Tag Archives: Life

Prayer

Posted on by under Life

Prayer

Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important/
calls for my attention — the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage/

I need to buy for the trip./
Even now I can hardly sit here/

among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside/
already screeching and banging./

The mystics say you are as close as my own breath./
Why do I flee from you?/

My days and nights pour through me like complaints/
and become a story I forgot to tell./

Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning/
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence./

– Marie Howe, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, W.W. Norton & Co.

Detail from The Elation of Understanding, 2007

In Which Mrs Dudley – My High School Art Teacher – Visits

Posted on by under Art, Life, Teaching

I got a surprise text from my wife last night – she’d received a call from my high school art teacher, Mrs Dudley, to let us know that she and her husband were in town and wanted to see us before they continued on down I-70 eastward. I’ve carried on old-school letter writing with Mrs Dudley ever since high school. She was the first outside encourager of my work. She got me into my first shows, taught me about framing and matting, and was the first to purchase my more developed work once I was a few years into undergraduate school. 

Mrs Dudley and me.

Hanging out with Alison and Miranda

Chasing little Miranda Grace in the hotel lobby

The Dudleys getting ready to head back out on the road – set to visit the Arch today

Keep in contact with the people who helped you get started on whatever road you’re on. One of the best things I ever did was to never forget about Mrs Dudley, to keep her informed, and to respect the artful way in which she’s continued to live her life. If a teacher ever made a big difference to you, write to them now. It’ll make a huge impact.

What a Difference Four Years Makes

Posted on by under Life

Four years ago this week I watched Eli Manning and the Giants devastate the New England Patriots in Superbowl 42. It was glorious. Be sure to watch David Tyree’s amazing catch here and Plax’s gaming winning TD catch here. This was my reaction:

Four years later I watched the Giants crush the Pats again, only this time it was with my daughter. What a wonderful difference four years makes. I’m looking forward to many more years of Superbowls with Miranda :)

Remembering Dancer in the Dark

Posted on by under Art, Life

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.

Inspiration – Marilynne Robinson

Posted on by under Art, Life, Teaching

Check out the fantastic lectures by Marilynne Robinson from the Dwight H Terry Lectureship at Yale. These talks, which took place in 2009, are full of valuable information and perspectives. Any thoughtful, engaged person will be both encouraged and exhorted to press deeper into understanding by Ms Robinson’s words.

You can buy the book that sprung from these lectures here.

Above: Untitled gouache sketch from 2008, 18 by 10 inches. Click for enlargement. I was thinking of Hanneline Rogeberg’s images of the body in tension, but also trying to find images that translated bodily discomfiture into a key to internal dialogue, questioning, and machination. How do you turn a sphere inside out? A mind inside out? The self inside out? Listen to Marilynne Robinson’s lectures for some answers…

Thirteen Years

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I met my future wife on August 20th, 1998 in Indianapolis, Indiana. She was 16 years old. 13 years later she’s been the most important human being – other than my mother – I’ve ever known. Everything I am I owe to the grace of God she’s been to me. Everything I do – all the different hats I have to wear, every competency I have or try to have, every correct comma – I owe to her. She’s 29 today. And still freaking awesome. I love you, Alison.

Here we are in Assisi, Italy in 2005, just a few weeks before our 2nd anniversary.

Here we are in McCormick Creek State Park (near Spencer, Indiana) on our 5th anniversary.

Into Dust

Posted on by under Art, Life, Writing

“Can I remember it only in some half-form? Can I remember it only as a chimera, made of memory and will and hope? Can I not recall it totally, fully, being in myself as I was? Does no one understand the fullness of the emptying time? Does no one sense it in themselves, that time when they lost the tether? Let it loose again, to feel that it is gone! Alone. This is the deep pit of sensing, where I know the contour of death and dying. Suspended above the abyss. Glory.” – from A Mnemonic of Longing, an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.

“Look… an abyssal missive, a doctrine of smoke… ‘into dust.’

In the end I suppose that I wish for it, (and sometimes still seek it with nervous hope) that confusion. Sweet psychological instability – the wobbly legs of a newly drunken lad – here as the land curves away beneath me. I guess that, at times, the seeking is more interesting to me than the knowing. I’ve seen it here, right here on this land; is there self-loathing? What’s beneath the surface of us all? Did I see myself here for the first time, or was I just revealed anew, from a novel angle and in skewed light? The absolute beauty of being permissive, of stepping aside and watching oneself from the wings – it can’t be beat, though it stays with you in some way I can’t yet fully understand. I don’t think I ever will understand it. Watching others though – there’s the bittersweet fruit. The fallen human trembles and tumbles through life, and even at the lowest point renders to itself the most poetic, romanticized stroke.” – from A Mnemonic of Longing, an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.

Still falling
Breathless and on again
Inside today
Beside me today
A round broken in two
’til your eyes shed into dust
Like two strangers turning into dust
’til my hand shook the way I fear

I could possibly be fading
Or have something more to gain
I could feel myself growing colder
I could feel myself under your face
Under…your face

It was you
breathless and torn
I could feel my eyes turning into dust
And two strangers turning into dust
Turning into dust.

“Into Dust” by Mazzy Star

All images above are from digital photos taken between May and August 2001.

Inspiration – Sloane Snure Paullus

Posted on by under Life, Teaching

The first class I was a part of teaching at the University of Missouri included three grads – Nancy Brown, Ian Shelly, and Sloane Snure Paullus. These three – and a few others, like Catherine Armbrust, Eric Sweet, and Natalie Hellmann (among others) – have defined my experience as a teacher at MU.

Above: Sloane beading back in 2007.

Over the last year or so I’ve seen each of those first three grads finalize a body of work, refine and defend their thesis writing, organize their thesis exhibition, and move on to new things. This week saw Sloane and her husband move away from Columbia and into a new phase of their lives.

Above: Sloane and her peephole boxes, 2008.

For so long Sloane has been a cornerstone of the Art Department, bringing both intellectual excellence and paroxysms of mirth to each of us. She transformed the culture of the department, raising the bar and shaking things up. There’s really no one like her.

Above: Sloane hanging out with Ian at the Annual “Kinkade Christmas Cottage” viewing, 2009.

She was the perfect grad student; engaging as an artist, thoughtful as a friend, cosmopolitan in her views, expansive in her mentality, and distinctively creative in her sense of humor. I am thankful to have known her.

Above: Sloane Loves Britney! Halloween 2009.

Keep us all updated, Sloane! We love you!

Note: No lens flares were harmed in the making of this blog post.