First came the houses on the horizon, then the blossom, then the stairs, then the figure going down the stairs, then more stairs, then Lady Liberty, then Lunkhead the Holy Barbarian. But the blossom needed a flower pot, and the pot needed an Easter Island head. By that time I knew I had tapped into a dream-making machine, though I was awake. Therefore I inscribed it, and then signed and dated it, but then a bird and an aloft cow and an elfhead begged to be added. Done, done and done.
Though it is undated, and may be reworked at a later time, this drawing is essentially done as of today, January 17, 2022. Today is Betty White’s 100th birthday. Betty is no longer with us but her legacy of empowerment for women–she led by superb example–and reverence for animals is alive and well.
Two days ago I briefly served as a Docent for the Glendale Arts Council, spending the afternoon at Sahuaro Ranch Park welcoming visitors into the Fruit Packing Building, where the Council’s 58th annual Juried Fine Arts Show was in progress. After I had done my duty I took a long hike to my friend Martin Klass’s house. Before I had gone a mile I was walking past a mini-flock of sheep, and I stopped to take pictures, and some of them left the flock and came up to the fence, thus:
I was subsequently compelled to write this about our encounter:
no baa, no humbug
out the gates of sahuaro ranch park
and east on mountain view
west of fifty-first ave
reside livestock
including sheep
who were clumpingly champing on grass
bout fiddyfeet from the chainlink
and were so bored
that a pedestrian with a phone cam
was a welcome distraction
and three nay four
came up to the fence
to say hello
and mouth-grab dry leaf from the links
they were mellow
matter-of-fact
and i hope not disappointed
that i gave them only
murmurs
Two days later, rereading the poem, it seems to me that it sounds eerily similar to the “voice” of William Carlos Williams in his famous poem “This Is Just To Say.” I gratefully acknowledge his influence.
As for my own poetic voice, in the form of the acrostic poem in the image above, here it is, transcribed:
risk disk
ruminate in fleece array’d
indolence: it’s toujours gai
sacrificial-lamming desks
keep it pesky–add some pesk
And the image, which was sketched and calligraphed on a card approximately 3″ by 5″, is a rather muddled blend of at least three faces. the central face is that of the ewe in the photo, the one on the right. It is flanked by a couple, one of whom has one hand on top of the other’s, though that is nearly impossible to see, what with the superimposition of ewe-face and poem. There MAY be a duck’s profile helping the ewe’s right ear do double-duty, and there MAY be a grinning clam doing the same with the left ear. (In this surreal Image-Universe, clams are every bit as sentient as were the oysters in Lewis Carroll’s famous poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter.”)
I say MAY be, because this image is preliminary to a much larger drawing on the same type of paper, but with 32 times more square footage. (Inchage? [smiles]) I hope to spend at least a week on the larger, more elaborated, less murky drawing. It is inevitable that I will find new things to say and draw to honor Betty White and her love for all creatures, which is ancillary but vital to this image. (Notice how the sheep is saying “Happy Heavenly Birthday, Betty White!) I love the idea of having some small part in continuing the divine Ms. White’s earthly mission. And so, inspired by the example of mypoet and professional-organizer friend Michelle Frost, today I made a modest donation to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Friends, I urge you to make some donation to some animal-advoicacy group today.
“Everybody’s gonna tell you it’s not worth it,/Everybody’s gotta show you their own thing./You may try to find your way up around it,/But the need for Love is still the same…” Jackson Browne, “The Times You’ve Come”
The word dimension is slippery. It seems to mean something like “an aspect of something that it must have in order to exist.” But it also seems to mean “property” or “measure.”
As wire “quadrifoaled wireframe,” this new one was built one dimension at a time, but note that the implied distance with a size difference has already added a third dimension, so that the folded paper/space unites the three dimensions in what may be argued a fourth dimension. There is an outside-the-grid consideration with the text elements “year” and “ning,” which when fused become “yearning.” The distance between the two word-components is analogous to the distance between the two human beings depicted in the image.
A few decades ago the Phoenix Art Museum had an exhibit showcasing the work of Alexander Calder, who became famous for his Mobiles and Stabiles. The show included vodeo footage of Calder playing with doll-like circus characters he’d created from wire and cloth, and he was delightfully playful with them, e.g. making a growly lion-noise. The show also had some drawings of his that I at the time thought absurdly minimal and simple-minded. I remember muttering “He’s getting away with murder” when looking at a piece of newsprint of perhaps twenty square feet of area, upon which he’d drawn an arc across the width, and then placed a second arc near the middle, above the first arc and with points touching down near the fist arc’s crest. He might have drawn the arcs in a total of five seconds or so. Absurd, right? But he was demonstrating how quickly the human mind will convert the least pattern of line into anythin from a mountain sunrise to a close encounter of two spheres. In so doing, he informed my drawings, including this one.
Here I defined a space one dimension at a time, and the third dimension was achieved not by drawing but folding. The possibilities seem exciting, but this prototype falls short of ignition.
This fabulous painting, “Reef,” was created by my artist/writer/poet friend Richard Bledsoe. He posted it on his Facebook timeline and I commented that it had a nice “Hey, let’s put on a show!” feel to it and asked him what his asking price was. He messaged me the price privately, and I told him that was a bargain. Sold!!
So yesterday Richard and his wife and soulmate Michele met me at the Fair Trade Café, right off the Roosevelt light rail stop in the heart of Phoenix, Arizona, to transact and snack. We all had bagels. Richard and I had ours with jalapeño and hummus, and Richard and I had coffee. Michele, whose heart goes out to all animals, especially the unfed and/or distressed, fed torn-off bagel bits to the birds (Sparrows with just a touch of Ravenous Vulture). In an hour that seemed like five minutes to me, we talked about mushrooms, psilocybin, Robitussin, flies, distressed kitty-cats and birds, Mystery Science Theatre 3000, Richard’s work as an upper-echelon Small Business Accounts Complaints Department for a major financial institution, Michele’s work with adults on the autistic spectrum, painting from memory versus painting from a photo source, loss (Michele’s father and my father both died of heart attacks at 49), and my wish to include them in my Volume III of my “Eminent Poets of Greater Phoenix” series. I left rather abruptly (“Welp, got a train to catch!” and by running some I was able to board just before the doors closed) with the heartening feeling that Lifelong Romantic Love is not only possible, but manifest in this vibrant pair of lovebirds. The life that they have forged together is truly thrilling to behold.
Richard has a thoughtful, incisive blog about art, artists, art history, and art philosophy. Here is a link:
https://remodernreview.wordpress.com/
Michele has a website for her work with autistic adults. Please visit!
This year I have resolved to take more time with my drawings. With this drawing I turned my resolve into reality. I have worked on this drawing for several days. I stopped when it seemed not to benefit from further fussing. I do suspect, though, that when I look at it later I’ll see a few things I will want to fiddle with–but I won’t; this one stands as is.
A few days ago I got on the stage of a Phoenix bar, Gypsy’s Roadhouse, to perform seven minutes of poetry, at the request of, and in celebration of the birthday of, my friend Russ K. I was happy to be there, and honored by the request, but the superb performers who had preceded me could not get a rise out of the audience. And I did worse than they did. The ONE time I got the faintest rise out of this tough crowd was an ad lib. I was in the middle of a set of words about cats, in one of my series of “CATastrophic Cat Acrostics,” and I came to the word “Anhedonia,” and I stopped. Looked at the crowd. “Raise your hand if you know what Anhedonia is.” No one raised a hand. “It is the Inability to Experience Pleasure.” Waited a beat. “You know, kind of like what you guys are going through now.” And I got a micro-laugh.
Other than that, it was zilch, zip, zero, and I psychically limped off the stage, yielding it to the next victim. Some nights are going to be like that, if you dare to take a stage.
But it was a valuable experience, humbling and character-building. And it inspired this page. Please note that the things I have people say in my cartoon above did not happen at Gypsy’s Roadhouse that night. But I have heard the equivalent of every single one of them in my four-decade experience in bars, grilles, nightclubs, and lounges. Bar ladies DO get hit on rudely. People DO verbally abuse family members over the phone. Other people talk incessantly during a person’s act; so on so forth.
And some bars are magnets for extreme behavior. One of my favorites, not too far from my apartment, has been known to have crime-scene tape around it more than once.
TOUGH Crowd
They eschew the esoteric
Ostracize the sweater wearer
Upsy-daisied Jericho
Goes the Confidence, laid low
Having thus been woh’d, whoaed, woed
Long ago the artist Kimon Nicolaides wrote a book called The Natural Way to Draw. It has something to offer for artists at any level. And one piece of advice in the book is “Draw anything.” If you are willing to draw ANYTHING, from a stain on cement to the Andromeda Galaxy to a bent big toe and the toe next to it, and you actually DO draw those things, and anything else, but especially subject matter that is indimidating to you, perhaps a vase with the reflection of half the room it is in, or a cityscape with dozens of buildings in it, or an electric pencil sharpener with the brand name on it (see above), then you will be a more fearless, more powerful artist.
Another piece of valuable advice that Nicolaides dispensed was put sternly in all caps in the Introduction, where he described the best way to use the book. First he said that it’s all very well to look at other people’s drawing, and read about how to draw. but the most important thing to do is after you do some of that. “THEN SIT DOWN AND DRAW.” The best way to learn how to draw is to DRAW, find out what you did, DRAW some more, look at it after putting it aside for a while, DRAW and keep your strengths and weaknesses in mind, DRAW DRAW DRAW DRAW DRAW. Take it as an article of faith that keeping at it makes you better.
The best advice I ever got about my own drawing, as I’ve mentioned several times in this blog, was on a slip of paper with my portfolio, which was critiqued by outstanding art teacher Darlene Goto. SLOW DOWN! she wrote. I am still trying to take that advice, 48 years after she gave it to me. I will say that though it almost always benefits a drawing to be mindful and deliberate while making it, there are some special times when the ease and flow of the drawing are so transcendental that the best thing to do is let go of the reins and go Full Speed Ahead. But those special moments don’t occur very often. They do tend to occur more often when drawing daily and often, though, so DRAW DRAW DRAW DRAW DRAW.
(Or PAINT PAINT PAINT PAINT PAINT, if painting is your thing. Another bit of advice: Try Everything. As many media as you can handle and/or afford. A cheap way to get into Sculpture is with big bars of Ivory soap, or a salt block obtained at a feed store, or armature wire. A little-kid’s watercolor set costs very little, yet you will learn a lot from it if you put in the hours. (As soon as you can, buy some decent brushes though, and upgrade from multimedia paper to a good watercolor paper.) Try markers, colored pencils, chalk, gouache, India ink, Sumi-e ink–or just follow your instincts. Find something you enjoy using.)
Put your work on display, even if you think it’s unworthy of view.
Join drawing groups on social media Look at stuff your friends have done. Soon you’ll go from “How did THEY do THAT??” to “Bet I will be able to do that some day” to “I can do better than that.” But it is no one’s place to be scornful. It is everyone’s place to learn and to encourage others.
Here are two contradictory pieces of advice: “Have fun!” and “DON’T Have Fun.” Most of the time it is good to enjoy what you are doing. Sometimes you must do things for the sake of the image that are difficult or tedious to do. It can be frustrating to get something just right, and there is the pitfall of overworking the life out of a drawing. Sometimes the greatest value is not in the drawing itself, but the lesson the drawing provided.
That’s enough advice! NOW SIT DOWN AND DRAW. 🙂
NOTE: A version of this poem appeared in Facebook, earlier in December, 2021. The poem was altered, partly to better suit the illustration.)
[pause]
—let’s have some wine. I have some left over from a Wedding.
[wine and two wineglasses materialize]
—to Enthusiasm.
–amen!
[they drink]
One with Clay, Image and Text 