• • Plus, I like bullet points. • •
• Way back at the beginning of the pandemic, I wrote that I was really enjoying it because we had so much more time. That was wishful thinking. I tried to make myself believe it,.. and yes, we were driving less.. but having your 9-year-old suddenly at home all the time does not create more time. Parents will understand this. Non-parents... maybe not.
• Christina has handled the home-schooling, and I've been handling the fishing. Kodiak is a fishing maniac, and he's really good at it too. We go down to the Rio Grande a few times a week, and in the time since we started fishing he has caught 24 fish while I have caught 4. We eat a lot of trout.
• I was recently reading about Rainer Maria Rilke and apparently he suffered an artistic crisis which caused him to take a whole decade to finish a certain book. This made me feel more OK about my little artistic crisis. I'm trying to be a little less hard on myself.
• Christina and I recently got a commission to build a new sculpture for the little town of Arroyo Seco, just north of Taos. It's gratifying to get a cool new job like that, during this pandemic/lockdown/COVIDcrisis. We have to bang out the sculpture in about 6 weeks, and... we are working together... actually collaborating... for the first time ever! The sculpture is called Capsule and you can keep up with it here and here.
• 2019 was a bit of a tough year for Christina and me, as a couple. 2020 is shaping up to be a lot better. It's not something I write about so much on my blog, but Christina is an amazing woman and I am lucky to have her in my life. I love you, Sporrong!
• I've written before on this blog about the psychological component of the divide between right and left, and I continue to be fascinated by it. In my last post I said I had an observation to make about politics, and it's this: Conservatives seem to need certainties, while progressives seem to be more comfortable with uncertainties. Trump and his supporters seize on any new possible treatment for COVID19, declaring it the 'wonder-cure' before the scientific results are even in. Remember Hydroxychloroquine? Liberals seem OK with actually waiting until there is a proven therapy, understanding that these things take time. Conservatives are drawn to religion in part, I think, because it offers a story that answers the difficult questions, while liberals understand that these questions might just not be answerable... and they are OK with that. And it's cross-cultural; conservative westerners hold onto Christianity, conservative middle-easterners flock to Islam, and conservative Jews are pretty into Judaism. Trump blames China for COVID, while conservative Iran blames the USA and Israel. How does this help anything? I'll tell you how it helps: it helps them feel better, having someone to blame. My guess is that it's related to the enlarged amygdala in the conservative brain and the interrelated way in which their worldview is oriented around fear. Life is disorderly, but the conservative impulse is to stamp out the disorder with 'law and order,' stamp out the fear with certainty. Conservatives need certainty. It's comedy.
• I've mentioned before that I collect original paintings from the 1970's cartoon series Wicked Wanda, but those are just one part of a modest art collection that I add to when I can. I just acquired this quartet of drawings from Allison Reimold.
• I've recently come up with a new idea for a large-scale mechanical sculpture, and it's quite interesting to note how inspired I feel by the challenge of building complicated big machines. I'm already beginning to work on a small prototype of it... you know, in my spare time!
• As part of the process of working on Capsule, Christina and I have busted out the clay to work out some of the forms, and that has inspired me to work on another clay sculpture... another portrait / bust. I also picked up some really sculpturally-interesting tree-parts the last time I was at the lumber yard, which are inspiring me to build another human-scale piece like Big Mother. Sometimes it seems like the biggest challenge for me is WHERE to focus the creative energy... big sculptures, or small prototypes, or human-scale tree-sculptures, or paintings, or clay portraits? Hell, I'm a frickin' Renaissance-man. Or at least I would be if I had the time.
• For now... Capsule. Stay tuned.
Spring time in Taos is motorcycle season.
(The white tube is for fishing rods!)
And it's beautiful.
No comments:
Post a Comment