artwells

I love the fact that that almost tiresome quotation "Good artists borrow.  Great artists steal." is not definitively attributable to anyone, but that Picasso, Elliot or Dali are often thrown in as placeholders.  Whatever these people were, their names are now placeholders for a collection of works and ideas.  They may have changed the world of expression in their days.  They may have been geniuses.  Now, though, they're in the swirling cultural confusion that is human memory.

I'm beginning to think that it isn't the artist's job to create anything, and that even borrowing and stealing may be overstating things.  The only art that has moved me lately, at least, is simply an acting of locating beauty and pointing at it.  "Look at that" is all the eloquence I've been receptive to lately, and I'm beginning to get a bit of an attitude about it.  It could be a carefully realistic landscape, a beat, a hand gesture, a couplet, in any medium and method--it's all just saying "That, over there, is beautiful and I put some of it in this."

I used think that the point of artistic expression was to say "this creation is beautiful", so I'm kind of shocked by my recent convictions.  I used to think that the self-referential and contextless was sublime, and that the creation of art was a great extension of the artist's will.  But now, I see a something beautiful that someone has done and its all about how well it dances in  the music I hear, how it  acts as a frame  for all the beauty around it, how I can hear in it echoes of the voices in my head.  Rarely, the artist's hand clenches into a near first and the remaining finger, whichever one that is, points at me, right into my head.

I've never had any art training, and I don't read up on the subject much, so I'm probably saying the same thing everyone writes about in Art Appreciation 101.  Whatever.

Lately, the dearest opportunities have become the absence of outside stimulus.  When things shut off, or when I can shut them off, I turn on.  Every hour of my day is so cramped, and my todo list is so long, that it feels like static or silence are the only songs I dance to.

I'm walking to the bank and I realize that I'm walking too quickly, that I have time.  I don't just slow down.  I stop.  I close my eyes and lean against a tree.  I can almost see the tendrils of perception retreat on the back of my eyelids.

I wake up an hour too early and find myself imagining all the things I need to do, all the things I want to do.  I realize I've got a free hour, and my mind fills with frivolity, a thousand clowns of nonsense unpack from tight head and play for a moment.

I know things will change once the kids get older, at least I intellectually imagine that.  Emotionally, I've got my head down running forward.  I remember sleeping in, spending hours on video games and these memories become movies about other people I saw once.

Today, the house was empty when I went upstairs for a coffee. I was walking across the kitchen when the phone started to ring and I froze.  I closed my eyes and let a blank moment wash over me.

I started seeing gloves with an increasing frequency before I started taking pictures of them.  The frozen form of strangers' hands -- flattened open, wrinkled into empty gripping, mangled into impossible moment dances -- started receiving more and more refined meanings  while I walked past them.

I decided that by photographing every one of them that I saw, I could better explore the forms as an interpretive art, and more importantly, explore my habit of seeing them.  As an added bonus, by focusing on a specific subject, and a specific perspective of that subject, I could learn a bit more about photography.

Six months and hundreds of photos and gloves later, I'm done with gloves.  At this point, the habit of seeing gloves is interfering with my vision and my walking.  This happened with playing cards around ten years ago--it took a few weeks of not making a big deal about finding playing cardsfor them to fall back into the landscape.  This last shot is a good demonstration.

I have been noticing the interference of glove-seeking for several weeks, noticed that it had been about six months, and decided to quit soon.  I was walking last Friday and took this shot.  Though the glove is in an interesting posture, and I found it inspirational, I didn't notice what the paper next to it said.  After I downloaded and took a look, I read "important information value".  There's a lot to see.  I'm going to make sure I see more of it.

After a while, I'll start photographing gloves again, but not like this.

I genuinely look for answers in the randomness of the gutter.  In this cynical and post-modern world, I'm free to do so without feeling the need to create a whole theology, science or philosophy around the act.  I don't even feel much need to explain it to anyone. 

I feel lucky, just decades ago I probably couldn't do this without feeling obliged to say that I'm trying to find the voice of god or "reading the signs", or some such.  Some people still try to pressure some sort of tiresome New Age, or Magickal, or some other fringe religiosity from me to explain what I do.  I'm old enough now to not yeild to the pressure.  This is just what I do when I need to think.

The world speaks to me through a rorschach mosaic of random objects.  What it shows is meaningless in the way a new canvas is meaningless.  In imposing interpretation, I begin a dance with all of reality, and no pale relative reality at that. 

"Know Thyself" is the first work of any serious study.  In seeing what I see in the gutter, in forcing the random into my limited thinking on my problem, I become more receptive to new thoughts, and often find some pretty good answers

The papers are stapled to the poles that provide phone, cable and electricity.  The support of power of communication is covered with a tick-tick-tick-tick of hammer staples.  Bands and garage sales, the missing and offered are posted about for a sometimes brief moment.

Past the annoyance, the commerce, the legality and the safety issues, a history is left rusting and clinging to fragments of what was said.  All the intent and variation leaves a nearly uniform patina.  The pole could have briefly held tens of thousands of messages and be in any city.

This photo is being taken today by somebody else, as someone else will tomorrow, and the same thoughts will stir.   Tiny rusty staples.

For years now I've been attracted to the paint that covers graffiti.  After some time of feeling oddly drawn to them, photographing subtly mismatched squares of paint on storefronts, reviewing the photos later, and reviewing and reviewing, it occurred to me that this attraction was an echo of a strong, adolescent fondness for Mark Rothko.  I came close to abandoning the crush.

Shortly after that realization, I became free to appreciate anti-graffiti a its own form.  Once I could identify those bits of beauty not linked to a previous habit, an expansive, rich world opened up to me--and I found more beauty beyond the familiar Rothkoan squares.   Thousands of uncategorized photos later, I have a well-developed passion and photo collection to rival a teen's pr0n directory.

Intention is the clothing that can either enhance, or obscure, the beauty of its creation.  In my mind, however, Beauty lives outside of the intent reach.  I see anti-graffiti and I see the frustrated but ceaseless hope of the shopkeepers to have a space clear for their work.  I see the shouts of taggers who follow the impulse of the advertisers but abandon their marketplace propriety.  And I see their dialogue, frozen for a moment this one morning, layers of words and silence, words and silence, words and silence. Fortunately frequently, the hum of this dialogue speaks an blunt, accidental beauty that can still stop me, mouth open and staring, minutes before I reach for the camera.

Whenever I find sheet music, I think of the times in which I considered myself a musician.  I remind myself that I minored in music in college, (or at least accomplished the equivalent in a college with no majors or minors). 

I'll pick up toy instruments the kids have scattered around the house and play enough to get them dancing.  It's good.  It's never what I imagined I'd do.  Nothing is.  It's good.

This is my favorite photo in recent weeks.  It took three exposures before I was happy.  The paper shred was barely visible as I was walking by.  The photo captures, exactly, what I saw. 

The blurry photo fragment and the clarity of everything around it, the shading overgrowth, the mossy step, the debris under the image:  All of it addressed very loudly the thoughts of the moment.

Were I impulsive, or drunk enough, I'd been planning on getting this photo tattooed on my back.  But I know this will be a favorite for only a few more days.

When did you first realize that you were _a Poet and Philosopher_? Was it a positive or negative experience?

It was when I was about 17.  I realized suddenly that it was okay to be a poet and philosopher even though I was no good at it.  It wasn't like I was going to be a drummer, or dictator, or racecar driver--I needn't force others to suffer my failed attempts.  I could spend my life failing at it and it would be nobody's business but my own.  It was a big bubbly relief.

As it turned out, though, I failed even at holding it back, and have sometimes found pleasure in imposing my mediocrity on others, sometimes the more mediocre the better.  I've been bad.

But trust me, there would be far more suffering had I picked up the bagpipes that afternoon and decided my lack of skill no longer matter and followed my joy regardless of cacaphony I brought upon the world.