Four years have gone by and it’s getting harder to keep time from slipping by. Is it age-related or just the fact that I’ve been keeping busy? I really don’t give it much thought, it’s just a fact I’m confronted with now that I’ve packed up my studio and shipped my things off to a new destination where I’ll start all over again.

In the past year, though, keeping busy had something to do with it. One of the reasons I decided to stop posting on aa was because there was too much I needed to tend to, and the lure of the ethereal world was sneakily keeping me away from the real one. But I also felt that a break from blogging and commenting might actually be a good healthy thing. Too many things kept popping up on my screen asking me to join and I needed to distance myself from my computer ‘routine’ to be able to focus on the concrete things I wanted to achieve at the studio. What’s the point of being on 8 different sites if you can’t get anything worthwhile completed in the real world to talk about?

So let me tell you about some of the few things I was able to help out with apart from my own production and input at OD?

In this past year OD – oficina do desenho – came a long way. From being a small independent art school where Rui Aço gathered his students and I helped out as tutor and developed my own projects as artist in residence we have become an association and have since started to engage our community in a more pro-active way.

The snowball had been picking up momentum but it was really only after we presented our collective project at the Cascais Cultural Centre [Dec 08 to Feb 09] that we started to realise the impact OD seemed to be having and that we became fully aware of the opportunities and responsibilities we could expect in the coming years.

The project 3 Men on a Boat in which Rui and I teamed up with Fernando Vidal – before he distanced himself for professional reasons – was not a commercial exhibition but nevertheless it was one of the most successful projects I ever took part in. The reward was not monetary; it was much more valuable than that. I think I can safely say that it enhanced our presence as artists and as trustworthy partners within our community. It opened doors for future exhibition possibilities and collaborations with the local authorities both as consultants and as active creative participants in cultural activities. And, because it went on for over two months it exposed us to a greater audience, as a matter of fact it was one of the least publicized yet most visited exhibitions at the cultural centre ever.

The staff at the Centre were tremendous, they fell in love with the project and went beyond the call of duty to spread the contagion to visitors coming in to see the galleries hosting more publicized artists. Maybe this had to do with the fact that Rui and I were present on location most of the time. Indeed, to me it felt like home for those twelve weeks. Personally I didn’t so much see this as an occasion to dump my work, no matter how beautifully presented, but as a privileged opportunity to deepen the much needed connections with curators and the people in charge.

I also invited a few selected people over to lunch at the centre’s restaurant and gave tours, maybe not so much spoken but just to be there with the public lest they wanted to ask questions, and though we invariably spoke about other things it was always somehow linked to the philosophy behind the work and what we aim to achieve with the school.

Local schools, from kindergarten to 12th graders, organized field-trips to see the show and ask us questions… and, sometimes, play with the dangling steel treads of my boat, which, I’ll admit, must have been a temptation for any child [and I caught a glimpse of the odd grown-up having a go!], but it was so inspiring to be caught up in their enthusiasm that it made it impossible to ask them not to touch. I can’t even begin to tell you how rewarding it was to see my installation and video through the eyes of those children. No amount of money can equal that.

Once that was over I slowly entered into a new mode – different tempo, different focus. In January my wife was told that she would be reassigned to a new posting and so when we took down the show my boat came straight back home. I continued to paint and oversee the work of the students at OD up until the end of May but the students couldn’t help but notice how the paintings, art materials and unfinished canvases kept disappearing until there was nothing left but the original concrete space I had added a little colour to over the three years I was there.

I’ll miss those exchanges with the students, I’ll miss Rui’s insight and companionship, our painting styles may seem diametrically opposed but we share much in common and I learnt a great deal from him while I was there. It was good while it lasted, and I’ll always be connected to the school in some capacity or other, I am, after all, one of the founders, but I’ve become more and more absorbed with the move and have instinctively crept into that buffer-zone I know inside of me where I am able to cope with the loss and prepare for the new stuff.

In May, with me half-here-half-there and not being much help, OD organised an event that brought together commerce and art in an attempt to boost people’s morale and get them back on the streets looking at the shops and at the art. The original idea was for 30 shops to allow 30 artists to redo their shop windows with art for two weeks and hand out a prize for the best collaboration [artists and shop owners were supposed to work together on this], but things soon got out of our hands when word spread and we ended up with sixty shops… and minus 30 artists. Ana Grácio and Rita Cardim solved things smoothly, amazingly and in record time, rounding up the remaining artists and getting some of the school’s own students, as well as other art schools to join in the ride. Also, the work they had as coordinators, getting artists and shop owners to get along peacefully while at the same time getting all the visuals ready and out on the streets [banners, leaflets with maps, red carpets for the important guests at the cocktail, etc.] was an important part of the event’s success, contributing greatly to putting OD on the local map.

I won’t go into the details here but it was a tremendous success, with a formal opening by the Mayor and the cultural and legal advisors from the Town Hall and the Cascais Cultural Centre taking their time to see each and every shop, talking to the artists and shop owners [when initially it had been said that there would only be time for a brief overview of the main square area]. From here on I think many things are possible, many doors have opened, both for OD and for each individual helping out to make it what we all wish it to become. And even if in the years to come I won’t be participating as an active participant I still look forward to telling you more about its progress as Rui keeps me informed, because I now think of it as one of my babies as well.

As for me, soon, I hope, I’ll be getting back to the business of setting up a new studio and looking for new projects – starting from scratch… in Japan.

Created by Jose Freitas Cruz On 07/03/09 At 11:11 AM

Kentucky born and bred artist Brad Everett Kirkman is what some people might call an “outsider artist.” He isn’t trained, but some might say he’s anointed. Looking at his work, you can clearly see that he’s not only driven by art, but also a message. He works full-time for a precision manufacturing company, but art is his true calling and message. Incidentally, we had this chat long ago and begin by talking about his old website which has since changed to www.brevki.com and www.BradEverettKirkman.blogspot.com However, his message remains the same.

MICHAEL: Hey Brad. First of all, your website is called, mainrinse.com. Why do you have a website and where did the name come from?

BRAD: I felt I needed a space of my own that I could have complete control. No ads to distract and no restrictions etc. Main Rinse is an anagram of “I’m a sinner.” I named it this so I would always be reminded that I am no better than anybody else on this planet. I will always be in need of a Savior that can fill the hole in me that nothing or no one else can fill.

MICHAEL: Do you draw (no pun intended, sorry) any connection between your art and “Main Rinse”?

BRAD: I really can’t separate the two. I think of the website as an extension of the art. I can say and do more there to expand on the message I’m trying to relay with my art.

MICHAEL: I have several different representations of your work and I think it’s more driven by your vision rather than even the material itself. How would you describe your art? I’m tempted to say “outsider,” but I don’t love that term.

BRAD: My work is a direct reflection of my life at the moment it’s created. It’s not necessarily “pretty” in a department store sort of way. And it’s not something that a lot of people will want to hang in their living room. My wife would never let me display most of my art in our house. I want to encourage people with my work. If it’s not considered decorator art, no problem. If you want to hang it in your closet and have a private laugh or a secret bit of encouragement that’s absolutely great with me.

MICHAEL: I seem to recall you telling me that you sometimes paint things and just leave them out in public for people to freely take? What’s up with that?

BRAD: I create little sculptures under the name “Prayzine” (like Praising God) and have left them all over the country for people to pick up and keep. I do this as a gift to others. It’s kind of like a friendly street art project. Just another way to try to help people smile and point them to Christ in the process. I leave just enough information for people to Google the name and see what the project is about.

MICHAEL: So, you’re like a wandering, troubadour artist with a message. Where have you left these sculptures? Have you heard from anybody who has gotten one?

BRAD: Mainly east of the Mississippi from Michigan to Florida. I also have friends who leave them for me in places they vacation and travel for business. I have gotten email just saying thanks for the art and encouraging me to continue. Not a whole lot of communication comes back. Maybe people think that there is more to it than it seems. I suppose they think, “Nobody would leave art lying around for free. There must be a catch.”

MICHAEL: Does your full-time job influence your art in any way or do you keep the two things separate?

BRAD: You can say my art is influenced by my full-time job in that there are a lot of people that I work with who need encouragement or just a kind word. I see them as a good cross-section of people, and even though these people have jobs, they still have needs, be it emotional, physical, or financial. Everybody needs to know they are needed and appreciated. This universal need for encouragement is something that pushes me to continue to make positive, uplifting art.

MICHAEL: Many art people might ask you why you live in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. It’s not exactly a booming art center.

BRAD: Hopkinsville is where I grew up. I’ve been a lot of places and I can’t find a place I like better that I can afford. It’s central, not too hot, not too cold, not too northern, not too southern. And it’s easy for me to jet to NY or LA for my one man shows. Ha!

MICHAEL: Oh, okay. Why do I get the feeling that you’ve answered that question before? But I digress. You mentioned something early on about having “complete control” over your work. This is a huge issue with so many artists (not to mention writers). What’s the deal? Is it the galleries? Who is trying to control artists?

BRAD: The pressure to make something that you know will sell is always lurking. You feel if you paint what you want, nobody will get it and thus not buy. I have control over very little in my life. My time is demanded, my attention is demanded, my finances are demanded. My art is really the only thing that nobody can tell me what to do.

MICHAEL: Yes, that’s tough. On top of that, most of the time, you don’t even know whether buyers are misinterpreting the message of your art. I also experience that myself as a writer. That must be a real issue with you because your work is so message driven. Still, you must create things hoping that there’s an audience out there for it … otherwise supporting yourself can be extremely difficult.

BRAD: I just try to make enough to pay for my supplies, anything above that is a bonus. I don’t see me supporting myself/family on my art. It would be great if I could pull it off, but right now I can’t see that being even close to feasible.

MICHAEL: So why are you even doing this? Aren’t there other ways to spread the message? Living artists have such a tough time. What good is art to anybody?

BRAD: Creating art for me is cheap therapy. It relaxes me. I have a fairly stressful day job and I need a wind down activity. I tried other things, like golf. AHHH! That just added more stress that I didn’t need. As far as the message, I have reached people around the world with my crazy little creations. I love that people anywhere can view my art just by happening upon it. If they look and don’t buy that’s OK. Maybe they get a little encouragement from just seeing it. Actually making a sale is just icing on the cake.

MICHAEL: Thanks Brad. You’re much more than just an optimist. You’re clearly a messenger.
Endnote: You can visit Brad at his websites at www.brevki.com and www.bradeverettkirkman.blogspot.com
MICHAEL CORBIN IS AN AVID ART COLLECTOR AND AUTHOR OF THE MULTI-AWARD WINNING BOOK, “THE ART OF EVERYDAY JOE: A COLLECTOR’S JOURNAL.” CHECK OUT HIS BRAND NEW WEBSITE AT WWW.ARTBOOKGUY.COM

Created by Michael Corbin On 06/08/09 At 12:00 PM

I found out about the “radiology art” of Satre Stuelke from a NY Times article called “The Inner Beauty of a McNugget” but I would have called it something like “Scary, Toxic Looking Chicken McNuggets.”

Stuelke has also done a few McDonalds burgers for his Radiology Art project and they look just as scarily toxic as the McNuggets. Sure, they’re beautiful to look at but they’re probably not something that should be put into your mouth.

The New York City artist’s statement for the project says it is “Dedicated to the deeper visualization of various objects that hold unique cultural importance in modern society, this project intends to plant a seed of scientific creativity in the minds of all those inclined to participate”

He has photographed/scanned toys, food and electronics. My favorites are the toys, especially the wild looking barbie doll and the toy elephant. See them on his Website here.

Money for nothing
Most artists do not deal with anything. The “art geniuses” deal with “artistic issues” which are of interest only to the art critiques and a hand full of artists, and by that narrow the language of art – the language of shapes and colors, the most universal language possible – down to a collection of petty conflicts and dilemmas with tedious solutions that are of no importance to anyone, at any scale. Few are the artists who deal with issues and problems concerning the whole of humanity and the essence of existence, probably just as few are the people who really care about others of their kind.

Perhaps the beautiful thing about the art of the Middle Ages, for example which was mostly religious, is that it really served a purpose. There is no doubt (I think) that they are primitive, and there is no doubt that utilizing different solutions and revelations from the course of art along the ages might assist in conveying messages in a more articulate, advanced, attractive, credible, authentic and diverse manner. However, I feel that in the great efforts of escaping the conditionings and fixations of the archaic and institutionalized art and of creating new “art languages” every alternate day, perhaps unconsciously art has gradually become a tool in its own hands and nothing more.

Kahnweiler, what?
For example, problems in the field of analytic cubism interested only Picasso, Braque and a hand full more of copycat cubistic artists and the enthusiastic art critiques and interpreters who found some new “artistic issue” to mess with as a child would have with a new toy. But actually all that toy does is distracting the mind from the simple truth, that there is no real essence in analytic cubism. It is merely an anal fetishism of that hand full of artists who were to busy in being artists and not as much so in being humans. Brass tacks, who cares about the fairly-artistic and vital-scientific “problem” of expressing three-dimensional forms upon a two-dimensional canvas?

And even if and when I bother in great exertion to discover the hidden abstract (excuse me for saying) facial features behind the title: “Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler”, then what? Who cares to discover that at all? What am I supposed to do with this discovery? Who gives a shit about him, anyway? Hence, the cubistic portrait of the chap was not meant for anything expect for being a tool in the hands of Picasso, with which to disintegrate the “real” nature into another “real” nature which he defined. That’s all. No one else cares about that.
Malfunctioning horsiness
Does a blacksmith manufacture cubistic horseshoes which do not fit any horse only for the sake of forcefully inventing and then solving some problematic issue in the field of perceiving the interaction between the three-dimensionality of the horse and the multi-dimensionality of horsiness? No, he does not. Similarly, you can imagine a situation where you stand in front of someone, engaged in a conversation, and that someone does not seize to blather pointlessly, only because he is so busy in utilizing language for the sake of finding new ways for utilizing that same language.

There is nothing wrong in the endeavor for enriching the language, whatever it is, when that language has a purpose of conveying a message. This is its only purpose.

Accessing art
I think that many people are recoiled by art. They fear from it because in the course of generations – initially fueled by the insecurity of the Renaissance artists and later on by their followers – it transformed from a simple creative practice into a sophisticated trade of philosophical contemplation in the hands of some arrogant intellectual elite, and therefore seized to serve the people. The fear of the artists from being “of the people” as blacksmiths and not “elitist” as philosophers caused art to lose its integrity and to turn into an empty and useless tool.

What makes art accessible to the common people has got nothing to do with whether or not it is created from common day to day materials. The problem is that not only that the different forms of modern art are the opposite of user-friendly, but on top of that the manufacturer does not even bother to supply minimal instructions for the buyer. If you studied art and you are ably clairvoyant and good in seeing through pillars and walls, then you’ll understand it and if not then ‘ts’yo’problem.
You may stand there in that gallery and gaze at your will like a drowsy cat, while you take caution not to admit your ignorance if you are an intellectual, and admit it with a jaw-breaking yawn if you are truly wise.

Every doing, every product in this world serves all, this is why it was manufactured to begin with. Art is an exception to that rule; it is the only field which serves only itself and its products are consumed only by the fashion clerks of contemporary art.

The boundaries of art
The picture expresses pictoriality, the theme of the painting is the method of paintings itself and the theme of the sculpture is sculpting… could it be that the message is “message” and that a dog is made out of a “dog”? does medicine exist for the sake of its own self, or rather for the sake of curing the ill? Is the purpose of a scientific research to amuse the mind of some physics geniuses or rather to discover for the benefit of humanity and a better future?

You cannot explain a term using the term itself. You cannot exceed the boundaries of painting by painting, not to mention exceeding the boundaries of reality by inventing an illusionary alternate reality. Painting about painting is parallel to talking about talking or languaging about language upon langiging the linguabenge – art is not a method for attaining the ultimate truth or changing reality. This is reality.

Hand in hand
Tell me a story, interest me, take me with you on a fascinating journey and teach me some lesson. Waken inspiration within me, make me think, feel and grow up as a human being. Make me look at art, eye to eye and learn from it about myself, because art without a purposeful message is like a good-looking stupid girl – nice to look at but no dialogue. In this case I’d rather drink my coffee by myself – Starbucks offers a pretty good Cappucino and not to bad of a chocolate croissant.

Created by Ilan Lichtnayer On 02/05/09 At 12:25 PM

Managed to avoid the excess heat of the Dubai summer this year by spending much of July and August contemplating the infinite shades of grey and green in a very wet Europe. Got back to Dubai to find that I no longer have a job!

The project I was working on was gradually being subsumed into a government body when I left and by the time I returned it had been swallowed up completely. Apparently this is not unusual. I have since heard of other proposals and projects that are taken over and the external consultants unceremoniously dumped. However, despite being unemployed, incomeless and back to square one in the job search, I am surprisingly sanguine about the whole affair. I’m happy with what I did and the whole experience has provided a fascinating insight into the chaotic, schizophrenic and slightly brutal nature of local cultural politics. Also being unemployed does have advantages. September marks the beginning of the post summer season and all the galleries have new shows so I should have time to see them all this year!

I started a few days ago with a trip the Third Line Gallery showing its war themed exhibition ‘Roads were Open / Roads were Closed’. The Third Line is the most successful gallery in Dubai. It has the most staff, some of the most lucrative artists (like Farhad Moshiri) and last spring it opened a new gallery space in the Qatari capital, Doha. The Third Line artists are usually connected in some way to the region but may have been brought up elsewhere or lived between two or more cultures. This allows for a multiplicity of influences and interpretations – very appropriate for the global and transient nature of Dubai.

‘Roads were Open / Roads were Closed’ featured five artists interpreting either direct or indirect experience of the Palestinian and Lebanese conflicts. The exhibition’s focus was on exploring how we register trauma and perceive conflict. However, the work was also very much about how artists interpret history and preserve or package national and political as well as personal memory.

As you entered the gallery, Palestinian Layla Shawwa’s ‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’ was a striking start. The huge slingshot complete with large stone sitting on a stand in the middle of the gallery floor is an immediately recognisable symbol of military asymmetry and moral triumph. The piece and its ironic title acknowledge this standard interpretation but Layla Shawwa’s point is more complex. In the absence of any forward movement, the symbol now stands as an impotent victim of its own mythology. It becomes a memory around which an uneasy internal dialogue revolves rather than being the external symbol of strength that it once was.

Photographer Tarek Al Ghoussein is also Palestinian but born in Kuwait and living in the UAE. As a consequence he is not directly exposed to the conflict but still needs to process and interpret his connection to it. His photographs, all taken in the UAE, depict huge and featureless concrete walls reflecting both the reality of the Palestinian situation and his inaccessibility to that reality. He also photographs barren desert spaces sometimes juxtaposing the two themes. When placing himself in the images he is inevitably dwarfed either by space or by containment.

Fouad El Khoury documents a month of his life in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 when Beirut came under serious bombardment following the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. The technique is a series of prints that show his diary page for each day. Sometimes the whole page is situated inside his house surrounded by the normalcy of household items. Other times the text is superimposed on events taking place outside the house, sometimes images familiar from news reports during that period. At the same time as news of what is happening in the nation is reported in his diary, a parallel tragedy is unfolding in his personal life as a relationship fails which makes a nice if obvious juxtaposition of the personal and the political. The whole photo series covers an entire wall of the gallery and makes an impact as both visual and emotional archive.

A very different approach is taken by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige whose multi part project ‘Wonder Beirut’ documents the earlier civil war period using the ‘Story of the Pyromaniac Photographer’. This was Abdallah Farah, a photographer commissioned by the Lebanese tourist board to take postcard images of Beirut in the late 1960s. With the onset of the civil war in 1975, he systematically burned or altered the slides and negatives he used for the postcards to reflect the damage of battle. This results in some fantastic images with parts melted and blackened but retaining postcard colour intensity at the same time. Others such as the ‘Battle of the Hotels’ show sequences of the same postcard image gradually being destroyed.

Another part of the project relates to Abdallah Farah’s many rolls of film, which were never developed, first because of a lack of materials and then out of choice. Each roll is carefully dated, some as recently as 2000, and their contents documented so you are able to read the images but not see them. This part of the project is called ‘Latent Images’. Latency is apparently an engineering term meaning the time delay between the initiation of an action and its results. So the consequences of the action remain unobserved in the present. What a perfect notion for an exhibition about conflict!

The Thirdline Gallery

http://www.thethirdline.com/

Created by Valerie Grove On 09/11/08 At 11:14 AM

I was writing about 3 weeks spent of a friends boat on lake Erie recreating watercolors lost in Argentina. A day or two after we got Alan’s boat in the water I helped Markus get his new/old 40 foot + wooden sailboat over to his slip with no mishaps. A few days later he called me back and said he and a friend were going to take it out for a little shake down cruise. It was a fairly blustery day, sunny with 3 -4 foot swells. I hadn’t actually made any watercolors yet and wanted to get started but decided I wanted to go with Markus on his new boat instead. It’s a beauty for sure. Newly restored after an Ohio winter’s worth of work in the back yard scraping, sanding and painting the hull and redoing much of the interior. I was supposed to help with some of the hand work but could never get free when Markus was able to work. So Markus did it all. I’m always impressed at his industrious nature, his knowledge and creative resolve. He did nearly all the work himself from bending wood to repair the hull breaches, painting and re-stitching sails. He’s an ace at maintaining a motor and has refit his diesel to burn 30 percent bio-fuel. Remarkable! Normally I’d simply call this green thinking but in this market any saving is appreciated with the price of diesel often above $4.50 a gallon.

We had a little trouble with the boat turning into the wind with only the mainsail up once we left the marina causing the sails to lose wind or luff. Markus jury rigged his working jib. It wasn’t quite the proper rigging. There was an unnatural scalloping along the luff or front line of the sail as it attached to the bow sprit up to the line that kept it to the main mast. Markus said he didn’t have the right fixtures attached so he made it up as he went along. Out of Irons refers to the tri-point or ‘Y’ shaped wind direction device on top of the main mast. A sail boat cannot sail less than 45 degrees against the wind or into the wind. When the directional is between the rear two metal points one is ‘In Irons’. Creative sailing…I love it. And it did the trick of keeping the boat out of irons even if it lead to a rather rough sail. At time we were nearly healed over at about 30 degrees which means the rails or gunnels are nearly in the water. That can be rather exciting on such a large boat. We also had a little trouble keeping the inflatable dinghy from cupping water behind the boat. The rigging tying it to the rear davits was a bit loose so it hung too low to the surface of the water. We eventually tried tying it up tighter but even that failed us a little while later. But it was such a windy day and there was a slow leak that had Markus flustered. We brought her back in after a rather exciting 3 hour sail.

I managed to get my first watercolor started the next day. It was a reworking of the first watercolor I did in Cordoba in 2004 from my hotel window. Originally done in a book of rice paper, the papers in the new book gave a much more vibrant range of color. Rag paper does that, while rice paper tends to absorb the chromatic intensity. I’ve included images of both the original and the new version.

Interestingly I realized almost right away that while I had photos of a number of the works done in 2004 and some of the earlier works done in Buenos Aires in 2001 and 2003 I couldn’t just copy them. Maybe its me. But a work, even if it is only a preparatory sketch is also a complete idea in and of itself. There is no copying stroke for stroke. There must always be a new bit of creative response in any work whether directly from life, from imagination or from a preliminary study. In the case of these re done images I began to take a lot of liberties with the color, shaping and broshwork even when there was at the same time a certain loyalty to the original image. While I tend to like both versions of each image I must say that the reprised images have a very different energy to them.

I also quickly realized that to mentally get into each image I almost had to do the same process as I had originally done on location. I often did a small postcard sized image from life, returned to the hotel and then did a larger version from the study and memory and sometimes an even larger variation. I began doing the same thing while working on my friends boat. I’d start a small study, then rework it again at a slightly larger size and finally, if all went well a larger version in the bigger book I’d purchased for the project. Each variation had its own qualities…none were exactly alike, none were ultimately better just different in my mind with perhaps a couple of exceptions. But the process began to unlock certain visual memories that carried me much further than simply copying a photograph would have.

Ultimately I did so many variations on the Sierra Chicas that I felt I could do them blindfolded in my sleep backwards…to the point that I almost sense that this is the ultimate Argentina in my mind. But in the case of the Del Dique (the dike or the dam) works, I had only a color photograph and a pen and ink sketch to work with. The photo wasn’t very large format so much detail was gone. I had to work primarily from memory and what the image gave me to spin off from.

In a week or two I will return to Alan’s boat to continue my journey into the memory of my Argentina. Now I have a better sense of how to work…a more efficient process to access my memories and create a body of work in the shortest amount of time. I have approximately 50 more works to recreate. I hope to get perhaps two thirds of that number accomplished this time if I work with some discipline for about 5 or 6 hours everyday. I think I can create about 4 or 5 images or variations on images every day given that I can work every day. Weekends will be hard as Alan brings friends to the boat. I’ll have to pack things away from Friday night to Sunday evening each week. So I have about 10 days to do 25 – 30 works. It took me 15 days to do 27 works the last time. And that included several days during the middle of the week when Markus came up to sail. I know this sounds like quantity vs. quality. But it is not unlike when I worked as a commercial illustrator. I had to punch a time clock for each project I worked on any given day so my boss could bill for creative time. I became very disciplined during those years. I don’t often practice those disciplines as a fine artist. But in this case it seems to be the right approach. After all I’d already done these works once before. They are now in my head. In that sense they become somewhat like the works I do from imagination in my studio. While the inventive works are also in my head as an idea when I begin them and begin to verge toward and merge with extrapolations as I go these have begun to do the same thing even though they began as simple works from life. It’ll be nice to finally release them and the entire experience which caused me to have to recreate them.

Markus, another of his sailing friends and I went out once more for a second shakedown cruise before I finally came home. We sailed half way to Kelly’s Island. He’d rigged a larger jib with the proper fixtures so it was a much smoother sail. But the leak was still bothering him although the bilge pump seemed to drain it quite nicely. A day later he finally got the leak sealed, at least for the season amd shortly after that I drove back to Columbus. I must admit it was hard to come home to mowing the yard, and the mundane everyday things one does to get by. The solidtude of being on the boat by myself most of the week was itself theraputic. But as I said in another week or two I’ll be back up on the boat painting away. And maybe I’ll manage to get up there a few more times before the summer turns to fall and then time to take the boats out of the water for the winter… at least for a couple of weekend cruises.

Created by Walter King On 07/24/08 At 10:37 AM

When I last left this subject, I had a studio on the property of a luxury hotel on the Greek island of Mykonos. Since then, a lot has changed. I always feel that the interest of someone in what I do is defined clearly in the moment they buy one of my pieces. The depth of that interest is made clear by the amount they are willing to spend, and the effort it will take them to accommodate what I’ve made.
Some have gone to the extent of re-engineering suspended floors to support not only the weight of a statue, but also the transport across open stretches of such a floor, as was the case with the Gewiss Corporation in Bergamo, Italy. Others, like Alabama Power, have constructed pedestals that may have cost more than the statues themselves. In both cases, I was offered a stay in a five star hotel and had only to submit receipts of my expenses in order to be compensated, no questions asked.

These two companies managed me with teams of paid employees, who did everything they were supposed to do, and saw to all my needs, but there was nothing personal between eventual buyer and me in these relationships. I felt outside of something, and knew I wouldn’t be going downtown to have a beer with the president of either of these companies. Both were among the easiest customers I’ve ever had in terms of money. They did what they said they’d do.
So did the owners of the Hotel Tharroe, albeit with some minor changes along the way. Last year, they bought ‘Amarilli and Corisca’ and in doing so, convinced me that they really were passionate about art. It’s one thing to talk about something, and quite another to commit to something this substantial in terms of money and the effort required to make the piece a vital part of the business under whose roof it sits.

In speaking about our next round last year, this summer that has just started, we worked together on deciding what kind of a new piece should be roughed out in Italy, and brought to Mykonos for me to finish. We agreed on a female Minotauress, and probably they knew more about this subject than I did. It seems that in one account, the labyrinth represents the subconscious, and therefore the Minotaur is metaphorical. It could be anything. I only learned this as I began to study the subject and its origins, much as I had done with earlier figures, and as with them, the profound and multifaceted nature of it only emerged after I had started.
My original idea was to have Theseus, whose worth as a warrior was without question, meet something that would challenge him in a way that he was not used to. I gave my Minotauress a roll of string with which to confuse him during his exit from the maze, and designed her so that if seen from the back, it isn’t apparent that she has a cows head. I imagined Theseus finding her lying nude on her pedestal, approaching from her back side, and going weak in the knees.
This morphed into Theseus being challenged by himself, by his own subconscious, and his feelings about matriarchal power, another theme that emerges in discussions of the Minotaur that I have read. Think about doing something, anything, and knowing that each thing has some part which makes it dangerous, something unexpected, like the string, which is a thing we carry within ourselves. We may be the most dangerous part of anything we try to do.
In an active life, we are constantly challenged by the decision to turn left, or right. We live, in that sense, within the contours of a labyrinth.
We decided I would work near the pool, where guests could see what I was doing, and talk to me about it if they felt like it. The Tharroe maintenance people constructed a roofed over area at one end of the pool, and a platform in cement on which the statue would be placed.
I started the piece in February, going up to the La Cappella, or, the chapel, quarry, and choosing a piece of dark grey Bardiglio. As I worked it, I heard that as I chipped it, a crystal ringing came out of the stone, much like a chapel bell. Perhaps this was the reason why the quarry had been called the chapel, and not because of any nearby churches as I had always believed.

As luck would have it, the quarry was closed just after I got the block out, as some townspeople below had complained about the risk of an avalanche. So now I had seven tons of something that you just couldn’t get any more. I had the bottom cut smooth and flat at a saw mill, and removed the top just above the statue by drilling holes through it and using stone splitting wedges. I wasn’t about to waste any. I worked six days a week straight for three months, and when I saw that it was down to two tons and far enough along that I could do the rest without using power tools, I arranged the shipment to Mykonos.
Once there, I had the piece unloaded as far up the hill alongside the hotel as the crane’s reach would allow. The pool is behind the building, and getting there was over rough ground. Laying fourteen foot beams down as a sort of railway, with log rollers we were able to go over rocks, gullies, and up the incline using a chain hoist and three men.
And past the tomb. Tharroe, the Mycenaean queen who had given her name to the hotel, had been buried here nearly four thousand years before. The tomb is in surprisingly good shape, a sort of large underground igloo made only of dry stone wall, rocks that had been found and not shaped. When the hotel was to be constructed, the tomb was discovered during the groundbreaking, and the owners called the cultural authorities and moved the site of the building significantly so as not to disturb it.
Today I find myself with just the stone wall behind the statue between me and the tomb. The sculpture and me are the same distance from the edge of the igloo as the center section is, where the grave was. The figure looks, in its setting, alarmingly like an idol in a pagan temple. When I started to research the origins of the Minotaur in Crete, I found out that it had its roots in more ancient cultures, like those of the Phoenicians, and the Carthaginians. These cultures may or may not have practiced child sacrifice, but the figure that blood was given to was a ‘golden calf’ as mentioned in the Bible. There is also a relationship with figures coming from other cultures, such as Baal and Moloch. The Egyptians have some human figures with animal heads, most notably birds of prey, but also bulls. In their culture these sometimes represent the Sun god. Crete traded with all three of these populations, and never had a war with anyone until after their decline. The final crushing blow came when the volcano that today is Santorini erupted, sending a tsunami wave four hundred fifty feet high against the shores of Crete, and wiping its culture out. We saw what happened with a thirty foot wave.
I am in no way superstitious, but during the past few weeks, am often struck by the thought that this theme may not have been just my own doing. Maybe this ancient queen from a culture with no written language that we know of had some influence? They say that the ancients were in touch with timeless powers we no longer have access to. I have seen first hand how animals know about earthquakes and tornados before they happen, and can’t help but compare that to how we’re no longer able to do much anything without technical and electronic aid, and despite that still do not know the way they do in advance. I suppose that if I don’t die minutes after completing this piece, then I can rest easy for a while longer.
Carving this sculpture with so many stories intertwining, while gazing at the Greek islands and the sea from a perch so high above everything, is a sensation that inspires me. I don’t have any plans for this piece, I have no idea who I’m going to sell it to, or if I even can sell it. That a hotel gave me the opportunity to do what I’m doing, using their pool area as if it were my own studio, is remarkable, and sets the Tharroe of Mykonos apart from any hotel I’ve ever been in. It truly is exceptional, in every sense of the word, because the passion of the owners overpowers what might be called good sense. Passion is that special something that makes everything possible. And in being passionate about the carving, the polishing, and the detailing, forgetting about everything else if I can, perhaps I can make this piece as exceptional as the setting in which it was made.

Created by Andrew Wielawski On 07/18/08 At 01:07 PM