Life on the Edge

A Gary Snyder zen poem reads: “In the shaping of the axe the model is close at hand.”

As a sculpture who uses axes, chisels, gouges, rasps and other tools-of-removal, I am fond of this poem because of its inherent wisdom in the notion that if one wants to make an axe, all one need do is simply look at the carving axe already in your hand as the model to create the new axe.

(As a sort of koan, there are multiple meanings to this poem, but I will leave these up to the reader to pursue and ponder.)

Not quite in the sense of Snyder’s poem, but now in my studio I have my own “model close at hand” and am using it to create a much larger sculpture of around nine feet in length (2.7 meters). The small model seen in the photo started off as an experiment where I carved two spirals going in opposing directions. I had no idea what the finished piece would look like and was rather surprised at what emerged. Sort of humorous, actually. Like a stack of fish eggs that diminished in size or an aquatic, never before seen species of sea weed. Although complex in a mathematical sense and a bit daunting to carve, the little model never fails to put a smile on my face much in the same way seeing someone strumming on a ukulele never fails to cheer me up.

Anyway, I hope the full scale sculpture turns out as intriguing as the model. Plans now are to carve a grouping of four of them (one for each finger of my carving hand). 

Lifer

Hunched over hard white bread
and plastic soup bowl filled with gruel,
he looked like a stork, a silly angel,
all neck and bony shoulder-wings
and awkward beak.

His head lifted, then fell
in a slow deliberate dance,
three, four times, dough-skinned
in a gray room sickened by yellow light.
He kept his eyes shut tight.

Outside the prison dining hall,
a turnkey slammed and locked
the heavy iron gate. The old man placed
his palms together softly, raised
them to his stubbled chin,

crossed himself, and ate.

—Sam Hamill

Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

—Mary Oliver

Forget your life. Say “God is Great”. Get up.
You think you know what time it is. It’s time to pray.
You’ve carved so many little figurines, too many.
Don’t knock on any random door like a beggar.
Reach your long hand out to another door, beyond where
you go on the street, the street
where everyone says, “How are you?”
and no one says “How aren’t you?”

Tomorrow you’ll see what you’ve broken and torn tonight,
thrashing in the dark. Inside you
there’s an artist you don’t know about.
This artist is not interested in how things look different in moonlight.

If you are here unfaithfully with us,
you’re causing terrible damage.
If you’ve opened your loving to God’s love,
you’re helping people you don’t know
and have never seen.

Is what I say true? Say “yes” quickly,
if you know, if you’ve known it
from before the beginning of the universe.

—Rumi

We were never told it would be easy. What we were told was that it would be worth it. 

After all the trials and tribulations that go into both the painting of the paintings and the hanging of the paintings, Sally’s exhibition opening was nothing less than a stunning success. The joyful party atmosphere throughout the packed crowd of around 100 at the Eucalypt Gallery cafe, where an electric enthusiasm continually bubbled up in excited conversation, was one of those rewarding moments in every artist’s life that somehow makes it all worthwhile. 

Heather Rose, Tasmanian business woman of the year, novelist and environmental activist, officially opened the exhibition with a speech that was touching and passionate in its heartfelt response to both Sally and her paintings. A few excerpts follow:

Sally’s work is extraordinarily accomplished, rich with not only the technical skill it takes to bring these paintings into being – but with a spiritual wisdom and an ability to tune herself in to frequencies not many of us choose to listen to – let alone harness for artistic purpose.

Sally’s paintings are not for the faint-hearted. They are for the adventurous, the seeker, the observer.  They demand a level of interaction from the viewer. They can be unsettling, inspiring, eerie, unbalancing and balancing. ... they speak to those who are ready to hear.

The exhibition opening was on Sunday. After a day off on Monday catching up on needed sleep, by Tuesday Sally was back at work. Not in the studio, but down at her Moonstone Mandala temple putting the finishing touches on its construction. Another adventurous project in an artist’s sometimes uneasy, but always worthy life.

All too often people think that being an artist is a care free, no stress, easy going way to make a living that just touches on being a serious, worthy occupation. Our office (our studios) can be visited, it seems, at any time of the week because we’re not really doing anything that requires a schedule or appointment. For us to close the gate three days a week creates more offense than respect of the need for us to protect our privacy in order to create the work we do.

A look behind the scenes, however, reveals many a stressful day that requires an artist to have the patience of Job and the resilience of an enlightened yoga master to avoid going nuts as the once neat and tidy living room—and dining room table—become staging grounds and work stations for weeks on end for an upcoming exhibition or the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere while on the way to Hobart to photograph the paintings for such an exhibition.

We actually took two cars (mine could only hold five of the seven paintings plus my own sculpture, “Birth of Beauty") so, in a way, we were lucky as I was able to get to the photographer on time with most of the work while Sally limped back to Roaring Beach. Having left half an hour earlier, I had no idea that Sally’s car decided to call it quits until the kind waiter (this is Hobart where a “kind waiter” is not an oxymoron) at the restaurant we had agreed to meet at for breakfast handed me his mobile phone. It also happened to be a day when the temperature rose to 100 degrees on the drive home as I nervously transported $100,000 worth of uninsured art with all the windows rolled down.

All said and done, though, it still was a good day. The photographer, Peter Whyte, is a skilled master at documenting art work and it was a pleasure to watch him work. His $25,000 camera was needed to get the necessary 80mp for a future poster of “The Birth of Beauty” (see below) as well as fine art reproductions of the paintings. The two paintings that didn’t get photographed are being shot today as Peter was kind enough to reschedule Sally ahead of her exhibition opening this coming Sunday .

Now, with just five days to go there is only the house to get transformed with the living room tided up, the dining room table cleared of hammer, screw drivers, pliers, gold leaf, pots of glue, staple gun, electric drill various jars of varnish, shellac and thinners, and, the beds made up for visiting parents, relatives and friends flying in for the weekend to celebrate the launch of the Moonstone Mandala paintings (http://www.moonstonemandala.com). All this plus continually working on my own ideas for a site specific sculpture for the Friendly Beaches Lodge in less than a month.

Life’s a party if you’re an artist.

Just last week Sally’s and my kayaks cruised languidly along the sandstone shoreline in the relatively protected waters of Norfolk Bay (as opposed to “Storm Bay” where we live). Looking at the below photo where she is lulling about at the entrance to a shallow cave got me thinking about how every new artistic endeavour requires paddling into the dark unknown and having a peek and poke at what might lie within. Whether holding a palette in the painting studio or, more simply, an omelette pan in the kitchen, creativity demands it. 

Embroidered onto the heart and stitched into the fabric of body and mind is all of our life’s history and it aches for inspired expression. Inspiration doesn’t just happen though. It is nurtured and coddled into being through the tiniest acts of bravery to overcome inertia, fear and the risk of failure. (Success, by the way, is going from failure to failure with enthusiasm.) Chance and luck play a part, but first and foremost, inspiration needs one to be an intrepid explorer, willing to enter into the mysterious, darker recesses of the many interior or exterior landscapes that lurk everywhere. 

Today’s burnt offering inevitably leads to tomorrow’s gourmet sensation.

January 2, 2008. Here we all are at the start of another year. Each one of us on our individual journeys doing the best we can dealing with the winds and currents that buffet our boats as they course their way through life. May we all have a safe passage to whatever awaits us.

To represent this life journey, three years ago I carved a fleet of nine boats with a total of 34 occupants who had set out on “uncharted” waters. After finishing the initial carvings, the boats were then placed outside to weather over the ensuing years. For the past two months I have been laboriously refitting the stones, re-sanding the boats and oiling everything. Although the top “boat” section looks to be separate from the darker “base”, they are actually carved from one single piece of wood. By not re-sanding the bottom section and leaving it completely weathered, a darkened and more aged patina is achieved.

Five years ago yesterday in 2003 I put up the first entry on this blog, Life at the Edge, and have written weekly since. A long journey indeed with lots of words and photos detailing what goes on at Windgrove and, hopefully, linking these stories with some sort of universal truths on how the world and all its inhabitants could coexist more peacefully. I doubt that I have always walked my talk and have probably sought safe anchorage in too many safe harbours instead of venturing out into the wilder unknown to either find myself or actively seek change. If the truth be known, I get seasick really quickly. Still, though, for those readers that have been with me since the beginning, there has been plenty of excitement to write home about. Thanks for sailing along with me. I look forward to the next five years.

In imagination is the preservation of wilderness. By this I mean one of two things. The first is that even while living deep within the confines of a city a person can close their eyes and imagine—quite vividly—the smells, visual details and tactile qualities of the green earth that they have in the past experienced. To call this up in one’s mind through one’s imagination is a powerful tool, not only for its calming and healing potential, but also to sustain and remind the political/environmental activist (while biding their time in solitary confinement at the local jail) why they engage in civil disobedience when pursuing legislative or other changes to protect and preserve wilderness.

The second meaning when I write “In imagination is the preservation of wilderness” is that an artist, through his/her imagination, has the ability (and quite possibility the responsibility) to create works of art that are expressive of the natural world and convey a sense of its inherent beauty. By so doing, these imaginative artistic renderings of nature’s beauty will serve to motivate people to protect wilderness areas because they have fallen in love with these areas through the imagination of the artist. Think of wilderness photographers Ansel Adams (America) or Peter Dombrovskis (Australia). Think of the poet Mary Oliver. Or, the sculptor Andy Goldsworthy. All focus their artistic efforts on the sublime beauty of nature. Their collective works are, indeed, iconic representations of the earth’s beauty.

Likewise for me.

Whenever I hold a sea shell in the palm of my hand I constantly marvel at the exquisite mathematical genius that is its beauty. In my studio I use my remembering of the shell at the beach—my imagination—to recall it into form. (Definition One above)

Outside my studio, my desire is that whoever views this sculpture will taste something of the sea in their handling of it and , thereby, fall a tiny bit in love with the natural world. (Definition Two above)

What I have carved can be simply described as a sea shell nestled into an organic kelp form. It can also be looked at (with a bit of imagination) as the billowing kelp giving birth to a sea shell.

Many religious traditions go to great lengths to explain their faith intellectually, but their real lure is in the beauty of their rites and images. When Gerard Manley Hopkins claims that “the World is charged with the grandeur of God,” I take it to mean that we can glimpse God in the electric beauty of nature and art.
.....Thomas Moore, The Soul’s Religion

Last year (1 April 2006) when writing about a sculpture similar to this one, I created a story about the birth of Beauty. As a starting point, I used the creation myth of the goddess Venus as portrayed by Botticelli’s painting “The birth of Venus”; sometimes referred to as “The birth of Beauty”. I proposed that if Venus came from a sea shell (the sea shell being symbolic of nature), just possibly the artistic portrayal of the birth of a sea shell could take us even closer to the source of all beauty—the electric beauty of nature Thomas Moore speaks about where we can glimpse God.

A bit convoluted I confess, but what the hell, even if my thinking process is a bit spirally, it is my own imaginative myth making, isn’t it? The story might fail on an intellectual level, but I do hope that there is a lure for the viewer in these photo images of the sea shell emerging swollen and smooth from the pregnant top side of a double layering of mating kelp. A lure both enticing and informative.

Now before my friends start bagging me for being either too religious or too blasphemous, let me just quote again from Thomas Moore: It is better to be on the cusp between religion and secularity than to fall into either category. For there is [a] paradox at work: the appearance of religiosity is often in inverse proportion to the quality of religious practice.

And, as beautiful as I think this new sculpture is, I am reminded of the humbling words of Rumi:

“So delicate yesterday, the nightsinging birds
by the creek. Their words were:

You may make a jewelry flower
out of gold and rubies and emeralds,
but it will have no fragrance.“

Length of “A Shell’s Birth”—5 feet / 1.5 meters

Every sound
has a home
from which it has come
to us
and a door
through which it is going
again
out into the world
to make another home.
...........  David Whyte—from “The Winter of Listening”

At the ancient pond
a frog plunges into
the sound of water
...........  Masuo Basho

Slowly, slowly over a period of three months, both outside in the weather and inside the warming house, the meticulous oil painting “Oasis” gradually emerged out of winter’s silent gestating darkness and into the world of Spring singing a vibrational tapestry of colour. Meditate on it long enough and one’s understanding of reality shifts into connective realms visible yet hidden; transitory, yet eternal where the sound of color resonates through one’s very soul.

During these same months, in the wee hours of the night while the oils were drying waiting for the next day’s thin layer, my partner Sally Horne also worked on setting up a web site. Today, with an excitement that goes with any creative unveiling, Sally launches her “Moonstone Mandala” into the public arena. For a more in-depth exploration—both visual and written—of “Oasis” and all the other mandalas painted here at Windgrove by Sally go to:
http://www.moonstonemandala.com

While there, discover how colour and pattern weave magic circles in sacred and profound ways; where every mandala has a home from which it has come to us and a door through which it is going again out into the world to make another home;

where Sally’s frog of emergence splashes into the age of the internet.