Supporting the Artist

Hello,

This is a rare direst communication and ask to my followers on this blog, rather than the usual essays or poems or photos. I rarely speak to you directly, except in comments, so this is a bit new to me, too.

I have started a Patreon site, which is intended to help me make a living as a creative artist.

Below, I will post the text of a long email, with updates, that I have sent out to family and friends. I have a favor to ask, which is detailed in the email, but which I will summarize briefly, first.

Basically, going forward it looks as if my best recourse in life is to pursue my arts career full-time, in which case I need patronage and support. Now that I am disabled, it's hard for me to do anything else, like hold down a regular job, but I do need to earn some level of income, and the best way to do that is to ask for help, and in return make everything I do creatively available to my patrons. They see what I am doing first, and they get first crack at what I have created, be in photographs, music, a new typeface (I have made three in the past year!), and so on.

The favor I want to ask is in two parts:

1. Please visit my Patreon site, read the introductory text I wrote about all this, or watch the video I made to introduce myself. If you would like to support me as an artist, in whatever small capacity, please do. No amount is too small, and every bit helps enormously.

Link to my Patreon site:
https://www.patreon.com/ArthurDurkee

2. Please pass on the news to your own friends and email contacts, especially those you think might be interested. To do that, you can cut and paste the email text below into your own email, and send it off. Or if you just wish to pass along the Patreon site and other links, please do that.

Thank you!

I am in the process of moving my creative activities, including the kinds of posts I have done on this blog for the past several years, onto my Patreon site, and making it into my new blog. I post a Public post at least once a week, which the whole world can see. The rest of my posts are for patrons only. But my lowest threshold of support is only US $2, so if you really want to keep following me, there's a very inexpensive way to do it.

Thank you again. Sincerely Yours,

Arthur

Email text is below.

Here are the links, also in the email below, relevant to this occasion. More will be added later.

Link to my Patreon site:
https://www.patreon.com/ArthurDurkee

Link to my Redbubble online store:
https://www.redbubble.com/people/arthurdurkeeart?asc=u

Link to the GoFundMe set up to help me replace the gear stolen from my van in Palm Springs, last March:
https://www.gofundme.com/replacingstolenmusicgear

•

Dear Family, Friends, and Supporters—

I am contacting many of you on my email list with an update and some important arts-career-related news. Later on, I am going to ask a favor.

First, an update:

I am for this summer living in the Ann Arbor, MI, area, for now, where I will have a roof over my head, and thus can get a lot of work done in a settled place—I can set up my recording studio and work on the two albums of music I have been thinking about for awhile; I can paint; I can write; I have a base from which to roam, go camping, do road trips, and bring back more new photos and ideas to work on.

Ann Arbor, MI, many of you know, is the closest thing to a home town that this nomad has. It's a little strange being back in Michigan, this summer—much remains the same, much has changed. I will be based here in Michigan for the summer, during which time I will be doing some camping excursions, a music seminar in July at Interlochen Arts Academy in northern Michigan, and more. I will also be driving to Wisconsin periodically, to continue to sort through what I have left in my storage lockers there. As for where I will be past this summer, I haven't planned that far ahead. I have options, including heading back to the Southwest and California for the winter. All that will depend on where I find a place to stay.

This past winter I spent mostly in New Mexico and California. I was very happy to stay with my bestie Becca and her Mr. Man in Paso Robles, CA. Because, you know, wine country! After that, I was in Palm Springs for several months; or rather, in and around PS, as I never found an actual place to live. Some things happened that were wonderful, like having an opportunity to sing with Modern Men, the Coachella Valley Men's Chorus, which led to a very fun concert experience singing choral jazz arrangements from the American Songbook. I made many new friends, and renewed some existing friendships in the LGBT chorus movement. I knew that the Palm Springs area was a retirement community; I did not know that it was such a huge gay chorus retirement community!

Some less-than-great things happened during my stay in Palm Springs, too, all of which I survived, learned from, and which I have now moved past. My van was broken into, and music gear and my cameras were stolen. I am currently raising funds to replace my stolen microphones, while some friends and donors have already helped me replace the cameras and other gear. (I include links to my GoFundMe campaign and my other online arts activities below.)

I learned how to live fairly comfortably in a tent and a van. My friend Al helped build me a solar power rig, which is portable and which I can use to power my laptops and mobile devices wherever I am camped; it works very well, and allows me to do my creative work well into the evening, even while living far off the grid. I now have a Disabled Access pass for the National Parks, which means I get into the National Parks free for the rest of my life, and also gives me a 50 percent discount for camping. I also now have the same sort of access card for the California State Parks, which discounts 50 percent off all fees.

All of that is going to be VERY useful. Traveling and camping out West becomes a LOT cheaper. I feel at home in the National Parks; they are a huge source of inspiration to me, and also a place where I feel at home, and alive, and safe. I am probably meant to remain semi-nomadic, at this time of my life, so I hope to travel safely for as long as health permits. The "snowbird" pattern of spending winters in warmer climes appeals to me.

During my time in the Palm Springs area, I learned that asking for help leads to help being given, in large ways and in small. People stepped forward to help me after the van was broken into; others in Modern Men helped me enormously with attire for the concerts; still others found music-recording gigs for which I earned a little money. Being my Mother's son, asking for help, when you need it, is kind of a new concept for me; but I am getting a lot of practice. I am no longer ashamed to ask for what I need, and no longer afraid of getting a "No" in response. All you an do is ask; people help you if they can; even if they can't help you in tangible ways, the moral support is also wonderful.

To that end, I have created a Patreon artistic patronage website.

Patreon is a patronage paradigm: people support creative artists whose work they like directly, via donation, rather than going through a record company or a publisher as distributors. All kinds of creative work appears on Patreon, from music to comic books to the genuinely unclassifiable. I support a few artists myself, in my own small way, including Amanda Palmer, whose TED talk and book "The Art of Asking" inspired me to do this, along with some friends who recommended Patreon to me directly.

Patreon.com makes it easier for artists to connect with their audience, no matter how specific or tiny their niche is. I currently have a dozen patrons who directly support my art-making. Part of the agreement between artists and patrons is that patrons get first access to the work I am doing, and special treats that no one else gets. That is described in more detail on my Patreon page.

So here is the favor I want to ask, in two parts:

1. Please visit my Patreon site, and look it over. There is an introductory video I made that introduces the concept, and gives some of the background; there is also a text description. (I filmed the video at one of my favorite locations for photography in Joshua Tree National Park.) Please consider becoming a patron of mine, for as little as $2 per month, or for whatever higher value you think the work is worth. I assure you, every bit goes a very long way.

You can look my Patreon site over at this URL address:

https://www.patreon.com/ArthurDurkee

2. Please pass this email along to your own email circle of friends, especially those you believe might be interested in supporting the arts, so that they too can look it over. Please help me spread the word! I would be very grateful.

The good people at Patreon say again and again that the way this works is to spread the news far and wide, and see what happens. I just need a few more people to be fans—fans of the art I make, and the music, and video work, and type design, and all the various art forms I practice, many of which have already started to earn me some income. I have several friends around the world, who are musicians and artists, who are somehow making it work, via means similar to Patreon, and via their constant presence online. You have to let people know what you are doing—so I am! Even if you can't support me as an artist, please do support me in passing the word along about what I am doing.

That's it. That's all I am asking for.

This is my best shot at rebuilding my life, after long illness and recovery, and several years that were hard to get through. And here I am, still going. I am doing better, I am feeling better, I have restarted my life after that long illness, and I feel positive about it. My mind can still get fogged over by lingering after-effects of the chronic illness I survived; yet even on my worst days, I make art. It's what I do.

I anticipate that, going forward, making art will be more and more what I do. It's what I am best at doing. Perhaps it was what I was meant to do all along, and in some ways it's the only thing I am very good at doing. It is as fundamental to my being as breathing.

So, if you are able to help me, in any way, to continue to do my creative work, and to grow and evolve as an artist and human being, please do.

Thank you reading this very long email.

Thank you for being my friends, and fans, and supporters. (I know that for some of you this update is not fresh news, as you are already my Patreon supporters. Thank you for your additional patience.)

Thank you for being my family, both family of origin and family of choice, in every way that matters.

Thank you to each and every one of you who has helped me get through the past few years, to finally emerge on the other side, and start over, and build a new life as a professional creative artist. Thank you!

Please look over my Patreon site, and let me know what you think. And please pass it on. I am also researching means to sell my original photography and visual art online, and also my original typeface designs. I hope to have more news about that soon.

Thank you very sincerely, and with much love and gratitude—

Arthur Durkee
www.arthurdurkeemusic.com
www.arthurdurkeephoto.com
www.arthurdurkee.net
artdurkee.blogspot.com

Link to the GoFundMe set up to help me replace the gear stolen from my van in Palm Springs:
https://www.gofundme.com/replacingstolenmusicgear

Link to my Patreon site:
https://www.patreon.com/ArthurDurkee

Link to my Redbubble online store:
https://www.redbubble.com/people/arthurdurkeeart?asc=u<>BR>

Why Do You Write the Way You Write?

Lots of writers ask me why I write the way I do. Especially poets. There is an assumption behind the question: that writing is an act of will, or of self-expression, or of conscious activity. I dispute this assumption.

Why do I write the way I do? Because when I listen to the trees, the wind, the waters, the sky, the trees, the dancing fire pit, that's what I hear. I listen. I pay attention, and what I write is what I experience, and is my response to that experience.

I learned that from Matsuo Basho, the haiku master. I also learned that from Pauline Oliveros and John Cage and Morton Feldman, who each in their own way created musical situations in which listening was paramount. Oliveros took this to the point of almost sacred intensity. Interaction with the environment, by listening and responding, is central. Oliveros called it deep listening. Cage called it paying attention to the sounds of the environment. Feldman called it forth by playing his music always very softly.

I feel like the assumption behind the question, why do I write the way I do, is ultimately about ego. It's about wanting to fit a key into a lock and have a pat explanation. I feel like it's about control, in the end. In the days of social media, it's hard not to feel like it's also about narcissism, and self-empowerment, and self-expression, and emotional process work, and placing the individual personality foremost in the field of being.

This unspoken assumption about why writers write, perhaps especially poets, also leads me to be often asked about my writing habits. We have two generations of poetry workshops and MFA writing programs, now, which if you've been paying attention has led to an over-emphasis on craft. Why? Because you can't teach anything but craft; you can't teach heart, the writer has to have that, or develop that, on their own. When people ask me about my writing habits, I am alert to their quick judgments about how my habits differ from their own. According to one poet I knew, I have no discipline, because I write when listening calls me to write, not for an hour or two every morning, like a newspaper opinion editor. I don't write every day. I write when what I hear calls me to write; which takes me back to deep listening.

All of this puts me in a secondary stream to what poetry publishing is now. It puts me in a lineage of meditator-poets, nature-engagin artists, listening composers, writers whose work is based on observation and listening rather than milling their personal biographies for grist. Maybe that's why I rarely get published in the mainstream. There's not enough "I" in my poems, perhaps. I do not claim to be a great poet, or even a good one; but I *know* that some rejections from some quarters are due to the unfashionability of the way I write. Which is another assumption behind the question, that I also dispute.

Well, some of that is indeed about finding your niche, fitting a key into another lock. But some of that is not: it's about making an egoless art, rather than an art that projects personality-ego.

Egoless art is VERY unfashionable lately. Don't kid yourself into thinking that art isn't subject to fashions.

I don't know where my poems fit in; honestly, I haven't been trying very hard to find or create a niche. It is, or it is not. I do feel deeply connected to a lineage of writers, though; not just influences but kindred spirits. I certainly have the same small amount of ambition and ego as any artist, in wanting my work to be heard, seen, read by others. Another favorite poet of listening and response, Odysseas Elytis, once said, "Every poet needs an audience of three, and since every poet has two good friends, the search is for that elusive third." The poetry written the way I write has always had the two, and is always searching for the third. So, there is a stream of this kind of poetry, and there are many who do it. Perhaps they are content to be far outside the mainstream, and just keep listening.

Gratitudes 2016

Gratitudes 2016

Every year I write Gratitudes instead of New Year's Resolution. This has been my practice for a number of years. I am going to start working on that. After the past actually fairly challenging year, and looking forward to having to redo all the civil rights and social justice progress we've made over the past fifty years, I'm honestly not sure where to start. I usually start small.

To be clear, I'm announcing intent, not completion. I will have to start somewhere, And I will start where and when I can.

•

I am struggling a bit with Gratitudes this morning. I am also feeling somewhat emotionally fragile this morning, after having felt more resilient these past few days.

Some of this, no doubt, is that now that the Festival of Being Grateful at the Feast has been accomplished, and it was a good one, now we must face the prospect of continuing to be grateful when not at a feast. But that's when it counts even more. Anyone can be grateful at the feast; gratitude goes deeper when there's apparently less to be grateful for.

Some of this, also, is that one has had a few days of joy and celebration in each others' company, and is very grateful for that, and now one must turn to face the unsolved problems and unaddressed fears that still hover in the corners of the room, that will not go away, because the world has become a Scarier Place overnight. One has had the days of horror, followed by some healthy days of forgetting about the horror and focusing on the joy and friends who share and co-create the joy, and now one has to get back to work.

What I will NOT be doing today is Retail Madness. I have clean-up to help with, leftovers to enjoy, and people to spend the day Doing Nothing with. I do not plan to subject my still-raw nerves in any way to the annual Consumer Madness Blow-Out (that phrase bigger typeface and lots of exclamation points) that seems to possess people. But then, we live in the culture of the Religion of Money, no matter what lip service is given to other religions, cults, sects, and belief-systems.

I cannot help but remember what the second Bush Presidency said needed to happen after 9/11: You people need to go out and do your patriotic duty and spend lots of money on things you don't need, to help boost the economy back into health, and revive the American spirit. Linking consumption and nationalism is one of the earmarks of fascism. (I said that in 2001, and nobody wanted to hear it.)

Well, huge sales on Black Friday only make sense if you actually have money to spend on things you don't really need. You might want them, and that's fine, but needing them is another story. (To be fair, I have a few close friends, most of them tech people, who do take advantage of the HUUUUGE SAAAALES to get tech stuff they actually DO need. That's just clever, creative timing about shopping, as opposed to consumerism per se.) And still, you have to have to disposable income to get things you need, even on sale. This year, as with last year, I must lay low.

Am I grateful for any of that? I am grateful that I still have some choices in life, including choices about what not to engage in. I am fearful of the times changing in such a way that choices continue to be legislated away from me (which if you want to be fair has been happening my entire lifetime; but I don't want to be fair about that), making me life harder rather than easier, creating more chaos at a time in my life when I can barely summon the strength to cope with existing chaos. I could list those fears, I've certainly thought them through in detail, and right now I don't want to.

Can I find something to be grateful for, in the current political climate of the public ascendancy of the rhetoric of hate and selfishness? That's a challenge. I suppose I can find something in the spinning coin in which Hope is on one side of the coin and Despair is on the other: hope seen in many people rallying together to fight for their rights and refusing to normalize fascism; despair in that those civil rights we spent the last two generations fighting to acquire will now have to be fought for all over again. That's the true dynamic with Hope/Despair (I am amazed that this isn't so bloody obvious to more people than it seems to be): it is the Tao, always spinning, the seed of the light born out of the darkness, the seed of the darkness always born out of the light. The Balance is the dynamic that keeps it spinning, which is good, because if it ever comes to rest permanently on one side, well, that's when things *really* fall apart.

I am grateful that I had a terrific Day of Feasting and Giving Thanks. (Spare me the postmodern cynical undercutting of that with whatever complaining you were thinking of replying with.) (You see: the spinning coin.) Thank you.

I am grateful that I don't have to do much today, the day after, either. Thank you.

I am grateful of who I am spending these days with, and where, and why, and for being provided with a haven in which I am free to spend my energy this morning on introspection rather than struggling to survive.

I am grateful that I don't have to struggle to just survive, this morning, this week, next week. Thank you.

I am grateful that I have the opportunity to spend my limited energy, this week, on creativity, on activism, rather than on struggling to survive. Thank you.

I am grateful that I do have friends who care, and are able to help me out when I really need it, even in small ways. I have needed so much support, and it has sometimes made me desperate (the fearful Despair side of the coin), and therefore not easy to be around. I acknowledge that.

I am grateful that I have learned to swallow my pride, and just fucking Ask For Help. I am still learning how to do that elegantly rather than desperately (thanks in part to the mentoring of Amanda Fucking Palmer); my apologies for when I have failed on that front.

I will continue to need support, going forward, and I worry sometimes about continuing to ask for help, because I DO know that everyone else needs help, too. I give it where I can, and pay it forward where I cannot. I will always be grateful, even when the clawed and scratchy-voiced thoughts dominate me that try to tell me that I am not worthy, and it is an uphill battle to remember that I AM.

I am grateful for neediness. Because I need to be needed, as much as I need to be supported. I need, like breathing, to be useful. John Cage spoke many times about how being useful is one of the most important values, underlying so many other definitions of what it means to be a "good" person. "Good" means nothing, because that is usually a Tribal morality concept in practice. "Useful" transcends good, if you just think about it for a minute.

I am grateful for opportunities to be of use. Even when I am feeling scared and desperate, and am bargaining for my survival, that does not negate that I am being of use to someone, even if seems like a barter or trade. Being useful helps me fight against the clawed and scratchy-voiced thoughts about being unworthy.

I'm very grateful that my multimedia installation in a corn crib at Silverwood County Park, titled "The Temple of Deep Time," created in 2014, was one of two installations extended far beyond the original time frame of the original project. I spent some time this past summer on maintenance and improvements, and am glad to see it go forward. Thank you.

In many ways, the past year or so has been, well, horrible. It's the art-making, the music, the art installations, that have kept me going. Sometimes the creative work is the only thing that keeps me going, so I'm very grateful to have had it. To keep going, I need to do even more. Thank you.

I'm very grateful that I've been offered so many opportunities in the past year or so and been asked to create location-specific landscape art and multimedia art. It's been fulfilling to be able to create, and I've been honored to be given so many opportunities. Thank you.

You want to know to practice Gratitudes?
What is the one thing you most hate doing?
Go do that.
And be grateful.

I am grateful for all of the people who have given me places to stay, this past year and a half of homelessness. Just having minimal security frees up so much of my energy otherwise spent on just surviving. If I have days and weeks when I don't want to go on, a lot of that is because I've been spending ALL of my energy on merely surviving, and none of it on anything that moves me forward, or feeds me creatively and spiritually (those are intertwined), and Despair looks like an endless tunnel of merely struggling to survive, with no point to it. (FUCK nihilism. FUCK you.)

I am grateful, therefore, that I have had a morning hour of science and solitude, to be able to hear these thoughts as they percolate up through the cracked and bubbling dolomitic bedrock of my recent experience. I am still catching up on being able to have this morning silence and solitude, which for me is as necessary as breathing, as necessary as host times out in the desert when I can Just. Stop. and listen to the stillness. This is my therapy. This is what keeps me sane.

I am grateful, also, therefore, to have access for now to a working kitchen that I don't have to set up, tear down, move, and spend all my energy on just making it work. Food security is a major relief. Food security is something you take for granted till you don't have it; just like being homeless.

I am grateful. Oh, I am still fearful. I am still fighting dire Despair, and depression. And I am grateful to have had even a few days when I had the strength TO fight, leftover from everything else I have to deal with.

Let's make this an Arts & Crafts Day.

What I'm For, or How To Discover Your Purpose In Life By Failing At Everything Else

When I was young, I wanted to grow up to be a scientist.

I spent several years on that, training in the sciences, especially the earth sciences. I pursued that goal all the way to college level classes in geology and chemistry. What stopped me was math studies. I placed in advanced math till the eighth grade, and then I got stuck. Later in life, my Mom said it was because of the math teacher. She had seen it at the time, but had not been able to change it, or talk to me about it; she thought there were psychological problems in play. I had really liked my math teacher at the time, for example he liked to play Beethoven's Sixth Symphony during class while we worked, but he did somehow derail my confidence in my math studies.

I'm not really sure how that happened. I only remember that after 8th grade math, I felt stupid rather than smart in math studies. I had little confidence in my own ability. When it came to college entry exams, I scored nearly perfectly in Language Arts, and only at 50 percent in Math on the SATs. This was after scoring in the top 1 percent in every test battery taken throughout my school years. I still somehow scored in the top 5 percent overall for college entry exams, and placed out of both English and Foreign Language requirements, by getting top marks in Advanced Placement classes for both. But not for math.

I was a gifted child who didn't want to be one. I was one of those child prodigies. But I was bullied for being smart, for being a teacher's pet, for being different. I wanted nothing more than to fit in, to be liked, to be accepted. Well, that never happened. I continued in the sciences, till college, and loved doing geology in the field, partly because I loved being outdoors, and then I realized something.

I wasn't meant to be a scientist.

Well, I was, and none of that work was wasted, but there was a thing in me that could never be suppressed or ignored or set aside. It just wasn't possible. It was too powerful to ignore. It's too much more of what I was, and supposed to be.

I wanted to be a scientist. But I was supposed to be a Maker.

I was born to make art. I'm a natural creative. It's the thing I do best. (Really. I can barely handle mundane tasks like managing money, by contrast.)

It took me a very long time to accept that I'm supposed to an artist, a composer, a worker, a person who makes things. New things. A MAker

I say this with neither pride nor humility. I am neither egotistical about it, or falsely humble about it. It's just a fact. Making things is what I do best.

It's really the only thing I'm any good at. I've tried a lot of other career paths in life, and mostly failed at them. I'm looking at a future of failure again, every time I try to fit in, or be accepted, or be like other people. Fitting in never worked in school, when I was being bullied, and it still never seems to work in my adult life. I seem to fated to always be "other." Again, that's just data, not ego.

In mid-college I changed majors from science to the arts. I switched from geology to music, and transferred to the Music School. Almost everyone tried to talk me out of it, including the Dean of the Music School. But the fact is, I had been playing music since I was 5 or 6 years old, singing as a boy soprano soloist. I began piano studies at age 7. (That was inevitable, as Mom was a concert pianist and music educator. Both my sister and I studied piano. I think it made us better thinkers overall, as later education studies seem to suggest.) Everyone wanted me to continue in science, get a good job, and continue to be an amateur musician. But I couldn't do it. In fact, I had been composing music, and had even had a few pieces played, since I was a young boy. I had won awards for short story fiction by age 16. I had gotten interested in photography at a young age, and got better with every year. Even when I was out studying geology in the field, all summer long in Wyoming, my very first college class, when I returned home I had already taken so many photos in the mountains that people started to notice them. I was a gifted child, and stood out, even though a lot of the time I just wanted to disappear.

After music school, my first job after graduation was ironically with Mathematical Reviews, a monthly review journal, where I got in on the ground floor of the desktop publishing revolution, and became a computer graphics expert, a digital type designer, and more. Working in corporate graphic design jobs was creative enough to be fulfilling for me, and I did it for many years, but it still wasn't enough. A book design company, one of the best places I ever worked for, allowed me to use their gear to teach myself Photoshop, and become even more of an expert. I also started to win awards for photography and digital art. I worked there till they corporately downsized. The book publishing business collapsed starting in 2000, and has radically changed since then. Nonetheless, I still have all those skills.

And corporate employment just never seems to work. I can never seem to make it work. It's like it's prevented. And then my life changed due to chronic illness. I suspect those corporate doors may be forever closed to me now.

So I've got no choice, now, but to go forward with no hope of success but with my only choice being to be what I am, a Maker. I make stuff. It's all I'm any good at. I don't know if it will be enough to sustain me. I guess it's time to do what I'm good at, and forget about the rest.

It's pretty scary, because I've developed trust issues. Really big ones. I guess the only thing I actually trust anymore is Making, in which I never seem to doubt myself, and in which I always have full self-confidence in my ability and need to make things.

I make art of some kind every day. (Well, some really bad days I can't. But that's a symptom of a dark day. I hate it, but I try to get past it.) Even if everything else falls apart, that's still true. ON good days I make things, on bad days I make things, I just make things. I guess that's how to tell that's what you're for: it's the thing that you never stop doing, even when all the rest has been taken away. So that's what you do. That's what you're for.

And that's all I can do. It's all that's left. Wish me luck.

Fantasy LP Covers

Fantasy LP covers made from my own artwork and photography, and used to both appear in gallery shows, and to promote my own music. Some of these have been printed as 12x12 prints and attached to vintage LP record sleeves found in thrift stores. A couple have been displayed in gallery show openings. At least one was used to promote a new song I have written. Which also gives me the idea to finally record and release an album of my own songs. I'll get around to that soon, I hope, life willing.







This next group of LP covers was made for the opening of a showing of my photographs of Silverwood County Park:

Are you an Artist or a Maker?

I tend to think of myself as a "maker," because "artist" carries a lot of baggage around what people assume an "artist" to be. This is as true for artists as for non-artists.

(Point of order: Not everyone makes "art" or "fine art," or even "arts and crafts," but everyone has creativity as their human birthright. We are all creative in little ways, and in other ways, even if we do not "make art.")

Although I can call myself an Artist, because I have made "fine art" that has hung in galleries and walls in homes, and I do practice several artforms and art skillsets that are recognized as being "fine art," including music composition, poetry, painting, photography, multimedia, and so on, I tend to prefer to use "Maker" because it's a more neutral term. I make stuff. Some of it is art, some of it is just stuff that a creator makes, or a gadget engineer, or an artist making a sketch.

A lot of the baggage that "Artist" carries is cultural stereotypes and hoary romanticized clichés: you have to suffer for your art; artists are lonely, tortured souls who alone in starving squalor; artists are inherently disorganized and incapable of managing their lives; artists are depressed or suicidal drunks; and so on. Note how many clichés about artists are negative rather than positive: that's the cultural narrative since the early Romantic poets, and it's a narrative that's never been more than 25 percent true. For one thing, if artists really were that tortured and depressed all the time, they'd never actually have the energy to make their art.

Even the associated cultural narrative of "the artist's heroic struggle against the world dragging you down, to produce your masterpiece" is more myth than fact; because even artists like myself, who work more from intuition rather than intellect, still make art as a daily prctice, as a mode or way of being. Part of making things is just to make them, every day, as an ordinary activity. Like going to do your job.

For me, making art is a very positive thing, not a negative thing. It's not work I have to force myself to do, or fight to achieve. Making art is as necessary, and as easy, as breathing. It's not a heroic struggle, not even when I'm struggling against physical ailment or depression. You can view making art as therapeutically balancing or expressing life's many problems (glass half empty), or you can view it as transcending and overcoming life's many problems (glass half full). The truth is, making art is what you do, whether you're having a bad month or a good one; you just keep making art, no matter what. It can be your everyday salvation, it can give you reason to go on living, it can be the routine, the one constant in your life while everything else is falling apart.

Ironically, even though there are many "positive thinkers" out there who probably think I'm negativity personified (probably because I reject their simplistic aphorisms in favor of more nuanced and realistic overviews), in truth I'm very optimistic and positive about the benefits of expanding creativity in one's life to the utmost. I do think it's good that we all make art of some kind, even if no one but you ever sees it or knows you do it. The purpose of making a painting isn't to become a famous painter, it's just to make a painting; fame is often quite accidental, and capricious. And fickle. I make a lot of sketches and other little things that no one ever sees; they're not good enough to share, period. (The only reason you'll ever see early drafts or sketch versions is because I'm interested in the creative process for its own sake, and I sometimes like to examine a piece from inception to completion to see what happens during the process.)

For my recent art installation, "The Temple of Deep Time" (one of ten corn crib installations at Silverwood County Park), I had an overall conception, an early and immediate vision that I had when I first visited Silverwood, and saw the spiral tree rounds and the corn cribs there, and the end result was in fact very close to the original vision, and written proposal. And in order to get to completion, I had to use almost all of my skills as a creative person (the use of combinations of which is the very definition of "multimedia"), including: graphic design, computer work, photography, drawing, carpentry, math skills, a little bit of programming (in collaboration), getting up on ladders and doing construction, weaving, lighting design, electrical wiring, laser and solar technology, research into weather and solar annual variations, music composition, recording studio production skills, illustration, typography, paper arts, woodworking, calligraphy, and more. Even with this list, I've probably left something out.

So all of that went into making this art installation. And I did it all in about six or seven weeks, from inception to completion. (With a few details added later.) and last night I spent several hours doing long-exposure night photography (which I have taught) and HD video, to document the night-time aspects of my art installation, The Temple of Deep Time. The piece is about time, in multiple ways, on several layers, from past to future. Every element and aspect of the piece is a meditation on time, in some way. That is why I included a laser light show, and a music playback system: music is a timebound art, it has duration, then it ends. Music is an artform you cannot experience without time. It's only appropriate that it both in or porters time-bound arts as part of its design, and also requires being documented over time, using time-shifting as well as time-bound technologies. I will at some point do a time-lapse video of the installation, as well.

To make this art installation I used many skills beyond those (assumed to be) reserved for fine art. In truth, I don't draw a strong distinction between making things and making art.

All of this is why Maker seems to suit what I do better than Artist. If we must have labels or titles or categories. Honestly, labels and categories are for theory, which serves to describe what has been made. But I don't think about any of this when I'm making. I just Make.

Queer Art Show in New York City

I was very pleased to participate in this Qweer Arts gallery show in New York City, that was put on by the gallery and RFD Magazine, in celebration of the magazine's new issue featuring lots and lots of great art. I have artwork in the magazine as well (look for Dragon), which is why I was invited to participate in the gallery show. I'm very glad for the opportunity, and very glad I was able to participate.

I sent six works of homoerotic photography and digital art for the gallery show. One work was purchased at the gallery opening, which is very exciting.

So I regard the RFD Magazine "Qweer Arts" show to be a big success. Six prints of my photo-based digital artwork were shown in a gallery in New York City, and one of them was sold! Adding these elements to my artist's resumé brings me a lot of joy.

Thank you.

This is the third gallery show that my work has been shown in, in 2013. I hope this might be viewed as a good omen of Things To Come.

Spiritual Art Juried Painting Exhibit 2013

I have four paintings, one of them a group of four smaller paintings that are a series or cluster, in this juried exhibit of "Spiritual Art."

I was encouraged to enter my paintings in this show by a friend, although I had hesitated at first. On one level, even though I did a lot of acrylic paintings in my youth, I hadn't put paint to canvas or paper for almost thirty years till I began painting again last year. So I am both a total beginner at painting, and a very experienced visual artist with years of design, composition, and photography under my belt. In the past I've won awards for my visionary visual artwork, and photography. So, I had mixed feelings.

The call for entries of this show of "Spiritual Art" left their definition of Spiritual very open to interpretation. Being that this is a fairly conservative small town region, I expected that they would receive many entries of frankly sentimental religious art—for example, pictures of angels, and of people praying in church. So I hesitated to be part of that.

Frankly, sentimental religious art makes me cringe. I mean no insult to any artist who paints that kind of art, and I mean no insult to anyone's belief system. The problem I have is not with religious subject matter, but with thoughtless sentimentality. There is so much imitation rather genuine in bad religious art. On the other hand, finding a piece of religious art fresh and filled with life is rare enough that it ought to be celebrated.

My own spiritual tradition lies far outside the mainstream of organized religious worship. The details don't matter, what matters is that the points of convergence I have with the organized religious tradition are all normative to the mystical threads of tradition and usually controversial to the mainstream. As for painting, if you want to see a genuinely glorious and praiseful depiction of Creation, I recommend you take in a van Gogh exhibition.

Painting for me has become a form of personal therapy. I mostly do it for my own needs, and not to illustrate or depict a theme or subject that I want to present to an audience. I use a lot of vibrant colors in my paintings, often in many built-up translucent layers that create depth and subtle lighting effects. Most of what I paint is very abstract. Since I've been doing brush calligraphy for a long time, I have made a few paintings based on that kind of brushwork, even an enso or two, painted rather than ink-brushed. I "follow the brush" when painting, and it is expressive for me, but I don't particularly feel like I am in any school or have any purpose. A lot of what comes out is big bold fields of abstract color, with sometimes just a hint of form that might be a hint of subject. I feel like what I am doing is closer to what Kandinsky originally described in his theories of expressive color, than any more recent school of painting. I know a lot of art history, and I don't want to be part of a school or -ism, I just want to paint. Less theory, more art.

Even though painting for me is a personal expression, mostly, what comes out is abstract enough that it's not a journal entry, or overly personal. People can look at these mostly-abstract paintings and read in whatever meaning they wish, that is their own and not mine. I've talked many times of what I call abstract realism, which is abstraction from nature, but also abstraction not divorced from the form that inspired it. In painting, for me, this might look like an abstract painting that for me evokes a memory of the aurora borealis; but I'm okay with another viewer finding something else in it, or just looking at it purely as abstraction. If they get some kind of emotional or aesthetic response from the painting, I feel it's succeeded.

With all this in mind, I also knew that anything I submitted to a "Spiritual Art" show would probably be quite far outside the box, different from other entries, and quite possibly beyond the pale. I did end up submitting four paintings to the juried show, with no expectation that any of them would get in. I deliberately chose paintings that broke convention, and are very much experimental. One of them is even a three-dimensional work, not a traditional painting. The joke is on me, because all four got in. So what do I know?

Here are thumbnails of the pieces I will have in this show, all of which were painted in 2013:


Void: Emergence


Earth and Sky II


Enso (Meditation in the Marketplace)

This depicts for me the classic saying from Zen meditation practice: "Anyone can meditate alone on a mountaintop. The real test of your meditation practice is when you return to the busy, noisy city, full of sound and lively action, and try to meditate in the marketplace there."


Paleo-Icons

A group from an ongoing series of paintings inspired by prehistoric cave art, petroglyphs, ancient civilizations, and the colors of the rocks and land where such art is to be found. The other source of inspiration here is Byzantine icons, with their formalized styles and color palettes. I'm really enjoying this series, and have done a few more since submitting this grouping to the show. The icons are all the same size, and can be displayed in several different ways.

Brief Notes about Making Art, and a Digression

In the form of visual memes. Then a digression.



Catharsis in the arts is underrated. Why do people play the blues, or punk rock, or industrial rock? Because it's cathartic. I've played in bands in all those genres, and more, and rehearsals and gigs were almost always cathartic. I was reminded about catharsis a few days ago, when a lot of bottled up emotion around the Christmas holiday season suddenly came spilling out, triggered by a moment of aesthetic beauty. I remembered that I hadn't been making art for the past few days, and had been tied up in knots with the stresses of the winter holiday season. And then I remembered about catharsis, and was forcefully reminded about how making art keeps me grounded, centered, focused, and literally alive. Catharsis is more than just a pressure-release valve, it's a change of being, even if only for a moment. Art gives catharsis to the audience as well as the artist. The aesthetic moment that triggered all this was a sequence in a favorite movie that always, always gets to me on a very deep level, triggers an emotional response, and leaves washed clean afterwards, the way a good weep does.

Too many new age and neo-pagan artists are so focused on the light, on growth and healing and reminders to "keep it positive," that they forget that Shiva is both Creator and Destroyer. Parvati must be given her due, but so must Kali.

Sometimes you just have to get the darkness out of you by putting it into your art. The Wrathful Deities must have their due.



Art needs to be discursive, digressive, and distracted. All the best art takes you away somewhere, creates a new reality for you to wade around in, be immersed in. Art is nonlinear and even irrational. And that is its strength, and as it should be. Because that is what imagination is. Imagination is anarchic, not rational. Making art must be a journey for the artist as well as the audience, a free exploration of undiscovered and unfamiliar trails.



Life is messy, so is art.

Making art requires improvisation and intuition and inspiration, and not being in control, and not knowing what you're doing, or where you're being led.

Life is an improvisation, a guessing game at times. So is making art. Fingerpainting as well as technical pens. Disorder and chaos as another condition of orderliness. Dionysus and Apollo both.

•



And a digression:

Why do I share some of my art online? I think of it as advertising. Marketing for my arts business, as well as for fun. And I usually share only bits and pieces, and not the actual piece at full size. For that, or a print, people need to visit my online store.

Why don't we respect our artists? Because we have been convinced that art is a hobby, or that we don't need it to survive. Wrong on both counts, of course, but what do you expect from a culture that avoids self-reflection as much as possible, in favor of the loud and brassy self-display of narcissism and mannerism and self-absorption? When was the last time you shared something on your Facebook wall that was for the sake of others, and not basically a form of self-advertising? If you can honestly say, yesterday, then gods bless you.

So why do artists self-advertise online? Finding their audience. Your niche audience can be anywhere in the world, now, and at last you can connect with them. Calling that narcissism seems like a category error, though, because it's about the art, not about you. Note the subtle difference.



Every week I get requests from strangers to use my art for their website for free. These days I mostly say No. Folks, I am trying to make a living from my art.

Can I stop someone from stealing and using an image of mine online? No, but I can remind them that I probably worked as hard to make that piece of art they just "borrowed" as they did to earn their weekly paycheck. Maybe harder, because there's no downtime in art-making, and you never take a vacation. So I can't stop the thieves, but I also won't let them make me paranoid, and I'll continue to share some of my art, to find my audience, to make connections, and to let people know the art is there. Our culture pays lawyers hundreds of dollars an hour, and artists nothing, that's where our priorities really lie, and actions always speak louder than words.

But you can only buy my art from me.

If you like what any given artist creates, support them by buying their art, rather than stealing it or "borrowing" it. I got one of those freebie requests in my email today. I'm thinking about how to respond. I'm thinking out loud.

The Eclipse Bowl

The Eclipse Bowl, 2012, fine art papier-maché

I am calling this piece The Eclipse Bowl. It reminds me of the moon being eclipsed, which will happen tonight during the full moon. And also of the way the late afternoon directional sunlight fell on the bowl when I was making these photos of it, part light, part dark, as if eclipsed.

I like the way the bowl's edges look like streamers of fire or moonlight. Or the trailing edges of clouds covering the moon.

This bowl was made last week during a papier-maché session from remnants left over from a commission to make a much larger bowl. The stock is gold-marbled cream linen paper. It's exquisite in its subtlety, and affecting in its charm. The bowl looks white from a distance, till you get closer and realize it's cream with gold swirls.

When I made this latest set of bowls, I didn't mix enough white glue into the water-glue matrix, so I ended up having to reglue parts of all the bowls I made in the set, this bowl more than any of the others. Nonetheless, I am very pleased with the end results.



Moon, white and cream and
silver, coin spinning in air,
don't let that wolf devour!

Thanksgiving Gratitudes

One of the things I am grateful for, thankful for, despite all the pain and suffering it took to get me to the point of understanding—the many detours and wrong turns, the early knowledge and adult denials, denials for the sake of propriety and trying to please others, and ending with gratitude even for the horrific medical journey I've been on that culminated in surgery and recovery—is this:

Everything else stripped away, I at least know and accept now that my purpose in life is to make art.

Create. Make things. Write. Make music. Poems. Photography. Digital visionary and shamanic art. Paint. To make art.

It's what I'm best at doing, possibly the only thing I'm really any good at doing. It was what I was born to do.

I knew this when I was a boy, but then everything in life, and almost everyone, conspired to convince me I was wrong, that I could never succeed at being a composer or artist. That I had to find a "real" job. And I believed them. Or enough parts of me were beaten into that belief that I started to sabotage my own artistic success, by doubt and fear and self-created drama.

Enough. Maybe I'll never "succeed" as an artist, by becoming a wealthy and famous composer or writer or artist, but at least I've stopped fighting the core truth: making art is what I'm supposed to do.

Doesn't mean it will always be easy, or pain-free, but having a purpose goes a long way towards making the rest of life bearable.

I'm thankful for knowing what I'm FOR.

I hope you know that about yourself, too.



Thank You for the gift of beautiful and artful things
For the gift of being able to appreciate and enjoy them
For the gift of being able to make them
For the tools and materials and skills used to make them
And for the friends to enjoy making alongside
And for the friends to enjoy them along with

I think it was probably the life-threatening, near-death experiences I've been through recently—during which a lot of nonessential things got pared away, leaving the core of who I am—that this clarity about my purpose came life was able to emerge. A lot of useless drama in my life has fallen away. I have a heightened sense of my own mortality, the limited time on this earth to get done what I want to get done.

It was also a wake-up call to convert some old bad self-defeating habits into a more positive focus on what is possible rather than what was lost. That's still a new thing, still a fragile bit of learning. I have to remind myself to be positive rather than defeatist, most days. At the same time, I find I have less and less patience for those things and people that seem purposed towards wasting my time and energy. Awareness of your own mortality can heighten your impatience about wasting time. Stated more positively, I'll never be bored again. I have no time for boredom. There's too much to do, and I want to do it all.



Asked recently to write a short bio to accompany a set of my poems being published, I acknowledged this new awareness.

Arthur Durkee has finally woken up to the truth that his purpose in life is to Make Things: be an artist, a composer, poet, musician, painter, photographer, songwriter, landscape sculptor, book artist, videographer, etc. This realization came on the heels of a long illness, near-death experience, surgery, and recovery. Creative work is what he does best, and best loves doing; in fact, it's the only thing he's really good at. He's tried a lot of other jobs, from corporate to retail, and never excelled at any of them. He does still dabble for fun in freelance design and illustration for books and magazines, and creating art for musicians, such as posters and CDs. He observes the world from a slight angle, with an artist's eye and a bard's ear, and gives it back within new frames of focus. We are but mirrors and we marvel.

Autumn Arrives

Moonrise over fields, September 2012

Illustrations and illuminations. It's good to celebrate the turning of the Yearwheel. Mabon is the Autumn Equinox, in the old religion on the old calendar. Continuing with explorations of art-making on my digital devices, creating digital paintings and illustrations, and panoramic photo-montages.


Mabon Blessings 2012

Last year I gathered leaves falling from the trees out back in a wicker basket and did a photo shoot with them. This year I took one of these images and painted over it on my iPad, to make this illustration for celebrating the equinox.

I also used some clip art found on the Interweb to make this illustrated poem for the autumn equinox. Fires and memory. Burning piles of fallen leaves. The harvest moon. Cold nights, clear days. All those things that mean autumn in the temperate zones.



Then I went back to my original illustration and made some typographic art from it.



•



Autumn is arriving early this year. It's been an extraordinary year for weather, with a drought and a summer full of record heat, and this fall all the leaves are turning a full month early.



The fields are already harvested; due to the strange summer weather the corn crop was stunted and unhealthy, and partially failed, never growing very tall except in some scattered fields. Now are already brown, or plowed, the hay mown and gathered, and everything ready for winter.



The maple trees are already turning bright colors, although some other species are holding on to their green. Until the dryness in the air turns them directly to brown, with no moments of splendor. The fall colors are already half-over though they've barely begun.

Kandinsky: Concerning the Spiritual In Art

One hundred years ago, artist Wassily Kandinsky wrote and published a small book called Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911). It was translated into English and published in the British Isles in 1914.

Here is the complete text of that translation online: Concerning the Spiritual in Art. (The first page is the translator's preface, which is an interesting historical document for its context, although reading it almost a hundred years later, some of the big arguments about Modern art in this preface have long since been considered settled.) And here is a downloadable etext of the book from Project Gutenberg.

Kandinsky was Russian-born, lived and worked in Germany, and is considered by many to be the first abstract painter of the Modernist era. He sort of started the whole abstract painting project. A lot of what followed, including the flowering of Abstract Expressionism in the USA in the 1950s, flowed from what Kandinsky had started. At some point, every abstract painter needs to deal with his ideas.

The key point in all this for me is the word "spiritual." After a century of Modernism and Postmodernism, and more, the one part of Kandinsky's contribution to ideas about art is the spiritual aspect of art. This remains entirely unfashionable. I have written before about mannerism and decadence, about the re-enchantment of art. The spiritual component of art, so important to Kandinsky, is the main thing that the past century has worked hard to ignore or dismiss. Not all contemporary artists agree with this, though; the spiritual in art is beginning to return to the notice of artists and critics alike.

For example, a recent article by Taney Roniger: Beyond Kandinsky: Toward a New Sense of the Spiritual in Art. I have on my shelves next to my art-making part of my living room creative corner a small collection of books that look at this very topic. This isn't just art therapy, this isn't just psychology, there's more to it than that.

Creativity Beat website boils this down to a nutshell in a post on Kandinsky, and I quote:

In his introduction Kandinsky says, “The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in it grip”. A little over one hundred years later these words speak succinctly to our current state of crisis. The world financial crisis, global climate change, escalating violence and high-tech wars, all point out the destruction brought on by the greed of excessive materialism.

In Kandinsky’s time the vast majority of museum goers and art lovers could only understand art that represented reality. And even though modern and post-modern art have opened us to new ways of seeing, the gate-keepers of the art world currently have very little room for art with spiritual content.

But today, there is a great awakening, a re-membering of our soul’s connection; more and more people from all walks of life are responding to the spiritual in art. As an artist I take these words of Schumann to heart. “To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts- such is the duty of the artist.”

Let me repeat a key statement from that: The gate-keepers of the art world currently have very little room for art with spiritual content. I can attest to this personally, as an artist whose visionary and shamanic art has been rejected more often than not. Something about my artwork seems to scare people and attract them at the same time. Perhaps due to its often archetypal contents. I've written about this before, and I've thought about it a long time. So Creativity Beat accuses the gatekeepers of the art world as being hostile to spirituality in art, I can only nod my head in agreement. I do think, though, that Kandinsky would have been dismayed by this hostility's ascendance in contemporary arts culture; although he may not have been surprised.

For myself, I find new resonance in Kandinsky's words of a century ago, because as artists we are right back where he started from, a century ago, finally addressing these issues of the spirit in art after having denied their existence for so long. Or perhaps addressing seriously for the very first time.

Here are some quotes from Concerning the Spiritual in Art that I find worthy of contemplation.

•

There is no form, there is nothing in the world which says nothing. Often - it is true - the message does not reach our soul, either because it has no meaning in and for itself, or - as is more likely – because it has not been conveyed to the right place.. ..Every serious work rings inwardly, like the calm and dignified words: ‘Here I am!'

•

All means (in painting) are sacred when they are dictated by inner necessity. All means are reprehensible when they do not spring from the fountain of inner necessity.. ..The artist must be blind to ‘recognized’ and ‘unrecognized’ form, deaf to the teachings and desires of his time. His open eyes must be directed to his inner life and his ears must be constantly attuned to the voice of inner necessity.

•

The artist must have something to say, mastery over form is not his goal but adaption of form to its inner meaning.

•

In a composition in which corporeal elements are more or less superfluous, they can be more or less omitted and replaced by purely abstract forms, or by corporeal forms that have been completed abstracted

•

The artist must train not only his eye, but his soul.

Painting

Although I am, if I do say so myself, an experienced and even award-winning visual artist, I have never thought of myself as a painter. I did paint with acrylics in my youth, as well as do drawings with technical pens. I always preferred acrylics to oils because they are less toxic, and I also their overlap in technique with watercolors. I enjoyed painting, but it was purely an amateur hobby pursuit.

Last year I rediscovered a cache of some of those old paintings, and was interested to notice that some of the same themes I still pursue in my visual art were already fully-formed: transformation, shamanic and archetypal themes, cosmic imagery, mountains and moons. It is always interesting to learn that some of the themes that you thought you'd grown into along the way were in fact there from the very beginning.

I still don't think of myself as a painter, and probably never will.

Nonetheless most of the art I've made over the past month or so has been: painting.


Kandinsky's Poem, 2012
Collage, papier-maché, altered books, acryclic painting, brush calligraphy, photography, on watercolor paper, 30"x40"

This is a piece I made to donate to a fundraiser being done by the local public library to support literacy education in the community. Literacy was something both of my late parents felt strongly about—our family when I was growing up was a family of avid readers who were not averse to pulling out the dictionary or encyclopedia even while at the dinner table to answer a question—and both of them volunteered to teach literacy at the local public library. So, for me, when I was given the chance to donate art for a literacy fundraiser, it was a chance to connect to my parents, and also to a cause I myself support.

I made this piece to be donated. But as I worked out what I wanted to do, I realized I wanted to start with an acrylic underpainting. Bright colors, that would show through the papier-maché layer, which consisted of prints of my own photos and pages from an old two-volume dictionary. I highlighted the key words on the pages torn from the dictionary using Japanese brush calligraphy materials.

The altered books aspect of this collaged piece was in fact the central aspect, and the origin of the project. The call for donations from local artists, for the library fundraiser, was specifically about altered books. This is a form of art-making using recycled materials that I've been interested in for a few years, but never worked in before. An altered book is essentially an artwork made from an existing bound book, or its pages, or form, or materials. The creative possibilities are endless. I remember seeing examples of books a few years ago from the Berkeley Public Library, books that had been vandalized or damaged, and were given to local artists to make into altered books. In other words, to be given new life. That was spirit of this local library literacy fundraiser, and books were provided by the library, but you could also use your own. I used this old two-volume dictionary that I found at the local thrift store for almost no money at all. And no doubt will make more art from these volumes, as well as some others I have set aside to work with.



After finishing this large collaged piece, I continued to feel an urge to paint with acrylics. So I went and got a few more large sheets of fine printmaking paper, and have been painting. I am almost done with one more large painting, which is purely a painting. I've been working with large swatches of paint, teaching myself both saturated color and dry-brush techniques. I've been reading books about acrylic painting in the public library, and making notes. I've been thinking about putting more art on the wall over my bed in my bedroom; and what better thing to put up there than something I made. I don't care if anyone thinks it's narcissistic, but most of the time I'd rather make art to put up than buy it. I don't call myself a painter, but I am an artist.



As I've been working on this large painting, I've been making photographs of it as I proceed. Both to document the process, so I can retain what I've learned by doing, but also because I had the idea to make detail photographs (detail, meaning close-ups of sections of the artwork) for the purposes of stock photography. Such abstracted forms could be used in future for stock backgrounds, as elements of illustrations, and more. I have worked on this large painting over two or three sessions so far, and have one or two more sessions to go before I reach the point that I have envisioned in my mind.

One reason I referenced painter Wassily Kandinsky in the collages piece I donated to the fundraiser was that Kandinsky, as well as being one of the founders of Modernist abstract painting, wrote extensively about his theories of emotion in painting, about how he wished to reduce representation in painting to pure emotive form, to tell a story in an abstract way. I've written here before about abstract realism in photography; now I approach the topic from the direction of painting, as influenced by Kandinsky.

What I am intending to do with this artwork I am making, despite refusing to label myself as a painter, is brushwork that evokes emotion.

Brushwork can refer to calligraphy as well as painting, writing as well as representational art. Indeed, in Chinese and Japanese art history, brushwork refers to all of the above; because writing in those cultures is ideogrammatic rather than alphabetic, and done with a brush and ink, there are even literary forms that reference the brush in their definitions. So, for me, brushwork includes more than painting.

I am interested in Kandinsky's ideas about how abstraction can still evoke emotion. Almost in the same way music does, not through specific image but through form and mood and color and rhythm. Abstraction that evokes feeling. Which of course is what the American abstract expressionists were pursuing in the middle of the 20th Century. But they were painters, and I'm not.



So, since I work in multiple media, it's only natural that I would import my paintings into the digital realm and work with them there as well. I've been experimenting combining text and illustration, for example.


Storm Coming Near, 2012

I go back and forth between digital and actual painting in this work, which to me seems entirely natural. Paintings will become elements of digital illustrations, be used in stock photos, and will influence art made directly in the digital realm.

One of the most interesting parts of this ongoing exploration has involved painting on photographs, both actual and digital.



What I am exploring now is painting digitally on my tablet computer, my iPad. I am using several apps to paint digitally on the tablet, both in terms of making original illustrations and calligraphic pieces, and also in terms of painting on photographs.


Taos Home

I am particularly enjoying making paintings from some of my best photographs of the Southwestern United States, photos made on recent roadtrips. This is a process of using the photograph as a reference for making an original painting.


Vermillion Cliffs, NM, 2012

Sometimes I start by painting-over a photograph using digital painting software. I can sample and replace the colors in the original image, or I can go wild. I can make the forms and elements of the piece realistic in one area, and completely abstract in another. I find myself usually preferring to veer towards abstract realism.

I have no real desire to learn how to paint or draw photo-realistically, but that is what most instructional books emphasize. If I want a photo-realistic image, I make a photograph, because I am a professional photographer. I have those tools and those skills. I am much more interested, in drawing and painting, in loose realism, or abstract realism.

As with photography, I often begin with a landscape, a place and a time, a mood, an evocative moment. In making a photo, I often wait a long time for the light to be perfect, before I release the camera shutter. Photography can be an art that teaches you extreme patience. You learn to look at your subject a very long time, to see it, before you make your image. These are often the kinds of images I choose to make into painted versions.


Moonrise, 2012

Shapes and forms. Elements of color. Mood and feeling. Abstract realism. Emotion and music and lighting and those times when art takes you out of your mind and into your larger self.

That's what I am seeking as someone who has been painting lately. I am not a painter, and don't want to get stuck in that definition, which limits and skews as often as it liberates. I'm aware of art history, but I'm not dwelling on it. I'm just making some paintings.

This trend is continuing and growing. I am also making little illustrated visual haiku, calligraphic illustrations, sketches and drawings and little scraps of ideas. I'll write more about that later.

Make Art

The guidelines for the beginning of survival. The mantra for coping when you can't really cope because you're overwhelmed and exhausted all the time. The method of staying sane when it's a real challenge.

Make art. Record music. Write a poem. Make art.

When upset, make art. When sad, make art. When angry at situations or the stupid people involved in certain situations, make art. When tired of talking about problems, record music. When you can't face that stack of letters and bills and other things that make you crazy to think about, even though you know you'll have to deal with them eventually, make art. Always prioritize for art.

Although in some ways my health has radically improved in the last just-over-a-year since the surgery, I'm still recovering. I was sick for twenty years, I'm not going to bounce back in six months. I still tire out unpredictably. When too exhausted to do anything but feel frustrated and weepy, make art. The last few days I've been as exhausted as I used to be when I was really sick, and anemic. I just can't get it started. So make art.

When nothing else works and you're totally stuck and can't see your way out to ever getting out of whatever hell you find yourself in again, make art. Make art. Make art.

Almost an Ars Poetica

Almost an Ars Poetica

I don't have to eat
this breakfast silence
although I should
lest I go scattering
through another day

I want to live
sunlight on belly
brass in bold beds
although some days it's
awkward hard

•

It's not that
suffering leads to art,
that common myth
among non-artists,
it's that art is your best
response to life, a way to cope,
to get at the marrow,
to want to go on living.

We don't suffer for our art,
it is our art that gives solace
to our suffering. We cope as we can.
And making art is still
our best revenge.

Opening Languages

In January 2012, I played live improvised music for two consecutive evenings for the opening of an art gallery retrospective show by my artist friend John Steines. The retrospective show in Madison was called Languages, Acquired and Intuitive, featuring mostly oils painted over a period of some years. In his artist statement, John writes, in part:

Art, the language of images, is both necessary and crippling. Images can and do speak, but experiencing art means that we must participate: We need to create anchors into understanding. The individual experience of life as art and created into art evolves out of intense personal process.

The work in this show communicates that which is unwritten and un-writable for me. The pieces amplify my experience and the way I have lived. I want to give life to the universal within the vernacular, all of it situated in a large common public space—to open public conversation of my own understanding of meaning and experience.

This speaks to me of the sometimes pre-verbal, inarticulate nature of art, even of poetry which often fails to contain life's experiences in mere words. Art can communicate, and does, but indeed we must participate: we complete the meaning of art by finding within it hooks into our own lives, our own experience. One core aspect of the haiku aesthetic is the idea that the reader completes the poem, out of his own life's experience. The spareness of the haiku form, and its reliance on imagery rather than didactic telling, leaves the door open for readers to bring their own experience to the poem, to find within it echoes from their own lives and emotions. Some of the mystery and beauty of haiku is that we do in fact share with the poet the experience of the poem.

That kind of connecting is what good art does, sometimes seemingly effortlessly. I have often felt that connection, when deeply involved with playing music for an audience, or when writing a poem at white heat. I don't seek out these moments as the purpose of my art-making, but I thoroughly immerse myself in them when they do occur.

I sat in a corner of the gallery for two cold nights in early winter, playing whatever music I was moved to create on the spot. This isn't my first improvised solo gig, nor my first gallery gig. I enjoy playing gallery gigs, actually, as I like to be able to create ambient soundscapes that can take a long time to develop and change. It's inspiring to being sitting in a room surrounded by beauty, by art, by the feelings that the art evokes, and that can be fed into the music-making as a direct response. When I was taking a break from live playing, I played pre-existing tracks of my own recorded music. I had been asked to do this gallery opening a few months prior; the very next day, I left on my roadtrip to the Southwest and California.

For this gig, I played Chapman Stick with some simple effects processors, and two or three softsynths on my iPad, including the AniMoog app, an excellent synth app developed by the people who make the Moog Synthesizer. This is truly a great instrument, a professional-quality electronic music instrument—on your iPad! I ran the Stick through a looping device as well, although it's perfectly possible to play iPad and Stick at the same time, one hand each. I recorded both evening-long performances onto my laptop. I ran both iPad and Stick through my portable Mackie mixer, mixing them live to speakers in the room, and a stereo mix directly to the laptop. This was a great gig in which to try out the iPad as a concert instrument, and it performed wonderfully. For some future gigs, I fantasize showing up with my Stick and a backpack with my iPad and laptop, and maybe a foot-operated controller pedal or two—and that's all. A truly portable musician's performance rig.

After these gallery opening shows, I was on the road for over a month. Now that I'm back home, I finally had time to listen through the raw live recordings, to audition the musicscapes that I had made live. I've spent the last week or so going through the recordings from both nights. I've winnowed down several hours of live recordings to pick out some of the best moments, trimmed and edited them into individual tracks, and assembled them now into a short album. Just over 40 minutes of reasonably good performances. Remember that for a live gig there are almost always a few glitches or minor problems, and nothing is ever as perfectly-recorded as a studio album. That's also the joy of live music, its spontaneity and exploration.

I love playing completely improvised music, not knowing what will happen next, following my feelings, playing suspended in the air like a trapeze artist without a safety net. Things can go wrong, certainly, but when they go right, special moments are created.

I will eventually release this material as a live album, titled Opening Languages, probably when I get myself set up with the new music/composition website I am building at the moment. I intend to make the album available for sale on iTunes, and other venues. Meanwhile here is one track from this live improvised music, which you can audition here via streaming.

Opening Languages: i will not be sad in this world    

Arthur Durkee: Chapman Stick, effects, processing, iPad softsynths

Mental Illness

The difference between a healthy person and one who is mentally ill is the fact that the healthy one has all the mental illnesses, and the mentally ill person has only one.
—Robert Musil

•

The thing to keep in mind is that "mental illness" is a label. It's a label we use to categorize and define certain behaviors. It should be clinical and neutral, nonetheless it stigmatizes people. A label like this makes you look at people with doubt, with paranoia, with questions. And sometimes not with compassion, not with understanding, and not with friendship.

I've been suffering from depression for awhile now. But let's see: Is it mental illness? is it "clinical depression," or "chronic depression"? or is it situational depression?

In fact, it's situational. Some of it can be traced to PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). In the past five years, my life has been extremely stressful, challenging, and turbulent: I gave up my own career and income to move back in with my parents to be their live-in, full-time caregiver until they died. They died, and I immediately was diagnosed with a chronic illness, ulcerative colitis. That illness almost killed me last year, when I almost bled to death and had major anemia which I still am recovering from, and this past year I've gone through the first of three surgeries to cure and correct the problem. I'm still recovering from that first surgery—and even though physically my strength is better than it's been in years, and even though I have an immune system again and managed to not get the flu, bronchitis, or walking pneumonia this winter, for the first time in a dozen years—some days I'm really depressed. Just like I used to be.

It turns out I've had this chronic illness for a couple of decades, but it wasn't diagnosed till recently. Looking back, I can see how UC caused a lot of problems that, at the time, my family, many of my friends, and even myself thought were caused by a bad attitude (tired all the time), a lack of ambition (UC drains your energy, will, and life-force), and being unable to focus (having a wide range of career choices, but never knowing what I wanted to do when I grew up; in fact, there are mental and cognitive consequences to being anemic and exhausted all the time, one of which is being unable to focus some days). These were the favorites amongst other psychological explanations that it turns out were a smoke screen. In other words I was sick for twenty years with a physical illness that had consequences for my mental stability and cognitive resources. Was I mentally ill? No—but many people treated me as if I was. And I believed them.

Reframing this experience now, I can see clearly how the last two decades of my life had been overshadowed by a physical illness that ruined me, but which everyone thought was a mental or psychological problem. Or even an attitude problem.

So if you want to leap to conclusions and label people you know as mentally ill, well, go ahead, that's your right. As Eric Frank Russell once remarked, "Every man has the basic right to go to hell in his own way." But just in case you might have leapt too quickly to a conclusion that's unwarranted, you might occasionally want to step back and take a look at your own assumptions about what "mental illness" means.

What most people actually mean, when they talk about mental health, is a social rather than psychological expectation that people conform to social norms and values and don't act weird. It means get a job, be a normal person, don't stand out, conform to the social normative ideas of what "success" means. Don't be different. Don't be of all things an artist.

Being an artist means being different. And being born gay means being different. It's no wonder so many gay men have mental health issues, when we're raised in a culture that hates and fears us, and still treats us a second-class citizens, and tries to deny us civil rights and social equality. The high incidence of gay men who support political candidates that would strip away their civil rights, given a chance, speaks to a high incidence of lingering and inarticulate internalized self-hatred. Whenever people vote against their own best interests or highest good, you can be sure there is, underneath their rhetoric, some lack of self-esteem, some insecurity.

"Mental health" is a normative concept; it usually means that you're supposed to think and act like everyone else, not be "eccentric" or "weird" or somehow not part of the usual narrative mythos of the American Dream of economic individualism at all costs, or the Dream of Technological Progress, or other sociopolitical myths that we're all supposed to believe and conform to. Individualism vs. collectivism are modern social myths that drive many people's unconscious self-destructive choices.

But every aspect of this is wrong. Socially normative "mental health" is a narrative of conformity and subjugation. The myth is that mental health is a stable steady state. The fragility of this self-image is evinced by the relentless social (tribal) peer pressure to conform to the norm.

Genuine self-esteem does not fear diversity or disagreement, and does not attempt to enforce conformity. Genuine, actual mental health is a state of flexibility and adaptability, being able to cope with change and hardship, being able to celebrate joy and love. Genuine mental health allows for eccentricity and individual variation. Mental balance and psychological/ecological dynamic health accepts the inclusion of dark days as well as happy ones, and celebrates both as authentic to the fully-nuanced, full-range human experience.

For myself, I've affirmed many times, and it's still true, that art-making is a positive force in my life that has kept me alive, that has kept me sane. For me music is medicine, music is sanity.

One of the only really useful definitions of insanity I've ever heard is a very simple, pragmatic one. It goes like this:

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and each time expecting an outcome different than the last time.

This definition speaks to individual mental health, to common sense reasoning, and flexibility in the face of changing circumstances. It speaks to how people can get stuck in social and political ideologies that create a bubble of unreality that everyone but the person inside the bubble can see. And it speaks to the group pathology of socially-enforced normative conformity, ranging from peer pressure to fascism, revealing these to be inherently insecure and unstable.

It speaks to the truth that when you are a sane person living in an insane world, the rest of the world labels you as insane, when in fact the opposite is true. It speaks to the truth that lots of times you're right and the world is wrong. Nothing crushes self-esteem more readily than the social need for conformity to normative social expectations that the person cannot live up to (or down to), and is unable to follow.

And it is underlined by a bit of wisdom from everyone's favorite genius uncle, Albert Einstein: "You cannot solve a problem by using the same kind of thinking that created the problem."

So, go ahead. Judge others as "mentally ill." You might even be right, some of the time. No more than that, though. Because lots of folks who we judge as mentally ill are in fact just having a hard time living up to your expectations of who they're supposed to be, and how they're supposed to behave.

Some wise man named Yeshua bar Joseph once quipped, "Judge not, lest ye be judged." If all the people who claim to speak for Jesus, who claim to speak in his name, would just remind themselves of his actual words, "Judge not," imagine what kind of world we might actually be able to make for ourselves.

Ocotillo Flowers

Ocotillo Flowers

At Joshua Tree National Park, where I camped for two nights, there had been a relatively wet fall, so many of the cacti were blooming this mild winter. The ocotillo grove, which is one my favorite spots in the Park, had several stands that were flowering. Long conical red flowers at the ends of the long cactus stalks, some of the stands covered in small green leaves. Ocotillo are dramatic, standing up to 20 feet high, stalks growing from a central taproot point. They bend to the prevailing wind over time, giving them a windswept look even when the day is calm.

I made this drawing on my iPad, with the ArtRage app, using one of the photos I made that afternoon as a reference image. Still, I like the more impressionistic result. I didn't try to be too realistic about the background, or the area around the ocotillo, suggesting more than depicting the surrounding dirt and stands of sage. Still, anyone who's been to the Southwest will recognize the colors, the sky, the desert scene, and the ocotillo.

I did this drawing in several layers, exploring the app's Layers feature for the first time. The cactus and its sun-shadow are foregrounded, while other layers were built up for the sky, the distant line of mountains, and the foreground dirt with its loose jumble of rocks. I used several different tools this time, two different kinds of brushes, pastels, a little airbrush, and the paint roller. I like broad strokes for this kind of drawing, and I think the paint roller made an interesting sky gradient, built up in several thicknesses on different layers. more subtle to create than the end result appears. This kind of drawing/painting painting is about underpainting, building up color in layers, so that subtle effects show through. It took me awhile, but I like the finished result.

The Re-Enchantment of Art 5: Instruments of Revelation

(Some random notes and quotes from recent travels and readings.)

At Carlsbad Caverns National Monument, there are a couple of small art galleries in the visitor center devoted to art inspired by the caverns. One of these rooms contains nothing but photographs by Ansel Adams. Adams didn't think his cave images, made for a large project of photos of all the national parks, were very successful: Adams always worked with natural light, and of course the caves had to be lit artificially for his photos.

On the wall of the Adams gallery at Carlsbad is the following quote:

Our time is short, and the future terrifyingly long. Believing as we must that things of the heart and mind are most enduring, this is the opportunity to apply art as a potent instrument of revelation, expression, and perpetuation of wilderness activities and moods. Through art of brush, pen, and lens, each one no less than the other, we possess a swift and sure means of touching the conscience and clearing the vision.
—Ansel Adams

Art as an instrument of revelation. Art as a means of touching the conscience and clearing the vision.

Art is kenotic. Art is prophetic. Art is revelation. Or at least, art can be all these things. It doesn't have to be, or need to be, yet it often is. Art as an instrument of revelation.

My own photographs often feel to me like splashes of cave paintings on the walls of rocks much older than time. I often feel as though all I am doing is waiting to see what is there, and what will happen next.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen . . .
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin.
—Bob Dylan

Stories in fiction and poetry are lies that can tell deeper truths. What passes for human interest on a daily basis is self-involved and deadening by comparison. Most self-involved fiction isn't revelatory, but deadening. What use is criticism if it doesn't likewise enliven the art that it discusses? What use is criticism at all, for that matter? Far better to go on making art than to talk about it. Of course, the old clichéd saying does hold truth to it: Those who can, do; those who can't, instruct.


Carlsbad Caverns; infrared photo

It has happened that we have been afflicted with a basic deprivation, to such an extent that we seem to be missing some vital organs, even as we try to survive somehow. Theology, science, philosophy, though they attempt to provide cures, are not very effective "In that dark world where the gods have lost their way." (Roethke) They are able at best to confirm that our affliction is not invented. . . . Abstract considerations will be of little help, even if they are intended to bring relief. Poetry is quite different. By its very nature it says: All those theories are untrue. Since poetry deals with the singular, not the general, it cannot—if it is good poetry—look at things of this earth other than as colorful, variegated, and exciting, and so, it cannot reduce life, with all its pain, horror, suffering, and ecstasy, to a unified tonality of boredom or complaint. By necessity poetry is therefore on the side of being and against nothingness.
—Czeslaw Milosz

Poetry deals with the singular. It can also deal with the universal, with the cosmic, with the fully human, but it gets there via the specific and singular. Poetry doesn't have to be didactic or hectoring to be true, or tell the truth. Sometimes the most prophetic poems are those that show us what is going on, that just present the truth as it is lived by real people.

Nothing that isn't beautiful can be true, only the true is lovable.
—Paul Cezanne

Cezanne was an extremist in many of his views, an uncompromising artist who made enemies by refusing to change his ways. But he was often right. There is a lot to his comment here, that whatever truth is, it is always beautiful. Or can be perceived as beautiful.

The simple truth is, those we try to explain away all mysteries fail utterly, simply because there are always larger mysteries that cannot be explained.

Art as an instrument of revelation: What we see that is beautiful contains truth that sometimes we don't want to confront. But we must.