Back to the Studio

Wow, so I just re-read my last post, the one I wrote on the plane coming home from Taos, and it was a doozy. For one thing, it raised the possibility that coming back here to Sweden might be difficult, or that our life here might pale in comparison. I think I probably should have written a quick follow up to that post a few weeks later letting you all know that everything here was good. But I’ll just do that now… everything is good! It’s been lovely to be back here.

Actually, to be fair, it WAS difficult returning. I find that whenever I travel between New Mexico and Sweden, or the other way around, it takes me about a week to adjust, both emotionally and in terms of sleep. But at least now I know that, and can expect it. And after a week, it's done.

The other thing I talked about in that last post was wanting to take my work in my studio more seriously, to treat it more like... work. And I'm happy to say that I've been fairly successful in that. 

Christina and I are quite good at what I like to call 'homesteading.' That is to say, we do a darned good job at building houses - or renovating houses, in this case - and then continuing by making the home and the land around it really lovely. This also applies to workshop buildings. We have done this extensively in New Mexico (2 homes and a workshop), and now here in Sweden as well (a home and 2 workshops.) The problem with homesteading, however, is that it's never flippin' done! There is always something more to do! So, not too long after returning from New Mexico in August, I decided to draw a line in the sand and commit to spending at least 4 hours per day in my studio. The homesteading work, and everything else, would just have to fit into the remaining hours. I am proud to say that I have been semi-successful at this, because semi-successful at a 4 hour daily commitment is a hell of a lot better than the essentially no hours I was spending making art before. 

I have basically finished one painting. I made a bunch of late corrections to it today and it might be done. I'll have to look at it again in a few days to be sure.

I certainly want to get my paintings to the point where they feel right - when I see an error I cannot help but to correct it - but when I get close to the end of a painting I also have the competing impulse to just call it done and move on to another one. I figure that the more paintings I make, the better. I want to get faster and better. 

I'm also working on a small mechanical sculpture. 

As crazy as this sounds, it is a sculpture I am coming back to after a 4-year pause. I started it in Taos in 2020, and I just brought all the parts back here to Sweden in my luggage a few months ago. I enjoy working on multiple projects simultaneously... so that if I ever feel stuck or bored with one, I can move to another. I do have a minor quandary about the subject matter of this particular sculpture which I will probably discuss in a future post. For now it can suffice to say that the sculpture involves a tricky mechanical challenge, which I enjoy.

At this point I seem to have more ideas for paintings and sculptures than time to make them. I feel pressure to make things. Maybe it's a sense of my own mortality. Maybe it's a sense that waiting for big festivals to give me money to make big sculptures has just been a colossal fucking waste of time, and I need to get to work and make up for lost time. I'm also feeling ambitiously broad in the media I want to work with; I'm already painting, but I have plans to also sculpt in traditional clay, in oil-based clay for eventual casting in bronze, in wood, and in stone. Today I bought some regular (water-based) clay to start a bust, like what I was doing in Barcelona a few years ago with Jorge Egea. 

Speaking of Jorge and Barcelona, you might remember from my post back in June that I had failed in an attempt to buy a marble Jassans sculpture at auction. I'm very happy to report that the painful hole in my life... caused by not owning a genuine Jassans sculpture... has now been filled. 

About 2 weeks ago I saw a listing for this well-documented sculpture in wood come up online, and.. after a little aggressive bargaining with the seller... I was able to bring it home for about 73% of his asking price. I really didn't know how I would pay for it at the time, but I couldn't lose the opportunity! I ended up selling three (1, 2, 3) of my original Wicked Wanda paintings by Ron Embleton to another collector, which more than covered the purchase of the Jassans. As I mentioned in June, Jassans is really my favorite sculptor. Looking at his work, especially in person, brings me back to my days in Barcelona, AND inspires me to sculpt. What a fucking genius the guy was. I've recently enjoyed reading my old posts about him, here and here, and I'm now also reading some of the books I have about him, with the help of Google Translate, because... everything about him is in Catalan! (I suppose it's lucky for me that he never got more famous - according to Jorge he never cared about fame - because it makes his sculptures comparatively affordable. But the flip-side is that there's almost nothing written about him in English.)

Anyway, back to me and MY art!
Like many painters, I like to have an image in front of me when I paint. And I have very specific ideas about WHAT I want to paint. But I have struggled a lot over the last few years with HOW to arrive at this visual source material. I have paid models on several occasions to take photographs of them, but overall  this has been a frustrating experience. For me, the key to my paintings is facial expression, and over time I have come to realize that a model's ability to make facial expression is probably the most important thing to me. A woman can be beautiful, and have a beautiful body, but if she cannot act (it's essentially acting that I am talking about here), then it's not going to yield anything useful for me. 

(Side note: I've just finished reading two books, back to back, about the human face. What a fascinating topic! The first of those books makes the interesting point that it's really only actors who can masterfully and convincingly control their faces at will - to make us believe that they're feeling what they are actually only pretending to feel - and we pay them handsomely for this comparatively rare skill.)

From all the photos I've taken of models, I've only ever painted one painting. Paying models isn't super-cheap, so that doesn't seem like such a great investment. 

Another technique I've employed is essentially photo collage; I will find photos representing different parts of a woman and put them together in Photoshop to make the image I want. I'm quite good at Photoshop and I've gotten some reasonably good results this way. But I'm not THAT good, and there are always frustrations, especially when it comes to making the lighting match on the different parts of the body. 

I've recently been building up the confidence to just draw my source material... in other words to simply draw the people I want to paint and then paint those drawings. It's certainly a time-honored method, practiced by artists throughout history, AND I've been drawing from live models for a few years now and my drawings are definitely getting better... BUT it feels to me like a pretty big fucking step. And it would require a lot of confidence in my drawing skills. The bottom line is that I won't rely solely on my drawing skills if that undermines the quality of the finished painting. Nevertheless, I will likely begin to experiment soon. 

But this whole discussion has been leading me to what I really want to talk about, which is AI image generators (AKA generative AI) or.. for those of you who aren't familiar with the concept.. software (websites) which can generate images based on text inputs (called "prompts"), or based on other images. This looks like it should be a real boon to artists looking for copyright-free source images, and frankly it is. (The copyright to the images you generate on the various sites belongs to you, the user... at least for now.) There are, however, pitfalls...

But AI is such a hot topic right now that it warrants a very brief aside... Most people seem agree that AI (and here we are no longer really talking about visually generative AI but rather information-processing AI, more like ChatGPT and its descendents) could one day pose an existential threat to humanity, but that's not the "pitfalls" I'm talking about. The existential threat presents variously as "AI will kill all humans," or "AI will replace humans... or at least take their jobs." While it strikes me as reasonable that doomsday scenarios such as these are possible, back in the mundane here-and-now world of art-making, I tend to agree with these articles (1, 2, 3) which take the position that artists are safe from generative AI, at least those artists engaged in the production of "High Art" like painting and sculpture. At least for the time being.

No, the pitfalls I'm talking about are much more pedestrian, and are specific to the use of generative AI. First off, a lot of the images coming out of these image generators can look similar to each other, and so images made this way can have an 'AI look.' To be fair, the various bits of software are getting better all the time, and if you are willing to keep playing with them I think you can sort of get around this same-same problem... but it takes some work. Another problem is that it can sometimes be pretty difficult to get the software to do what you want it to. If you're open to being surprised, it can be a lot of fun; but if you want something really specific it can be frustrating. Also, like most screen-based technologies out there, it can be quite addicting. You can spend a lot of time on it. You have to be disciplined. And lastly (and this is the danger that I take the most seriously), I think that making an image with AI has the potential to satisfy the artistic impulse (or the dopamine circuits) so thoroughly that one no longer feels the need to even make the painting. There are many people out there making AI generated art, and then calling the whole process done; in other words, for them the digital image is the end goal. But to me, that's not good enough. Because the best you can do with that is to make a print, and a print is not an artwork. A print is an object that is produced by a machine, while a painting is an object made by a person. Some people will bristle at this distinction, but that's how I feel about it. 

As far as the specific image generators I've used, most of my experience has been with Midjourney, Freepik, and Getimg, as well as a few others. The source image for my newest painting... the one I'm still working on above... was made with a combination of found imagery, Midjourney, Freepik, and Photoshop. It's the first painting for which I've employed AI. (To be honest, I think the reasons I've struggled a bit more than usual with this painting are rooted in this combined approach.)

Some people (including many artists) have a violently negative reaction to these image generators, but for me AI is just another tool in the toolbox. If I could find a model who could really emote, that would be great. And if one day I get to the point where I can draw exactly what I want to paint, with all the required subtlety of expression, that would be fantastic. In the meantime, AI image generation opens up a lot of possibilities. 

Just for fun, here are a few images I've made, along with the text prompts that generated them:

smiling feminine skull with long hair and sunglasses

wood sculpture of a calm serene smiling woman looking upward, seen in profile

(Note the interesting hybrid of painting and sculpture in the background)

Trump as an Indian style guru

socialist recruitment poster featuring a powerful attractive young woman, rise up against the ruling class, chaos and explosions

blonde woman riding a shark

gay leather jesus

Each of these images was created in seconds. It's pretty amazing.

OK Thats's it for now. I do have more to say about the Swedish art scene and what Jassans might have to say about it, but I'll leave that for another post.

Oh and in case you're wondering, I feel like I'm 2 or 3 paintings, and one or two sculptures, away from putting together a digital portfolio and trying to get a show in a gallery somewhere. That's the big idea.

Hope you all are well!

Bye!

Nice Place, Nice People

I am on a plane returning to Sweden from Taos. It’s quite uncomfortable. I‘m having difficulty finding the right way to organize my body and my laptop in this confined space… so that I can write. 

Something that felt big and important happened on this trip to Taos, but I don’t quite know what it was, or how to write about it. It’s confusing. I’m confused. Maybe by the end of this blog post, I will have a better understanding of what happened, and… maybe by the end of it, you will too. 

I guess the easiest way to state it is that we all – Christina, Kodiak, and I – had a really wonderful time in Taos, and we realized that we miss it there. More specifically… we miss our people. Our community. 

Do you remember, at the end of my last post, when I said that I wasn’t looking forward to going back to Taos, but that I would probably enjoy it more than I expected? Well, yeah… like that. It happened like that. I had a lot of physical work to do in Taos, and I did it all (which means that I was working hard most of the time), but fear of that work wasn’t the reason I didn’t want to return. I think the part of my reluctance to return to Taos that I was conscious of was that I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of progress we were making in Sweden… and I think that fear was semi-legitimate, but perhaps overblown. In fact I think this little break in Taos may well turn out to be good for my flow in Sweden… but more on that later. And I think the part of my reluctance to return to Taos that I was UNconscious of was basically a fear of liking it too much, being too comfortable there, having Taos shine an unfavorable light on our life in Sweden. It was a risk. We went. We ran the risk. In 5 hours I will be back in Sweden and the readjustment will begin. I won’t make any judgments for a week or so, because jetlag is a bitch. It fucks with your sleep, which is almost exactly the same as saying that it fucks with your moods, your emotions. So no judgments for a week. 

But yeah, it was nice. I mean, not all of it. I’d rather live in the lush green Swedish embrace of our wild grass and fruit trees than the dusty dry death of the Mesa any day. And the painting and sculpture studio I build in Sweden beats the hell out of any studio I’ve ever had in Taos, and I can’t wait to work in it. But the community… wow. What a difference. I mean, don’t get me wrong… the people we know in Sweden are lovely, amazing people and I am genuinely looking forward to seeing them all (YOU all!). But really, there is something very special about being in your old home town for 3 weeks and having genuine and engaged conversations with over 100 people (there's a list below)… people you run into at parties and grocery stores and restaurants and parks… people you have missed and are happy to see… people who are happy to see you. It’s lovely. Does this mean that I want to focus even more on community-building in Sweden, deepening and broadening the friendships we have there? Yes! Or does it mean that the focus in Sweden can be on buckling down and working while Taos can be for topping up the social battery? That could work too! I’m telling you, man, it’s very confusing! 

Of course, it’s not fair to compare a place we’ve been in for just under 2 years with a place we lived for a combined total, between Christina and me, of 40 years. But despite it being unfair, of course I was comparing the two places all the time; which place has better weather, which has better work opportunities, which of our two chunks of earth is better, which workshop is better, etc., etc. But in a conversation on the topic, my friend Benito wisely said “You don’t need to compare; you’ll always be in one paradise or another.” Yes. That’s the right way to think about it. 

Back in Sweden, our metal shop is finished, as is my art studio… so now the hard work begins. What will we do there? What will we make? How will we make money? These questions have so far defied easy answers, but that’s at least in part because we’ve been so focused on building and renovating that we haven’t put much effort into answering them. The answers will come. We will apply for opportunities and the opportunities will come. I believe that. But something about this trip to Taos has focused me, sharpened me. Personally, my fantasy is to make a commitment to myself to spend at least a few hours of EVERY day in my studio, painting or sculpting, for the next 6 or 8 or 12 months so that I can not only get some work done, but even more importantly develop my own style. Go into a cocoon and develop. No outside influence. No opinions. Just me. Find the truth. The truth for me. And then paint it, and sculpt it, over and over and over again. And sell hundreds of fucking paintings! Fuck it. No time to lose. People die every day, and it might even happen to me one day. Maybe. 

As I write this, in one long flow on this plane, I’m tired and a little overwhelmed and emotional about it all. But I’ve decided to just post this, as I’ve written it, without waiting a few days to come to my senses and edit it. An honest snapshot in time. 

Did I figure out what happened in Taos? Did I make it clear? I hope you understand, because I’m not sure I do. Maybe in a week. 

You might remember that Kodiak and I started off in New Hampshire, with my brother Trevor and his family... which was super fun

I made this list of people I saw in Taos, mostly because I wanted to count the names. If you don't live in Taos, I can't imagine that you would care... and you can skip it. 

1. Cedar 

2. Johnny Cisneros 

3. Big Giles 

4. Krizia 

5. Little Giles 

6. Elijah 

7. Todd 

8. Marlena 

9. Phil 

10. Elizabeth 

11. Peter 

12. Gregory 

13. Toby Rickabaugh 

14. Nonnah 

15. Roberta 

16. Sasha and Vida 

17. Ruby 

18. Shandra 

19. Eric 

20. Niko 

21. Satya 

22. Eric 

23. Elizabeth 

24. Sonya 

25. Dave 

26. Josh Kanizzle 

27. Lydia 

28. Jason 

29. Pamela 

30. Zoe Zimmerman 

31. Barry Norris 

32. Joan Norris 

33. Kelly Igo 

34. Scott Shaward 

35. Ron Detullio 

36. Keevan 

37. Sofia, Jen Hart's daughter 

38. Matt 

39. Richard 

40. Chris Painter 

41. Copy Queen Nicole 

42. Nicole Barady 

43. Alessandra 

44. Key (Kye) 

45. Gerd 

46. Jimmy 

47. Renee & Daisy & Ready 

48. Scott Adair 

49. Val from New Zealand 

50. Sherry Mcgraw 

51. Tom Azari 

52. Holly Azari 

53. Lynn Garlick 

54. Maury 

55. Sheila O'Malley 

56. Benito 

57. Joshlynn 

58. Jennifer Amman 

59. Kate 

60. Sam 

61. Eileen 

62. Elaine Baker 

63. Maria Zamora 

64. Kevin 

65. Nancy 

66. Charlie 

67. Olive 

68. Cozy 

69. Genevieve 

70. Oswald 

71. Tracy (Zeke's) 

72. Carl (Zeke's) 

73. Michael Lujan 

74. Amy Westphal 

75. Thomas 

76. Siri 

77. Jack 

78. Dimitri 

79. Shawn Ludwig 

80. Scott (Randalls) 

81. Claudia 

82. Cullen 

83. Anita (John Dunne shops) 

84. Kristin Swim 

85. Eric Anderson 

86. Adam Robison 

87. CJ 

88. Jemma 

89. Namani 

90. Mariah 

91. Lola 

92. Juniper 

93. Izumi 

94. Shintaro 

95. Angela Oliver 

96. Travis 

97. Jason (Jen Hart's Ex) 

98. Tara from UPS 

99. Suki and Orion 

100. Forest 

101. Aaron Shiver 

102. Cousin Amanda 

103. Ashley (Magical Tattoo) 

104. Casey from 2 Peaks

105. Steve McFarland

106. Bonnie

107. Beau

Busy Spring, Part 2

OK, Part 2. Picking up where we left off, which was in Oslo or something like that...

All the while, even as we were going on these various trips, we were also working on the renovation of our workshop. As that project creeped closer to completion, we began in earnest to look for metal-working tools. At some point Christina responded to a classified ad for a good-looking belt sander, and when we drove to the seller's location, only a few minutes from our homestead, we were surprised to walk into one of the largest machine shops I've ever seen, boasting the largest lathe in Skåne! 

Kodiak next to the largest lathe in Skåne

It turned out that the proprietor, a really nice guy named Farhad who emigrated here from Afghanistan a decade ago, was selling a lot of equipment, and we ended up buying the belt sander, a plate roller, and a beautiful metal table from him. Not long after that, Christina managed to find an old USSR-built pneumatic power hammer in Lithuania which she promptly painted fuchsia and named Ludmila.

But with all these heavy tools slowly making their way to Spitfire Konstbruk och Smide (the name of our newly-formed business) we were in need of a way to move these tools into our shop. That meant two things: 1) we needed a forklift, and 2) we needed to make a big door in our shop that the forklift could get through, where there was none before. I know that it must be only a small portion of this blog's readership who gives a shit about heavy equipment, but I can tell you that I was quite excited to find this Swedish-built Stocka 3-ton forklift at an auction. 

Unloading my new plate roller

Although it's rated at 3 tons, that fact that it can move the old babushka Ludmila, who weighs in at a hefty 3.3 tons, proves it's a conservative rating. 

It was around this time, as spring started to poke through the gloom, that the waves of house-guests started to wash up onto our shores. The first to arrive - and almost the last to leave - was our dear friend Brian Malley from Canada. Brian spent almost seven weeks here with us, mostly helping us build the shop and the other spaces, but also having fun adventures like bicycling in Copenhagen and camping in Portugal (more on that in a second!)

BRIAN!

I mentioned that Brian helped us build the 'other spaces.' Immediately upon his arrival, Brian, Christina, our friend Kryzs and I transformed a crappy and mostly empty space into a cozy and comfy self-contained guest apartment in only 2 weeks! 

BEFORE

AFTER

The apartment was put to good use; over the last few months we have had the pleasure of visits from Brian, Matt and Richard from Taos, Amy Westphall from Santa Fe, Cedar from Taos, my mom from Greece, and Eileen... also from Taos. 

Once the apartment was finished, we shifted focus back to the workshop. 

The workshop, early in the renovation...

After sorting out the ceiling and walls, the final hurdle was to cut the aforementioned door into the end wall of the building, big enough to move materials and tools in and out. By this time we were joined by Cedar, and all those capable hands made the job a success. 

Brian beginning to cut through the brick wall, and...

...the (almost) finished result.

And the shop today.

Of all the spaces we have renovated in the last few months, though.. the one that excites me the most is probably my art studio. I had been working on this space, slowly and by myself, over the months as time allowed. Once the shop and the apartment were finished, however, Brian and Cedar gave a huge push of energy and helped bring it to completion. I think that, of all the spaces we've renovated here, the difference between beginning and end is perhaps the largest in my studio. 

A series of photos showing the evolution of my studio space. As I write this, I have now mostly moved in and I am so excited to start working in there.  

When the building was finally done, we found ourselves in a strange situation. You may remember that Christina's sculpture, the Flybrary, was purchased by a young entrepreneur in Portugal. The purchaser decided at some point to build a new sculpture park in eastern Portugal, and the primary purpose of Brian's and Cedar's visit to Europe was to help move move the sculpture from the private estate where it now resides to the location of the new sculpture park. My mother had also arrived here in Sweden to look after Kodiak while we were working down south. However, in the weeks leading up to our departure on this scheduled work trip, there were problems with engineering documents, building permits, and equipment rentals, and the whole plan to relocate the sculpture fell apart. Everyone had taken off time from their busy lives to make this happen, and in recognition of this fact the purchaser of the sculpture generously agreed to pay us all almost 50% of what we would have earned on the job. So here we all were, in Europe with pre-purchased plane tickets to Portugal and a little extra cash. As a sort of farewell to Brian and Cedar and a closing of this chapter, we decided to rent a camper van and take a tour of Portugal! The highlights were the beaches...

 and the charming town of Porto. 

Probably the best thing we saw in Porto...

And the series of ridiculous 'band photos' we took! 

After 5 days in the van together we said bittersweet farewells and went our separate ways.

After Portugal, with no more house-guests, Sweden suddenly felt lonely. But there is never a shortage of things to do around here. And even after almost 2 years, we are in some ways still in the process of arriving. I have recently applied for the extension of my residency permit (which is a cumbersome process involving a period of time after the expiration of my first permit but before the approval of my second permit in which I am therefor quasi-illegal here). And, as of yesterday, I am finally the proud holder of a Swedish motorcycle license! It's actually kind of a big deal because, while the test for the car license is offered in Swedish, English, and Arabic, the motorcycle test is only offered in Swedish. I had to learn a lot of new Swedish, but about 10 days ago, I passed it!  My actual driving test was yesterday, which was also not exactly easy, but I passed that too and so now I can ride here!

This entire winter and spring, with all the building and visits, has felt a lot like a chapter in this story of moving to Sweden that we are writing. To mark the end of this chapter, and hopefully the beginning of a new one, we decided to have a party! We invited pretty much everyone we knew, and even with 10 or 15 of our friends not showing up, we still had a little over 40 people come see our new setup. Technically it was a 'shop-warming' party, but really it was a bit more than that. The shop was clean and well-organized, the tools were all out and on display, and the party functioned - or at least I hoped it would function - as a sort of flashing billboard, advertising to our nascent community that we are here, ready to start working, hoping to do cool stuff and integrate. (Or to put it another way, as our friend Benjamin recently did... Now that we've finished the hard work of building the spaces, now comes the even harder work of working IN the spaces.)

Party!

If you find yourself reading this blog and thinking that we must be running out of money by this point, you would be correct. Everything we have done up to this point has been fantastically expensive, and the resources we amassed by selling sculptures, cars, and even our house have now been more-or-less depleted. So yes, it's time for us to work. I have submitted proposals to a few opportunities for building new sculpture; so far none have been approved but I will continue submitting. With the skills and resources at our disposal, there must certainly be many ways that Christina and I can make an income from our own shop, and we are hoping to find those channels before we are forced to take hourly jobs. Speaking personally, I would like nothing more than to make paintings and sculptures and be able to earn a living doing that. Fingers crossed.

Speaking of which, here's some more art...

A pencil drawing done with no visual reference... harder than it sounds!

Another drawing. I continue to be inspired by the structural and conceptual overlap between tree branches and the female body. I recently proposed another sculpture on this theme to a sculpture park in Oslo. Here's the proposal image:

If the people in Oslo reject this proposal, I think I will just build it anyway. This whole construct of waiting and hoping for some curator or another to say YES to your idea is totally fucked. It kills the spirit of the artist, and the art-making. I've made some of my best work just because I wanted to.

And here's a sculpture that I'm close to finishing, which I will likely cast in bronze...

Kodiak and I will be going back to the States on Monday. We will spend a week in New Hampshire with my brother Trevor, and about three weeks in Taos, where we will be joined by Christina. As with my previous trips to Taos, I am not too excited about this one because it feels like a disruption to the flow of things here. But I imagine that, just as I did on my previous trips, I will find being in Taos unexpectedly enjoyable. It's always fun to see old friends and visit old familiar places, and Taos is a magically beautiful place after all. 

If you made it all the way through to the end of Part 2, thanks! I hope to see all of you soon.

Hugs,

Christian

Busy Spring, Part 1

OK, yes it's been a long time since my last post. A little over six months, actually... which is a long time for this blog. I have done SO much in these last six months (most of it with Christina and/or Kodiak) that I have made the unusual decision to split this post into two parts. At this very moment, you are beginning to read Part 1. In a few days I will post Part 2. You can blame this on me... for having paused so very long between posts. I'll do my best to keep abreast of things better in the future! Let's begin...

As of my last post, I had just returned from Rome and we had just begun working on renovating our workshop. Knowing that we would need tools when our shop was completed, I drove down to Berlin in December to take advantage of a good deal on a nice TIG welder being sold by a friend, and I had the pleasure of staying with my old friend Guy and his family. Guy's help in building With Open Arms in Berlin in 2018 was invaluable, and it was lovely to see him again.

Not long after that we escaped the dreary Swedish winter by spending the New Year in Athens with my brother Cles and my mother. 

In Athens with Cles

Cles and his wife Kelly had just welcomed a pair of baby girls, Kyveli and Elektra, into the world! It was so fun to see them! We then in turn escaped Athens for a few days on the Greek island of Hydra. I've written about Hydra before... about how ridiculously charming it is, how unspoiled it is by the modern world. It's really an amazing place. No cars, no roads, just donkeys and cats. So many cats! 

The feeling I had this time was really one of being transported back to a simpler time. There is something that I find so seductive about the idea of living a pared-down, simpler life that I even started fantasizing about trying to buy a house on Hydra one day. Oh well, one can dream!

The simple life

While on Hydra it become so obvious to me (in case I'd forgotten) how much I love cats. In fact we all fell so much in love with one particular cat (which Kodiak named Calypso) that I even started researching how to take her home with us. 

Calypso

In the end, that wasn't such a good idea... but we returned to Sweden with the clear goal of finding a cat for our new farmhouse. My only criteria was that I wanted a black (or dark-colored) cat. After quite a bit of searching, we found a mother and daughter duo who we named Stella and Luna. They are not black... but they're tough little farm-cats and they're a perfect fit for our family.

Stella and Luna

In February Kodiak and I again escaped the Swedish gloom by spending a few days in Oslo, the capital of Norway. OK, maybe we weren't actually escaping any gloom, but Oslo was really fun... full of good museums (really good museums, including a military museum that Kodiak Loved, and a museum of polar exploration where you can wander around on board the actual ships which they took to the north pole a hundred years ago!), good food, beautiful views, and lots of sculpture. In fact Oslo is home to the world's largest sculpture park featuring the work of only one artist, and it was precisely that park which drew me there. Gustav Vigeland is Norway's most famous sculptor, and with good reason. He was fantastically prolific during his long life, and the park which (informally) bears his name and the accompanying museum are full of literally hundreds of monumental sculptures executed by him or by his assistants. Actually the fact that he had an army of assistants tasked with carrying out his designs brings us to an interesting handful of points to make about him. 1) Because he was so well-loved in his native Norway, and because he was working in the years before and after the turn of the twentieth century, an era which was characterized by industrialization, optimism, and cultural investment in Europe, he received a tremendous amount of support and assistance from the Norwegian state. This support took the form of financial assistance which certainly helped retain all those assistants, but also resulted in a unique deal in which the city of Oslo not only gave Vigeland an amazing city park to fill with his work, but also gave him a spectacular and huge building in a great part of the city to serve as his home and studio, in exchange for that very same building eventually reverting back to the city upon his death and subsequently serving as a museum of his sculpture. What a deal! I don't think that sort of state sponsorship really happens anymore... 2) The second point to make about the assistants is that, although on first glance it might seem like an antiquated arrangement, especially insofar as the Norwegian state might have helped him retain those assistants, a working arrangement like that is not so different from what we see with today's billionaire art stars. People like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst need only sketch something on a napkin... and then their minions do the hard work of realizing the idea as an actual object. During the construction of Vigeland Park, Vigeland was working in much the same way; he would make a small clay 'sketch' of a sculpture (these clay sketches are all in the museum), and his assistants would execute it in full-scale from granite. A lot of people like to shit-talk artists who work in this mode (and I'm sure there are major disadvantages to being 'distanced' from the actual production work), but it doesn't sound that bad to me!

A few of my favorites from the Vigeland Park and Museum.

The centerpiece of the park... Vigeland's monolith. Look closely to see what the tower is 'made of.' Remember that you can open any of these photos in FULL SIZE by right-clicking (or Command-Click on a Mac) and opening in a new tab. (Not my photo)

2 more sculptures from the streets of Oslo. A diver near the harbor (cast stainless, nice!) and a monument to those affected by breast cancer. The sculpture is modeled from a real person and her story, as detailed on a nearby plaque, was intense.

On the topic of Damien Hirst, on our last day in Oslo I discovered another, more contemporary sculpture park which featured one of my favorite sculptures by Hirst, Anatomy of an Angel. 

The piece presents a medical-style cutaway of an archetypal angel from the Christian faith. By drawing attention to the fact that angels share most of their exterior anatomy with mortal women, and presumably therefor their interior anatomy as well, I think the piece attempts to question the idea that they could somehow be immortal. Or at least that's what I take from it!

While in Oslo we also discovered a really super unusual store which calls itself an 'army-surplus store', but was really so much more. You could buy everything from knives and uniforms to dried insects to animal skulls in there. My kind of place. Kodiak went nuts in there!  

At some point not too long after our return from Oslo I attempted to purchase a genuine Jassans sculpture at an online auction... 

....but the bidding quickly eclipsed my purchasing power... and I failed. Despite all my fascination with Hirst and Vigeland and all the other amazing sculptors of the world, Jassans is my favorite. It's been a few years since I wrote about him, the great Catalan sculptor who I discovered while living in Barcelona, but my love for him hasn't diminished. In the 8 years that I've been a fan, that was the first time I saw one of his pieces come up for sale, and I was heartbroken for days after losing that auction. I've got to figure out how to make some money so I'm ready if another one ever shows up! (Ironically there's a strong argument to be made that one of my best shots at making enough money to buy sculptures like this is just to start making sculptures like this...)

I'll finish up Part 1 with a little update on my own art production. To be honest it's been a busy few months - a fact which will become even more clear in Part 2 - so I haven't exactly been cranking out the work. But back in February I did start a figure drawing group, and that has kept the nerve fibers between my eyes and hands in good shape. You might remember that back in Taos I was enthusiastically involved in such a group, and I figured that it would be easy to find a local one here in Sweden to join. But after a few months of searching, I came up empty... so I started a group. We meet on Monday evenings in Malmö, and I've gradually started to produce some decent drawings. I have lately begun experimenting with drawing directly in pen, which is so much more of a commitment... but also signals, I think, a bit more confidence. Here are a few drawings...

I have more of my own art to share, of a different and slightly wider variety, in the next post.

OK, stay tuned for Part 2 in a few days, in which I discuss our awesome new workshop and all the fun adventures we've had with all the fun people who have visited! It's already written, so I promise it will really happen! 

I'll end with this great picture taken by Cles, in Athens' First Cemetery...

C