restingmotion

International Quilt Study Center 2: Craft....

I've broken this visit to the Quilt Study Center into two sections mostly because it grew long, and I've divided it into sections labeled art and craft, not so much because I believe that one is more or less worthy than the other, or even that dividing lines are all that clear, but because it suited my purposes.  In this post I am covering the parts of the exhibit that were devoted to pieces that were created to be functional.  

Simply put, as much as I love art in and of itself, there is a special place in my heart for those who make things that are beautiful for everyday use.  We have little time or even use for such things in modern life, when everything is available to us without much thought and it is time that feels rare.  But I sometimes wonder if we've missed something truly important.

There was a small, but lovely exhibit of Miao pieces which included the two collars shown above.  These are pieces intended to be worn, and they show signs of wear and use, but the design and workmanship is stunning.  I want to say that they are in fact children's collars, but I neglected to take a photo of the descriptive plaque and cannot remember.  That seems foreign to us in modern life, where we feel our hands are put to better use than on handwork that will be quickly outgrown, but I'm not sure the results of our labors are any less ephemeral.  The act of making shows respect and honor and love, the wearing connects one to the art, to the cycle of life and art combined.  Such things remind me that we humans are creative creatures, that we are compelled to make beauty, and that it is in fact the act of living itself, and celebrating the small, the immediate, and the circle of our individual family and community is from whence our well-being and happiness ultimately arises.

It is not really important if something was made for everyday use or for special occasions.  What attracts me is the making as well as the using, that it is the act of living itself that is worthy of art.  Look at the detail in this Miao women's jacket for example.  It is not fast fashion.  This is something to be worn and cared for, to be treasured.  It is something that is meant to last, not permanently no, but nothing really is permanent, and to be worn with pride.

In some ways, we modern people have lost that.  Would any of us spend the time embroidering a jacket, putting in time to perform intricate work such as in the example above?  We think of our time as too valuable, and yet do the things we do with our time prove to be more lasting?  Do they bring us greater pleasure? I am not trying to denigrate the art quilts, I think they are fabulous.  I think human need to create is something essential to our being, that we are all creative, if anything, we do not honor or desire for creativity enough.

But one of the joys of looking at older, or traditional quilts and bed coverings is not only in admiring the skill of the makers, but also in reminding oneself of the joy in making something that was both necessary and beautiful.  No one has to make beauty, and yet we do. And our desire to express beauty can take many forms. The bedspread above is not quilted, or embroidered but stenciled. It is no less beautiful, no less useful, and the stenciling is artfully done.  Similar stencils are available in Michaels and we might stencil a placemat, a piece of furniture or a wall, and yet this bedspread dates from sometime in the 1820s or 1830s. Would we stencil a bedspread? Are we missing something in not curling up under the warmth of our own handiwork?

Or consider this embroidered blanket, embroidered with wool thread, which the description stated had probably been spun from local wool.  Note the date, 1816, making this blanket over 200 years old.  The workmanship is beautiful.  Can we imagine it today?  Such workmanship takes much practice and skill, and not every budding embroiderer has the patience or talent, but can we even imagine sitting down today and embroidering a blanket?  What have we lost and what have we gained?  

Is this any less art?  Someone meticulously cut out motifs, arranged them, and attached them by hand.

And so we still admire and celebrate that which survives, the patience, the skill, the handiwork:

Today these things are the exceptions, the treasures, and most of them are just that.  Most of what makes it to a museum is the exceptional, the work of the skilled and talented, but many of these objects also came from a time when most people needed to make what they used, and not everyone was equally talented.  The truth is that most quilts were not exceptional.  But we tend to forget about the quality of the average.  We are blinded by our own exposure, our experience, our knowledge.  We forget that we have become critics, and we forget that our vantage point is indeed from a point of exception.  But in many ways the average, the everyday, even the fact that individuals and communities made quilts, that the making was itself both a necessity and a bringing together, is forgotten. 

I think in some ways, that was the beauty of the Ken Burns quilt exhibit, although we admittedly did not spend enough time there.  It is something I regret.  I admit that compared to the work in the other exhibits some of these quilts seemed boring, but we were blinded by our own knowledge, our own skills as seamstresses although I for one am no quilter, and the fact that we had just come from the art exhibits.  But I also blame this on the curation of the exhibit itself,  It could have been so much better.  To that end I am showing two photos from the International Quilt Study Center's website illustrating the exhibit.   The photo above shows an example that I think worked.  The words printed on the wall relate directly to the quilts displayed, and give the viewer some sense of what attracted the collector, but for most of the exhibit this was not the case.

More often we had random words and phrases, yes Burns' words, but disembodied from a conversation and not necessarily relating to the nearby quilts.  Often these words, taken out of context, in a sense disembodied, seemed shallow and often patronizing.  They seemed to lessen the experience of viewing the exhibit rather than enhancing it.  The collection is in fact quite interesting, even though we did comment that the quilts were often boring.  But that is not the point, surrounded in a museum of the exceptional in terms of technique and style, a bit more work was required in order to bring the heart of this exhibit to the viewer.  I don't think it succeeded.

 

After returning home I googled Ken Burns and came up with this article in the New York Times.  I highly recommend the article.  Many of the words used in the exhibit come from this conversation, but here they are warm whereas in the museum they seem cold and detached.  There are also photos of quilts not seen in the exhibit, lovely quilts, but their loveliness is not why I mention them.  Read Burns descriptions of the quilts, what attracted him to them.  This is what was missing from the Burns exhibit, the connection with the collector.  In the end I think this is what we all want.  We want to see art, yes, but we also want to understand, we also want relationship.  We want to know what attracted the collector to the works he collected, what meaning he derives, so that we an then form our own conversations with what we are seeing.  This was lacking.

 

Having read the article, now I'd like to go back and see the exhibit again.  Still I think it could have been better done, it could have offered an opportunity for connection with our past and with the idea that everyday creativity is not mundane or even boring. Instead I am left with regret, regret that despite all the beauty, all the exceptional workmanship, we missed something essential, regret that perhaps we did not see the forest through the trees.

 

The two photos from the Burns exhibit are not my photos but are taken from the website of the International Quilt Study Center. 

 

International Quilt Study Center 1:Art....

I've been going through photos, and was reminded that I always intended to write more about my trip to Lincoln, including our visit to the International Quilt Study Center and Museum.  I took a lot of photos, only a few of which are shown here.  In fact editing through those photos and deciding what to write was one reason this post was delayed nearly a month.  Be warned, this is a photo-heavy post.

This large art-quilt is by Velda Newman.  There were three quilts in this exhibit, all huge, all meant, it appears to me, to be public installations, quilt as art.  The smallest one, the last one I show, is about the size of the large painting I bought for my living room.  The one shown above is larger than my longest living room wall. I suppose I should have gotten a photo with one of us for scale, but that would have interfered with the loveliness of the quilt itself.

Despite being large, the detail is also meticulous.  Admittedly, I was most entranced by the colors, and there is nothing surprising in that. And I am amazed at the artist's ability not just to conceive of the idea, but to execute the work with the large pieces of fabric.  I love small things and small pieces, but if you've been reading here you've seen that.  My inclination with large pieces of fabric is simply to roll myself up in them, swaddled. And yet it is for this reason that I am even more amazed: the idea and he execution are breathtaking.

Look at the piecing and the quilting on this detail,  a section of the quilt seen below.  

Obviously none of these are one's grandmother's quilts.  The quilts I am showing today are all by artists, artists who are respected in their field. but the styles are remarkably different.  That is the point.  Some quilt are envisioned as art, some as craft, some as a blurring of the two.  Newman's quilts, at least the quilts seen here, are traditional quilts in terms of technique but not in terms of subject and scale; they are quilts obviously meant for public spaces, not intimate lives.  

Although they speak the language of art, they do so in a different dialect than that which is traditionally reserved for the fine arts. This merging of genre's offers much latitude for insight and revelation.  This blurring of genres is something I see happening in similar ways in some kinds of music, in venues like Big Ears.  But perhaps that is my bias as well.  I love tiny details and amorphous broad categorizations.

 

Notice above the way the butterfly extends past the edge of the border.  Notice also the way the stitching of the smooth fabric, from a distance, gives an sense of softness, of depth, almost of a velvety texture, like the wing of a living butterfly.  If I did not know the scale of this piece, I would think the red tip on one butterfly's wings was softly embroidered, but it is stitched with smooth fabric.  Notice, in the photo below, by a different artist, the blending of materials, the watercolor-like effect created by blending hand-dyed fabrics with piecing, embroidery and brushstrokes.

But much as I love these large-scale works and the idea of art for public spaces, which is a bit of a theme at this moment in time, not just in quilt circles,  I also love the small and the intimate, the functional, the idea that beauty is something that is a part and parcel of our lives, both public and private.

These works are by Japanese quilter Eiko Okano.  Many of these quilts were more functional, and more traditional in size.  The above small pieces were actually described as study pieces, but I love how they are also useful, not something to be placed in a drawer but which can be used.

Although Okano uses multiple techniques, her work bridges the traditional with the modern, art with life, and the necessity of things, but things that bring beauty to existence.  The quilt above is a traditional size that could be used on a bed or on a wall.

Note the detail, each of these tiny pieces that make up the whole.  Traditional techniques and stitches, a widely varied selection of fabric styes and prints, combined into something that both honors tradition and the present, art and craft, necessity and beauty.

So how do we define art? How do we define craft? I do think that is always a question worth exploring.  This work by Molly Anderson is obviously a quilt, obviously a celebration of traditional handwork with appliqué, quilting and embroidery.  And yet it is something to be seen, to be appreciated in and of itself -- visual representation of both the world, but also of something intrinsically human -- something that takes what we know and moves us to think and see in new ways.

 

 

Two Prints

I recently rediscovered a photo I had taken at the opening of a new exhibition of contemporary prints at the Knoxville Museum of Art back at the end of January.  I returned to the museum this week to refresh my memory and perhaps to explore whether my thoughts had changed or evolved.  The exhibit is closing the end of this week, so I do recommend seeing it I you have a chance, although the works are part of the permanent collection and will resurface again. 

 

What I discovered is that thoughts and impressions do indeed change, but certain things do not.  The print I loved in January remains my favorite print of the lot, even though there are many fabulous prints, including examples by artists whose names are more well-known.  I am too old to think that this means anything significant.  My attraction to this print is not really about the quality of the print, although I do think it is masterfully done., All the prints are fascinating, and I am not qualified as a critic.  The fact that I am drawn to this particular work is as much about me and what I bring to the conversation as it is about the artist and the print itself. 

This is the print I loved, the print I still love, and I have actually been back to look at it on multiple occasions.  The print, titled Building,  is by James Surls.   I love the depth of it, which is imperfectly captured in this photograph.  Notice how the artist utilized both sides of the paper, so one sees depth to the print itself. Imagine the complexity of that process: these are not random bits on paper, the dual printing adds layers of complexity, but also enhances that sense of randomness I see in the print. But it is very hard to make something appear random, easier for nature than for orderly human brains. What I particularly like is the way it speaks to me of memory, of things past and things present, old and new and how our past shapes and organizes our perceptions of the present and the future.  This print speaks to me of home, of self, of holding on and also of letting go, and how we never quite manage either. Our pasts, our expectations, our experiences, shape us and are always there floating in our own personal ether, sometimes up front, sometimes further back, a part and parcel of who we are. And yet there is a certain sense of disruption here, of uprootedness.  One is grounded but just because who we are, our past, is always with us, does not mean we do not sometimes flounder, does not mean we have control over how we are shaped.

 

Oddly, this print also reminded me of another print, one I had seen at an exhibit at the McNay Museum in San Antonio back in August.   The prints are nothing alike.  The artists' work is nothing alike, and yet, even in this last visit to the Knoxville Museum, that connection came to mind, a connection not so much between the art itself as between the feelings the works evoke in this particular observer.

This print, titled Headed to the Promised Land, is by Juan Mora.  Where the first print was light and airy, this print is dark and heavy.  And yet, they both speak to experience and memory and the things we hold onto in the face of disruption.  Mora's prints, at least the ones at the exhibit in question address the experience of the immigrant, and this experience of holding onto culture and the past, while simultaneously being very uncertain about the future.   In both prints there is, at least to me, a sense of how the past and expectations shape our present, a tacit acknowledgement that who we are is shaped by all the bits and pieces of our lives.  Mora explores how we hold on to our pasts, explores fear, and the unsettledness of facing the unknown, acknowledging that we cannot imagine or seek the future, or even salvation, as separate from our fears and hopes, from the compounding of our experiences. And yet the bundle of the things that we deem necessary for life, for security,  also burdens us, and holds us down.  We must carry it with us, but we must also lighten our load, allow our stuff to fall by the wayside. If you look closely, you still find hope in this print, you still see that, although the things that we hold on to are both a part of who we are, it is not our baggage that will get us where we are going.

 

Two prints. Two cities.  Six months between my encounter with each.  An older artist and a younger one.  The Surls work is 20 years old, made when the artist was middle-aged.  Mora is young.  Both works speak to the experience of transition. I recognize that the connection is extremely tentative, and yet I remain compelled by something I am not sure I understand, I am not sure I need to understand.

Weekend in NY

I'm a little scattered this morning, and the post I was planning on posting this morning, that I had started writing and then abandoned is just that, abandoned.  I took photos in a rush, which is always a mistake, and now I am unhappy with myself because I must go back to the source and take new photos.

I'm not too unhappy however, because I am having a wonderful time in New York City.  I flew in Saturday, and went to the Ballet that evening.  Walking up the stairs to the balcony lobby in he David Koch theater and seeing that space filled with colorful balloons, creating a buoyant wonderland of color floating through the room, was a magical moment in and of itself. The installation is by Jihan Zencirli and I felt like a child playing with bubbles as we walked around it, as did many others apparently, wonder on their faces, people pulling their friends over and snapping selfies with balloons during intermissions.  Young, and old alike smiling, momentary glimpses of childish glee on the most carefully composed of faces.  And yes, the ballet was stunning as well, an all Balanchine program, beautifully performed.  I haven't been to the ballet, to a really good ballet in years, and I don't have the words for it, except to say that magic happened all around.

Sunday it rained, quite heavily at times, but we were out in the morning, exploring, wandering,  Trying to stay dry, not always successfully. We had thought we would go someplace and be promptly indoors, but it didn't quite work out that way.  By 1PM, tired, hungry, and also a bit wet, we decided to retire to the hotel, where we could while away the hours with a drink and a nibble.

We had tickets again that evening, again at Lincoln Center, but this time at Alice Tully Hall, a part of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's series. Somehow, out of pure dumb luck, I think we may have gotten some of the best seats in the house.  We were up in the balcony, so not close, but the sound was marvelous.  We could hear every note, separately and also as a part of the whole, combining, and blending, merging into the conversation of the music.  The music was just that, a conversation between the performers, exactly what chamber music should be, something I had not been aware I had really been missing (I had not gotten tickets to one small venue in Knoxville this year, a decision that might have been a mistake).  Best of all, in the final piece, the Dvorak quintet #2 in G major, for two violins, viola, cello, and double bass, they performed the original scoring, with five movements, and it was just stunning.  The two slow movements add a balance and a depth to the piece that is not as evident in the four-movement version.  The soft notes of the double bass, played by Edgar Meyer, in the second movement were breath-taking, as in fact was the entire, stunning, performance. 

The rain was finally lifting so we decided to walk.  We stopped at the same restaurant we had eaten in the night before, Remi, just a couple of blocks from our hotel, but this time we were seated by the window, looking into he courtyard/pedestrian walkway.  I was entranced by the view of the courtyard and the play of light through the window, the reflections, and shadows. I'm not sure I captured it here, but I hope you get a little bit of the feel of the place.  

We walked back to the hotel through a series of pedestrian walkways, stopping to take some photos, then stopping for a grand mariner in lieu of dessert at the hotel bar.  I was entranced once again by the really rather mundane view out the window, the play of light and color, shadow and shape of the lights and the buildings, Applebees and all.  Greater America and New York combined, high and low and everything in between, melting together.

 

Christian Dior: Couturier du Rêve

I can't even begin to describe, or share the wonder that was the Christian Dior Exhibit.  It was by far the most spectacular and magical fashion exhibit I have ever seen and I am very happy that I was able to go.  If you have the opportunity to be in Paris before January 7th, I highly recommend it.

We went during a holiday in France.  Would I have changed my mind had I known?  Probably not; this, after all, was the weekend I had.  But the lines were long even though we had purchased tickets in advance, and the crowds were thick, especially during the early parts of the exhibit where there were drawings, pictures, accessories and a wonderful collection of miniatures of the gowns, many of which we would see later in the exhibit.  Those rooms were packed and barely moving.  I'm not particularly claustrophobic about small spaces, but the pressing crowds, the inability to move, and the fear of stepping on someone after I tripped over a couple of people who were crouching down to take photographs were not happy-making, and I progressed through those sections quickly, finding a nice open, quiet, corner, to watch the crowds (endlessly entertaining) and wait for Liana, who has far more patience, and who glided through the space like an island of calm in a sea of turmoil.

Luckily however many others have gone to the exhibit as well, and Susan has just posted a wonderful review of the exhibit, far more comprehensive than I am likely to write, with great photos, including much from these early rooms.

Mostly I just wanted to look at the clothes.

I admit to being shallow that way, but it is more than that.  With infinite time, and quiet and space, I would love to pore over the details, but I don't have the patience for the crowds.  So I'll simply share a few photos, a small hint really of what was there.

I loved this embroidered raffia dress, and especially the detail at the bottom, the areas without embroidery, which gives the dress a very modern feel, a nod to the truth that our work is both always unfinished, but also just a whisper away from decay.

Although work by the various designers for Dior was mixed with the originals to suit the various themes of the exhibit, there were also rooms dedicated to each designer who has worked for the house.  

 

I have always been particularly fond of Gianfranco Ferré, both his work for his own house and when he was at Dior.

But each designer has brought their own stamp to the tradition.

But these segments were very congested, and often dark as well.  My photographic successes are merely snippets here and there.

By the time we reached the magnificent final room, I was worn out and tired of the crowds.   This final photo of the dream finale is Liana's.  

 

 

This Is Not The Post I Planned To Write

I am sporadically working my way through the photos I took in Scotland, but progress is slow. I am still working on photos from the third day of my trip.  The plan was that I would post as I sorted, a plan that was not, perhaps, highly focused and organized, but worked, given my over-extended fall schedule and the fact that I tend to keep adding things to an already full plate.

The second day we went to Holyrood.  Frankly I found the ruins of Holyrood Abbey far more interesting than in the palace itself, although parts of the palace tour were, indeed, fascinating.  

And yet, as I was sorting through photos, thinking of how I would put them together, my thoughts went astray, wandering in a rather unanticipated direction, my mind fabricating connections between disparate and unrelated images.  .  

The above photo was taken at the fashion exhibit at the National Museum of Scotland.  I didn't record anything about its provenance because I was, and am still, attracted by the combination of pattern and texture.  Further, as I added this photo to my pending folder, muddling over whether I wanted to write about the Abbey or the fashion exhibit, the columnar nature of the pattern and the combination of smooth and shiny with the rough, fluffy and bumpy texture of the skirt reminded me of the abbey itself, with its soaring columns standing next to piles of stones and broken walls, visual reminders of collapse, as well as  the contrast of the grand and ambitiously uplifting design with sometimes very rough and uneven workmanship.   In some ways the outfit struck me as a modern interpretation, in fabric, of what I had seen in stone. 

But the jacket also reminded me of something else entirely, something unrelated to my Scotland trip.  It reminded me of this painting by Anselm Kiefer, Shulemith, which I saw in San Francisco in August of last year.  When I first saw this painting I thought of something sacred: dark and disturbing, yes, but also sacred.  Since then the photo has been sitting patiently  in my pending file, waiting for me to write something, and it seems odd that it would pop into my head now, drawn to my attention perhaps more by the colors of a garment than the nature of the work itself.  

 

The Abbey also had a sense about it of a being a sacred space, but my initial response to the abbey was not as visceral as my response to the painting. In fact, that palpable sense of holy ground initially seemed to have faded, trampled by thousands of feet.  But it still clung to the walls and the corners, the in between spaces, almost lurking, waiting to catch one by surprise and snap one out of oblivion. The abbey is filled with light, seems to masquerade as a place of light, a space settled into itself, almost where the cares of the world had been worn down and faded away. But that is an illusion.  Light and dark live together here, holiness and the ravages of time, etched into the stone with nearly nine-hundred years of human history:  love, loss, fear, joy.  Still, I cannot explain, perhaps I can't even fully comprehend, why these two things, the abbey and the painting, Shulemith, have welded themselves together in my thoughts.     

The Abbey was founded in 1128 and built over the next century.  It was also repeatedly destroyed by wars and mobs, vandalized, neglected, rebuilt, sometimes Ill-advisedly, replacing wooden beams with heavy stone work that the structure could not support, and in that sense it is a testament to belief and faith and humanity's need to build structures to honor and worship, to offer glory to our Gods (and yes, I am saying it that way intentionally).  And yet we often fail.  We humans cannot build without also destroying, we cannot rise above our natures, and our greatest impulses are always brought crashing down around us.  And yet we try again. The sense of holiness of a place arises not from lofty human ambitions, but actually from human failings, a testament to the struggle, a testament to our very humanity.  Yes, the ruins of the abbey are about soaring arches, actually both physical and metaphysical, our desire to reach for that which is greater than ourselves, our tendency to elevate ourselves too highly, and our tendency to fail in our efforts.

But how does any of that relate to the Kiefer painting?  I have read that the structure portrayed in Shulemith is a Nazi Monument, the Hall of Soldiers, by Wilhelm Kreis, except that Kiefer has altered the scale.  Rather than soaring, the arches have been shortened, and the walls are scored by soot and ash.  The monument, which was probably grandiose and inhuman in its original scale is, as portrayed here, still stark. But it is no longer a soaring monument but an oven, stark and dark and filled with death. The monument to the German soldier, the God of the Aryan ideal, has become a symbol of horror. In its heaviness and almost palpable sootiness, emphasized by the thick layering of the paint, the structure is both inhumane and because of its inhumanity it is horribly and unnervingly human.   And yet there is hope.  Deep in the center of the painting are the flames atop a platform of steps, a symbol of hope and transfiguration, a hope and transfiguration that comes only after acknowledging and facing our own denials and deaths, our own complicity in the human condition. The abbey as well is a symbol of hope, of our history with all its failings, and of our desire to rise above them.  But we cannot rise up without remembering the past, and making our peace with it, acknowledging the fact that we are complicit as a very fact of our being, and yet we can rise.  We traipse through life, and yet we too can rise.

 

 

 

 

 

Morning Melancholy

 

While I was in San Antonio I spent some time looking at an exhibit of nineteenth and early twentieth century French art glass at the McNay Art Musuem.  The McNay is one of my favorite small museums, and I try to go by each time I am in town.

This time the glass captured my attention, probably because I had just seen an entirely different collection of glass, glass created using entirely different techniques, in Arkansas at the Chihuly exhibit.  As I studied the small pieces and read the information posted, I thought about art and skill and fashion, how we hold ideas in our heads.  Looking at these small pieces of glass, I was thinking that some of them can never be recreated, the technique has been lost.  I'm certain we did not intend to lose that knowledge, those particular skills.  There were wars, people died, so many things changed.  We value different skills now, but sometimes we don't even know what we lost until we have lost it.

 

I remember back when I was in my early 20s, talking to artists in the Woodstock community of New York state.  I remember being told that only mouth-blown glass was true art, that fused glass, glass formed in molds, was inferior, was not art.  Did the first person who fused glass together and carved it think that?  No.  I suspect not. 

 

Of course we know better now, know that art and beauty come in many forms, in many guises.  Hopefully we know we are as apt to lose them as we are to hold on to them, and that those two desires, two results, are interrelated.  Hopefully we know that we can hold to tightly and crush the life. We can hold too loosely and not realize that what we truly valued has been lost. Or do we?

 

Seeking the Quiet Space

On a quiet block, in the quiet Montrose neighborhood of Houston, there sits a rather severe looking building shaped much like a Greek Cross, or is it an octagon superimposed on a Greek cross?  It could be easily missed, and yet it is a space I treasure, a space of profound holiness.  

 

This is the Rothko Chapel.  Commissioned by Dominique deMenil and completed in the early 70s as a non-denominational chapel, open every day, open to all, it has become a center for interfaith dialogue.  The interior consists of a quiet, some would say somber, modified octagon containing 14 paintings by Mark Rothko, paintings that are mostly black, or almost black, a blackness that I see as rich with depth and color and texture, rich with meaning.

 

I get that many people do not appreciate this place, and yet many do.  The world is big enough for many understandings of what is holy.  As I grow older I increasingly understand that every moment, every place and object holds its own share of that holiness, but we all too often are too preoccupied to see.  And yet, for each of us there are places or spaces that are totems of holiness, places to which we yearn to return. For me, the Rothko Chapel is one such place. There are many who find peace in the reflecting pool, the Barnet Newman sculpture and the stand of bamboo, and there are those, like me, who find peace in the meditative silence and darkness of the chapel itself.

 

I discovered the Rothko Chapel the summer I turned twenty.  At the time I had never experienced anything quite like it, and I was the only person, other than the docent, present in the space.   I didn't know much about Mark Rothko then, but the paintings seemed to embody blackness, not as a slick of color on a canvas, but as an act of absorption, an act of containing all of experience and holding it in a holy reverence.    I felt a profound sense of peace, a profound sense of contact not only with the divine, but with humanity, a link through all people and places and things through some divine thread.

 

When I was twenty, that sense of peace was something new and powerful for me and it was something I yearned for but which always seemed out of reach.  The only way I knew to find it was to return to that one place.  And I did return several times that summer, several times each summer I worked in Houston, each time I returned to Houston.  I took George to the Rothko chapel before were married and we shared our experiences of profoundly layered depth and peace.

 

Although it had been many years since I had spent any time in Houston, I had not forgotten.  When I planned my loop trip, beginning with Chihuly in Arkansas, I realized I could easily loop through Houston and end with Rothko.  It had been an emotionally overwrought summer and I felt deeply in need of a quiet meditative space.  I planned an afternoon, and I stopped in.  The space was as meditative as I remembered, the paintings as rich with meaning.  As I sat quietly, contemplating not so much the space, but the act of art, contemplating the colors of blackness, of darkened shades of color, I felt this attempt to reach out and into all that was and is and will be, all of human history and potential.

 

I also realized that I no longer need to seek out holy spaces to find that inner peace.  It lives in me and with me and it always has, although I have not always been receptive to its presence.  Even now I am not always receptive, and it was true that I had needed to distance myself from my daily routines in order to distance myself from my own emotional turmoil.  But I had reconnected with that peace long before I arrived in Houston, and I will continue to carry it with me.  Sitting in contemplation I recognized that I tend not to give myself enough space for gathering in and reflecting back.  I tend to think of that time to fill personal needs as wasted time, but it is in fact not wasted, as it is that time that fuels all the rest, that times that keeps it all from spinning out of control.

 

I did not really sit at the reflecting pool on this visit, but I have.  It was raining lightly.  Perhaps I was feeling petulant at the wetness, although I do not melt.  I watched a small child splashing a toy in the water, in the shadow of the obelisk, and I contemplated space and the way we interact with space, both the spaces we intentionally create, and the way our presence has shaped and formed even those places we label as "wild" or "natural". Our every thought, our every action simultaneously shapes and is shaped by the world.  How then do we decide what is holy or sacred and what is not?  How can we?  
 

Photo of the Rothko Chapel from Wikipedia, here.

Photo of Dale Chihuly's Niijima Floats, from the Facebook page of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, here.

 

 

Crystal Bridges

Not many words today.  Rather, I thought I'd share some photos from the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville Arkansas.  Designed by Moshe Safdie, I found it interesting in its own right.

This was not my first trip to Bentonville, and yet I had come to a place in some ways completely different from the place I had seen before.  That first Bentonville was a very small town, a town of less than 6,000, smaller even than my own hometown.  There was no Crystal Bridges Museum, no Walmart, although there was Walton's 5 and 10, now the Walmart Visitor's Center.  The town itself is worth exploring, with a lovely historic district, reminiscent of other old southern towns, but I don't remember it specifically and I did not take the time to explore. This may be my loss.

Ahh, things have changed, as they do.

I like the way the museum echoes the colors of the place. In some ways it is jarring and modern and opposed to my childhood memories.  In others it is revealing of its environment, celebratory even.

The way it works with the landscape.

Notice how the screening both hides, but also reveals a subtle shading, a building of color upon color and a sense of place.

I didn't spend much time in the permanent collections.  I could go back although I dont know if I ever will.  As I mentioned previously, I reach my saturation point early with art, and need to step back.  Even in a small museum, it can take me days to see and absorb. Notice the Chihuly chandeliers above. And the Sol LeWitt below.

The LeWitt faces the water, faces the view seen in the second photo above.

This last photo is looking out over the museum from the grounds, just before second part of the Chihuly exhibit, "in the Forest".  I don't think the outside exhibit was my favorite, but perhaps I was already reaching my saturation point, perhaps I was too easily distracted by the museum itself.  It was all certainly worth the detour.

 

 

June Books and the Pleasures of Reading

I've  been thinking about the pleasures of reading.  In part this is simply because I have occasionally found myself curled up with a good book, the world receding from active thought.  I don't have a boat or a pond or a lazy glade in which to read, but this painting by sergeant perfectly captures the mental escape provided by a good book. (photo taken at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art)

 

Which reminds me that I have been remiss in maintaining book lists, partly because keeping the list is not as fun as time spent reading, but also because I still struggle with the idea of even keeping a list, even though there is some aspect of my nature that can't relax into the next novel until I've caught up with my accounting.  The fact is that keeping a list has proven useful, serving to remind me of when I read a book, perhaps even that I have read a book, at least before I get through it a second time wondering why it seems so familiar (see Rules of Civility).

 

Of course there are good reasons not to keep a list as well, especially when one does so in order to claim bragging rights.  The point is never about what you've read, except inasmuch as what you have read, if you have read it well, becomes a part of who you are.  I see already that the above statement is misleading as I've just said that what you read doesn't matter and in the same sentence stated that you become what you read.  That may give me pause.  There are many things I've read which I sincerely hope do not define me. Lucky this is not the case with the books I read in June.

 

Perhaps there is a purpose in writing a book post as well in that it forces me to think about the books I've read after the fact, when they are no longer forefront in my memory and my emotions are apt to be swayed.  It also  allows me to make a pretty collage.  Well, at least the previous months' reading materials yielded pretty collages; June's collage is mostly brown.  Did the colors of the book covers affect my thoughts on the reading?  No, but it is interesting that my favorite book, Lincoln in the Bardo is blue.

 

Both of the two theology texts are required reading for EFM year 4.  Since I will be taking EFM mentor training, and these book are on the schedule for the next cycle, I shall keep them.  Of the two, Timothy Sedgewick's The Christian Moral Life is my favorite as it made me question my beliefs and think about the way I live my life in retrospect to the principles I profess to believe.   My Neighbor's Faith is fairly light reading, and I did not find it either deeply theological or thought provoking, consisting as it did of brief personal stories.  However, since one of the themes of year four, besides theology, is about deepening one's faith through interfaith dialogue, the book can be enlightening and perhaps even upsetting for those who do not have friends of different faiths or have not been inclined to engage others on matters of belief.  Unfortunately I will have to buy a new copy of My Neighbor's Faith as Moisés peed on it as a very pointed protest at having been forced to move, and rather than dry it out and live with the urine-scented pages, I discarded the book.  I know at least one person who does not believe that there is any valid reason for interfaith dialogue and who would applaud Moisés's actions. I however disagree.

 

As I look at this collage, it strikes me that three of the books, Lincoln in the Bardo, Mr. and Mrs. Doctor, and Unbroken, all deal, at least in part, with how people come to terms with change and stress and trauma in their lives, with grief and strength and fortitude, with creativity and passivity and their benefits and consequences.  To some extent my reading of each was informed and influenced by my readings of the others.   But only Lincoln in the Bardo remains on the list of books I will read again. 

And David Foster Wallace? I'm glad I read the book; the essays were brilliant riffs, often entertaining, often far too personal, making them at times uncomfortable to read.  It is not my favorite volume of his essays,  yet my perspective on the author will never be the same.