Beyond the Picture

The heart-wrending photo I posted yesterday of an Alabaman wave polluted by the Gulf oil spill prompted me to share some work by artists who evidently love nature, and whose work, I find, deepens my own love for nature and beauty.

Sakiyama Takayuchi is a Japanese ceramic artist who makes clay look like water and stone at the same time. Joan Mirviss says of his work, “Some vessels appear as if made from sand on the beach, the surface simply decorated by the current of the receding water. Others appear to undulate and twist in space as if in perpetual motion.”

"Listening to Waves", 2004, S. Takayuki. Sand-glazed stoneware.

This undulating, double-walled piece, entitled, Listening to Waves

“…gives material expression to the sensation of sound and the movement of water…. Waves swirl across the exterior, sweeping over the rim into the interior to create a fully integrated, organic form. Moss-colored glaze fills the ebblike grooves, leaving traces of sand on the surface of the vessel. This effect recalls the raked sand-waves of Zen kare sansui gardens, such as the sixteenth-century Ryoanji in Kyoto, which convey the expanse of the oceans, and ultimately the entire universe.” (From the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History on the Met’s site)

I  love the idea that a humble lump of clay – skillfully-formed – can convey someone’s inner sense of the “expanse of the universe”.

S. Takayuchi, 2008. Vessel with diagonally-incised cascading folds. Glazed stoneware.

Next up, Jim Denevan is an American “earth artist” who, like Takayuchi, evokes the grandeur of nature. He makes temporary drawings on sand, earth and ice that are eventually erased by waves and weather.

I'm so partial to this image I don't know what to do with myself.

He claims to have made the world’s largest free-hand drawing. Is it bigger than the Uffington White Horse drawing etched in chalk in the English countryside? Possibly. I don’t really care. His drawings are sublime, and I love the fact that they are ephemeral. They fade away according to nature’s whim and schedule, covered by the tide, blown away by the wind.

Stunning, meditative, freehand labor of love. Look at the scale!

Finally, there’s Colleen Plumb, an American photographer whose eccentric and surprising series of photographs, Animals Are Outside Today, examines the intersections between humans and animals.

Horseback Mountain

This image is so arresting, it gives me the shivers. I can *hear* it. Plumb explains that she likes to study “how animals are woven through the fabric of culture. I began this project looking at fake nature, considering how substitutions for nature might satisfy people. Looking deeper I began photographing real animals, investigating how they provide intangible links to a deeper world of instinct and rawness.”

Elephant. Colleen Plumb, "Animals are Outside Today".

Now, I am not claiming that these three artists have some sort of pure, unambivalent “love for nature”. Love for nature can look like many things – sometimes the over-the-top awe and joy we feel for the natural world can be mixed with revulsion, fear or callousness.

We domesticate wild animals and keep them indoors. We adore the beauty of creatures, but one way of engaging with that beauty has been to conquer them and decorate our interiors with their hides and horns. We yearn to walk in an ancient forest, but we won’t directly miss it if it’s gone, thousands of miles away, and if it yields beautiful furniture and houses for us. Plumb says,

Contradictions define our relationships with animals. We love and admire them; we are entertained and fascinated by them; we take our children to watch and learn about them. Animals are embedded within core human history–evident in our stories, rituals and symbols. At the same time, we eat, wear and cage them with seeming indifference, consuming them in countless ways.

Our connection to animals today is often developed through assimilation and appropriation; we absorb them into our lives, yet we no longer know of their origin. Most people are cut off from the steps involved in their processing or acquisition, shielded from witnessing their death or decay. I am interested in moving within these contradictions, always wondering if the notion of sacred will survive alongside our evolution.

Plumb reflects on our relationships with animals, and underscores in her photographs the many contradictions and ambivalences that characterise those relationships. My starting point, the photograph of the oily wave, seems similar somehow. Although the image is not a traditional “nature” shot depicting a pristine ocean, I don’t doubt that the photographer loves nature and wants, through his work, to draw attention to its destruction. Denevan’s work is fleeting; it dies and fades away, underscoring the fragility of nature and a fascination with its manipulation. Even Takayuchi sets forth ideas with a sort of irony: he thinks about the expanse of the universe – in the form of a pot, made of mud.

Denevan

What artwork have you seen that inspires your love for nature, contradictions and all? And don’t worry – there will certainly be ample discussion of Andy Goldsworthy in Part 3, coming soon.

How different is your inside from your outside? Your interior thoughts from your exterior presentation?

Some people I know have very few filters; the distance traveled between their thoughts and actions seems … short. Others are enigmatic and full of surprises. Sometimes the unfiltered people and the inscrutable people change guises. Sometimes it is apparent that I simply have not learned enough to decode it all, either way.

Recently I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon in my artwork: the things I’m thinking about most in my interactions with people seem to show up in some form – symbolically and unbidden – in the artistic and technical problems I encounter in my work. Turns out that efforts to achieve harmony with people are on some level, anyway, not so different than efforts to achieve harmony of form in art. I regularly feel that I get the opportunity to examine spiritual concepts through the evocative processes of ceramics and picture-making.

The piece in question, when it was greenware (before the bisque firing).

A recent ceramic piece that I liked, and spent an inordinate amount of time making, failed. It was the most frustrating kind of failure because it appeared only in the final firing. At the same time, it proved to be a very useful failure.

I had applied a surface texture to it, and glazed it with a verdigris on the outside, and a clean white on the inside. The glazes, however, were apparently stressed out because they had such different formulations. They didn’t get along.

Obstinate verdigris and white glazes

One had a high frit content and didn’t budge (so I’m told) when it became vitrified; the outer glaze reacted quite differently, and expanded and contracted with the extreme heat of the firing. These very different chemical reactions, along with the shape of the piece, caused it to crack from stress. It’s called “dunting”.

Look! I've hidden the unsightly crack!

Although disappointing, the dunting drew my attention to a spiritual idea. Perhaps it was a symbolic, visual demonstration of what happens when the interior and exterior of a thing do not match:

“They … have no ambition except to revive the world, to ennoble its life, and regenerate its peoples. Truthfulness and good-will have, at all times, marked their relations with all men. Their outward conduct is but a reflection of their inward life, and their inward life a mirror of their outward conduct.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u'lláh, CXXVI)

Or maybe, “Hast thou ever heard that friend and foe should abide in one heart?” (Hidden Words of Bahá’u'lláh, #26 from the Persian). I do know now that shiny white and verdigris should not abide in one vessel, for sure. And that it is more fun to experiment with this topic on pots than it is on people.

I kind've like - and accept - the piece this way.

So what of dunting, or jarring differences between the inside and outside, when it happens within a person? Between people? In your own creative efforts?

[With thanks to A. for asking about the artwork and precipitating thoughts]

I like people who see things others don’t. This guy collects on his blog images of people and objects that, well, look alike.  It’s not just the “Separated at Birth” concept, however. Aref-Adib has collected some unusual pairs, like this one (Banksy/calligraphy):

Here’s a Mondrian/”Mind the gap” juxtaposition that I like a lot:

There’s also one of Borat vs. the Turkish “I kiss you” guy.  I think one influenced the other, however, and their similarities are no accident.

So what other observant, unlikely collections of visual connections do you know of?

Some years ago, my brother and I were playing Boggle with a friend. Boggle, for those who don’t know (and I don’t know if you deserve to be told if you don’t know, but I am in a munificent mood) is a word game consisting of a small plastic board, 16 letter cubes, and a transparent plastic hood that enables players to shake up the cubes and rearrange them on the board.

The object is to find as many words as possible in 3 minutes by linking the letters on the cubes. Three- and  four-letter words win a single point, for five letters you get 2, six get 3, seven 5, and eight or more yield the Holy Grail of Boggle: 11 points. It’s quite difficult, especially as you are rewarded for uniqueness: during the tally, any common words that you and other players have found are disqualified.

Most of our games that evening (and, to be fair, any game played by us on any evening) consisted of trash-talking. During the round in question, after the gameboard made the Pavlovian “clack-a shick-a shick-a” sound, pencils set furiously to paper. To our alarm, at minute 1:30, my brother threw down his pencil, crossed his arms with a triumphant smile, and watched us as we continued to search for words.

The reason for this display? He had found an 8-letter word: QUAGMIRE. And it was worth 11 points. A terrible blow. He knows how to stop when he’s ahead, and so shut down the tournament, claiming victory.

We knew what ensued would be bad, but we had no way of knowing how bad. Declaring himself the “King of Boggle”, he asked our mother to fashion a crown—yes, a crown—out of wrapping paper. For reasons still unclear, our mother complied with this request from her grown son, making him a Burger-King-style wrap-around crown.

To the crown he affixed “pieces of charm”, if you will—Post-it notes with the words: “King of Boggle. QUAGMIRE. 11 Points”; “RISK: Flattened opponents” and “BACKGAMMON: Marsed Dad”. This of course further endeared him to all members of the household. Uh, the royal household, I should say: starting at his coronation, he would enter the room with a “royal” wave of the hand towards his humble subjects. How happy we were when he said it wasn’t necessary for us to genuflect when he got up for a snack—we only needed to do that when he arrived in the room.

The Boggle win was, in short, unbearably annoying. For not only is the brother an expert trash-talker—especially when it comes to lucky wins—but he is also tenacious. We knew we would not soon hear the end of this.

Fast forward to the next summer. Another friend (with an encyclopedic knowledge of music, I should add) had come to visit, and while the others prepared the barbecue, I was hunting for something in the cupboard. I came across the evil crown and showed it to my friend, telling him about my brother’s ascension to the Boggle throne, precipitated by his win with QUAGMIRE for 11 points. My friend, apparently unimpressed, said, “Oh, like the Beastie Boys.”

“What? No, this was when we were playing Boggle,” I said, concerned that he was not listening.

“Right, so, like the Beasties,” he said. I still had no idea what he was talking about.

“No, no, I am talking about a word game. Perhaps I should start at the beginning again?” He told me to wait and went out to his car.

Whereupon he retrieved his computer. He played a song for me by the Beastie Boys which simultaneously made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, drained the color from my face, and made me feel dizzy. It had the following lyric:

I’m the King of Boggle
There is none higher
Got eleven points with the word quagmire

The name of the song is “Putting Shame in Your Game”. Check it out for yourself.

Morningside Park.

On Friday, I had to get from the upper west side of Manhattan down to the UN, over to Brooklyn, and back, and happened to pick a miserable, urban ice storm in which to do it. In addition to subways, that’s about 40 blocks of outdoor walking. I had not come to the City with the right gear, either (dramatically incorrect footwear, no hat, flimsy umbrella). I felt, as I often do these days, culturally ill-equipped for my re-entry into US society — Martian, even — as though I have never had to be out in snow before and could think only of the 78 varieties of coconut that grow in my fictitious backyard.

As I walked down 42nd Street, I couldn’t help but notice that my face was being bombarded with tiny stinging ice pellets (Mum helpfully pointed out that said pellets are called “rime,” but the fact that they have a name that appears in 19th-century poetry does not excuse their behavior).

As we stepped gingerly through the gunmetal slush, trying to find a bus – any bus – to catch, a recent transplant from Canadia confessed to me that she had dismissed that morning’s severe weather warning as the paranoia of wimpy Americans. Then she got to work, and started noticing colleagues arriving at the office covered in, well – rime. With wet feet. And then she realized her only shoes were buttery-soft leather flats. I should add that the addition of ziploc bags used as socks did not help (is that some sort of Canadian trick?). The one who fared best among us was, interestingly, from Perth, and had never been in such weather in her life. She was wise enough to have invested in granny boots at the first signs of winter.

So, lucky me! Lash came to visit.

It was great to see him, though surreal, because it’s been months, and many farewells, and thousands of miles, and … thousands of degrees, besides. We walked around Boston in freezing ridiculous weather, and snapped some photos.

The light was very New England – I would even venture to say that it was very Bostonian. I don’t know, however, if I have a leg to stand on when I assert that Boston has its own light. It may just be superstition. People say the Caribbean has its own light. The Mediterranean. The American southwest.

And Boston: something about the brick against the blue cold sky, and the silver shine that glints off bare urban twigs – for me it is iconic. I was eager to see how a Canadian eye-lens would see all of this, and of course I was not disappointed. But you can’t see them because he hasn’t put them up on his Flickr yet.

Here are a few from that day. Because I like taking pictures too, Mr. Professional Photo Person. If ONLY I had a better camera I could take photos just. like. you. <wink>

… We stopped to chat for a while. He was lolling about by the incoming tide. Because he didn’t seem to be making his way back into the water, and because there were no other seals lolling about in the vicinity, we thought he might be ill and waited while a man called the New England Aquarium for help. Apparently seals “look abandoned” while their mothers leave to seek food for them. No, I don’t know how to tell the difference between seals that look abandoned owing to the lunch issue, and those that really are abandoned.

Later, I was asked what there is to discuss with a seal. It went something like this:

Me: What are you doing here? I’m cold. Are you?
Furry Creature: (flappity flap)
Me: I see your family also makes you go out in the tundric wind in the middle of winter.
F.C.: (disarming seal-grin)
Me: You have a coat on, but still. Is your mother getting you lunch? Are you lost?
F.C.: (flap flap flap)

Am I wrong, or is it kind’ve unusal to come across a seal during a mundane walk?