barack the magic....

I have a habit of "going ostrich" whenever the subject of Rush Limbaugh comes up. The only time I have really paid attention was when he went after Michael J. Fox, which I considered not immoral--it was amoral. You have to wonder if the man has any compass at all, as in he's not psychotic--he's a psychopath.

This little ditty called "Barack the Magic Negro" is not Limbaugh's invention (that distinction belongs to Paul Shanklin), but Limbaugh promoted it on his show, and I don't ever intend to forget it. Furthermore, it's on a CD that was distributed with the intent of generating goodwill among (angry white) men as part of this year's Winter Shopping Festival. The giver was Chip Saltsman and the recipients were key members of the RNC/GOP, who were given a gentle seasonal reminder that Saltsman would like to be the group's next leader.

Atonal.

i love rain

We have lived in our funky, weird house on College Ave. for nearly 10 years now. Those 10 years correspond exactly with my love of rain.

Our house has a low-pitched roof, and the ceilings of each of the upstairs room mirrors the roof's pitch on the underside; each room is 1.5 stories with an angled ceiling. The insulation--if you can call it that--is thin. Which means that our house is cold in the winter and hot in the summer and that whenever it rains there is the most beautiful sound throughout the upstairs. Same thing with our main-level family room, and best of all--my ground-floor studio.

I could listen to the rain all day, every day. I drink coffee or wine or I paint or I read or nap or snuggle with Luna. And I try to be very quiet and not talk because I don't want anything to detract from that magical sound. When I get bored, I look out the window at the swollen creek that runs through our backyard.

Rain today and tomorrow. Even thunderstorms! Heaven.

the surge

Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard
by Mary Oliver
(image: Joseph Cornell)

His beak could open a bottle,
and his eyes - when he lifts their soft lids -
go on reading something
just beyond your shoulder -
Blake, maybe,
or the Book of Revelation.

Never mind that he eats only
the black-smocked crickets,
and the dragonflies if they happen
to be out late over the ponds, and of course
the occasional festal mouse.
Never mind that he is only a memo
from the offices of fear -

it’s not size but surge that tells us
when we’re in touch with something real,
and when I hear him in the orchard
fluttering
down the little aluminum
ladder of his scream -
when I see his wings open, like two black ferns,

a flurry of palpitations
as cold as sleet
rackets across the marshlands
of my heart
like a wild spring day.

Somewhere in the universe,
in the gallery of important things,
the babyish owl, ruffled and rakish,
sits on its pedestal.
Dear, dark dapple of plush!
A message, reads the label,
from that mysterious conglomerate:
Oblivion and Co.
The hooked head stares
from its house of dark, feathery lace.
It could be a valentine.

used with admiration, but without permission

This just in!

Thanks to my good friend Sharon Bardonner for forwarding this to me under the subject line : Celebrate! =D

Anne's 5 greatest tennis moments of 2008 (as if anybody cares)

Let me start by saying that I don't get the Tennis Channel, and Indy's ATP tournament is waning in relevance, so I don't have many opportunities to see world-class tennis except when the Slams are on. Even then, the networks tend to focus only on Americans or the biggest stars. So if you want real insight into tennis check out Craig Hickman's Tennis Blog or Savannah's World.

But I do love the game, and I watch it as much as I can. Right now the men's tour far surpasses the women's in terms of competitiveness, interest, and all-around excellence of top tier players. (Pains me to say so, but it's true.) So my top moments are almost all about testosterone.

The countdown:

#5 Venus vs. Serena for the Wimbledon title
Long after everyone had stopped looking for a truly competitive match between these two (there always seemed to be complicated familial ambivalence about winning on both sides of the court) , they came at each other with everything they had and threw it down. And somewhat to my surprise, Venus came up the winner. Sure, Wimbledon is where Venus famously plays her best, and she was on pace. But I have seen enough of Serena to know that you can never count her out, even if she's down 1-6, 0-4--she's still going to win the match; you watch. But this time she didn't, and you can tell that she was, well...kinda pissed. But she recovered enough to go out later that day and take the ladies' doubles title with her sister, and an Olympic gold medal with the same partner later in the summer.


#4 Rafael Nadal vs. Roger Federer for the Roland Garros title
OK, this was sort of expected, because Rafa is the king of clay court tennis. He's played 22 matches at Roland Garros over a period of four years--and he's never lost. In fact, all the drama came from his perennial opponent, Roger Federer, but for the most unlikely reasons. Roger, who for years has beaten everyone on every surface--except for Rafa on clay--suddenly looked vulnerable. He is presumed to be the greatest player who ever lived, yet he is still chasing Borg's achievements and Sampras's Wimbledon record, and NOW the pundits are starting to say invincible Roger may be running out of time. (Please don't believe it.)

Rafa beat Roger, matching Bjorn Borg's record of winning four consecutive French Opens. But for the first time, I felt myself pulling for Roger a little. I don't like punishing dominance, which is what made it so hard for me to root for Roger in the past. Until 2008, the outcome of Roger vs. anybody-but-Rafa-at-Roland Garros was a forgone conclusion. Roger has the greatest game of all time, but I began to wonder...is he tanking? Is something in his head?


#3 Novak Djokovic vs. Everyone for the Australian title
The 20-year old Serbian phenom didn't drop a set on the way to the final, including his semifinal defeat of defending champion Roger Federer (this is when cracks in the Federer armor first appeared). It was closer than a straight set victory sounds: 7–5, 6–3, 7–6(5), which in my mind proves Djokovic's mettle. Then he defeated Jo-Wilifred Tsonga in a four-set final. A lot of people are annoyed by Djokovic and his interminable ball-bouncing and on-court antics; but I love his intensity. He reminds me of John McEnroe, which is a good thing. Djokovic's defeat of Federer meant it would be the first Grand Slam tournament won by someone other than Nadal or Federer since 2005, and the first in 10 straight Slams in which Federer did not appear in the final. So I had to thank Novak for giving me something new to look at. I stayed up all night to watch this tournament unfold live, night after night! BTW, the year ended as it began. Djokovic won the first Slam in January, and then he took the Master's Series in November. (Nadal and Federer both injured though.)



#2 Roger Federer vs. Rafael Nadal for the Wimbledon title
This has been called the greatest tennis match in history, and I agree. Even McEnroe said so (in fact, I think he was first in line to say so). It had everything: two players with contrasting styles and temperaments; two players who have faced each other over and over; two players who have proven themselves indomitable on specific surfaces--each trying to take away the other's turf (no pun intended). It was five sets long: 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5-7), 6-7 (8-10), and because the fifth set in a Slam cannot be decided by a tiebreaker, the final set went to 9-7. It was Rafel Nadal who prevailed, with Roger doing everything humanly possible to prevent it. It was eight hours of the best tennis ever played, nighttime when it ended, and the winner was tennis itself.

#1 Roger Federer vs. Andy Murray for the U.S. Open title
Heading into September 2008, Roger Federer had yet to win a Grand Slam tournament--something that hadn't happened since 2003. Nadal had yet to prove himself on a hard court (at least at a Slam), so there was a very open feeling to the Open. James Blake looked good, Novak Djokovic was my pick to win, and Andy Murray broke through convincingly. But in the end it was Federer who won it (for the fifth consecutive time), and for the first time, I was all smiles. I have always been in awe of the man's game, but exasperated by his dominance. The newly vulnerable Federer of 2008 changed my view. Now I want him to finish it out--to surpass Pete Sampras's 14 Grand Slam singles titles and 7 Wimbledon titles. He deserves it, and I hope he gets it. He has raised the standards of the game as much as any of the all-time greats. I hope 2009 brings great things for Roger.

could be me?

She might as well be me? Thank God, for her sake, that she is not much like me!

At left, my daughter Abigail Pearce Robinson. At right, I keep an eye on my son [James Elliot Robinson] . I am Anne Pearce Robinson (tap it 4 better detail).

Think we look alike? I have to admit, I do. But don't tell Abby.

Why should we care about what's being said in South Carolina?

Because my brother Fred lives there, that's why. C heck out his blog and its latest entry, on the tongue-twisting, dumbfounding affair now unfolding in Illinois. Also, Fred's blog has been added to my blogroll at left.

At right--taken yesterday--my son Elliot asks Santa for the open Senate seat in Illinois.

P.S. Thanks and love to my husband and the photographer, Steven William Robinson.

Love letters

It is not uncommon for artists to create works that are, pure and simple, love letters. There are many kinds of these love letters--not all of them romantic. Sometimes a work can be the expression of an artist in love with an idea or a persona--with something or someone remote, unattainable...impossible.

Joseph Cornell was the self-taught inventor of shadow-box collage as an art form [as opposed to overgrown Victorian gewgaw--its prior application] and no one has been able to match his vision since.

Cornell was mostly a loner. He spent his entire adult life caring for his widowed mother and his younger brother Robert, who was stricken with cerebral palsy and wheelchair-bound his entire life. The three of them spent most of their lives in a small bungalow in a neighborhood in Flushing, Queens; the address, famously, was 3708 Utopia Parkway--a serendipitous detail that seems to precisely describe the beauty, poignancy, and dream-like quality of his boxes.

The box at right is one named Untitled (Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall), an homage to the actress--one of many gifted female performers whom he worshiped obsessively.




The traditional beadwork of the Zulu people of southern Africa includes a form of "love letters," which are neck pouches made by young women to send very specific messages to young men, perhaps encouraging them to come up with the bride wealth necessary for marriage to take place. The meaning is carried through the arrangement of beads--the color combinations, order and pattern arrangements all tell a tale, often a very private one understood only by the maker of the beadwork and the intended recipient. Young men, in turn, often ask their sisters to make beaded love letters in reply to young women.







I have made one object in my life that I know, unquestionably, is a love letter. It is my one and only red painting, titled Dream of a Friend. I made it about 1998, in reference to many personal losses. It is about loneliness, which is something one can feel at any time in any situation, even when you are surrounded by people--as the errors of the past weigh on one's conscience. These aren't really bad feelings--they can be very rich and full of energy, even if they are also a little sad, because they respond to that which is forever gone, including one's own abundance or potential.

stalking my backyard

What a beautiful thing.

This hawk stalks my small backyard in the near suburbs of Indianapolis...along Holly Creek at College and 81st, to be exact. She (we don't know, but we're sure nonetheless), SHE sits on rocks and squats on the ground and peers into the depths of our little creek in near wintertime hunting small birds or chipmunks or I don't know what. When she spreads her wings, I hold my breath for a moment.

She is, I think, Cooper's hawk. Thoughts?

Update: No, she is a Red Shouldered Hawk, buteo lineatus, a rare and threatened species in Marion County.

Betsy gratitude update

One more thing: Betsy told me last Saturday night to take the week of Thanksgiving off. I didn't exactly do that, but starting Tuesday afternoon I went on vacation at home, and I feel better than I have for a long time, except for the severe back pain.

My sister Betsy: Gratitude letter #2

If I could choose my family, I would of course include every member of the family I have, but I would add Betsy Zlatos as my way-cool sister (and I have no blood sisters).

Betsy and Steve Zlatos' son Bryan became our son's Elliot's best friend starting in Montessori pre-school (yo, 1992 y'all), and they've been close ever since, even during periods of sporadic communication because they were/are at different places in life. Steve R. and I met Betsy and Steve Z. through our sons' friendship, and Robinson/Zlatos has long been a bedrock relationship of our adult lives. The "two Steves" thing has led Betsy and I to refer to our husbands as if they were characters in a Russian novel or a 1960s movie: they are either Steve Robinson and Steve Zlatos, or "Mr. Robinson" and "Mr. Zlatos." Otherwise, lottsa "Steve" can be confusing, especially to us--and we need to know! So our dialogue of many years is laced with this entertaining formality. Go Steves.

We (Anne, Betsy, Steve, Steve) all play tennis, read books, like movies, vote Dem/liberal, care about the environment, and avoid thinking too hard about certain stuff to the same degree. (But they play a lotta pinochle and we don't) AND-- Betsy almost never cries--a trait I've carefully nurtured in myself and admire in other women when I encounter it.

Why am I grateful to Betsy?

Betsy, I thank you for listening to every frickin' crazy thing that ever crossed my mind, accepting me despite every low road I've ever taken without judging me, and always being there to listen. Like...as soon as I called. I've never encountered such openness and acceptance in another person (OK...except for my actual family and a Steve who made a public vow to stand by me no matter what "until death parts us"). I have many GREAT friends, but you are like my personal crisis hot line. It's not like I need it too often, but when I do--it's a 24/7/365 zone. Was it your Mom, your Dad, your sister? Where in the hell does that kind of loyalty come from?

I love the way you play tennis. The "Zen" overheads that spike off into a corner that no one can reach. The steadiness. The mostly unflappableness. The occasional strategic F-U shot, --like the ballsy, unexpected down-the-line passing shot on what could have been (and indeed turned out to be) the final shot of a match-winning tiebreaker (I wish we had played that match together=D). You just work it methodically, and I need to be reminded of workmanship. Otherwise I get absorbed in a fool's paradise of artistic shot-making. Your inside-out backhand from the deuce side. The way we tend to lose the first set and then win the next two, just to get our money's worth.

I actually like (don't love) the fact that you smoke sometimes...I think. It seems you can actually control such indulgences. I have absolutely never been able to do that. I am either all in, or all out. If you are really able to have a little fun without becoming a slave to cigs, way cool. But, not me.

I am grateful that you are such a a great Mom and Steve Z. is a fantastic Dad. You both do everything for family. Right on.

I am grateful that you checked out Six Feet Under when I suggested it, and even more impressive, that you called me and sobbed for like an hour when you got to the episode where Nate dies.

Despite the fact that you cultivate a profile of being, and I quote, "a reformed contemplative thinker," you are always feelin' it, and then you deploy your formidable rational faculties to organize your emotions into something useful. We had a moment long ago, as we were batting the ball back and forth on the tennis court at Rivi, when we discussed the value of emotional detachment. Oneness.

I loved, and am grateful for, the time when our families traveled to London together between Christmas and New Year's 2006/2007. Actually, the Zlati should probably have banished us Robinsons forever from any potential vacation plan, considering the original, extremely generous proposal to visit your place in paradise--Costa Rica. But I can tell you that both Abby and Elliot consider London the trip of their lives, and I know it was because it was the adventure we had all together. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I will be forever grateful for your Book Group picks including Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina and Isabelle Allende's Eva Luna. Two of the best books we've read in 14-15 years. I happen to think that two of my picks--John Kennedy O'Toole's Confederacy of Dunces and Victor Hugo's Les Miserables--were just as good, but you are the master.

I am grateful that you love animals and share that obsession with me. Rocky, Luna, Tony (our adorable singing frog whom I must point out I did NOT name), Tess, orange cats, and all the rest. You are among those friends whom I lean on to know that critters know us, and put up with us, and absorb our excess love. It is a sad fact that human love often overflows its boundaries and then seeks animals or objects (rather than our fellow man), but at least it's a great benefit to some of the critters. Under any circumstances, for every reason imaginable, way more people should generate excess love.

I am grateful that you are Betsy. You a great Mom, thinker, instrument of compassion for all living creatures, and friend. I hope we can always be together somehow, no matter where life leads. (Can you say "Slovakia?," cause that's where I think you are going!)

The Silence: Gratitude letter #1

This is a weird thing for me to do, I guess. And it isn't an original idea; it comes from Irvin Yalom who suggests writing gratitude letters to people who have been important in your life as a way of confirming "rippling"--the idea that our ideas and actions live on in others, sometimes for generations (even though, as Yalom believes, we don't otherwise live on. I have never been sure what I feel on the subject of "afterlife").

So this is my gratitude letter to my Dad, who died in 1974. Because the photo was included with pix Dad brought home from the Pacific, I assume this is a picture of him piloting his C-46 during WWII. Underexposed (man would I like to get my hands on the lost negative to see if there's anything else in it), it's a fitting image, I think, for what follows.

I thank you for coming to me and saying that you were proud of me for showing my emotions when I was 12 and I bawled like a baby as our train pulled away from Glacier National Park, leaving my brother Andy behind to his summer job as a tour bus driver. I was feeling silly and a little scared about being so emotional, and you made me feel like I was a normal for missing someone and caring so much.

I thank you for showing me the "worms"* on your forehead as often as I asked to see them, which seemed to be through most of every cocktail/crossword hour for about a year when I was around 10. Although you were meticulous about your appearance, you were never overly sensitive about your age or your weight or your baldness. You would so much rather that I laugh, even if at your expense, than waste time wishing after something that was gone, like smooth, young skin.
(*Worms were the super-prominent furrows on Dad's forehead whenever he raised his eyebrows. I have inherited them. )

I thank you for taking me up in your plane a lot. Period. That was fun. And every night after we flew I would fall asleep remembering the "floaty" feeling of hitting thermals. I loved that.

I thank you for pulling Mom aside on the day I got my driver's license and insisting that the two of you had to let me drive. (Mom didn't ever want me to drive. She finally quit complaining about five years ago.) You stood up for me against--sorry, but it's true--the most powerful person in my life at the time.

I thank you for letting me adopt that last kitten even though you made me name it "Dick Butkus."

I thank you for coming into my room and listening to my records with me. Music was everything when I was 16, and you were willing to share, including The Crusaders and--ick--Loggins and Messina.

I thank you for telling me--on your deathbed no less--never to let a boy hurt my feelings deeply; however, I didn't listen. In fact, I screwed up on that one. But everything worked out quite well in the end. You would love your only son-in-law, Steve. He is wonderful to me and he is a fantastic father. Not to mention all he has done to care for your wife.

I thank you for telling me I might "have to go to IUPUI and be damn proud of it." I did, and you were right. I got a second undergrad degree--a BFA from Herron, which I finished just four years ago--and it is one the accomplishments of which I am most proud. My tassel hangs on the painting wall in my studio.

I thank you for always being right and never, ever, ever saying you were sorry--even though that's a really stupid way to go about life.
When you died the pastor came and asked each member of our family to tell him something very special we remembered about you--and then he worked each of our memories into your eulogy--all except for my memory of you, because I said, "Dad was always right." I was recalling your exasperating, iron-willed stubbornness, which was awesome--practically god-like, though completely counterproductive in your personal relationships. Of course, I didn't say all that to the pastor; I just told him you were always right, or maybe I said you were never wrong. This surely presented the pastor with a dilemma, because of course, only God can always be always right..(.but after you died, we all had serious doubts about that too). Still, I never heard you admit to being wrong about anything and I never heard you once say you were sorry to me, even when you should have been downright ashamed of your behavior. You, you...you ill-tempered....dude (can you tell by my admirable restraint that I'm writing a gratitude letter?)

Appropriately enough, I inherited these troublesome attitudes, but in time I actually overcame them, and when I did, you grew up inside of me even though you were gone. I now know in my heart that of course you knew were wrong--even if you would, apparently, rather die than admit it--and of course, you were also sorry. And I'll bet if you could have it all back you might even say so. So I forgive you because you were just human, and I have learned to say to my children when I am wrong and say that I am sorry, though I can still be imperfect about admitting such things to Steve.

I thank you for your silence. It's the hardest thing about losing someone--you are no longer here--and you never will be again--to answer my questions. The living mourn, cling, get scared, get angry, and most insidious of all we try to rationalize our loss: in my case, "Dad could not have stood the failure of his business," (which occurred at the same time as your death at age 51), or so I used to tell myself. Bullshit! That gives you no credit for being able to change or meet life's challenges. The tragedy is that you will never have the chance to respond to anything in the ever after--happy or not--and that we can never know what you might have done, or how you would have loved your grandchildren, or a million other things. On the subject of you there is only memory and silence, and that's the fragility of us all. So my response has been to live with as much intent as I can, and leave as few of my own big questions unanswered as possible. The silence that you belong to--the silence that I have lived with longest and which is the thing I know best about you--has become the yardstick by which I measure my life.

Staring at the Sun

Why do I do this to myself? Why--when things could be going better in general--would I decide to read Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death by Irving Yalom? And then I spend the entire day reading it? Ugh. No housework, no studio time, no useful work....just reading about THE end.

Yalom finds greatest comfort in an existential approach: "You were nothing before you were alive, and this does not bother you. You won't feel it when you are gone either." BTW--he is paraphrasing philosophers like Epicurus and Nietzsche here, not making things up on the fly.

Finally, at about 4:00 pm, I became so terrorized by this pursuit of comfort that I called my good friend Betsy and asked her to come over. Yes, I am a death wuss.

The painting is Philip Guston's Source, which features his wife, Musa, as the sun.

This post has taken the place of another I intended to write that would have been called Fear of Rutting Season, on the topic of my terror of hitting deer on the road at this time of year (not deer sex). I nearly "bought it" 3 years ago about this time on the way to Louisville, but at least the poor terrorized deer escaped unharmed. Here is my painting about that particular paranoia, titled Strange Wheel, in which I quote Philip. It's easily my most hated painting (by others), but I don't care. It covered over an especially noxious attempt at abstraction--real double-duty.

By my father, who is long gone

My Dad died 34 years ago--I was 17. He died of colon cancer. It was the kind of tumor that caused no physical distress until the cancer had spread throughout his body. Diagnosed in May 1974, he was gone in September of the same year.

I did not have the opportunity to know my father as an adult. He was still just my Dad when he died, and for me there is much about him that is a mystery. But this year I dug into letters he wrote home from WWII. He flew troop carrier in the Pacific Theater of Operations. Because he was support personnel and not on the front lines, he was able to keep the letters his family sent to him, and they kept everything he sent home. So we have both sides of the correspondence--some 550 letters in all.

Dad also wrote a brief but comprehensive account of his war service. He recounts, on 47 sheets of paper in his beautiful penmanship, everything that happened from shipping out of San Francisco in July of 1944 to his time in Japan post-surrender, up to about November 1945. He is only 19 when the letters begin; younger than my son who is now in college. And I am now the age that Dad was when he died. Strange places to exchange.

Here is tiny excerpt from his account of his service written after his return (he was probably 22 years old). Edits/comments in brackets are mine. The picture above is California's "desolate" [yup] Camp Stoneman. Tap it to enlarge; it's worth it.


July 6 [1944] Left Columbus, Miss. That afternoon somewhat bewildered, realizing that I was starting a trip that would end at New Guinea, Hawaii, Central Pacific, India, China, Australia, maybe even South America. That’s what we thought, all of us: Pownell, [on?] one the first ship[s] into Tokyo; Broadurst, killed in action; Perry, my roommate in advanced, cited by the president for a drop on Corregidor; Bjonebo, a good pilot and damned good man; Cromartie, couldn’t stand being away from home and cracked up; and White and Twardzick whom I never heard from. They went to an outfit in Australia.

We had quite a trip out to California and I spent my last stateside weekend in and around Los Angeles. Quite a time, it was an all out offensive. I arrived at Camp Stoneman, a desolate place with tar paper barracks. It was here I first realized that maybe it wasn’t going to a picnic. Here men were drinking and laughing and having one last fling. Here I met some more boys I was to fly with.

July 13 As we come out of the theater, we had been having an orientation lecture, we learned that we were alerted. That afternoon we packed all our bags and I took personal luggage into Pittsburg for shipment home. I could have called or sent a telegram saying I was leaving the next day but I was honest and abided by the rules.

July 14 We boarded the “River Queen” and started off, down the river. As the ship shoved off the band played “Over There.” I got a lump in my throat but I was too excited to feel sad. In San Francisco Bay we board the U.S.S. Exiria and the word got around from the ship personnel [that] our destination was eighteen days away and probably in New Guinea.

July 15 At 0800 we shoved off and passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and soon the old U.S.A. was out of sight and believe me every one watched it to the end. There was a blimp flying over us for two days.

We crossed the equator and went through the ceremony and ended up a fine looking bunch of hairless “Moes.” I tried a mustache but it wasn’t so hot. I gave that up immediately and tried to look as presentable as possible.

Rumor got spread about and we decided we would be a new squadron formed and trained overseas. What were we going to fly? B-24s were out of the question, A-20s, no, we wouldn’t be that lucky, B-25 maybe, P-38s probably because we wouldn’t need much training. After all was surveyed we found that most of the engineering men had experience on P-47 so that was it. We knew that men and officers were on two ships, but the third was a mystery.

Sansapor in Dutch New Guinea was invaded as we were coming over. That was the advanced base. We wondered what an invasion was like, what New Guinea was like, we wondered many things.

Right: 3 P-47s

The Mocking of Christ--Beato Angelico

Lots of people love this genius; he/his work has been an object of adulation for more than 500 years. And this is among the most revolutionary of all his visions; it's a surreal representation of The Mocking of Christ (tapto enlarge!) before anyone had thought of a concept like surrealism. The blindfolded Christ (really? did that happen?) is accosted by a floating head that spits at him and floating hands that strike him with sticks. He is set against a light green backdrop like a roll of photographer's seamless--Christ and his torturers float in a sea of oceanic color.

Meanwhile, Mary and Saint Dominic sit in sorrowful contemplation--not so much observers as imaginers, or maybe rememberers. They are both next to and a million miles from the event.

Fra Angelico, a Dominican monk who at one point led Florence's San Marco monastery, conceived and largely executed a complete series of frescoes--over 40 in all--inside the rooms of San Marco, with the vast majority being placed on the walls of the cells of individual monks. The shape of the frescoes echoed the arched shape of each cell's small window, which are always immediately adjacent to the image. One is a window to the world, the other is a window to the spiritual life. These images were the first things the monks saw on awakening, and the last thing they saw before sleep. It was the most powerful site I visited in all of Italy.

But this is not a life I aspire to; I have serious issues with the guilt basis of much Christianity (like my friend Christine, "I'm shame based"), but I can't help but be moved by the power people attribute to such imagery and to imagination. I can understand why so many Protestant sects got rid of these images, and I can understand why other strands of Christian faith cling to them. But here is what I don't know: how would an artist like Fra Angelico have responded to the catastrophes of the mid-20th century, for example? How would he invent a secular version of suffering? He lived in a world where the Roman Catholic Church dominated and organized all--it was the basis of the social fabric. I am not against the church; I just am grateful that I live in an age when there are many ways to celebrate life and the spirit. If all things were possible, what would Fra Angelico do now?

Contemporary religious art--out of bounds/on the border (Thanks to Tyler Green)

OK--this image is Praying for Peace, a painting (or is it a print? Hell, I don't know) by The Painter of THE Light, Ron Dicianni. (This as opposed to the mere Painter of Light(R), Thomas Kinkade.) I would never have known this work existed had if I had not attended the iMOCA lecture Thursday night at IMCPL Central by Tyler Green, "Ten Things I Hate About Contemporary Art." This one fell under Hated Thing #7--Hypocrisy ("but I love art's ability to point out hypocrisy," said Green).

Green went on about how this composition picked up on conventions of Renaissance painting, including the positioning of the representation President Bush against a cross. There is also an interesting trinity (Father, Son, Holy Ghost) of what are presumably three Presidents, though I agree with Green--the one on the right must be Washington, but who knew? I also love the fact that Lincoln and "Washington" look like holograms. Hey CNN, take a tip. This is how it's done, baby.

Anyway, this work, for me, is out of bounds. Saccharine in feeling, slick in its combination of classic 20th-century and amped-up, 21st-century-techno illustrative memes, and sinister in its conflation of Christian iconography with American presidential history, (ouch! did I get that line from the Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator?) it isn't just bad--it's outright scary. I don't care how much you Rockwell-up President Bush, this painting reminds me of how I felt on the morning of Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004, when I realized upon awakening that I would be spending four more years in a theocracy. ("I earned capital in the campaign, political capital," said Bush on November 4, "and now I intend to spend it." .....Boy howdy.)

I famously stayed in bed the whole day.

But setting this image aside (oh, do let's!), I began to look for other contemporary American religious art(specifically Christian), and I came across an artist who--I think--operates right on America's most interesting and perhaps volatile border, exploiting the tension between freedom of expression and freedom of religion. Dylan Mortimer, a native of St. Louis, has created numerous series of work that confront viewers with their own feelings about public expressions of Christian faith. Tyler Green agreed with Lou Harry's item 3 on Harry's 10 Things I Hate about Contemporary Art list--artist's statements. Well, I think Mortimer's is a model statement with nary a clause from the Art Phrase Generator.

"Does evangelism have any place in the art world? Does the nature of Evangelical Christianity threaten the artistic process? How can the most used subject matter in the history of art still be challenging and relevant today? These are some of the questions I try to address in my work. I am a Christian, but I aim to warn and inform the public about the difficulties of my faith. The artistic process is essentially about questioning and doubting. Faith is the process of finding answers and believing. My exploration is to question whether the two can co-exist.

By employing the language of familiar public formats (signage, advertising, public communication systems, etc.) I aim to ask questions about public and private faith in contemporary society. I try to balance humor and seriousness, sarcasm and sincerity, in a way that bridges a subject matter that is often presented as heavy or difficult to deal with. By appropriating signs and materials, the work asks questions about society’s depth of spiritual belief, the customization of religion and the restriction or tolerance of religious behavior in public settings.

I am interested in presenting these ideas and issues in a way that will cause the audience to question their assumptions and beliefs. The intent of the work is to create questions that allow the viewer to confront their religious and spiritual feelings.

I would like to see a show of Mortimer's work, but a virtual presentation of it is convinces me that the work is smart, serious, and sincere, and gets me right at the place where I feel most threatened by the repressive agenda of right-wing Christian conservatism, (which is not to say that Mortimer is a right-wing or conservative. He's simply Christian), and most ambivalent about freedom of expression.

I am never content to stop with the work--I like to dig into the artist's biography. This penchant of mine can be an extremely annoying to some in the art world, but I am not going to apologize. I like to know what motivates an artist. Here's some background on Mortimer: he received his BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York City (2006). He is the son of a minister. In radio interviews, he has alluded to his former partying ways, and in a recent Kansas City Star interview he talked about his return to the church:

While attending the Kansas City Art Institute, he started going to church again at the brand new Rivercity Community Church in Westport. “When I first went, it was just my three friends and eight homeless guys,” Mortimer remembered. “It was real and authentic. For me, church hadn’t been like that before.”Mortimer continued his artistic education, earning his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York before returning to Kansas City when Rivercity Community Church asked him to be its minister."

Some of Dylan Mortimer's sermons can be found here.

What Mortimer has never much discussed with the media is that he has cystic fibrosis. In the 1950s, children born with CF were unlikely to live past the elementary school years. Now it has advanced to age 30+. In a podcast Mortimer talked at length about his life with CF and sounds nonplussed by life expectancy statistics for people with the disease, opting to make whatever time he has count. (Above, Prayer Booth, now installed in NYC.)

Six Feet Under--The End

Need more time to post on Tyler Green. Meanwhile, if you are a fan of Six Feet Under, enjoy this clip. "You can't take a picture unless it's already gone."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVBiZdy6TpQ

Liberals funnier?

Hmmm....this is kinda fun:


http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/do-liberals-tell-better-jokes/

Whoops! The TARP blew away!

From The New York Times today:

"The Treasury Department on Wednesday officially abandoned the original strategy behind its $700 billion effort to rescue the financial system, as administration officials acknowledged that banks and financial institutions were as unwilling as ever to lend to consumers.

But with a little more than two months left before President Bush leaves office, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. is hoping to put in place a major new lending program that would be run by the Federal Reserve

and aimed at unlocking the frozen consumer credit market.

The program, still in the planning stages, would for the first time use bailout funds specifically to help consumers instead of banks, savings and loans and Wall Street firms. "

Nuff said.

Philip--Night Studio

How haunted do you have to be to come up with this? WTF? I am about to read Night Studio for the fifth time; it's a biography of the artist written by his daughter, Musa Mayer. I love biographies, and this one is by far the best I've ever read. The fact that it is written by the daughter of the subject--a psychologist and poet/writer (like her mother), makes it even more impressive. An amazing book.

This painting is titled "The Three."

My man

Interesting to me... I think this is one of the best pictures I ever took, and also one of the best pictures Steve ever took. I created it for an environmental portrait critique, which was one of my best. I also wrote about him--about how he thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine, how he gets things done, how he always follows through. How his word is everything.

I would be lost without him--he is the love of my life. And he's incredibly good looking too.

a sudden gust of wind

Jeff Wall versus Hokusai....or, more accurately, Jeff Wall thanks to Hokusai. Jeff Wall is part of a generation that remade photography way beyond the scale of painting. I saw Wall's work realized as a 6-foot-wide light box at the Whitney Biennial, 1995. Lucking foved it.

Ironic acronyms--thoughts on the Wall Street bailout

Apparently Friday, 11/14, is the deadline for banks to apply for federal cash through the Troubled Asset Relief Program and then, if accepted, the banks have to figure out what to do with the money. Nothing in the terms forces banks to make loans with these taxpayer funds.

Meanwhile, I still don't really have a gauge on what is going to happen for those homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages. I do believe in personal responsibility and I am not smart enough to know the right answer, but it does bug me that tax dollars are propping up institutions that made or purchased bad loans, yet we have not addressed the problems faced by homeowners who may have been sold some serious snake oil in their pursuit of the American dream.

Along these same lines, I note and am troubled by the fact that the that the acronym for Troubled Asset Relief Program is TARP. As a people, I hope we don't accept tent cities as the answer for these struggling homeowners. (This photo of the 9th Ward, New Orleans.)

Between Gerhard and Louisa

There is a kind of tug-of-war in my work that pulls back and forth between photo-based imagery and practically cartoonish imagery. It would be easy enough to say that it's a push-pull between my love of the works of Chuck Close and Philip Guston (especially the latter), and there's no denying that both of them are always on my mind, but the outcome, I think, is more like the contrast between Gerhard Richter (see Candles, above), and Louisa Chase, whose work, titled Red Sea, is at right.



While Richter has been the subject of major museum exhibitions worldwide, especially over the past decade, Chase's time in the limelight was more limited; she is often characterized as a Neo-Expressionist, but before that term was coined she was a "New Imagist" painter of the 1980s--a brave soul who helped us return to figuration and narrative after more than a decade wandering in a Minimalist desert. I saw a work by Chase at on of the IMA's old Painting and Sculpture Today exhibitions--titled Cave, I think. The intensity of the color attracted me immediately--it was not unlike Red Sea. There is a great deal of animation--of aliveness--in the works of both Richter and Chase. Close, by contrast, strikes me as a formalist, while Guston's work is more self-referential and formalist critique. I'm only describing shades of feeling--not valuing one approach over another. But if I were to pick a side of the scale for my own work to fall on, my heart resides with Richter and Chase.

Light at the End of the Tunnel--Hail to The Twelve

So this is the magazine that showed up in our mail today. I have never much liked to read The New Yorker; the design is too old school for me, and I guess I have the attention span of a flea because I just do not like long-form journalism, even though I have written a few books. The husband, on the other hand, has been a devoted reader as long as I have known him. He was OUTRAGED when Tina Brown became the editor and started running photographs (uttered with the utmost disdain). I explained to him that Ms. Brown had to do something because only 12 people read the thing. Ever since that day, whenever The New Yorker does anything the least bit discomfiting, Steve will hold up the magazine and say something like, "The Twelve are NOT pleased."

Through this election season, I have to say I have loved the covers of The New Yorker, and now the magazine has given me an installation idea for the Inaugural Ball. Thanks to all twelve of you readers. Ye-yuh!

Thinking about an inagural ball

It's premature, but I so want to send a save-the-date cards, and I think the fist bump is the moment.

I can keep going

I am trying to change some things right now. Mostly I am trying to resist going back to the way I always do things and that isn't always easy. But one of the nicer things about getting older is that you know that time is your friend. You just need to let it work for you. So getting where you want to be is really just a matter of long, slow, deep breathing.
(Thanks to Sugimoto.)

C U 2 Nite Barack

Feeling a little tense...it's getting close to VB Day (Victory Barack Day), and Barack is taking up 30 minutes of time on the networks tonight to seal the deal. I want to host that inaugural ball so badly that I think I'll go vote right now.

A question about loneliness and ambition

So....do you ever feel as if you always have to be constantly moving, achieving the next thing? And does that make you feel isolated and lonely? I feel that way right now.

I think that there must be plenty of advice on my situation. I wouldn't be surprised if it pointed me toward meditation. But what if you don't really want to escape self? What if you believe there is always some better self you can be? Will you be all alone when you get to wherever that better place is?

Moon River

No more pinball machine. I am now feeling like one of the Slowskis in the Comcast commercial. I've been trying to think of a painting that expresses my mood, and this painting by Pat Steir is about as close as I can get. Pat Steir's work is well worth an entry or two by itself, but I haven't got the energy right now to draft something intelligent. Suffice it to say that she has been through several distinct phases--each marked by very different subjects and approaches--but her "signature style" seems to be this, protrayal of water in a method based on Chinese painting. It's the letting go and falling away that I love. And this one is titled Moon River--which also happens to be the name of a Henry Mancini/Johnny Mercer song from the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, starring Audrey Hepburn. Not sure of the relationship in Steir's mind, but here are Mercer's lyrics:

Moon River, wider than a mile

I'm crossing you in style one day

Oh dream maker, you heart breaker

Wherever you're going, I'm going your way

Two drifters, off to see the world

There's such a lot of world to see

We're after the same rainbow's end

Waitin' round the bend

My huckleberry friend

Moon River and me

pinball psyche

This is what my brain looks like on rest and relaxation---->

Synapses firing simultaneously; everything is being rewired all at once. It's like I'm suddenly left-handed (please take no offense lefties--it's about the idea of rewiring).

Had dinner with my friend Jessica on Friday night, and it was great to see her. But it was so hard to follow the topics--I was bouncing from one thing to the next--every idea is like a pinball machine flipper and I am just a ball bouncing around inside my own brain, trying to land somewhere.

This morning I set out to deal with this issue and I have to admit it was funny. "Just 20 minutes of meditation," I told myself. Started in a half lotus with a candle that had clear aspirations of becoming a tiki torch. Blew it out and then sat in the dark. Shoulders began to hurt, so I tried child's pose and then corpse pose. Suddenly I found myself thinking about buying a laptop this afternoon. Next thing you know; I'm at the computer.

But...at least I'm back! =D

anonymity as an asethetic strategy

The Guerrilla Girls are a longstanding inspiration to me. They're an anonymous group that tries to embarrass the art world establishment into doing the right thing. Back in 1992, there was an outbreak of similar guerilla action in Indianapolis when a shadowy group called FTC2 called on a major department store chain the "Free the Cherub"--to return an Indianapolis icon that they taken away to St. Louis. The timing was perfect for a retail boycott campaign--Christmas--and it worked like a charm. The story was front page news for four straight days. (Best headline--"Hark Imperiled Angel Sings") Does everyone always have to get credit for everything? Does credit for authorship make the work better? These are political/social interactions--I know--but what about a work like this Greek dancer? Do you really need to know who made it to appreciate that person's genius?

l'il van gogh

This is one of my favorite paintings and it happens to be by Vincent van Gogh. That says a lot for the painting, because I really don't respond much to Van Gogh's work. He's not overrated--just overemphasized.

Ironically, I actually like this one because of what it says to me about Van Gogh's life. He was a very spiritual person--studied for the clergy and tried to become a religious leader, but he was a failure. (He had already failed in the family business--being an art dealer.) I think of his experience through life as that of an outcast, though thanks to his recurring mental health issues, (undiagnosed, but some experts have made a convincing argument for manic-depression/bipolar disorder) he was probably an outcast thanks to his own behaviors.

The strong diagonal line of the fence and lamp posts leads the eye into the tightly cramped center of the picture, where five people look out at the horizon, physically and forever separated from the distance that is the the object of their gaze, which in turn emphasizes the spiritual isolation that is the metaphoric subject of the picture. The viewer (or perhaps the maker?) is doubly separated, both from the distance and from those who look into it, as they turn their backs to all who would approach.

It has been some time since I've seen this small painting--Terrace and Observation Deck at the Moulin de Blute-Fin, Montmartre, 1887, from the Art Institute of Chicago--in the flesh. On my monitor it is far more blue than I recall; I remember a more neutral gray tonality. There is also more contrast; it is more sunlit (albeit a weak, hazy light); the shadows of the fence posts seems more pronounced. But the trees/vines on the left side, and the little patch of noxiously green-brown grass, pack the emotional wallop I recall. These small, sticky tortured little things stand stiff and naked against the sky. Winter has come, but it seems to be going now, evidenced by the sodden grass that waits for the sun to warm it again.