Convention Center
“RENAISSANCE”, 2008, 10′ x 3′ x 3′, earth,wood
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This large sculpture stands in the center of an outdoor courtyard on the main floor of our local Santa Fe Community Center.
Upstairs on the roof terrace there are 15 more smaller versions of this peeking out amidst gorgeous landscaping of feather grasses.
These were the last works-in-form I completed.
These upcoming weeks are high season in our town.
Many, many people from all over the world will be here for INDIAN MARKET and various other events.
I am proud to be represented so publicly.
And I miss the hands-on work that goes into creating large sculpture.
My body has just moved into different territory.
I try not to hanker after what was but really, IT WAS GREAT WHILE IT LASTED!
And an important piece of me I am proud of.
Onward ..onward we go into territory unseen and calling us to the mystery whether we like it or not.
God, please make it just as interesting and satisfying as it used to be.
Crossing
untitled, 1992, 30″ x 22″, monoprint
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Cross is a strange word.
It is a religious symbol, yes.
And used differently it can mean sourness as in: “I am cross with you.”
You can cross over or into.
Cross one mushroom with another and get a third.
Cross out a whole sentence.
Or cross paths with another.
The gist seems to be a meeting point where one thing joins another or pretty much obliterates what was happening previously.
I heard someone on the radio speaking about the symbology of the cross in Christianity.
He described it like this: The horizontal line is representative of our very humanness.
We traverse these waters and have our various experiences, good and not so good.
The generator is our WILL.
We will ourselves forward and shoulder the very heavy HORIZONTALNESS (my word..) which certainly can be peppered with adventure, intrigue and golden things.
If we are fortunate, the luggage gets too heavy and we put it down to rest a bit and see a street sign still dripping with fresh paint with only the word “OTHER.”
We are so damn tired of the road and the weight and the willing of it all that we haven’t the strength to keep to our plan and so we leave the bags at the corner and make the turn.
The only thing we take with us is surrender.
And the turn opens to us and keeps opening and we fall in love with the question mark.
‘Till we get scared and need our favorite shirt from the left behind luggage and we retrace our steps back to the crossing.
But now the beloved shirt has a moth hole.
So we leave it at the side of the road and make the turn once again…
…and again..
..and again.
Chaos and Order
“BEACH SANDS”, 2007, sand,wood
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This piece is made from sand collected from many beaches.
I have always liked the juxtaposition of chaos and order.
In this case, the idea of tiny grains of sand from various places; tossed in the waves for God knows how many eons and then introducing the geometry on top of that.
It soothes me, somehow.
And so, I wonder how this thread of order and not which shows up in my work so often makes itsself known in my life?
Well, the chaos part is pretty self-evident.
It starts with an M and ends with an S.
The order is the interesting element because I seem to fight it in many ways but see that it is essential for a sense of wholeness for me.
I’m feeling too vulnerable this morning to list all the areas out of order in my life at the moment but suffice it to say they are there.
…and there..
…and there…
What I am drawing attention to this morning is the solace that seems to come from the presence of the two.
Together, they are life-supporting. Chaos and order.
I’m going to wobble over there and clean up my desk…
How to Pray
ceramic, steel, 1997, 28″ x 4″
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HOW TO PRAY
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First, get out of the way.
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Stay low to the ground and take
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No thing for granted.
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CA 2010
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Mystery
textile design on silk, 1987
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I have the oddest feeling a new life is waiting in the wings for me.
I have certainly had many, many incarnations lived out in just this present lifetime.
And so, it seems another is just around the bend.
There is not too much fear.. some, truth be told, but the pull toward this new thing, whatever it is wins out over trepidation.
In the transition I don’t trust myself in the world.
My fuse is short and my tolerance level low.
I was meandering through my favorite bookstore yesterday looking for solace and a gorgeous amazonian black
woman sat at a small table with a sign offering intuitive readings.
I seldom choose ‘in-store’ guidance givers but I was drawn to sit with her and after all was said and done I left with the knowledge I needn’t look anywhere other than the avenues I now depend on for way-showing.
Illness fosters drawing at straws when answers aren’t forthcoming.
And always, I am asked to return to home base..
Close my eyes and go inside and ask for what I need.
Have the where-with-all to tolerate the stillness it takes to STOP.
Weirdly, this is so challenging for me.. the curtailing of incessant ‘going out there’ for answers.
We all seem to be heading fast and furiously away from stillness what with all the bells and whistles in our techno-age.
Where is our tolerance for silence?
Our ability to sit soaking in the unknown trusting it’s innate intelligence?
Knowing that we don’t know and that has to be ok sometimes even if it makes us wiggle and squirm.
Unbecoming Behavior
untitled, 30″ x 30″, 1999, m/m
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The process of getting well is fraught with bumps in the road.
For me, healing is a process affecting my emotional, spiritual, mental, psychic and physical selves.
Each change I make in one area shifts the others in some way.
Sometimes I am literally flattened and I don’t know why.
The thing I DO know is the more I let go of who I thought I was, the more I become uninterested in becoming.
It has been a life of pushing toward achievement for this girl.
Like a good and true American entity, I TRIED to go for the gold.
But in my art career “IT” eluded me.
Sure.. I made money sometimes and have magazines galore with beautiful spreads on my work.
A resume’ that tells the tale of decades of TRYING.
But is that it?
Is that the gold?
Truth be told, there was always a big MISSING in the life I led of creating art in my studio alone and driving it over to the gallery and sometimes getting a check in the mail.
I seldom knew the names of who took my work home to their living room or how they felt about it or what moved them enough to shell out the cash.
BUT I WAS AN ARTIST!!
With a genuine and shiny identity in my pocket.
And who is this girl who is getting out of bed at noon because her body is in revolt today and she doesn’t know why and can’t find the energy to care?
Instead of being in the process of BECOMING I am UN- BECOMING…
That artist girl is certainly still in here but she’s resting and healing from a lifetime of YEARNING for some damn thing that seems to be closer in to her these days, even as she lies still in the un-doing of it all..
Jonah’s Pool
If I were forced to choose a time in my life that I hold most dear it would be my high school years at Cranbrook.
In truth, my name was called each morning in classes across the lake at KINGSWOOD, the girl’s school part of the educational community.
But I likely was not there to answer.
I was given the gift of an education at Cranbrook by my grandmother.
A number of my ancestors names were carved (legally) in the halls of both schools upon graduation.
The Cranbrook Community is a rarified piece of real estate; both of the mind and the earthen kind.
I will write more about my time there another day but I woke this morning thinking about Jonah’s Pool.
The pack I ran with were boys, mostly.
Smart and sassy, irreverent and intense.
I loved them. Love them still.
They saved me but they likely don’t know that.
We laughed and cut class and smoked pot and walked around the grounds at Cranbrook in the process of becoming the men and women we are today.
We just looked around at things.. life.. and took note. We were too high to put the pieces together back then but later on in life we did.
It was the finest backstory you could ever imagine.
Jonah’s Pool was dark. And surrounded on all sides by green. And BIG! And in off hours, private.
It served as a swimming pool for the boarding students, teachers and all those associated with Cranbrook.
It felt like a secret place as you walked through the glade and the big, black water opened up in front of you.
I was too depressed most of the time in high school.
That pool gave me freedom as I crept through the green gates of hedge in the half light of Michigan evenings.
I scanned the still water and if I found no one there, I left my clothes on the bank and dove into the dark.
I never quite knew what was under that water.
Could have been anything.
But the mystery and surrender of the dive called me and I kept listening over the years.
It was medicine, that water.
A private reverie.
A grand erasure.
And I was new.
And I was new.
Today, so many years past, here in the desert, I remember.
Sky
The skies here look a bit like this at dawn.
There are a few wildfires burning close by and the monsoons have made their entry with a suitcase full of cloud formations.
My dog presses close in as thunder wreaks havoc.
And I shut my eyes to smell the sweetness of dampened blacktop and fat sage.
Twice this morning I’ve written what felt like good and solid words here.
And twice their lives were cut short.
It is a sign I need simplicity and spareness as my medicine today.
I will share it with you..
Church Ladies
detail of ceramic sculptures, 1995
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My girlfriend has a 10 year old son.
He wanted to go to church.
She, not being ‘organized religion savvy’ looked on the internet for Santa Fe possibilities. (Good techie mom she is..)
The UNITARIAN-UNIVERSALIST people won.
Yesterday, I went too.
I usually am really put off by the initial barrage of false-feeling, bug eyed strangers heading in my direction as I walk into a church for the first time.
‘She has done this before’, you say….
Yes. I am drawn to ritual. I like the feeling of singing with others. I do enjoy a bit of faith-en-mass.
Incense, candlelight, humility and hope and mystery seem like good companions sometimes.
Yesterday, I was surprised by sincerity.
No push to join the group.
No one asked for my vitals.
Just a bunch of regular folks setting aside some precious time to come together and turn their hearts toward something other than themselves.
Homage to the ‘larger than us’ we tend to tuck away at the back of the drawer.
I loved sitting with my friend.
We judged people.
(We talked about this later)
And we sang.
My voice was so small. I took note of that.
We all sat in the midst of the tailings of a theater performance the church had put on; painted scenery and make-shift changing rooms and other flotsom from the previous night.
The only real prop added to the actual service was a chalice with a candle and flame in the center.
All the makings of a very human existence were well represented and had a place reserved for them: sorrow, hope, meditation, voice, order, chaos, questions and there were even a few answers.
I was left with the calm and pleasure in my friends company.
And the strangers who I didn’t need to armor myself against.
I liked the whole thing a lot and may go back.
So precious this human journey as we try to make sense of it all.
I feel the need here to tell my version of a church I’d love to attend:
Gospel choir.. very black and sort of wild, the event held in a wood down a secret path somewhere in the high desert at dusk or dawn, rocks and hay bales for chairs, a 10 year old kid next to me and a Native American teenager on the other side. No words read from any book. A chance to speak if moved to do so. Flowers, flowers everywhere. Animals, animals everywhere. Unlikely characters pouring out of the half-dark. And at the center of it all just a simple fire. And the unmistakable presence of the ‘all-that-is.’ And the sound would be one I had never, ever heard before. And everyone I have ever loved or ever wanted to would be there.
Amen.
Eclipse
untitled, 2003, 11″ x 11″ x 4, m/m
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Tomorrow we have a lunar eclipse to look forward to.
I am peripherally interested in astrology and those guys say: “TRUST CHANGE.”
Well, I’m pretty dang tired of change these days, truth be told.
My nights and days are full of giving myself grief over undone life things like messy closets and projects and bills and phone calls and unwashed dishes and dry cleaning needing to be picked up.
Yes, there are meadows dotted with wildflowers and bunnies scattered in the midst of my days.
Sleep used to be a respite but lately, even those realms are tainted.
Oddly, I am finishing up a book proposal and the writing of it is the solace in my life at the moment.
That and a flirty-thing going on.
Sometimes I want to throw in the towel.
But I haven’t the strength to make the toss.
Pathetic but real.
This season of change we are ALL INSIDE is horrible.
And necessary.
And anger-provoking.
And patience-making.
I hate change.
And I need it.
We all need it.
Sometimes, I feel as if my body acts as a little microcosm of the out-in-the-world frustrations of collapse and rebuilding.
I am tired.
So very tired.
But we don’t have a choice.. not a one of us.
We get up and handle the stuff shoveled our way.
Make a neat pile or toss it in a messy heap.
The key seems to be action.
No matter how large or small.
It acts like a ballot put in the voting box of LIFE, I think.
So, today, with this small act of writing my truth, I cast my vote for life.
God, give me the strength to keep moving through my day and participating at a healthy and vibrant level.
And forgive me if I can’t.