Zyphoid

Unsettling Alcibaides

2011-03-22T10:49:00.004-04:00

This is a short essay for a philosophy in education class I am taking with David Hansen, at Teachers College, Columbia University, on "Ideals of Human Flourishing," on the Socratic dialogue, "Alcibaides."

“It is not possible to step twice into the same river, according to Heraclitus, or to come into contact twice with a mortal being in the same state.”
-- as cited by Plutarch, (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

“We find ourselves in a river. Which of the things around us should we value when none of them can offer a firm foothold?
Like an attachment to a sparrow: we glimpse it and it’s gone.”

-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6:15

When Socrates first encounters Alcibiades, he very quickly secures the younger man’s regard by articulating and seemingly affirming the high regard in which Alcibades holds himself: “You say you don’t need anybody for anything, since your own qualitites, from your body right up to your soul, are so great there’s nothing you lack.” (104:a) The portrait Socrates paints of Alcibiades, in those first lines, is of a man quite certain of who he is, secure in his exalted place in society. But within only a few paragraphs, Socrates begins to undermine Alcibiades’ sure footing, by stimulating his curiosity about Socrates’ own position. “I really do wonder what you might be up to” pleads Alcibiades. “Tell me please. I will pay attention.” (104:d-e)

When and why do we humans “pay attention?” The wisdom literature of the ancient world and contemporary neuroscience agree on the all too human capacity to overestimate our own grasp on reality. We think we are paying much more attention to the world around us than we actually are. Recent research has revealed a phenomena called “change-blindness blindness.” Change blindness refers to our failure to notice even large changes to our environment. Change blindness blindness refers to most people’s over-estimation of their ability to notice such changes. (Levin, Momen et. al. 2000) Tricksters and magicians of all sorts have relied on this human frailty for millenia, and the figure of Socrates, as Hadot describes him, was among them.

Only when we sense that something “out of the ordinary” is going on, do we begin to wake up, to pay attention to the constant flux all around us. The process of unsettling the false sense of stabiliy created by our own cognitive/perceptual apparatus (in other words, our own minds) opens us up to new possibilities and unforseen connections.

The figure of Socrates, in dialog with Alcibiades, conducts a pedagogy (as well as a psychogogy) of uncertainty. He draws Alcibades into relationship by first identifying and then leading him to question his most basic assumptions about his place in the world. As Alcibiades gets caught in unforeseen contradictions within his own thinking, Socrates reminds him, “wasn’t I asking and weren’t you answering?” (112:e) Socrates insists that Alcibiades take responsibility for his own growing uncertainty.

Yet somehow Socrates is able to build a sense of trust between himself and Alcibiades throughout this process, that his interlocuter is able to tolerate the discomfort of being dislodged from his previous sense of himself. In a telling exchange about midway through the dialog, Alcibiades begins to balk at Socrates’ incessant questioning. “Stop pushing me around, Socrates!” As they negotiate, Socrates asks, “Wouldn’t you be completely convinced if you yourself said, “Yes, that’s how it is?” Alcibiades comes around, saying, “I’d better answer—I don’t think I’ll come to any harm.” (114:d-e)

It seems that Alcibiades is comforted by the fact of Socrates’ apparent regard for him. Alcibiades seems to feel understood by Socrates, that the older man is truly seeing him and listening to him. This sense of loving attention, professed by Socrates at the outset of the dialog draws him in, and Socrates’ patience and persistence draws him out, lending him the courage to confront the inherent instability of his own self in relation to the cosmos. “I swear by the gods, Socrates, I have no idea what I mean---I must be in some absolutely bizarre condition! When you ask me questions, first I think one thing, and then I think something else.” This aporia, this impasse, becomes a gateway into a new way of life for Alcibiades. Socrates has rescued him from the fate of being one of “those who don’t know but think they do know..the ignorance that causes bad things..the most disgraceful sort of stupidity.” (118:a)

The power dynamic of the relationship turns full circle. Alcibiades fully embraces his new role as suplicant and suitor, asking, “what kind of self-cultivation do I need to practice? Can you show me the way?” Socrates, at this critical shift, gently rebuffs the leadership role proferred to him, saying “the need for education applies to me as well as to you—we’re in the same condition….” (123:c) By insisting that they are fellow travelers, Socrates affirms his loving relationship with Alcibiades. But even on the topic of friendship itself, Socrates does not allow Alcibiades to rest, forcing him to question even the most basic human bonds so that his younger companion exclaims, “I think I must have been in an appalling state for a long time, without being aware of it.” And Socrates is right there, to comfort him, “don’t lose heart. If you were fifty when you realized it, then it would have been hard of you to cultivate yourself, but now you’re just the right age to see it.” (127:d)

Now that Socrates has fully earned Alcibiades’admiration, he takes care not to abuse it.

As Plutarch,in On Listening, wrote“Admiration is the opposite to contempt, and it is, of course, a sign of a more reasonable and equable nature; all the same, it too needs quite a lot of caution, and perhaps even more. The reason is that although contempt and wilfulness lessoin the benefit to be gained from speakers, yet admiration an innocence increase the possibility of harm.” 41A [7] As the dialog draws to a conclusion, the larger social good of the growing bond between the two men comes into focus. Socrates’ efforts to help Alcibiades become a wise and just leader of Athens becomes clear. Socrates tells Alcibiades, “ I shall never forsake you now, never, unless the Athenian people make you corrupt and ugly.”

If the antidote to corruption is self knowledge, Socrates asserts that they truly need each other, that in relationship, with one another, they can come to know themselves. By providing a model of attentiveness, Socrates has taught Alcibiades to attend to others. Socrates says, “if the soul, Alcibades, is to know itself it must look at a soul, and especially at that region in which what makes a soul good, wisdom, occurs, and anything else which is similar to it.”(133:b) The transformation is complete: the young man who believed he had no need of anyone now pledges to Socrates, “from this day forward I will never fail to attend on you.” And Socrates pledges to continue to care for Alcibiades, yet warns against certainty even in this strengthening bond, asserting that they must both remain aware of forces larger than themselves continually at play, “I should like to believe that you will persevere, but I’m afraid—not because I distrust your nature, but because I know how powerful the city is—I’m afraid it might get the better of both me and you.”

Happy New Year

2011-01-10T11:32:00.002-05:00

It was a very busy fall, but my New Year's resolution is to get back in the habit of posting on this blog. Here goes:

So this is what happened to me on Friday.

My car had broken down the day before in Greenwich Village.
I was teaching way out at the far end of the Bronx, as part of this federal research project I'm involved in-- in a struggling school, where less than 40% of my students are at or above grade level. It can be pretty discouraging work, often I just want to quit. It was a long subway ride-- through the South Bronx. I'm sketching, there's a guy sleeping near me and someone else further away who's ignoring me. About halfway, a tall African American man, working class, little younger than me, comes in the door behind me, then sits down directly across from me, and asks, "you've been drawing a long time?" "About 10-15 minutes," I say. "No, I mean in your life. You do it for a living?" (Now I never talk to people on the subway, and normally I would find a guy like this intimidating, especially in an unfamiliar area of the city. I noticed that he had nice, but intense eyes.) So I said, "yes, I've been drawing my whole life. I teach, and sell paintings sometimes." He said, "I've been drawing my whole life. too. I really love it, it calms me down. Helps me see the positive side of things." Just then the doors behind him opened at a deserted stop, and I saw a rat scurry by inches from the car. We talked about how everyone's on the computer these days, but how working with a pencil or pen on paper is different, is special. He told me he mainly works from observation, that he likes to draw what he sees, but that sometimes he makes work for silk-screening on t shirts or bandannas to sell at the Puerto Rican day parade and stuff. He got off, somewhere in the Bronx, and I continued on, but somehow it was the kind of encounter with a stranger that made us both feel affirmed -- that this humble act of sketching in the subway is significant, important even. That somehow it helps us feel that our lives are worth living.

Saccades (Archeology of Love)

2010-08-09T09:57:00.004-04:00

This was an installation I've been meaning to post: it was part of an exhibition at the Macy Gallery, Teachers College, last February, "Studio Practices".

10"x 10" monotypes, on heavyweight printmaking paper, were attached with loops of thread onto pins which held them out from the wall about 2.5 inches. The wooden shelf in front held wooden blocks with combinations of some of the same and similiar images.

These are some of the questions I asked with this piece: How does a portrait engage the viewer in a process of visual reconstruction of meaning? Where does the essential meaning in a human face reside? What do we see when we think we see signs of the inner life of those closest to us? What role does gesture play in deciphering meaning?

The images were based on a photographs I took of family members. I tried to deconstruct the images to find out at what point they became unintelligible, and conversely, when they became something more than random smears of ink on pieces of paper. Inherent characteristics of the monotype process, such as the lack of precise control, relative quickness, and repetition with variation, distanced the final art work from both the original visual resource (the photograph) and the hand of the artist. The multi-step process itself intervenes between artist and subject, making the familiar strange. A recognizable human face is reconstructed through the physical act of putting the pieces together again, yet the fissures and fragments, the archaeology of the image, is evident.

Feeling our way: what does art have to do with it?

2010-07-30T11:08:00.006-04:00

Inspired by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, I've been trying to figure out what a scientific understanding of how we've evolved to function in the world might say about the practice and experience of art. We humans seem to be particularly good at finding our way through unfamiliar, uncertain, and initially inhospitable environments. How (and why) do we do it?

Even when we don't know where we are headed, we are able to feel our way. How might art be part of that process?

So I've been doing my research, reading up on theories of emotions (what they are and what they're good for) and pouring through some of the most recent studies on the relationship between feeling and thought. By placing emotions in the context of natural selection, Darwin set the stage for a long series of neuroscientific discoveries which have revealed phylogenetically nested and interwoven layers of emotion-related neural processes and networks.

Interoception is the perception of our internal processes, such as heartbeat and respiration. It may be at the heart of our subjective emotional experiences, and perhaps of our very sense of self. Feeling, even in its most subtle form, evolved to help us survive and thrive in uncertain and unfamiliar situations and environments. Descartes’ famous assertion “I think, therefore I am” might be rewritten in the light of Darwin and current research, “I feel, so that I may be.”

Emotional brain-processes not only resemble the ordinary sensorial brain-processes, but in very truth are nothing but such processes variously combined.
--William James, What is an emotion? 1884

Turns out William James had the right idea, way back in the 19th century. Our emotional experience originates in bodily sensations. Our body reacts much faster than our minds, when we sense an important event. Good thing too-- better get ready to move before we have time to figure out whether its a saber tooth tiger, or just a strong breeze rustling those bushes. Antonio Damasio imagines a tree, rooted in ancient processes of natural selection, whose trunk consists of metabolic regulation, reflexes and immune responses, which we share with paramecium. The main branches of pain and pleasure divide into ever finer nuances of emotion until, the very top is crowned by the very human ability to be aware and make conscious choices about how to respond to our emotions, what Damasio calls feeling.

There's a paired set of neural stuctures, called the insular and the cingulate cortices, buried deep in our brains, which seem to be in charge of telling us when to pay attention and when we can afford to daydream. A recent issue of the scientific journal Brain Structure and Function was devoted to the insula, with research indicating its involvement in everything from regulation of heartbeat to the experience of uncertainty and empathy.

The unified representation of all salient conditions—represented as feelings—is in effect a representation of the entirety of the individual…a continuously updating series of global emotional moments… that incorporates predictive representations based on acquired internal models”
---- A.D. (Bud) Craig, The Sentient Self

In other words, we build a sense of ourselves through our awareness of a continuous flow of feeling states. It turns out that when we daydream, the insular and cingulate cortices are still busy, talking to each other, switching on and off diffuse neural networks across our cerebral cortex. Some researchers are asking if during these moments these structures are quietly knitting together our autobiographical sense of self (Sridharan, et al., 2008; Taylor, et al., 2009).

Most good teachers will tell you that instilling “a love for learning” in students is more than half the battle and many students will tell you their best teachers seem to truly love what they are teaching. Yet the quality of social relationships and affective environment in classrooms is too often ignored or sidelined. Neuroscientific insights into the intimate role emotional awareness plays in executive functioning and cognitive effort has important implications for education. Immordino-Yang and Damasio identify reciprocal and recursive cycles of influence between emotional processes rooted in bodily experience and rational thought in their essay, We feel, therefore we learn:

Recent advances in neuroscience are highlighting connections between emotion, social functioning, and decision making that have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the role of affect in education.

So what does art have to do with it? I would argue that both the practice and appreciation of art is all about the integration of feeling and thought. Aesthetic experience grounds our most elevated concepts in sensate form. By externalizing our thoughts and feelings in tangible form, we can look at them, examine them closely, see them anew, pull them apart and put them back together in unexpected ways, surprising even ourselves. We improvise, feeling our way toward innovation and invention. We practice being human.

here are some of the references I've found useful on this subject:

Allman, J. M., Tetreault, N. A., Hakeem, A. Y., Manaye, K. F., Semendeferi, K., Erwin, J. M., et al. (2010). The von Economo neurons in frontoinsular and anterior cingulate cortex in great apes and humans. Brain Struct Funct, 214(5-6), 495-517.

Craig, A. D. (2008). Interoception and Emotion: a neuroanatomical perspective. In M. Lewis, et. al (Ed.), Handbook of Emotions (Three ed., pp. 272-289). New York: The Guilford Press.

Craig, A. D. (2010). The sentient self. Brain Struct Funct, 214(5-6), 563-577.

Critchley, H. D. (2005). Neural mechanisms of autonomic, affective, and cognitive integration. The Journal of Comparative Neurology, 493(1), 154-166.

Damasio, A. R. (1999). The feeling of what happens : body and emotion in the making of consciousness (1st ed.). New York: Harcourt Brace.

Damasio, A. R. (2003a). Looking for Spinoza : joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain (1st ed.). Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt.

Damasio, A. R. (2003b). Feelings of emotion and the self. Ann N Y Acad Sci, 1001, 253-261.

Darwin, C. (1872). The expression of the emotions in man and animals. Available from http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F1142&viewtype=text&pageseq=1z

Gallese, V., Keysers, C., & Rizzolatti, G. (2004). A unifying view of the basis of social cognition. Trends Cogn Sci, 8(9), 396-403.

Immordino-Yang, M. H., McColl, A., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. (2009). Neural correlates of admiration and compassion. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 106(19), 8021-8026.

Medford, N., & Critchley, H. D. (2010). Conjoint activity of anterior insular and anterior cingulate cortex: awareness and response. Brain Struct Funct, 214(5-6), 535-549.

Menon, V., & Uddin, L. Q. (2010). Saliency, switching, attention and control: a network model of insula function. Brain Struct Funct, 214(5-6), 655-667.

Pollatos, O., Gramann, K., & Schandry, R. (2007). Neural systems connecting interoceptive awareness and feelings. Human Brain Mapping, 28(1), 9-18.

Singer, T., Critchley, H. D., & Preuschoff, K. (2009). A common role of insula in feelings, empathy and uncertainty. Trends Cogn Sci, 13(8), 334-340.

Sridharan, D., Levitin, D. J., & Menon, V. (2008). A critical role for the right fronto-insular cortex in switching between central-executive and default-mode networks. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 105(34), 12569-12574.

Many Faces

2010-07-08T09:51:00.009-04:00

Here are some pictures from a recent collaboration with Rebecca Schwarz, the 8th grade art teacher at Pelham Middle School in New York.

“Heroes Walkway,”(more photos here) is a physical and metaphorical path toward responsible citizenship for Pelham Middle School students in Pelham, New York. Sixteen panels line the outdoor walkway between the Middle and High Schools.

Inspired by Michael Schwerner, a graduate of Pelham High who traveled to Mississippi in 1963 to fight for voting rights for African Americans, it features fifty diverse individuals selected and portrayed by students.

Transparent portraits on plexiglass float two inches in front of quotes and images from each hero’s life chosen and painted by the students.

230 students were involved. The school districts' "16 Habits of Mind" Initiative, provided the unifying theme.The students really outdid themselves, especially with the portraits, which express not only the individuals portrayed, but also the individual style of each student artist. Not your typical school mural, “Heroes Walkway” involved many sectors of the school community, including Social studies teachers, who helped the students come up with a list of "Habits of Mind" heroes and gather biographical information, and English teachers, who guided students' research on appropriate quotes.

It had something for everyone: school administrators, teachers, parents, and the students themselves. Arts Westchester, the county arts council, also supported the project through their Arts Partners program. The school's maintenance staff (thanks so much to Victor and Robert!) were very patient during the whole process, and did a fabulous job on the installation.

Here is the mural committee, who put in many hours afterschool pulling the mural together and applying finishing touches. Thanks everyone and congratulations on a job well done.

William Kentridge is the man behind the curtain

2010-06-08T09:09:00.017-04:00

Hands play with random, torn bits of black paper. Somehow they come together to form a horse. The hands keep moving the paper—the horse is momentarily lost, but then we find it again, and again and again. As the thick fingers keep moving the bits and pieces around we wait for the horse to appear. “I am not me, the horse is not mine,” the artist tells us. It doesn’t matter. We humans are made to find meaning in what we see. Now almost all the bits of paper are gone, only a few shards remain. We still see a horse. We can’t help ourselves.

The artist pulls larger torn pieces of paper out of the air. He presses them on to the wall, where they seem to meld into one another.. As he moves an eraser back and forth across the now whole paper, his own image, as a drawing, appears beneath his hand. It is clear how the trick is done. The tape is simply running backwards. The artist has first erased, then torn up a self-portrait drawing, and now he’s showing this process to us in reverse. It doesn’t matter that we know this. If anything it seems to add to the wondrous magic he has performed, pulling his own image out of thin air. In this film, “Invisible Mending,” from "Fragments for Georges Melies" he has satisfied our deep desire to see that which is broken made whole.

William Kentridge is a magician who wants us to see the man behind the curtain. He welcomes us in. The very crudeness of his primary materials: thick charcoal and blunt eraser, forces us to see how the trick is done, at the same time that they intensify our pleasure in the illusion. In the catalog to his current traveling retrospective (Five Themes, recently at MOMA in New York City) Kentridge included a DVD with raw source material from his animated films, paired with excerpts from those films. It includes live footage of the actual hotels and cabanas on the beach in Johannesburg, South Africa, which inspired the poetic elegy “Tide Tables.” In the studio, the artist and a little boy in a hat act out the gestures of the old man and his younger self that we see drawn on the beach in the film. In “Tide Table,” the ebb and flow of the waves become the embodiment of the relationship between Europe and Africa, youth and age, life and death, played out upon the sands of time.

Kentridge says,”Out of the process of drawing comes both the content of the work and, implicitly, an analogue for life itself.” He describes the process of making “Tide Tables”(in a video on the MOMA website) as unscripted, that he simply felt his way through images, as they emerged in the process of drawing. He says, “ I believe that in the indeterminacy of drawing, the contingent way that images arrive in the work, lies some kind of model of how we live our lives. The activity of drawing is a way of trying to understand who we are or how we operate in the world. It is in the strangeness of the activity itself that can be detected judgment, ethics, and morality.” And we, his audience, feel our way along with the artist, as he draws his way across the paper. We implicitly recognize the ways we all, as humans, grope in the dark for shards of meaning in our own lives, finding patterns within our partial and fragmented experience of the world around us.

We feel for the old man in the beach chair, reading the newspaper, remembering his youth on that very same beach. We share his pleasure when he finally gets up to pick up a stone and skip it out over the waves. Kentridge captures the sensation of the waves on sand, and thereby draws us into to his world. Current theories of embodied cognition emphasize that all human knowledge and understanding is rooted in sensory experience (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, Barsalou, 2008). Everything we know and understand, we know through our bodies, which were designed by evolution to enable us to navigate and survive as autonomous beings under an enormous range of conditions. Analogy, comparing current situations with past experiences,is a primary tool that we use to understand how to navigate within the environments in which we find ourselves.

Kentridge says, “The activity of drawing is a way of trying to understand who we are or how we operate in the world. It is in the strangeness of the activity itself that can be detected judgment, ethics, and morality.” We understand abstract concepts, such as justice and morality, by making analogies with our own physical experience. We explore the possible intentions and emotions of others, by imagining ourselves in their place, by literally simulating their actions in our own minds . Neuroscience is demonstrating how language itself is born from an embodied response to others (Rizolatti and Arbib, 2002). It is this visceral response Kentridge, like all the best artists, is able to engage through his work.

Imagine now, if you will, a cat swatting at a ball of yarn under the couch. Why does the cat do that? Its obvious that by doing that, the cat is working out one of the central problems of being cat, how to catch a mouse. But that’s not why does it. He does it, because that’s what cats do. He’s excersizing his essential cat-ness. Cognitive scientists are learning that most of the central problems of our lives, we solve through the use of our imaginations. The way we exercise our imagination, is through creative play: dance, music, poetry and drawing. Just like the cat, we don’t set out to solve practical problems in our lives by making art. But just like the cat, playing, making and viewing art, equips to deal with the challenges we face as humans

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) "has recently revealed that visual perception of the external world and mental imagery light up the same parts of the brain. As Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Kosslyn writes, “the brain doesn’t care” whether what we see is “real” or “imagined.” As we watch the man behind the curtain, William Kentridge, both perform and reveal his tricks in front of our eyes, we experience a deep sense of empathy with smudges of charcoal and eraser marks. We don’t care whether we are simply looking at charcoal smudges: we see and feel the waves. In fact, we take pleasure in our knowledge that it is only marks on paper, seeing and feeling our own minds at work.

Visualizing a talk about visualizing thought

2010-04-27T09:49:00.004-04:00

At the "Claiming Creativity" conference last week, graphic artists took visual notes of the presentations as they were happening. It was an interesting process and actually gave you some quick sense of the talk: here's the one that was done during my presentation.

Digging deeper: Drawing and the Brain

2010-04-25T07:40:00.007-04:00

This is a talk I just gave at an international symposium at Columbia College, Chicago, co-sponsored by ELIA, the European League of Institutes of Art. The whole symposium was an interesting, fun event (though a lot of the Europeans couldn't make it on account of the volcano!)

There's a tremendous amont of incredibly exciting discoveries in cognition and neuroscience that have been made in the past 10-15 years. I make links from this current research to the pedagogy of Kimon Nicolaides, and the drawings of a variety of artists, such as Giacometti, Gong Xian, and William Kentridge. I'm trying to figure out what we can learn from looking at the work of expert practictioners, through the lens of cognitive neuroscience and psychology, that we can use to teach and advocate for and practice drawing today.

This was the first time I had publicly presented these ideas, and it was great to get some feedback. I certainly have a long way to go to figure it all out, but it seems that people want to know, so I guess I better get busy!

About nothing

2010-02-09T13:42:00.009-05:00

Marc Trujillo, 14048 Ventura Boulevard

Only the painter is entitled to look at everything without being obliged to appraise what he sees...

... It is as if in the painter's calling there were some urgency above all other claims on him. Strong or frail in life, he is incontestably sovereign in his own rumination of the world. With no other technique than what his eyes and hands discover in seeing and painting, he persists in drawing from this world, with its din of history's glories and scandals, canvas which will hardly add to the angers or the hopes of man-- and noone complains...
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind

Through the magic of Facebook, I have been able to follow the work of some of my fellow Yale MFA graduates, and a few weeks ago went to see Marc Trujillo's work at Hirschl and Adler.

Marc paints spaces in our built environment most of us hurry through as quickly as possible: food courts, dollar stores, drive thru windows. Unlike the rest of us, he takes his time in these spaces, observing every nuance of light and color, finding the sublime within the most banal interstices of daily life. This painting, in particular, took my breath away. It reminded me of what painting is all about: everything and nothing. The emptiness at the center, the exit aisle, pulsates with a sense of presence. But noone is there. Only the gaze of the painter fills this empty space, and we are invited to join him there.

I always question my own decision to pursue painting. I love the feel of oil on canvas, the colors and textures which seem unobtainable by any other means. Yet its such a hopelessly anachronistic pursuit. Exiting from the local Imax theater after seeing Avatar this weekend, I was kicking myself that I hadn't followed my early interest in computer graphics instead. I admire Marc Trujillo's steadfast committment to the venerable tradition of oil painting, and his ability to mold this tradition to his own vision.

I'd been reading the phenomenological philosopher, Merleau-Ponty, whose words came to mind looking at 14048 Ventura Boulevard:

...Painting awakens and carries to its highest pitch a delirium which is vision itself, for to see is to have at a distance; painting spreads this strange possession to all aspects of Being, which must in some fashion become visible in order to enter into the work of art.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind

The ability of painting to capture the "delirium which is vision itself" apart from any other social, ethical, political, moral or pedagogical agenda, is what keeps me coming back for more, both as a viewer and practicioner. Thanks for the reminder, Marc!

Being Peter Paul Rubens

2009-12-19T22:12:00.011-05:00

A major function of the embodied mind is empathic. From birth, we have the capacity to imitate others, to vividly imagine being another person, doing what that person does, experiencing what that person experiences. The capacity for imaginative projection is a vital cognitive faculty. Experientially, it is a form of ‘transcendence.” Through it, one can experience something akin to “getting out of our bodies”–yet it is very much a bodily capacity.

George Lakoff & Mark Johnson Philosophy in the Flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought

Craig Schwartz: There's a tiny door in my office, Maxine. It's a portal and it takes you inside John Malkovich. You see the world through John Malkovich's eyes... and then after about 15 minutes, you're spit out... into a ditch on the side of The New Jersey Turnpike.

Maxine: Sounds great! Who the f**k is John Malkovich?

From the film, Being John Malkovich, 1999, written by Charlie Kaufman, directed by Spike Jonze

I have been thinking about my experience with Peter Paul Ruben's painting, Venus and Adonis. What follows is a reflection on my inquiry, Looking at Love.
I was first introduced to Peter Paul Rubens in high school. It was a grand history painting, “Queen Tomyris before the Head of Cyrus,” at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Nothing could have seemed more foreign, more incomprehensible. The beautiful queen gazes down serenely at the severed head of her foe, which is about to be dunked in a bowl of blood. Who are all those people crowded around, in all those glorious silks and satins? I remember being impressed by the sheer drama of it all, and the excess. This painting was surely made in a time when the act of painting itself was serious and consequential endeavor.

A few years ago at the Louvre in Paris I found my way to Rubens' galley of enormous (11 feet by 24 feet or so each) paintings celebrating the life of Marie de Medici. The paintings, 24 in total, were commissioned to celebrate the major turning points in the life of the queen. Standing in the middle of this awesome gallery, it was striking that it was the artist’s name, rather than the once powerful queen, which brings viewers to gaze upon these majestic works. Teeming with anecdote and allegory, as alive to the sense of touch as to the eye, every inch seems to swirl and twist under one’s gaze. Its as close to living flesh as any artist has every gotten with oil paint and brush.

In a century when oil paint and canvas sometimes feels ridiculously obsolete, it can be a little difficult to give oneself over to these grand visions. But I when I was asked, in John Baldacchino's course in Philosophies of Art in Education at Teachers College, to befriend a work of art this fall, Rubens immediately lept to mind. We were told to pick an artwork to revisit multiple times and become intimate with (a la “The Sight of Death” by T.J.Clark.) It seemed this was finally the opportunity to spend some time with an artist who always had felt both remote and seductive.

I located the Rubens gallery on the Metropolitan Museum map and headed straight for it. Once there, however, I felt lost. Standing in front of the work, I couldn't imagine how to enter the mind of this painter who lived 400 years ago, under circumstances and in a society so vastly different from my own. I went back out to the museum store and picked the cheapest sketchbook I could find. Returning to the European Baroque galleries, a little more cautiously this time, I looked around at some of the other artists' works. Eventually I came back to Rubens, and settled on Venus and Adonis, a much smaller and simpler work than the paintings in Paris and Boston. At first I was a bit worried I wouldn't find enough in the work to sustain repeated visits. But I started to draw anyway, and in a matter of minutes, was flooded by my own intuitions of Ruben's thoughts and feelings as he created this work. Drawing became my portal into the mind of Rubens. As my pencil traced the movements of his brush, I began to imagine I was truly able to see through his eyes.

After a few visits with Adonis and Venus, I went back to Rubens' own inspiration in Titian, and even further, to the Greeks. I then turned to look at Rubens' self portrait with his young wife and tiny son, hanging on the opposite wall, and mirroring the mythological family, of Adonis, Venus and Cupid that it faces. I had been avoiding the self-portait for weeks, barely glancing at it as I entered the gallery. It was almost shocking to look the artist in the face. I was surprised by the compassion and the closeness I felt for this immensely successful man who nonetheless seemed to be grappling with his own mortality in these paintings.

But that face facing me, in its expression – in its mortality –summons me, demands me, requires me: as if the invisible death faced by the face of the other --pure alterity, seperate, somehow, from any whole -- were ‘my business.” As if, unknown by the other whom already, in the nakedness of his face, it concerns it ‘regarded me’ before its confrontation with me, before the death that stares me, myself, in the face...It is precisely in that recalling of me to my responsibility by the face that summons me, that demands me, that requires me – it is in that calling into question -- that the other is my neighbor.

from Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence

Looking at Love

2009-11-19T11:20:00.035-05:00

Venus and Adonis, mid- or late 1630s

Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640)

This painting is hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Periodically over the past few months, I have spent time looking and sketching from this and related works at the Met, as part of my doctoral studies at Teacher's College, Columbia University.

9-11-09 “I’m looking for beautiful turbulence”--that’s why I’m drawn to Rubens. Venus is begging Adonis not to go on a hunt which she knows to be his last. She is luscious, a deity, but as such, the epitome of female humanity, her flesh warm and tender, her desire for her lover, as full of longing and fear of loss as any mortal woman in love.

Adonis seems untroubled by her concern. He reassures her lightly. Is he looking forward to autonomy, independence, freeing himself from the entanglements of human relationship? The hounds are patient, but also ready to be off. Is Adonis a personification of courage in the face of the inevitable?

I am reminded of Jonathan Lear's characterization of us humans as "finite, erotic creatures."

There is a vortex at the center: the grasping, clinging arms of Venus and Cupid. A group of middle aged European men pass by (speaking Dutch?) and chuckle at this painting. I assume they are commenting on Venus’s succulence, identifying with the 50+ year old Rubens’ appreciation of this younger woman. The painter was just about the age of these men when he painted this work. Is it simply a male fantasy? Or is there some genuine understanding (on Rubens’ part) of what it means to be a woman in love?

Is all visual language, in some sense, the language of the body---of the human body as it moves through space?
What about the centrality of grasping--the infant’s first gesture, reaching out into the world, becoming an actor through those first interactions?
How does Cupid act out Venus' deepest emotions? He is her surrogate in his no holds barred, desperate yet impotent struggle to pull Adonis back from death.

The dogs are impatient to be gone, untroubled by consciousness of mortality.

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) (Italian, Venetian, born about 1488, died 1576)

Venus and Adonis Oil on canvas
Dimensions 42 x 52 1/2 in.

“In his "Metamorphoses," Ovid relates the story of the goddess Venus vainly trying to restrain her lover, the mortal Adonis, from departing for the hunt. The mood of playful sensuality conceals the tragic irony that Adonis is destined to be killed during the hunt by a wild boar. "

Metropolitan Museum gallery label

9-17-09 Turns out Rubens painted the flip side of this Titian composition, which is two galleries (one country and one century) distant from the Rubens room! Its startling to see this scene from the other side. It is familiar, yet completely different. Here we see Venus’ back, her trapezius and latissimus dorsi muscles so perfectly rendered, yet almost made of the pale marble of an ancient Venus. Her classical proportions are more important to the painter than the palpability of her flesh.

The transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque is played out in these two paintings. How classical grace and balance is supplanted by passion, perfection by the fallibility of the flesh.

When I go back to the Rubens, I am most struck by Adonis’ manliness. He is so much more believable as the true object of both Venus and Cupid’s longing. Ruben's depiction of Venus attests to all Adonis has experienced and is forsaking. Cupid seems to be here the young son, begging his dad not to go. How much more poignant! Titian’s Cupid was content on the sidelines, perhaps happy at the prospect of having Venus to himself again. I wonder about Cupid.

9-24-09 I go down to the Greek and Roman sculpture galleries to look for Cupid, and find him sleeping, peacefully. He is unaware of all that has passed. The relaxed twist of his torso reminds me of Venus’ active, turning form. He seems to be a beloved child, so carefully observed that you can almost hear his breathing. I can see both Titian and Rubens in this body--as it is both perfect and real. Is it that this is how human children have always appeared, or that the Greeks taught us how to see?

Statue of Eros sleeping, Hellenistic or Augustan,
3rd century b.c.–early 1st century a.d.
Greek or Roman Bronze

10-1-09 Back to Rubens: who is this child? Rubens had children, five with Helena Fourment, the young wife of his last years who is the model for this Venus. Did his toddlers grab at his legs as he left for his workshop in the morning?

10-7-09 This painting hangs opposite Venus and Adonis, but I’ve avoided looking at it until now.

Peter Paul Rubens
(Flemish, 1577–1640)
Rubens, His Wife Helena Fourment (1614–1673), and One of Their Children
mid–late 1630s
Oil on wood, 80 1/4 x 62 1/4 in. ]

“This magnificent portrait of Rubens, his second wife, Helena Fourment, and one of their five children has usually been dated on stylistic grounds to the late 1630s. The child's blue sash, heavy shoes, and plain collar resemble adult male attire and suggest that he is either Frans Rubens, born in 1633, or, more likely, Peter Paul, born March 1, 1637. Rubens married Helena Fourment on December 6, 1630, when he was fifty-three and she was sixteen. Helena became the model and the inspiration for many paintings by Rubens dating from the 1630s, particularly those dealing with themes of ideal beauty or love. The present composition was considerably revised during execution to shift the emphasis from Rubens, as the dominant half of a courtly couple, to Helena, as ideal wife and mother. The parrot, long a symbol of the Virgin Mary, suggests ideal motherhood, while the fountain, caryatid, and garden setting imply fertility and recall Rubens's own garden in Antwerp, where he frequently escorted Helena. “

Metropolitan Museum gallery label

10-7-09 Looking at this painting, executed around the same time as “Venus and Adonis,” adds a new layer of meaning to my previous experiences. It’s the non-fiction version of the same story. Here is Rubens’ personal Venus, the teenage bride of his last decade. Just like Adonis, he is destined to leave her, with the difference that he is aware of this inevitability. His admiring gaze is also wistful. He knows he will leave her alone too soon: she outlives him by 33 years.

But Helena, unlike Venus, is at peace. She must anticipate her fate, but at least in her husband’s eyes, she is supremely content in her role as wife and mother. Her gaze drifts past her son as her reaches up toward her. The happy child is confident she will fulfill his needs, and she bathes in the warm admiration father and son bestow upon her.
She knows she is the center of their universe, she is the answer to their question.

In the gallery descriptions of the two paintings it is noted that Rubens softened Adonis’ facial expression to be less severe, and here modified his own, initially prominent appearance in order to foreground his wife. I wish I could ask him why, and guess it was out of love.

10-13-09 Ruben’s hands are surprisingly delicate, the fingers tapered and elegant. I have been working on a series of images of my husband and my hands, interwoven, and was wondering about the hands of Rubens and his wife. I am struck by the light touch, the way his gently cradles hers, and the weightlessness of her hand in his. How odd, the leash seems to grow out of her hand, rather than be held by it, the fingers hardly grasp it… (what is that fluffy thing in her other hand, and what does it mean?)

11-8-09 I came back today for a final reflection on “Venus and Adonis” and it was gone! They were restoring that part of the gallery, and put it in storage. I felt quite frustrated, almost as if I had been stood up for a date. I had really been looking forward to one last visit, but instead returned to this painting.

When I first saw Helena, I thought she looked a bit stupid and maybe even a little homely, with a weak chin. Now I am coming to appreciate her. Her gentleness and grace…I can almost see what Rubens saw in her. Is the beauty in the object of love or in the eyes of the lover? It is almost as if a spotlight is focused on her.

She seems to be living blissfully in the moment, without regrets or fears. Who was the real Helena, and what did she really think about her husband’s work? And what was life like for her after he was gone?

11-8-09 Here is the artist, portraying himself gazing at his beloved. He chooses to ignore us, his viewers, for whom he has made this picture. He is absorbed in the act of looking.

What does it mean to look, and to see? What does it mean to truly see another human being, or even more, to see through his or her eyes? What does it mean to devote your life to this act? I have tried to see through Ruben’s eyes, and believe I have in some small measure, by taking the time to truly try to see his paintings. Making these sketches has given me new insights into his work, through taking notice of the nuances and subtleties of line and shape, color and light. There is so much about experience, about our humanity, that we comprehend through our senses but cannot articulate in words.

Art is a reflection of the ineffable in human experience.

Mind the Gap: thoughts on drawing

2009-10-26T10:04:00.002-04:00

Drawing, both from observation and imagination, is a powerful tool in alerting us to our most fundamental mental processes. As we trace small moments of perception and invention on the blank page, we see and feel our minds at work. Metacognition, the capacity to understand not just what we know, but how we know, is often cited as one of those vital 21st century skills. The act of drawing, of coordination between eye, mind and hand, by its very nature, cultivates metacognition. Through this process, gaps in understanding are revealed and explored. Yet drawing is seen as a dispensable elective in most U.S. schools today, (particularly in middle school and high school) a mere outlet for self-expression rather than an essential skill in today’s highly visual and rapidly changing world.

I want to build a case for drawing as fundamental across the curriculum: that the habits of artists, architects and designers, who draw as a means of exploration and investigation, can benefit students at all levels. Mental flexibility, the capacity to cope with ambiguity and uncertainty, to face the unknown with courage and hope, these are all needed skills, perhaps now more than ever. In my teaching practice, I often urge students to begin by drawing what is not there. This basic technique can be expanded into a metaphor that describes an essential part of what artists do: look for the gaps---in knowledge and understanding, between disciplines---taking advantage of those small openings where imagination and invention can thrive. Drawing seems to be a common thread that crosses gaps and connects concepts, themes and disciplines, including what is, for me, a difficult divide between teaching and making art. A person has to slow down to draw, to pause and consider. In so doing, one might notice what would have otherwise slipped by. Thinking through drawing, visualizing as well as observing, one can discover and refine relationships and associations, and invent new possibilities.

In his book, “Radical Hope: ethics in the face of cultural devastation” Jonathan Lear tells the inspirational story of Plenty Coups, the last great chief of the Crow Nation. He describes how Plenty Coups stood in the void, the destruction of traditional ways of understanding the world behind him, facing an unknown future with courage. Lear writes, “Courage is a virtue, I think, because it is an excellent way of coping with, responding to, and manifesting a basic fact about us: that we are finite, erotic creatures.” (Lear: 2006, p 119) Lear defines his term “finite erotic creatures.” We are finite because we are limited in our abilities and understanding, relying on concepts that, any day, may become unintelligible. We are erotic, in the Platonic sense, because “in our finite condition of lack, we reach out to the world in yearning, longing, admiration, and desire for that which (however mistakenly) we take to be valuable, beautiful, and good” And as creatures, we are inevitably vulnerable, “it is an essential part of our nature that we take risks just by being in the world.”

So what, you might ask, does the notion of human beings as “finite, erotic creatures” have to do with drawing? The story of Plenty Coups is of a life at the extreme edge of a reality we all confront, whether we realize it or not. We live in a rapidly changing world, buffeted by forces and confronted by phenomena beyond our understanding. Yet there exists, most evident in children, and also in some artists, scientists and others, a passionate desire to know and understand the world. A teacher who can help a young person harness this passion, guiding them toward maturity without dampening their vitality, is doing something important. I believe the discipline of drawing can help this process, by helping students become more aware and learn to take advantage of the gaps in their understanding. The act of drawing makes us notice the intricacies of our own minds, the complex interdependencies and recursive loops of perception and cognition. Through the interaction of mind, eye and hand, we constantly try to bridge the gap between phenomena and understanding.

Conventional wisdom long held that perception and visualization were very different processes. Yet contrary to expectation, recent fMRI studies have revealed that perception and visualization both take place in the same areas of the brain. (Black: 2009, informal communication) In fact, both activities take place in many parts of the brain simultaneously. Cognitive scientists are learning that spatial reasoning is multi-modal, pervasive and fundamental for the way we understand and function in the world. (Tversky, 2009) When we draw, either from observation or from our imaginations, we become aware of these processes in our own minds. It is as if we are more alive, and the world around us is also more vivid, more present to our senses. I may only sketch for a half hour on a hike in the woods, or while sitting at my kitchen table, sketching a random bundle of wires. Returning to the trail, or to the tasks of dishwashing, grading papers, or feeding my family, I experience a sense of awakening, as if I had been sleepwalking through my life until the moment I sat down to draw.

It is this space, this interstice,* that we, as teachers, need to make more available to our students, so that their greater awareness of the workings of their own minds feed their natural thirst for knowledge and nurture their ability to imagine. Confronting the emptiness of the white page, and the splendor of the world as it is, and as it could be, they will continue to desire to bridge the gap between the two.

*(n. pl. in•ter•stic•es (-sti˘-sïz', -si˘z)
A space, especially a small or narrow one, between things or parts: "There is a gleam of luminous gold, where the sinking western sun has found a first direct interstice in the clouds" (John Fowles). [Middle English, from Old French, from Latin interstitium, from *interstitus, past participle of intersistere, to pause, make a break : inter-, inter- + sistere, to cause to stand, set up; see stÇ- in Indo-European roots.])

The Comic Torah Project

2009-08-21T10:56:00.005-04:00

My friends, Sharon Rosensweig and Aaron Freeman, are working on publishing a traditional book version of their online series, The Comic Torah. They are raising seed money via Kickstarter, through Amazon, and could use all the help they can get! I think its a pretty valuable project, and if you do too, you can help make it happen (and get mentioned in the book!)

Everybody Dance!

2009-07-20T10:41:00.006-04:00

This is a permanent art installation created by 6th and 7th graders for the front lobby at the Urban Assembly Academy for Civic Engagement in the Bronx, funded by Met Life's Art in the Schools project. These students have no regular art instruction, so it was a challenge to help them make something was an authe ntic expression of who they are, without the foundation of basic art skills. They helped each other pose while I photographed them against an improvised green screen. I silhouetted the photos in photoshop, and then they traced them onto clear vinyl with the help of a digital projector. They painted the patterns on the reverse side with acrylic paint.

In the end, I think we came up with something that truly reflects the energy and visual thinking of the UAACE students who contributed to this project. Thanks so much to Partnership Coordinator, Angela Jack, Principal Cameron Berube, School Counselors Shavon Eveyln and Raymond Warren, and everyone at Studio in a School, for giving me the opportunity to work on this project and for making it all possible. And thanks, students, (especially the after school girls who really put in the extra effort) you did an amazing job.

Christopher Walker took wonderful pictures at the celebration, some of which I show here, and more which you can see at his website, Gotham Pixels.

One student said, at the final celebration in June, "This project took us to places in our minds that we had never been before." As soon as she said it, I realized that was the whole point.

(dis)continuities: the movie!

2009-05-29T11:14:00.004-04:00

Here is my first foray into animation in a very long time! Not sure what its all about yet, but it was fun to do....I used some of the drawings described in the previous post to create this video.

(dis)continuities

2009-05-12T10:49:00.010-04:00

ink on paper, mounted on board, dimensions variable (7.5” x 7.5” squares)

“I am what I am not yet.”
(Maxine Greene, March 3, 2009, Teacher’s College)

In response to a seminar taught by John Baldacchino on Maxine Greene’s thought(at Teachers College, Columbia University) I wanted to create a work inspired by her ideas. I took many of Greene’s key concepts quite literally, attempting to transform them into a methodology I could use to create a work of art. I used Greene’s fundamental concept of infinite possibilities via the imaginary as the basis of the project, to create a work that had no definitive configuration, but could be endlessly rearranged and expanded. My aim was to create a set of limits within which I had the possibility for infinite exploration and increasing complexity.

I tried using a uniform paper size, such as 8” x 8”, and a category of subject matter, such as seeds and pods. I planned that the materials and visual language of depiction would continually vary, a literal translation into visual form of Greene’s concept of situated freedom. (Greene: 1988, p. 8) This approach went nowhere: the results felt too arbitrary. I had given myself too much freedom. I decided to pare down my variables, limiting myself to the simplest tools, a plain white paper and a permanent felt marker. I started with a single, intentionally banal subject: a pot of dried flowering grasses.

As I sat down to work on the first drawing of this series, early on a Saturday morning, I thought about what Maxine Greene had said a few nights before, during her lecture at Teacher’s College, about seeing things large. The more you pay attention, the more small things matter, they gain in significance. In describing what it means to see things large, Greene writes, “To see things or people big, one must resist viewing other human beings as mere objects or chess pieces and view them in their integrity and particularity instead.” (Greene, 1995, p.10) I became absorbed in the intricate interwoven structure of the plant in front of me, which grew steadily more complex and mysterious, the harder I tried to understand it. The strict limits I had imposed upon myself had liberated me. When I finally looked up, to greet my husband and daughters as they sleepily wandered into the dining room where I had been working, I was startled by their sudden vividness. These three people that I know so intimately, my family, seemed almost as strangers, unnaturally present to my gaze. Even the couch and bookcase across the room seemed more real, their existence more emphatic.

This experience was not new, though I hadn’t had it in a while. It was how I understand what Greene describes as a state of heightened consciousness, attributing this concept to Alfred Schutz, “what he (like Thoreau before him and Camus) chose to call wide-awakeness” (Greene:1994, p 436) The resonance Greene’s “wide-awakeness” has for me personally sends me back to my own adolescence, sitting on the banks of Walden Pond, in Concord Massachusetts, next to my bicycle, reading these words; “Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.” (Thoreau:1910, p 440) The idealism that was affirmed in me at that long ago, sun-dappled moment in my own life story led me to become an artist in the first place. Sitting at my dining room table that recent March morning, looking into the faces of the people I love most in the world and seeing them with such intensity, renewed my faith in the larger project of art-making.

I continued to make drawings within the confines I had laid out for myself. After making almost twenty, I needed to introduce a new element in order to create a dialectic tension in the evolving work. As Greene writes, “There is, after all, a dialectical relation marking every human situation… This relation exists between different, apparently opposite poles; but presupposes a mediation between them.” This mediation is “something that occurs between nature and culture, work and action, technologies and human minds.” (Greene: 1988, p. 8) A man-made element, in contrast with the plant forms, seemed right, and I eventually settled upon a jumble of power cords and computer cables that created curious visual rhymes in juxtaposition with the grasses and flowers I had been drawing. (My husband insists I should call this work “Power Plant.”) Here is an example of an (almost)
arbitrary arrangement:
The individual drawing, plant, knot or cord is less important than the patterns and continuities that emerge as the drawings are laid out in various arrays. In observing any particular array of drawings (one of many possible series of choices), the eye and mind connects lines and spaces from one square to those in the others, forming new, unplanned visual pathways. The continuity created in the viewer’s mind between a blade of grass and an I Pod cable is both random and intentional, designed to de-stabilize the work, to confound expectation of subject matter as a viewer moves from one square to the next. These imagined connections are the true subject of this piece, the way our minds create and hold onto threads of meaning that exist only in the individual imagination.

This is the first artwork I can remember making where theory preceded practice. Visually, it is also a marked departure from my previous body of work, consisting of large oil paintings of torn fruit. Although many similar ideas have been present in my previous work, they have only emerged into verbal consciousness post facto, while speaking with others about my intentions and their perceptions regarding a particular piece. I am encouraged that this approach opened up new territories for me to explore as an artist, and look forward to future expeditions into uncharted lands of both theory and practice.

References
Baldachino, J. (2009). Education Beyond Education: the Self and the Imaginary in Maxine Greene’s Philosophy. New York: Peter Lang.

Greene, M. (1988). The Dialectic of Freedom. New York: Teachers College Press.

Greene, M. (1994). “Epistemology and Educational Research: The Influence of Recent Approaches to Knowledge.” Review of Research in Education. Vol. 20. pp. 423-464.

Greene, M. (2000). Releasing the Imagination. Essays on Education, The Arts and Social Change. San Francisco CA: Jossey-Bass.

Thoreau, H. (1910). Walden. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co, Publishers.

Chairs? CHAIRS?! Chairs!

2009-04-28T08:11:00.005-04:00

Over the past couple of weeks, I put together a website documenting a project I did with two 7th grade math classes. The students were asked, "What is a chair?" and addressed this question in a variety of ways. They researched contemporary and historical chair design. They created small 2-d models out of cardstock and masking tape, and then made posters advertising fantastic chairs: ones that could fly or transform in surprising ways. They were split into teams to make real, functional chairs out of cardboard and tape.....

At times, it seemed like the classroom was in total chaos. But they succeeded: the final chairs were able to hold even my weight. I was really delighted and surprised when I asked them to write about their experiences: their writing was as fun as their actual creations.

You can leave comments for the kids here, and I will pass them on.

Here's a sample:

Chairs? CHAIRS?! Chairs!

Murmuring swept through the room.
Chairs? CHAIRS?!
Books, too? BOOKS?!
Yes. Chairs and books.
Disbelief spreads through the room, like a plague.
Fun! Draw, staple, dream!
Time to go on computers.
Computers? COMPUTERS?!?!?!?!
Whoohoo! Computers!!!
No games. Research only.
More murmurs.
No games?
No games.
Paper? Check.
Scissors? Check.
Tape? Check.
Imagination? Check!
Work, work, work, like excited bees in a hive.
Cut, paste, think.
Cut, paste, draw.
Wonder. Dream. Create.
Design poster.
Draw, draw, draw once again.
Group up.
Think. Bicker. Decide. Sketch.
Cardboard, scissors, bamboo, and tape?
CHECK!!!!
Work, work, work once more.
Many new materials!
Lace! Cushions! All things comfortable!
Finished!
Heavy hearts and good byes fill the air.
Goodbye! We'll miss you, Ms. K!

Thinking about adolescence

2009-04-09T05:35:00.007-04:00

"Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I’m dead….But, just for a moment now we’re all together. Mama, just for a moment we’re happy. Let’s look at one another."

I recently interviewed four 14 year old girls I've known for years for a research project. It was an interesting opportunity to reflect on the experience of adolescence, and to see and listen to teens I've watched grow up. The lines above are from the third act of the play, Our Town, by Thorton Wilder. In this scene, the newly dead young woman, Emily, goes back to relive one of the happiest days of her life, her twelfth birthday. At first, she is so excited to be home again. But at this moment, she becomes aware of the habitual and cursory nature of our daily encounters, even with people we love, and is heartbroken at that discovery. When I saw this play as a teenager, this scene spoke deeply and memorably to my own adolescent desire to be both seen and heard, and I remember promising myself, that, as an adult, I would stop to really look and listen. In attempting to listen more deeply to young women in my life, I realized that I have more in common with Mama Webb than I thought.

As a teaching artist in New York City for the past ten years, I’ve worked with incredibly diverse groups of young people in a huge range of educational settings. One day I find myself in a small classroom of emotionally disturbed, ethnically diverse 8th grade boys in Queens. The next day I am on W135th Street in the heart of Harlem, talking about Anne Frank to a class of 25 gifted, primarily African American 10th graders. I could be making chairs with a math class of Chinese and South Asian immigrant 7th graders in Flushing and an hour later be in a transfer high school, with 18-20 year-old students, in the South Bronx, silk-screening T-shirts.

I love this work: its freedom and the level of intellectual and creative challenge it brings. One of teaching’s chief joys, and great difficulties, however, is being able to see each child as a unique individual, with her or his own story to tell. In the whirlwind and practical exigencies of actual classrooms, it is sometimes too easy to miss that moment of recognition, when you look into the eyes of just one of your students and see a universe of meaning and experience.

In an early essay entitled “Existentialism and Education”, Maxine Green wrote:

“The teacher, conscious of his students’ capacities and predicament, respecting truth, and passionately devoted to the cause of his students’ emergence, will work for the moment when the individuals in his class stand away from him in freedom and show their respect for him and his ideas by relating to what he has taught in unique, authentic ways. Such spontaneity and authenticity arise in the context of communion, of the full I-Thou relationship in which each participant is profoundly and consciously himself.”

This research project reminded me to be mindful of the significance of that I-Thou relationship, to remember to honor the life stories, perceptions , and developmental processes of our students.

My essential task as a teacher is not to create “mini-me’s,” but to do whatever I can to help my students become themselves. In interviewing girls I thought I knew well, I was awed by the mystery inherent in their journey toward adulthood. How much more mysterious are teenagers I am encountering for the first time in schools in unfamiliar neighborhoods.

Daily life does not often offer the extensive opportunity for deep listening that this research provided. But moments, even in the busiest classrooms, can be found where we can stop, look, and really listen.

Welcome to the Aquarium: A Year in the Lives of Children

2009-02-18T10:26:00.006-05:00

Early on in my work as a teaching artist in New York City, I had the great luck to be teamed with Julie Diamond, a master kindergarten teacher at P.S. 87, on Manhattan's Upper West Side. She's just published a beautiful book, Welcome to the Aquarium: A Year in the Lives of Children in which she distills her philosophy, methods and observations of her classroom. It takes the reader from the last weeks of August, when Julie prepares herself psychologically for the year ahead as she arranges baskets and blocks, to the final celebratory and clean up days in June, as her students move on to the rest of their lives.

Julie was an amazing role model for me, as well as a coach, mentor and friend. At the time, as absorbed as I was by the excitement and many challenges of making art with five year olds, I also felt a private embarrassment that the work was trivial and insignificant. Julie's deep sense of mission and commitment to empowering her students was a potent demonstration of the importance of our work together. She shared her insights into the cognitive and creative processes of her students, along with useful tips on how to keep my supplies organized and instructions brief. (I can still picture her giving me the time signal from the back of the group of fidgety five year olds gathered on the rug in front of me.)

Julie showed me how close the roles of teacher and artist can be, and how much we have to learn from one another. The open and responsive style of Julie's teaching meshed well with my philosophy that art can and should be about so much more than colors and shapes: it should help children develop their own unique potential as human beings. In the chapter on making art, Julie reflects on the work we did together, along with the role of art more generally in the elementary school classroom, "for elementary students to make something that revolves around a narrowly set problem is a waste of an art period, too scarce a thing to waste. To whatever extent young children study art, their work should be inspired by their own desire to create art." One of the rituals Julie and I developed together, was having the children reflect at the end of the class, by drawing in their sketchbooks what they had done that day. As she writes, "the drawings were marvelous," in their detail and close observation, way beyond what is usually expected from kindergarteners.

I've written in this blog about wanting to be useful to my students. Paying attention, in order to offer the skills and tools students need to do what they want to do, is what makes teaching rewarding. Julie writes:

One essential piece of teaching--of wanting to do it year after year, of sticking with it so that you get better--is the will for connectedness, the determination to find out who these children are, which is not entirely separate from finding out more about oneself. It is in the wish to bend and listen, the meaning to the teacher of that motion.

Thanks again, Julie, for showing me how teachers can make a difference in the lives of children, and how, in turn, our lives as teachers become more meaningful.

Is art useful? (should it be?)

2009-02-06T22:45:00.006-05:00

A few months ago, I wrote here why I think art is and should be (sometimes) useful. In 1890, Oscar Wilde wrote (in the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray), that "All art is quite useless." I loved that book when I was a teenager, perceiving a vivid description of the hypocrisy of the adult world which really appealed to my adolescent sensibility.

These days I'm around teenagers all the time. As the adult, I try my best to be honest with them and worthy of their trust. I try to offer whatever I have that they might find useful in their struggle to make meaning and find their way in our complex, messed up world.

Today I was introducing a portrait lesson to a group of middle school students. It is for a class "Inspired by Anne," that I am teaching for the Anne Frank Center. We talked about how Anne's diary is so riveting because her experience was so unique and different from ours, but her feelings--about growing up, her family, her hopes and dreams-- are so recognizable. We recognize them as our own. On the board I wrote: Every person is the same. Underneath, I wrote: Every person is unique.

Then I gave the students mirrors, pencils and paper. I also gave them a simple diagram of the proportions of the human face (that the eyes are located halfway down the head, etc...) I had them lightly sketch out the basic structure of the face. Then I gave them the challenge to observe the subtle, individual qualities of their own facial features and to see if they could make it clear to anyone that knows them that their drawing was a self portrait.

We started a discussion about the small acts of superficial prejudice and hatred we encounter everyday, and how every person is infinitely more complex and mysterious than you might imagine at first, the more you get to know them. My hope is that through making art, the lessons I am trying to teach about being human will become real and concrete. I have thirteen more weeks with these students. In the end, how will I know I have succeeded?

So is art useful, or should it be? I'd really like to know what you think about this question. Please e-mail me (andrea@andreakantrowitz.com) or post your comments below. Thanks.

Enduring Questions

2009-01-18T07:43:00.008-05:00

My dad's memorial service was on Sunday, at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the next day I was teaching at the Bronx Community High School, a transfer school for students that have dropped out or failed out of other Bronx high schools. Without really planning to, I decided to tell the students about my dad, about how he knew how to dream big, and make at least some of his dreams come true. It wasn't until the second class that I remembered to tell them that he had been kicked out of school in fifth grade, and told to learn a trade, because he was good with his hands.

In the last class of the day, a student asked, "So if your dad was a rocket scientist, what are you doing here, with us?" I gave a quick answer, which was honest: that I believe in education, and art, and in their power to transform people's lives. So what better place could I be? But what, exactly, was I doing there? That one's going to take a little longer to answer.

Later in the week, I found myself at the Lincoln Center Institute at a workshop in aesthetic education for teacher education faculty (I teach graduate students in art education.) The workshop was all about asking essential questions, questions that can't be definitively answered, exactly the questions which can form the basis of a life's work, the questions that can change the world. On Friday, Maxine Greene, the philosopher-in-residence at LCI, came to talk to us. She is 91, very much of my parents' generation and culture, and has an intimate way of talking to a group that makes you feel like she is addressing you personally-- I certainly felt that way. If you are reading this blog, and don't know her work, look it up! In a half an hour or so, she was able to articulate many of my essential questions: why art matters: in society, in education, how it can help us be more fully alive, more fully human.

Here's a taste of Maxine's thought, from Releasing the Imagination, 2000:

When habit swathes everything, one day follows another identical day and predictability swallows any hint of an opening possibility. Only when the given or the taken-for-granted is subject to questioning, only when we take various, sometimes unfamiliar perspectives on it, does it show itself as what it is -- contingent on many interpretations, many vantage points, unified (if at all) by conformity or by unexamined common sense. Once we can see our givens as contingencies, then we may have an opportunity to posit alternative ways of living and valuing and to make choices.

In Many Houses

2008-12-22T12:50:00.003-05:00

A cousin sent this poem to my sister.

In many houses

all at once

I see my mother and father

and they are young as they walk in

Why should my

tears come,

to see them laughing

That they cannot

see me

is of no matter:

I was once

their dream:

now

they are mine.

Thanks, Dad

2008-12-09T15:24:00.011-05:00

My dad, Arthur Kantrowitz, passed away ten days ago. He spent a great Thanksgiving with us, surrounded by daughters, grandchildren and significant others. He interrupted the festivities to make a special toast to Barack, with whom, he was proud to tell everyone, he was on a first name basis, and to whom he had given advice regarding the importance of educating the next generation of engineers. He had met Obama at a house party during the New Hampshire primary. Obama's election really excited him: he felt great optimism toward the new era in American society it seems to signify. After enjoying a juicy slice of blueberry pie(baked by my husband from scratch) he was tired. Thirty six hours later, he was gone.

It's impossible to enumerate a father's gifts. My dad was an inventor and a dreamer. Maybe you need to be a dreamer in order to create something entirely new. As a young child, I remember sitting on his lap in the evening, while he smoked his pipe and told me about the outerspace metropolis that would be my adult home. It didn't sound quite as appealing to me as it seemed to him (where were the big trees, that grew around the pond in back of our house, in my dad's vision of the future?) But I got the essential message: dream big.

My father had an unshakable faith in progress, in the ability of the human imagination, through science and technology, to solve even the most intractable human problems. He believed in dreaming big, crossing boundaries and "standing on the shoulders of giants." There was a time when I could literally stand on his big, strong shoulders, but even today, when I still dare to dream my own dreams about how I can, in my own small way, make the world a better place, I feel his encouragement to do so.

I became an artist, instead of a scientist, partly out of a sense of adolescent rebellion, feeling that science was not that answer to everything, and that it was the enduring questions that really mattered. My dad encouraged me to follow my own path. He would sometimes talk about his good friend, the art educator Viktor Lowenfeld, who he met in Virginia, during the war. My dad was working at Langley Field while Lowenfeld was at Hampton Institute (where he taught John Biggers and Elizabeth Catlett, among others.) My dad loved to tell the story that Lowenfeld's favorite art teaching technique was to stand behind his students working at their easels, and to say under his breath, "beautiful." When I tried this at one of my first teaching gigs at the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh, a student turned around to look at me squarely in the face and asked, rhetorically, "you're not from around here, are you?"

My dad felt that religion was the enemy of science, and certainly never believed in an afterlife. I don't either, but if there could be an afterlife, my dad would definitely find it on the internet, where technology and openness of information, which he believed in so passionately, have triumphed. It seems appropriate therefore, to say here: thanks, Dad.

Some thoughts on art and art education

2008-11-22T14:34:00.002-05:00

I believe art can and should (sometimes) be useful.

This is a statement ripe for misinterpretation. Let me explain. By art, here, I mean those products of our visual culture which do not fulfill an obvious and tangible function, such as advertising or educational materials, but which are made primarily for their own sake.

But if art, as I have defined it, does not have a tangible function, how can it be useful?

It is known that when an individual has a novel experience, the physical structure of the brain actually changes. Art can inspire, provoke, enlighten, reveal or in some other way, arouse deeper levels of awareness in the viewer. In doing so, it creates not just new neural pathways in the viewer’s brain, but pathways between the viewer’s and artist’s minds. These pathways, like the neural pathways in our individual brains, change the way minds can work together in imaginative and innovative ways. Just as a multitude of new experiences can change the way a brain works, a multitude of encounters between artists and viewers can change the way our minds work together, paving the way for a societal paradigm shift.

In saying that art can and should be useful, at least sometimes, I mean to suggest that art-makers and art educators can think about their work in purely visual terms, and sometimes that can be enough. To notice the color of a patch of sky next to a tall building, and perhaps call someone else’s attention to that unique, fleeting and mysterious visual experience can be profound. But there are more questions to ask. That patch of sky might be a door into another world, opening onto as yet unimagined possibilities. A painter might explore the meaning of emptiness, finding it full of life. A teacher might discuss the relationship of nature to the built environment, or even global warming.

Artists, and even more so art teachers, ought to encourage their students’ and viewers’ explorations of all of these possibilities. If a student looks at the patch of sky and becomes interested in the ozone layer, or modernist architecture, the teacher need not shut down that line of inquiry in order to draw the student’s attention back to form and color simply because she feels that is her job. Artists and teachers can and do use their work to engage fundamental concepts about the human condition and the world in which we live.

In this unique historical moment of hope and fear, I have found myself reflecting on my core beliefs and values. Central among these is faith that the human capacity for invention will lead us through and past the catastrophes we face. In challenging times like these, the best of human ingenuity is required to move forward. As artists and educators, our work of stimulating the imagination and nurturing innovation is not only useful, but imperative.

seeds of change?

2008-10-15T10:04:00.004-04:00

This weekend we celebrated my father's 95th birthday. It was a true celebration, people coming from all over to be together. I had been working on same paintings of my own hands holding pomegranate seeds, and decided to photograph everyone's hands with seeds. The seeds were passed from hand to hand--not sure what I'm going to do with these photos, but it seemed important to do. Here are my dad's:

When I started this blog, I wasn't intending it to be political, but since I've outed myself, I have to say I'm feeling really encouraged today that McCain's attempts at negative campaigning seems to have backfired. Could it be the taking the high road this time has actually worked, that the issues at stake are too important for people to be distracted by anger and fear and prejudice? That, as Anne Frank said, in spite of everything, people are basically good? I may be too old to be confident of this, but I am hopeful. By the way, ArtObama raised $46,775, and I was happy that I was able to contribute more with my art than I would have been able to give in cash.

ArtObama: A benefit for change

2008-09-23T10:43:00.003-04:00

On October 3, I am participating in a silent auction of over 100 small works by American artists to support the election of Barack Obama and down-ticket Democrats. All proceeds will benefit the Obama Victory Fund and ActBlue, a clearinghouse supporting progressive House and Senate candidates nationwide. Space is limited, and pre-registration for this event is strongly recommended. (check out the website by clicking on the invite. The work looks great!)

Berger

2008-09-10T07:39:00.008-04:00

Speaking of process, the process of writing this blog has brought back a lot from the past. I've been thinking about writing that meant a lot to me when I was young: Rilke was one source and John Berger, in Ways of Seeing and other writings, also meant a lot to me. I read the book, but here is the original video. Berger seemed to believe that there was something important and subversive in being a painter-- an idea I doubt now more than ever, but, nevertheless, continue to find inspiring.

I can't tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that art has often judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past has suffered, so that it has never been forgotten.

I know too that the powerful fear art, whatever its form, when it does this, and that amongst the people such art sometimes runs like a rumour and a legend because it makes sense of what life's brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us, for it is inseparable from a justice at last. Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts and honour.
John Berger

Teaching Graphic Narratives: Inspired by Anne

2008-09-03T11:27:00.010-04:00

School is back in session, and I'm starting to schedule artist residencies for the coming year. After a summer in my studio, I really look forward to the engagement and challenge of teaching in the diverse and culturally rich communities of New York City. As a teaching artist, I have taught at an alternative high school for students who did not make it in traditional settings in the South Bronx, kindergartners on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and (almost) everything in between.

One of my most interesting residencies lately was at the Bell Academy (IS Q294) in Bayside, Queens last spring, for the Anne Frank Center. I taught a workshop once a week for seventeen weeks with Melinda Spataro, a teacher at Bell. Students read and discussed the diary, kept their own journal/sketchbooks, worked on a variety of drawing projects, culminating in an anthology of the students' graphic narratives inspired by themes in Anne Frank's diary.

Here's an example of one of the narratives, World Industries Wrestling, by Max Sidotti and Sun Eui Kim. I really was impressed by the way the middle schoolers, Max and Sun, translated the idea of triumph over oppression into their own inventive visual and narrative language. (click on the images to view a larger version.)

Reading is, in itself, an act of imagination. To read Anne Frank’s diary is to imagine ourselves in her shoes: how would we feel, how would we be able to cope? Anne describes common feelings we all have growing up, yet the circumstances in which she found herself were so different from those any of us will ever experience. In this class, Bell students read the diary, recording quotes that spoke to them personally in their own journals. Through drawing and painting, they made self-portraits, and learned how to convey emotions visually. After viewing images of Anne’s secret Annex, they made paintings of their own rooms at home, thinking about how their surroundings reflect their lives.

Students thought about and discussed the many ideas and issues found in Anne’s writing, Then they took a few of these ideas and made them their own, by creating an original work of art inspired by Anne. Their stories are about the consequences of prejudice and injustice, about growing up and about learning what really matters. Many stories describe a triumph over the forces of racism and intolerance. Not all end happily. In some, the victories are small and personal, in others, the world of the characters is changed forever. I’d like to thank Maureen McNeil of the Anne Frank Center for making this project possible, and for all her help and support.

Here's another story, less ambitious in it's vision for world peace than Max and Sun's above, but very connected to the actual experience of middle school: Friends that were Meant to Be, by Brittany Bernstein.

Jay, Maine

2008-08-30T10:18:00.016-04:00

While at Skowhegan (a residency program for emerging artists in rural Maine) in 1988, I learned about a massive strike that was going on at a paper mill in the nearby town of Jay. In Jay, I was immediately struck by how much the striking Mainers (many of Quebecois background) had in common with the workers in Watsonville (primarily Mexicana.) The sense of unity, purpose and shared sacrifice in both communities was profoundly inspiring. I was accepted an invitation to paint a mural for the outside of the Local 14 union hall in Jay. Here is a description of how the strike turned out:

Twenty years ago, workers at the nearby Androscoggin Mill, faced with demands for massive concessions by the International Paper Co. (IP), at a time of record profits, reluctantly went on strike. As it threatened, IP hired scabs to replace virtually its entire papermaking workforce. Despite a long heroic effort by the local union, the strike was lost. The strikers were permanently replaced and the union soon decertified. The bitterness, the divisions and the sense of loss are still almost palpable in this once proud hard-working community.
The Jay strike shows another more positive way the importance of the strike weapon to the labor movement. Recently, the International Paper Co. and the United Steelworkers (USW) concluded a major agreement, which will secure the status of the union at IP’s other mills and provide job security for its workers. That agreement would not have been possible without the inspiring struggle of the Jay strikers. Richard LaCosse, vice president of the USW who negotiated the agreement, told me IP was eager to avoid a battle of the magnitude it faced in the 1987 strike. The Steelworkers union is to be commended for its steadfast support of IP’s workers. But it is sad to realize that the one group of paperworkers who will not benefit from this new agreement are the strikers, who by courage, struggle and solidarity made it possible.
from "Right to Organize, Right to Strike" by Julius Getman,
Professor of Law, University of Texas,

Last week, my family was in Maine on vacation, and we decided to drop by the Jay union hall.

Although the union had changed, the mural and the strike veterans are still there. We said hello to Bob Roy, Norman Oulette, and Gillis Couture, who were playing pool inside, and graciously (if a bit reluctantly) came out for this photo:

At Skowhegan in '88, the mural was controversial. Seeing it now, I can understand why artists might have been skeptical of its aesthetic qualities. Ursula von Rydingsvard, a sculptor who has had many prominent public commissions, was particularly offended. She related the mural to Nazi propaganda, and her own experiences of growing up in displaced persons camps in Europe after WWII. David Reed, another critic, though an abstract painter himself, was very encouraging and supportive. During a group discussion, he spoke about how, as contemporary artists, we often are unsure of who we are painting for. David Reed commented that this mural had been painted for and about a specific community, and predicted that it would have a place in that community even after the events it depicted were long over.

When the mural was unveiled, the scenes were instantly recognizable to everyone involved. Many had fun identifying their friends and co-workers and recalling the events shown in the painting. The union members offered many thoughtful comments about what the painting meant and why they thought I made it the way I did. One thought that the indoor scene in the center of the painting reminded him of a creche.

The circle of singers really happened (I sang there too), and was not a stock image. Seeing and hearing the powerfully expressed emotions of the ordinarily stoic Mainers was an unforgettable experience.

When I returned to the Union hall this summer, it was remarkable to see how much and how little had changed. The participants in this heroic effort had returned to their normal lives and now, 20 years later, and 20 years older, were playing pool, smoking cigarettes and telling stories in a union hall full of beat up couches and worn out decks of cards. I wondered how many people had driven by the mural (it faces the main road in Jay) and what they thought of it. I wondered if my mural had become, like the strike, a part of the community that had once happened, that was sometimes forgotten, but was there to be seen and thought about by anyone who wanted to.

These days, my main area of social engagement is through artist's residencies in New York City public schools, rather than directly through my own art work. Looking back, I feel both a sense of pride and nostalgia for both the Watsonville and Jay projects. (this is us!)

Here is one more souvenir from the union hall, which today is hosting local Obama campaign efforts.

More Watsonville drawings

2008-08-13T05:44:00.017-04:00

More on the work in the exhibit , Remembering the Struggle/Recordando la Lucha. Thinking about process (the purpose of this blog, after all) it was a really important discovery that I needed to draw, rather than photograph, the strikers. So many people had cameras, it was news. But to really see what was going on, it made a huge difference to do it the old-fashioned way. The slow process of recording observations with a pencil and paper allowed for a sense of connection to the women on the picket line that as an outsider, I wouldn't be able to achieve any other way. It also gave me a chance to talk with the people I was drawing in a more relaxed way than I could have if I was formally interviewing them.

This is what is written on this portrait:
"Because we're Mexicano, they treat us like slaves, like the way they treated the blacks. Its worse for those that don't speak English. The strike is not just for us, we've lost so much. Now its a question of dignity. There's no way we can go back for all the other canneries. The majority of us are women and part of the struggle is with our husbands, so that we can participate. I worked at Watsonville Cannery 11 years. My husband says, 'Why do you keep coming to the picket line?' I say its for our dignity. I'll keep coming back till it ends."

Guillemena Rancon
Watsonville California
1-22-87 12:30 pm

Here are a couple more of the drawings/prints and a link to others.

Remembering the Watsonville Cannery Worker's Strike

2008-08-11T10:41:00.011-04:00

A project from 1987, around the time I saw Killer of Sheep,(see last post) is currently included in an exhibit in Watsonville, CA. The exhibit, Remembering the Struggle, commemorates an 18-month successful strike of predominately Mexicana cannery workers. This poster reads "For the welfare and future of my children, I fight for justice" and was signed by the mom, Ophelia Lopez, and her two children, Nelson and Elida.

Living in Oakland at the time, I drove down to Watsonville at first with a camera, thinking I would shoot some photos to work from in the studio. Once on the picket line, however, I realized that to capture the experience I needed to take a lot more time to understand what was happening, and took out my paper and drawing pencils instead of my camera. I spent many days in Watsonville, on the picket line and in the union hall, drawing portraits of the workers, going to meetings and demonstrations. As I drew, I asked the workers about their experiences and thoughts on the strike, and recorded many of their words on the drawings themselves. I produced a set of silkscreen posters with the help of Jos Sances at Mission Grafica in San Francisco. These posters were sold at union and community events as a fundraiser for the strikers.

why blog?

2008-08-09T21:50:00.009-04:00

Hopefully this will be a place to explore the process Rilke describes below: the way life experiences are internalized and transformed through art. In turn, art has the power to transform the way we experience our lives.

Here's an example of life into art into life: a black and white film I saw many years ago, but have never forgotten, The Killer of Sheep, by Charles Burnett. It was shot in Watts on a budget of less than $10,000 in 1977.

Killer of Sheep examines the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-1970s through the eyes of Stan, a sensitive dreamer who is growing detached and numb from the psychic toll of working at a slaughterhouse.

Frustrated by money problems, he finds respite in moments of simple beauty: the warmth of a coffee cup against his cheek, slow dancing with his wife in the living room, holding his daughter. The film offers no solutions; it merely presents life — sometimes hauntingly bleak, sometimes filled with transcendent joy and gentle humor.

Walking out of the movie theater in Oakland, California that night, it seemed as if I had stepped into a new world: more complex, more beautiful, and more worthy than the one I left when I entered the theater. That's what I believe art can and should do.

From Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

2007-12-21T17:22:00.000-05:00

Ah, but poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life. You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines. For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough) — they are experiences. For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning. You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained, to parents who you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn't pick it up (it was a joy meant for somebody else —); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet, restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along high overhead and went flying with all the stars, — and it is still not enough to be able to think of all that. You must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labor, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the scattered noises. And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves — only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge