leaving atlanta

We are a less than two weeks out from leaving Atlanta. I am stressed out. I don’t make friends easily and fear sinking onto a self induced depression from dwelling on what is the sometimes curse of the artistic personality: "I don’t fit in….I don’t belong…..I am different and everyone knows it"…. Although Craig regularly assures me that I am the most ‘normal’ person in my family, I fall naturally into the mode of standing on the outside looking in. I have stood there my entire life. It is like a groove in a record. The needle just falls right in.
Now, this way of feeling or understanding can be a good thing at times, but for me it is more often damaging. I have begun to ask myself what might happen if I looked at us all…..everyone….as ‘together’ instead of ‘them and me’. We are, after all, ultimately the same….seeking the same things (i.e. 10/5 entry..). What if I began to see myself as connected in some way with every other human being on our planet?….as fellow human beings….as brothers and sisters?…. This is a fearful proposition for me I assure you. Too many wounds…too many scars. But we are all wounded. I can try to start there, God help me….

election 2004

I cannot begin to express how disappointed and sad this election makes me feel. But then it really exemplifies human nature, doesn’t it. Everyone has an agenda and everyone wants everyone else to jump on their makeshift bandwagon. And if anyone disagrees with that agenda then watch out for the flying fists and rotten vegetables. Why do we need for others to agree? Why do we feel so threatened by any opposition? Our natural desire to control others and form little ‘ideology cults’ is SO ugly and quite honestly ungodly. I do it, for crying out loud. But I am AWARE. I see it in my guts. I despise it in me and in others. That huge divide of ‘us and them’, of left and right is despicable to me. It accomplishes nothing and I am embarrassed by what I have heard professing followers of Christ spew in the election season via the media. Writer and speaker Don Miller refuses to use the word ‘Christianity’ anymore because of all the damage that WE have done in the name of Christ. He prefers ‘Christian spirituality’…. I am beginning to prefer that too…. The church is not being ‘persecuted’ in American for being Christ followers. The church is disliked because we are religious and feel the need to insist that others be as well. We have twisted the scripture. It clearly states to judge those who are IN the church not those who are outside the church.

avoiding christian radio

I generally avoid Christian radio even though I follow Christ. I am pretty sure He wouldn’t listen to it either. I find it full of religious, arrogant and uninformed people. But I am able to glean insight from a few shows. I was listening to one morning spot while I was making coffee and as it ended and went into another show I was still making coffee. Morning coffee a ritual around here. This guy is a well known hot shot radio preacher. I usually run to the radio and quickly change the channel when he comes on, but the coffee details had my attention. His sermon was generally pretty unmemorable, but then I heard him bring up the subject of the arts. This educated man of God who people listen to by the thousands every day and whose church is attended by the masses regularly made one of the most ridiculous and uninformed assertions I have yet heard. He stated that ALL rock music is about sex and drugs and that ALL country music is about drinking and adultery and therefore one must never listen to such music if one calls oneself a follower of Christ. It really was that much of a blanket statement.. ‘Rid your home of such sinful music and only listen to Christian music!" (he yells a lot.) … Certainly there is a percentage of foul musical garbage out there, but ALL!? So by making that statement over the radio and in his church he has produced more uninformed, religious people who can in turn go out and produce more uninformed religious folks. Great. People already roll there eyes when they here about one of those big preacher dudes. I always get angry and my husband says ‘Why do you listen to that slop?’.
‘Secular’ music (that’s a big word the church likes to use for sinful things) is where I hear the human soul. It is where I hear the cry of reality and therefore see the fingerprints of God. Likewise I see it in movies and fine art. We are all alike. We all really want the same things. We want to be accepted, loved, forgiven and to do something meaningful. I hear and see all these truths in ’secular’ arts. I resonate with that. I don’t resonate with ‘Shine, Jesus Shine’.

foul mood

I am in a foul mood for one reason or another, so I thought I would rant a bit about my subject of choice.
The New York Times had an article in the Arts section today about a four year old whose paintings are being compared to Jackson Pollock’s. Well, duh. That is not a hard one figure out. They are quite similar. I have seen his paintings as well as the kid’s. Nearly identical. Now, I am all for creativity and people calling whatever they want to call art art and I understand the movement of the time. I think it should be left to the creator of the work. A friend sent over a story about some dude’s installation in some fancy museum being mistaken by the janitor for trash, so the janitor threw it out. If its art to the artist and the fancy museum curator, fine. The thing that really annoys me is that all of this work, the little kid’s paintings, Pollock’s work and the ‘trash’ installation all sell for ridiculous amounts of money. Artists like to crawl up their own behinds and take themselves really seriously and make all kinds of deep statements that they feel should be worth somebody’s yearly salary to own. Folks in the art industry promote this. I don’t like artists myself. They are flaky…and weird. To assume that your painting or whatever your craft is really worth so much money is arrogant. People buy it because people will buy anything especially if there is enough hype and they think they are the only ones to have it. Its an investment. It has little to do with art. And the perpetuation of that practice has been virtually the death of art… or at least the institutionalization of it. It becomes inaccessible and gives the illusion that you have some rare talent or insight into some mystery and thus should be highly paid for it.. Obviously not true from looking at the kid’s art and Pollock’s art. Its the same. Shoot, I could do it….

pony ride

My sister and I jokingly refer to my rare opportunities to ride horses as my ‘pony ride’. She is an accomplished rider and riding instructor and is tolerant of me in the ring riding around while she teaches. I have loved horses all my life. Horses sent me on the quest to become an artist. As a kid I would copy pictures of horses onto loose leaf paper with a number 2 pencil. I had a binder full of drawings of horses….just horses. So for me the rare chance I get to be around them is like eating nothing but junk food for a day or traveling somewhere exciting. Maybe heaven. As the problems with my hip get worse I really don’t know how far I can go with riding. It is a issue that has begun to effect sitting at my drafting table, as well. Any extended period of immobility causes me discomfort. I often lament to my husband that I had not a thing wrong with me until I entered my thirties. Then came some sort of unidentifiable hip issue, allergies and the big one: endometriosis. I am convinced that they are all tied together somehow….someway and that they are meant to be. So, when I get to embark on a ‘pony ride’ I experience a hint of heaven and when my infirmities speak I remember that I am not supposed to live here…….

fast food entertainment

I decided a few months ago that television is slowly eating away my life and that I needed to read more so I started ‘Joan of Arc- Her Story’ by Regine Pernoud. I found it really hard to absorb being written in a academic style. So I picked up ‘Hemingway’ by Kenneth Lynn……I still had a hard time wanting to skip passages and get on with it. I suddenly realized how damaging t.v. has been…… I want to use a remote control for the books as well to get to the interesting parts. Fast food entertainment has made me REALLY LAZY. And though we don’t watch nearly as much television as a lot of folks, I am totally shocked at how much it has formed how I work. When I begin a new painting I find myself demanding subconsciously that it already be done or that I should just easily create the work and get on with the next. I am so divided in my focus jumping from one thing to the next like flipping channels. I hate that.

the great aloneness

There is a great aloneness to making art. No one tells you which ideas to pursue or how to convey those ideas. In each moment that an aspect of a work is confronted…a direction chosen in its progression…the death of countless others occurs. And when the completion of that work comes there is almost a mourning over what a piece could have been had you chosen another approach. So the decision making process in creating a work of art is overwhelming. With artists like myself who work largely from a surreal and imagined realm these issues are magnified ten-fold. I don’t use a set of rules and techniques to tell me how to work and I don’t copy from what I see. Those who work in this way have most of their work done for them once they master the assigned rules. Someone long before has already figured out the techniques and someone has already created the subject. On the rare occasion that I work from conscious reality not only do I find fewer challenges but I also find myself less interested…..