Self-care Art

 Art: Whither or Wither. Can't you see it? A special topics course at some small tony liberal arts college? Perhaps my alma mater Kalamazoo College? Or Oberlin? Perchance a philosophy seminar with my late, great uncle Dr. Calvin Schrag at Purdue? It sounds like something I would have signed up for. But I now realize it would be a topic one would have to approach with a bit of caution, especially now during the first quarter of the 21st century.

The "wither" part wouldn't create much of a problem. No one can seriously argue that art is in any danger of "withering away." Not when everyone carries around an art/photography/video/audio studio with them on their smartphone. And even when they shouldn't, they feel free to compose and share. No "withering" will occur when one of the major concerns in the art world is an existential one: will AI begin to do it all for us?

Rather, it is that whole "whither" question, just what does the future hold for "art," and what all do we include under that ever-expanding umbrella - "art;" that might make you want to slip on the old tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches, fire up that briar pipe and wax eloquent as clouds of Flying Dutchman float about. But, I'm retired. I don't have to do that anymore.

What I am interested in is why creating images has become so important to me. And, interestingly, part of the answer came from here on the Schrag Wall. The Wall is an interesting place. I should explain that assertion especially since there are some new folks on board. (Again,welcome!) Back in the late 90s I had just finished The God Chord: Physics in the Landscape of the Heart, and realized, while shopping that manuscript around, that I still had ideas that I wanted to share. However, I wasn't going to go back and address them in the "finished" manuscript. So I began to print them out and tape them to the wall (see what's coming?) above my computer for inclusion in some future writing or lectures. When the World Wide Web morphed into the Internet, I just transitioned the pieces of paper into digital ramblings and posted them to y'all - friends, family, etc., here on The Schrag Wall.

Anyhow, you are a fascinating group. Because The Schrag Wall is delivered via blind copies, I never know who is looking at the posts and reading them, or who may just delete them. I only know that you're there when you choose to respond to some post or another. And you sometimes do, providing responses that can grow into more unique interactions. 

So, there is this novelist, cum former student, who touches base every, oh, three or four years. I hadn't seen anything about any new books in a few years so inquired about the lull. She responded that her writing these days was mostly restricted to "self-care."

I hadn't heard the phrase before, but a little messing around online revealed that the concept is quite common, and, not surprisingly, refers to a wide variety of activities that one pursues in order to take care of yourself. You'd think I could have figured that out myself. But I didn't.

Rather, I have been thinking about what I find so attractive about creating these images that, like Grand Canal (which I shared a few posts ago) can be incredibly detailed and time consuming? There are, I have decided, a number of variables in play.

First, everything about the process is in my hands. There are no surprises, no intervening issues. None of the details of life, shopping, cleaning, cooking, appointments with a surfeit of others, intrude when I am working on an image. It is a self-created world unfolding on the paper on my drawing table. I have either drawn or photographed every element of the images myself. There are, however, a couple of exceptions to that rule, a couple of homage pieces. One done several years ago, a cutting from Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling:

And the more recent steal I shared here of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring:

 So there is, most often, this fact that everything is under my control, divorced from the stresses, vagaries, and demands of the "real world" outside that is important. Obviously this is quite different from those who choose to use their art to foreground and confront contemporary social, environmental, or political problems. Those issues certainly define legitimate artistic callings. Just not mine.

Second, and this is a direct steal from Bob Ross: "We don't have mistakes here. We have happy accidents." Yes. But Ross has to finish the painting he is working on during that particular episode of his program. I get to take it step further. If I have an "accident" that is not so happy, I can just trash the image and start over. (I wonder how many paintings Ross backed out of? I mean, really, he too could just start over again. It wasn't live TV.)

I also love the fact that I can turn old images into new ones. For example one I am working on now. (Those of you who were at the recent Schrag reunion saw some early stages of this one.) The finished version will get a name later, but I was asked, "Is that the Schrag women?" Could be. Those genes run strong. I have a picture of Andrea, my older daughter, when she was about two. I also have a picture of my sister Margaret when she was about the same age. I had to write their names on the back of the pix because the pictures look like two pictures of the very same person!

But back to the current, as yet nameless, image. The "grandmother" of the image seems to be this piece from quite a number of years ago that I simply called Muse.

She later apparently gave birth to this image, which I called, admittedly prosaically, Muses and Bricks. I have done several versions of that image, when I chose to exercise my "beyond Bob Ross option." I didn't really care for them and so haven't done any "finish work" on them. Just that little bit on the bricks.

The current image - based on the basic form of those early rejections - is still "in development" but I thought I would give you a look at the process. This first image is of two of the faces, in which portions of the hair have been removed to make way for further designs [some developing designs appear along the top of the image]:

This image shows the other two muse's faces where I have filled the former blank spaces with designs. They await the addition of color. And that is an interesting process wherein my ridiculously large selection of markers and I mutually decide which colors, shades, and hues go where.

Some of those choices were obviously influenced by this image from a couple of years ago called Masque. I do go back and browse through stuff from years gone by for pleasure and inspiration. Fun.

So, that's my current answer to the old Larry Norman song, "Why do you do things you do? Why do you do these things?"

I encourage you to find some personal pastime that you can make all your own, one that gives happiness and comfort to your life and which you can - if you choose - share with others.

*******************

PS.  This post "went to press" before today's story about US bombing raids in Iran broke. That obviously bruised my "nothing gets in while I'm drawing" tenet. Like many of you I wonder what those actions portend. My current thinking is that the only thing that was conclusively "busted" was the president's campaign promise to never again involve us in "forever wars" far from these shores.

Unspoken Words

 Formally, it was a family reunion, however the gathering of a motley crew would not be overstating the situation. There must've been 30 or more of us, all with direct or indirect ties to a group of Mennonite immigrants who settled in the Dakotas in the 1870s - somewhat ironically, after fleeing from a village in what is now the Ukraine, partly because their pacifist views were no longer tolerated in that still troubled region.

Chronologically we stretched from those flirting with a century to those for whom 30 seemed a place beyond a far horizon. Politically we ran the gamet from left to right, with a number of "they're all crazy" and "I don't care" positions in between. 

Among us there were those for whom the "good book" was the same one Rev. Schrag preached from in the church down the road from "the home place," back in the early 19teens. Others turn to an older book's Talmudic teachings. More prosaic are those among us whose hankering for a good book anticipates the next installment of a favorite mystery series. So, we largely remain "people of the book," though precisely which book remains a bit up in the air.

What strikes me most about this gathering of cats, too unique to herd, was the consistency of the themes that arouse during "sharing times" wonderfully constructed to get us all in a circle to think about, and speak to, our individual perceptions of what was becoming meaningful to us in these few days we were sharing together. When the words often unspoken were shared.

Here we all seemed to be reading from the same book, regardless of its particular binding or dictates. Family, faith, compassion, and loving kindness. Again and again and again. In one room and among so many seemingly different people.

And then we leave. Back into the particularity of our own lives. We have gathered these last few days at The Del Schrag Retreat Center, named for a beloved member of the clan, and former director of the camp that houses his center: Tower Hill Camp. The camp's mantra which appears on the t-shirt I bought for my wife is "Out of the ordinary, Into the sacred."

Can we carry the sacred with us once we leave this very special place? The world seems to insist on crumbling around us. LA, the Middle East, the homeland of our misty past in the Ukraine, and now Minnesota. Will we pull on our ancient feet of clay and slog again through the muddy paths of disagreement and discord that we seem to have put aside within these magic boundaries?

My mother, remembered these last few days, but gone many years, when confronted with the troubles of the world would sigh and say, "If I had a magic wand, I would wave it and make this all better." We must move ahead without the benefit of a magic wand, but perhaps we have another tool equal at least to our portion of the task.

Let us exercise a little editorial privilege. Tower Hill says "From the ordinary, Into the sacred." Let us each make an honest effort to, in our own small way, "Take the sacred into the ordinary."

Oh, look! Come See the CCC

(Trigger warning - don't get me started on those. But this is a pretty long post. Been thinking about it while drawing the "Sky River of the Grand Canal" drawing. Would scribble an occasional note to myself, etc. So don't try to read it while waiting in line at the grocery store. Find a quiet place. Sit back with your favorite calming entity, and enjoy!)

I remember - sort of - of learning about "cycles" back in K-12, the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the oxygen cycle. I suppose gym teachers might have touched on the bicycle - but that is a cycle of a different color which is no longer discussed public schools since the President declared a 214% tariff on lunch money funds for schools teaching anything bi. Schools producing the musical Bye, Bye Birdie were exempted from the tariff, which was suddenly rolled back to 2.14% as the result of a typographical error in the original decree. But I digress.

The cycle I am currently concerned with follows the cycles that occur in nature - step one leads to step two, then three, etc, until you come back to the starting point: plants are pollinated, they make seeds, seeds get dispersed, they fall to earth, plants grow from the seeds, the plants make flowers, the flowers are pollinated, etc., etc. That kind of cycle.

However, the particular cycle I am thinking about occurs less in the natural world and more in those areas addressed in the academic world by sociology, cultural anthropology and economics. It is a cycle I think of as the Creation, Consumption Cycle - CCC. Basically it goes like this: something is created. It can be anything, a product or mechanism or artifact that, through any variety of paths, comes to the attention of the larger society. We, in that society, feel that we need, or would like to possess the product/artifact, so we - again through a wide variety of actions - purchase, capture, theft - come to possess the product. Ta da! consumption!!

While I like to think of myself as primarily a creative type, I realize that I do spend much of my time as a consumer. Other than the normal "stuff" in the 21st century, - housing, food, fuel, clothing, etc. - I also spend a lot of time consuming messages. These are often mediated messages I consume onscreen. Information: news, weather, traffic directions, science, etc. Communiques: texts and emails from commercial entities, political fundraisers and advocates, and occasionally from friends and family members whom I actually know. Entertainment: some sports and lots of videos and ebooks in the mysteries and thrillers genre. And then there are those other artifacts I consume as an audience member - either locally or as a tourist possibly somewhere far away. I view things live - sporting events, a concert, a cathedral - and so I am a relatively passive consumer.

Nonetheless, as I am most content, peaceful and relaxed when being creative with lines, colors and words, I do reflect on the creative element in the CCC, more than on the more overt societal consumption that surrounds me.  In the art world these creative cycles are often expressed or defined by the "isms" I discussed in the previous post about Compessionism. But I have noticed an interesting glitch in the CCCycles in the art world - at least historically. The nature cycle offers an interesting parallel in the the life cycle of the cicada. Cicadas, those loud strange looking red-eyed noise makers who only appear in various locales after spending 12 to 16 years underground. They are out-of-sight and out-of-mind for a decade or so, only to emerge shrieking their way into our consciousness. So think Vermeer and Van Gogh,- both of whom had no place in the dominant artistic canon of their times - only to be appreciated years after their work had been completed.

Van Gogh is perhaps the best known example of these delayed cycles. According to Wikipedia Van Gogh created approximately 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, but sold only one image - an oil titled,The Red Vineyard, before his death at 37 in 1890. Hardly a successful artist during his life. His primary supporter, his brother Theodore died 6 months later, leaving the lion's share of Vincent's work in the hands of Theo's widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonge. It was her stewardship of Vincent's paintings and his letters with Theo that eventually and finally brought Van Gogh's works to the consuming public several years after the artist's death. Without her efforts it seems quite reasonable to posit that the appreciation and monetization of Van Gogh's works might have been terminally delayed - leaving the consumption portion of his artistic cycle unfulfilled.

Vermeer's story is somewhat different with his "re-emergence" even more delayed than Van Gogh's. He had a limited output during the Golden Age of Dutch painting, an era running from the early to late 1600s also featuring the works of Frans Hals, Steen and Ruisdael and Rembrandt van Rijn, - who, incidentally but worthy of inclusion in this CCC art ramble, fell out of favor late in life and when he died in 1669, was a bankrupt - only to be "resurrected" in the 1800s, when realism came back in style.

Only 34 paintings are officially attributed to Vermeer, possibly because he worked slowly and used paints ground from very expense materials like lapis lazuli. And when he died in 1675, he was considered a minor artist. It was not until Théophile Thoré-Bürger, a French art critic and journalist, wrote an influential essay about Vermeer, almost 200 years later, in 1866, that Vermeer finally took his current position as one of the great painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Of course, in contemporary culture advertisers and "influencers" attempt to eliminate the "cicada gap" between creation and consumption. They would have us believe that new artifacts are being created everyday and we need to consume them right now!

I tend to believe that these trumpetings of the latest and greatest are often bogus. Back when I taught media and technology courses, my university was very good about supporting my playing around with the "latest and greatest" Elements in the CCC. I believe I still have a "presence" in Second Life, an early online world where you could actually create, buy and sell stuff right on your computer. "Imagine that!", we thought. I did get on board with the earliest Apple computers - which the College of Engineering, who ran our campus network, kept offline for a number of years - blatantly favoring "UNIX boxes."  Long and short of it, I would suggest that unless you have a university paying for your new toys, "let the buyer beware" when it comes to investing in the latest and greatest tech. Let 2.0, or 3.0, 4.0 roll around before hopping on board.

That is not to say, let me hasten to add, that you should not be an active participant in the Creation Consumption Cycle. Far from it. I think we all need to participate, but we need to think about how we do that. Our society is strongly tilted towards the Consumption element of the cycle. Truth be told, we probably spend the majority of our time consuming all that stuff I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Even in the arts, we are most often observers, audience members - watchers, readers, lookers, hearers, tasters. It is my firm belief that we should bolster the other partner in the cycle and expand our role as creators.

But that isn't always as easy, or as clear cut as it may sound. The more traditional routes to creativity are relatively obvious: poets, writers of all genres, painters, photographers, sculptors, architects, etc., are considered "creatives" because they create something - they create an artifact that can be "consumed" by audience members. Sometimes many years after the original creator is dead.

However, as is often the case, advances in technology muddy the waters somewhat. Recently, while sharing my process of image creation with a friend I pointed out that I used Photoshop to erase parts of my photos to clear the way for the next stage - hand drawing the designs which are then colored in. "Couldn't you do that all on your computer?" He asked. Well, yes, I could. But for me that eliminated several important and satisfying steps in the creative process.

So there are obviously some shades of gray in the creative process, most of which are addressed by the artist setting his or her "rules of engagement" with the creative process, sometimes confusingly referred to as the artist's "conceit." It is part of my "conceit" to define and limit the roles of digital and hand work in the creation of my images.

However, digital advances carry the seeds of their own demise. An artifact created on a specific digital platform often depends upon the existence of that specific hardware/software platform to animate the artifact. The same is true of other media from the dim recesses of the pre-digital age. Consider the "mix-tape" of days gone by. Often created by a young person to carry a variety of meaningful songs to their significant other. Dependent upon an audio cassette player. Oops. To step even further back I have a couple of reel-to-reel audiotapes of plays I acted in back in the sixties - the 1960s, thank you. Not the 1860s. Jeez. They need a reel-to-reel deck. Oops again. Down in our basement there is literally a wall of carousels of 35mm slides, waiting for a Kodak Carousel projector, oops, to bring them to life on a reflective screen, oops again. There are, of course, stores and sites that will - for a rather significant cost - convert your old artifacts to the latest and greatest format. Good for at least a few years before that new format itself becomes obsolete. Oops.

And artifacts from the digital age are not immune to this type of "techno-creep." Think "floppy disk," "DOS," "CD-ROM," "WAV audio files." All dependent on the originating hardware needed to reincarnate them. Which is why vital archives like the Library of Congress now include the necessary animating hardware and software with the actual artifacts they preserve.

So there is that hardware/software issue on the whole creative side of the CCC. But there are other issues to consider. Just what qualifies as an "artifact?" I need to admit that in my mind an artifact has "temporal permanence." You can touch "it." Perhaps pick "it" up. Maybe "carry 'it' away." But I realize that is a 20th century perspective and that, like the rest of digital evolution, begs the question. The old definition of artifact needs some tinkering.

For example, is "coding" an art form? One would assume so since everything that appears on our various screens, computers, tablets, etc., is the result of some sort of code that results in a digital stream. A thought that brings us up against the current elephant in the room - AI, aka Artificial Intelligence.

A friend recently showed me some video clips that appeared to be real people engaged in ordinary tasks. However, he informed me that "no real people were used in the creation of these videos." They were purely the creations of AI. Hmmm. There are, as pundits, priests, philosophers, professors, and ordinary people profess, some pithy points to ponder here. Fortunately I choose to only deal with one: the relationship between auteur and artifact, and the place of that artifact in the CCC.

First let me provide a quick and dirty definition of auteur as I use the word:

An auteur is the person intellectually in control of the creation of the artifact. The human mind behind whatever processes are employed in the creation of the artifact. I choose to employ the caveat "human" as a perhaps contrived restriction on the creation of meaningful artifacts. AI and its kin; past, present, and future, may well create artifacts that appear, taste, smell and feel like artifacts created by human beings - but they must remain, as their name rightfully indicates, artificial.

So having decided that the human mind kick starts the creative side of the CCC, I now need to turn my attention to the artifact itself. Again a dicey issue. I'm thinking, and again, this is my particular artistic conceit, that any artifact needs to have permanence. It needs to have the ability to be experienced - consumed, to complete the cycle - by an audience.

So, is Hilary Hahn's interpretation of a violin concerto an artifact? No, not by itself. The artifact is the score, and the composer of the score is the auteur. The score has permanence, not the performer or the performance. Unless, of course, the performance is recorded on some medium that allows it to be consumed by an audience. Which, unfortunately, exposes that artifact to the problem of obsolescence of the medium upon which the performance is stored. Whew. Or to quote The King and I, "Is a puzzlement!"

Similarly, any dramatic performance based on a script is not an artifact. So Laurence Olivier's performance as Hamlet on stage does not qualify as an artifact, as Shakespeare remains the auteur. However, Olivier's 1948 film of Hamlet, is more complicated. It does not qualify as an artifact simply because of Olivier's dual role of star and director. It is the wide availability of the consumable film on television that nudges it toward the "artifact" designation.

This is also the case for impromptu, unscripted performances, be they comedic tours d'force by Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters or the gentle painting lessons of Bob Ross. The performers become part of the artifact only if and when it is captured in a permanent format. So, in this example, Ross is more an artifact than than Williams and Winters.

So then the CCC is a cycle in which creation results in an artifact that is consumed by an audience. So what? Well, here is the important part. In our culture we cannot escape being consumers. We are born into it. And then we immerse ourselves in it. Gallup News reports that American teenagers spend between 4 and 5 hours a day on social media. And adults check their own screens, watches, tablets, phones, etc., about 150 times a day. Perhaps while or before catching up on that series they are streaming on one of the many video services competing for our screen time. We are consumption junkies.

I strikes me that we would all be happier and healthier if we balanced the CCC cycle and made an honest to feed the creative side - to make an artifact.

More easily said than done. A contemporary problem is that in today's interconnected world we are free to graze among the "GOATs." The "greatest of all time" singers, actors, painters, chefs, potters, architects, etc., etc. And as we peruse their often intimidating artifacts, it seems presumptuous to see ourselves as "creatives." Balderdash! Phooey! and Baloney! We can each be creative in our own way! Or as The New York Times said just this morning: "Creativity isn’t a rare gift reserved for artists. We’re all creative in some way, whether or not we think so. And being creative comes with big health benefits. NYT 6/2/25" (I've been working on this post for a couple weeks, and they come up with this today?! Anybody else thinking piracy?) Anyhow, my advice as to how to best encourage your own creativity is to wander among the tools that enable creativity.

Seriously, go to an art supply store - a big one, a good one. And just wander around looking at all the cool stuff. Don't know what it is used for? Doesn't really matter. Go to a Hobby Lobby, a Joann's Fabrics, Go to a big - or unique small - hardware store. Go to a stationary store that has calligraphy stuff. Go to a craft store. Pop in to a William-Sonoma, check out all the shiny stuff. [Be careful about music stores - the ones that sell instruments and give lessons. After completing my Ph.D. and securing a tenure-track teaching position, I decided it was time to let my inner Eddie Harris free. So I rented - thank god - a saxophone and took a lesson. The sounds I was able to produce on that poor defenseless instrument were criminal. I returned it. Did much better on the Casio keyboard that had the sounds of various instruments built in. But I digress. Again.] Anyhow, just go spend a few days wandering among the tools that enable the creation of artifacts. Something will speak to you. 

Listen.

And if it continues to speak to you, tiptoe into playing in its space. Not everything reacts like my saxophone. Ask the people in the store how you might see your new found muse in action. Consume a little. A YouTube video? A Bob Ross Rerun? Something designed for "newbies." Yeah, maybe a class right there. But I'm a little leery of those "art center" classes. I have noticed a tendency there for "instructors" who want to teach you the "right way" aka "their way" to use the medium. I don't want to learn to paint flowers, thank you. On the other hand my first wife was lucky enough to take ceramic lessons from a truly crazy potter many years ago at the Kalamazoo, Michigan Art Center. He made giant tea cups you could sit in, and filled them with hundreds of little tiny human figures. Fun stuff.

The point is to create an artifact in a medium that you can get lost in, that makes you smile. If the first doesn't work, try another. Forget the saxophone, try the Casio. Keep looking until you find a creative space where you discover that you are happy and at peace.