It's amazing to find these old paintings and how they 'work' as sidebars, or backgrounds, or navigation buttons, or whatevers, for my new Art & Writings Website.
This one will (yes, yes, a self-portrait from perhaps around 1989 in a large painting of about 5 self-portraits in varying guises as I attempted to re-find the painter within who had disappeared for a decade at that point). She 'oversees' a "Links" page.
And links to whose sites will I place there? Oh, this is so exciting!
trying a simpler version, wishing I could make this into a card (painting from 1989, photo of rose probably 2004, prosepoem & recording from 2006, put together in 2009)
recording of this poem
(or click the 'click to listen rose':)
Ah, Brenda. You never cease to amaze me. I´ve partially completed a series of pre-Sim stories that tell stories, paint vignettes, whisper at the loneliness behind people´s chosen icons in the sim worlds on Web 2.0 (I completed 11 so far, think Edward Arlington Robinson, but then put this project aside for the nonce to finish M.C. Escher & The Alhambra. I would LOVE to use this angel figure when I post a few on Gather and in pre-Sim blog (with the accompanying explanation you give of your prescient inspiration ), as well as perhaps your luminously numinous Whorls Of Angels. If you agree, I´d like to do this collaboration, I´d like to post our work together in both places in July, which gives me enough time to revise at least five of the rough drafts of this poem series.
ReplyDeleteNow, as to Whorls of Angels. What I love the most is the way this consistent, radiant voice is intensely sympathetic and inviting from the very first to the reader, conjoining him or her as a secret sharer to enter into a pact of the sacred, while at the same time authentically admitting her contradiction: She is earthbound, temporally local and as such a force and causality in and of herself, even as she redistributes presence digitally in the n-spaces available through the Web´s dispersion of her sacred energies by those who pick up and link to this poem. She is everywhere and nowhere, ¨here, but you cannot see me,¨ both archival in serving as the repository for projected prayer and fleeting as the next dynamic hyperlink to the next dynamic web page.
A fabulous visioning, worthy of Borges, Calvino, Pamhuk & Pynchon. But you do it in poetry, with the simplicity and clarity of a Mary Oliver or Alejandro Jodorowsky. I adore the tension in the paradox between sacred and mundane you´ve established and just as quickly dispelled in this mirroring invocation. You´ve managed to stay sincere in this first person voice, inter-subjective and glowingly affable, and yet use the other, mon lector, with the irony of the awareness of the problem of other minds, an extremely difficult feat. This is where pre-Simulationism takes flight from postmodernism; we no longer need to stay solipsistic in our self-referential framing, but invite our readers to share the shrine. You have created a myth at the same time you de-mystify the process of remaining true to the Sacred.
Bravo, bella Brenda!
Text and image go wonderfully together. I look at the angel, and become her acolyte, resonating from my erotic core a holy desire.
Please post a link to this work in a mini-article on the Gather pre-Simulationist site as well as on the pre-Simulationist ning social network. I will comment on both and feature it on both sites to draw more comments here to your Rubies In Crystal blogsite.
ReplyDeleteOf course, John. I'd be more than honoured.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you like the piece as it is - now composed of art and prosepoetry from different years.
And yes, the way we 'appear' to each other through the digital medium of the Internet... only you say it much better than I.
Thank you for your kind and generous comments. xo
this is ever so beautiful, brenda, and what an amazing idea! i looked at john's comments and yes, the sincerity of your work brims over in ever blog post, poem, and every painting.
ReplyDeletei know what it means to lose one's art for a spell... i did not write many poems, maybe two or three per year, as i worked through the despair of becoming ill, of figuring out how my brain would work with this onslaught of drugs that separate me from the deep pain i feel throughout my body but also sometimes separate me from cohesive thought. my brain used to have such fire! i could rattle off a poem a day with the best of them.
i needed two things: inspiration and discipline. the inspiration came when i met john walter and ed nudelman on gather. the discipline came when i realized that it was not just a matter of a drug-addled brain but of simply putting pen to paper, or as i have discovered in the last year, fingers to keyboard. and what a relief that all was! and a bliss that i will not take away from myself again... the universe will have to do that, but i'm ready for anything now (ha ha ha!). :>>))
i love the idea of these paintings as little icons and buttons and sidebars! i will be posting my artwork on pre-sim soon––i used to have jpegs of them all but accidently threw them all out last year, one giant folder! aaaargh! ron is slowly photographing them again for me and i'm dying to share them with the presim community! i don't have the skills of a brenda clews, ludolf, stirling or toomas, but i hope my artwork––painting and decoupage––is sincere... i'll be anxious to hear what you think of it when it's up, as i respect your art so much.
all love this memorial day, bren. perhaps we can be remembering our old selves as well, the many girls and women and human beings we have been. xooxoxox ~lt
verif. word=ingsm. a cliché form of the present participle? :>>))
Inspiration is a mystery, Laura. We know what's evoked it in the past. We try to maintain that state of synergy to be open to the art-producing aspects of ourselves. It's a delicate balance, though. A major illness, a huge disappointment, the loss of a loved one, all these can shake the porous equilibrium we cultivate for our art. Sometimes we sink. We have to re-evaluate, re-find our way back to a new and integrated way of being a vehicle for the flow of creative forces. I do agree that simply putting in the hours goes a long way. That discipline is important. But so is an openness to what is, the reality of our lives, to allowing ourselves to be vague and formless as new reflections on the world begin shaping in us, in writing, or paint, or musical notation. Discipline, yes, but not to forget always to risk.
ReplyDeletewhat you say is true, and actually i think that is what i mean by discipline although i didn't go into a lengthy or very good explanation. of course, to sink for a few years certainly provides fodder!
ReplyDeletewhen i put pen to paper, it's with the element of risk because i don't expect a masterpiece. what i want is to put down feelings, to just see what comes, and some of that work will just very raw... so the writing itself becomes risk and process. does that make sense? sure, i can lie around and just dream about it––and believe me i do a lot of that, i'm in too much pain to do anything else––but i can also allow the writing to be a process of dreaming. like you, i think, i write quite automatically, it comes fairly easily, so that's not real risk. i think i understand what you are saying... what is the risk is to allow myself to feel. and when something in the writing yelps out at me "potential here!" that's when the real work begins. xoxoxoxoxo