Lending the Sisters a Hand

The Image

Lending the Sisters a Hand

Story Behind the Images:

We watch a lot of BritBox mysteries. Sort of "popcorn mysteries." Plots pretty predictable, cast drawn from what we contend is a cluster of 25 to 50 actors who have lifetime contracts to appear in several movies each year. General "chill out" stuff. However there is one repeating aspect that makes us a bit crazy - the domiciles.

It seems that every home - unless a period manor - features floor to ceiling glass walls, wrap around vistas, isolated conversation nooks, glass coffee tables. Very hip, very what? 70s?

An inevitable result of dressing scenes in this manner is that there are virtually no walls upon which one can hang art. While our new abode does have decent wall space for art, it does not have anything like our previous home. As a result we have far more framed art than space to hang it. Add to that the fact that I keep creating more images. Very OCD, I know. But the situation demands that we reign in our inclination to hang art just where we felt it looked cool, and begin to think about what images informed each other - made a joint statement.

These variables came to result in the image above. You have seen all the images before. The steal from The Sistine Chapel debuted as Mike's Hands. The left hand image is "Masque" from several years ago, while the right hand image is the recently created "Pearl." While Hands was professionally framed, I framed the Sisters by deconstructing a couple of older professional frames and casting the Sisters in them. And the three images seemed to come together conceptually in a bit of vacant wall space across from the entrance to my bathroom. An added benefit is, obviously, a unique view from the throne.

Tangential Thoughts

About the whole OCD thing. I find comfort in Van Gogh's life. He too kept painting image after image throughout his life despite having sold only one inexpensive painting to a follow artist. Upon his death, a relatively short time after his lifelong champion, brother Theo, all of Vincent's paintings became the property of his sister-in-law Johanna Bonger. It was the largely unrecognized Johanna's insightful shepherding of Vincent's painting and letters that gave us the creative genius we enjoy today.

Although I have already tripled Vincent's lfetime sales figures - sold three during a one-man show in a coffeeshop back in the 90s. I have not figured out a way to market my images that would not detract unacceptably from the time that I wish to dedicate to creating them. Sigh.

 

Moontree

 [Schrag Canvas is how I have decided to designate posts that are exclusively visual. Apologies for some format glitches. I am dodging between platforms to get this post out to y’all!]

My history of image-making has had about as many different stops as the New York subway. OK maybe I exaggerate. I haven't changed visual emphasis 427 times, but sometimes it feels like it.

From doodles in library books (for which I was deservedly chastised), through photography and my undergraduate senior thesis film, into video and now digital media, always including some aspect of marks on paper - it has been a kaleidoscopic ride. Here is the most recent stop.

Moontree

Today's canvas blends a few of the stops along my visual subway. The tree began as my current standard: hand drawn and colored in a 14x21 inch format. 

But then I fed that image into my computer in a 21x28 format at 150 dpi. I went into that image in photoshop and "cleaned and brightened" the image at the 4 - 5 pixel level.

Next I added another layer and "borrowed" an image from NASA's collection of images of the "super moon" from several months ago. I then merged those two layers together and made everything except the tree and the moon transparent.

 

OK. Next I added another layer behind those two merged/transparent layers. I went back to a sunrise image I had created some 20 or 30 years ago for an image I called Tequila Sunrise. I cut out a piece of that sunrise that "felt right" and copied it into the Moonrise image third level so it floated behind the tree and the moon.

You will have do image that old image, it is two computers and a hard drive away from me right now 🥴

And that completed the composition. Only problem is that when I had the 21x28 image printed it came out huge! 21x28 covers a lot of real estate which quickly shoves the cost of "appropriate" framing into the "I don't think so!" level. So Moontree will live with a more prosaic backing for the time being.

Today We Have the Naming of Parts

 In my mind I was quite certain that this was the first line of a somewhat suggestive poem by e. e. cummings with a matching title. The Internet demurred, returning instead a poem with that title by a guy named Henry Reed about weapons. I queried Dr. Coyle, my oldest bud and go-to guy for English poetry, who sadly confirmed the Reed citation. I will not, however, allow this reality to stand in the way of one of my favorite more fantasy-like activities. Hence we can consider the better title of this post Today We Have the Naming of Things.

And I do, I name things - and critters. This goes well back beyond the significant time we spent coming up with a name for the Black Labrador puppy we hope to purchase in the Spring. Dickens won out over Euripides - in part because we couldn't imagine hollering "Stay Euripides!" Or "Sit Euripides!" But I also name critters whose relationship to our lives is more tangential.

There is a chipmunk that lives, at least sometimes, beside our frontdoor or under the pine tree just across the walk. I have named him - or maybe her - Rasputin because he or she, is, after all, a monk! Rabbits live in the row of dense pine trees that separate our backyard from the church parking lot just to the north - well, at least one rabbit does. He silflays most evenings in the dusk. If you recognize the verb, you will understand why I have named him Hazel and his occasional smaller companion Fiver. (Spoiler: think Watership Down.) And then just last night our security camera caught a coyote sauntering across our patio in pursuit, no doubt, of a midnight snack or assignation. I immediately named him "Wiley." Who else could he be?

You get the idea. But I take it a bit further and name inanimate objects as well.  A couple pertinent examples, first, Boswell. There is a backstory.

Many years ago, when my older daughter was attending college at George Washington University in DC, I was visiting Dr. Coyle who lived in the area. During the night a thunderstorm swept the area and I became aware of a dog scrambling beneath my bed. I got up, thus releasing the tramped canine who scampered away. As I began this post I contacted Dr. C, who confirmed the identity of the trapped pouch with this composition:

My Boswell                                                                              

 Faithful companion, devout biographer, 

beloved spaniel, my Boswell. Attentive 

to all particulars, you reconstruct my day 

from trace evidence on pants, underwear,

and boot soles, record my comings and goings

from the opening and closing of doors,

my moods from modulations in my voice.

You store all this data in a capacious brain,

a sensory registry rich beyond words.

 

Pheasant flusher English-bred to rouse grouse 

from the gorse, contented now to plod 

about the house with a rag puffin 

in your fluffy cheeks, you lie down opposite me 

in the den each night, one eye closed,

the other on me. If a hand extends beyond

the chair’s arm, you pad across the room, 

nudge my fingers with a wet bulbous nose, 

drop at my feet a snot-covered bird, 

sit on your haunches, awaiting my praise, 

looking immensely proud.

 

I have tried ignoring you—it never works.  

Such is the nature of English breeding.

You jack up my hand with your snout 

so it rests on the plateau of your head, 

nod to bring on strokes of affection, then slide 

the length of your body under my hand

so I drag my nails across your coat 

withers to rump, loosing dander and dry skin 

your own nails can’t reach. As hind legs 

give way in spasms of joy, you lift your muzzle 

to the heavens, move your head side to side, 

eyes shut, thankful the world provides 

such bodily pleasure for the gift of a cloth bird 

you give up gladly each night again and again.

 

And now you sleep, your legs twitching, still running,

still retrieving across the fields of praise.       

 

I returned this inadequate bit of doggerel:

My Boswell

I too do have a Boswell

Tho’ my Boswell is a bear.

A black and white small panda

Draped in cloth instead of hair.

His daily tasks are simple,

Naught for a bear to dread

Especially when you realize

They are all performed in bed.

Therein he must support my head

At just the right incline

To read my book or tablet

‘Til Morpheus I find.

Thereafter he is free to roam

‘Cross bedclothes, here and there

And on the rare occasion 

He rests upon his chair.

I have also named our new Acura TLX, purchased after the sale of our North Carolina home and a loyal but tired 2009 Yaris. Our new gleaming white vehicle is named Shadowfax. (Think Gandalf, Lord of the Rings.) My sculpture and images are usually named after the people or places that served as either models or inspiration. I chat with them in passing or as I compose their successors:

Pearl - of course.

Here's Lookin' at You Kid - Casablanca 

Roan Inish - Google it.

So what is this inclination to name inanimate objects, and to indulge in one-sided conversations with them? I dunno. I suppose Freud would have multiple fantastical explanations for the phenomenon. Having studied media for nigh onto half a century, my explanation is more simplistic - the habit fulfills a communicative need. 

My wife need not hear my exhortations to Boswell, "Where the hell are you? Ah, ha! Hiding under a pillow again!" Or my query to Wiley, "Where are you off to sneaky, Dude?" To Pearl, "You comfortable in those new glad rags?" Roan Inish, "Still a seal today, huh?" But these "uni-versations" amuse me and are somehow comforting.

Ironically, given that you receive these posts online, the internet rarely contributes much to my desire for feeling a connection to folks. When I open my iPad in the morning a communication from a person that I know is a rarity. Corporations, marketers, pundits, candidates, conmen and hipsters fill my inboxes with drivel - from the inane through the meaningless to the offensive. Even to stay informed about friends and family one often needs to visit some corporate site or another - Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn, Instagram.

Delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, d d d d d!

I do recognize the irony of this being yet another message cluttering up your screen. But I would assert it differs from most in significant ways.

First, we know, or have known each other on real, often quite significant, levels. So I remain actually concerned about your life. 

Second, as should be clear from point one, there are not many of you. How could there be? Despite my adolescent conviction that one's capacity for love was infinite, I now realize that a heart can be divided into only a limited number of spaces.

Third, I will never ask you for money for cause or campaign.

Right, Boswell?

Right, Big Guy.

Why Every Painting is a Prayer

While listening to Pandora you often hear artists make comments before a song actually begins. One day recently while listening to one of my "awesome female folky" vocalist channels - maybe Joni Mitchell, or Judy Collins, or Joan Baez, one of the "flower children" types - I heard her complain about the fact that audiences always wanted to hear their favorites. "Nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Hey! Paint Starry Night again!'"

Well, maybe nobody actually asked Van Gogh, "Hey, paint Starry Night again!" But he did. Most sites quote 21 versions of Starry Night, different weather, times of year, angle of view, but all the same framed patch of sky. And then, of course, there are the sunflowers - 7 to 15 of those depending on the criteria. "OK," you say, "but wasn't Van Gogh painting a lot of those works while a patient in a mental institution?" Yup. But before we write off these multiple versions as fixations of an unbalanced mind, consider this.

Munch painted 4 versions of The Scream, which thieves kept stealing. Rembrandt did some 80 self-portraits - versions of the same subject, not? Even DaVinci did two versions of his Madonna on the Rocks, and, of course, Monet painted some 250 works featuring water lilies. "What," I said to myself, "is going on here?" The answer I came to tends to natter on a bit, so get comfy.

First I need to clarify what I mean by the divine and the function of prayer. The long version of that clarification can be found in my 2008 book, The God Chord: Physics in the Landscape of the Heart, which I just learned can be bought through Amazon/Goodreads for four bucks! But I'll try to save you digging through my search for a "theory of everything," in that book and cut to the chase.

The God Chord rests firmly on string theory. In it most basic iteration string theory persuasively asserts - in my mind, and the minds of others far better versed in theoretical physics - that virtually everything in the universe is made up of incredibly tiny vibrating strings, far too small to be detected by contemporary technology. In The God Chord I assert that the idea that vibrating strings - no matter how tiny - make music. Hence, everything in the universe is made of music.

OK, I realize that may seem a bit of a stretch, but consider the fact that we were largely blind to much of the universe until we invented telescopes that enabled us to see beyond our eyes. It does not seem to me unreasonable to assert that we will remain largely deaf to the vibrations of these tiny strings until such time as we are able to invent the technology that will allow us to sense, if not actually hear, this pervasive music of the spheres.

Furthermore it seems equally plausible that, just as the current tools of cosmology allow us to peruse the cosmic microwave background (CMB) -which is a faint glow of microwave radiation that fills the observable universe and is a remnant of the Big Bang - a bit down the line aways technology could allow us to discern a kind of celestial symphony that would reveal the Central Organizing Harmony of the universe, the COH, or as I more whimsically call it the God Chord.

Alright, if you are with me so far let us take another step down this road. If everything in the universe is made up of these tiny vibrating strings, that means we as well are made of vibrating strings - are made of music. That is one of my favorite suppositions, that we are made of music and hence do, existentially, conform to certain aspects of music theory - we are in harmony with some other individuals [their strings] and may find ourselves discordant with others. But that is an issue for another time that I play with rather extensively in The God Chord.

Right now I want to focus on our relationship with the COH, The God Chord. Think of resonance, of a tuning fork. You hit a tuning fork and rest it agains any surface, a table top, whatever, and that surface resonates with the pitch of the tuning fork. Obviously this works best if you place the tuning fork against the sound board of a musical instrument, a piano, violin, viola, whatever. And then you adjust the strings to cause the instrument to vibrate in concert, in harmony with, the vibrations of the "tuning" fork. Get it? Tuning it!

And now another jump. We are the instrument and the COH, the symphony of the universe is the tuning fork. And it is when we achieve a "state of grace," "nirvana," "inner peace," call it what you will, that we exist in, are at one with, we resonate with The God Chord.

Continuing to jump along. Our lives chronicle our relationship with The God Chord.  Any life, any occupation, either resonates with, or mutes, the influence of the god chord in our existence. This notion could take us down any variety of paths, but for this post I want to focus on the special relationship that "creatives" bring to the process.

"Creatives" seems to be the current term to define folks whose life is devoted to the arts - painters, poets, sculptors, dancers, musicians, photographers, writers - in short anyone who sees the major activities or expressions of their life as "art."

So now, let us jump back up to the title of the post, "Why Every Painting is a Prayer," and consider those multiple, seemingly redundant, images created by those most excellent artists. Why paint, seemingly, the same thing over and over? It is an attempt to get "it" right. And what is "it"? The symphony of the universe.

It is commonly said of creatives that they do not chose their art, rather their art chooses them. Their parents and partners often ask when they will get a "real" job.  And except for a - sure talented, but mostly lucky - few, creatives are not fated for fame and fortune. Consider Van Gogh who is said to have sold one painting in his entire life, and for what would, compared to his current market value, have been less than pocket change. But he kept painting those Sunflowers, and those Starry Nights. Monet kept on painting waterlilies, over, and over, and over, and over. Why?

It is my belief that "creatives" sense the symphony of the universe, The God Chord, more deeply than most. It is through their art that they seek to express, and hence become one with, that symphony. Yet in their minds they often fail to "get it right." So they continue to try again and again, painting after painting, prayer after prayer.