CREATION—
A REALLY BIG SHOW
Creation is a really big concept. It is the inaugural, the initial, the premiere event—the pre-eminent action that began it all. It is, at its essence, really, really big. Given its first pole position in terms of humankind, there is little wonder that the subject has been the focus of thinkers, philosophers, religious, just plain folks throughout recorded history. It is a subject that I have found to be endlessly fascinating as I have researched creation myths across time and cultures.
By creation myth, I mean the philosophical and theological explanations of creation within a religious community. I use the term “myth” to mean the imaginative expression in narrative form of a cultural belief. I do not assign a negative connotation to the term and it is not an expression of my belief of lack thereof.
The creation myths I have found originated in ancient Chines and Korean cultures, Australian aboriginal societies, native American and other indigenous peoples and the book of Genesis. There are so many picturesque and illustrative representations of the original of the world, many of which have elements in common. These common themes include an event of primordial chaos, divine intervention in the act of creation, a resulting established order and the emergence of life and humanity.
Often the initial chaos is a void—simply a nothingness before creation. This void is often depicted as water, darkness or both. A deity or deities are often central to the creation process whether as the creator or a shaping force. From this void, and the action of the deity, a structured and organized world results and life emerges.
As I have read these myths, I have pictured the myths in my mind’s eye in abstracted form. From there it was only a simple step to wanting to create a concrete representation of each myth. I am currently working on a body of paintings and fabric collages, both 2- and 3-dimensional, that will depict the abstractions that represent each myth to me. As with the concept of creation itself, these works are large and, I hope, will help to portray the glorious majesty of the story of creation, regardless of the origin of the myth being depicted.
PALM SUNDAY
IN
ITALY
It was Palm Sunday 2005 and I was by myself in Pietralunga, a small rural village in the Italian region of Umbria. On Palm Sunday in Pietralunga the entire congregation of the small church in the village gathers in the small piazza adjacent to the church. There they encircle the long unused municipal well. Three hundred or so people of all ages and all (save me) related to this community through generations of blood or marriage.
There is the diminutive, white haired Senore Pauselli and his equally diminutive wife. They are the fourth generation to own the local hardware store—Pauselli Ferremente. Their son, Filippo, a good looking thirty something who works with his father, is the fifth generation and possibly his eleven year old son, Gregorio, will be the sixth. Filippo’s sisters, Anna Rita and Paula, are here with their families as is Rossella who cuts my hair, Fabrizio who sorts out my computer problems and many others whose faces, if not names, I know. As only the Italians can do, their “buon giornos” fill the piazza with the excited sounds of people who understand simple pleasures.
The priest, Don (not Father) Salvatore approaches, dressed in the gorgeous red and gold vestments of Holy Week. The crowd quiets and branches of olive trees are passed around to each person. The priest sprinkles the entire assembly with holy water thrown from a highly polished silver implement upon which the bright sun bounces. As one, all make the ancient sign of the cross, touching first their foreheads —” i nonimi padre”—next their hearts—” e di figlio”—then their left and right shoulders—”e spirito santo”. Finally fingers brought to lips “Amen”. This is not a church of repressive theology or one that has a more than checkered past. This is simply a community united by tradition and love. Surely God is in this place.
Singing and waiving their blessed olive branches, the congregants follow their priest into the church. The wolf of winter has been beaten back. Life survives and is entering the season during which it renews itself. Alleluia. Alleluia.
The church is simplicity itself in its pre-Gothic use of arches holding aloft the roof. Not enough sitting room for a third of the people gathered, I watch old men and old women alike stand to give their seats to young parents holding children. I stand in the back beside a young father holding his Raffaello like angel daughter with whom I exchange smiles. Mass progresses; the passion of Christ is read; the transformation of bread and wine into body and blood takes place. The church is filled with believers but that does not really matter. A passage has been shared. A ritual has been passed down from the oldest (who may not see the next Palm Sunday) to the youngest. And they welcome me, this outsider, into their midest. “La pace, senora, la pace”. The peace, the peace. And I feel the peace of this place.
I YEARN TO BE A NEAT & TIDY ARTIST
I really yearn to be a neat and tidy artist. I literally have studio envy when I watch You Tube videos of artists at work in their incredibly organized and clutter free studios. I simply do not comprehend how they can get paint from the tubes without getting paint all over said tubes. It is an utter mystery to me that one can engage in the creative activity of painting and have a clean, paint free worksurface—so often it is glaringly white in these videos I watch. The artists I watch at work never get paint on their hands, much less the blue ink I currently have under and around my fingernails because I decided to use a spray ink that I have not used in years and totally forgot that it is nearly impossible to remove. How, I ask myself, do they have work aprons that do not have paint spattered from neck to hem? And let’s not even talk about brushes and palette knives. My brushes are truly sad remnants of past creative storms that have overtaken both me and my studio. My palette knives are a quarter inch deep in paint that has accumulated much as a layer of permafrost and much as the permafrost does not thaw, neither do my palette knives ever clean themselves. And, that I am afraid, is the problem.
You see, when I begin painting a piece I simply lose all conscious thought. I am moving and reacting in a kind of whirling state of semi-consciousness. I am instinctively reaching for the tube of bright aqua green or ultramarine blue. I simply squeeze the glorious paint from the tubes without thinking of the residue I am leaving around the cap of the tube. Residue that, by the way, my You Tube heroes do not generate. (Now they should do a You Tube video on how they accomplish that). I have palette paper and squeeze globs (carefully measured NOT) of paint onto the paper, mixing and squishing (technical term here) the paint into combinations that meet the need of the moment. When I need to wipe excess paint from the brush, do I take time to go to the sink and wash said brush? Ugh, no. I am on the move. I just wipe the brush on my apron—something I have never seen done in a You Tube video. Now you may think that when I finally reach the end of my painting session I would take the time to clean up and leave my studio pristine for the next time. In fact, that is one of my every year for 2 decades New Year’s resolutions—much like losing weight, drinking less wine and exercising more. Unfortunately, you would be wrong. I paint until the creative tempest has passed which leaves me so exhausted I wonder how I can drive myself home. So much for good intentions and resolutions. My brushes and palette knives are lucky if they are thrust into water. My tubes of paint are extremely fortunate if I put the caps back on before I head for the hills. And, as I leave the studio, I tell myself that the next time I will be better. I will learn from the denizens of the neat and tidy You Tube studios and will do a better job. Alas, it just never happens.
NIENTE SENZA GIOIA
“Niente senza gioia” is Italian for “nothing without joy”. Years ago, I adopted this phrase as my motto-my goal-my inspiration. When I am in my studio, surrounded with paint and canvas, with creativity literally oozing out of me the way the paint comes from the tube, it is easy to do nothing without joy. To be glad to be alive and grateful that I can still experience all that life has to offer. When I am cleaning toilet bowls or dealing with cranky technology or waiting impatiently on the telephone to speak with a real person rather than to a machine, the challenge of being joyful is much much greater. Yet, the only real difference between the energy and gratefulness charged times and the opposite ones is, in brutal actuality, me. The real problem, the crux of the matter, the mountain to be climbed is my attitude and my reaction to events transpiring around me. It seems to me that, particularly in this charged and divisive environment in which we find ourselves, it has become almost essential to survival that we cultivate and encourage a positive reaction to all things. That, in short, we do nothing without joy.
I have had the good fortune, la buona fortuna, to spend a great deal of time in rural Italy in and around a small village in northern Umbria. That experience has had a huge impact on the person I am now and has helped me to realize the value in living with an emphasis on the important rather than on the trivial and mundane. I have often said that the person I am now was created during my times spent in Italy. For years now, I have tried to analyze just why that may be and have come to no concrete conclusion. I know that, when I am on vacation in Italy even for extended stays, I am living an artificial existence. I am not cleaning house, paying bills, counting calories. In short, I am living an ideal existence that bears little relationship to the life I live when in the States. I also realize that, for my Italian friends who live there full-time, their life has the normal share of problems and concerns—sick friends and family, aging relatives, troublesome kids, career challenges, fatigue, all the things that can drain one’s life of joy. Yet, for all that, the life in this little village of Pietralunga, Italy does appear to have a simplicity that can be so often missing from our lives here. My Italian friends seem to take pleasure from activities that focus on friends and family and not on activities that stress consumption or acquisition. I often tell people that I have spent the majority of my life in central Kentucky and, yet, apart from family, there is no one at whose home I would appear without an invitation to ask for a cup of coffee in the late afternoon. Yet, in my part of Italy, there are literally dozens of doors at which I would feel perfectly comfortable, and assured of welcome, if I knocked at 5:30 pm and asked for un caffe. At each of those homes, I would feel assured of a warm welcome, a platter of proscuitto and cheeses, a glass of wine, a cup of coffee and warm friendship. In the late afternoon and early evening in Pietralunga and most of Italy, it is the custom of make a una passeggiata. It is most usual, unless the weather forbids it, to see people leisurely strolling, usually arm in arm, through the village just enjoying each other. Older women in black straight skirts and black pumps. Younger folks decked out in their finest. Children kicking soccer balls and crying out from the pure pleasure of it all. The older men who stop occasionally and sit on benches discussing the weather, the state of the world, the winning soccer team, And everyone greets one another with the double kiss that for me, unused to that custom, was a difficult thing to feel comfortable in doing. Perhaps the lesson I have learned from this is that joyfulness is the result of simplicity, of having a focus on the things that are timelessly important and not on the transitory and illusory events that can, in the moment, seem so very vital of our existence. It is a lesson that I strive daily, with varying degrees of success, to weave into my life.
So, to all of us, I wish us niente senza gioia.
When can you call yourself an artist?
When do you call Yourself an Artist?
Several years ago, my brother asked me “when can you call yourself an artist”? Doctors call themselves that after they graduate from medical school; lawyers after they pass the bar. What then about artists? I answered “when you have the nerve to do so”. I think that answer remains as true today as it was then.
All my life, I have been crafty. I explored crafts from counted cross-stitch to knitting to doll making. Each time I decided to “master” a craft, I jumped in with both feet. I bought every book/magazine I could find on the craft, outfitted myself with every supply I could possibly need and set forth. In my cross-stitching years, everyone I knew received a cross-stitched ornament for Christmas. My knitting years saw all my friends and family receiving hats or scarves. (Never mastered socks). I made literally everyone I knew a porcelain doll when I was in my doll-making phase. I was totally immersed in each craft I attempted but none held my attention indefinitely.
That all changed when I first put a palette knife into a glob of cadmium red oil paint and swiped the knife across a canvas. I was hooked. The feeling was simply indescribable and now, twenty some years later, I still experience both the terror of a blank, white canvas and the joy of adding color, form and texture. That was over 20 years ago and I still find the process of making art utterly fascinating and engaging. It took about 5 years or so after I began painting, but there did come a day when I knew I could call myself an artist.
Maritime Italy
Maritime Italy
It always begins for me with an idea. I have literally thousands of ideas. So many ideas, in fact, that my family says that the four scariest words in the universe are when I say “I have an idea”. But I digress.
I have always loved maps. I think I may have been a sailor in a former life. But, again, I digress. The body of work in which this piece is included began with the idea of incorporating reproduction vintage maps into my mixed media pieces. So, I bought a bunch of vintage map reproductions and began. This piece was based on a map of ancient Italian maritime routes. The map was secured to a wooden cradle panel—sort of like a stretched canvas but made of wood. Then I decided on the color palette I wanted to use for the piece and printed and painted papers to coordinate with that palette. Finally, I looked through the bits and pieces of things I have accumulated through the years—looking for postcards, stamps, Italian images, Italian text from books, magazines—literally anything that could be collated onto the map to evoke a sense of Italy.
Once the materials were assembled, the fun began. This is an extremely zen process for me. I just adhered the bits and pieces and printed and painted papers in random, unplanned shapes onto the map. I edited the entire piece with acrylic paint and ink to eliminate some of the “busyness” of the original version.
And, viola, “Maritime Italy” resulted.
Beaded Koi I
Beaded Koi I
My journal entry for April 29, 2020 reads:
Years from now, if someone asks what I did during the pandemic, tell them that I beaded. Must as Penelope wove a burial shroud as she waited for Ulysses to return from the Trojan War, I beaded. Unlike Penelope, I had no ardent suitors to keep at bay. Rather, I beaded to combat boredom, isolation, fear, anxiety and other side effects of the unwelcome changes to my life caused by the virus.
So I hand-sewed literally thousands of beads onto this and other fabric collages on which I was working at the time. That partly creative, partly mindless activity helped me make sense of what was, at that time, appearing to be a hostile and threatening world..
Book Review: What Am I Looking At?
What am I Looking At?
Contemporary art can be, at times and for many people, totally confusing and almost intimidating. As an artist, this is the type of art to which I am most strongly attracted. I admire the techniques and skill of more traditional painters but I do not look at their work and wish that I had been the one who created it. I get that feeling, however, quite often when I am looking at more contemporary paintings.
In his book—What Am I Looking At—Will Gompertz teaches art history with a zany sense of humor. Gompertz is himself a former director of the Tate Gallery in London and is the art editor for the BBC. He makes it his mission in this book to btring modern art’s exciting history alive for everyone. He explains why an unmade bed or a pickled shark can be artr—and why a five year old couldn’t really do it.
I listened to the book on Audible. It was a fascinating overview of contemporary art history and I recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about that subject.