art Archives

No return

In lieu of brand, a body of work

The artist denounced repetition. When asked why, said if repeating the winner was a principle of advertising, of branding, art should do the opposite. The artist, upon leaving one harbor, would not return. They folded each canvas as they painted, each fold rendering the form into something it had not been before. For this reason, the artist had to admit, no one would ever be able to describe what they were doing until the doing was done.

Inspired by and with borrowed phrases from an interview with French painter Noël Dolla by Gwenaël Kerlidou in the latest issue of BOMB.

Bearings

Where assembly is required

Considering any set of assembled would-be actors in each scene, most of them go nameless. If the story is the frame, the names of those in this majority are a secret between the storyteller and those characters outside of it. Or between the storyteller and those too close to be named. The witness withholds so much of what is from the voice of the story. The process of getting anyone or anything born is so fraught there may be some wisdom in being cautious about who and when you name what parts. Which suggests something about wisdom, its necessary incompleteness. Which suggests I have accessed some, though I have not. I am just trying to write this thing.

Spiral

Regarding the next breath

The artist did a series of spirals. I don’t know what she was thinking before she went down this road but begin somewhere is a familiar feeling. I am often haunted by this one. Anywhere will do, but where is still a pertinent question. You can start at the outside and dive in, in, in––follow the logic to the question of black holes and the possibility of the singularity and related questions about the connecting thread between dimensions, or universes, if you take as a fact the possibility of many in one. Or you could start at the center and spin yourself away, beyond the frame.

***

Inspired by the spirals of Louise Bourgeois.

Seaworthy

Sight fishing lessons

The first thing to learn was forgetting well enough to dream a boat to help with crossing the night, its busy port thick with interdimensional commerce. The next was how to watch the anchor, watch the ropes, keep a pen and a lighthouse nearby to allow for return and remembrance.

Allowances

For breadth

I am sometimes permitted to return as a single filament of root hair on an ancient tree, and stretch toward the hair of another nearby, who is not yet tree and not yet anything visible because all its life, for now, is happening underground.

The Consultants

Moonlit expertise

There was a group we would see at night by the river. We wanted to know what they did there. If it was nothing good, as everyone said, we still wanted to know, but how? One night we went to see for ourselves. With blue-shadowed feet they danced the shores to pieces, and we woke in our beds and went back the next night to see why? and they explained that they were seeking out the marrow of the river stone and to our question on for what? they said to talk. There was a precision to their foolishness. This, we recognized. These were definitely not the ones you called if you had a question about calculations having to do with variable rates but could tell you in the space of a single breath the minutes until daybreak or the number of feathers needed to make a heart on the ground the size of your head, and whether when you are done it will even fit, and how to go about attaching it.

Bird Dreams

Hope in the dark

One day I hope to remember
the song I keep rehearsing in dreams
and sound it.

Craft Talk

With Andrew Wyeth.

The less there is in a subject, the more I can pour into it. And I have a strong feeling that the more objects you use, the less there is in a picture. It’s not that I doubt the object. I doubt the way I paint it. If it becomes about the object, forget it. What matters is what seeps unconsciously from the object. The fleeting character of shadow, the sadness of fall. It is important to forget about what you are doing, then art may happen. Sometimes.

***

Adapted from interviews with the artist, whose “Wind from the Sea” moved me this morning.

Before Sky

When a bird

How often I wish I could tell you about this exquisite bird in such a manner that you might know her, too. She was here before me, before the shattering. Bird is an inadequate word in this context, but I use it because it approximates a reference to a creature with a beak and feathers. She was much larger than I am but bowed her magnificent neck to meet me at eye level. I wanted to look into those eyes endlessly. This seemed like an indulgent and selfish response to such an offering, so instead I started numbering her feathers. I recognized that this was likely an impossible task, especially for someone of my limited intelligence who lacked training and had neither tools or methods beyond the steadfast attention that had long been a symptom of what my elders gravely suggested was a somewhat outsized and possibly obscene capacity for devotion. One, two, three. . . I was at 13,426 when abruptly interrupted. An official voice demanded to know, What are you doing? but I would not turn my head from those undulating wisps. I meant to keep my count. Other things were shouted but I ignored them, meaning to hang on.

That is not, the voice insisted, real. I heard a click of metal.

What followed was not feathers, but sky. What ghosted through it has no pulse, no blood, no song. There is no after here and nothing to save by the counting. Only this continuance. I am rearranged inside it, but I cannot tell you how. I thought the words would appear at the end of that count and if it did not end that I would live inside the action of keeping it––forever, with no need for language beyond what was passing between the count and that vision in pieces. Now what.

Consciousness

Of edges

Where was the edge of that place with the weathered hands of that white-haired woman who collected birchbark as she walked? For art, she said. Whether to make something or for the sake of those scraps alone, their jagged perfection, I did not think to ask.