The Bright Eye of God

Walked into work this morning (yes, I can walk in). My vehicle decided that electricity was just not something it was going to handle anymore so it is at the shop being coaxed into compliance. I can be pissed or see it as an opportunity... I can use the exercise anyway.

I was privileged to watch a most glorious sunrise while enjoying some tunes on my headphones and the occasional caw of my crow buddies. The morning was very warm and I hoped I wouldn't get caught in the rain that was forecast (I wasn't). During the walk I suddenly became aware of how much gravity was pulling on my body. I don't know if it was the backpack I was wearing or something else. I felt like a deep sea diver with lead boots. I thought of that Laurie Anderson bit where she says when we walk we are really falling and catching ourselves with each step.

Funny, but the last time I had to walk into work I was reading a lot of Jim Harrison and my thoughts became more poetic with every step. Recently I have taken to rereading some of JH's books that I own along with his newest collection of poems. JH is probably my favorite fiction writer. He writes a lot about walking in the wilderness, among other things, but his stories have a very zen-ny feel to them. I'll take the coincidence as a sign to get out more.

Spent the weekend finishing up printing some of the little prints' editions. I still have that big canvas staring me down. Soon.

Thanks to Teresa for being a great patron. Your recent print purchase will help put the serpentine belt back on my vehicle among other things.

#3 of Top Ten: "Fire" (part I)

“Fire” 1994
Woodblock relief print
7 3/4 x 10 1/4”
Edition of 25

In telling about the print, “Fire”, I first have to give some background on the “Earthdiver” images that I’ve completed. “Fire” is part of what became an unintentional trio of prints that includes “Earthdiver” and “Inspiration”. I say unintentional because when I finished the “Earthdiver” print I felt the story of the figure in the bottom of the boat begged to be expanded upon. “Fire is the second image produced for the trio.

In 1993 I painted the first incarnation of the image influenced by the Earthdiver myth. That particular painting sold right out of my studio before the paint could dry (the only time that’s ever happened!) The sale was so sudden that I felt I still needed to work the image out. A few months later I created the “Earthdiver” print which eventually led to “Fire”.

The story of the Earthdiver is an ancient Native American creation/flood myth. After the inundation some surviving animals floating on a raft take turns diving to the bottom of the ocean. At the urging of one of their number (usually a bird) they attempt to retrieve some earth in order to create land. Many try and many fail until one creature, usually a small mammal, comes back half dead with a tiny bit of mud under it’s claws. This is sufficient material to create the landmass for them to recreate their world. My intention in the painting and later in the print was to anthropomorphize the creatures in the flood myth.

At the time I was thinking of the Earthdiver tale as a metaphor for the creative process. The struggle to dive the depths of the unconscious, scrape the subconscious and bring back some rich silt to grow one’s ideas on can be a difficult, tiring and sometimes fatal process. (Suddenly, I’m reminded of John Goodman running down a burning hallway yelling “I’ll show you the life of the MIND!) There are many ways the myth can be interpreted.

The figure at the bottom of the boat in “Earthdiver” represents the tired or dead creature that has failed in the first attempts to bring back the prima materia. In “Fire” there is, once again, a figure in the bottom of a leaky boat. We stare down his/her legs as if they were our own while a male figure crouches on the seat board manipulating a stick in an attempt to start a fire. The tunnel through which the boat travels is decorated in glyphs from various ages of Meso-American history. Each level is meant to represent one of the three worlds: celestial, earth and watery underworld.

As in most of my work, there are more questions posed than answers given in this image. That’s the way I like it. I like the viewer to fill in the blanks with his/her own experience and impressions. Where are we? Is the boat coming or going? Is the figure in the bottom of the boat dead or alive? What is the purpose of the fire? Are we witnessing a healing, a funeral rite or a quickening ceremony?
(to be continued)

#4 of Top Ten: "La Llorona"

“La Llorona” 2004
24 x 12” woodblock relief print
edition of 25

Mexican parents have been using the legend of “La Llorona” as a cautionary tale for rambling children for decades, maybe even longer. I remember being a kid and playing with my cousins long after dark out in the fields, ponds, and streams near my home. My parents, aunts and uncles would warn us “don’t stay out too late in the dark or La Llorona will take you”. If you are not familiar with the story I refer you to a pretty good account at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Llorona). As with any good legend, the variations are endless.

This print started as a sketch to compliment my print, “Anhelo”. In “Anhelo” a male figure plunges into the water holding an undisclosed object (see 1/10&11/08 blog entries). I knew I wanted a female figure in this work so that the two would eventually bookend a third central piece to create a triptych. Up to this point the whole triptych hasn’t materialized. The associations of the submerged female figure to the Llorona legend were obvious from the start so I decided to let them be.

By October 2003 I hadn’t yet gotten around to realizing the sketch into a finished work when I got a call from Rene Yañez, curator at SomArts (http://www.somarts.org/). Rene was asking if I had anything for their annual Dia de los Muertos exhibition. The theme that year was “La Llorona”. I told him I didn’t have any installations but I did have a print that he might like. He asked me to send it over…that’s when I got down to actually cutting the block and printing one up!

I dug out my sketches once more and decided that the format would have to be tall and thin to play up the depth of the water. I searched around and found a scrap of birch plywood that had an amazing wood grain on one end. The natural wood grain suggested a beautiful water ripple effect so I readjusted my sketch to work this into the new composition and drew the image straight onto the wood.

The deadline was looming close so I had to work fast. Rather than present a whole lot of time consuming detail I chose to let the flowing vegetation become a backdrop of dark flat shapes while the figure would emerge with dimension describing cross contour lines. I used rays of straight lines emanating from one vantage point to imply a light source while creating some contrast to all the organic curving shapes and lines. This method easily brought out all the wonderful wood grain texture in the block. Shifts in density of the wood grain makes the carving tool blade dig deeper in the soft areas and shallower in the hard areas. Even though the line remains straight the grain itself is responsible for the weight of line changing and accentuating the grain/water ripple effect.

Initially, the figure was going to be holding a baby but as my wife and I were expecting our second son at the time I just couldn’t bring myself to follow the legend literally. In addition, since the piece was supposed to be a companion piece to “Anhelo” I thought the ambiguousness of the “package” in the figure’s arms would keep with the intention of the other piece as well. I’d rather leave some mystery as to what the figures hold in both prints and let the viewer fill in the blanks rather than tie it to one thing. Everyone that comes to the print has his/her idea and they are all equally relevant.

The carving took a couple of days. I printed up one good print from the block, had it framed, packed it up, and sent it on its way to Rene in California where it was included in the exhibit “Bringing Light to the Darkness” at SomArts in 2003. The rest of the edition was printed later in 2004.

5 and 6 of Top Ten

“Spacetime” 1994
wood block relief print
8 9/16 x 11 5/8”
Edition of 25

I remember reading Leonard Shlain’s “Art and Physics – Parallel Visions In Space, Time and Light” at the time that the sketch for “Spacetime” came about. I would read while doing guard duty at the CAC or while sitting nights at the Cove Café where a beautiful curly haired brunette pulled the late shift. I’d listen to the eclectic music selection while drinking coffee, beer or cocktails with the other patrons and secretly wished we were all time tripping back to Paris in the 20s. The initial sketch is scratched out on the back of a blank check lifted from the shop’s pad.

The initial idea was to present an image that would combine the ideas of particles and waves in the stream of time. This was when I was working on my underwater figures series and I think the element worked nicely with the “flow of time”. The male figure’s stance is an “as above, so below” pose. The ripples he creates on the water’s surface influence/echo the circle he’s drawing on the undulating sand.

I like the element of water as a compositional device because it can imply something working beyond the picture plane. Just as in the print “Lotus” there are various levels or worlds working simultaneously. The water current has shaped the sandy landscape, the tides along with the wind above have influenced the current and the sun far above it all casts it’s influence. The man tries to make sense of it…all in good time.




“Repression” 1994
wood block relief print
8 3/8 x 11 3/4”
Edition of 25

“Repression” presents the anima manifesting herself to the surprise of the unsuspecting repressor. What exactly the male figure is holding under water is the little mystery I like to pose wherever I can in my work.

I had been reading many of Carl Gustav Jung’s collected works, Camille Paglia’s “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson” and various studies on goddess culture. The combination of similar ideas led to this image.

I am particularly proud of the way the cross contour lines create a chevron, an attribute of the Goddess, on the female figure’s torso and the way the background flattens into a screen of sorts.

“Repression” evolved and was later re-worked into the painting “Call”. In the painting the figure emerging from the background is motioning in what Joseph Campbell called the “fear not/boon bestowing” gesture.

January 22, 2008

Yesterday morning I received an invitation for a solo show. The details are still in the works but the timeline looks like sometime in the spring of 2009. It’s a great opportunity and a welcome reason to get to work.

I’d like to have a whole new body of paintings to show. I don’t have the actual measurements but the space sounds like it is quite large. I’m going to need quite a few paintings. Now with a chance to show a quantity of work all at once the thought arises. Is there going to be a theme? Consistency, or at least, an evolutionary flow is needed to hold the whole show together. Thematically, I’ve been hopping all over the place for the past few years without a thought to how all the work created in that time could (or should) work together. So, where to start?

Last night I walked into my studio and decided I had to organize before anything productive can start happening. There are still remnants of printing the small woodblocks everywhere and the cumbersome coffin is filling up floor space. Where am I going to store that thing now? I haven’t had the chance (or is it courage?) to try and pull it apart so I can reprint the side panels. So it sits in the middle of the floor still in one piece.

First I set a couple of beers to chill in the window sill, cranked up some tunes and started looking for order. I moved some boxes around, put prints away, and restacked the mass of cds that multiply on any horizontal space (one of these days I’m getting me an iPod), moved and installed some shelving, and re-stacked stretchers and wood. I pulled out the stretched and gessoed 65 x 87” canvas I’ve had kicking around for a while and hung it on the wall. Finally, after some order had been restored to the space I had time to ponder what to do next while I sat and enjoyed a nearly frozen brew.

In the middle of taking a sip I happened to catch the contour of a figure appear in the play of light raking over my uneven gesso ground. Not just any figure either, I recognized this guy. He’s in one of my sketches done around the time I was working on a digital sketch for “Anhelo”. I quickly pulled some old sketchbooks off the shelf and began leafing through, all the while casting sidelong glances at the figure materializing on the “blank” canvas.




Now, I don’t normally start my work in this fashion but it has occurred from time to time. The painting “Exchange” is one of those images that just “appeared” one day as I glanced over at a blank canvas. I don’t know if I’ll end up using the idea but I figured I should at least acknowledge and follow any suggestion the universe throws at me at this point. In the end, looking through the sketchbooks for the sketch I remembered allowed me to find and reconsider about 6 old ideas from the same time period as possible compositions to work on. Not a bad start considering just a few hours before I had been racking my brain for somewhere to start.

“Salud” to the Universe. I’m strapped in. Let’s see where it goes…

#7 of Top Ten: "Crossing(Loa)"

“Crossing(Loa)” 1994
Wood block relief print, 7 7/8 x 11 1/8”
Edition of 25

“Crossing(Loa)” is an example of the cross pollination that began to occur between my paintings and prints in 1994. With scraps of birch plywood from my day job I began to make prints in my Cincinnati apartment. I was without a studio, proper ventilated area or means to continue painting. I began experimenting with techniques on the wood to see how I could find an adequate means to reproduce the images I had in my head. I decided to re-examine and re-interpret a couple of painting images in print form to see how they stood up. “Crossing(Loa)”, “Almus”, and “Earthdiver” were some images that got the re-examination treatment. Some print images, like “Fire”, “Repression”, and “Whisper” eventually worked in the opposite direction and became paintings.

The painting, “Crossing (coyote)” has always been one of my favorites. That painting combined quite a few ideas I had floating through my head at the time: genetics, gender relationships, heritage and history. I remember the original idea came from the serendipitous melding of a book I was reading and a song lyric. The book was Maya Deren’s “Divine Horsemen: the Living Gods of Haiti” and the song was “Kiss of Life” by Peter Gabriel. The lightbulb went on when I realized that part of the song, like the book, was describing an important aspect of Haitian Vodou religion rites. The image that intrigued me was based on practitioners’ belief that the Loa (intermediaries of the deities) mount (possess) the ritualist and “ride” him/her as a rider rides a horse. The literal interpretation of this image intrigued me and I set about sketching different ways of presenting it. In the meantime many other associations of “crossing” began to enter my mind as I worked out the specifics of the composition. Once again the St. Christopher reference is present but the piece also playfully nods to the story of the scorpion and the frog, my cultural heritage and my family’s migration (hence “coyote”), as well as, a visual pun for x and y chromosomes.

When it came time to re-interpret the painting as a relief print I resorted to the use of cross contour lines, as in “Chasing Thoughts…”, to describe a figure. I wanted a clear distinction between the two figures in order to imply the “otherworldliness” of the Loa. The concentric flowing lines creating volume in the female figure become a nice contrast to looser sketchy lines describing the male figure. I wasn’t concerned with the mirroring of the painting’s direction that occurs in the print. This is the clear connection of having drawn the block in the same orientation as the painting and then having it print in reverse in the transfer of ink to paper.

#8 of Top Ten: "Ringcrow"

“Ringcrow” 2007
3 x 4” chiaroscuro relief print
5 variable editions of 5

Crows and ravens have always fascinated me. I love their black shapes cutting across the sky, their raucous calls, their mystique and their intelligence. I know many people that think that crows are evil or dangerous. I like that they serve as instigators and clever tricksters in Native American myths, companions of Odin in Norse myths and land finders in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

These black birds have always brought a smile to my face no matter where I may be. When I lived in Cincinnati a murder of crows would arrive by the hundreds (maybe thousands)to roost in the trees of Mount Adams. Their pops, gurgles and snapping language would greet me in the morning as I went to work at the Art Museum and again at night as I left for home. I have to wonder if the famous Rookwood Pottery studio just up the road took it’s name from the annual arrival of these magnificent birds.

“Ringcrow” is a simple ode to those pursuers of shiny things. In this case the little thief has captured someone’s ring. A wedding band perhaps?

The prints in this particular series entitled “Unfinished Stories” were my first attempts at multi-block multi-color relief prints. The color editions are small, just 5 (sometimes 6) prints per color with a total of 5 color runs per print. I like the way a different color will change the mood of the image even if ever so slightly.