Tag: Creativity

Film Journey in the Now

Curve Talk About Art

Grand Providentia United

If straight talk is what you’re looking for, you may, or may not, find it here. Art takes many forms. In some cases, it is formless, as it is with conceptual art when the concept is as yet unrealized. Ideas are immaterial things, and concepts are sometimes abstract, along with algebraic formulas. But an abstract acrylic on canvas can have solid appeal. Touch it with your fingertips and let your vision follow its pathways until your senses are absorbed in the two-dimensional realm of optical illusion. Eye candy is delicious, but too much of it, and you run the risk of rounding an eye tooth. Straight lines can stabilize your composition with economy. Straight lines can also derail an art critic’s ability to look straight at your art. Contemporary architecture often bends the strict rules of structural integrity in an effort to add in a curved or crooked line, an arch or a floating stairway. A stairway that theoretically leads us to a horizontal heaven, and it gets us there vertically, on a diagonal. In my own practice of art, I’ve heard the square folks lamenting in my ear about the inability to even draw a straight line. My reply, usually non-verbal, is ‘Why would you want to?’.

“Midlife Crisis” Drawn in pastel during my midlife crisis.

Bear with me, I promise to get to the pointillism. Then again, who wants to talk about a million polychrome dots giving the impression of three-dimensionality anyway. Nobody does. Everybody does want to talk about Leonardo DaVinci though. He was an exemplary master of all dimensions, proportions and abstract scientific concepts. Leonardo and Michelangelo often behaved like oil and water when in close proximity, but being the art giants they were, they were rarely in close proximity. There wasn’t enough space in all of Europe for that.

“Inside Outside”

Then there is sculpture. As big as David or as small as Venus of Willendorf, the contours comparable. Just this morning, I loaded a ridiculously heavy bronze sculpture on a truck and offloaded it in the studio that is now my temporary home. I’m very tired, so I’ll write about sculpture the next time I am inspired to talk curves about art.

“Salvador Seahorse” Bronze bench by sculptor Mike Elwell. Me, stranded in Saint Petersburg, Florida, for the moment.
Just for the Joyfulness

Welcome to Exploratory Sunday!

Grand Providentia United

We stand on the banks of a stream of consciousness. Except that this is no ordinary stream, it is the resulting flow from the current of every stream of consciousness that has ever found its way into the one river of universal potentiality. Where we are now standing, has been the starting point of every great physical, metaphysical, and spiritual exploration ever embarked upon. We have the choice to stay here on these solid shores of security, these granite shores of little risk, or we can choose to trust in the flow. Allowing its beckoning strength to immerse us in its soulful power. For sure, there will be dark depths and shallows of light along the course of this magnificent flow. There will be risks taken and rewards earned. And knowing all of this, we will make the choice to explore or to stay here in our stasis and watch the others letting go. The entrance is by way of a shimmering trail, a pathway of light, hovering just above the surface of our shared consciousness. For some, the pathway appears to be a rickety wooden dock, for others it is as solid as a golden brick road. I am now walking just above the surface of the river, following the vaporous scales of a rainbow serpent’s body. I have committed to joining the flow. Dive in with me. As you can see, the only threats here are the ones that we ourselves are releasing.

Now, we’re releasing the rainbow serpent’s head, as it dips down and withdraws, we become one with the fluidity, two with the solidity, and three with the ambiguity. We are at once a musical note with twice the reverberation of a bull moose bellow, but we’re also a ringtone described by a cello. We wonder about stars, on Hollywood Boulevard, while we are dreaming with Costner about wolves dressed in baseball uniforms. Not old school uniforms, they’re not worn in uniformity at all, more in tune with motley crew outfits, donned by the cast of the Deadliest Catch. We all catch a chill, and we release it as well. These days there is a shortage of every fish it seems. Even white wine served at room temperature has a short fuse. Bullets and bombs should be stored in root cellars, let the roots stay connected to the tree trunks who need them. Gold crowns encrusted with white flour by star studded bakers, are eaten by preachers, leading their flocks of daily bread takers. We’ve now entered an eddy, a roundabout in the road, our way forward is spiral, ham-hocks and tick-tocks gone viral. To avoid motion sickness, we’ll watch the horizon, where every big event appears smaller, with the exclusions of waterfalls and sun rises. Back to the main flow, orientation a given, we now understand, why our lives are worth living. It’s not for the fame, the cash flow, the glory. It’s not for the pain we attach to our story. We live to experience what it’s like to be human. To experience the love and forgiveness we offer to ourselves and each other. To share with one another the joy and the wonder of this incredible journey we call Life.

Exploratory Sundays are likely to continue indefinitely. Hopefully, they will always be enjoyable, and ideally, they will encourage a smile!