Monday Morning Share

Many of you who read this post have already seen the poem below, but I want to have it here because it feels like the right place for it. I usually write poetry when I feel inspired to do so, & I've been feeling the tug of a poem over the past few days.  I'll show it to you when it's finished. Happy Monday everybody.

Anthem to Creativity
by Jodi Combs-Kalla, 2010

Creative urge
You loiter
Like a house ghost.
You’re a scorpion’s sting
Who sometimes plagues me
Too long.
But if I’m lucky,
You’re my chance
To
Jump
And
Skip
Through a dense briar patch
Of color and words,
And chisel and paint,
Dusty charcoal sticks
Or a brush that fits my hand
Just
Right,
To breathe
& think over
The thoughts
That keep me thinking
Until 4 A.M. when
The Mourning Dove moans
A breath of life
Into the death of darkness,
And early light shrieks
Like a heartache, I search
For something solid to lean onto,
To say something/anything
Anything
In the same way young Harrison glowed
When he drew cartoons
On the tennis court with white chalk
When we yelled “Let's go! ”
That chilly spring day
And he said
“Hey,
Wait a minute,
Something’s missing here.
I gotta finish this drawing.”
We laughed
Because he was right.
A young and beautiful blue-eyed boy
had been drawn in,
into the grips of drawing
and the things that make a day
feel worth finishing
with a big fat grin,
A hug,
And a pat on everyone's back.

Creative force, with you
I’m a hummingbird, gathering
From a Yellow Bell bloom
Flying inside
& out
& back again, looking
For any answer I can find,
Any cloud to wash away
Any tear to shed
Any line to erase, lingering
On the threshold,
Where the red blood
Of a new idea flows.

Creative surge
You’re a fresh wound
Demanding a full dose of
“I believe I can do this.”
You’re a sunset
Who reaches out, who
Grabs my throat
And whispers Choke,
Cry if you have to
But I'm not going anywhere.
You pull me
In five or six or seven directions.
I have no choice except
To follow
And when I’ve ripped and
When I’ve torn away
From your grip, even then
I know nothing really,
Except that I have to assemble,
Glue, paint, arrange
And rearrange words,
Look and see,
Feel and hear,
Cry and die, hoping
You will show me
Or I can show you
Who I am by what I add
To what would otherwise be
A day of what-ifs.
So with your help
I can safely face
An open blank space
Of nothingness
Knowing my day will end
With a big fat grin,
A hug and
A pat on everyone's back.

A Time to Give

 



Free Arts of Arizona

This morning I attended an orientation at Free Arts of Arizona to donate some time & energy to children who need my time & energy. Soon I'll be in training to give a little something back to my community. Check the organization out (see site URL above). They do good work.

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1.02.28

Scratching at the Surface

This week we're back to the old "Weather Goddess" dance where she steps in to remind me that she's in charge of my outdoor activities. Temps will be around 105 all week, so I'll adjust my plans to suit her whims. Knowing this, I got up around 5:30 this morning for a run before the heat made it's way into the neighborhood . It was beautiful & almost-----chilly. I can handle a few more days of midday/evening desert heat; once autumn gets this close, all other climate-related snags along the way are nearly negligible.

The desert heat & sun can be merciless to most surfaces. Unfinished wood splinters and generally gets a pale gray sheen. Thin plastic will crumble after just a  month or two of summer.  Paint will flake, peel, & blow away. However, one plastic has captured my attention: PVC pipe. Years of landscaping & sprinkler repairs left us with stacks of old PVC pipe. After a few years of holding onto it in my studio lot, I noticed it had taken on this warm, reddish-brown patina from summer after summer of sun. I began to scratch the surface of a piece one day because that's what artists do, i.e., we scratch at the surface of things to reveal what's beneath, what the true nature of things are both literally and figuratively. I eventually began to assemble pieces I had cut, scraped, scratched, sanded, and glued into small 3-dimensional sculptures. I find the plastic looks a lot like bone when "processed." Most importantly, the sun helped me to do something interesting with a material that would've otherwise ended up in a landfill. Today is a day of scratching at the surface.

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1.02.28

Below The Triple Digits

Now that it's nearly mid September, the temps here in the Sonoran Desert are slowly, gradually, quietly, subtly, ever so faintly lowering. When the local weather person mentions "tomorrow the temps will be below the triple digits", all who sit in front of the T.V. will give a collective "ahhhhhhhhhh" with big grins for everyone because we've made it; we've survived another hot desert summer, & are now going to have about 9 months of sweet, gentle climate in which to run, skip, & jump outdoors as much as we wish.  Changes of season here, they come on like a whisper. A person has to have the eyes for them to see them, & my eyes for them have developed over a period of years because I moved here from Kentucky where the seasons sometimes hit like a strong fist. Here they come for a visit, then leave for a week or two, then they come back around to gossip about the 'possibility' of seasonal change. Then one day all of a sudden I realize how autumn has suddenly grabbed me in the chest & shaken out  memories of Halloween & Thanksgiving & running & biking & outdoor Greek festivals. I find myself standing outside during late evenings silently looking at the sky, or leaning against an outside wall just looking around for projects to do without wincing from sweat streaking down my face, or at the thought of "Damn it's scorching freakin' hot out here."

So here I am knocking at the door of autumn, looking for outdoor projects to do. My first declaration of independence from the confines of the house involves an alternative photographic printing process I learned during my photo marathon with Rachel Woodburn & Carol Panaro-Smith in June. With cyanotype chemicals consisting of a mixture of potassium ferricyanide (red) & ferric ammonium citrate (green) I can make some very cool prints without using a camera, but just with these historic photographic chemicals, some paper, (or fabric, or wood, or just about any surface), and the sun, the last of which there is no shortage here. Later I will show you the process as I do it. Thank you Rachel and Carol for taking the time to show me this process!

One last comment: here I am autumn! Come and get me!



Check out my pals:

Rachel Woodburn    Carol Panaro-Smith

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1.02.28

The Thin Gray Line

During conversations among many artists, questions that frequently come up are: with whom do you want to communicate with your art? Do you only want to make art for those who are educated in fine art or would you like a broader audience for your work? If the latter is your preference, then how far are you willing to go to convey an idea with your art?  How far should an artist be willing to bend for the sake of communication?

As with most human endeavors, the metaphoric line to cross is a thin gray one; if a fine artist crosses it in one direction, that same artist risks producing trite fluff. If an artist makes art that travels far on the opposite side of the line, he or she will be making art that mostly the intelligentsia of the art world will appreciate, where 'art for art's sake' becomes a common mantra. As trained artists who spend much of their lives among art educators, scholars, & other artists, it's easy to fall into this particular train of thought.

As an artist I find myself thinking about how each object, color, technique, & medium connects to my overall goal to communicate to my audience. For my own art, communication is essential. Sometimes I am successful, and sometimes I am not so successful, but my ultimate goal is to jar something in the viewer, to shake loose some memory or association in them so that when they walk away from the art they still think about it, they continue to remember it and think about why it spoke to them in some way.  In other words, I prefer to walk the gray line.

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1.02.28