Art Collective
Last weekend, some friends and I traveled to Montana for a wedding, appreciating the natural beauty from the view of car window. We stopped and gazed at this scene, traintracks just below this grassy cliff. The water, we found, was crisp, nearby rocks seemed to be destined as sunbasking chaises. We might have spent only a little more than a half an hour here, but time stretched in such a way that you can say these are the moments of our lives.
Fool’s Gold: Making Something from Nothing and Freeing your Creative Process
By Wooldridge, Susan (Book – 2007)
Summary: The author is wonderfully well-read. Anecdotes sprinkle this book through with quotes by Zen masters and poets and tips on how to be more creative. She describes her collage processes, her poetry composition, how she inspires others, and how they inspire her. This book is a heartwarming collage of words, love and a respect of human nature.
Review: Reading this book, it felt like a poor man’s Annie Dillard piece. For those who don’t know me very well, I would like to express how truly impressed I am with Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. To say that this is for the Dillard lover, on a budget, so to speak, is a fairly high recommendation. In this book there are some places where she dwells on her father’s death and her feeling of loss during her recent divorce, but I suppose that it adds a flavor that some people who have gone through those events can well appreciate, though not I. I particularly like her style of poetry, her emphasis on the accessibility. Anyone can write with flowery dignity and express something unique and special that can move you to a smile or tears. It’s not for special people, but anyone who can think of synonyms can eventually compose something original and thoughtful.
Rating: 7 bouts of torschlusspanik, which is German, literally “door shut panic,” the fear of closing doors and letting go of options
Favorite part:
“It’s important to be heroic, ambitious, productive, efficient, creative, and progressive, but these qualities don’t necessarily nurture soul. The soul has different concerns, of equal value: downtime for reflection, conversation, and reverie; beauty that is captivating and pleasuring; relatedness to the environs and to people; and any animal’s rhythm of rest and activity.”—Thomas Moore, p.85
Wine-pairing: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard.
I used to have this recurring dream as a child. There was a bridge. It was at Ala Moana Boardwalk and there were pathways on which to rollerskate or jog and concrete bridges arching over bits of waterways that flowed to the Pacific Ocean. This dream was always pleasant and just there. I would wake up happy because it felt like a familiar place to hang out for a while and then return to the waking world.
A
A place in Austraila with eroding mountains and desert shrubs. I found it in a book about places that have inspired art. I could imagine if it has this effect in photograph form, traveling would definitely fuel some great paintings for me.
I’m a little morose. I was planning on painting some sort of landscape and here I paint this. I title it “Widow” because more recently, I’ve felt like I lost something, but I don’t know what, but I look at calm scenery, the bay outside my house, the distant snow covered mountains surrounded by an empty pale blue sky. It’s sunny outside, but cloudy in my wormy little brain.
Mike A. and I were talking in Allegro Cafe about their terrible (and inefficient) installation of black and white photographs that was taking place. Some of them, possibly photos of shadows, seemed upside down. Is that art? We envisioned a more meaningful set of bad photographs.
I felt challenged by this picture. I painted a photograph from a book about France, a Place of Dreams (that or something like it, is the title of the book). I still haven’t been to France, Europe, or even French Canada, but someday I will taste a croissant rolled by cigarette stained fingers.
This background (painted by Matt) makes me feel a little chaotic. I imagined that neurons in a mental person’s head are connected in this idiosyncratic way, with hard turns and layers of color, each relating to a certain persona, never intersecting. This is a portrait of Kristen Stewart. She’s always had that smoldering look for me. Something about those green eyes.
Kismet Arts Tangent 