Redtree Times

High in the Hills– Now at the Kada Gallery, Erie PA

I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.

― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

I made a quick trip to Erie PA yesterday to deliver some fresh work and meet the new owner of the Kada Gallery, Doug Scalise, who takes over the rein in the wake of the retirement of my longtime friend, Kathy DeAngelo.

It was a good visit and I left feeling very much encouraged by Doug’s vision for the future of the gallery. He is a youthful, affable guy with a lively entrepreneurial spirit. Good energy. We agreed on a date for a solo show of new work at the gallery later in the year, on November 11, 2022. Really looking forward to it.

So, yesterday was a good day, a hopeful day.

Unfortunately, this morning I began to watch and read about the invasion of Ukraine. It was disheartening, to say the least.

One of the first things I saw was video shot from an apartment in Ukraine, looking out on a wide boulevard. In it, an armored, tracked vehicle of some sort is rolling at a good pace down the wide street as small sedan is approaching from the opposite direction on the far side of the street. The armored vehicle suddenly swerves and comes directly across the street and runs over and completely rushes the car.

The remainder of the video is of citizens trying to extricate, with only a steel bar and a hammer, the driver who has somehow miraculously survived the assault and whose lower body is trapped ( and no doubt severely damaged) under the crushed front of his vehicle.

I watched the beginning of the video a few times, the part with the actual assault from the armored vehicle. I was struck and enraged by the senseless cruelty and inhumanity in the act.

It was not an accident. It was a decision by the operator of that armored vehicle to crush that passing vehicle and kill its driver.

And for what purpose?

It was just a passing car, not a military vehicle nor an apparent threat. It appears to just be a senseless and random act of cruelty, the work of a heartless bully without any concern for who they hurt, even an innocent civilian, because they know they will not experience any repercussions.

They will write it off as being part of the chaos of war even though it was an obviously conscious decision.

There were more scenes that could cite– mothers sleeping and consoling with their children on the floors of the subways which now serve as bomb shelters as the Russians bomb both military and civilian sites., including apartment buildings.

Or the thirteen Ukrainian border patrol officers who refused to surrender a small 40 acre island west of the Crimea to a Russian warship. When ordered to surrender they responded via the radio, “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.”

All thirteen were killed.

And all I can ask is: For what purpose?

There is no apparent nor authentic rationale for this war. It only serves greed and a thirst for power, the same factors that have created a sense of chaos and division throughout the entire world in recent years.

Many of us think we can just ignore it and it will go away, never affecting us. It’s thousand of miles away, across the ocean after all.

But that’s not the way the world works.

We have turned our heads away too many times before and that only emboldens and normalizes acts of cruelty and inhumanity by those who are power hungry.

Evil cannot be ignored. Unchecked evil will eventually find its way to those who attempt to do so, maybe even in the streets of our own cities and villages.

I am paying attention, not turning away. But even so, I need to try to find something to make sense in this time of crisis and chaos. I am fortunate to have my work to fall into, something that gives me a glimpse of the potential for beauty, as described in the Maugham excerpt at the the top.

Maybe that’s the ultimate purpose of all art, to give us a pattern that leads us out of the inevitable chaos we all face at some point in our time on this planet.

I certainly hope that is holds true for this moment.

 Pax Terram— At the West End Gallery

It is in your power to withdraw yourself whenever you desire. Perfect tranquility within consists in the good ordering of the mind, the realm of your own.

― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book IV:3

My interest is always piqued when I come across a bit of wisdom from Marcus Aurelius, the 2nd century AD Roman emperor. Aurelius was also a Stoic philosopher whose book Meditations with its observations on living a good and virtuous life still reverberates in the present day.

Wisdom then is wisdom now.

We often tend to think of Stoics as being kind of emotionless due to their attempts to have control over their reactions and passions. But that self-control is but a small part of Stoicism.

Their classic principles are often categorized as:

• Nature: Nature is rational.
• Law of Reason: The universe is governed by the law of reason. Humans can’t actually escape its inexorable force, but they can, uniquely, follow the law deliberately.
• Virtue: A life led according to rational nature is virtuous.
• Wisdom: Wisdom is the the root virtue. From it spring the cardinal virtues: insight, bravery, self-control, and justice.
• Apathea: Since passion is irrational, life should be waged as a battle against it. Intense feeling should be avoided.
• Pleasure: Pleasure is neither good nor bad. It is only acceptable if it doesn’t interfere with the quest for virtue.
• Evil: Poverty, illness, and death are not evil.
• Duty: Virtue should be sought, not for the sake of pleasure, but for duty.

A simplified modern take is as follows:

1: Focus on what you can control.
2: Take action.
3: Be virtuous.
4: Lead by example.
5: Diminish your ego.
6: You’re not entitled to anything.
7: Exercise your will.
8: Practice resilience when faced with obstacles, failure, or tragedy.
9: Choose your response.
10: Be grateful.

You can see how the principles of Stoicism might be the basis for many 12-Step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous.

Just a basic outline for living a better life, inner and outer. Its principles often end up being the object of much of my work.

Like I said, wisdom then is wisdom now.

Everlasting Bond– At the Principle Gallery

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove

Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

-Leonard Cohen, Dance Me to the End of Love

I have a piece on the easel that is calling out to me this morning that needs my attention. It’s nearing that point where it takes on its own life so I am eager to get to work. Thus, I don’t have much to say this morning though there certainly is enough craziness and danger in the world right now on which to comment.

The painting above, Everlasting Bond, and the song below have a common theme, one that is the antithesis to the perils of these times: Love.

The song is Madeline Peyroux‘s version of Dance Me to the End of Love from the late Leonard Cohen. It has a jazzy, swingy feel. A good way to kick off what I hope will be a good work day.

In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity.

–Abraham Lincoln, December 1, 1862 Message to Congress

Short on time but wanted to just put out a reminder that this is President’s Day. Abraham Lincoln always held high esteem in our family. Growing up, there was a  photo of Lincoln in our family photo albums. It was very old, small sepia-tone photo that most likely belonged to my mother’s grandmother, who had raised my mother from early childhood after her own mother had died.

From my genealogy work, I know that my great-grandmother was born just after the Civil War but her father and many of her uncles and cousins had fought for the Union Army in the conflict. There are plenty of offspring along the line named after the great Union generals Ulysses Grant and William Sherman but surprisingly none named after Lincoln.

I think they felt that would be going too far, that the name was too sacred, too burdensome a load to put on the shoulders of a child..

I have read similar accounts from other families who also had photos of Lincoln in their family photo albums. It speaks volumes for Lincoln’s moral and steadfast leadership in times of peril.

After the four years of the former guy’s tenure, it’s hard to believe that such leadership is possible. Let us hope that that are those out there in our future with same strength of character, with similar depths of honesty and moral courage willing to take on this difficult role.

Here’s reading of  Oh Captain! My Captain! from Walt Whitman, that captures the loss felt by the American nation at the time of Lincoln’s death.

Zeche Zollverein

Wasn’t sure what I would write about this morning. I came across a performance of a favorite Philip Glass piece, one from his soundtrack of the film Mishima, that I was going to use for this week’s Sunday Morning Music selection. It was performed by a saxophone quartet, the Multiphonic Quartett.

I was intrigued by the setting for their performance. It was some sort of industrial building with gray concrete walls and these strange, huge inverted pyramid structures hanging from the high ceiling. At first glimpse, I thought they might be in some sort of experimental recording location and these were some type of acoustical structures that moved or enhanced the sound.

The more I watched the video, the more intrigued I became. Looking through the details I saw that the location was Zeche Zollverein. Doing a little research I found that it was once one of the the largest coal mines and coking plants in Europe, located near Essen, Germany.

It was a marvel of industrial architecture and the shaft shown in the photo at the top, Shaft 12, is considered the most beautiful coal mine in the world. It has been out of service since 1986 and the complex has been transformed into a massive cultural/arts center for the region. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. I have included a video below that shows a bit of the complex.

Those inverted pyramids turned out to be huge chutes that fed coal into the processing plants where t was transformed into coke used for steel production.

There’s no doubt a lot more to be said about the place but I thought I would pass on some basic info. I like the idea of transforming industrial sites that are potential eyesores into something beautiful and useful. It certainly makes an interesting setting for the Glass piece.

Devotional– At the West End Gallery

Devotion

The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to ocean –
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.

-Robert Frost

Things to do this morning keep me from writing much. But here are a few things that kind of line up with one another. A painting, a Robert Frost poem and an Arvo Pärt composition, Da Pacem.

A good way to ease into a Saturday morning in a world that seems a bit on edge.

The excerpt above is from On Modern Art, the 1924 treatise from the great Swiss artist Paul Klee, someone who I have featured here a number of times over the years. Yesterday, I wrote about how it often feels like everything has been done before. With Klee, I often wonder if he was one of the exceptions to that rule.

His work always felt like it was a jumping off point, an origin, rather than an extension of something that had come before. It was work that didn’t owe anything to the past and set the able for the future.

I know for me, he was a big influence if only in his attitude and the distinctness of his work.  I always think of his work in terms of the color– sometimes muted yet intense and always having a melodic harmony to it.

It always feels like music to me.

I like his idea that the world is in the process of creation, a constant and ongoing Genesis, and that it is not a final form. It allows for visionary work, for imagining other present worlds that extend beyond our perception because, as he writes, “In its present shape it is not the only possible world.”

And to me, that is an exciting proposition, one that gives my little created world viability.

This was a reworking of a post from back in 2015. It’s the post I needed this morning.

Southern Gardens- Paul Klee

vemödalen

n. the frustration of photographing something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist—the same sunset, the same waterfall, the same curve of a hip, the same closeup of an eye—which can turn a unique subject into something hollow and pulpy and cheap, like a mass-produced piece of furniture you happen to have assembled yourself

–The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

The artist forever wants to be original. Unique and different from the pack of other artists with that same impulse.

And this desire applies to their own work, wanting each piece to be absolutely distinct and unrepeatable, totally different from their other pieces of created art.

But despite all best efforts, for most artists there is a dreadful feeling that is often near at hand.

The fear that everything has already and always been done.

It’s can be a crippling feeling for an artist.

Why go on when everything has been done, when there is nothing new under the sun?

Standing in front of the easel holding a blank canvas, that question and many more often arise.

Will this piece be something new, something never seen before? Or will it be a reworking of a theme and a pattern that has been repeated numerous times through the decades and centuries before this moment? Or a repetition of a similar work or pattern of my own?

Why go on?

That’s a good question. And an existential one for an artist.

The answer, at least in the way that I see it, is that it doesn’t matter whether it has been done once, twice or a thousand times before, either by myself or artists of distant past generations.

The simple act of creating is what counts. This moment with this thought, with this effort and concentration, with this interpretation of how it feels to be in this moment, is what counts.

Attempting to reach out from this moment and connect with another mind and soul in whatever manner and form is possible within our limited abilities– that is all that counts.

Everything has been done. But it doesn’t matter because it wasn’t done in this place nor point in time.

The opportunity comes in this distinct moment.

Knowing that takes away the fear, allows the artist to continue. And to do so with the hope that today is unlike any day before, that something new and never seen before will come to life.

And if that doesn’t happen, that’s okay because the artist fought through the fear and made the attempt.

There is always a new opportunity to contribute to the continuum of creation tomorrow.

Lawren Harris- Ice House, Coldwell, Lake Superior 1923

Art is the distillate of life, the winnowed result of the experience of a people, the record of the joyous adventure of the creative spirit in us toward a higher world; a world in which all ideas, thoughts, and forms are pure and beautiful and completely clear, the world Plato held to be perfect and eternal. All works that have in them an element of joy are records of this adventure.

—Lawren Harris

I love this quote from the great Canadian painter Lawren Harris. I know that whenever I am working and am excited with the joy of what is unfolding before me, I feel closer and more connected to some sort of power that is beyond my knowledge.

It’s as though I feel tapped in to that winnowed result of the experience of a people as Harris puts it.

Connected to a universal oneness.

That is a great feeling, exhilarating and calming at the same time. It is ultimately the feeling that brings one to art, both as a viewer and a creator.

Unfortunately, in the course of creating, it is sometimes a feeling that is forgotten, put aside for ends other than this element of joy.

It’s easy to do, believe me.

But rediscovering that joy is like coming across it for the first time. Because even though you know you have experienced it before, it feels all new and shiny, full of promise.

Effervescent– that is the word that comes to mind when I think of these moments of joy.

So, let me stop right here. I am close to my own joy and don’t want to delay it for another minute.

Effervescence and joy will not wait around too long, you know, and I don’t want to miss it.

Trying to find some of that effervescence this morning so I am replaying this post from several years back.