Buon Giorno! Or, as we like to say in Sunnyside, hello!
Wait? What?
The week before leaving for Rome, I was up at the Monastery in a week-long, silent meditation intensive retreat. It is a wonderful thing and I highly recommend it to all but it did add a certain level of stress in terms of being ready to leave for nine days in Italy about 24 hours after getting back home. Indeed, as I sat in silence for those many hours, my mind would turn towards this trip and it would say "No." While my fears around flying came into the picture, the No wasn't totally about being afraid. It was more a longing to stay put (for once).
I am pretty sure that when the idea of wandering around Rome seems like a burden and chore, then it might be a sign that the timing is off. I mean, it feels almost like a crime against humanity to say that you don't want to spend nine days in Italy. Who says that?
Apparently I do. Each day, I would do a little check-in with myself: how does it feel to imagine going? How does it feel to imagine not going? Then, when I got home, I checked in with Lucy, who said, "I knew I didn't need to pack!" Old Mom is very obvious, I guess. I checked in with Finn, who just said that he needed more money if I wasn't going to be around to pay for everything. Ever practical, that guy.
Finn will be coming home for a spell very soon, so I will be seeing his long and lanky self in, well, about nine days time. Now, I can actually be ready! And finish the living room curtains. And paint the walls. And get the couch re-upholstered. Also: grocery shopping. And get the two art projects that returned from their various locations organized and put away instead of filling the above-mentioned living room.
I know that all that I just mentioned could have waited for nine days with no dire consequences but it occurred to me, as I sat in my stillness and silence, that my body was giving my a very clear message about what it needs. Usually, I might notice that message and overrule it. I mean, we gotta do stuff, right? That's how we prove our worthiness to occupy this little patch of real estate that we currently occupy on the planet. Right? I had the very radical thought that I might be worthy of occupying my little patch of real estate under my feet without running my body into the ground and even without making everyone around me happy or impressed or anything at all. What if I just listened instead and did the thing that was alternately easier and more difficult and stayed home?
Finn plans to return to Italy after getting a job and saving up some money so he can mix up WWOOFing with other travel. So, we considered this a postponement not a cancellation. Of course, who knows what will happen in the meantime - he is in a pivotal time of his life - but I trust that Rome will be there. It is the Eternal City, after all.
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Friday, November 13, 2015
Holding onto the Bars
Yesterday, I went to see an exhibition of paintings, drawings and etching by Giorgio Morandi at David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea. It was so beautiful that I actually got a little teary-eyed. The paintings just shimmer with their subtle colour changes and simplicity. They are both confident and humble. Pure joy, really.
As a bonus (as if we needed one!), we discovered that there were two other shows at David Zwirner (the guys owns almost a city block of gallery space): one of paintings and drawings by Bridget Riley and one of sculpture by Donald Judd. Three home runs, if you will excuse the sports metaphor on an artist blog.
I went to see these shows with my art school pal, Patrick Glover, who is, himself, an amazing painter and someone who it is great fun to talk about art with, although we were pretty silent in the Morandi show. It is beyond words - you just have to feel it.
Patrick had arrived on the block where the Zwirner real estate empire resides before me and had looked into a gallery across the street. He didn't have a very high opinion of the work on view there - photoshopped landscapes that were manipulated, enlarged and then painted over - but he invited me to go look just in case he had missed something or sold them short. To be honest, I already knew what I thought even before we got inside - the paintings visible through the window from the street told me all I needed to know. But, we went in and looked more closely.
In a good story about redemption, we would have looked more closely and discovered their hidden beauty and realized how our short-sighted, knee-jerk reaction was causing us to miss out on so much of the nuances and beauty available to us in life. But it didn't happen that way. The more I looked, the snarkier I became, first in my mind and then, out loud. I became irritated by what I perceived to be the fatuous attitude of the work - sickly sweet colours, the worst kind of cleverness in the technique, and meaningless content. I began to imagine this guy at parties, surrounded by glad-handers and being praised for his talent. And him smugly accepting this praise as his due. Indeed, I had a full picture of him, his life, even his clothes and the inevitable beard.
It must be nice to know so much from so little, right?
This is what struck me as I hissed sarcastic comments to Patrick and we sniggered in our own version of smug superiority - a feeling that was so familiar that it actually felt physically warm. And it felt old and worn out. I realized that I had not had this kind of snarky conversation in a long time, where I ripped apart someone's art with my words and my superior attitude. While it felt so, so comfortable - oh yes, I know this place so well! - it also felt kinda yucky. I thought about how reluctant we (I) are (am) to let go of the bars of the jail cell of our own making. I might be working very hard and very deliberately to let go of the many ways that I confine myself and make myself smaller, not to mention hurt people and cause suffering, but...can I just keep a bar or two of my cage? You know, for comfort's sake?
That's what it felt like - like I was carrying around one of my old bars of my jail cell. Pretty heavy and totally useless. Maybe I can loosen my grip on them now. And may I wish that guy - beard or no beard - my congratulations on his exhibition in that gallery across the street from David Zwirner.
As a bonus (as if we needed one!), we discovered that there were two other shows at David Zwirner (the guys owns almost a city block of gallery space): one of paintings and drawings by Bridget Riley and one of sculpture by Donald Judd. Three home runs, if you will excuse the sports metaphor on an artist blog.
I went to see these shows with my art school pal, Patrick Glover, who is, himself, an amazing painter and someone who it is great fun to talk about art with, although we were pretty silent in the Morandi show. It is beyond words - you just have to feel it.
Patrick had arrived on the block where the Zwirner real estate empire resides before me and had looked into a gallery across the street. He didn't have a very high opinion of the work on view there - photoshopped landscapes that were manipulated, enlarged and then painted over - but he invited me to go look just in case he had missed something or sold them short. To be honest, I already knew what I thought even before we got inside - the paintings visible through the window from the street told me all I needed to know. But, we went in and looked more closely.
In a good story about redemption, we would have looked more closely and discovered their hidden beauty and realized how our short-sighted, knee-jerk reaction was causing us to miss out on so much of the nuances and beauty available to us in life. But it didn't happen that way. The more I looked, the snarkier I became, first in my mind and then, out loud. I became irritated by what I perceived to be the fatuous attitude of the work - sickly sweet colours, the worst kind of cleverness in the technique, and meaningless content. I began to imagine this guy at parties, surrounded by glad-handers and being praised for his talent. And him smugly accepting this praise as his due. Indeed, I had a full picture of him, his life, even his clothes and the inevitable beard.
It must be nice to know so much from so little, right?
This is what struck me as I hissed sarcastic comments to Patrick and we sniggered in our own version of smug superiority - a feeling that was so familiar that it actually felt physically warm. And it felt old and worn out. I realized that I had not had this kind of snarky conversation in a long time, where I ripped apart someone's art with my words and my superior attitude. While it felt so, so comfortable - oh yes, I know this place so well! - it also felt kinda yucky. I thought about how reluctant we (I) are (am) to let go of the bars of the jail cell of our own making. I might be working very hard and very deliberately to let go of the many ways that I confine myself and make myself smaller, not to mention hurt people and cause suffering, but...can I just keep a bar or two of my cage? You know, for comfort's sake?
That's what it felt like - like I was carrying around one of my old bars of my jail cell. Pretty heavy and totally useless. Maybe I can loosen my grip on them now. And may I wish that guy - beard or no beard - my congratulations on his exhibition in that gallery across the street from David Zwirner.
Tuesday, November 03, 2015
Prima di Roma
You know how you can be thinking something and thinking that something for a long time and it gets all fixed in your head and you start to believe your idea of this particular reality and you believe it so thoroughly that it seems impossible that anyone else would not also believe it and then you actually say that thing out loud and almost instantaneously everything changes so that your very fixed idea about this thing is so woefully out of date that it is remarkable that anyone, let alone yourself, ever believed such a thing? You know?
Well, that's sort of what happened when I wrote that post about losing my fire around making art. Whatever process that happened around writing about what I had been thinking for months opened things up and - wait? Was that a spark of something creative that I felt burning inside? I went to my studio and sorted through the work I made at the Saltonstall Foundation residency and, you know, it didn't totally suck. In fact, there are some solid ideas there worth pursuing. Note to self: go to studio more often.
The thing that signaled most clearly that a shift was happening in my entrenched "I am the worst artist ever" energy is that I was noodling around on Newfoundland real estate websites (hey - some people collect stamps, ok?) and I found a listing for a former high school in a wee town way up at the tip of the Northern Peninsula, St. Lunaire-Griget. And I wanted to buy it and make something BIG. The back story about this is that, fourteen years ago when we were looking to buy a house in Newfoundland, we came across a former school building in a wee town on White Bay. Like this one, it is available for a crazy low price. At that point, I was married to someone who thinks very, very practically and he entertained me and my fantasy for a brief - very brief - period of time before listing off all the ways that buying a huge building in a tiny, remote community was a bad idea. So we ended up with our (now, my) lovely house in Gillams instead.
Clearly, it was a wise decision....and yet. The "what ifs" have haunted me ever since.
So, what would you do with a 25,000 sq.ft. building in a town of 600 where it snows in June on a regular basis?
Maybe going to Rome later this month will actually help to dampen the fire!
Well, that's sort of what happened when I wrote that post about losing my fire around making art. Whatever process that happened around writing about what I had been thinking for months opened things up and - wait? Was that a spark of something creative that I felt burning inside? I went to my studio and sorted through the work I made at the Saltonstall Foundation residency and, you know, it didn't totally suck. In fact, there are some solid ideas there worth pursuing. Note to self: go to studio more often.
The thing that signaled most clearly that a shift was happening in my entrenched "I am the worst artist ever" energy is that I was noodling around on Newfoundland real estate websites (hey - some people collect stamps, ok?) and I found a listing for a former high school in a wee town way up at the tip of the Northern Peninsula, St. Lunaire-Griget. And I wanted to buy it and make something BIG. The back story about this is that, fourteen years ago when we were looking to buy a house in Newfoundland, we came across a former school building in a wee town on White Bay. Like this one, it is available for a crazy low price. At that point, I was married to someone who thinks very, very practically and he entertained me and my fantasy for a brief - very brief - period of time before listing off all the ways that buying a huge building in a tiny, remote community was a bad idea. So we ended up with our (now, my) lovely house in Gillams instead.
Clearly, it was a wise decision....and yet. The "what ifs" have haunted me ever since.
So, what would you do with a 25,000 sq.ft. building in a town of 600 where it snows in June on a regular basis?
Maybe going to Rome later this month will actually help to dampen the fire!
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