The Journal

Although I started my art journal last week, I have made only four entries in it. I suppose because I write my Morning Pages every day, I assumed I might do more than three or four entries a week. But who knows? I didn't write everyday although I have written several times a week in my pages for over seventeen years. Perhaps I will develop my own way to do my art journaling.

I don't really feel disappointed, but I do wonder just what all I will make of art journaling. I am struck at how much easier it is for me to write a sentence than to draw a picture. At this point, with four entries made, I find that what I write does two things: it interprets something about the print I have mounted on the page and it tells stories related to the petroglyph I have made the block print from. For example, I have mentioned an artist I drew with in the valley where I first saw these petroglyphs. I have also mentioned my grandson who saw some of these when he was young and asked me a question about one of the figures I had posted on Facebook. 

The first time I heard about keeping an art journal, the friend who told me had spent weeks making mandalas on a daily basis. She explored her thoughts and feelings through the designs and drawings, through colors and shapes, through abstracts that sought to explore things she barely had words to express. I was impressed and recalled a workshop I attended in which I too made mandalas. Of course, these were assignments for the express purpose of the workshop and did not become a regular practice. Perhaps I will add some mandalas to my art journal. So far I have not.

The second time I discussed an art journal with an artist, I was encouraged to draw, draw, draw. It reminded me of Julia Cameron's write, write, write approach to Morning Pages in her Artists Way book. I draw but not incessantly like my son did in his high school years. I doodle but don't feel prone to do so every day. So I'm wondering, now that I have begun my first art journal, what am I going to do?

What I actually did was to mount two more prints and mess around on the pages! The second one with the big bear became a confetti celebration and a few words. The third one with a deer became an explanation of the petroglyph type, its location, some archaeological information I recalled from reading about it, and my feelings from first seeing it on a huge boulder near my in-laws' farm. 

I'm not quite sure what I think about what I am doing, but I'm sure happy to be doing it. I wonder what I will learn. What new ways will I learn to relate to art? What new ways will I learn to express my feelings? I feel hopeful and mildly excited and mostly feel like I'm on the verge of learning something mighty nice about art and myself.

Denver, 2015

Art Journals

I've shown this paintingbefore.
It's the same figure as in the print
I added to my new journal.
I've used it in several paintings but couldn't
find a picture of the one I wanted to show here.
Oh well.

Last evening I began two art journals related to who-knows-what art experiences to come. One is going to focus on or be inspired by Ute Petroglyphs. I'm using drawings as I make entries but haven't begun to consider whether I'll make daily entries. I'm gluing to the pages small prints of Ute rock carvings; at least I did last night.

Beyond what I have done, I have no clear direction, but I have been encouraged to do this by my artist friend Sue.

Years ago, just as I started writing daily, I was challenged to spend some time keeping a drawing journal--an idea I have never pursued. The suggestion intrigued me, so this Ute journal is my beginning in this new direction.

I made an entry in my "Ute" journal, glued in a small print, and wrote my recollection of drawing the design years and years ago. I also wrote of an interaction with one of my grandsons when I posted a painting of the figure a couple of months ago in Facebook.

That was my start. 

But I mentioned two journals. I made a cover for the second journal, a print of an Osage petroglyph after an 1804 drawing by William Clark, a figure he discovered along the Missouri River. I'm not sure what this journal will be at all although I have many years experience from Mid-Missouri. Who knows? I certainly do not. Still I'm looking forward to what I may learn in days, weeks, months to come as I draw, collage, and make my way through these journals.

Denver, 2015

A Stroll at the Denver Art Museum

Artists sometimes open our eyes to realities and injustices the society tolerates. Friday at the art museum my granddaughters Rose and Ulzii took off on their own. I walked with my daughter-in-law Heather, one of the most intelligent and creative persons I have ever known, also one of the most open personalities I have ever spent time with. She and I have been good friends ever since the day my son Michael brought her and her three-year-old son to our house. She’s educated, teaches writing at college and secondary levels, and with my son has reared a quartet of unusually bright and talented youngsters: two boys, two girls.

Heather and I sat in the chairs in the ‘Matisse and Friends’ gallery on the first floor of the Hamilton Building of the museum while the girls went on their own. They had become tired of Mom and Grandpa talking so intensely over the previous two days! Heather and I discussed the art and our two days of visits and interviews at culinary schools, of bus and light rail trips around metro Denver, of meals and walks, and of her children, the boys as well as the girls whom we had accompanied the past two days.

Then I suggested we take my favorite stroll through the museum accessed by riding the elevator to the fourth floor. There we saw mostly empty walls since most of the area was being re-hung. We walked down the huge staircase beneath the impressive Calder mobile. At the foot of the stairs we turned to the installation with grey foxes cavorting in a red café. Heather was especially thrilled with this work. We walked on through the narrow north hallway and entered a gallery that usually offers some kind of audio-video experience. Although I had seen this installation several times, Heather had not. She caught the title “Lot’s Wife” and with her deep curiosity took in the white mannequin with white skin, white clothing, and long white hair, a figure that from her meadow-like setting gazed at a projected lakeshore. Heather read it as a depiction of Lot’s wife after she had glanced back toward Sodom, the hometown she and Lot were leaving, a glance against Yahweh’s command. In the ancient story form Genesis the wife turned into a pillar of salt, thus the white the artist selected. Then Heather noted the thick, muscular neck of the figure, then the very male profile of the face. The artist wants to push us! Oh my God! Was Lot’s wife a man? Was Lot homosexual? Was his wife transgendered or a cross-dresser? The questions piled up. The rationalizations multiplied. The objections flourished. And finally the truth of it settled. If one is gay, he or she cannot turn away from who they are even in the face of nearly universal opposition!

I know from a careful study of the ancient text and its ensuing interpretation that the story’s meaning is not anti-homosexual. It’s a story about lacking hospitality, but of course that sounds too wimpy. The Hebrew God demanded hospitality to strangers. That demand is at the heart of biblical story after biblical story in the Hebrew and Greek bibles. But our artist, Canadian Kent Monkman, wasn’t worried about that. He (or she?—in the context of the work I really don’t know) is concerned about the deeply embedded prejudice inherent in our culture and society that fears anything homosexual, anything queer, or as Wikipedia defines it, anything LGBT! Whoa! LGB and T. Yes.

Heather got it as my artist friend Sue would say.

Gods can often seem unfair, especially ancient Gods to post modern humans. It doesn’t seem right that when Apollo couldn’t resist looking back at Eurydice that SHE then disappeared and couldn’t make the trip from Hades to be reunited with her husband. It doesn’t seem right that when Lot’s wife (of course they left out her name—which in this interpretative context seems like double trouble!) glanced backward at her hometown she was leaving to avoid its destruction that SHE was destroyed anyway.

The artist now seems to be telling LGBs and Ts to watch out. Don’t look back at your fears; don’t doubt the truth of your own reality; don’t get scared at what you are becoming—or you may become a pillar of salt or melt into nothing. DON’T BE AFRAID.

So my little stroll through the museum challenged me to leave my own homo fears and embrace this new life, one of possibility, challenge, and hope.

Watching Heather process the installation and discussing it gave me hope for our family's young adults establishing themselves in creative work, of the ability of the supporting generations to help them, of myself to keep getting over the deeply hidden fears generated by being so truly queer.

Denver, 12 January 2015