My daughter draws. See for yourself:
Working hard on the Magna-doodle.
A tableau with a foot and the finished work…
The facility of a Twombly!
Her mother interprets the ineffable script.
The work table is itself a work of art…
A swift, sure hand speeds over an uncertain surface: glory!
My daughter loves watching Star Trek: The Next Generation these days.
When we bring up Netflix to watch an episode, she shouts about SPACE SHIP! and DATA! – yep, it’s pretty cute. Here she is looking through my Star Trek “Ships of the Line” book. She always parks on the images of the Enterprise D, naturally.
I create paintings, drawings and prints in an attempt to address – through archetypal themes and symbols – the fundamental questions, ideas, hopes, and concerns I have about being in the world. I write texts in an attempt to integrate rational conceptions and reflections with my passionate, sometimes illogical, image making. In tandem, these avenues of expression form a multifaceted arena of investigation and inquiry that I use every day to – hopefully – understand and make sensible the miraculous reality of being.
The statement above relies on the fact that I am deeply interested in three main aspects of the human condition: being, symbol, and body.
I am intrigued by the state of evocative subjective experience that Gaston Bachelard described as “the astonishment of being.” Thus, though I am interested art of all kinds, I take particularly to those forms that connect with our embodiment or sense of being. This means the physical world, the objects we use and love, and the bodies we inhabit are particularly important to the sort of art I want to see and make.
It follows then that I find the expression of meaning through symbol – that is, the potential for objects to accumulate and resonate with meaning – to be a central interest of my art-making practice. Anything containing meaning has been, as John Dewey wrote, “funded” with importance through the physical interaction and intellectual contemplation human beings have invested in it over time.
The body is the zone of incident where being-ness and the structures of significance coalesce. Therefore, I foster a deep appreciation for the human body as a container for and calibrator of meaning and knowledge. As a maker of images – be they painted, drawn, or printed – I function as a symbolist in the traditional sense; I create tableaus for the relational contemplation of that which is beyond the facts of appearance. In doing so I hope to stimulate an evocative, transformative experience in my fellow human beings.
My wife, Alison, and I are beginning the process for an international adoption. It’s something we’ve thought about for a long time and something we’re excited about.
Above: me and my daughter drawing.
There are a lot of reasons we’re interested in this and there are a lot of logistics and options to consider. There’s tens of thousands of dollars to raise, most of which we don’t have just laying around. My wife is much more skilled than I am at holding all of these different issues in mind. She’s able to plan and strategize at a level that I can’t really even understand. So in the midst of this process I really just want to be able to DO something, to add something to it, to help make it happen.
As I think about this huge thing we’re getting into, I really just want to make sure that one of the other huge things in my life – my art-making – plays some role. I want to make my work mean more than perhaps it would on its own, more than it would do just hanging on a wall. I want my work to actually do something about the nearly 150 million orphans in the world. If, by some miracle, my artworks could help us bring one or two kids to a life of love and intentional care, then I want to do whatever I can to cause that to happen.
Above: Seven Mandalas for the Murky History of Beginnings and Endings, #5. One of the pieces for sale to help fund our adoption. My daughter Miranda helped me make this one.
So I’ve opened up a little etsy shop that features about 50 different artworks, with more to come. My hope is that I can have these works – images that I love and worked very hard to craft – become part of the means by which Alison and I do a different kind of work in the world… something that can make all the difference to a child who needs a mom and dad.
If you resonate with this sort of thing, I hope you’ll consider going to my etsy shop and purchasing a work. If you don’t see anything there you’re interested in, please check out my flickr and my main website as some of those works are still available as well; I’d be happy to hear from anyone who’s interested in any of the works.
…a completely subjective, personal list that was based entirely on how much I played them and/or was inspired by them, and regardless of when they came out. So here they are – artist, album (conveniently linked for your perusal), and year of release.
m83 – hurry up we’re dreaming (2011)
battles – gloss drop (2011)
broken bells – broken bells (2010)
the national – high violet (2010)
doves – kingdom of rust (2009)
tori amos – abnormally attracted to sin (2009)
bat for lashes – two suns (2009)
beck – modern guilt (2008)
the shins – wincing the night away (2007)
the national – alligator (2005)
radiohead – OK computer (2003)
the decemberists – castaways and cutouts (2003)
yeah yeah yeahs – fever to tell (2003)
broken social scene – you forgot it in people (2002)
doves – the last broadcast (2002)
neko case – blacklisted (2002)
cake – comfort eagle (2001)
modest mouse – building something out of nothing (2000)
holly golightly – God don’t like it (2000)
soul coughing – el oso (1998)
alice in chains – dirt (1992)
the pixies – trompe le monde (1991)
tom waits – rain dogs (1985)
Now if I had to pick 3 absolutely essential recordings from this list, I think I’d pick the Tom Waits, the Neko Case, and the latest The National albums. But, then again, it seems to me that the whole “desert island list” thing is played out and – at least now days – ill-conceived. Right now I can carry pretty much every piece of music I’ve ever owned in the cloud… so let’s not say this is a desert island list, no. Let’s say it’s an electro-magnetic-pulse list. An EMP has hit the earth and YOU – you alone – have a way to play a select bit of music in our post-EMP world. What would you play?
Yes, I think I could survive with some Neko, some Waits, and some National. But, man, I’d really need some Shins and Radiohead…
What are your EMP essentials?
Keep rocking in 2012, folks! (image above taken by Jake Johnson)
One of my favorite songs, from one of my all-time favorite albums (Blacklisted) and one of my all-time favorite artists (Neko Case), is called Ghost Wiring. When you listen to the track, I suggest a late night and low light and the tension of strange memories to enhance the experience.
One of the song’s enduring aspects is the short, whispered sentence that precedes the opening bars of music. I had listened to the track dozens of times before I heard it, and now it’s something that I love to bend in close to hear – especially when traveling late at night on empty roads, or ensconced in my dark studio trying to suss out glory from paint. Below is the section in question, pulled out and enhanced. What do you think is going on here?
Ghost Wiring Intro Whisper (mp3 format)
As seen the week before Christmas outside Hobby Lobby in Columbia, MO.
I’m so glad to know Jackie – one of our grads here in the Art Program at Mizzou – who recently finished her requirements for an MFA in Painting. Originally from Guangzhou, China, Jackie has been here in the US for about 4 years. Here’s an a short piece about her from Vox Magazine and another, longer piece from the Columbia Daily Tribune.
Tonight she (and Jade!) took my family out for Peking Duck at House of Chow. It was amazing!
And here is one of Jackie’s works for which I posed… Right or Left (“Not with that hand, my granddaughter!”) 40 by 32 inches, Pastel on Mi-Tientes Board.
Thanks for the meal, Jackie… and for all the good work!
The last time I saw a Lars von Trier work in the theater it was the single most devastating experience I have had with a film. My wife (then girlfriend) and I saw Dancer in the Dark in late 2000, and had to travel to see it since it had a limited theatrical run.
The movie stirred the sort of emotional tension to which most films can only remotely aspire. Bjork’s performance was so direct and full; a true lived-in reality for her. It was a performance for which she won best female performance at Cannes. It was also one she reported as being extremely difficult emotionally, uncomfortable intellectually, and nearly torturous overall. If you’ve seen the movie, you know what I mean. Bjork has been widely quoted about her experience with von Trier and her feelings about the film, but one thing she has said sticks with me: “Lars doesn’t consider it his responsibility to make sure people are psychologically stable after he’s worked with them in such an intense way.”
I expect he probably operates the same way in regards to his audience as well.
After the epic final scenes in Dancer in the Dark, so charged with emotion and a visceral sense of anger and hopelessness, Alison and I openly wept for minutes on end. Feeling the horror of what was to happen, our eyes streamed, but the silent tears were transformed to loud cries and groans as the credits rolled. Many others sat there in the dark as well; they were crushed and crying, too. I’ve never been as emotionally undone in public before. It was an unforgettable experience.
Kirsten Dunst in a still from Melancholia
So it is that I am filled with some trepidation… tonight I’ll be seeing von Trier’s Melancholia with friends. Will I find myself as torn, as moved? Will I have such an unforgettable reaction to this film as well? Great artworks are like this: so pungent, so evocative, that they literally precede themselves with palpable force.
An iconic, alchemical image from Melancholia
I’m looking forward to this experience.
eikonktizo 