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CategoryCreative Power

Posted Art and Spirit

A Surprise Communion across Continents, Classes, Centuries, and Cultures

. . .In dejection from all the awful and discouraging news about reactionary political victories, rampant viral sub-variants, catastrophic droughts, and increasing violence (as well as, for me, unhappy views about my own self), I found myself doing something that I’ve done on occasion over the years, especially under stress:  I was hand-writing, long past midnight, a list of my favorite artists and mystical writers.  That exercise can calm and comfort me. not just as an obsessive-compulsive ritual, but as a reminder of real treasures that I’ve been given, for inspiration and illumination.

Posted Art and Spirit

The Self behind the Self – Juan Ramon Jimenez and Jim Carrey (yes, That Jim Carrey)

In certain of these posts, I’ve put together two stories or quotes that go at one thing from different directions, or whose common ground isn’t obvious on the surface, aiming to spark for you some realization that can’t just be given or explained.  This time, the two sets of words that I’ve joined come from two seemingly-almost-comically-different sources.  The first is a poem by Juan Ramon Jimenez, the Spanish poet who won the 1956 Nobel Prize for Literature and was a leading figure in what is sometimes called (with good reasons, like the writing of his kinsmen Antonio Machado and Lorca).  The second set of words is from a speech by the American comic actor Jim Carrey.  Jimenez may not have had the same kind of extremely zany humor that Carrey has shown in his movie and TV career, but Jimenez was anything but a stiff.  One of his most wonderful books is a work of prose, Platero y Yo (Platero and I).  Platero was his donkey.

Posted Art and Spirit

Towers and Devices of an Alien Race

I want to introduce you to a new portfolio of mine: “Towers and Devices of an Alien Race.” But I don’t, don’t want to squeeze it into an ill-fitting box of conceptions or drown it in chat about techniques or influence. Still, I want to tell you a few of the thoughts and feelings that I had in making these works.

Posted Art and Spirit

Keith Carter and the Cloud of Mercy – Part 3 of 3

It’ll be tempting for me at times to get lost in exposition or explanation, but I want to stick as much as possible to what’s central to this series of posts: an experience that I had some years ago on August 28 in Israel that suddenly came to mind as I was looking at Keith Carter’s Fifty Years and thinking about his use of shallow focus.

“. . . there is only one thing valuable in art and that is the bit that cannot be explained.  To explain away the mystery of a great painting – if such a feat were possible – would be irreparable harm . . . if there is no mystery then there is no ‘poetry,’ the quality I value above all else in art.”

-- Georges Braque

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