Big footsteps...

Dad looking surprisingly contemporary for over a half century ago. He didn't need the trappings to be a wonderful artist. Makeshift easel, foil on the rabbit ears and headphones in an Alaska winter.

Buy Back the Land...

Here’s an update for you on this “in progress” panel from “Buy Back The Land,” a concertina work, 12 x162 inches (1x18.5 feet). Each panel, on a double spread, is 12x18 inches. Mixed media, my own photographs and images of the site and a previous painting series, Working the River. 

Tiptoed into this piece as a story took shape and held my breath to sense for monsters waiting in the darkness of unaware. 

In an effort to understand how to translate to myself what the work I make is trying to tell me, I found sketchbooks an effective Rosetta Stone between the subconscious and the face staring vacantly back from the mirror. For decades, my art has been screaming to get my attention while I continued oblivious to messages from my soul. Understanding appears to begin when we allow ourselves to know what we know.

Fascinated by the concept of concertinas, I connected into Karen Stamper’s class to learn more about these long, folded format sketchbooks. The applications she teaches are invaluable to this art form. Karen mentioned “themes” early in the process and my subconscious went into overdrive, incorporating my own photographs and images of paintings from a previous show, as well as desiccated flora photos and drawings. 

I have an obsession for the process of decay. A tree cone dries and transforms into a “rose” or an avocado pit dehydrates into layers of paper like leaves. The second stage of a growing thing is possibly far more interesting than the, esteemed as more beautiful, original growth. Symbolic of the cycle of nature as well as our own lives.

The images of the defunct paper mill continued to appear, rearrange and place themselves, until I resonated to the tones of aging, abandonment, betrayal, ecocide, nods to religion in the church of commerce, a systematic stripping of identity. Imprisonment. A rich internal, ancestral and environmental awareness. The layering of paper and paint, recycled envelopes and images translated the troubles rolling around in my soul. The griefs of a land, a life, of a river.

The mill is located on the Willamette, sacred ground to Indigenous Peoples. Home of sea lions bigger than the puny boats of fishing folk attempting to pull a catch from a depleted channel. Reduced population of salmon, shore birds and animals. Colonizers blew out the banks of the river, constructed a mill, dammed the water. As an aging woman in the business world, deemed no longer useful for profit, power or sexual favor, the crumbling buildings are being offloaded. What I find most galling, is Confederate Tribes had to buy back land their ancestors were evicted from and they’ve stewarded since time was known.  

Buy Back The Land is a theme for many of us. Return to our heritage to nourish our soul, and by recounting our personal stories recognize the seeds of our identity buried with our ancestors. Reframe our meta narrative.

Our work is always speaking. Yet, I missed all of this the first time. Or perhaps I wasn’t ready. The process becomes a question of how we listen and invite the words to help us discern meaning in our life. We buy back our own land.

What is your creative impulse guiding you toward? If you listened, would you hear your story speaking to you?

Playing with fire...

Far left: Bill Neithercoat and me. Our parents were friends and made us trek with them to the middle of nowhere for picnics. Thanks for the photo, Bill, and Robbie for my best toys, a box of colored fly-tying feathers and a book of stamps. 

Playing with fire is one of the five dangerous things Gever Tulley, founder of The Tinkering School, deems critical for children to learn to play and retain the ability to play as adults. Another, handling sharp objects as extension of the self. One of the first gifts from dad was a pocket knife, upgrading to a hunting knife around second grade. I learned he trusted me. Yes, there are scars, yet I never hit an artery.

In Alaska, come break-up, every caregiver screams the same litany. “Summer is short. Get out and play.” Let’s be real. The truth is every other creature is mating and the parents are feeling spring frisky so existing progeny are relegated to the porch and whatever unsupervised mischief they can get up to.

The Earthquake destroyed our town and the family experienced a diaspora. Until then, a half-sister with her six children, another half-sister enjoying her beauty and serial monogamy, and a trio of boy cousins experienced an anchored family group. We included former brothers-in-law. By extension, every kid in the village was family.

During the weeks when my parents went hunting winter meals, I stayed with Sister. She taught me to ride a bike, play badminton and consistently discovered wherever I was hiding out to confiscate the inevitable book. You’d think she’d have bigger things to worry about. She commanded me to play when I had no concept of what “play” was with zero interest in enduring swarms of mosquitos to drag a bucket after a hoard of small people questing to find the most earthworms or frogs. How the early indoctrination of competition and the war of business found it’s way to children in the middle of nowhere mystifies me. Even then, as well as pointless, the occupation felt disruptive on ecological levels. The days the ships came in and we trooped to the docks were a notch up. The sailors threw candy down to the kids and the women rejoiced for vegetables and eggs, loosely termed fresh after weeks in a hold.

In the North, summer days last 24/7 and I felt far more drawn to sneak outside after the adults were in bed and run in solitary delight with the rabbits. See a moose or two. Find old bones or fabulous petrified wood. Feel the spring of footsteps on tundra and the delicious musky, spice scent of scraggy spruce along with impossibly fresh air. Snack on berries winking back in midnight sun. My play was different.

After the earthquake, we moved every year. In third grade, we were allowed to paint in the back of the class after we’d completed our lessons. I’d finished a painting and was pulling out another sheet of paper when a self-assigned monitor of propriety, with the indignation only 8 year olds in all of their mean girl glory can carry off, announced I was doing “it” wrong. IT being the audacity to make more than the allowed one painting a day. As an adult, I understand the need for rationing heavy and expensive as paper in a village where supplies were delivered by float plane or boat. As an embarrassed child, I didn’t paint again.

I’d ignominiously flunked childhood at a very early age and had no clue how to play. Didn’t fare much better as a fully growed artist. In representational art there are subtle exclusions and sanctions while the pack blindly follows the scent of abstraction. Abstract artists know how to competently play, right? Everywhere we turn in art making these days, play is the new buzzword. Let go and play. For decades, I avoided anything with overtones of play since inability to play correctly was obviously a deep flaw.

Long story for a short conclusion. Who knew all those years of making campfires and skinning fish fostered key requisites of play? So deeply grounded in the fundamental elements, I didn’t recognize what play really is and wasted a lot of time looking to Others who were Successful to show me the way. They are thriving their way. While people may share jewels along the way, the path to our own truth is ever inward.

We innately know how to make our art. We know what we love to do. We recognize our true work. We confuse the issue when we make the concept harder than it has to be. Why search for fun when we can have bliss? My inner child is fine, thank you very much! She’s contented with a good book curled up in the window seat of my heart while I explore in the studio.

Unfortunately, I’m not the only one who experiences stuckness around art when associated with the word play. When every day with art making holds magic why do we need to define the experience as play? Perpetually interested might be a loose synonym. If happiness, joy, new knowledge, expanded skill are the end result of a creative day, isn’t that the same effect?

So play comes down to definitions and healthy danger. Who knew? Play was in there all along. How many times in art making do we chase the latest when what we want patiently rides our shoulder waiting for us to notice? What is trying to get your creative attention today?

Check out the TED talks by Gever Tully and Stuart Brown for more. Spoiler alert: the best part is the play ballet between the polar bear and husky.

Ray and Kiki and Me...

Segment from a 12” x 13.5’ work in progress. The point of these under layers is to disrupt the surface and get over the “preciousness” of the white space. Trust me. Will document the layers as they go.

Ray Bradbury is my new hero. His solution to creative block is fascinating. Basically, he said a creative block, drawing a blank means we’re not doing the true work we’re supposed to be doing and our subconscious is mad at us. I don’t know about you, there’s hell to pay when my subconscious is angry with me.

When computers came roaring into our lives I was excited and savvy. I’ve lost precious time since chasing the market and angsting over systems designed to change faster than most mortals can keep up. Many of us who run on a natural clock struggle when we think social media is requisite for marketing our work. Bradbury offered a bottom line solution: tech is “flimflam.” Succinct, and for the most part true, if the evidence of this moment in time holds.

I’ve been dragging my feet for years on a newsletter then compromised my integrity on promises of sending one and not come through. I apologize. I don’t like being intruded on and hesitate to intrude on others yet, I don’t sleep when I don’t keep promises. This is my happy version of a newsletter. Realized this week I’m not a photographer., rather a documentarian. I’ll share what I’m doing and what’s happening in my creative world. Stop by with your tea and curiosity when you’re in the mood. You’re welcome anytime.

Rumor on the street out of Europe is newsletters are becoming a thing of the past since we’re all inundated and over the novelty. I enjoy the few I subscribe to and read with the purpose of learning something new, enjoying beauty shared, or hearing what a friend is up to. Hope this evolution of a newsletter will bring at least that much to you.

I’ve given Bradbury’s words a think in terms of actual application, and had a conversation with the best coach out there, Megan Macedo. A read about how she encourages people to build a body of their true work is well worth the time.

Immersion in tech keeps most of us drugged so we don’t have time for personal decisions, time to sink into ourselves to consider what we really want. Tech tranquilizes our intuitive voice, shouting down our knowing to terrorize us with FOMO and what should be done to promote and grab our share of the pie. In reality, when we do our real work, we have our very own pie. Possibly a whole bakery! Or a franchise of pie eaterys. Worrying about success in the art market place distracts us from our fears around actually making the work. About this time we hear, or don’t hear, from our subconscious.

Distraction is a technique we perfect to keep us from the frightening prospect of knowing ourselves through our work. For most of us, tech is not our true work. If tech is what rocks your socks, sincere best to you as you enjoy what you do.

What is to be gained by eschewing the current pace and propaganda of social media? Peace. Contentment. Satisfaction. Freedom. Pure and simple. Cut the umbilicus to the need for competition. Make what we love and believe in our true work supports us every time. And yes, sometimes we need a supplemental day job to fill our stomachs while our true work supports our soul.

In the middle of nowhere in Alaska a couple of decades ago, I was doing portraits. In frustration I yelled to the Universe if I was supposed to be making portraits the folks who want them could show up at the door. Literally, a few days later, a young woman came to the house (in those days, anyone could give basic direction to each other’s home) and commissioned a portrait of her parents. Literal proof the world will find you. Being human, in the external crazy, I’ve forgotten too many times through the years and as a result, lost faith in myself.

Kiki Smith struck the gold of truth …“Just do your work. If the world needs your work it will come and get you. And if it doesn’t, do your work anyway. You can have fantasies over having control over the world, but I know I can barely control my kitchen sink. That is the grace I’m given. Because when one can control things, one is limited to ones own vision.”

What is your true, authentic work that makes you feel real? What have you sacrificed of your true work that you want to recover?

Pairing words and art...

“All There in Black and White”

I show up to paintings as I would a huge breaker, rush to the wind and fling myself into the wave or the work. The canvases are large, between 3x4 foot and 4x6 foot. However, when I’m metaphorically crawling onto the sand with a back scraped raw from undertow, coughing up my guts, I curl around a 6” square sketchbook of collage. I explore what’s broken with synonyms, clawing the rotting skin of words away, going deeper and deeper until I find peace. Working primarily with Shizen paper, dried palette papers and up cycled envelopes, I push images to define the words and emotions. The first few pages slog around in the morass of amorphous feelings until they find purchase and the concepts become clearer. By the time a book or two is full, I’m amazed at what I discover by allowing the images to perform as mirror.