Category: art

Almost the end

Posted on by Dale

We went to Abingdon, VA, this weekend, mostly to visit Ginny’s parents, but also to hit the Virginia Highlands Festival. Think Powers’ Crossroads scaled down and staged in downtown Newnan. It was the usual mixed bag, ranging from interesting to pedestrian, art to crafts. The Barter Theatre, of course, is also a mainstay of the Festival, but Annie is not quite my idea of art, is it? (Did I ever report on their production of Lying in State? We went up to see it a couple of years ago. David, the playwright, now deceased, had rewritten it a bit after we premiered it in 1996; the cast was competent, but frankly not as razor-sharp as ours.)

Abingdon also has the William King Regional Arts Center, housed in the city’s old high school building, a fairly magnificent Arlington-style mansion atop a hill on the west side of town. It’s a very nice facility, one you would think they would think twice before abandoning. But apparently they’re concerned about cost of upkeep and the lack of foot traffic, so they’re looking a building a new facility over on Barter Green. My advice? Take the millions and buy up all the auto shops and low-rent housing that clog the entrance to the hill and re-landscape it.

Anyway, a couple of interesting things at William King. One exhibit was called “Cabinet of Curiosities,” and really was just an excuse for a hodge-podge of local antiques, including a desk from my in-laws’ house. There was something about “can you spot the fibs?” in the exhibit labels, but that was not interesting.

This was, though:

Just a candlestick fashioned from a tree branch, but isn’t it spooky? I’d love to have something similar out in the labyrinth. It resembles the aliens from War of the Worlds, I think.

The other was in one of the galleries upstairs, a young artist whose exhibit featured self-portraits on unstretched canvases. This is a sample:

Megan van Deusen’s work examined the veils behind which we conceal ourselves, both metaphorical and literal. The draperies are sketched in with figures draped themselves, and in the example above, the figure holds/generates another drapery with a draped figure emerging from it. Very nice indeed.

So my last days of summer were spent consuming the creative work of others, not creating my own. Oh well.

Summer Countdown: Day 8

Posted on by Dale

I built a couple of boxes to serve as platforms for the paint studies I’m submitting for Picaflor Studio’s If a Body… show. It was a great feeling to have absolutely every tool I needed to do it correctly and efficiently. To recap: hundreds of dollars worth of equipment so that I can put together some boxes and paint them black to tack some crappy studies onto and send them to a small gallery. Yep, great feeling.

Actually, I haven’t figured out how to attach them yet. I don’t want to glue them nor double-tape them, and those are probably the ways one does these things. This morning I thought I might attach some wire to the boxes and just go all industrial on the aesthetic, clipping the paper at the corners.

Then I cleaned up—again—because the amount of clutter around here is boggling.

And we have a problem: my numbering of the days I actually had to work on creative projects has become inaccurate, null and void. We’re off on a trip to Abingdon, VA, to visit Ginny’s parents but also to catch the Virginia Highlands Festival, an arts conflagration of some merit. (Think Powers’ Crossroads, only not as much art and a whole lot more involvement downtown. Plus music. Plus a quality regional museum with first-rate exhibits.)

Also, I failed to calculate for the leadership team meeting at school next Tuesday, and if I’m being halfway a decent person, I will have to go in on Wednesday to begin putting the media center back together after stripping it for the installation of new carpet.

Essentially, that means I’m out of days. My original plan gave me seven more, but next Monday is the only day I have free to sit down and spend a morning writing music or painting, and half of that must be devoted to getting the paintings up to Picaflor. Time’s up.

Maybe I’ll write Prelude (no fugue) No. 5 on the road.

Summer Countdown: Day 17

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Not very productive at all yesterday. I wasn’t feeling well, so I just moped about.

I did a concerted search for a hard copy of “Children of the Heavenly Father,” but I cannot find one. I don’t know why I’m obsessing about this particular piece. I think that if I found it I would find that it was not that good to begin with.

In rummaging through the attic boxes, I did come across a handwritten score for a Gloria I wrote many many years ago, before 1980 at least. I know this because it ended up in the Street Scene in Christmas Carol: “Isn’t it cold today? Weather fine for Christmas day!” I think Marc wrote those lyrics.

Perhaps I should reconstruct Christmas Carol instead?

In other news, Craig’s daughter Kathryn has accepted some of my raw paint-sketches for the ELP for an exhibit at her gallery. The show is called “If a Body Catch a Body,” and opens August 7. I’ll keep you posted.

Summer Countdown: Day 18

Posted on by Dale

I finished Prelude (no fugue) No. 2. How’s that for productive? Actually, I started work on it, decided it was too pretty, and started over.

Prelude (no fugue) No. 2: score | mp3

It’s actually more vigorous than I originally planned for it to be. The original idea was for a more gentle, gracioso, melodious thing, to become between the outrageous faux-counterpoint of No. 1 and the hyper-Romantic No. 3. Oh well. Now everyone has to wait until No. 4 to take a break. Because Nos. 5 & 6 are going to be tough for everybody.

I got bored waiting for our yard man to show up, so I devised a cover for Pieces for Bassoon & String Quartet.

It occurred to me that I don’t really have a page for my instrumental music. Over on my “real” webpage, I have a page for my choral stuff, and not even my newest of that. I’m thinking of making the blog my web page, period, and adding a page for all my music. Because of course the only reason we haven’t heard more performances of Pieces for Bassoon & String Quartet is that people haven’t had a page upon which to find it.

Come to think of it, we haven’t heard any performances of PB&SQ. Michael Giel, what is wrong with you?

I’ve had on my to-do app, for days now, to reconstruct “Children of the Heavenly Father,” the ill-fated hymn arrangement that should have warned me off composing years ago. Why “reconstruct,” you ask, as well you might? Because it got left behind on hard drives gone by, on musical software so quaint that the young folk marvel that we could do more than bang the rocks together.

I tried half-heartedly to find a physical copy yesterday, but if the music exists —and I know it does, I just know it —it’s in a box of all the stuff I wrote for the Presbyterian choir, in the attic. Too hot, too icky. Much easier to find the computer file, I thought.

Right. You know those geeks who still have every computer they ever owned? That’s me. Almost. I did give my 7500 (is that right?) to the theatre, and I had even revved up the chip to a G4, baby. But I still have my SE/30, my PowerBook 190 (oh yeah, I had a laptop), my blue-and-white G3/G4. I would have my old MacBook Pro, but it was stolen last November.

So I sought out “Children of the Heavenly Father” on both the old PowerBook 190 and the SE/30. Neither would even come on. Well, to be fair, the SE/30 is over 20 years old, and the last time it even ran I had to give it a whack on the side to get the solenoid started. But still. It was heartbreaking.

Even I had been able to get either of them running, what then? None of the cables would feed into anything I have in the house, needless to say. And where would I have found a 3.5” floppy? And then how would I have gotten it onto my MacBook Pro?

And finally it dawned on me—even if I find the file—it’s from some music software so quaint that the young folk marvel that we could do more than bang the rocks together.

I drove to Sam Flax in Atlanta— and trust me, I only do that when nothing local will serve—to pick up my gallon of White Absorbent Ground that they had ordered for me. I also got a color wheel (thanks, Diane!), a tube of raw sienna (mine had completely dried up on me), and a palette knife. I used to have one—I probably could put my hands on it if I had to (ah, but I was wrong about where I thought it was)—but it was never as elegant or precise or as flexible as this lovely thing is.

Then back to Newnan, where I charmingly thought that perhaps a light rainfall —perhaps—might intrude on the evening, so I went ahead and set up candles and the makings of a fire in the labyrinth. Then upstairs I went to check on mail while dinner was in the microwave, and then back downstairs to find the deluge upon us.

I dashed outside to grab all the candles and cover the firepit. Modesty must draw a curtain over the state in which I finished my labors. I sat awhile in the torrents of water, luxuriating in that unrepentant sense of being completely wet when you have no reason not to be dry, until I realized that all that lightning was occurring right over my head. I tiptoed back up to the house, stripped off what remained, and toweled dry.

I actually repeated this, believing the storm to be past, although I was more sensible than to get a fresh change of clothes drenched. After the second rain-soaked reverie, however, I was done.

Throughout all of this, I completely forgot about our bedspread, freshly washed and hanging out to dry on the deck.

Summer Countdown: Day 19

Posted on by Dale

Yesterday I got up at an ungodly hour to make the two-and-a-half-hour drive to Clarkesville, GA, for my One Day Art Camp.

For those who are coming to this late, here’s what the deal is. Forty years ago, in the summer of 1970, I spent eight weeks on the campus of Wesleyan College in Macon as an art major in the Governor’s Honors Program. Although art majors all had to cycle at one point through all three of the components— painting/drawing, sculpture, and textiles (hey, it was the 70s)—we could focus on one. I chose painting/drawing with the ever-wonderful B. Diane Mize.

The woman was amazing. She opened my eyes not only to new ways of thinking about art , and I famously say that while GHP taught me I was not an artist—which she disputes—she taught me that the creative process was at the root of everything we do. For that matter, she showed me what the creative process is.

I had not seen Diane since May of 1976, when in one of those scenes that you would disbelieve as too contrived if it were in a movie, I bumped into her in the bookstore at UGA one month before I graduated with a BFA in theatre. On the final night of GHP, six years earlier, I had performed with my theatre minor group to such acclaim that Diane had asked me if I had considered theatre instead of art as a major. Smart woman.

Three or four years ago, I was in my dorm apartment at GHP and somehow I thought of Diane. I googled her and for some reason found her Amazon wish list. I sent her a CD in gratitude for everything she did for me—you know, change my life forever, that kind of thing—and we re-established contact. This spring, I suggested that since I have the summer off, I should visit her and let her teach me all the things I failed to learn forty years ago.

And that’s what I did yesterday.

Once again, she has changed my life. She looked through my sketchbooks. She took notes on what my goals were and what my problems were. She showed me ways of looking at color—and mixing color —that render those tubes of Flesh Tint largely irrelevant. She set up an exercise in color mixing that will take me the rest of the summer to get halfway through. (As she puts it, a musician has to learn scales and etudes; why haven’t artists been trained the same way?)

She showed me a few tricks of the trade in drawing and gave me the title of a book—another book—that I need. She had me mixing paint and matching colors. (Jeff, did you know that part of you is lilac? No, not that part.) She looked over all my paintings and agreed with me on the good ones.

And the entire day she laughed at my feeble attempts and my frustrations, taking great joy in my revelations and my stubbornness and my acid struggles. It was enormous fun, and by the end of the day I was exhausted. I seriously wondered whether I would be able to drive home without falling asleep. But I was too exhilarated from what I learned. I flew home.

So did I get anything done yesterday? Not if you expected to see completed still lifes or portraits. But in most respects it was the most productive day of the summer.

Summer Countdown: Day 20

Posted on by Dale

After running errands and generally being distracted for much of the morning, I was finally able to settle into the labyrinth and do the first leg of the color exercise Diane had sent me.

Simplicity itself: grid of 1-inch squares, seven across, five down. Put a pure color in the top square. Put a barely tinted white in the bottom square. Devise the middle tone. Devise the second one. Devise the fourth one. Repeat.

It was of course not difficult, although the yellow ochre defied me in the upper, darker half. Alas, I didn’t have time to do more than the “lights,” and I don’t think I want to schlep all that stuff to St. Simon’s with me. I’ll have to see if I have time when I get back on Saturday.

In our Summer Countdown, we now have a break of four days. I’ll be at St. Simon’s with my lovely first wife, serving as arm candy as she swans about being important.

This is not to say that I won’t get any work done. I’m taking my sketchbook, and my goal is to fill the last 20+ pages at the beach before heading off to Diane’s house on Sunday. In fact, I’m taking my new one with me as well. I may be ambitious.

I’m also taking my laptop and graphics tablet so that if I get inspired I can work on music as well, although I really don’t see that happening. I work better with my keyboard, and I’m not taking that. Or maybe I will.

In other Lichtenbergian distractions, I bought a timer for the water in the labyrinth so that the new grass plugs can have their daily watering while I’m away. We’ll see if this keeps the grass alive and flourishing.

Summer Countdown: Day 28

Posted on by Dale

I kept working on Prelude No. 3, returning to the opening chord phrase and wrapping it with the sixteenth note arpeggiations. I stopped at one point and emailed it to Maila, who gave it a thumbs up for its playability. So I kept adding to it. Didn’t finish it, but got it longer. I think I have some ideas for wrapping it up. I’ll refrain from posting another mp3 until I have it finished.

I also sketched for a while, using my new proportional divider, and let me tell you, that is a very good tool to have. I purposely went back and redrew some poses that had given me particular trouble, and all of them were 1,000% better. Still haven’t used my circle guide, but irises and pupils are not my real problem.

Summer Countdown: Day 29

Posted on by Dale

I heard from Wallace Galbraith in Ayr. In his first email, he essentially agreed with my assessment of the five pieces, but expressed no preference for any of them in a way that my American brain could discern. I asked for clarification, and he suggested that we move forward with Resignation and Rondo. So there we go. I have new goals. (He also proposed Waltz as a “third movement,” but I’m not sure what he means by that.)

I woke up with the start of a piano piece in my head, the first of a series I conceived earlier in the spring, Preludes, no fugues. This is mostly driven by my sense of guilt over never having written the Trio for piano, trombone and saxophone that Maila Springfield asked me to write three summers ago. I can at least throw half a dozen bagatelles at her.

So I was quite productive on that front: finished No. 1, conceived No. 2, and am halfway through No. 3. I’ll loop back to No. 2. Nos. 4, 5, and 6… this week, maybe?

Prelude No. 1, score | mp3
Prelude No. 3 (as of 6/27), score | mp3

The third prelude will continue with that opening theme now interwoven with the sixteenths, I think, in multiple octaves in both hands, more grandiose than the delicate opening. Since I cannot possibly play any of it, I’m going to have to be very left-brain about its construction: where can the fingers actually be at any given time? Can I notate it so that the quarter notes of the “melody” are distinct from the sixteenths? How is this thing supposed to end?

I also heard from Diane Mize. While her cabin is being repaired, she has asked me to write a goal statement for our Art Camp: what do I want to accomplish and why? This is supposed to be “uncensored.” No fair making me think. Or be honest. You can see how this has taken me two days even to get half a page written.