City Mayor, Maria Arango Diener from Las Vegas, Nevada USA was obligated and delighted to cut four blocks.
Two were substitutes for ones that never arrived, one is a memorial to Claudia Coonen who left us too soon, and lastly the one I had reserved for my own block (either that or I miscounted and was left with an extra block, you decide).
When faced with the task of "forced inspiration" due to a deadline or project, the artist is sometimes frozen by the obligation. Let's face it, fresh images just don't come to us all that often and trying to come up with something in a hurry actually hurts the brain...well, it hurts my brain anyway. I'm not really a copier and when I find myself reaching for photos, I know it isn't a day to create.
But this time I was showered with so many choices. The way I see it, everything we experience perceptually and emotionally remains running around the artist's brain until time rinses images clean and feelings ebb away gently. Some images stubbornly remain and those are the ones that come to be our art.
Then hopefully we are inspired again and the process repeats itself. Artists are ever-sensing beings, everything we perceive is felt raw in a very special way. Hopefully that leads to the transformation of that sensation into a visible image with which we communicate what is inside of ourselves to the viewer.
More simply put: artists attempt to show the way they "see". But if I think about the process too much or talk about the images to an excess, the raw power of art can get lost. That's my view anyway.
Back on earth and more to the task at hand, I grabbed the four blocks that I needed to fill and a Sharpie (my favorite no-errors-allowed sketching tool) and sat outside in my desert garden amid the budding spring. The simple almost silly images just came to me this time, flowed off the tip of the marker with ease and that fortunate day I could have produced another dozen, never mind the constraint of time and the small size of the blocks. Carving for me always completes the image, most of the time I stray a bit (or far from) the drawing and let the chisel speak its voice.
Mau Loa (Forever) Claudia For Claudia Coonen, in memoriam
Crescent What's a city without love!?
We need much more love in this world, here's a little love for all of you.
Velando A long drive through the downtown, tall buildings lit and looming, a bridge over the ocean, distant pier, and back through the city...windows twinkling along the way in the tall apartment buildings.
Lights on, lights off, city windows and their dwellers unaware of each other, next to one another, each alone in their world within the big city.
The verb "velar" is Spanish for staying awake at night; in old times by candle-light, from the word "vela" which means candle.
On to the progress reports but first for me, a hearty dive into the studio, much to do!!! I have a long list of items to assemble for the trip, a bit obsessed with not forgetting anything important.
