Artwala Road

I’m a lifelong city girl but this year I’m going to plant a garden, one that grows vegetables! Our city house does not have a lot of earth around it but it does have some and one side of the house gets glorious sunshine for most of the day. I’m inspired by my friend Kelly who has an acre of land and grows all kinds of things. But I’m also inspired by what’s happening on our planet and by the movement towards being more conscious about the energy we use both in going to and from the shops and in having our food shipped from far away. I’ve always been very conscious about the quality of food we eat and having fresh greens and tomatoes right outside our kitchen door will be great. I was just visiting my friend and neighbor, Sally, this morning and she too is going to put in a wee vegetable plot. My wonderful son is coming to do some work here on the house this week so I’ll get him to pick up some timbers for Sally and us to make raised beds.

There will be things to learn, of course, but that will be fun. Allan and I tried our hand at a community plot a few years ago but we weren’t good at getting ourselves over there. It felt difficult to pull ourselves away from work and will be much easier to have the plot at home. We’ll have to get a delivery of good earth. I’m not quite sure how the original settlers in Massachusetts actually survived on the stony soil here. But once we’ve got some good earth going we should be able to get the vegetables planted and be off to the races. Could be famous last words but I think not! We can’t have that!
Now I will have to plan out what we’ll have—tomatoes for sure and a few herbs like basil, dill, parsley, coriander. Then lettuce greens. I love salad every single day in summer. It is my favorite, favorite food, for sure. I want to put in a rhubarb patch somewhere though maybe not in the same spot as the other stuff because it takes up room. A few zucchini would be nice and perhaps other squashes. I might just start with that and see how well we do this first summer. There’s also the possibility of a second plot beside the deck. That would be for carrots and cucumbers and maybe a few spuds.

When I was in San Francisco I bought a wonderful book called—World Changing. Al Gore wrote the introduction and more on this soon when I get a bit farther into it. The problems in our world are so very complex and challenging now but every little thing we do can make a difference and join us to the spirit of positive change. Even a little city plot. And I think this plot will make me more conscious of others things that can also be done, that I can do. It does feel like time I did more. Some of it is just old habits that need changing. But by next weekend I should be up to my elbows in dirt! Yay!

May 4th, 2008 | Category: Dear Reader | Comments (8)

It’s a rainy Saturday here in Boston and there were only four of us drawing today. Our goal was to work on getting a little more abstract. Realism is always interpretive anyway and we’re all interested in breaking free of its constraints. I’m really always interested in exploring. I think that’s what a class is for and, with luck, we get ideas and experience to further our art in whatever way we want to continue. The thing that grabs one artist is not necessarily what grabs another so it’s good to try things out, to really experience them as a way of coming to know who you are as an artist and even as a person.

So we folded our paper in half and drew from a photograph of flowers on the top half with the intention of simplifying. In other words, we tried to leave some of the detail out, to leave some of our lines open, to keep shading to a minimum. The object is clear but the rendering is light. That done, I asked the class to then open the paper and complete the picture using something from the first image but not all. I think the results were really interesting.

Sometimes it’s a question of coming in closer, or reversing dark and light, or just doing lines. In every case, what emerged was more interesting because it allowed the viewer to engage with the image by trying to find meaning in it though not literal meaning. I think that art in a pure form like this is energy. Depending what we do we can create a field of energy in our work—a field of lightness, or tranquility or excitement, all kinds of things. It’s the viewer’s job to watch themselves and their response to the piece at the same time as viewing the art itself.

Art can take us out of our small minds and into our big, expansive ones. So even if it is just a practice it is a fine, fine thing to do. We confront ourselves even when we are focused on something outside of ourselves. We see the ways we inhibit ourselves and the ways we begin to free ourselves. And, very often, we see the ways in which we judge ourselves and our work. I think this is why it’s so hard to break free in art—we’re groomed from our first day in school to perform the ‘right’ way, to get ‘good’ grades, to ’succeed.’

I called this class ‘The Mistakes Class’ because I really want us to make mistakes, to go that far out. Luckily I made one myself today. I tried something and just couldn’t find anywhere to go with it. So, it was on to something else. I can’t even say it was a mistake I learned from—it was just something that didn’t work. But the next piece I did really did work and I couldn’t have done it without going way too far in a fruitless direction first.

I’m still a bit pooped from our time in San Francisco, have to say. But so many wondrous things seem to be happening that are leading in good directions. I’m still very inspired by the Art in the City symposium at Harvard a couple of weeks ago. It makes me think how much of art and literature in the last part of the twentieth century was invested in form in an intellectual way for its own refinement and sake. How little art and literature in the recent past has looked out beyond the small ego self. This is just a thought but it seemed we had our heads in the sand as our planet slid into dilemmas we ignored—overpopulation, the burning of fossil fuels and their effects, extreme poverty, pollution and illness. Making another drawing is not going to solve these problems but I think it can lead us to our brave, creative selves where we are able to look both inwards and outwards and take good action in the world. Maybe it’s all perfect as the Buddha said but I hope artists are going to be part of the solutions we need now to create. More on this soon and I’d love to hear your thoughts too. But now I’m going to cook dinner and try to get back on east coast time!

May 3rd, 2008 | Category: Drawing Club | Leave a comment