Martha Graham and the "Blessed Unrest"

No Artist Is Pleased"That seems like the kind of thoughts that lead to heavy drinking and permanent despair. Or maybe it’s just a matter of how you look at things. I read “No artist is pleased” and I start thinking words like failure, discouraged, dismayed. But I’m not sure that’s what Graham meant; or, maybe more important, I’m not sure that’s the way we should take it. We don’t live in a black-and-white world: saying you aren’t happy doesn’t logically mean that you are sad. There are many, many, many emotions on the spectrum to get a person from one end to the other. Graham goes on to call this a “blessed unrest.” -- a reporting from the Missouri Review.

Should I call it "Pearl-diver" ? Mixed media; fabric, Pitt pens, found objects. 10 inches by 8.

more on tsunami series

Those images (and several previous unrelated images) are part of a Moleskine accordion-style blank book, with a double-page spread of about 10 inches by 8. A terrific paper, very workable, takes a beating. This series of pages is mixed media, including Faber Castell PITT Artist Pens, Pentel oil pastels, graphite, matte and gel medium, and found objects including window screen, duct tape, rust, fabric etc.

As I've said, there is something terrible and lovely in the images of flood-wrack, though the loss of life and lifestyle, home and security, is profoundly sad. The human experience of flood is nothing to envy, but the images are breathtaking, as we've seen in hundreds of YouTube videos and still photos. It's the archeology of ruin, the terminal moraine, what's left after the current passes over the landscape, that interests me visually. I realize some people can't bear to look at the real destruction; these are obviously abstracted impressions. Time tells the story.

tsunami 2

tsunami 1

going somewhere?

union suit me

More fooling around in the sketchbook. "Let Munsingware Union Suit You." Ah, the "union suit" - so many connotations. The advertising image of discreet yet tantalizing female forms takes advantage of that old catch-22, the purity/sensuality dichotomy, woman as virgin/mother/whore. The ad is of course for underwear, and it's a lovely drawing in early-twentieth century style.

As I get older I've come to appreciate anew the weight and density of these cultural "screens", layers through which women are seen and judged. The dichotomy and contradiction, of course, as well as the underwear. And while I've become more interested in and attracted to some of the garments associated with the female archetypes (aprons on the one hand, garters on the other), I fully realize the tendency of society to desire the symbolic female form over the complexity of the internal woman.

That said, I'm not a neo-feminist. I live in relationship with others. When I want to, I can use the language of a woman's body to my advantage, and I do so often. My body has never conformed to a contemporary notion of beauty, though I get close enough. I'm too tall, my hips are too wide, my thighs are too big, and until recently my hair was too short. Growing my hair long has catapulted me into a whole new realm of desirability, as has losing 25 pounds. I don't mind. It helps me feel better about myself -- versus swimming upstream. I've become a Christian too, and I doubt very much that God cares how much I weigh.To the point though, if people occasionally do what I want them to because my looks persuade them, so be it. I won't complain.

I've known men who wanted androgyny in a woman, but these guys are mostly closet bisexuals and underdeveloped college students reinventing the virgin for the 21st century (or rather, believing they have, though the flat-chested gamine took her place in the Western gallery of desirability long ago; and even androgyny has gone by the fashion wayside now.) Having very short hair never made me a prepubescent runway waif. I looked like a woman already in the 8th grade.

But I struggle still with that notion of purity, of goodness. More on this later.