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Wednesday 13 August 2008- "Where do you get the stuff for your work? The question comes frequently, and I've yet to come up with an answer entirely satisfactory to me or to inquirers. The truth is, I have always been a better finder than a seeker. Things surprise me along the way, catch my gaze and engage my attention, usually for no apparent reason. The reason may continue to elude me until I finally see an object's place in a construction.
I go out into each day with the open mind and meandering eye of a gleaner, trusting with a gleaner's faith that if I am a watchful traveler, the things I need will find me as I go.
Sunday 16 August 2008- Everything in a construction has it's place. That place has nothing to do with the object's place and function in the larger world outside the artifact, but it has been brought into this contrived little cosmos because it has some meaning to the maker. The piece at upper left, "Sight" derives its title from the small vial in the lower left quadrant which in real life held the L-carnosine solution that medicates my cataracts. The paint brush at center is one of many derelicts scattered around the studio. The acrylics and resins I use to finish the constructions are extremely hard on brushes, rendering them short-lived even with conscientious cleaning.
Monday 19 August 2008- David Longley and I have been carrying on an engrossing and at times coherent email discussion re/ the origin of the standing stone pictured at right. While it is fun to think some aboriginal people set it up, it is seems more likely to be the work of nature. You find such stones here and there along the Blue Ridge Escarpment, always in or near streams. One can imagine the stone buried and submerged in the river. Over time, the surrounding soil eroded away more quickly than the stone, and as the water level dropped below the top of the stone, the sides continued to be worn away by the action of water and sediment, resulting finally in the pillar that stands today.
When we look at a tree or a river or a stone, we are seeing only what is momentarily visible of a long and continuing process. Only God is. Everything in creation happens. All created things have duration. They begin, they are altered, finally they end, changed into the beginning of something else. Mountains are exceedingly slow events.
Thursday 21 August 2008- Fretting over my daughter driving a truck laden with all her worldly goods to Rhode Island, I stayed up way past my bed-time, and watched Charlie Rose's interview with Francesco Clemente. Clemente is generally identified with the Warhol gang, but I think his figurative work is much closer to Leonard Baskin. I was more interested in his observations on the human condition than his comments about art. According to Clemente, we are driven to live and work by two basic urges: the desire for narrative (to have a place in our own story), and the desire for completion (we seek people and situations that make us feel whole.) He also remarked that a spiral is a better symbol of existence than a circle.
Saturday 30 August 2008-
It is amazing how life works out. Your children turn into interesting adults about the time you start needing some new friends.
Saturday 6 September 2008- Although I still keep sketchbooks, the working drawings that once filled them are becoming fewer. Nowadays, I'm more likely to work out a piece by directly manipulating the components, which are packed into the studio in boxes and bins and piles. All around are bits and pieces shaped and joined which will eventually become part of some larger construction. Generally I have no idea when I begin stirring things about, where they will finally fit, and what sort of structure may emerge
from them.
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