Ecstatic
A quenchless love, dreaming of fire,
In sparkling rain, still heart’s desire;
Still filled with stars and wind and joy
And graces formed without alloy—
A pretty hope, a shining night,
That place where blessings all alight—
Give breath and meaning to all things—
This is my love, and yes, it sings,
For in the center of it all
Into such ecstasy I fall
As cannot be divined or plumbed
When earthly spirits have benumbed
The finer senses made for this—
Stop here, and end it with a kiss!
I’m fond of the idea of animal companions and the way that various spiritual and philosophical schools of thought have incorporated the concept of human-animal affinities as talismans, symbols, totems and the like–never mind the opportunities presented for animal appreciation in contacts with pets, farm animals, zoo denizens and the serendipity of wild meetings. I simply find animals intriguing and appealing, and the chance to be in friendly contact with any of them pleasing and attractive. When they become boisterous, and especially when they are threatened or threatening, not so much of course, but even in those states they are compelling subjects of interest.
Animals are beautiful, mysterious, sometimes cuddly and affectionate, sometimes regal and dramatic, and always rather miraculous in my view. As I’ve lived much of my life in proximity, one way or another, to interesting animals but never had pets or been a caretaker of animals directly, there’s a tinge of the exotic even in the most common and frequently seen birds, bugs and beasts, fish or fowl, tame or terrifying, that perhaps people having more direct relationships with the creatures would not see. Somehow, despite the frequency with which I may see them sitting on the road-lining fenceposts, dead trees and light standards, hawks become not only the focus of my attention but messengers and comforters and guides that reassure me and inspire me simply by appearing where they do and catching my eye. When the call of a full moon brings out more of the neighborhood creatures to enjoy its bright benefits, I am moved to feel that the presence of more animals (the wild ones from our wooded ravine and even the neighbors’ straying house pets) has some meaning and purpose and must be meant to please me as well.
It’s not surprising, then, that animals appear in so many of my artworks, both in their expected forms as portraits of a kind or characters in my visual stories, and often in more abstract influences on the pieces. As a carnivore myself, I am not averse to eating animals as well, but my appreciation in this regard is enhanced the more when I can make complete use of the animal’s sacrifice, say, in using not only all of the meat but also cooking down the bones for delicious and healthful broths and then still having the beauty of the bones that have not been utterly disintegrated in that process as potential art materials too.
Some marvelous turkey bones, for example, not only supported the original bird that became the crowning glory of a roast-turkey feast (or, more accurately, two or three feasts at the least), but then became soup and sauce base in a long slow cooking and then, as the bones came out of the broth, beautiful and earthy and sculptural objects that in turn made me think not only of the turkey itself but also of all sorts of other creatures whose bones and skeletons and exoskeletons make them so remarkably lovely and strange. That is how a turkey breastbone became, in my mind, first a nose and then a beak, and finally, when the ‘beak’ was matched up with other bones having the right shamanic shapes, combined and decorated and gilt and otherwise conglomerated, the bones became the structure of a different bird altogether. In a turkey I found an owl–a Great Horned Owl, or to be even more precise, the Spirit of a great horned owl–and perhaps that reflects best of all how I see animals.
For I would include the human animal, naturally, in the list of perplexing and amazing and funny and marvelous creatures that capture my imagination and that, in its own way, is a species full of exotic mystery and charm. That makes my own life, presence and bones a collation of possibly only practical and ephemeral and biologically ordinary, yet even in those regards, mythic, parts that fit in their infinitesimal way quite neatly enough into the grand scheme of existence. I suppose it’s a reflection of that, after all, that I see and seek in admiring animals as I do. Perhaps it’s legitimate that I should make shamanic masks and look for meaningful appearances from the many winged and hoofed and spirited beings surrounding me daily and nightly, throughout my life.
If you can’t make a grand entrance, at least try to make a spectacular exit . . .
Talk about Relief!
The way my insurance is freighted
With small-print and guilt, and prorated,
I find that this chick
Who can’t risk being sick
Can afford to be
Decapitated.
Campfire Song for the Unwitting Centerpiece
Singing silly campfire songs, we sit at either side
Across the pit and toast marshmallows, making note how wide
And high the flames can leap at will, and thinking if they might
Be quite sufficiently stoked up by middle of the night
To throw something substantial in to roast before the dawn,
Perhaps a certain someone here we’ve finally settled on,
Whose camp-songs so annoy us; cook to ash before next day
Our deep-disliked camp counselor: our own auto-da-fé.
Why, certainly, cabin-master, Sir, have another toasted marshmallow! Here, just lean over a teensy little bit closer . . .
When I was a young artist-in-the-making, it irritated me to no end that people who saw my interest in art and knew of my Norwegian roots often instantly assumed that I was a big fan if not acolyte of Edvard Munch, Norway’s best known artist. Besides that my knowledge of Munch’s work was pretty nearly limited to ‘Skrik‘ (‘The Scream’) and what little else I’d seen even in passing was not at all to my taste, I took it as an insult and a frightfully narrow-minded view of my potential. And that, my friends, was the capper, because it implied that I was not in charge of my own future but predestined by my ancestry to be a pale imitation of somebody I wasn’t particularly fond of or impressed by in the first place. I was jolly well going to go my own way and choose my own muses and inspirations and, most of all, I was absolutely not going to be told what to do and when and how to do it by some ghostly abstract borne in my bloodstream.
As a very fortunate young pilgrim, I did manage to get to the Old Country and spend a little time rooting around my ancestral stomping grounds during my undergraduate studies. I got to meet and spend time with my great-aunts and various other relations and visit the house my grandfather helped build for his elder sister, our Tante Anna, and the family farms–the sylvan Ovidsland property with its tidy white house and taller red barn set in among the slender birches, and the more remote summer pastures of Eitland, a smaller and more rustic place on land with a sweet little lake for fishing up dinner. I was able to see the headstones of relatives long-gone, outside the little church where many of the family had attended services for many an age, and walk paths and travel roads where many of them had trod and ridden for ages before that.
Eitland, painted by an unknown family member or friend in the early 20th century.
It was a rich and rare opportunity to both visit the places of my family’s past and to live among my Norwegian family in their current places and way of life, something that few people get the chance to do and that I will treasure for as long as I live. Because it did change me, and change my point of view. It may seem strange, but some of the greatest change happened in completely unexpected ways; I was not especially surprised, though quite pleased, that getting to know family I had not known before and see the world from which my grandfather in particular emerged to live in the States (my other three grandparents‘ ancestors all came from other parts of Norway, where we had less constant and present contact). But I never imagined that simply setting foot in the country of my ancestors would move me as it did. I could never have begun to imagine that I would be so struck, feel such a palpable and somehow heart-wrenching connectedness on standing in front of the amazing Oseberg ship in the Viking Ship Museum of Oslo–but I was; I did.
And I was truly astounded to discover, when I–a little reluctantly, perhaps–went with my sister to visit the Munch Museum that I not only found Edvard Munch’s work much more technically impressive and more profound, his life story and the stories that gave life to and were expressed in his work more impressive and thought-provoking than I had ever dreamed I would allow, but indeed, there was a lot more that I found simply compelling and even, startlingly, appealing. First of all, the guy could draw. He could paint, make prints, tell stories. He was, dammit, gifted and actually worthy of the attention. How very annoying of him, really. Because then I had to come back and re-think what I was doing a little bit. Was it so terrible to reflect something of our however-peripherally-common ancestry in my own work?
I had, if anything, a new appreciation for how much I didn’t wish to emulate his life, with the illness and suffering that marked life for and around him. But to take, as he did, what life presented and put it through the same filters of self and vision and thoughtfulness and surrealist whimsy and passion–that might be precisely what could make me more, dare I say it, myself as an artist. Who knew.
So by the time I set about making the collection of artworks for my master’s degree exhibition, it was an amusing ‘closing of the loop’ to find quite a number of people observing the works in preparation and in the finally installed show coming back to that same old observation that had used to frustrate me so. ‘Has anybody ever mentioned how much your work is reminiscent of Munch’s?’ It was even amusing to me to realize that, though the subjects might stray from his, though the media were sometimes decidedly different and the techniques concomitantly skewed to fit them, and though most of these viewers had no inkling of my ancestry, apparently there was a little something making its way up from my roots to the surface of my art.
Somewhere along the way I had also started to grow up a bit and begun to figure out that we all, inevitably, have less control over our own destinies than we fancy we do, and that that’s not inherently a bad thing–that life will always surprise us and challenge our grand plans and hopeful dreams and carefully charted paths. That the very things we can’t predict or control help to guide and shape us into things we might never have imagined we could plan or wish to do or to be. I guess I just took a longer and more convoluted route to letting my little commonalities with my fellow Norwegian artist Edvard show through; being dead, he could spare the time to wait for me to catch up. And once I got comfortable with the idea of seeing a hint of him in the mirror, I didn’t feel like screaming anymore either.
Dancers I: Bend Sinister
Leaning back into a dire S-curve
And turning, twisting out of grace,
Finding cruel existence takes
Her to a meaner, coarser place,
She rebels against the tide
That pulls her downward, scrapes her soul,
And makes a revolutionary
Spring to leave the great Black Hole
Of wounded spirit, tortured love,
To swim back into something sweet—
This is the mandate of the dance:
To win by keeping on her feet
Dancers II: Conjuror
Under a spell of loveliness
She leans, she curls, expands;
She falls against the strong caress
Of gladness, in the hands
Of magic greater than herself,
And when the spell is done,
There is no darkness, loneliness
Or sorrow; she is one
With every boundary, with joy,
With having been set free
From all constraint; the dance has won
Her to infinity
Pardon My Snoring
My lead-lined eyelids will insist it’s time to go to sleep,
So don’t be too insulted if I leave to count some sheep;
I find you fascinating and quite scintillating too,
So please don’t take it wrong if I should conk right out on you.
Your dazzling personality and brilliance are so bright
It pains me to, but go I must, and bid a fond Good-Night!
Pay no attention to the way I’m backing out the door,
And know your super-excellence could never be a bore.
I sigh, I yawn! But, for all that, it can’t be you that tires:
I’m sure it seldom happens that your audience expires!
Naturally
Following the steps of Nature, in my time I’ll go to sleep
and slough off my human stature, an appointment I must keep
whether soon or late or sudden, whether willingly or no,
taking nothing, I am bidden, as to dust–beyond–I go,
to a deep cellular cellar, shut from day and gone from night,
simple mote or something stellar, eternally both dark and bright;
I’ve no grief at this my bedding down to death as time requires,
but will go with no regretting to new lands and distant fires–
or to deep chasms’ silent spaces, nothing moving, nothing moved,
nothing touched by ills or graces or by sweetness I once loved,
for my thoughts will too lie resting, speechless, dreamless, all release;
all exemption now from testing, seamlessly wrapped up in peace–
So I’ll leave you, soft, in quiet
naturally inclined to sigh
with something of
relief, a sigh yet
not of sorrow,
when
I die
Reawakening
Winter now is past, forgotten swiftly as the melting snow,
as the things that children know slip away in quilted cotton
while they sleep: tomorrow, calling, beckons them to newer days
and to pleasures yet a haze on the edge of nighttime’s falling–
sorrow dissipates, as ices rimming rivers melt apace
in spring’s warm return to grace the Earth with all her sweet devices
Love, awake! The gentle keening of the season’s herald bird
is from barren branches heard, calling them to leafy greening,
calling from the snows of death all who have lain sleeping, dormant,
seasoned with dark winter’s torment,
to return to life
and breath
Sometimes even a partial notion will do!
'Pair'--a mixed media painting--is now available in my little shop ArtSparks at Zazzle.com and I just learned is being featured as one of Today's Best. It's not World Peace, but it's a nice 'opening day' present from my sponsors.
I told you recently that I was preparing to offer some of my work for sale online, and it’s time for the first revelation. I know that so many of you who read and converse with me here are also artists, writers and other creative people, and thus virtually by default are also (a) somewhat challenged by the technology and know-how of operating in businesslike fashion, promoting and marketing and selling your work; and (b) not exceedingly wealthy, as a result. So I did what I know a few of you, and many other people nowadays do, and turned to an existing, established production/marketing mechanism online and am going to let Zazzle help me with the ‘dirty work’. It means I’ve made a few business choices already, and I will share my thinking with you here because we really are all in this together!
First of all, this is far from a get-rich-quick scheme, not only because this is work I’ve spent most of my life learning to do and producing, but because as a business model it’s even less remunerative than the 30%-off-the-top commission that’s fairly typical among artist representing galleries and agents I’ve known in the past. But I am willing to take a very small amount (in many cases, the standard 10% royalty fee) from a company that will cover the grunt work I’m not willing or able to do myself. That is, of course, if they prove they can and will do it. I chose Zazzle because they have a certain established reputation and track record, easy to use interfaces, and while they are not high-end and going to capture for me any exclusive and wealthy clientele, they produce a decent quality range of products and so far have been very responsive in our interactions. This also makes me feel confident in their interactions with anyone who would come to view and buy my work, and that I can price the work as low as possible so that people like me (many being of the aforementioned impecunious creative sort) can choose from a variety of items that they might actually be able to afford without horrific trials.
I have begun posting my designs to the store fairly recently, but have made an effort to put up a reasonable representation from different sorts of my work: photography, drawing, painting and mixed-media images, and a fair range of topics from the abstract to absurdist, from factual to fantastical. There are a small few images with text (prose or poetry) on them, and many of those offered as prints can be purchased not only in different sizes but on different kinds of paper or even as stretched, ‘gallery style’ canvases, that is, with the image wrapping the sides so that the pieces can be framed but do not require a frame for hanging. I have offered a few of the designs as T-shirts, too, because it’s generally considered a good thing to wear clothes, and if we require clothes, then why not wear ones that aren’t terribly expensive? T-shirts are a pretty affordable option. But I’ve never been fond of wearing anything that advertised someone or some Thing (object or cause or concept)–if I want to promote a cause, I’d rather do it with my own words and my actions than with worn signage. So you will find very few slogans or words at all on the T-shirts, just pictures for the most part. I have made a number of them simple black-and-white images, often using my pen-and-ink line drawings, and I would encourage those who like color to consider getting a set of fabric coloring pens and having a good old time coloring the T-shirts like coloring book pages to suit taste and need. Might be a very fun thing to do with children, in fact, as the T-shirts can be ordered not only in a range of adult sizes and styles but many children’s ones as well.
I’ve configured most designs as the largest print version for which I think they’re suited, but most can be scaled smaller for your smaller space or to be more affordable. As it is, there are a great many prints under $20 a piece, and quite a few under $10, so I hope that a larger number of people can afford them without feeling a terrible pinch. There are a whole lot of other designers and artists represented in Zazzle stores, and a really wide array of objects and items that can be customized with your, my, or others’ designs and images, and I will see if and when I’m ready to branch out further with my own. For now, you should know that there is lots of work posted to Zazzle by someone under the name of ‘artspark’–pretty nice stuff, from the look of it–that’s not mine; I tried a huge number of store name options before finding one Zazzle accepted as not already in use, so I’ll just stick with this one even if it’s a bit close. I titled each of my designs KIW Sparks: [Title] to differentiate a little, hoping that helps.
Even if you have no interest in–or money for–buying anything, I invite you to spend a little time visiting my work at Zazzle. It can serve, in part, as my online gallery for now, where you can see many of the works I’ve used to illustrate my blog posts, as well as a few artworks you’ve not seen here before, and I am eager to share them all with you. I hope that you, too, are finding the courage to ‘put yourself out there’ artistically and creatively because we have this fine forum among friends in the blog-world and online businesses, because even though it’s generally a tough way to make a living, financially speaking, it’s a glorious way to make a Life.
I don't know if I can claim to have accomplished anything yet, but I'm at least underway in the process of taming the dragon that is my fear of the business side of the creative life. Hopefully, having chosen Zazzle as my squire, I'll figure out how to battle my way through the whole process more successfully over time!
It was a simple little painting, nice if nothing especially original or fantastically crafted or anything startling like that, but I liked what I saw. It was of a slightly stylized, funny little semi-abstract bird, one of those paintings that always run the risk of being too cute and cuddly and charming for its own good, with a few little bitty splashes of the leftover paint sprinkled about the canvas almost as an afterthought, maybe meant to evoke flowers or stars. Not much to move me or even catch my attention . . . except . . .
No, this is not the painting. Not even part of it. I couldn't photograph someone else's artwork (this is mine, as always) and stick it in my blog even if I wanted to do so, because that would be (a) copyright infringement and (b) as ill-mannered as flying over someone and . . . well, you'll see . . .
I liked what I saw because that last little splash, those sprinkly spots–why, they landed smack in the empty space right beneath the birdie’s tail. All of a sudden a foofy little bird that seemed to have been meant to act all pert and prim . . . had pooped. In an eyeblink it went straight from being a prissy little pretty-bird vacant of all meaning to become a faintly twerpish chirper, a vaguely immature and irresponsible and a much, oh ever so much, more real and kindred-spirit creature. “I strafe upon you all!” it cheeped, but all the while with the same blandly friendly expression, almost as if it were a passive-aggressive scalawag of a bird just barely behind that pastel-feathered façade.
So much more understandable and filled with story-time potential, this impertinent little fellow. It’s not that I want to be that bronze-cast personage of the park whereon the pigeons land to ‘take their ease’–life offers plenty of opportunities for humans to feel they’re treated like inanimate objects or public restrooms as it is–it’s just that part of me is pleased that a little cutesy-bird was allowed to go his own way just for the element of surprise, that some painter I might’ve dismissed as boringly sugared-up with too-sweet birds decided, literally, to ‘let this one go’.
Even better to my mind, I’m afraid, is if that same artist never even noticed the obvious implication of that splotch’s placement and so sent out, for show and sale, a scamp of a bird that flicked its tail with devious disdain and dropped its pretty pastel bombs upon the painter’s cozy dainty reputation right along with all the passing world. I couldn’t help myself: I liked what I saw.
No, obviously this is not the painting in question either. In the interest of full disclosure, however, I will tell you that my original mixed media painting shown digitally here was titled ‘Ruach‘, a nice juicy Hebrew name meant to evoke the eponymous Holy Spirit. Which, being represented in the narratives generally by a much nicer (if not necessarily politer) sort of bird, would presumably drop kindlier sorts of things upon one in passing. I would hope. And hey, that just makes the earthly, earthy mischievousness of the bird in the other painting that much more amusingly charming by contrast. If you share my childish kind of humor, anyway.
Much of what I share on this blog is likely to be my artwork (drawings, paintings, photography, digital images, mixed media work, and so forth) and writing. Here’s a sample of my graphite drawing, from what my fans know as my ‘fish and pencils‘ period. As in so much of my work, the fish and pencils, both individually and in conjunction, became thematic merely because they interested me and kept me entertained as objects themselves, as subjects to be drawn or rendered, and as a bonus, as agent-provocateurs by the mere eccentricity of their coinciding in images. That, in fact, is thematic in my life as well: the falling-into or happening-upon that leads me to link previously unrelated thoughts and items and creates the flicker of initial interest that takes me down yet another tangential path.
