01 June 2012

Art taking new Form :: And why I haven't updated this blog.


Detail from my woodblock & watercolor:
"What the World Needs Now is a Little Sweet Love"
Despite that my last blog entry from 2010 corresponded with what will be my last public art show in Vermont for quite a few years, it doesn't mean I'm not still being creative.  Although I've failed to update the blog for far too long (sorry about that) a lot has happened in the last two years.  Let's catch up.

For a couple of years now my partner and I have been on a path to simplifying our lives.  It started with becoming acutely aware of how our every day actions affect everything in the world, from the people to the environment (my artwork from 2009-2010 was pretty accurately reflecting this examination).  From there, it blossomed into a personal desire to find a new, more sustainable and humane way of living.  We set out to change everything - to get rid of debt, to get rid of stuff that distracted us, to get rid of space that we didn't use and to face truth....the whole truth.  We're still working on it but we've making progress.

As a part of this process we've made some drastic changes in our lives.

For one, we designed and built our own Tiny House, a 180 square foot home on a trailer.  If you don't know about the Tiny House movement or you're interested in why we built our home, you can read more all of our posts documenting our Tiny House build here.


For another, my partner and I quit our jobs, for many reasons, but mostly, so that we could travel the world by bicycle (and the occasional train or freighter) and become more involved global citizens.  Our open-ended, self-supported bicycle tour around the world is a sort of pilgrimage for us to a simpler more intentional way of living.  We're using the opportunity to learn how to live by our own power in a way that is light on the earth, open-hearted and vulnerable.  Our travels are also a way for us to see the world in all its beauty and its suffering.  More than just a "vacation" or "escape" we're creating our route around meeting people and organizations that inspire us and can teach us new skills or new ways of approaching global issues we face.  We feel an urgent need to build our skills, to strip ourselves of everything that distracts us from dealing with real and critical problems we face as a global community and to return home to utilize everything we learn along the way in order to, hopefully, contribute to a more humane and sustainable future.



As you can imagine, my months have been full, first with designing and building our home, then with preparing for our journey around the world.  Although my "fine art" has taken a backseat of lately, I find my creativity to be soaring.

Both my artistic and technical skills have been put to test over the last year and a half.  Having to design a house is challenging in and of itself, but having to do so without any prior experience and for a small footprint of 180 square feet is even more challenging.  Throw in having to learn how to use programs like SketchUp, how to draw up floor plans and how to physically build walls and a roof and you'll have a completely overwhelmed but highly stimulated "artist" on your hands.

From there we hopped on our bicycles, cycling from Vermont through New York, heading through to Illinois via train, then cycling through Missouri, Iowa to Nebraska and finally on to California (again via train to avoid the winter).  After cycling down the coast of California and through Baja, Mexico, we're currently perched at the sourthern tip of Baja, awaiting a ferry to mainland Mexico, where we will continue to travel south till we hit the tip of South America.  From there, we'll tackle Africa and beyond.  Despite the obvious physical and mental preparation and shifts one has to make for this sort of journey, my creativity has been kept alive by daily interaction with my camera and writing.  Web design and maintenance and photography have replaced designing and building which had replaced working with mixed media on papers.

And so my choices to simplify and the life it has led me to has continued to fulfill my truest passions, those things that keep me startlingly alive and passionate - my creative self.  

That being said, I do have papers and media with me (yes, I did make room for them in my panniers!).  And I intend to continue to create and share my work.  Now that we've been on the road for eight months we're finally starting to feel like we're "normalizing" our daily activities so I imagine I'll start incorporating time for artwork in to our schedule soon.  I'm missing it and have so many ideas (and have been having dreams lately too) of what I need to create next.  Beyond that, I'm also feeling a strong calling to get more involved with political and social art movements.  So, don't give up on me yet -- I have a feeling I'll be posting more artwork soon.

Till then, please join us on our current journey at www.2cycle2gether.com.



14 September 2010

Latest Additions

Following

A couple of new pieces debuted at one of my shows earlier this year and I wanted to follow up on my promise to explain the concepts behind the pieces.  The last post discussed one piece within a series of four, the "Last Drop" series, while this post discusses a singular piece.

"Following" is a quite literal visual representation of the "yellow brick road".  Although I'm fascinated by the ever-over-analyzed significance of the yellow brick road in the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, as a viewer of the film, I took the film at face value and interpreted the road quite literally.  I saw it as a road the characters of the story followed to reach their destination in order to, ultimately, fulfill their goals and desires.  Aren't we all driven to keep walking this road, in pursuit of our dreams, goals, or whatever it is that drives us forward? 

Being very straight, and sharply disappearing into the horizon, the road in this piece represents our sometimes maniacal, obsessive need to continue on whatever road we're currently on, without detour, and regardless of the consequences or surroundings.  A dichotomy can grow, over time, between our original intentions upon starting down a certain path, and what will actually make us happy.  We can also lose sight of why we chose the path in the first place, so even though we're following a well trodden path, we could still be "lost". 

When I made this piece, I was thinking a lot about our obsessiveness with obtaining "success", as defined by our society.  The barren landscape and the strictly laid path is representative of the way societally defined paths can sometimes inhibit our creative selves and our ability to reflect upon our choices.  I was also thinking a lot about material possessions and wealth, and the disparity between our society and the rest (majority) of the world.  We are constantly being told to pursue greater wealth in our American society, regardless of the real cost to our neighbors and the world around us.  Does this ever-present pressure to pursue the classic "road to riches" cause us to lose sight of our very humanity?


Following
Monotype, acrylic, oil pastel
15" x 21", 22" x 28" framed,
black wood with archival materials

12 September 2010

Last Drop Series

Last Drop: Water

A couple of new pieces debuted at one of my shows earlier this year and I wanted to follow up on my promise to explain the concepts behind the pieces.  This post will discuss the first piece, one of four, in a series that explores the subject of dwindling natural resources.  The series is actually closely related to the Focus series I completed in the past year.  In both, my goal is to highlight a distinct “point” in the work, which represents the “elephant in the room”, so to speak.

Prompted by a growing awareness of how our society is based upon a system of distraction from serious and dire threats to our very well being, the "Last Drop" series attempts to highlight some of the most important resources and how they will be consumed to extinction if we don’t change the way we consume and, fundamentally, function as a society, both locally and globally.  This first piece is representative of the resource “Water”. This resource has been on the forefront of my mind in recent years, as the world at large has stood by and allowed privatization and pollution of what I consider a community owned resource.

Regardless of the facts that there are wars across the world being fought over this shrinking resource, that millions of refugees are borne out of a need to migrate from their homes in search of water, and that 36 of the United States of America could reach a water crisis in the next five years, we still continue to consume water at an unsustainable rate, as if it will be infinitely available to us.  We’re certainly not fighting privatization efforts or the concept of comodification of water.  Walk into any grocery or convenience store and you’ll still see bottled water lining the shelves, and people purchasing it at a premium, even though they can get it for free from the tap.  Meanwhile, the bottled water companies are buying up farmlands, indigenous lands, wilderness tracts, and whole water systems, often located in developing countries, depleting the water there, then moving on to ravish even more.  This is done without remorse, without accountability or regulation, and without any pretense of compensating for the devastation they leave in their wake.  It is done in the name of Profit.  That this practice is still legally allowed in our world, much less supported by our own purchasing of the “commodity”, seems ethically, environmentally and socially wrong.

On the bright side, since I completed the first "Last Drop" piece, the United Nations General Assembly (amazingly) added water and sanitation to their list of basic human rights.  This is a huge victory and step forward in the effort to retain water as a publicly owned/shared resource! 

If you’re interested in learning more about water, issues of consumption, and privatization, check out activist Maude Barlow’s “Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Fight for the Right to Water”.  It will change the way you consume this precious resource.

Last Drop: Water
Monotype, acrylic, oil pastel
18" x 18", 24" x 24" framed in
black wood frame with archival materials