Lichtenbergian Goal #1

Posted on by Dale

Lichtenbergian Goal #1: to continue my painting/drawing, which has two avenues at this point, and I’m thinking of adding a third.

First of all is my Field series, which began with a couple of news photos the composition of which I thought would make a good basis for abstract paintings. Those first two were based directly on the photos. Indeed, the first one I actually painted over the photo itself.

The main issue I’m exploring now is how to create these compositions on my own without bogging down in the “figures playing in snow” motif. (That’s exactly what the first two were based on, of course.)

Many of the avenues I’ve tried recently don’t really work, which is the point. Keep exploring until you find something that does. Then the problem is how to use that which works without it becoming cliché. It’s the accursed cycle of creativity.

With the portraiture, I have two problems I need to solve. The first is the ongoing issue of verisimilitude: does what I’ve painted accurately reflect the subject? Can you “tell who it is”? That’s what I was working on fairly assiduously in my sketchbook, until it dawned on me that it did me very little good to be able to draw Jeff’s face if I had then to turn around and use paint to achieve the same goal.

(Which is not to say that the drawing is not critical to the painting. It is: it allows me to see in a more leisurely and forgiving, and cheaper, medium how faces are put together.)

The second issue is that of style. If we assume that in this best of all possible worlds I will end up with a eight-foot long oil painting of the Lichtenbergians standing in the labyrinth, then what do I want it to look like? Caravaggio-like finish? Rembrandt? Renoir? Bacon? Hockney? Something new, readily recognizable as Lylesian even?

What kind of stylistic approach will best achieve my goal, which is to show a group of men who have a certain authority just by dint of having lived? To show the aging of the male body not as a matter of decay but of changing, even growing, powers? Can I even do that?

With the Field series, my plan of attack is to continue working on the pieces I have currently going, i.e., IV and V, then grow from there.

With the ELP, my plan of attack is two-fold: quick stylistic studies, and slower, more layered attempts at verisimilitudinosity.

I foresee two stumbling blocks that my Lichtenbergian self will seize on as excuses not to proceed, and that is that I am already chafing at the size restrictions with the Field series, and at the limitations of gouache as a medium overall. However, I have no room for larger canvases/boards, and I certainly cannot afford to fill them with oils, which have environmental issues of their own.

Onward.

Oh. The third avenue. I may start exploring collage. That is all.

Lichtenbergians, part two

Posted on by Dale

Before I write about each of my Lichtenbergian goals, I need to explain why this group means so much to me, if I can.

As part of our discussion Saturday night, Craig kept asking why, given the Void that is ignorant of our efforts, is it useful at all to talk about our creativity? Jeff finally replied that it provides us with a sense of community, that we are not alone in our efforts. There are others like us.

A truism, of course, since the other side of our discussion was the idea that we are evolutionarily compelled to create the thing-that-is-not, but sometimes in our modern world we can forget that. Especially as men in small town, middle class America, we find ourselves on the outside, wondering indeed whether all the time we scrape together to pursue our art is worth it.

So this group of men meets fairly often, but especially this once, to say those things which rattle around inside us, to share the ideas and theories and plans we have, to meet and understand that we are not alone, that what we feel we must do is in fact understandable by someone else.

And this night, the Annual Meeting, with all of its made-up ceremony and ritual, is the most important night. Because that ceremony, that fake little ritual, requires us to present our selves as Accomplished. We must drop the pretense that we’re not really artists and instead proclaim what we want to do in the coming year. We must bind ourselves to our fellow Lichtenbergians in a trust that demands that we regard our creative impulses as legitimate and not merely impulses, but imperatives.

This is the third year we’ve done this, and I have found my three lists to be interesting in their arc. Last year I had seven goals. I don’t even remember what all of them were, but I didn’t meet a single one. It was stinging.

And so I lowered my sights. Last solstice I set only four goals, and they were ones I knew I could meet. And I met them, all four. It was stinging.

I felt as though I had cheated, as if I had lowballed myself and the Society. I did not feel accomplished, smug, or even happy that I had made all four goals. They were measly goals, cramped, little things that might have made others proud, but not me.

This year, therefore, I made some goals I felt would be honorable to make, and some more that I felt would be honorable even to fail at.

Because when I bind myself to these guys, it means something.

Brief Labyrinthine note

Posted on by Dale

Craig had asked if we could get together tonight in the labyrinth. He was feeling that he needed to be in the space more, and of course I said yes.

Alas, he was detained at a worksite and won’t be able to be here. But it’s too beautiful a night not to be out here: not too cold, perfectly clear sky, a peaceful moon and the labyrinth looks gorgeous. So even though I thought I’d stay in, it would be a shame to waste the opportunity.

I want to write my next blog post about my Lichtenbergian goals, walk the labyrinth a couple of times, and just generally be grateful for the universe. Not a challenge, actually.

And who knows? Maybe someone will see the open gate and walk in.

Lichtenbergians

Posted on by Dale

This past Saturday was the Annual Meeting of the Lichtenbergian Society, a top-secret organization for creative procrastinators. That is, creative men who procrastinate, not men who procrastinate creatively. We celebrate the virtues of procrastination. We are a veritable support group for procrastination. With drinking.

This Annual Meeting is one of the most important evenings of the year for me. Even though we gather often during the year and are companionable and argumentative, even though we have a website through which we communicate our ideas and passions, still this particular meeting stands out, because it’s the only meeting in which we have a ritualized ceremony.

We toast our genius Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, German physicist, aphorist, and satirist, and inveterate procrastinator. We submit Corroborative Evidence of our Claims, i.e., creative works the creators of which would have been well-advised to have procrastinated over a good deal longer. Then we Consign said Corroborative Evidence to the Flames.

Next comes the part that means the most to me. We have a journal in which the recording secretary has recorded each member’s Proposed Efforts the preceding year. The secretary reads out the list of what we thought we might accomplish this year, and to each we have to respond: “Accomplished” or “Cras melior est” (our motto, which means “Tomorrow is better”). After everyone has confessed responded to the secretary, and there’s a lot of discussion and commentary, we stand and have a silent meditation on the Year’s Efforts, followed by a silent toast.

This year, I am ashamed to say, I accomplished all four of my goals. Last year I was zero for seven, which is also pretty bad, but at least had the virtue of making me an exemplary Lichtenbergian. This year I felt cheesy, as if I had cheated somehow by choosing easy-to-conquer goals, and as if I had not set goals extravagant enough to be worth attempting. Success did not make me feel as if I had accomplished anything.

So in the next part of our ceremony, I was determined to challenge myself more. This is the Engrossment of the Proposed Efforts: each Lichtenbergian states for the record what he hopes to accomplish creatively this year. This is an awe-inspiring exercise, because you know that at the next winter solstice, you’re going to be confronted with your claims and have to acknowledge your success or failure.

After everyone is done, we have another toast, to the Proposed Efforts, followed by the agenda. This year’s topic was “compulsion and void,” revolving around the polar ideas that a) we are compelled by our nature to create, and b) we are confronted by the void which renders our creations pointless. How do we deal with these ideas as artists? And it may be that more toasts are made as the evening progresses. You get the idea.

What were my Proposed Efforts?

  • continue my painting, both the abstract Field series and my studies for the Epic Lichtenbergian Portrait
  • restart the 24-Hour Challenge, which to my surprise I had proposed last year to do only for six months, which is just about what I managed
  • compose one complete work, any description
  • write one good short story
  • begin work on A Perfect Life, my proposed description of what it’s like to live a life like mine
  • and in conjunction with all of the above, produce a lot of crap, i.e., produce boatloads of work

I think what I’ll do is blog about this for a couple of days. I need to write more anyway, and I need to set forth some ideas about this whole process and each of the particulars.

Labyrinth, 12/20/09

Posted on by Dale

I haven’t posted good overview shots of the labyrinth in a while.

Settled in for the winter. The grass is still sparse in parts, but when the weather settles down I can overseed with winter rye. I probably need to put some wheatstraw over the peacock moss on the bank and center mound to protect it for the first winter. I’m also looking at one or two more ferns, probably ostrich ferns, for the back corner, but that planting will be for the spring.

My main projects for the winter are the stone circle for the western portal, the mirrored gates for the back corner, and figuring out what to do for the eastern portal.

A crisis

Posted on by Dale

I’m having a bit of an artistic crisis here.

Look at the following:

These are all by an artist named James Castle (1899-1977), and I discovered him through a review of a retrospective of his work at the Art Institute of Chicago. Very elemental, masterful stuff.

Except.

James Castle was born deaf; never learned to read, write, or sign; never left his parents’ farm in IDAHO; did all his work with WHATEVER HE COULD FIND, including, for his drawings, SOOT AND SPIT.

THIS MAN DID HIS DRAWINGS WITH SOOT AND SPIT.

Color? “Unknown source,” but probably SQUEEZED FROM MUSHED-UP COLORED PAPER.

HE MADE BOOKS. On found paper. Newsprint left over from someone’s typing lessons. Cardboard boxes. Leftover twine.

HE MADE SCULPTURES out of whatever the hell he could find to hand.

And I’m thinking, what the ever-loving ? What have I been playing at, with my blobs and “encroaching white” and fake perspective and pursuit of verisimilitude? All the notebooks and art paper and gouache and brushes? Nothing I’ve done, nor am like to do if I pursue these paths, has even one-tenth the power of the works of James Castle.

He was seeing things I don’t see, hearing things I don’t hear, walking paths I have no knowledge of. He did this in Boise, Idaho, alone, starting in the 1920s.

This is going to take a while to get over.

Here’s more:

Painting, 12/16/09

Posted on by Dale

I got so bored last night that I painted.

I had two paintings on my easel, Field IV and a self-portrait, but I had no vision for Field and no guts for the portrait, so I pulled out a blank board and started on it.

Different, yes? I mean, in some ways, like the fact that the foreground is two major blobs instead of multiple blobs, and they’re made of mixed colors.

I keep thinking there should be a very large object intruding from the left side of the canvas. I’ll keep envisioning that one.

Then I put up a piece of paper and began another self portrait, which you will forgive me if I don’t share here. It’s very sketchy, and my intent is to keep adding layers of paint to it and define my figure more and more as I go along.

Not at all productive, I don’t think, but hey, it’s paint on board and not in the tube.

My Reading Rat

Posted on by Dale

Look at this little guy? Isn’t he cute?

I am not given, as a rule, to enthusing over such things in an overt, little-girl-squealy kind of manner, but last Thursday night we were in Decatur and visited one of our favorite stores there, Mingei World Arts, and there was a whole display of these bizarre, wonderful little creatures, about 50, all different and all of them reading.

I couldn’t contain myself.

I oohed and aahed so much over each and every one that I attracted the attention of the owners of the store who guessed correctly that I must have something to do with reading in my real life. I told them who I was, and they told me about the figures.

The school in La Union, Oaxaca, Mexico, has a library, but the children cannot take books home from there. And so Libros Para Pueblos (in Spanish, and the English button doesn’t seem to work) was formed to establish circulating libraries for the children. They can open a library and sustain it for a year for $1,000.

So the good ladies of Mengei cut a deal with the village of La Union, to donate 20% of the sales of these figuras, carved there in La Union, to Libros. I think I’m remembering correctly that they very quickly raised multiple thousands for the children.

Anyway, all of the animals are reading books. There were dogs and zebras and elephants and lions and mermaids and nearly everything you could think of. My favorite was a large cat, about fifteen inches long, with a rat dangling from its mouth, and the rat was reading a book. Of course, a figura that size is very expensive, about $200. None of them were cheap.

But I find Oaxaca wood carvings (follow the link and make sure you look at the galleries) irresistible. There’s something endlessly intriguing about them. The store had a lot more from other villages, larger, even more fantastical (and more expensive), but I had to have one of the La Union readers.

It took me a long time, but I finally settled on this little guy. His carver was Calixto Santiago, who appears to be somebody in the carving community. Color being what it is on computers, you’ll have to imagine his brilliant cerise coat, his vivid yellow eyes and book (which is purest lapis lazuli underneath), and his emerald green ears. He is no more than five inches tall.

There is some question as to his species. Others have suggested that he’s a jaguar because of his spots; I’m thinking he’s a rat because of his incisors, but he could be some other rodent. Anyway, I find him absolutely charming. I will be collecting more.

Arrrgh!

Posted on by Dale

I have been reading Treasure Island, of all things, via dailylit.com, and I have to say it is a ripping tale. If you have not read it, believe all the good things you’ve ever heard about it and go subscribe to it. I subscribed to the “double dose” mailing, because I knew that one small chunk every morning would not be enough.

Labyrinth, 11/29/09

Posted on by Dale

I meant to write about this on Sunday, but I didn’t get around to it.

While in Key West, I bought a couple of things for the labyrinth. Here’s the first:

It’s a little fuzzy, since I took the photo with my iPhone, but essentially it’s a raku ceramic rattle. It’s stamped with dragonflies on its two halves, and then what seems to be waxed raffia holds some not-quite-what-I-would-have-picked-but-unoffensive beads, while at the same time blocking the hole on the bottom.

I figured it would be something to do a little meditative noise with while I sit out there.

I was worried about how to store it, and then the bowl I already had came to mind, along with sand to cushion it. Very nice presentation, I think, and a highly practical solution.