Day 21 -- I will find my way

It just will look and feel so very different than I could possibly expect or imagine. Look i am here at i-park in Connecticut, have had 5 or so solo shows in the last two years, secured a visiting professorship, am making new friends, rekindling existing friendships. I am doing the necessary things to move forward, with the help of friends, my brothers, mom and dad, and that powers that may be. I know I am moving. Sometimes my process is so slow I feel stuck, but I know I am not stuck. Good things are happening. I need to continue doing the things that open me to life. I will and am.



Today I will find my way in art.

Yesterday I was working toward finishing out my piece more tear droppish. I saw last night that it wasn't working. So this morning I will reevaluate. I am thinking I will go back to finishing it more flute/funnel like...creating a pooring out. That is my plan at the moment. The tear drop thing is nice and the idea and method will be saved for another day and project.

Day 20 -- view from inside the belly of the beast

Day 20 -- I've shown up

...somedays that is as good as it gets. At moments like these I am daunted by the physical exertion that, is evident, will be required. I fidget about in preparation. Then get a bit overwhelmed and diverted...a walk to get a snack, a return trip to the house to get my keys to move my truck so i don't have to carry the tubes so far, then a blog and a book. Another diet coke. And again have a moment of grief. I just feel physically and emotionally spent. I know. I know. There is only one person who is responsible for choosing such a medium and feels compelled to work at such scales. It does make me question the why. Where does this compulsion or need come from to work this way? Almost every artist I know has certain compulsions, or rules they hold to in terms of their medium, process, or concepts. Even teachers have a compulsion (or preference) for their medium (p-k, elementary, junior or senior high, college, or adult) and method (subject)...as do doctors, lawyers and sales men. So this artist compulsion is not out of the ordinary, really, it just manifests quite differently than other jobs.

But I divert from the topic of why do I work at such a scale with such dang weighty materials. Why do I call it a compulsion? I suppose i classify it as compulsion because I do not fully know or understand the internal place from which it comes and because it requires a serious degree of physical umph that often results in real aches and pains.

Initially I thought I understood the source of my work, but I think that was a combination of denial and arrogance in thinking I actually comprehend the complexities of my life and the way it connected to others. It is obvious that this is not so.

But I do know that I don't want to return to Houston. I have discovered that since I have been here. I don't want my ruby red slippers (they don't work anyway). I just want my steel tip boots bearing themselves across the soft loam of the forest floor and clunking across an artist made peer. Making, writing, walking, basking, healing in this solitude.


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Dead battery. Time passes. Lunch acquired. Consumed. Work accomplished. Blog post posted. Progress visible. Direction good. Maintain!

Phone left indoors ti charge with the bird. Nesting in my studio. Guess I should not hVe left the door open so many days in a row.

Location:Hopyard Rd,East Haddam,United States

Day 20 -- I've shown up

Day 20 -- laddened with a glimmering dew thickened blanket

It is my first in many days for the sun to again kiss the nap of my neck so early in the morn with her heat. Summer in Connecticut has re-emerge at the start of this day. She is much welcome and she is greeted with the perfect glimmer of thickly laddened liquid dew crystals sliding viscously with their weight towards the earth.

"because you are human, you are privileged and burden with the task of knowing. Our desire to know is the deepest longing of our soul; it is a call to intimacy and belonging...knowing calls you out of yourself. Discovery delights the heart. This is the natural joy of childhood and the earned joy of the artist. The child and the artist are pilgrims of discovery. When you limit your life to one frame of thinking, you close out the mystery. When you fence in the desires of your heart fixed walls... you dishonour the call to discovery. You create fields of "quiet desperation."... When you open your heart to discovery, you will be called to step outside the comfort barriers within which you fortified your life. You will be called to risk old views and thoughts and to step off the circle of routine and image. This will bring turbulence. The pendulum will fix at times on one extreme, and you will be out of balance. But your soul loves the danger of growth. In it's own wise trust, your soul will always return you to a place of real and vital equilibrium...either we are in the universe to inhabit the lovely eternity of our souls and grow real, or else we might as well dedicate our days to shopping and kill time watching talk shows..."
--John O'Donahue

Day 19 -- the shakes started about the time we reached the beach for dinner

Which was delightfully hosted by Patricia and KevIn. It must be a new London/Lyme thing, but Patricia, in the most agreeable way shortened each of our names. Nathaniel became Nat, Kathy, Kat, Kevin, kev...and of course Bob became Bob:) anyway, it was done in that special friendly way, as when a close friend gives you a nickname as a term of endearment.

Oh back to the shakes, as I shut the little green Canadian chevy's backdoor and buckled my belt, double dog dang (polite verbiage for oh crap), I forgot my phone upstairs on the charger. Aaah I must exercise self discipline and not run to retrieve it. But it means no gps, no dictionary, no email, no vicarious social network, no google, and NO CAMERA PHONE! it was a good but distressing exercise. I missed my camera. I've grown use to it and rather dependent on it. Word without image...aaaagh!

Oh and I have been sewing thin rebar I've bent into rings into my piece. That is helping me create the tension I desire in the work. Though the work is meant to have a fleshy sense it is not meant to look flacide. So thin curves of rebar sewn in seem to be doing the trick.

Day 19 -- I am not really happy about this!!!

Freshly pealed and slithered out of directly where I just had my bum
sitting there on the ground.

Day 19 -- talk about chatty

The sun is shining, the first time in days, and the birds seriously have been deprived of all that they would sing and say, til now at this moment in the midst of this fabulously weathered day.

Day 19 -- tension beginning to reestablish

Day 18 -- need more tension

Equals lowes/home depot run to new london to get more clamps and cabling

Looks kind of small cause of distance, but see genie s-40 man toy in background for sense of scale

I would like to maintain the sense of floating. When I paint cables black, they literally disappear.

New route via google maps--a dirt road. I though for sure I had taken a wrong turn when I lost my phone service. But I finely popped out at the right spot. Such a pretty drive. I could so live here. Well the commute to SAM would be a bit rough. Come on captain Kirk! When are we going to get teleporters--we've got the doors that slide open when we approach and the tricorders.  I want the food moleculizer and the teleporter.

I am out of any truly deep or healthy thoughts.

Day 18 -- tension

When I move a piece, it is so maleable that the process moving and restringing creates a loss of tension. So I'll try to string to
restore tension then rework, refine to it's new home. And then finish her out according to the site.

Day 18

Hands much better. One week left, must get back to work.

Weird fungus ? growth following a week of wet and rainy days.

Day 17 -- the rains steady hum sooths

Ha. And now for some light reading on this rainy night--the life of reason: reason in art by Santayana, 1917.

Day 17 -- a little artists jaunt into Hadlyme, CT

Artists living on the edge, so wild we are. We migrated in for a little Haitian food at the local Hadlyme Congregational Church. It was some kind offund raiser--kinda of Haitian potluck for 10 bucks. Now back to defensive driving online. Four and a half more hours.

Day 17

Different flora comes into life each new day, lilly pads continue to encroach, and my little swollen digits are slow in their recovery and make gripping difficult.

I believe I'll break out my rachet straps this morning to heave her up. They require no strength in my grip to function. It's time to start. To rachet, to listen to her form, and see where she wants to go...

Day 16 -- split her in half to ease install

A gray fox stood on the stone mounded fence gazing 30 feet up at us working in the trees canopy. I was amazed at how quickly she found us and at how well she blended into the stone. Her coat was as the stone. She froze and stared for a bit and her babies instinctively followed her lead. She was not overly impressed or concerned with us, quickly going on about her business when she became bored with us and saw us as no threat. We were far more fascinated with her than she with us. Neat!







tomorrow I'll hoist the rest of her up. Excellent, the cables have disappeared so when she's finished, she'll be floating or appear to just have grown up and out of the ground toward the light! perfect.

Day 16 -- my man toy in use

Not Mason! I am referring to my (temporarily) Genie S-40 lift!

Day 16 -- me and my man toy up up into the tree canopies

Day 16 -- my genie man lift has arrived

Yeah!!

Day 16 -- brrrr

I am such a Houstonian as I sit here layered up with my wife beater tank, long sleeve-t, two sweatshirts with both hoods up, sleeves pulled over my sore hands and brrrrr, I am chilled.

The frogs were quite in the chill of the morn and this was the first day for the wild geese to glide out onto the pond, six in all, three grown, three small. But graceful does not mark their entry. OMG If I was a fox, their entrance and loud cur-plunk of a water sloshing ruckus just screamed, "LUNCH!"