Category: Creativity

Creating something every day for 365 days

Painting, 4/6/09

Posted on by Dale

The taxes are at a standstill while my IRA advisers try to figure out who coded the rollover wrong and why the feds think I was the recipient of a huge disbursement that was taxed, and which if uncorrected stands to have me owe $12,000 in unpaid taxes for last year.

So I thought I’d paint for a while.

Here’s the most recent thing I was working on.

You will notice that I’ve been futzing with it. I am so far from thinking it’s going well that I will not comment on it. And yes, I’ve turned it upside down. I’ll let you know whether that did any good or not later.

At the moment, of course, I have to produce a painting for the Patrons of the Centre event at the end of the month. I served on the committee for the Brooks Arts Scholarship, and while discussing with my fellow committee members what an awesome group of polymaths we all were, I divulged that I had started painting again. I was immediately asked to cough up a painting for the silent auction. My vanity could not say no.

In a traditionally Lichtenbergian maneuver, I am here blogging and putting up this shot of the board with a couple of pencil scribbles on it. You can tell absolutely nothing about the thing, but as long as I keep writing here, I don’t have to break out the paints and actually, you know, produce art.

OK, I guess it’s time to go clean off my palette and get started. It still has gobs of dried up gouache from my recent efforts, including the octopus I painted in fluorescent paint out on Craig’s studio wall last November, and I need a fresh start.

afk–bbs

later

Here it is a little while later, with some color blobs on it. Magnificent progress. That’s what I’m calling it, magnificent progress. Actually, I’m calling it a break for a while, since I have to go to a special Masterworks rehearsal for the “men’s ensemble,” i.e., those of us who volunteered to sing the porters’ quartet in “Moonshine Lullaby” because the men as a whole weren’t getting it. God bless Irving Berlin.

Talent

Posted on by Dale

Here’s a great article about Allonzo Trier and all that he represents. You can go read it if you like.

What the article does not tell you is that Allonzo has a little brother, Geraldo. Geraldo displayed an early interest in the family’s piano, plunking out tunes when he was three-and-a-half. By the time he was four, he could mimic anything he heard on the radio.

One day when he was five, he heard a Philip Glass piano piece on the radio (he keeps his radio tuned to the local NPR station), went to the piano, and played it from memory.

He had to do a book report on a prominent African-American in second grade, and he astonished his teacher by writing a small musical about how Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery. He wanted to do the famous man’s whole life, but he didn’t have time, he said. His teacher, Ms. Barbara King, thought it was cute.

In short, Geraldo shows every sign of being another Mozart or Bernstein just like his big brother does of being the next Lebron James.

But he can rot in hell.

Ongoing listening, 3/12/09

Posted on by Dale

I am behind in my listening, or at least in my posting about the listening.

For about a week, I made my way through Skys, by Michael Danna, and Brian Eno’s Discreet Music.

The first one is somber space music, based, the composer says, on the lowering skies of Canada. Well, who wouldn’t jump at that? I can resist the temptation. The ten pieces on the CD are all basically the same, an ostinato kind of figure over which there is some countermelody, without any kind of harmonic exploration, or indeed thematic for the most part. Very uninspiring. Onto the giveaway pile.

The Eno is a bit more complex. The first piece, the title piece, is a lovely bit of Eno’s ambient stuff, pretty much indistinguishable from most of his other stuff, but pleasant.

The other three tracks are entitled Three Variations on the Canon in D major by Johann Pachelbel, and it’s a bit more involved. In each, parts of the Canon are subjected to “systems,” e.g., the tempo of each players part is decreased at a rate governed by the player’s pitch. The first is, at first listening, most successful. Probably the other two would bear fruit upon further exposure.

I then moved on to two symphonies by Philip Glass, No. 8 and No. 2. The Eighth was part of my desk pile; the Second was on my CD shelf.

The Eighth was my favorite of the two. Its command of the soundspace was more masterful. I know it’s hard to think of someone like Philip Glass becoming more assured over time, especially since the Second was written when he was already a master, but to my ears there’s a definite difference in the success rate of the form.

The Second was choppy, a little more self-conscious about what it was trying to do (be a symphony), and it just did not pull together. The Eighth, on the other hand, was a return to purely instrumental after the choral/vocal settings of the 5th-7th. It announces itself with a strong opening, and the energy is carried throughout the movement.

The second movement is a passacaglia, and it sounds organized in ways that Skys never did. The third movement is the most interesting. It’s very short, only seven minutes long, and it’s very slow, with no Glassian fireworks at all. The English horn intones a despairing kind of theme in a bleak landscape. It repeats, then twice more with a countermelody, then the whole thing closes out in an evaporation of sound.

My next two listening adventures are Prokofiev’s Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 3, and Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3 on one CD, and Rautavaara’s “Angel of Dusk,” Concerto for Double Bass; Symphony No. 2; Suomalainen myytti (A Finnish Myth); and Pelimannit (Fiddlers), on the other CD.

Saturday afternoon in the labyrinth

Posted on by Dale

The chimes have just struck noon, and the carillon has played its selection of Lenten hymntunes. I am back in the labyrinth, soaking up the sunshine.

My intent is simply to relax. There’s nothing pressing on my agenda, no deadlines, no concerts, no Literacy Task Forces. So I’ll read, and do crossword puzzles, and probably nap.

I could work on the yard, but I think I will put all of that off till another sunny day.

What’s still left to do? Oh, plenty. Now I have lots of areas that need grass or moss or something covering the ground. The mound in the center needs a ground cover, since the bluestar stuff I planted earlier died, despite being featured prominently in the new Southern Living as having been used in a lovely Buckhead garden by one William Tingle Smith, of whom I could tell you some charming tales from our Period Dance days.

There’s the putative dance floor, which as you can see I have tilled but not yet leveled or shaped. This requires a lot of thinking and looking and probably drinking.

There’s multiple plantings of various ferns, but I really want to wait until it’s warmer before attempting all of that.

I have cut and sanded, but not stained, new armrests for the old glider. Also, I need to find nuts and bolts to attach them, which was not an automatically easy thing to accomplish when I went to Home Depot last time to accomplish it.

There is still the drilling of pavers for the little plinths out in the labyrinth. I got one finished, and then cold and rain sidelined that operation.

There’s this little deal. These are the leftover bits of pavers after I lopped them for the curves in the labyrinth. My plan is to drill a small hole through them and thread a rod of some kind that will hold them up, then install it as a sculpture somewhere in the complex. It’s an idea stolen directly from Andy Goldsworthy. He, of course, would not be drilling holes or threading rods, but then again he’s an international artist of some integrity. I’m just decorating my garden.

More as it occurs to me.

Later in the afternoon:

Cat with Platonic solids.

Friday afternoon in the labyrinth

Posted on by Dale

It is Friday, March 6, and I am enjoying the first warm afternoon of the year, sitting out by the labyrinth and sipping cosmopolitans, my own recipe.

There is a gray cat sitting in the center of the labyrinth, looking very blasé about sitting on the black granite, when she knows very well she is holding down the universe. I think too she is using it as a vantage point in case I rise from my seat, so that she can immediately run before me to the food bowl.

My plan was to make potato soup for supper tonight, but I may decide not to. The cosmopolitans will be a big help in my reconsideration. Just sitting in the sun, listening to my Pandora new age station over my outdoor speaker, and not thinking about tasks, even simple, non-essencetial tasks like making supper, is a dream. Watching the labyrinth. Watching the grass in the labyrinth.

The cat has moved from the center of the labyrinth to the entrance and thence to the steps. She of course used the Straight Path which is forbidden to us humans.

I feel I should explain my previous post. It reduced Marc even to a simple ?, even though I think (I’m on my second cosmo) that we discussed it at Lacuna on Wednesday.

I’m feeling a profound disturbance in the Force, and I think it’s me. Here’s what I think is happening: the tide has turned, and now it’s incoming. Still not clear? After major projects, I think most creative people (I’m generalizing, of course; I mean me) feel a bit bereft. Their creative tide has gone out, and there at the turning of the tide, there is a feeling of stasis.

Wise creators know not to resist this turning, but to sit and enjoy other things while their creative impulses settle and find something new. My tide was abruptly sucked out to sea when I found that there was no longer any need for me to be writing a symphony for the GHP orchestra.

But now, after a prolonged turning period, I am beginning to feel that onrush of ideas and impulses that signal a new period of creativity. This is always exciting, but it’s also a time of extreme anxiety.

There’s the time issue, foremost: when am I supposed to start on… whatever it is I’m meant to be working on? What schedule should I set for myself? (I’m one who works best on a schedule.)

You will have noticed that I haven’t said what it is I expect to work on. That’s because I’m not really sure. I’ve started painting again, of course, and I can always work on that. But there are these short stories that seem to have claimed part of my brain, and I am intrigued enough not to dismiss them out of hand.

There’s all the Lacuna material that is lined up like a flotilla of airplanes on the runway. I could hammer out “We’re Frauds” and “We’re Bears,” plus “The Boy Who Was Afraid of Nothing,” at the very least. I could generate scripts for any of the ideas on our gigantic performance graph.

There’s the music. There’s always the music. I could finish the two-piano arrangement of “William Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way,” thus improving its chances of performance several-fold. I could continue my self-imposed exercises. I could look at Day in the Moonlight again, and I need to. I could go back to the trio for piano, trombone, and saxophone. And I could always go back to the symphony.

You see my problem: the tide has turned, it;s surging up the shore, and I don’t know exactly how to respond yet. There is a disturbance in the Force, and it’s me.

In the meantime, however, I think I will have another cosmopolitan.

Painting, 3/3/09

Posted on by Dale

One way to deal with the Dakota:

Just cover it up. The ochre stripe came to me last night as I tossed and turned. The “sky” area may go Prussian blue tomorrow.

In other news tonight, I almost had a solution for the center omphalos of the labyrinth. We had stopped at a home furnishings place in Buckhead, and there was a glass bowl thing with a hole in the bottom that would have been perfect: about an inch thick, and gold. Alas, it’s too small. I shall have to take it back. But I’m really thinking that the central bowl should be gold. That presents its own problems, of course.

A day off

Posted on by Dale

So it snowed yesterday, and of course the whole school system shut down. [I will have to make up this day, because as a day laborer I am paid to be onsite for 180 days, whether or not there are children to be taught or work to be done. But let that pass.]

I’ve gotten a lot done today, most of it involving driving back and forth to Michael’s no fewer than three times. Don’t ask. But the original plan for the labyrinth is now framed, as is the photo of the roller coaster where we spent our wedding night.

I piddled around with a short story that crawled into my head a couple of weeks ago. I’m not sharing anything about them till they’re finished, if ever. Short stories have not been my métier heretofore. It doesn’t have a title. We can call it “Swimming,” if you like.

And finally, finally, just a few moments ago, I began a painting that started bugging me on Saturday.

Here’s the deal: the New York Times offers for sale prints of photos from their archives. Here’s the one that jumped out at me:

It’s of skaters in Central Park, 1884. That’s the Dakota apartment house in the background, reigning in solitary splendor on Central Park West.

I don’t know why this idea popped into my head, but it suggested itself to me that I should clip this thing out of the newspaper, attach it to a board, and then paint over it, exploring its composition as an abstraction. What do you think?

Here’s my first pass:

Here are my thoughts so far: a large whitish field on the bottom half, blackish hieroglyphics scarring the surface. A hot gray stripe above that, cooler gray swath above that. Above that, I don’t know yet. Blocks of Prussian blue. Vertical scrapings across the cool gray swath. I don’t know about the Dakota yet. Browns will begin to figure into the composition at some point.

I’ve begun by simply blacking out the figures, then blocking out some items in Prussian blue. I’m of half a mind to leave the two men in the lower right corner.

Back to the painting.

Pass #2:

Now I’m curious about when the black marks down front are going to stop looking like humans.

Pass #3:

What am I to do with the Dakota?

Listening, 2/26/09

Posted on by Dale

I do apologize for not blogging regularly these days. Perhaps I need to blog about that.

Just joking. I can’t even get my thoughts together for that kind of metablogging. I’d like to think that my brain is in such a creative turmoil that I’m afraid to commit any of my ideas to writing. Sure, let’s just go with that.

So my most recent CD in the ongoing Listening Project is Symphony No. 3, Philip Glass. The CD contains the aforesaid symphony, plus Interlude No. 1 from The CIVIL warS; Mechanical Ballet from The Voyage; Interlude No. 2 from The CIVIL warS; and The Light.

At first, I was not overly engaged by the music, but the more I listened to it, the more I understood each piece and even began hitting the back button on the car stereo to hear a track again, always a sure sign of my listening investment.

The third movement of the symphony in particular caught my fancy. It’s the slow movement of the work, beginning with a Glassian pulse in the low strings. (The entire work is for strings only.) Eventually, after the chaconne-like harmonic progression has been established, a solo violin enters, sweetly singing in a higher register, with a syncopated upward leap in its melody. Then, without our even noticing it, a swirling triplet figure detaches itself from the underpinnings and becomes a second violin melody in counterpoint to the first one, and then another, and then another, until we have multiple melodies spinning up and down their scales and trills and melismas. All the while, the throbbing accompaniment ebbs and flows, and we keep the upper melody as signposts on the way. It is quite lovely.

I also quite liked The Light, a symphonic poem which is the usual Glass thing: counterpoint, syncopation, stirring outbursts and climaxes. Quite a happy piece by his standards.

So this one’s a keeper.

At the moment my two Listening companions are Discreet Music, Brian Eno, and Skys, by one Michael Danna. I’m about done with those, I should have posted this piece days ago. Because of my impromptu Wikipediaing of Glass, I have dug his Symphony No. 8 out of the pile and will work on that next. I also retrieved the Symphony No. 2 from the shelf and will give it a whirl.

The problem with this is that then I start hearing this kind of music in my own head. I’m not sure that’s where I want to go with my music.

Painting, 2/24/09

Posted on by Dale

I began my “close observation” painting the other day but haven’t had time to blog about it.

Here’s the first pass:

Bold, ugly, blocking out shapes and masses.

Second pass:

Still pretty “slashy,” but already getting more detail in the handle and around the rim. Also, I reshaped everything: the mug is wider, and the handle is more accurate.

Signs

Posted on by Dale

Over the weekend, outside of Greensboro, NC, we came across this:

I made Ginny pull over so I could get out and take a picture.

Yes, it’s too easy to make fun of rural-ish ventures such as this. It makes me look boorish, an issue that has arisen in the 341 poem as I try to figure out what I’m trying to say in that particular work of art.

And yes, a Tuff Man contest in the arts center is no more ridiculous than the Miss Georgia Teen pageant that our own Centre hosted several years ago. In fact, I’d say it’s exactly equivalent: the investiture of prescriptive sociosexual norms in a communal glorification.

However, this dichotomy of macho manhood and the arts has raised itself [ed. note: that was for Marc] in our efforts over at Lacuna Group. Four of our five artists involved there are men, and part of the material we’re grappling with is the risks/pleasures/pains of defining ourselves as creatives in a society that does not necessarily see that as congruent with Tuff Man ideals.

So it amused me to see an arena that we probably regard as a haven from such things hosting such things. The worm i’ the’ bud, as it were. And with one more serendipitous link to that charming phrase, I’ll open the floor for discussion.