The Way Forward

Ok well it’s been a while. So much is happening all the time and sometimes it’s hard to pick out the ‘blog-worthy’ stuff to write about. But I have to remember that what feels normal and routine to me might not seem normal and routine to everyone. 

I’ll get the bad news out of the way first, and that is that Burning Man decided to reject my application for funding a new sculpture… AGAIN! 

Burning Man places sculptures in specific locations around the ‘city,’ and the most prestigious placement, arguably, is a location called ‘The Keyhole.’ It’s very central, very high visibility. Christina was awarded the Keyhole placement in 2009 for her sculpture “The Heron Project.” The reason I bring this up is that, pretty much every year that I apply for funding, I gradually convince myself - while waiting for their response - that my proposal is so good that not only are they going to fund it, but they’re going to honor me with the Keyhole! And then… they reject it. 

The upshots of this brief discussion are A) that I apparently always like my own proposals so much that I think they merit fantastic placement (and I suppose this sort of self-confidence is probably a good thing) and B) my own assessment of my own ideas must be really out of step with the assessment of the Burning Man granting committee. (In fact when I look at some of what they fund instead of my proposals, I am often baffled.)

Oh well, fuck it. I have other shit going on. 

Actually, to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I would have been able to accept the grant - and build the sculpture - even if I had gotten the 'thumbs-up' from them. The next few months look like they're going to be very busy for me and Christina, with both paying work and non-paying work. In this context, it was probably even a blessing that I did not get funded by them, as building something for Burning Man is always a huge time commitment coupled with a loss of money. Still, it would have been nice to know that they liked my proposal in the same way that I do. Whatevs.

(For the record, my proposal was a sculpture of a woman on a shark. It was kind of the inverse of my proposal in 2019, in the sense that it was another interaction between man and nature (another sea creature, in fact), but this time it was positive and forward-looking. In fact it was called "The Way Forward." A text description and pictures will follow at the end of this post.)

Moving on.

In my last post, way back in December, I stated that I was about to start building a new sculpture as a private commission. My creative energies have been pretty focussed for these last few months on building that piece, and it's been a lot of fun. I have certain reasons for not wanting to 'unveil' this new sculpture, even here on the blog, until it is really done, so that means that the best you're going to get for now is this teaser picture...

I must say that I've really enjoyed building this piece, not least because I decided at the beginning to fabricate it entirely out of stainless steel. I love working with stainless steel! (Whenever one works with regular steel, a decision has to be made about how to 'finish' the surface to keep it from rusting to bits. In other words, one must ask oneself... should I paint this sculpture, or oil it every 6 months, or seal it in some other way, or let it rust? Stainless presents no such conundrum. Weld it up and call it done.)

Anyway, the official install date for this sculpture is May 5th, so I should be posting some pictures of the whole thing around that time.

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Christina and Kodiak and I just returned from a 2-week trip to England and Sweden. (It was my first time on a plane since October 2019!) We travelled to England in order to install Christina's sculpture The Flybrary on the grounds of the Chatsworth House.  The Chatsworth House is a stately mansion built in the 1600's which has been home to the long succession of Dukes of Devonshire. In fact, the current Duke of Devonshire lives there now! Burning Man arranged with the Chatsworth House to bring over about 10 large sculptures, and Christina's beautiful piece was one of the ones chosen. In fact, her piece is basically the star of the show; it has the very best placement (right in front of the house!) and is getting tons of great press. In fact, if you click the link above you will see a great picture on the Chatsworth House's homepage... which I will also immortalize here:

We were treated really well while in England; they put us up in a cute little stone cottage and fed us way too much food. We also got the chance to tour the home and see it's truly spectacular art collection. It's like a museum (and I love museums.)

I will now take you on a little photographic tour of our European adventure!

A view of the house, with the partially completed Flybrary in the foreground, as well as the river Derwent.

Another view of the house, with a very handsome young gentleman in the foreground. Kodiak did so well, and had such a good time on this trip. All the grownups fell in love with him!

This is the first room you see in the house. The room is colossal, all the walls and ceiling are covered in Renaissance-style paintings, and every nook has a sculpture.

This is an approximately life-sized sculpture of Saint Bartholomew, who was skinned alive, by my old favorite Damien Hirst. He is shown holding his skin on one arm, and the scissors used to remove his skin in the other hand. It is cast in silver, then gold-plated!

These are paintings of the current Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, the occupants of the house, by Stephen Conroy. They might seem unremarkable, at first glance, but they were actually my favorite paintings in the house, on purely stylistic grounds. They feature just the right amount of stylizing / idealization. I would like to paint like that.

Some contemporary sculpture by... I don't know who. The swirly, curvy things are made from bent wood, and I thought they were quite beautiful.

 

A wooden bench, which I also found gorgeous.

One of two original Rembrandt paintings in the house. This just gives you an idea of the quality of this collection. (We were told a funny story... Apparently many years ago there were three Rembrandts in the house. At some point one of the dukes died, and some pretty hefty 'death taxes' were due. The government came in and took one of the Rembrandt paintings as payment - they chose the one which was assessed to be the most valuable. Then, some years later, the painting was proved to be by one of Rembrandt's disciples, not him!)

There was an entire long room full of Lucien Freud paintings - probably 20 or 25 of them. Wow. This one, featuring his nude girlfriend and his mother, was perhaps the most intriguing!

And a HUGE John Singer Sergeant. This painting is about 9 feet tall... or 3 meters. Again, wow.

The last room on the tour was a large hall full of marble sculpture. This one was perhaps my favorite.

Also not bad.

Marble bust of... who knows! But wow, she is gorgeous. I took a lot of pictures of this one.

I had to squeeze behind this sculpture, close to the wall, to get a good shot of this lady's marble butt. Butt it was worth it.

After touring the house, we toured the gardens, which were vast. This guy cracked me up.

I dragged our group into a far corner of the grounds to see this sculpture, behind me, by my old friend Rachel Feinstein.

I guess that when you are a duke, and you have a 200 acre garden, you can have some pretty weird trees. 

Here's our crew! From left to right... Me, Christina, Brian Malley from Canada, good old friend Cedar, Cedar's girlfriend Heather, Kodiak, and Terril Scott from Berlin.

After leaving the Chatsworth House, Christina and Kodiak and I went down to London for a day and connected with my cousin Eduardo. He is originally from Brazil, as is my dad, but has lived in London for 8 or 9 years.

Upon arriving in Sweden we went straight to the house where we were staying, which was on the island of Rindö. The house is owned by some friends of ours who have deep roots both in Taos and Sweden. You have to take a ferry to get there.

The landscape in Sweden is quite beautiful, and the water is never far away.

Here is another photo from the ferry, taken from within the electric car we rented. It was our first real experience with an electric car; the car was cool, but recharging it was a pain because the car did not come with a charger. Instead we were forced to use the charging stations scattered around the city, which was quite difficult.

Sweden features large selections of both delicious pastries and power tools!

I tend to judge cities, or European ones at least, in part based on the quality and volume of their public sculpture. And extra points are awarded for female nudes. Barcelona leads the pack in this regard, at least as far as I have seen. Stockholm doesn't measure up quite as well, but there are a few gems, including this one near the old town center.

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I know that I usually round out my blog posts with some philosophical ponderings (and once in a while the ponderings wholly comprise the post). I have to say that with everything going on these days, I haven't been pondering all that much... other than to say that I sometimes find myself thinking about compassion. The ability to really identify with someone else, and feel what they are feeling, seems to me to be such a critical and important factor in the world, and sort of a differentiating factor between people. For instance, would Putin really have invaded Ukraine if he was a truly compassionate person? Would his soldiers be killing innocent women and children if they were truly compassionate people? I guess most soldiers aren't particularly compassionate. But I think the world would be a better place if more people conducted themselves with more awareness of how things are for other people.

And also, being in England (and close to Manchester at that) got me enthusiastic... again... for like the 100th time... about my old favorite band Joy Division. What a great band they were, and what a tragic story. I find that I am always interested in people who do really extreme things in life... people like Ian Curtis and Ted Bundy. I will never be one of those people... but I find them fascinating. 

While at the Chatsworth House we were really close to Macclesfield, and I really tried to get over there to see the last house that Ian Curtis lived in, but I had no car and so it wasn't possible. Oh well, another time.

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OK, as promised, I will now show some images and text from my most recent proposal for Burning Man.

Proposal text:

The Way Forward is a mid-action snapshot of an impossible scene. An ocean wave bursts from the ground, and at the cresting top of this wave is a shark, on the verge of breaking free from the water. Just forward of the shark's dorsal fin sits a woman. She is leaning forward, looking intently ahead, right arm outstretched in front of her, finger pointed decisively forward. The wave and the shark are crafted from steel; the woman from aluminum. The scale is such that the woman is about 1.25 times larger than a real human. This piece is a synthesis of several threads - aesthetic, personal, and philosophical - that came together for me in an unconscious process. The male and female, or Apollonian and Dionysian, as presented originally by Nietzsche and elaborated by Paglia, achieve a dynamic fusion in this piece. Also, a tremendously productive year of therapy brought me finally in touch with my wounded and suppressed female side, hidden since childhood. The woman on the shark IS my female side, showing the strength and focus needed to manifest, to demand to be seen. But I believe the most important, universal, and accessible meaning of the piece can be found in its depiction of the female principle uniting with the power of the natural world to show a path forward through dark times. The male principle can be rapacious and has done much damage. It will be the female principle in all of us that gets us back on track. Power and longevity of the shark, vision of the female, direction, focus, The Way Forward.

OK, thanks for reading.

Bye!