The Light and the Dark

I just got in the door through a raging blizzard the last two miles before home. Today was a violently erratic day for me in Montpelier.

Immediately when I got there this morning, eager to see Susan's work, I saw it. Started pacing and talking with her, and then in one of those lulls that come into conversation naturally, I realized I was crying. Standing still and crying.

You all know that doesn't happen often for any of us. But when it does happen, there is a reason. As incapable as I am in expressing in words my own passion about my own work, my wiring is such that it can be extracted by the work of others.

After I calmed down, I began to try to verbalize what hit me. The best I could do was that her use of colors that were, to me, "odd" did not detract from the subject, but rather forced me to look harder. Their slight oddness drew me in. Made me unable to say, "Yeah, that's a hay bale," and move on. I'm not sure yet, but I think because the colors are, here and there, odd, and that their oddness is not overdone, their use grants an ethereal quality that carries the real world solidity upon which these colors are placed to a slightly different dimension that we are forced to deal with.

As in, just what is it, exactly, that I am seeing here?

And, at the very end of the day, a strange thing happened. When I travel alone I always bring a book with me--just in case. Today it was Bright Earth, the book about painters' color by Philip Ball. After we had all gone our separate ways, I was standing on State Street, trying to wrestle the big easel into the car and not be run over. I also was carrying the book and my camera. In the course of this activity, the book slipped from under my arm. I swore and finished positioning the easel inside the car.

Then, I looked down to see my beautiful new book settled deep into the muddy-brown slush. Its gleaming white fore-edge plastered with brown and frozen water, its brilliant cover, and its "Bright Earth" words, now streaked with brown, glowed up at me. I hesitated before picking it up.

It was like Susan's work; it was like this project: gleaming up at me in contrast to the terror that, in my darkest moments, I truly feel for Vermont.

Wow! and a Correction

Yesterday was wonderful--except for being dead nervous. The wonderful part was seeing the art of the other finalists in the flesh. To finally be close to the real thing after weeks of looking at stuff online was immensely satisfying. So much so, I coming back for seconds.

I figure I've worked this hard, I might as well see it through to the end. And, I'm sorry but I HAVE to repeat a story that I forgot to tell in my presentation. I buttonholed everyone I could find afterward so skip it if you were buttonholed! I'm just obsessed with the fact that I forgot it because it's so bloody key to the database part of my proposal!

In 1966 I walked from my apartment on Buell Street in downtown Burlington to the village of Williston. It was a pleasant walk. That's 11 miles. Imagine if you will that I had video-taped that walk then. And, if I did it again today. And then, split-screen, we ran them side by side, mile for mile.

I don't think there would need to be any voice-over.

Well, I'm out of here, heading south again. (I'm actually coming to enjoy the drive to Montpelier!!)

Montpelier, Here We Come!

As they say in Houston – all systems go.

It’s on. We’re on the road to Montpelier and it’s the end of an odyssey.

And, true to the analogy, there have been Siren songs along the way for most of us I think. Mine was White River. A name that now shimmers with promise on my private map.

I am grateful to the VAC, Mr. Orton, and the initial review committee for this four-month marathon of thinking about Vermont and for providing a framework in which I "found" Kent Corners and White River.

And, I can’t thank those finalists I’ve met enough. It’s as simple as that. Some things exceed expectations, and some wonderful things arise for which there were no expectations. The latter is lagniappe. It’s rare and rich, and I got some!

Gruelling hard work and synapse-twisting problems have been alleviated by your comaraderie. For me, recently “re-emerged” into the visual arts, you have dispelled my loneliness.

I wish us all well these two days, but know that not all will be well for all. And, as I said in an email—-no matter the outcome, there will be sadness, only the degree will vary.

Good Weather News

I just caught the CNN report: the storm is shrinking and moving faster.

So, we should all be fine, just as long as John (Z)

Good Weather News

I just caught the CNN report (12 noon): the storm is shrinking and moving faster.

So, we should all be fine, just as long as John (Z) lights a fire under the Montpelier road crew. As far as I can tell, they will have about 6 to 8 hours to get ready for us. And, of course the legislature. (That is if they haven't kept up with it; if they have, then they need even less.) And, after all, this is Vermont. Let's summon up our vaunted rugged lineage and get on with it!

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor hail nor snow, etc.

Comic Relief --

This is the first of two postings today.

I was mucking about on the vermont.gov main page, seeing if there was a VAC link and imagining where a link to the AOA Image Database would go when I stumbled on this link title under the heading, ONLINE SERVICES:

Obtain a Criminal Record

Wow! Must offer tutorials on how to hold up a convenience store or rob a bank. Now that is a helpful government! And here I thought I was all on my own.

The ARTS Economy

I told myself I couldn’t make another post here until everything was ready for my presentation. Well, it finally is; at least the material goods part.

And now I can write about something that’s been bugging me for a few days. (Sometimes my tongue is in my cheek here, and sometimes not.)

The Creative Economy. I first came across this phrase when I stumbled onto the Creative Communities website months ago. It was intriguing then, and since my eye-opening trips to Montpelier and White River where I saw the obvious spoor of creative communities, and since I heard about their communities from Mariella, Charlie, and Phil, I’m even more interested in this.

Which leads me to the chapter in the CFV stuff where it is said that there is much confusion over WHO should be included when counting the contributors to a “creative economy.” I read that section several times. And got more irritated each time. (Not with CFV; it's only the messenger in this case.) Apparently this umbrella term might include chip designers, and the like.

Now just hold on here! Do they want to include the chip designer because his or her income will shield the world from the paltry incomes of most artists? Chip design, I think, falls under industrial design. How many folks are holed up in their drafty spare rooms designing chips, getting turned on by copper and solder?(Apologies to makers of stained glass.) So, then I thought, maybe the argument over who should be included is not really the problem. Maybe it’s the damn name. What’s wrong with The ARTS ECONOMY?

Things suddenly get a lot clearer for me and easier to understand. We finalists are artists, the VAC is in the business of funding and supporting the arts, gallery owners show art, etc. But then someone says, what about the writers? Writing is an art, without a doubt, as is composing, playing, directing, etc. Ain't no stinkin' chip designer within a million miles.

Definition

So what would be the underlying definition of such a beast. How about this: the arts economy comprises all who produce or work with in some manner, a product which produces value for one individual, and whose income drops like a stone in a recessive economy.

Susan paints a picture, a gallery sells it, I buy it. Then what? It hangs on my wall for my sole pleasure. It doesn’t make me richer, or give me a job, or increase the value of my house, my car, my land. This picture only contributes to MY quality of life. All of us in a theatre audience are just separate little MEs soaking up their own kind of pleasure, individually, in a group. We are all bettering our quality of life by these means. But for each it is an individual experience.

And, when people don’t have jobs, they can’t afford to buy art, so the artist’s income goes down. Going to a performance, buying art, attending a workshop, are not necessary for practical survival. You see where I’m going here? The artist or performer in the end makes things of absolutely no redeeming economic value. Susan doesn’t make a million paintings and export them to Brazil in exchange for coffee. I mean, no one actually needs anything "arty" to survive. Hey, art is civilizing. This is America! We don't need no wimp-barf.

On a lighter note: It should then be fairly easy to find out who should be included in the ARTS ECONOMY. Simply ask people what they would relinquish when their income suffers a setback: piano tunings, buying works of art, music buying, concerts, book buying, attending movies, plays, buying movies, renting movies, buying musical instruments, taking art lessons, music lessons . . . and there you have it.

The folks connected with all these no-longer-can-afford things are participants in the Arts Economy.

Some Changes are Good

I woke up this morning thinking about change; I haven't done that since I turned in my proposal. I shrugged it off and went about my day's usual start. As I was shuffling things around on my desk, this picture fell out of one of my notebooks.

The man in the picture is Homer Sweet. He would be dead in a very few months. The little kid is me. The house in back is the one I live in now. He was born in Sheldon, and, could figure board feet of lumber in his head.

However, for his entire life, he could neither read nor write.

I also have my grandmother's autograph book, a popular form of pleasure in the 19th and early 20th centuries. (She was born in 1865.) On the inside of the cover she wrote:

Given to me on my 14th birthday, if I would not read a book for a year.

Some changes in Vermont are part of much wider changes that occur in history. And, funny coincidence--this post is I guess, my small contribution to The Big Read.

The Bones of Vermont

This barn is near me, a little over two miles from my house. (This was shot about a week ago.) A bit more than a year ago now I first photographed it. When I looked at the shots, I was struck, as I had been when I looked at the barn itself, by its uncluttered beauty. The neat lines of its roof, the proportion of the building, its setting. It was, for me iconic.

For days after shooting it I couldn't get it out of my mind. So I began sifting through the images, picked one and went immediately to black and white. I didn't even think about it. It was then that I saw a picture of what my mind "saw" when it assimilated this barn. I hit "save" and knew now what I was going to do with my camera in Vermont. It was all there, the starkness, the emptiness, the sharp, hard edges of abandonment, the bones of Vermont.

With apologies to my painter friends, color hides. Color enchants. Though this might sound odd, I think it's true: color often enchants us away from reality. The incredible palette of the visible colors sucks us in like moths to a flame. Perhaps it's because we live in a world of color, all the time. And, like anything else that happens "all the time", we become desensitized to it on some level. Sometimes that world needs to be uncolored; so we can see what is there, and only what is there.