my friend Leah gave me a photocopied page (p.24) from this "new-agey book" called The Power of Now as a gift last week. Here is the text:
...a creative solution is needed, you oscillate every few minutes or so between thought and stillness, between mind and no-mind. No-mind is consciousness without thought. Only in that way is it possible to think creatively, because only in that way does thought have any real power. Thought alone, when it is no longer connected with eh much vaster realm of consciousness, quickly becomes barren, insane, destructive.
The mind is essentially a survival machine. Attack and defense against other minds, gathering, storing, and analyzing information - thins is what it is good at, but it is not at all creative. All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of mo-mind, from inner stillness. The mind then gives form to the creative impulse or insight. Even the great scientists have reported that their creative breakthroughs came at a time of mental quietude. The surprising result of a nationwide inquiry among America's most eminent mathematicians, including Einstein, to find out their working methods, was that thinking "plays only a subordinate part in the brief, decisive phase of the creative act itself." So I would say that the simple reason why the minority of scientists are not creative is not because they don't know how to think but because they don't know how to stop thinking!
It wasn't through the mind, through thinking, that the miracle that is life on earth or your body was created and is being sustained. There is clearly an intelligence at work that is far greater than the mind. How can a single human cell measuring 1/1000 of an inch in diameter contain instructions within its DNA that would fill 1000 books of 600 pages each? The more we learn about the workings of the body, the more we realize just how vast is the intelligence at work within it and how little we know. When the mind reconnects...
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Friday, November 23, 2007
thank you John Cage
one of the best quotes ever:
“What I’m proposing to myself and to other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude—that you act as though you’ve never been there before. So that you’re not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.” – John Cage
“What I’m proposing to myself and to other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude—that you act as though you’ve never been there before. So that you’re not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.” – John Cage
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Playspace August Residency Opening!
Yay... this was almost a month ago now, but it was still fun! Click the flickr link for more photos.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
One of the most beautiful things I have read in a long time
read it aloud if you can
Part of Eve's discussion, by Marie Howe
It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat from you hand, and flies, just before it flies, the moment the rivers seem to still and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no storm, as when a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they wheel and drop, very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin, like the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say, it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only all the time.
Part of Eve's discussion, by Marie Howe
It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat from you hand, and flies, just before it flies, the moment the rivers seem to still and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no storm, as when a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they wheel and drop, very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin, like the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say, it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only all the time.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
August Residency Show at Playspace!
work in progress during my Playspace residency.Come check out my wall painting at Playspace. The show opens this Thursday September 6th from 7-9 pm.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
World Machines
Click the photo to link to my flickr account for images of my new paintings. All are mixed media on paper.... a mix of ink, acrylic paint and xerox transfers... roughly 50" x 42".
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
First year over
new black & white work in progress.... "World Machines" of some sort....Well, I am now officially on the last summer break of my life. My first year is over and it was quite a ride. Below is my most recent artist statement... this is how I have wrapped things up in my head.
What if we could see through all the levels of strata in our world—physical, technological, social, psychological—and understand how it all fits together and affects one another? If all the stuff of the world were distilled into either a building block or a connector, how would we understand the construction of our reality? I like to think that our universe is made up of fundamental visible and invisible interactions that shape everything we know. I am interested in the processes of how it all evolves and fits together. In this vein, I build each painting from a single element to create multi-layered autonomous little worlds with tenuous cohesion. The decisions I make in my paintings are based on reacting to what has come before. The paintings are records of their own making—a visual experience of “fitting together” and evolving over a specific expanse of time.
I think the biggest challenges of this past semester have been understanding what type of work I make and not comparing myself to other artists. The concept of Fitting Together applies at so many levels of our world/our understanding... one of which being a fundamental part of painting.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Friday, March 02, 2007
Making Space Exhibition!
If you are in the SF area, please come by the Crucible Steel Gallery at CELLspace to see my work in this show!
Making Space
March 7th - April 1st
RECEPTION MARCH 22nd, 7 - 10PM
Space becomes an entity by the elements that define it.
Monday, February 26, 2007
painting vs. photography
from an article about Botero's Abu Ghraib paintings in The Nation:
"... there can be little doubt that the art of the Baroque was successful in its mission. The art achieved extraordinary precision in the depiction of suffering and hence in the arousal of sympathetic identification. It is often noted that we live in an image-rich culture, and so we do. But most of the images we see are photographs, and their effect can be dulling, if not desensitizing... Photography must be augmented—with text, Susan Sontag proposed—if we are to feel the pain it shows. A picture may be worth a thousand words, as the cliché goes, but a photograph does not speak for itself."
"... there can be little doubt that the art of the Baroque was successful in its mission. The art achieved extraordinary precision in the depiction of suffering and hence in the arousal of sympathetic identification. It is often noted that we live in an image-rich culture, and so we do. But most of the images we see are photographs, and their effect can be dulling, if not desensitizing... Photography must be augmented—with text, Susan Sontag proposed—if we are to feel the pain it shows. A picture may be worth a thousand words, as the cliché goes, but a photograph does not speak for itself."
Friday, February 23, 2007
new work!
check out my flickr account for photos of new work and some studio shots!
This new work is really thinking about creating worlds that are the result of reactionary but very deliberate decision-making. All of the marks are either "building blocks" or "connectors" and each piece grows and evolves to create a unique "place." I think of them as conceptual landscapes or something you might see when peering into a petri dish. What if we were all gods and this is what the world looked like from "above?"
Thursday, February 15, 2007
travel & affect on others
A great excerpt from an independent publisher. I share some of the same ideas about why I feel compelled to make paintings as well as relate some of his thoughts about extension of space and time into the subject matter of my paintings.
Sean Wolf Hill, Time Worm & Counter Culture
All people crave the experience of extension into space. That is why people travel, send letters, write stories, and watch TV or listen to radio. The modern world has given us ways to experience the extension into space, ways tat are more accessible (maybe) than the older routes of meditation, mimetic ritualization, trance induction, hallucination, vision quests and so on. All of these things, including recording and photography & painting, are also mostly extensions into time. Space has become obsolete. That is why I publish. When I send a magazine off, or send my writing, to someone “somewhere else” that person who receives it allows me to re-emerge thru them, to experience the same space they are filling. If this engagement is strong enough, I may also come to life thru them. When this happens, they become my channeller; they carry my life energy into their world. I send to them a seed of myself, product of my vision, sweat, hand-eye coordination and then it germinates in their body or mind and I arise within the. That’s why I publish. Not to push thoughts, although thoughts are surely pushed. Not to make money, which never happens anyway. Not to become known or important, though to some I may be. I publish because of the thrill that happens when someone write back to me and I sense in their letter that I passed through them when the read Time Worm or Counter Culture or other of my books… thru them and out of them, breathed their breath for a while, felt their sensation, shared in their sorrows or good fortune. Mingled with them in a fuller way than if I didn’t publish. I publish for this sensation of in habiting a shared earth where distance in space and time is no obstacle, where there is no wall, no closed system that restricts my travel.
Sean Wolf Hill, Time Worm & Counter Culture
All people crave the experience of extension into space. That is why people travel, send letters, write stories, and watch TV or listen to radio. The modern world has given us ways to experience the extension into space, ways tat are more accessible (maybe) than the older routes of meditation, mimetic ritualization, trance induction, hallucination, vision quests and so on. All of these things, including recording and photography & painting, are also mostly extensions into time. Space has become obsolete. That is why I publish. When I send a magazine off, or send my writing, to someone “somewhere else” that person who receives it allows me to re-emerge thru them, to experience the same space they are filling. If this engagement is strong enough, I may also come to life thru them. When this happens, they become my channeller; they carry my life energy into their world. I send to them a seed of myself, product of my vision, sweat, hand-eye coordination and then it germinates in their body or mind and I arise within the. That’s why I publish. Not to push thoughts, although thoughts are surely pushed. Not to make money, which never happens anyway. Not to become known or important, though to some I may be. I publish because of the thrill that happens when someone write back to me and I sense in their letter that I passed through them when the read Time Worm or Counter Culture or other of my books… thru them and out of them, breathed their breath for a while, felt their sensation, shared in their sorrows or good fortune. Mingled with them in a fuller way than if I didn’t publish. I publish for this sensation of in habiting a shared earth where distance in space and time is no obstacle, where there is no wall, no closed system that restricts my travel.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
new studio!
I have moved into a new space in a different building. I am now in Hooper 2 in the the Grad Center. The space is about double the size of my old space and though I will miss my old neighbors, the new ones are pretty great too. Ryan was here today helping me get settled... he put up shelves, installed lights and new outlets, and bought me that cushy blue chair and a coffee maker. It's great in here now!
things to remember
Making takes time. Evolution takes time. If I am thinking of my work as little worlds that grow and change, the process may take months or years. I have started to think about the work the way I take care of my houseplants... tend to it when need be, appreciate it, ponder it & allow it to grow.
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