With this pandemic and quarantine, life as we have known it has changed. But I am not much for socializing, gallery hopping. We ate out occassionally. I guess an artist’s routine doesn’t alter too much, up in the studio most of day isolated. Focus has changed for me though. Can’t sit at the hospital seeing and drawing in the hallway, feeling part of something , filling up cheap sketchbooks with impressions of walkers. I have a lot of ideas for linocuts and monoprints with those sketches on hold right now. Currently intuitive marks on paper with ink and watercolor have taken over lately since last June. These drawings are short hand intuitive blindfolded journeys, with a nib, holder and bottle of ink. It’s just a kick seeing where they land, lifting the blindfold, blinking from the sudden light and …It is interesting to invent techniques to keep it fresh, finding or making new tools to advance the ink. I start often with shish kabob skewers dipped in ink lately. It adds freshness and surprise to making a line. I have some control by twisting , slapping on the paper and sliding the bamboo sideways and forward. It is what you do after the mark, where the next one goes, how the paper slurps up the ink. What I start a piece with somewhat determines where is might go but not always or necessarily. If I start with hash marks , pen and ink, it determines the mood maybe or the magnetic pull, north, south, east or west. The bamboo has a looser more spontaneous indication, but can slow it down with nibs or speed it up with brush. The imagery or result must somehow come together as a whole. Sometimes it gets away from me but mostly if I stay focused can pull it together. But what do they mean? I think most emit a sound or promote a feeling if they are any good. A literal meaning is obscure. You may see figures, an imaginary machine or a strange landscape. The process may determine what imagery may or may not pop up. Is it subconscious, something in my psyche? I don’t know. The title may draw your imagination in a direction, but it comes to me later on and is not connected to the process of making it. The viewer must make up his or her mind as to where it takes them, if anywhere.
Seeing in the East Tower
Finding myself in a comfortable chair in the lobby of the East Tower, Beaumont hospital, Royal Oak, Mi.., Appr. 4 hours, twice a week for 2 years waiting for my wife accepting chemo, I attempted to see, with pencil and paper in hand, life in the hallway. It wasn’t People Watching exactly. I was trying to feel the moment, the movement, light and shadow letting the flow reveal and using drawing to focus, no looking at the paper, no think/draw, see/draw. It took time. The first few books were a little tight, more drawing and thinking about drawing than seeing. We are so result oriented and this being a public setting it took awhile to free up. But it came the more I stayed with it. People walk by fast, even when they’re slow it’s fast. I needed to see it, get it down quickly and not belabor the drawing after the moment was gone. This turned into a detachment from worrying about outcome and an acceptance in the process of quick seeing/drawing. I became a part of the hallway, connected. Faces and personality drifted away in the quickness. What was left in the moment was movement, arms legs feet, tilt of the head, float, swagger bop,stutter, feel the ground, roll on preoccupied. Walking, how was it possible? No thinking or awarenesss, just moving of legs, how do the feet realize the ground, why doesn’t the body fall? What keeps it upright with a knowledge of gravity. I began to see the wonder of walking. The magic of the inner gyroscope. There were quite a few more aha! Moments sitting in the East Tower at Beaumont.I was there for two to three hours in a seeing meditation and eventually I came away with more than a full cheap 40 page sketchbook of quick sketches. I was changed somehow with the flow of humanity, wheelchairs, gurneys, cleaning carts and the occasional dog passing by. I connected, became part of that hallway twice a week. People revealing so much in their walk, their gate, their style, physical blocks, light and dark, fast and so painfully slow. There is so much to see and feel. It gets in your bones of memory truth, like a melody that occasionally brings back youth.
When I brought the car around for Diana and drove home I usually felt a centeredness, a solidity I normally am not used to. I saw the trees and cars and movement differently more clearly.L more truthfully somehow, like working in the studio all day but different. Don’t get me wrong, there were days when I didn’t feel like it, or was bored by the whole process. Maybe occasionally I would get something to eat, or just go home. But 95% of the time I was seeing in the east lobby.
Finally…
It's hard to teach an old dog, and all that... I started my art experiment in 1986 at 34 years of age in Detroit when I quit my job as a caseworker for the State of Michigan..Moved about in the city a bit, had 10 differntI art studios, a few bumps and bruises along the way, some self inflicted. I got married 17 years ago to another artist, Diana Alva and we moved out of our house in Detroit, in 2012. to our new home and studios in Hazel Park Mi..I make art, 34 years now. I directed the Space Gallery 1990-1992, Zeitgeist Gallery and Performance Venue 2001—2008. I currently curate and install art exhibits for the Kayrod Gallery, a gallery for senior artists at the Hannan Center, Detroit.
I opened this site 02-01-2020, added close to 200 original pieces of art since and finally started this blog. Signing off for another time, maybe tomorrow if I get time.