--Now we are on the side of light, the days are getting a little longer; think of the earth tilting away from the sun...

--This morning I finished my proposal for the Art of Action.  Two pages written, and a ten minute video (I'm going to be away, far away in Mexico in a sort of artist residency, and unable to make my presentation in person, and arranged to show a video of my proposal).  I'm glad I'm done with it, I was agonizing over it to the point where it stopped making any sense.  Ann watched the video and thought it seemed good, but she is biased.  

--I didn't expect to get so involved with the whole process and project.   I was thinking that it would be a little side job, figuring out the whole proposal, but it kind of ended up being challenging and fun.  

--Have also enjoyed getting to know some of the other artists through their blogs, what an interesting bunch!

Art of Reflection

--When you are working in the studio, who is your imagined audience?  

--I agree with all the responses from my last post, but it still leaves a lot of conundrums.  One of these is how can we communicate in our language that we are so familiar with (painting) with a group of people who might not have any experience with that language?

--Some of the stuff I've been trying out for my proposal involves things I think work conceptually or visually but I have no idea if anyone else will "get it", but I must proceed on to make it interesting for me. 

--For example (above) I have some disjunction in these panels that I want to push together to create a panorama, and there are some rhyming forms and scale shifts that I want to use to create some connection.   The vignette of figures (not shown) will play somehow with the still life arrangement and the goats in the background to create a dialogue about active and passive uses of the land...

--Anyway, I'm also bringing in the Robert Frost stuff in various ways that make sense to me because I know the whole story and love visual metaphor (a scrim of trees) but will anyone understand any of that unless I'm standing next to my work explaining it, or there is a wall text (not a fan) explaining what I was trying to say?

--My work (all of us finalists' work) is accessible to a wide audience due to realism, certain level of logic, ideas of aesthetic  balance and harmony... but a lot of it is available only to other painters, and other people who have experience with reading visual images.

--Giotto is a good example, and in fact I was thinking of him the other day when I was trying to think of artists who told a story in a way that I found interesting. (other Sienese painters).

--All that work was commissioned to tell stories to people who couldn't read.

Art of Action

--After reading some of the other finalist's blog postings, I feel like I've been avoiding the issue of what exactly, or how exactly, my project could effect change.   It is great to see all the energy that everyone is putting into figuring out how to make their work more effective politically or socially, or how to design a proposal that addresses "issues".

--I would like to make a plea (and this is probably more for my benefit than anyone else) that as artists, we must trust our instincts, and also trust in the ability of painting (we're mostly painters) to carry meaning in ways that we understand non-verbally and intuitively.

--There is something to the notion of going "outside our comfort zone", and I think in trying to tackle this project everyone seems to be experiencing that, but I know for me that in order to complete an ambitious project like this (if I am chosen) that I would have to be working on something that compelled me as an artist, not just a concerned Vermonter.  

--All the research I have done for my project will weave it's way in to whatever I make, I hope and trust.

--I am excited about the project I am working on, and in fact will carry it through and complete it whether I am chosen or not.

 

Changes

--People talk about preserving the character of things, but "character" is continually being lost.

--From the moment people came onto the scene, the dynamic began to shift.  Not just white people either: the early native hunters eliminated the mastodon and other pleistocene species when they came into North America about 15,000 years ago (There were other factors too).

--On a relative scale Vermont is in pretty good shape, (New Jersey) though if you try to imagine what has changed in the last 50 or 100 years, it is substantial.

--My little town of North Bennington is very cute, but there are a lot of things that junk it up to someone with a sensitive artistic eye.

Point of View

--Have you ever seen a  flock of small birds that flies in suddenly, animating a  bush, then they move on?  

--Follow that flock across the panorama, here and there, flitting about...

--Let one of those birds be the protagonist.

--"Who was so foolish as to think what he thought."    R.F. from "The Wood Pile".

Eden

--This is not one of my details, this is from the cover of a book about botanical illustrations called "Eden".

 --Another source I've been looking at as a possible model for my project proposal is a section of 19th century French wallpaper (landscape panorama) also called "Eden".  This landscape is different from most of the other French wallpaper in the book I have on the subject, in that it is unpeopled.  The viewer becomes the sole inhabitant of "eden".  We wouldn't want to share Eden with anybody, unless it was Eve, (or Adam). 

--In what way is painting an attempt to recreate this world and reclaim eden?  "Eden" means something different for every artist. 

Transformation

--This is a view of some drawings I'm working on, the edge of one overlapping another.  Shifting spaces... 

--One of the major themes in the poetry of Robert Frost is Transformation.  Many of his poems describe a transitional moment, wherein one thing is lost and something else takes its place.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Edges

--One thing I realized while driving up to Ripton the other day and watching the landscape was how important the boundaries are between woods and clearings.  Many kinds of wildlife thrive in this edge environment (woods for cover, openings let the sun in which provides better food selection).

--I use this edge too in my paintings.  I like the feeling that we are peering out from behind some brush and trees, hiding sort of, and quiet enough that the edge animals and birds don't notice us, watching people going about some business or other in the clearing beyond.

-- Robert Frost uses a similar strategy in his poems.  Many of them involve an observation of nature that is so close that it seems we are holding very still, listening to wind, bird song...  And behind these observations is always the world of human issues and concerns. 

Drawing

--It's one thing to have a lot of ideas and have convictions about issues that are really important, but it's quite another thing to make a work of art that is compelling or feels successful in some way.  

--I've started making drawings, pencil and ink with brush, which is the way I start all my paintings.  They are very loose and sketchy, but it gives me a way to develop compositional ideas, foreground/background relationships, and build a non-thinking kind of narrative.

--Sometimes I will start with a post-it note sized drawing with a couple dozen lines on it, but it will have a certain slant or feeling that I like.

--Making the painting is when all the development happens and I discover what the painting is really about.

--I will post some of the drawings as they rise to the surface; already I have discovered ideas about the scope of the project as a whole, as I've moved the drawings around and tried different configurations. 

Research

--Ori and I visited the Robert Frost cabin in Ripton today.  Quite a fun day, but a little long in the car for a three year old.  She kept asking "where is the cabinet", which I liked because I felt like I was driving somewhere to look inside a cabinet.

--Both the farmhouse and the nearby cabin are locked, so you can only peek in, but the interiors are preserved intact and very quaint and cozy. The whole thing was a little walk back in time.

--There was even a hunter walking back to his truck (the property borders the Green Mountain National Forest) empty handed, but carrying a gun which gave the scene some poetic texture.

--Now I know what it looks and feels like up there.  The cabin sits in the corner of a large field about a quarter mile up the hill from the farmhouse.  It has two fairly large trees growing very close to one side, and just down the hill a line of 5 or 6 apple trees.  The rough hewn siding grooved and lined with worm trails.  

Farming

--One of the areas I am interested in exploring for my proposal was agriculture in Vermont.  As one of the land uses that has a big impact on the way Vermont looks, and is a part of the rural landscape that people site as one of the main reason they have stayed here or decided to move here, I want to engage in some of the issues around agriculture.

 --My experience this morning at our feed store was fairly typical, a farmer (dairy) in front of me in line complaining about a particular change in milking regulations (some valve has to be replaced regularly), and saying he was tired of having "the government" telling him how to run his business.   Of course government subsidies to dairy farmers have helped the 1000 or so dairy farms in Vermont stay in business.

--Most of the issues that I've seen discussed by the finalists and others deal with some sort "good news, bad news"  duality.  If it is a good thing, then too much of it results in some deleterious outcome (development).  

--Farming is seen from the outside as a romantic and picturesque addition to the landscape, tying us to the land, our past, sustaining us...   The reality is messier: farming is dirty, hard work, and not always profitable.  People should probably be eating  fewer dairy products anyway, and definitely less meat.

Eagles and Turkeys

Happy Thanksgiving!  

--A report on the radio this morning about the wild turkey population in Vermont (about 50,000) all from 39 birds that were brought in from NY state in 1969.  The issue for the turkey was loss of habitat, as the state was largely deforested in the 19th century.  

--Let's be thankful for some of the positive changes that have come to our state over the years. 

--We don't have breeding Bald Eagles yet, but it's only a matter of time before that happens.  It wasn't long ago that this bird was nearly extinct.

--Ben Franklin advocated for the Wild Turkey to become our national bird, more for his disapproval of the choice of the Bald Eagle.  He argued that the eagle was cowardly (chased off by smaller birds) and a scavenger mostly (diet consists mostly of dead fish).

--Including with each post a small detail from one of my paintings.  

--Idea: create "details" as the whole painting, fragments that could work with adjacent works, a collection of details.

--Idea: use native flowers in a bouquet or basket

(picked) with landscape behind, referring to R.F.'s

botanizing, also to  local bounty.  Also colorful bird such as indigo bunting.  Power through celebrating what we have here.

Robert Frost Project

--How did I come to the idea of Robert Frost as a theme for my proposal?  I started by making lists of basic concepts that I was interested in, with some thoughts to a visual component that could correspond with those.   My concepts were things like "Agriculture", "Hunting", "Technology"... one I came up with was "Cabin in the Woods", which I liked because it symbolized an independent, self reliant spirit which characterized a classic Vermonter, but also symbolized Vermont itself - separate from the rest of the country, isolated, self sufficient...

--Later, while making some drawings, I was reminded of the story from earlier this year of Robert Frost's cabin being vandalized, and after doing a little research, was struck by the importance of his poetry and the possibility of his story becoming relevant to my project.

--There has to be for me an image before an idea can develop.  In this case a meadow, looking through trees and brush (past birds and animals...) in the meadow a small unpainted cabin (a figure in front of the cabin?)

--Economic climate:  a friend asked me if I thought the economic collapse would lead to a "Mad Max" scenario.  I said I was imagining a world in which people took public transportation, walked, or rode bicycles, planted vegetable gardens and ate less meat.  

--Robert Frost was a farmer off and on for his entire life.

 

 

Robert Frost Project

--Some background:  my research has focused on Robert Frost, particularly on his life and work in Vermont, but also his poetry, which I didn't know a lot about beyond the classic poems.  Have become interested in how he observed and recorded the natural world, and used those observations as metaphors in poetry.  Metaphors about the human condition. 

--Parallels with my work, though very different.  I am interested in metaphor, and how our vision of nature is fabricated.  I use "nature" in my work, but first it has to be filtered through art.  That is why I have a hard time using photographs as source material and instead rely on paintings, drawings.

--My interest in Robert Frost is also about his story.  I am tracing his biography (he lived a couple miles from my house in Shaftsbury) and the story continues to the present:  His house in Ripton, near Middlebury, where he spent summers between 1939 and his death in 1963, was vandalized last winter by partying teenagers.  As part of their sentence took seminars with Middlebury professor Jay Parini, about the work of Frost.  "The Road Not Taken".