The Greatest

Posted on November 19, 2020 by matt ballou under Life

Chan Marshall – she who records as CAT POWER – released the album The Greatest at a peculiar time for me… then again, when isn’t it a peculiar time?

It was 2006. I had finished grad school at IU and my partner and I had traveled to Italy to tag along with the IU summer trip. I was full – having seen many masters, finished a years-long course of intensive study, and imagining myself among my constellation of heroes.

My desire to do well and be great – to be masterful, to matter, to be effective – was intense. When I heard Marshall’s opening lines to The Greatest I burst into tears. It took me months to listen to the song without welling up.

“Once I wanted to be the greatest
No wind or waterfall could stall me
And then came the rush of the flood
Stars at night turned deep to dust”

“Melt me down…

Leave no trace of grace…”

“For the lead
And the dregs of my bed…”

“Lower me down…

Pin me in
Secure the grounds
For the later parade…”

Nearly fifteen years later it’s still powerful. I think Marshall saying “ONCE I wanted…” is even more poignant to me. In 2006 I resonated with the desire to BE great. But there is also the other side… the desire to HAVE BEEN great. To have wanted to be great “once” and then kind of learned and grown and gotten over it.

Easier said than done. Easier still when one has done something actually great. Worse when one has had the potential but has never been able to get there. To have been afforded so much, to have had so many chances. To have missed them.

Maybe getting older successfully is being able to say that “once I wanted” part without feeling desperate sadness. I guess I still have hope that I can do something transcendent as an artist. But we, in some sense, just do what we do. And what I have done isn’t particularly remarkable.

It’s nice to be able to surprise myself sometimes, even now.

But it’s a difficult time of endless distractions and urgent day-fillers. The days fill to weeks and weeks to months. What used to take a week now takes 18 months. Someday there won’t be 18 months left.

Never mind enjoyment or ambition. Just trying to get anything out takes just about everything.

Oh, well.

Skull of Teacups, Vectored in Triangles

Miranda Grace Makes Interiors

Posted on November 15, 2020 by matt ballou under Life

My eldest child, Miranda, is quite the artist (on top of being intense, defiant, powerful, passionate, and smart). Recently she’s been making these very interesting flattened interior spaces.

Miranda, the artist. Aged 10 and a half.

The drawings show an interest in categorization and organizational meaning, which are two interconnected ideas that Miranda has always been focused on. Placement and scale appear to be very important to her right now, too.

*Grandma Valerie’s Tea Party*
Colored pencil and ink on paper, 11 x 8.5 inches. 2020.

There is also a straightening and flattening of space in these new pieces. This is a little different for Miranda as she does understand perspective to a degree and has shown knowledge of recession of space in the past. However, these works seem to me to be more about the idea of the scene and less about naturalistic space or light.

*Aunt Clarice’s Dinner Party*
Colored pencil and ink on paper, 11 x 8.5 inches. 2020.

The way that forms extend unnaturally or terminate on two dimensional lines are unique aspects of these drawings. Above, see how the door extends into the floor or how the shelves stop right on the separation between the floor and the wall. These characteristics make the drawings function more as tableaux rather than structurally “correct” space depictions.

I’m interested to see how she combines the symbolic spaces of these drawings and the more expressionistic and observed spaces from her other drawings/paintings. I think that the organization and delineation of objects in her recent drawings are related to a desire for control. When she’s feeling more tense and uncertain, she wants to establish control. When she’s feeling more at ease and free her creates much more expressionistically and with fewer hard lines and forms.

I’ve taken Miranda on solo dates to museums a couple times (see most recently below) and she loves to do sketching from the master works and take in the quiet, calm spaces…