Let’s keep going, ok? These pictures have been in my wallet for about eight years. I take them out to show to students and friends. And I frequently look at them myself – so thankful and appreciative for who you are. I want to see how these pictures look in another eight years, and another eight after that, and after that. I love you, Alison.
*see little Miranda Grace Ballou’s first bow there? I keep that in there, too:)
And here’s the link to last year’s remembrance…
There’s a great piece up on the Guardian UK website showing a film of famed painter Sean Scully talking about working, being a father, and other topics. Though I’m not a huge fan of his work, I love what he says here:
“You’re trying to, in a sense, imitate God because you’re trying to be creative. And I can never make anything better than Oisin (his son). That’s my greatest creation.”
and here:
“I’m not sure that I have a destination in mind. I’m on a journey. I don’t expect to arrive.”
and here:
“If you’re plotting art, and trying to make something to get something, you’re not in a state of creative innocence. You’re not making art. You’re doing something else.”
This last bit is fantastic. I find it quirky for an artist like Scully – who has exhibited such consistency and clearly defined formatting for decades – to make that statement. But it is really something I believe in. I tell my students constantly: I couldn’t care less about products – I want experiences. I think that’s part of what Scully is saying there.
I don’t want my students to merely execute skills or master techniques; I want them to live out the sense of being that’s wrapped up in obtaining those skills or using those techniques. Making artwork is physical philosophy… it’s a musing on what it means to be miraculously conscious, purposefully aware, intuitively engaged and intellectually stimulated by a range of actions and tremendously important conditions of the human body/mind.
Above: Sketchbook drawing from 2006… it keeps coming back to me. Some day it’ll resolve into an image.
I saw the Scully story via Two Coats of Paint. Check out that blog.
One of the best things Barry Gealt – my primary professor at Indiana University (I got my MFA in Painting there in ’05) – ever convinced me of was the fundamental need for artists (and people in general) to develop and project what he called “a generosity of spirit”. It was one of those obvious things we so often need to be told to see as obvious.
But what did it really mean? I think Barry meant it in a few different ways… at least I interpreted it in a couple key ways and continue to refine my understanding of it. At the time, I thought of generosity of spirit in two main ways:
First, I thought of it as consciously extending basic good will toward other artists. When an artist is in the studio, when they work hard, when they spend time with ideas and words and thoughts and images, they deserve some true consideration, some assumption that they’re not just pulling the wool over an audience’s eyes. People who really dedicate years of their life to art-making aren’t doing it just to craft a lame inside joke; they’re doing it because they love it, they believe in it, and have made huge sacrifices to do it. That sacrifice deserves respect – it deserves the generosity of believing the best about them.
Secondly, Barry stimulated me to think of generosity of spirit as a kind of networking principle. This wasn’t the crass, dog-eat-dog networking of just using people to get a leg up on the competition. Yet it went beyond the quid pro quo angle as well. It wasn’t just doing one thing to get another, it was taking initiative to actively create opportunities for others. It went beyond doing something nice in the hopes that you’d get something nice in return later on. It was a lifestyle choice, a way to create a culture of support and encouragement for artists in general. If enough people got on board we’d all be giving and receiving something far beyond “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” – we’d get a sea change of the human equation. Generosity of spirit was Barry’s “pay it forward” concept.
In this sense, generosity of spirit sort of rests on a rhetorical question stemming from the bible: “what do I have that I haven’t received?” Obviously I’ve received everything – life, breath, language, mental capacity – and could do NOTHING to obtain them in the first place. While I am responsible for fostering and developing them over my lifetime, recognizing that I did nothing to get them and couldn’t replace them if they were taken from me instills (or should instill) a deep perspective of gratitude and hopefulness in the finite contingency of my life. This perspective should cause me, in appreciation and good will, to seek the best for others, to hold others up, to be a friend, to be compassionate, to be joyful and proactive in what I do. Why? Because I know that I am not what I am because I “deserve” it, but because I have received a great treasure in the form of being-ness and consciousness, and a great fundamental dignity in the form of being human. In the light of these things I must recognize the essential value and significance of others. They too received what they could not manufacture for themselves; we’re all in the same boat. Knowing that I couldn’t even live – or continue to live – without what I’ve been given causes me to value giving in itself. When I value giving, I do it for its own sake and work to create opportunities and possibilities for others. We should give because we have received.
At this point I tend to think about generosity of spirit as just this: grace. Grace: unmerited favor. Giving and extending goodness and honor to others without considering their “worthiness”. Grace: purposely working to be thoughtful, honest, loving, and considerate to everyone, regardless of what they can do or can’t do for me. They are human – Imago Dei – and so am I, so I must recognize, value, and uphold their dignity through true appreciation, encouragement, and good will. I fail at this all the time – I am so easily swayed into favoritism or laziness – but it’s what I try for.
Anyway, over the last couple of months as I’ve worked to finalize artworks and frame them for the shows I have coming up this year, these ideas of generosity of spirit and grace have been coming up again and again. People have been endlessly helpful to me. People like my wife giving me time to work long hours, allowing me to take over the entire house as my own personal workshop, and editing/proofreading my writing. People like Matt Moyer, David Spear, and the Larsons providing me with vehicles for collecting materials and shipping artworks. People like Shannon (a former student of mine) giving my current student Danielle detailed information about their areas of interest just because I asked. People like Brooke and Danielle hanging out with my wife to encourage her during this time of intense work. People like Jake and Aarik building me up, supporting me with IPAs, pizzas grilled outside in the snow, good talks, good music, and a vision for the future. People like Natalie creating such a beautiful arena for ideas (and for getting engaged to the Kilngod). People like Ian and Bruce selflessly working with me on upcoming shows.
There are so many more. I could write dozens more names, reflect on hundreds of blessings from people near and far. And I could write and write, finding more ways to define generosity of spirit. The ways of understanding the reality that we have nothing that we have not been given are endless, and they’re an endlessly worthy engagement.
Be generous, friends.
I graduated from SAIC nearly 10 years ago, and I’ve got a lot of memories from there. At first, right after I graduated, I was pretty negative about my experience. I felt as if they’d denied me some aspect of my education necessary to my future, that they’d tried to indoctrinate me, that they’d treated me like a number, not an artist.
In ways I was right, but in a lot of ways I was wrong. I’ve since gotten over it and look back with fondness, thankful that I grew so much during those years. One of the ways in which I grew was in my attention to the things that drew my eye. I began to document heavily, shooting thousands of photographs in the last couple years of my undergraduate career. Below I’ve posted some of those images. These are all from SAIC hallways and environs circa 1999/2000. I was obsessed with the angles, passages of light, and transitioning spaces in the places I saw every day.
Above, looking through the peep hole of my dorm door, 112 South Michigan Ave, 9th floor. This space no longer exists. Below, the elevator I took so many times.
Dead birds (they constantly flew headlong into the bank of windows on that facade, then fell, in droves, into the water below), dead leaves, and my shadow in a pool outside the lake side of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Two stairwell views on the way to the Advanced Painting studios (above and below).
Another stairwell view, light on the landing.
Glass and light, looking up toward the Advanced Painting studios.
Sunlight glances through the shades of my 13th floor (the smoking floor) dorm at 162 North State Street.
Seen written on a slate blackboard. In a barn outside of Glen Arbor, MI. In 2008. Click for larger view.
More on Voulkos here.
A great contemplation by the NYTs Roberta Smith from December 31st, 2009.
“Each piece of [art] is a concentration or distillation of ideas, inspiration, sensibility and craftsmanship into a frozen, obdurately physical moment that focuses our attention and then unfolds in the mind. Sometimes what unfolds is a chronological narrative conveyed by a single representative image or a series of them; sometimes it is an intense experience that seems to takes you out of time, yet persists and reverberates in the echo chamber of personal memory. Usually it is a combination of both.”
I couldn’t agree more. Read the rest here.
Me with one of my favorite art students, Shannon.
She earned honors for her work in Psychology at MU. She minored in Art, which is obviously where I worked with her.
Honor students often name a faculty person who walks with them in the procession to the ceremony where they receive their honors regalia. I was humbled when Shannon asked me to attend the festivities with her.
She is a dedicated, thoughtful, conscientious person. I’m looking forward to seeing the trajectory of her continued success as she looks toward Graduate School and combines her love for people with her love for art. Good job, Shannon!
Miranda
Your hands and feet… your eyes and brain… they are all more than fresh; they are still being knit together.
As I sit here, there you are across the room in your mother, your heart striking a tattoo of potential to future joys and woes. When I think about all that I am, all that your mom is, all that our people are, all that our world is, I am caught short of breath… not really overwhelmed, but overawed.
Overawed because I know that, in major ways (foreseen and unforeseen), I will be part of the way you access all that has been. This great world, this great universe of experience and time and sensation and being – each facet part of your inheritance as a human being – is going to be presented to you by my faltering, limited, frail hands and voice.
And I am moved by all of this, partly because I know that being alive is hard and I don’t want you to hurt. But I am more moved by it because I know how much the miracle of being conscious has inundated me, made me, transformed me. The glories and wonders of the things you’ll know and see and touch and hear and be flood me; I, too, know them, and know that you’ll know them so much differently than I have. But we’ll have that knowing to share.
Part of that knowing is a realization that the dignity of what you are is because of a Story that transcends space, time, personality, individuality, and being itself. That’s the place I want to start, even as we explore everything else, because everything else is embedded in that Story. You are in that Story.
You are the precious thoughts of the Author of that Story. You are the manifestation of the articulated structures of Story rippling through all things. You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
In 2001 I had a 3 month Fellowship Residency at Ox-Bow, a summer program associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
We did a lot of stuff there, made a lot of art, raised a lot of hell, ate a lot of food, etc, etc, etc, but we also made Lutz Art.
My understanding is that the Lutz no longer exists… so here’s to the Lutz and the art we made there that summer so long ago.
For more on Ox-Bow, go here.
The Columbia Daily Tribune is running a feature on Neil Gavett, one of the primary models I’ve used in my work over the last couple of years. He’s a pretty cool guy, has an interesting back story, and a staggering plethora of tales to tell. Neil is also a professional art model; he’s posed for nearly 10,000 hours and has been working consistently for over a decade in the Mid-Missouri area. Below is the first painting I ever did of Neil (Fall 2007).
I’ve been honored to get to know the man. In working with him, I have tried to create images worthy of the symbiotic relationship we’ve developed, a relationship that could never happen without his deep intention and purposeful action as a man and a model.
Here’s to many more pictures, Neil!
UPDATE: Here’s a related item from the New York Times today: “In the Altogether.”
eikonktizo 
