Hope and Action

For a long time, I've thought that the purpose of activism and art, or at least of mine, is to make a world in which people are producers of meaning, not consumers, and writing this book I now see how this is connected to the politics of hope and to those revolutionary days that are the days of the creation of the world.  Decentralization and direct democracy could, in one definition, be this politic in which people are producers, possessed of power and vision, in an unfinished world.  

Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit

If there is anything that gives me hope it is teaching.  I've been thinking about what a gift it is these days.  Coming back into the classroom after a year away it is even more evident.  This term I am teaching a section of the courses called RPM's (or Research, Practice and Methods).

(From the course description) In these courses students investigate strategies for effective communication.  Each section emphasizes process and creative problem solving - appropriately using subject matter and a variety of media as a means of examining conceptual goals.  Students engage in critical inquiry and conduct in-depth research to promote the development of their own studio practice within a historical, cultural, and personal context. 

Students in the course recently turned in a project (a small book in an edition of ten, with a dos-a-dos binding) based on the writing and concerns of Kendrick Lamar and Lupe Fiasco.  The work was gritty and tough and the research was, in general, spot on.  It's not an easy class.  They are challenged each week with a new binding, a new writer, a new topic.  The turn around time is fast.  They have to work quickly without over-thinking decisions.  Practicing this is an important part of the course - again, not easy.

I have long been a fan of the writing of James Elkins.  His books, such as Why Art Cannot Be Taught and Art Critiques:  A Guide  are interesting, if only for the questions they raise.  They don't always come to definitive conclusions - but in their defense, how could they?  The topics are huge and the fact that he tackles them at all garners huge kudos from me.  I bring them up here because they have helped me formulate my own thinking about critiques - which is going to bring me back to the RPM students I'm working with in a minute....

In Art Critiques: A Guide, Elkins writes:

...an art critique is an entirely different sort of experience. Art classes maybe the only time in your life that people really focus on your work, and try to say all the things it might mean.  Meaning, interpretation, evaluation.  Ambiguity, complexity, difficulty.  Intensity, confusion, exhaustion.  Inspiration, doubt, revision.  These are the things that happen in critiques.

In your first semester of a dive into college, to study art and design - what you learn about critiques and how they are practiced has a great effect on the way you look at work - your own and others. More about the content of that critique in another post.

On the other end of the spectrum a group of seniors - working to craft a professional digital presence. What social media tools are best used, how to write strong content - how to pull it all together.  Over the summer - I sent out a survey asking former students and colleagues to talk to me about how they did this.  Many of them generously offered to speak to this group - and I try each week to invite one - in person or via Skype.

Full circle this past Monday for me. A student asked the speaker, "How do you annihilate your competition?"  He had a goofy smile on his face - but there was a part of him that was serious.
Our guest didn't miss a beat.  She said, "I don't, I try to become friends with them and ask them to teach me everything they know."

Now that, for me, is hope in the dark.

details from the Chagall stained glass window - Chicago Art Institute

Miss Eva is wearing earrings shaped like old time Christmas tree bulbs.
and they   blink    blink    blink
as she walks to the altar and receives the plate of hosts
The body of Christ, she says.
Blink    blink    blink.
The body of Christ. 

Blink. 

Miss Eva works in home health care.
She is the nurse you would want sitting next to your bed as you lay dying.
"Now let me fix your pillow" 

Blink    blink. 

The body of Christ.
Do you need a clean sheet baby?  It's okay if it's dirty. 

Blink. 

Let me do that for you. 

Blink.   

The body of Christ.
Miss Eva is a light in the darkness, a beacon, a reason.

Blink. 

Miss Eva with those earrings
standing around the altar with the other ministers
(ministers of the cup / ministers of the host)
watching her I laugh out loud with pure joy.
Funny, slightly scandalous, those blinking bulbs.
It did scandalize some of the ladies in the choir
and certainly Miss Augusta.
The more I thought about it, the more profound it was
when you look at HER
at the totality of her
of what she does 

run the food bank
nursing the dying,
singing, ministering to us all
her kindness to children 

those damn little lights should blink forever. 

She is blinking
she is a living heartbeat of love and service. 

Blink    blink   blink
blink    beat    beat
blink    beat    blink

____________________________________

Miss Eva reminds me that everyone I meet has something to offer - as I am so often quick to forget it.

Janelle always told me I could sing and I would never believe her.  Here I was thirty years later, singing in a gospel choir - an alto no less - and feeling happy and proud of being able to do that (no doubt in part to the remarkable support of the community that had taken me in).

A couple of things they did for me.  They helped me learn to like my voice, to love the way making music is able to take me outside of myself.  They reminded me of a world outside of academia, outside of "Art" (with a capital A).  I have done a lot of writing about this experience but never put any of it out in the world.  

Last week Laura told me that Miss Eva had passed away last year - and so I think it is time to honor her with the writing that I started years back.

Scrambled Eggs Benedict

Yesterday afternoon looking at Facebook, I came across a post by Nate Pyper (this is a link to his tumbler account - but he is plugged in to many social and professional media sites).  On Trend List he is described as a "Midwest native with a big heart for thought-provoking, responsible design" and to my mind that fits.  I was fortunate enough to work with him when he was at MIAD, and still keep up with what he is doing - primarily because he does good things, ASKS QUESTIONS and keeps an open mind.

Which brings me back to the original topic.  Pyper was asking about the ordeal surrounding the Niki Johnson piece, "Eggs Benedict."  If you don't know who Nikki Johnson is, look here.  If you are unfamiliar with the "ordeal," look here.

Part of Pyper's post read:

And someone please help me understand – I guess I just don't understand Catholicism–why is this an attack on religion? Why isn't this just a critique of a very powerful, fallible man who said something incredibly stupid? Why is Catholicism so fragile that to call out the flaws of one individual is to declare war on an entire institution?

And so - to Pyper's question.

However people are taking the work Nate - I don’t see it as an attack on Catholicism, if by that you mean the basic teachings of Catholicism, the ever- evolving result of a narrative about a man who came into the world (as John Dominic Crossman writes) as a first century Mediterranean Jewish peasant....and radicalized everything that came after him through his basic teachings - love one another.

However, a critique of the mandates of the organized INSTITUTION that is the Church is always in order - and that is how I see choose to see the conflict surrounding this particular piece  Remember that the institution of the church has been struggling with the idea of all things sexual since before the Council of Trent (1545)

"Eggs Benedict"  is a great example of the idea that meaning in any human experience is simultaneously rooted in the past and present - and will be part of the future.  We evolve, we grow, we change, we make mistakes, we move forward.  Johnson's work has taken a poke at how polarizing issues of sexuality and sexual ethics continue to be for Catholics.  This becomes evident looking at the history of questions and convictions about human sexuality.

The Archbishop of Milwaukee, Jerome E. Listecki wrote a blog post taking up the critique.  Talking about "radical individualism" he connects the piece to three contributing factors:  1) the loss of objective truth; 2) the loss of natural law; and 3) the loss of the sense of the sacred.

He writes:

An artist who claims his or her work is some great social commentary and a museum that accepts it, insults a religious leader of a church, whose charitable outreach through its missionaries and ministers has eased the pain of those who suffer throughout the world, must understand the rejection of this local action by the believers who themselves have been insulted. 

And one of the comment on his post, illustrates the problem perfectly

Always follow your religion. Catholics know our faith does not change to fit our life style..Our life style should follow our faith. The picture is Offensive and unacceptable in today's society. Controversial is not the appropriate term.

I respectfully disagree with both of them.  There can be critique without insult.  The mere fact of the making and exhibiting of  "Eggs Benedict" does not demean the charitable outreach of anyone or of any believer - it merely speaks to the complications that everyone on the planet carries within them.  It opens the doors to discussion, it points out flawed thinking.

The idea that "Catholics know our faith does not change to fit our lifestyle" is also mistaken.  Even a cursory examination of the history of the church (which is all I can claim) shows us that it is always evolving.

Margaret Farley gives a succinct overview of some of this history:

Alphonsus Liguori in the eighteenth century gave impetus to a manualist tradition (the development and proliferation of moral manuals designed primarily, like the Penitentials, to assist confessors) that attempted to integrate the Pauline purpose of marriage (marriage as a remedy for lust) with the procreative purpose. Nineteenth-century moral manuals focused on “sins of impurity,” choices of any sexual pleasure, in mind or in action, apart from procreative marital intercourse. The twentieth century witnessed the rise of Catholic theological interest in personalism and the tendency on the part of the Protestant churches to accept birth control.

In 1968 Pope Paul VI insisted that contraception is immoral.  Rather than settling the issue for Roman Catholics, however, this occasioned intense conflict. A world-wide majority of moral theologians disagreed with the papal teaching, even though a distinction between nonprocreative and anti procreative behavior mediated the dispute for some. Since then many of the specific moral rules governing sexuality in the Catholic tradition have come under serious question. Official teachings have come under serious question. Official teachings have sustained past injunctions, though some modifications have been made in order to accommodate pastoral responses to divorce and remarriage, homosexual orientation (but not sexual activity), and individual conscience decisions regarding contraception. Among moral theologians there is serious debate (and by the 1990s, marked pluralism) regarding issues of premarital sex, homosexual acts, remarriage after divorce, infertility therapies, gender roles, and clerical celibacy.

Farley, Margaret (2008-02-15). Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics (Kindle Locations 813-816). Continuum US. Kindle Edition.

The Vatican has denounced Farley for attempting to present a theological rationale for same-sex relationships, but I would throw my lot in with Farley any day.  As Professor Emerita of Christian Ethics at Yale, Farley has written about marriage, divorce, AIDS and sex with a clarity and moral wisdom that is sadly lacking in the hierarchy of the church.

In this, Joe Pabst was right on the money when he said:

"Why did I buy it?" Pabst has said. "I did not buy it because I thought it was beautiful. I bought it because I thought it was provocative and I thought it was important. ... This piece has work to do. It has to make people think and have discussions." (citation)

It can also be a call to action - and to that end  - here is the information for the 2015 AIDS WALK, which will be Saturday, October 3.

 

Research. Practice. Methods.

I had the gift of spending  two weeks traveling around Lake Michigan in June. Stops included the HASTAC Conference, seeing family and friends, searching for lupines and doing research for the upcoming residency and the coming academic year.

I've never minded traveling alone and I certainly love driving.

This coming Fall I will be teaching a course with people who are just beginning the journey through the labyrinth that is college. I know that on oh-so-many levels they are going to have experiences that will stretch them in ways they can't begin to imagine yet. I look forward to the day in a few years....which will feel like tomorrow ... when they walk across the stage, having earned the diploma that signifies their accomplishments. (Notice my assumption that they all will do well, be engaged, and graduate).

Traveling around Lake Michigan. Yes - I consider driving around the lake RESEARCH.  There are all kinds of research - and people can become entrenched in what kinds they feel is more valuable than others.  All kinds of research can be valuable.   The trick is not to get mired in one form over others.  If you only read physical books - or looked the physical archives of historical societies or libraries - you would miss a ton of discussion and access that you can only get online.  If you only look online - you are missing the joy of holding a written letter, or a beautifully bound book (or the one next to it on the shelf that you weren't even thinking about).  And if you only read and explore archives and libraries - whether in the physical or the online world - you are missing conversations, great cups of coffee and pieces of pie and fields of flowers and apiaries, the smells of lakes and woods, and the bustling experiences of walking through a city - large or small.

Thinking about research this way - opening yourself up to everything as fodder for your practice - can be overwhelming.  Filtering all of this "stuff" is a large part of my PRACTICE and sometimes it's like riding a bike....something I learned at one point and now will be able to do without really thinking about it at all.  It doesn't mean that there aren't times when I need to turn a laser beam onto a particular idea or solving a particular problem.  Mostly, I trust that it will work itself out one way or another - because I have the skills to make that happen.

 cast concrete piece from TELLINGS, Math Monohan 

 

 

 

 

(MFA Exhibit, 2015, University of Michigan)

For me, working in book arts is appealing for this reason. The considerations of object, page, double-page, type, paper (or not), media and presentation - these must all be seamless to really work.  This appeals to me.  It is a place I feel comfortable.  I have about seven different "projects" going at the moment - and when I get stuck in one I just turn to another...giving the knot of the first time to work itself out. Over years, one develops METHODS for making this happen that work for them.  Mine include a lot of writing about the ideas before I begin, a lot of sitting with an idea, and some false starts.

Wrapping up a sabbatical year begs for reflection - expect a fair amount of that coming up.

Trouters

Currently have the honor of spending some time at the Trout Lake Limnology Station as artist in residence.  The station is an active place - doing year round limnology research with undergrads, grads and doctoral students.  Housed in a little cabin on the edge of the "village," I work all day and have no obligations of any kind other than that.

Last night I was invited to attend the weekly Seminar held every Wednesday - I knew that there were other people at the Station - as there are cars in front of all the cabins and occasionally I see a young person walking to and fro.  But I was surprised when the room filled up with about 40 people!  Where did they all come from?  It's so quiet here - I generally assume no one is about.  Even at night, the call of the loons across the lake is the only noise I hear.  Last night I meant to go out and see the full moon - but fell asleep to those lovely loon calls.
 
The seminar yesterday was about a project called FLAME and another about freshwater mussel ecology with a walk to a mussel shoal near the station to see mussels in the field.  The FLAME project reminded me of something I had listened to while driving up here on  RADIOLAB.  The June 18th podcast is called EYE ON THE SKY.   The description of the program: 

Ross McNutt has a superpower — he can zoom in on everyday life, then rewind and fast-forward to solve crimes in a shutter-flash. But should he?  In 2004, when casualties in Iraq were rising due to roadside bombs, Ross McNutt and his team came up with an idea. With a small plane and a 44 mega-pixel camera, they figured out how to watch an entire city all at once, all day long. Whenever a bomb detonated, they could zoom onto that spot and then, because this eye in the sky had been there all along, they could scroll back in time and see - literally see - who planted it. After the war, Ross McNutt retired from the airforce, and brought this technology back home with him. Manoush Zomorodi and Alex Goldmark from the podcast “Note to Self” give us the low-down on Ross’s unique brand of persistent surveillance, from Juarez, Mexico to Dayton, Ohio. Then, once we realize what we can do, we wonder whether we should.

What does this have to do with FLAME?  I can't remember the acronym - but the gist of the research is a way to look at an entire lake and see the changes in temperature, oxygen and carbon dioxide.  How this is much more effective than doing a reading here or there --- or inserting a buoy in the middle of a lake and expecting that to give you an overall picture.  (Remember this is my take away with no real understanding of the science behind it).  The research Luke explained (sorry Luke I didn't get your last name, I'll insert it later....) reminded me of EYE ON THE SKY.  Lake surveillance - not with cameras, but with this little gizmo (how is that for a scientific name) that clamps to the end of your boat and uptakes water on a second by second basis as you zip back and forth across the lake.  This, in turn, gives you an overall picture of what is happening on the lake at any given time.

Our ability to capture time and move back and forth through it is amazing to me.  Boggles the mind.  Another thing for a solitary artist to muse about alone in a cabin in the woods.

Oh, what is a TROUTER?  That is the name given to those of us staying at the station by Tim Kratz, Station Director.

the examined life of the class of 2015...

What does it mean to live an examined life?

I can hardly believe that I am going to quote philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas - if only because my father used to quite him to me constantly and it drove me crazy.  But - pertaining to this idea of the examined life, Aquinas said

He (or she) ranks very low among fools who say "yes" or "no" without first making distinctions...since often opinion, rushing ahead, inclines to the wrong side and then passion blinds intellect.  Far worse than useless...is the quest of a person who casts off from the shore and then fishes for the truth without the art..."

This speaks both to what it means to live an examined life - and to the passionate belief I have - based both on study and experience:  that a life without civic engagement is a life cut off - without the ability to truly see the world or to truly know the world - an unexamined life.

It would be impossible to teach in a college and graduate a student who knew ALL of the ins and out of what it means to be any one thing - including a citizen of the world.  Someone who understood all aspects of history - the history of women, of persons of color, of science.  Someone who appreciated all the intricacies of how economics works, who could go into any cultural situation and appreciate all the particulars and politics they found there.  That is impossible, as it is a life-long endeavor that never ends.

But - to introduce that idea - a citizen of the world - and encourage the idea of what that might mean to grow into such a person - well I fully believe that is possible.

You know the phrase 'she lives in a bubble' or my favorite 'he's living in his own private Idaho?' Staying in our bubbles - or our comfort zones - does not allow us to recognize what is fundamentally the same between ourselves and others.  We all aspire to justice, we are all born full of goodness and promise (no one has ever held a newborn and not seen this), and we all inhabit the same home - earth.

To be a citizen of the world, we don't need to give up the ideas that are most important to us.  Think of yourself as surrounded by a series of concentric circles:  first, that bubble you are in, next your family (however you define them), then your neighbors, your fellow citizens.  Add the other circles that engulf you - perhaps they are linguistic, professional, gender related.  Beyond all of those circles is the biggest one - humanity as a whole.  We are all a part of the circle.

People from diverse backgrounds sometimes have difficulty recognizing one another as fellow citizens - and often this happens because actions and motives require, and do not often get, the patience necessary to interpreting them.  You are communicators, that is what artists and designers do - so particularly today when the world is so polarized - you bring special skills to bear in helping us to see issues in a new light, solve them in a new way.

Stepping into situations that you are different from what you are used to is important.  We all  need to be sensitive and empathic interpreters of what we encounter in circumstances that are familiar to us.

You chose to attend an institution that understands that civic engagement is an important component of providing you with an education - one that will make your art and design work stronger in ways that you may not appreciate yet.  Today as you receive your diplomas I am thinking of you all with heartfelt good wishes and abiding affection.  Keep in touch.

The piece from a recent Portandia called SHOCKING ART SUPPLIES makes me laugh every time I watch it. The cameo by Shepard Farey is perfect. It's not that a majority of the art students that I have worked with are like that - in fact most are not - but those who fit the bill - they REALLY fit the bill. In ways that are both slightly annoying and endearing simultaneously.

The reality is that there are as many stereotypes for people who teach art as there are for people who study it. Both born from the same places of wanting to be identified? Or born from a sense of the other's frustration with how to deal with the other?

I remember years ago being at a CAA (College Art Association) annual meeting - either in NYC or DC - and suddenly realizing that I was the only person wearing something colorful in a sea of black and grey and sometimes muted shades of purple. (I wasn't looking for a job or interviewing. I was there to speak on a panel and didn't feel like I had anything to prove.)
 
Uniforms. We all have them.  Some we put on ourselves and others are put on us.

My find for the day is from Kelly O'Brien's blog (which I highly recommend).  It is about the British artist Rena Gardiner.  It is wonderful to discover people like Rena, whose work is like a breath of fresh air. 

If you want a feast for the eyes - just google Rena Gardiner images and enjoy.  I am getting the book coming out immediately.

Mindfulness

It’s profoundly tempting to dismiss as cant any word current with Davos, the N.B.A. and the motherhood guilt complex. Mindful fracking: Could that be next? Putting a neuroscience halo around a byword for both uppers (“productivity”) and downers (“relaxation”) — to ensure a more compliant work force and a more prosperous C-suite — also seems twisted. No one word, however shiny, however intriguingly Eastern, however bolstered by science, can ever fix the human condition. And that’s what commercial mindfulness may have lost from the most rigorous Buddhist tenets it replaced: the implication that suffering cannot be escaped but must be faced. Of that shift in meaning — in the Westernization of sati — we should be especially mindful.

That quote was from an article in a recent New York Times - talking rather disdainfully about the meaning of mindfulness in the West.  And though it has a ring of truth to it, it is somewhat dismissive of how some might actually find solace in mindfulness - in a practice of mindfulness that includes facing the most mind numbing suffering.  Suffering that is implicit in the human condition - yes - but a suffering that, when personal, is often dealt with alone in the middle of the night or with a cup of coffee and a blank stare at a kitchen table in the middle of the afternoon.  One that you are thinking about so hard and get so lost in that suddenly you look up and the coffee is cold and the sun is almost set.

hurtling back and forth

someone should wash the windows in this studio....but this is kind of beautiful

Having one of those moments, weeks rather.

It's not that things are not working, they are working splendidly. Perhaps it is that there are just so many things.  Working. Splendidly.  I'm re-reading a small text that sits in my study and begs me to pick it up and engage with it over and over again.  On Beauty and Being Just  by Elaine Scarry is a debate - a mix of personal and philosophical insight that is at once engagingly poetic and perplexing.

This is a text that one picks up and dwells on again and again.  I don't really want to review or reflect on it here -  at this moment it's serving as a jumping off point for this current state of mind.

Scarry writes, "...beautiful things have a forward momentum, the way they incite the desire to bring new things into the world: infants, drawings, dances, laws, philosophic dialogues, theological tracts.  But we soon find ourselves also turning backward, for the beautiful faces and songs that lift us forward onto new ground keep calling out to us as well, inciting us to rediscover and recover them in whatever new thing gets made....hurtling us forward and back, requiring us to break new ground, but obliging us also to bridge back not only to the ground we just left but to still earlier, even ancient ground...."

Hurtling originates in the 13c from hurtlen, or hurten - to strike.  Think of moving or being caused to move at a massive speed, wildly, uncontrolled.  My studio and my study are not large - but they are packed with images, books, materials and projects that make me feel that I am ping-ponging back and forth with the beauty of them, the necessity (self-inflicted) of addressing each of them, and the new directions they propel me towards.

This is not a bad thing.  Just a tad overwhelming.