Creative Journey

CREATIVE JOURNEY: Peace Art Work and Installation Projects:

Yesterday I spent about 5 hours working on new drawings and designs for installation and gallery projects. Though I do not have a "formal" background in arts and drawing, I have always drawn and designed, though very little I've shared with the broader public. I feel like the drag queen who's been in the closet too long and has been taking the tiniest steps forward to bring her true nature out to the world. Is that almost a mixed metaphor?
I was at Yorba Center for the Arts and SF Modern over the past week, and was very inspired by the space and a few artists. I liked Shepherd Fairy’s work famous for his Obama poster, his work on peace and graphics of a Muslim woman was excellent. Nevertheless, I am equally inspired by the vast space of the museum. At the MOMA in NY I saw a show that I didn’t care for, but was amazed at the football field size space devoted to this installation. I started to draw on the spot and created an installation project inspired by the space. Last year, I also saw a terrific museum of contemporary art in San Juan Puerto Rico and the show with the focus on street life and art of the ordinary life was so inspirational. These shows give me confidence that my talent as a conceptualizer with an excellent sense of composition is sufficient for what I want to present. Interestingly, I have not been drawing much by hand, and now find that as I am sketching more of that memory is coming back.

I've seen museum exhibitions around the world: Barcelona Modern where there was an iron bed on the wall with barbed wire, St.Francis with splotches of red and black, or the Venice Biennale where I felt like such a hillbilly. At the Venice show, which I've been to twice, through sheer accident, I saw the work and said, "Fuck sake! I can do better than that." JFC, a stack of fluorescent tubes on the floor? Did I miss something? I said to the curator, "You should really clean up the rest of the floor for the show?" Pointing to the stack of bulbs. He informed me with an air of certainty that "This installation is one of our finalists!" JFC! No, shit? My plebian sensibilities never felt more exposed.

On a positive note, I am drawn to creating works for public spaces. Public spaces are rooms for arguments, discussion, ideas, exchange of ideas, vigorous debates, confrontations of aesthetic, challenging our perceptions, challenging our sensibilities. In addition, yes, it is permissible and encouraged, when art appears as bullshit to call it that. You may not be right, but too much of modern art or conceptual work sets off my crap detector. The Venice Biennale with the first prize of two chairs on a track, I thought, JFC, “I am in the wrong profession.”

However, I’ve seen the museum of Dali in Northern Spain, and that should humble any one of us. I’m more than astonished when some don’t include him in the top ranks of artists. I’ve seen his work in Europe and the US, the boldness and the humor of his work is refreshing. In addition, I’ve been very inspired by artists like Michael Singer who is able to combine his sculpture and design and integrate it into public space projects. Bob Rauschenberg’s atelier and his design work have often inspired me and though I was with some of his friends, I never had the chance to meet with him or visit his studio on upper Captiva. Perhaps, on the next visit I can again meet with Darryl, his partner and creative partner, whom I had met once before.

These past 35 years of wandering around the world, seeing art from the Ladak Museum in the Tibetan plateau to the “great” museums of Europe, to the private museums of Prague in the old Jewish Quarter, and all the points in between…I feel like I’ve had an amazing on-going education. I don’t view art as a casual observer, I absorb and digest it, and the works that have been meaningful are ingrained in my memory.

I have gone through such a long journey of exploration in arts and in this period reflecting how much I’ve absorbed over the years from the hundreds of shows and exhibitions both of modern and traditional painting and design.

This past week in San Francisco with my friend and wonderful!! performance artist and musician Idriss Ackmoor. He is writing and developing this amazing new work called "Breach." What an inspiration and I so savored the opportunity to catch up with this artist. His theater group is Cultural Odyssey.

The Art of Peace: PEACE ART:

I am attracted to the art of peace as an artist and as a Quaker. How is the theme of Peace an art form? In the last few months I’ve been sketching and designing a peace garden. I remember Mai Lin’s work when I first saw it. I was struck by its elegant power and beauty. Her design was drawn from the heart, it was a simple primal expression, as painful as the cry of a mother holding a dead child. As a nurse, I’ve heard that cry, and nothing is more painful than the loss of a child.

I wish to capture that savage brutal scream. I recall Yoko Ono’s wails that people found unfathomable, I think it was some of that pain of grieving. I like her work now with the imagine peace campaign. Also, the Peace of Wild Things with Jay Clayton is superb.

Peace is not simply the absence of conflict, it is a state of synthesis, drawing together the disparate parts. It is a time where the overt and active violence may cease, but it is a caesura, the time of reflecting and synthesis. Eros and Thanatos are the twin forces of nature. Human nature is conflict. Life is conflict. Conflict and the dynamic of change is imperative to growth. Otherwise, there is stasis.

It is unmanaged conflict that is the problem, the inability to engage constructively in conflict, and work with conflicting viewpoints there is a problem and ultimately war. I do not have a great deal of faith in humanity, the concept is wonderful, but the practicality and the embodiment of it leaves much to be desire. As Gandhi so archly said when he was asked what he thought of Christianity he said, “It would be a good idea.”

As a feisty Irish Quaker, I am always interested in the issues of peace and conflict. At one time I, though I was going to get my PhD in Peace and Conflict studies. After all, wouldn’t you have a person who intimately knows conflict to teach it? Well, maybe…

I am also witnessing the destruction of the USA from the ravenous desire to feed the military. I use a figure widely quoted of 22 to 25% of our GNP on military and related expenditures. Though I’m not sure I can help to mitigate it, I am called to respond to it through my art.

One of the large projects that has the most power for me is:

BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE: A PRAYER

Organizing 4,440 people, men, women, & children in ponchos, helmets, boots, painted in grey face, marching in front of the White House and to the Vietnam Memorial spot. Each cloth poncho has the name of a soldier US killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. The soldiers are joined together by a thick rope they’re carrying. A “sergeant” at the front of the parade is calling out cadence. I also envision a Buddhist Monk at the front or the beginning with a wooden block keeping the rhythm of cadence. The procession goes through the streets of Washington to Vietnam Memorial. In a circle the names of the soldiers are called out. Each poncho is removed and placed in front of the participants. The name of each soldier in a piece of paper is placed in a cauldron at the center of the circle. Then it is lit.

A simple prayer. Recorded. Held and cherished.

If I do this project it will take up to six months to a year. I do not know if it can happen quicker with all the twitter and blog work. I would do it as a movie versus a protest march. It is a prayer.

On the Island of Binga Bonga: The War that never was.

This children’s story is www.vermontpoet.com in the gallery

If there were no more wars what would the children do?

This is a long simmering project that I wrote years ago as a play and now it is a movie installation and performance piece. It is about twenty minutes in length. It opens with a soldier’s boots, the martial music is thumping, and gradually when you look into the faceit is that of an eight year old boy. Then you see a group of children on the side of the stage playing. A drill sergeant calls out for the soldier to assume “Ready! Aim! Fire!” as he raises his gun at the children. And next?

Ironically, as I am writing this, a gun range about 2 kilometers from my house and someone is firing a shot gun.

COST OF MILITARY:

Community project where people in the community put a price ticket on the cost of war around town. A simple price tag on paper.

One M-16 = $

One bullet=

The lifetime care of a wounded soldier

The cost of a dream lost:

The cost of a burial:

Hunting: A Vermont Tradition?

A photo exhibition inspired by a 12 year old girl smiling after she killed a deer. I was stunned. How could anyone smile after they killed something? How could you see an animal close enough to kill it and feel its spirit, and view it as a sport. There is a profound disconnect for me to see this.

The photography project is to shoot, every pun intended, a child on the hunt, the moment of her killing an animal, gutting it, and sitting down with the family to eat it.

Let the viewers decide.

Tommy Got His GUN:

A video that I've been sketching on a boy inspired by his video game and Columbine goes on a killing spree.

Summary

I’ve been having this incredible productive period where my attention is drawn inward and less and less inclined towards performance. Though I LOVE performing, and as I am given to say, if I was any more of ham the pigs would go on strike!, I am stepping back from it ever so slightly. The delight in performance is to the stage, but now there is a greater hunger for writing and designing, and also for getting out some of the business ideas up and running. When I am be bopping around the globe it is difficult for me to sit down and write! But the world of travel inspires me immensely.

Now to the business of making some do re mi!

Deeply inspired by "Found art"