a piece of stone.

Artists learn to value process over product, that is where the learning and alchemy take place. What touched me so profoundly in the ‘Cellist of Sarajevo’ was the huge power of an intended gesture. The cellist himself probably didn’t even know exactly why he put his life in danger every day for 3 weeks to play in a war zone- to memorialize people he didn’t even know. The ‘why’s’ are not important. What was important was the potency of such a commitment, and the way it touched and transformed countless others.  Music was a perfect answer to, ‘How can we overcome hate , fear, and death?’

There is a YouTube clip which shows Antwerp train station, busy and noisy. All at once, a song from a musical plays over the loud speakers. About a minute after that,  one of the travellers breaks out in a dance, He is joined by a little girl;  the dance, beautifully choreographed and obviously  professional, takes on more and more people, until there are probably more dancers than public.  It is a heart stopping moment of beauty and seeming spontaneity.

One of the more dull comments under the clip asked,’Well, what was the purpose of this’?  

We need to leave behind our literal mindedness and make room for poetry and enchantment in every day life.

What is the ‘purpose’ of doing my Tai Chi in the mornings when I don’t feel much like it?  Do I do it for the positive effect it is supposed to have on my health? Or as a meditation? Or as a routine?

 I do my Tai Chi because I do my Tai Chi.  And once in a while, I do my Tai Chi as a prayer to life, or a memorial to  a dead friend. And I do the movements to reconnect me to the place that has nothing to do with writing articles, ageing, career, household tasks. It is the part that is one with the new cherry blossoms, the waves in the sea,  the hiss of stars on a summer night. The big sun and big moon and all the seasons.

And I remember.