tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10442545663276095042024-03-13T12:21:16.569-07:00Mark Krieger StudioAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-20269911584614970842012-10-27T10:26:00.001-07:002018-11-18T19:27:25.008-08:00The Thinking Eye 2018<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 17.33px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">This year the Alianza
Latina/Latino Alliance at Case Western Reserve University has asked me to
exhibit a group of my portraits of Honduran children at the Annual Latino Art
Show from September through January, 2019</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 106%; margin: 0px;">In 2006 while still
working as a full-time teacher I joined a service trip to Honduras as a
chaperone and, like many others, I was moved by my experiences there.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Also like many others, I was frustrated upon
my return by the general indifference in this country to the circumstances of
the impoverished children who, in their millions, fill the poor, forgotten
villages of the world.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>A week among the
children of a Honduran hamlet may have opened my eyes but the experience did
not easily translate for the citizens of our comfortable world of museums, cars
and shopping malls.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It was a story best
told by art and on subsequent trips to Honduras I begin a series of large
portraits of Honduran children.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>At
present I have sixty finished portraits.<span style="margin: 0px;">
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 106%; margin: 0px;">Each drawing is big,
usually about 36"x48", done from life in Honduras amid surroundings
of extreme poverty.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I work in black
Conte crayon using a traditional technique, attempting to capture the openness,
charm and vulnerability of these children.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>All drawings begin with a child posing for me.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Some are children I know; others live in tiny
isolated villages that seem to be at the very end of the earth.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>My materials are light and versatile: a few
crayons, blenders, an eraser, a roll of paper, a folding drawing board.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I can arrive in a remote pueblo and be ready
in five minutes to begin a three by four-foot drawing.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It is never a problem to find a model.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I talk with the children as I draw them.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It is important to me that the experience of
posing be a memorable one for each child and the signatures on the drawings are
their own.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Some portraits can be
finished on the spot, most are completed later from back-up photos. The
children's faces are remarkable, and the personal quality of the encounter adds
an emotional dimension to the image.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 106%; margin: 0px;">I have visited Honduras
eleven times to date.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>As the finished
drawings have accumulated, the idea for a large exhibition ("The Children
of Honduras"), has evolved.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It
became clear to me that an imaginative display of, say, one hundred big
portraits could be impressive and might help put a human face on the thorny
issues that confront us in the news regarding the migration of children like
these in search of a better life.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Such an
exhibit might include personal stories and photographs and be designed to
travel to campuses and civic exhibit spaces. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 106%; margin: 0px;">There have already been
several exhibits of the drawings, including a major show in 2013 of fifty
portraits at one of the national museums of Honduras, El Museo para la
Identidad Nacional (The Museum for the National Identity), in Tegucigalpa.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I spoke at the museum, there were interviews
and media coverage, and a group of ten portraits toured Honduras for a year.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>That same year I gave a slide talk on the
work at The Cleveland Museum of Art.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The
exhibit in Tegucigalpa marked a sort of halfway point for the idea of a larger
exhibit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 106%; margin: 0px;">This year the Alianza
Latina/Latino Alliance at Case Western Reserve University has asked me to
exhibit a group of my portraits of Honduran children at the Annual Latino Art
Show from September through January, 2019.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I will be exhibiting nine large portraits of
children, along with enlarged working photos from rural Honduras.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>For this exhibit, Alianza Latina has chosen the
theme: "Children".<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>My drawings
will be featured, displayed for weeks in the cultural heart of Cleveland, and
showcased in exactly the kind of venue that I have in mind for the entire
series. The current show is therefore important in and of itself, as well as a
possible step toward the more ambitious presentation.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 106%; margin: 0px;">My concept for that
presentation is inspired in part by solemn contemporary memorials, such as Maya
Lin's Viet Nam Memorial, the Field of Empty Chairs in Oklahoma City or the
Pentagon Benches.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>My sketches for this
exhibit show the drawings not presented on walls but arrayed throughout an open
space on simple, freestanding display units, each with a portrait on both
sides.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The arrangement of the units
could vary with the requirements of a particular display area, but the viewer
should be able to wander among them, surrounded by children's faces and
experience, to the extent that my art can achieve it, an encounter with the
crowds of kids who turn out to greet any visitor to any tiny village anywhere
in the developing world. The elegiac subtext of the presentation is
intentional.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In contrast to the vitality
and warmth of their faces, a sense of loss is implicit in the vibrant humanity
of these children, who remain invisible to the wider world, with little hope
for any future.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 106%; margin: 0px;">I continue to seek support for this project, always with the
understanding that the work lies someplace between fine art and social
action.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The example of the drawings
exhibited in groups has helped convey my vision for a comprehensive artistic/humanitarian
statement.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I hope to bring the series up to one hundred
drawings and mount a large traveling exhibit. I remain in touch with my
Honduran contacts and have also been pursuing contacts beyond Honduras,
including with groups currently working among the refugees at the southern
border of this country.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>There are,
apparently, plenty of children to draw.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 106%; margin: 0px;">It should be clear from
current events that the story of these children has acquired additional relevance
since I started drawing their portraits.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 106%; margin: 0px;">More
than ever, it appears that the problem of world poverty is linked to the wellbeing
of society at large; that if today's inequalities persist, our culture could well
succumb to cascading catastrophes of our own making.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 106%; margin: 0px;">I
have no idea where these drawings may lead or even if they could ever have any
impact, but </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 106%; margin: 0px;">"The Children of Honduras" is a tiny attempt
by one artist to contribute to a better outcome.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 106%; margin: 0px;">I
also believe with all my heart that the children I have met, who have sat for
these portraits, have much to teach us, for they embody the human spirit in its
purest form.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 106%; margin: 0px;">I
hope that my drawings will express that, which is what my words could not
convey in 2006, when I returned from my very first trip to Honduras.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 106%; margin: 0px;"></span></div>
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"Sur"</div>
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72"x126"</div>
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acrylic on canvass</div>
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2018</div>
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August 19, 2017</div>
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All sold this summer. Working to rebuild inventory.</div>
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August 6, 2017</div>
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I finished the mural in early June. I am pretty proud. The image is a little larger than it appears here because it is a good 15 feet behind where I am standing. It was the organ loft of a fine old church building that was remodeled as the headquarters of an insurance company here in Cleveland. It was hard work and very good for me both artistically and physically. Climbing up and down ladders and scaffolding was great exercise and the discipline of just painting the thing stretched me in good ways. I took a trip to Ecuador right after completing it and bought a great camera, so the money is mainly spent. But the Andes are already showing up in my new work. </div>
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April 29, 2017</div>
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Sorry, it's been a while. I have been busy. There is new work but it has all taken a back seat to this mural project that has occupied me since November. First there were sketches and negotiations and painting began in earnest on January 29th. I have a couple of weeks left before it is done but the details are nice, I am quite proud and as usual will have a lot to say. Anyway, here are a couple of shots of the work and I will post the whole story ASAP. </div>
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September 11, 2016</div>
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Work in progress...</div>
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May 15, 2016</div>
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This has been done for some time. There are more as well to be posted soon, been away from the blog but back now. A very interesting year to say the least.</div>
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April 7, 2015</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">I have absolutely no idea where this one will lead, figure about a month to finish it. Stay tuned.</span></div>
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February 21, 2015</div>
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Done...almost</div>
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This is the fun part of painting. The piece needs a few little tweaks and accents, but it is just a hair away from completion and it leaves the easel and goes on display at the studio, where I can see it as I walk by and think about what does and does not need doing. The work will be done on the wall with a tiny brush and almost no paint, but everything added at this stage stands out. The last things that go into a painting are often the first things people notice. Still no title.</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RXWhkGpM76I/VOiGnCfb9mI/AAAAAAAAA-4/N0zWPnC2Y04/s1600/IMG_20150219_155405.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RXWhkGpM76I/VOiGnCfb9mI/AAAAAAAAA-4/N0zWPnC2Y04/s1600/IMG_20150219_155405.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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February 12, 2015</div>
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Working</div>
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Here is a new large painting underway, should be finished in a week or so. A few titles are suggesting themselves as the work winds up. My goal is to finish one of these every four to six weeks.</div>
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January 17, 2015</div>
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An old friend</div>
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"David and Goliath"</div>
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Finally there I have some good digital files of work from my teaching years. Teaching was a great job, no regrets, but teaching took its toll on time for making art. Watercolor worked best for me during those years because that medium could be taken up and put down in the small periods of time that I had for studio work. But that attenuated creative time, spreading the making of a single painting over weeks or months, also favored a contemplative approach to an image and these works were done in the reflective moments embedded in a pretty busy life. A fair amount of the work sold, but I still have some of it and I return to the images now for ideas that I want to develop in my new large work. This is one of a series of watercolors that were based on patterns from American quilts, this pattern, called "David and Goliath," yielded several paintings. </div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9lNHqUQ1Bzc/VLqgnjNfNDI/AAAAAAAAA-A/BAcyL_X6j-M/s1600/Mark%2BKrieger%2B0112150024_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9lNHqUQ1Bzc/VLqgnjNfNDI/AAAAAAAAA-A/BAcyL_X6j-M/s1600/Mark%2BKrieger%2B0112150024_2.jpg" /></a></div>
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Portrait #60</div>
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Mery Gabriela Servillon Garcia</div>
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Finished just in time for the New Year, this portrait started in Nuevo Paraiso in 2013. Waiting for another child to return from school so I could draw her, I asked around if anyone wanted to sit for a portrait. A girl stepped forward. Shy she may have been, awkward even, but her irrepressible smile seemed to light up all of Honduras. The drawing got off to a good start and the back-up photos were enough to complete it a couple days ago.</div>
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November 20, 2014</div>
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This is an interview for a documentary film on Honduras. There was an interview down there a few years ago while I was drawing portraits. Then no development for a few years, and now there is a push to finish the film. We met at the studio last week and picked up where we left off.</div>
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November. 6, 2014</div>
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Heidi</div>
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The past few weeks have been very busy and hectic for reasons that have nothing to do with art. Heidi was in my studio the whole time, looking down at me, and the portrait is now finished.</div>
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September 29, 2014</div>
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Here is the progress on Heidi but it is all about the next painting. Heidi is so appealing that all I need to do is be a clear lens to reproduce the image. But the connection with my abstract painting also becomes increasingly clear. Using the discipline of hand and thought that Heidi's portrait demands, I am making a series of quick abstract sketches for how the next large painting might develop. Each tiny sketch accomplishes, in about twenty minutes, an evolution of ideas that takes six to eight weeks on a large painted canvass. I traced the shape of the sketches from a file card, trimmed to the exact proportions of the 4'6"x9' canvass that is stretched and ready to go. I hope to avoid the waste of time that developing the basics of a big painting always costs me, and in the process, eschew the dumb moves in the early stages of painting that are so frustrating to integrate in an otherwise fluent image. A variety of artists come to mind as I work, Richard Diebenkorn, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Fredrick Edwin Church, and (forgive me) William-Adolphe Bougereau.</div>
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September 25, 2014</div>
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Here is Heidi, started last year in Honduras and now it is her turn to be completed. I had been working on abstract acrylic paintings and doing well, with a string of strong canvasses. I have two new ones stretched and ready to go but something has held me back. I wanted the new work to be really specia, but I found that my ideas were all too familiar. So I took a break and put Heidi's portrait on my easel. She had always been a little charmer and she appears that way in my photos over the years, starting as a toddler and arriving at the child whom I drew on my 2013 trip. That session was less than stellar. The little charmer had developed an attitude and would not hold still or stop fooling around with her friend. I gave up, but not before I snapped a few great pictures. The drawing will be more than a face, the best photos catch this once-and-future princess in a graceful pose, and I am digging in to do the image justice. Parenthetically, it is helping my abstract painting. As I switched from non-objective improvisation to realism, I quickly realized that I had been slipping into a kind of gestural mannerism with the painting and needed to tighten up my execution. As I work on the portrait, I am also doing a series of quick abstract designs in my sketchbook. The ideas are already much better and will be far stronger when I return to the painting, as soon as Heidi is finished.</div>
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"Mine enemy grows older..."</div>
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Grant proposal narrative, not new information but current with my new work, wish me luck.</div>
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Oscar, 2012</div>
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"Bamboo River", June, 2014<br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
My biggest discovery of the past couple years is seemingly
minor, but important for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
has yielded substantial results.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
have found that my large acrylic abstract paintings respond dramatically to the
addition of very fine detail, especially in the final stages of work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This insight was gained from my
realistic work, from murals and other freelance, but particularly from my large
conte portraits of Honduran children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In 2012 I finished a couple dozen portraits to complete an exhibit of
fifty-five drawings for a museum in Tegucigalpa, Honduras (April-June,
2013).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The big drawings really
pushed me to refine my technique, and the developments transferred directly to
my painting, bringing my skill in draftsmanship to bear on the big
abstractions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The slides shown
here offer a good snapshot of a productive and satisfying period for me that
has seen a breakthrough in all my work.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Each portrait begins in Honduras with a child posing for
me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The drawings are about three
by four feet in size and I can work anywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some portraits can be finished on the spot but most are
completed from back-up photos at my Cleveland studio, where I have the time to
take a portrait as far as it will go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In the final stages of work the drawings seem almost alive, the entire
image is responsive to the smallest touch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The softening of a line or blending of a shadow that serves
to turn a form or animate an expression, also adds cohesion to the whole.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I eventually discovered that the leverage such tiny nuances
have on big portraits applies equally to my non-objective canvasses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first I did not connect my drawing
with the delicate brushwork that I was beginning to adopt to resolve my large
abstractions. It was at once gratifying and mystifying to be able to integrate
bold, expressive areas, simply by applying touches with a tiny pinstripe brush
to entirely different parts of the image.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It still seems remarkable to me that a few calligraphic accents can have
such salience, exerting control without compromising spontaneity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My abstract imagery refers to natural
forces; but if a painting is to resonate with a viewer's deepest response to
nature, balance between natural and abstract elements is important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My newest paintings maintain that
balance as a matter of course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They permit me to ramp up energy, space and light with expressionist
abandon, and then restore an abstract equilibrium with minimalist precision. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many artists have inspired me, and they reflect the
abstraction and realism that coexist in my work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My most direct influences are: most types of 20th century
abstraction (and artists who apply abstract principals and vocabulary to their
subject, like Demuth, Feininger, or Diebenkorn), the Hudson River school,
Thomas Eakins, Velazquez, and the Italians, particularly the Venetians,
particularly Giovanni Bellini. And finally, music has always been a deep and
abiding influence on my thinking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Musical forms, such as patterns of polyphonic musical notation or the
concepts of fugue and sonata are always in mind, and my title for a painting
from a few years ago: "The Counterpoint of Light", could easily stand
for all of my work.</div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />
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</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-20aaxdueMnI/U9FF8ynyK4I/AAAAAAAAA3s/fv4jea7T0AU/s1600/Photo+on+2014-07-24+at+13.37.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-20aaxdueMnI/U9FF8ynyK4I/AAAAAAAAA3s/fv4jea7T0AU/s1600/Photo+on+2014-07-24+at+13.37.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
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<div>
This new piece has no title as yet. I am using the vocabulary that has developed in the last half dozen paintings with mixed feelings. I love how the work is going, especially in the final stages where the tiniest touch seems to add and resolve so much. Yet there are limitations. The lack of studio space is frustrating. It would be great to have a large loft where I could have three or four of these things going at once, in various stages of completion, exploring several possibilities simultaneously. Too much time is spent moving a painting into various positions to work in my little studio and way too much time pondering the next move. The pondering is necessary, an image needs thought, and haste tends to lead to blunders and problems that are hard to resolve. But there is nothing preventing work on several images at once, except the lack of room! </div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WQUu2kjb4Cw/U8aZZusTh6I/AAAAAAAAA3U/yYDOvoXXlhU/s1600/P1012994.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WQUu2kjb4Cw/U8aZZusTh6I/AAAAAAAAA3U/yYDOvoXXlhU/s1600/P1012994.jpg" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
"Bamboo River"</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
The title is taken from a chapter in </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
"The Tale of Gengi"</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
by Murasaki Shikibu</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
This novel from 10th century Japan has inspired me in many ways. I cannot pretend to have mastered it, but the book is a source of endless pleasure. Full of remarkable observation, rich characters, poetry and an intoxicating atmosphere, endless Japanese artworks have been inspired by this foundational work of Japanese literature. The forms and rhythms of that art has in turn inspired my own. </div>
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Good morning! Another day at the Studio begins<br />
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Grace Karina</td><td class="imgCaptionText" colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="color: white; font-family: Times; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: center; vertical-align: top; width: 0px;"><br /></td><td class="imgCaptionText" colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="color: white; font-family: Times; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: center; vertical-align: top; width: 0px;"><br /></td></tr>
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<em style="color: yellow; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 27px;">Three more large paintings have been sold and will be part of the permanent collection at the new Cuyahoga County offices.</em></div>
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"Prelude Centennial"<br />
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"Garden Jade"<br />
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"The Counterpoint of Light I"</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #00d7fb; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A fun project came up very quickly in May. The staff of Dr. William Phillips of The Cleveland Clinic surprised him with a caricature when he was honored as Teacher of the Year, Critical Care Fellowship, Anesthesia Institute, The Cleveland Clinic. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #00d7fb; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The finished picture had details of his ultrasound equipment, complete with the image of a four chamber heart on the view screen, but it went right into the frame for presentation before the completed drawing could be documented. </span></div>
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Work in progress<br />
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Presentation, May 15, 2014</td></tr>
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Two more large paintings are now on display for the next year in the beautiful main lobby of One Cleveland Center . </div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So, a total of seven large canvases have left the studio since December, and I am working hard to replenish inventory.</span></div>
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Installing the work<br />
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"Gordon Square #1"<br />
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"Chariot of Fire"<br />
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The first of the big archival reproductions, printed and on display.<br />
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And finally, a trip to New York for Memorial Day weekend. The painting is by Albert Bierstadt at the Met, and my ambition is to paint abstractions that are as large, as rich and as monumental as the great landscapes of the Hudson River School! </td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="color: white; font-family: Times; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; height: 26px; vertical-align: top; width: 392.99999999999994px;"><br />
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"The Counterpoint of Light VII"<br />
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<span style="color: white; font-size: 16pt;"><strong><strong style="font-size: 24pt;">Art Class at the Studio:</strong></strong></span></div>
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Art Classes at the Studio:<img align="right" alt="StudioClassGaucho" border="0" height="199" hspace="5" name="ACCOUNT.IMAGE.8" src="https://ih.constantcontact.com/fs133/1113645395572/img/8.jpg" vspace="5" width="266" /></div>
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<b>Always wanted to take an art class but never had the time?</b></div>
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<b><img align="right" border="0" height="199" hspace="5" name="ACCOUNT.IMAGE.7" src="https://ih.constantcontact.com/fs133/1113645395572/img/7.jpg" vspace="5" width="266" />These art lessons may be what you have been looking for. Students fit the classes into their schedule. One-on-one instruction lasts about an hour, and most students stay after and work.</b></div>
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<b>Individualized instruction</b></div>
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<b>Chose your class time</b></div>
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<b>$25.00 per class</b></div>
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<b>Children's Classes</b></div>
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<a href="mailto:markkrieger.studio@gmail.com" linktype="2" shape="rect" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Interested? (click here)</a></div>
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<span style="color: #b3af3a;">This is a working art studio, one of several located at the 78th StreetStudios building in the vibrant Gordon Square Arts District. Ongoing work might be on portraits for The Children of Honduras project, freelance commissions or abstract painting.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #b3af3a;">You may probably know all this already, having visited on a Third Friday and left your email, the most likely reason you are receiving this newsletter. The plan is to send one out about every three months. You may unsubscribe on this page if you wish. But if you choose to stick around, you will share the adventure of this amazing and exciting time for art in Cleveland.</span></div>
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With big paintings placed and on public display, work is going well on the first of two new, even bigger, canvases. </div>
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This is a good problem to have. Inventory is down. By the end of this month, eight paintings will have left the studio since last December. Two new canvases are underway to start the month of May.</div>
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Grace</div>
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The Children of Honduras #58</div>
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This little freelance project came up a week ago and came together pretty quickly. People are moving and wanted a memento of their home in Ohio. It is pretty light fare, but it was very enjoyable to try and capture the effects of light on winter evenings. If you live in a place where it gets cold, you know exactly what I was after in this one.</div>
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...and Happy Holidays to all.</div>
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There are several students who work at my studio. The atmosphere is wonderful, I often work on my own things right along with them. Winter is a good time for art; fewer distractions, a cosy studio, a reflective, inward-looking mood all make for productivity and quality. Even Pablo seems to like it.</div>
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Two new paintings finished in the busy month of November, very exciting but not much time to blog. There is lots to tell. The studio business shows signs of picking up. Some small but substantial jobs have come my way, interest in the Honduran portraits continues and those two paintings have both been purchased.</div>
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After the May-June visit to Honduras for the museum events, I took a little break from portraits to work on freelance and painting. Now that summer is over it is back to working on the pictures that were started earlier this year. There are twenty starts waiting to be completed, well, nineteen now, Rosa Linda is the first of the new batch that will bring the total to seventy-five portraits. Also, a grant proposal survived the first cut in a competition. I always choose to allow myself to dream as long as there is a possibility of success. Fingers crossed.</div>
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Presentation October 4, 2013</div>
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at</div>
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The Cleveland Museum of Art</div>
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"The Children of Honduras"</div>
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link to the video:</div>
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<a href="http://youtu.be/zpI99l4N85Q">http://youtu.be/zpI99l4N85Q</a></div>
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The is going out with grant proposals.</div>
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Now that the Teguce exhibit is done, I am looking for ways to carry forward my ongoing
project, "The Children of Honduras," which I envision as a traveling
exhibit of about one hundred and thirty large portrait drawings, intended to
raise awareness of the impoverished and neglected children who live in Honduras
and, by extension, throughout the developing world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On eleven trips to Honduras, I have completed fifty-five very
large drawings of children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
estimate that six to eight additional service trips to that country are needed
for me to draw the rest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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There have already been several exhibits of the drawings,
including a major exhibit of all fifty-five this year at one of the National
Museums of Honduras, El Museo para la Identidad Nacional, in Tegucigalpa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The show ran through April and May, I
spoke at the museum, there were interviews and media coverage, and a group of
ten portraits will continue to tour Honduras for the next year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These ten drawings are currently
displayed at the International Airport in Tegucigalpa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The event was personally
satisfying and marked a halfway point for my project, but I will need support
to complete the work and present it.</div>
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The origins of "The Children of Honduras" are
artistic and humanitarian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 2006
I joined a service trip to Honduras and, like many others, I was moved by my
experiences there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also like many
others, I was frustrated upon my return by the general indifference in the US to
the fate of the innocent children who, in their uncounted millions, fill the
villages, cities and orphanages of India, Africa, and Central America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A week in a Honduran village may have opened
my eyes but the experience does not travel well, it gets lost in the transition
to our world of museums, cars and shopping malls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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My drawings are done from life in surroundings of desperate
poverty, employing a traditional technique to capture the openness, charm and vulnerability
of these children. A service trip to Honduras lasts a week. I use all my time
to draw.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some portraits can be
finished on the spot; most are completed later from back-up photos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All drawings begin with a child posing
for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some are children I have
known for years; others live in tiny isolated villages that seem to be at the
very end of the earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My
materials are light and versatile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I can arrive in a remote pueblo and be ready in five minutes to begin a
three by four foot drawing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
never a problem to find a model. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
talk with the children as I draw them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is important to me that the experience of posing be a memorable one
for each child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The faces are remarkable,
but it is the personal quality of the encounter that adds an emotional
dimension to the image.</div>
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As the finished drawings have accumulated, the idea for a
large traveling exhibition has evolved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It became clear that an imaginative display of large numbers of the big portraits
could be impressive. "The Children of Honduras" could travel, like
Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party" and, like that exhibit, might
prompt conversations wherever it would be viewed, raising awareness at public
spaces, galleries, universities, and museums.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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The manner in which the drawings would be presented is crucial;
a standard drawing show is not the answer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My design for the actual exhibit is partially inspired by
solemn contemporary memorials, such as Maya Lin's Viet Nam Memorial, the Field
of Empty Chairs in Oklahoma City or the Pentagon Benches, rather than a traditional
exhibit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The drawings will not be
hung on walls but arrayed throughout a space on simple, freestanding display
units, each with a portrait on both sides.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The arrangement of the units may vary, depending on what
fits the particular display area, but the viewer should be able to wander among
them, surrounded by drawings, and reflect on the children they portray.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The viewer should experience, to the
extent that art can achieve it, an encounter with the crowds of children who turn
out to greet any visitor to a tiny Honduran village. The elegiac subtext of the
presentation is intentional, a contrast to the vitality and warmth of the
drawings. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A sense of loss, a
profound sadness, is implicit in the vibrant humanity of these faces. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Invisible to the world at large, these
wonderful children have little hope for any future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An informational component to the exhibit is being
considered, but it should in no way detract from the visual impact of the
drawings themselves.</div>
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Besides my own artistic satisfaction, "The Children of
Honduras" has a two-fold purpose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The first may seem a bit grandiose but, because I believe that many
years from today, world poverty will either be a distant memory or our civilization
will long since have succumbed to cascading catastrophes of our own making,
this exhibit is my attempt to contribute to a good outcome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And second, more modestly, I hope that
my drawings will be able to express to North Americans what my words could not begin
to describe in 2006, when I returned home from that very first trip to
Honduras.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Ten Portraits on display at the International Airport in Tegucigalpa, Honduras</div>
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Only saw it this week, feature story from the June 9 issue of El Heraldo, Tegucigalpa.</div>
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Studio Snapshot, Third Friday, July 19, 2013</div>
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Third Fridays at my studio building are a trip. Thousands of people move through the studios and some find their way to mine and watch me work. It is a curious, fun-loving crowd. Everyone talks and everyone is interesting. This night was uncomfortably hot but you could never tell from the mobs of people walking around. As an artist it is very stimulating. The attention is great, of course, but I repeatedly explain what I am doing and the exercise of putting my art into words often clarifies things for me as well. </div>
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May 23, 2013 El Museo para la Identidad Nacional, Tegucigalpa, Honduras</div>
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May 27, 2013</div>
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15 miles from the Nicaraguan border...drawing with a medical brigade, it was an amazing scene. Behind me were about a hundred kids playing in a schoolyard while they and their parents waited to see the medical people. Some had walked for miles and the line stretched out of sight through the school gate. We drove two hours to get here, past scenes of desperate poverty, and this place was more of the same. The faces of the children were absolutely stunning.</div>
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Just arrived in Tegucigalpa and a first-hand look at the portrait exhibit. Tomorrow morning will be my presentation.</div>
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To all of my world-wide friends: If you ever get to Cleveland Ohio, USA, do stop in and say hello. Check the link...</div>
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<a href="http://www.wkyc.com/entertainment/article/297411/110/See-The-Possible-Third-Friday-Art-Walks"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">http://www.wkyc.com/entertainment/article/297411/110/See-The-Possible-Third-Friday-Art-Walks</span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.wkyc.com/entertainment/article/297411/110/See-The-Possible-Third-Friday-Art-Walks">http://www.wkyc.com/entertainment/article/297411/110/See-The-Possible-Third-Friday-Art-Walks</a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">April 17, 2013</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I wrote this last fall for a grant application. It is a narrative of my life as an artist. The grant wasn't in the cards, but do like the statement:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Narrative statement, November 2013</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">When I left high school I intended
to study industrial design at The Cleveland Institute of Art. Designing cars seemed like a great life,
but many of my new art school friends had serious artistic ambitions, and I, too,
began to consider fine arts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
summer before my junior year I changed my major from ID to painting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I liked to paint but had little
experience; and the work showed it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I struggled through the year until June; then hitchhiked to Nantucket to
find a summer job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I landed at an old Nantucket hotel
where by chance two other art students, plus a poet and a musician, were also
working.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We all became friends, recited
poetry, listened to Beethoven, talked about life far into the night, and took
long walks by the ocean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something
clicked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I left Nantucket in early
August to hitch back to Cleveland and began to paint, not at all badly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hit that fall term at full speed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the next two years I averaged a
painting per week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every Monday I would
stretch a new canvas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By Friday it
would be done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my final year at
CIA I won first prize for painting in the student exhibition. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After being accepted at Indiana
University for graduate school, I learned about Tyler School of Art in
Rome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Travel was becoming a
fundamental source of inspiration; I had to go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was off to Italy.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rome, (1967).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I walked the city at all hours of the
night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On my lunch break I visited
my favorite Caravaggios. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
wandered into the Pantheon whenever I felt like it, always remembering to pay
my respects at the tomb of Raphael.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One dark winter afternoon, I stood alone in the Sistine Chapel. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I painted; monumental abstractions filled
with delicate baroque brushwork, a triptych, a full size variation on
Botticelli's "La Primavera," and prophetically, a few very solid
small-scale paintings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this
day, I believe that choosing a year of creative apprenticeship in Rome was the
best decision of my life.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">One year of painting in Rome was
not nearly enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I returned to
Cleveland after graduate school, found a good job teaching in Amish country and
saved for a second year in Italy, (1970-71).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was now married, and we first looked at Assisi before
settling in Orvieto.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found a
rooftop studio apartment with a view of the Umbrian hills; and we soon found a
circle of bright young Italian friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There are no words to do justice to this year of bohemian paradise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A few weeks into it, an important
breakthrough transformed my painting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The originality of a series of small abstractions, painted that year in
Orvieto, still seems remarkable to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The watercolor medium lent an impressionist air to
expressionist gestures; the transparency led to complex constructions that
could have come from the Bauhaus. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fusion of draftsmanship with improvisation took me beyond
my early abstract expressionism, and the paintings reflected a soft light that
evoked both the Umbrian landscape and the passage of time. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I felt that I had come of age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With gratitude and pride, I remembered
the words of the young Paul Klee after his own breakthrough Tunisian watercolors:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"I am a painter."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Back in Cleveland, I lucked into
a great job teaching film animation for The Cleveland Board of Education that allowed
me two days a week to paint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could
not find the college teaching job I wanted, but things were moving along
nicely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of my Italian
abstractions was awarded a jury mention at The Cleveland Museum of Art; I was a
finalist for the American Academy in Rome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I won a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship in painting. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would go back to Orvieto for a
third year of painting in Italy, (1973-74). </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This time my studio was in the
surrounding hills, in an 11<sup>th</sup> century monastery with frescoes on the
walls and a spectacular view of the city.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The paintings were all watercolor and, as with my earlier Italian work,
the developments were original.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The fusion of landscape and abstraction, rendered with techniques
reminiscent of classical and oriental painting, expanded into a long,
horizontal scroll-like format.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My
thinking had also expanded to include what I imagined to be elements from
music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Fulbright exhibit was in
a gallery by the Spanish steps in Rome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Cleveland was frustrating after all this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I kept painting but no college job came through.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1976 I moved my family to Newport,
Rhode Island and began life as a free-lance artist, doing whatever came my way
and charging what the traffic would bear. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I was a Renaissance journeyman
artist, living and painting by the ocean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>With Newport as my base, I felt ready to look for a gallery in New
York.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had good luck with a group
show at Allan Stone, and signed with Touchstone Gallery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Things began to break my way; work sold
and there was a one-man show, with good reviews, (1978); but it was all happening
too slowly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I now had a growing son
and mounting responsibilities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Living
on free-lance was hand-to-mouth at best, and after two years in Newport I took a
job teaching at The University of Texas at Austin. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Texas had some promise; a patron there from Touchstone bought
work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The position at UT was only temporary
but I really liked teaching basic design, drawing and painting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, I did not care for the faculty
politics, and when that job ended, I was done looking for college work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I returned to Cleveland at the end of
1979 and within a few months, at the age of thirty-six, I had found the private
school job that I would hold for the next thirty-two years.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The studio work of my teaching
years was diverse. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Touchstone
Gallery closed, but there were shows at Case Western Reserve University and two
exhibits at The Cleveland Playhouse, among others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were commissions and corporate sales.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Life was often hectic and much of this painting
is poorly documented, some only in images of work already installed, some pieces
sold quickly and I have no idea where they are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For over ten years I drew the figure every week with a group
of artists at my home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I produced portraits,
murals and free-lance projects, exhibited with groups and taught evening
classes at CIA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first of my
nine trips to Nuevo Paraiso, Honduras was in 2006.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I fell in love with the impoverished children I met there and
began the series of large portraits of them that were shown in Cleveland (2011-12)
and will be exhibited next March (2013) at a museum in Honduras.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The painting of these years developed,
expanded and deepened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Echoes of my
own history surprised me in my work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Emerging in my abstractions, transformed but clearly recognizable, were calligraphic
elements from my free-lance days, layers of glazes from my traditional commission
work and blended horizontals from my memories of the ocean and the Italian
hills.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The watercolors grew in
size, polish and complexity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Family,
job and a return to graduate school for a master's degree in education all made
demands, and I wish there had been more studio time to pursue a series of
important stylistic breakthroughs, especially in the large canvas paintings and
in a series of small prismacolor designs for larger work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These accomplishments were filed away
in my mind for a future time. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">That time, of course, is now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since retiring from teaching last June,
I have been working long hours at my studio.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My days are devoted to preparing the fifty large portrait
drawings of Honduran children that will be shown in March at El Museo para la
Identidad Nacional (The Museum for the National Identity), in Tegucigalpa,
Honduras.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Against my studio wall
lean two new abstractions on canvas, both underway and ready to go as soon as
the drawings are finished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Driving
to work every morning feels like playing hooky; I keep wondering when
"they" are going to catch me. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I have always imagined myself in
a studio on a mountaintop, with a Renaissance unfolding somewhere in the world
below.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this daydream I am
always working in splendid isolation toward an expression of classic contemporary
beauty worthy of a new Golden Age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Rome was a bit like that, Orvieto and Newport certainly were, and I see
this new phase in the same light. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today is no golden age and my
studio is not in Italy but in a converted, rust-belt factory in Cleveland. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps I should feel some pressure, but
I really don't.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a relief to
finally get down to it, and I could not ask for more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The portrait-drawing exhibit next year in Honduras will be a
good start, but painting is the big prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More than a few of my paintings have had a profound effect
on viewers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The best of them are
affirmations, standing apart from a cynical and belated time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a wonderful feeling to create
such work; and with all the tools at my fingertips, my hopes for these years are
high. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">On my studio wall hang two of my adolescent
pastels. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sometimes pause in my
work and glance up at them, always with a smile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a veteran middle school art teacher, I can testify that
they are remarkable work for a boy of fourteen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Recently re-discovered, they are all that remain of my early
pictures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They display a romantic
vision of Cleveland: industrial night scenes, blasting steel mills, smoke and fire,
ore boats on the river, a starry sky with silvery clouds floating across a full
moon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember when I made them,
in a time before this story began, before Nantucket, before Rome, before Newport,
New York, Texas or Honduras ever lured me away.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">April 10, 2013</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Tegucigalpa Exhibit is up. The top photo is obviously a school group in the gallery. The presentations for May are being arranged. The plan is to present in Spanish from a written text, more later.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">April 8, 2013</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">April 2, 2013"The Children of Honduras", installing the exhibit today at El Museo para la Identidad Nacional in Tegucigalpa, Honduras...opens in two days.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">March 21, 2013</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">March 18, 2013</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">From the studio today, the image at last has made the final turn and is headed to the home stretch.</span><br />
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Franz Josef Haydn</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sunday, p</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">ale late winter sunshine on a cold St. Patrick's Day. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I went into the studio this afternoon for a couple of hours and worked on the big painting. Very peaceful in the building, and some middle period Haydn symphonies were playing on my stereo. These are not the flamboyant London symphonies that were his crowning achievement. These symphonies were from the years when he was discovering the potential of this music. It is easy, from this vantage point, to take his achievement for granted. Haydn's numbered symphonies are officially 104. I own recordings of them all, several versions for quite a few, and I know them pretty well. They are a remarkable chronicle of creation. In them you can see Haydn finding his way, bringing the symphony from a light entertainment piece, a curtain raiser for operas, to a complete expression of human intellect and emotion. You can observe him discovering musical strategies and devices, and how to deploy them. Had he died at any point in the series, he would have been remembered as one of the greats. That he lived to at last complete his work in his final masterpieces, is simply beyond wonderful. Throughout his a long career, he sensed what the music could become, and through years of patient industry, he made it so.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Haydn's music is the template for my own work, for my painting. Like Haydn symphonies, my paintings do not differ much from one another; the basic form remains the same throughout decades of development. Devices and figures, once discovered, are worked out. I know it is a bit presumptuous, but my great teacher, H.C. Cassill once told me: "You have to be a bit presumptuous if you want to go after the whole apple" </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Haydn's last work displays a seemingly effortless complexity; with a wealth of energetic, probing allegro movements, powerful, deeply felt slow movements and sparkling finales, brimming with "Haydnesque" wit. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Much as I love that work, it is the middle period that I go to for my model. The form is less evolved in these works and they are often spare, simple, clearer in construction. The impulse to seriousness and profundity, very much like Beethoven, is very apparent, and much in keeping with the creative impulse of the abstract expressionists, 1950's Jazz musicians and Bauhaus painters who have influenced me. I equate the themes that Haydn invents and develops, tiny fragments of note and rhythm, to the fragmentary visual shapes that I invent and develop across the surface of my paintings.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Over the years I have come to relate to the creative process of this only apparently simple man. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I'm no Haydn. I can't pretend to have an artistic stature anything close to his, or for that matter to Klee, DeKooning, Kandinsky, Charlie Parker or H.C. Cassill. But none of them are here. I am. And, with their shoulders for me to stand upon, I see a body of work that is there for the taking.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">March 14, 2013</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It has been a long ten days in the studio. I picked away at the large painting, made it a little better, without really knowing how to grab it by the throat and forge the image that I know is in there. Today, however, I figured it out. About four years ago I did a free-lance project, a giant still life of a salad for a restaurant here in Cleveland. The thing was eight feet wide and highly realistic, and I found myself working with the tiniest brushes on fine details that would somehow move the big painting forward to a much greater degree than their scale would suggest. Every little brushstroke made a difference and was felt across the breadth of the big canvas. (picture below) So it is with this abstraction. Today I got out my tiny brushes and began to refine shapes with transparent glazes in areas that were rich but chaotic. It worked like a charm. It didn't take much and I kept asking myself: "can it really be this easy?" I guess we will see. Stand by for a companion image of the abstraction.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lousy photo, amazing music. Leipzig String Quartet at Oberlin, all Beethoven</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">March 2, 2013, Saturday morning at the studio</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The pause. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The painting looks back at me from its easel. It has been nearly a month since my return from Honduras, a trip that pretty much closed the first phase of the my work since I left teaching last June. The intervening time has been very productive and this post records a series of free-lance murals and a steady stream of the strongest drawings I have ever done. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yes, I am proud of them, plan to continue the series and see where the whole portrait project may lead. But I must admit that with the large abstract paintings, I have hesitated. There are four starts, three of them are bare beginnings and could go anywhere. The fourth one, the one in the picture below, is well enough along that the final look of the image has already begun to emerge. The painting was started last year in my middle school art room. I had an extra canvas that I had built for a free-lance project that fell through and brought it to school to work on in my spare time. Progress was in short bursts of activity with no particular idea in mind. Often I would aimlessly paint while the kids were working on their projects. Of course they loved it, made suggestions, asked questions identified figures in the evolving shapes. Each work session had its own character and the effects were a rich mixture of experiment. Soon, as always happens, some rhythms began to assert themselves and the thing actually started to have a fresh and interesting appeal. About this time I opened my new studio and I took the big canvas there to become my first post retirement abstraction. It sat there throughout my months of drawing portraits. Third friday is open studio night and dozens of visitors saw the unfinished piece over the weeks. They liked it; one couple almost bought it as is. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I liked it. No, it was not yet a complete or coherent statement, there were weak passages and ragged ends hanging out everywhere. But it had a freshness, energy and textural richness that, above all, needed to be preserved and developed. If the piece were a tiny colored pencil sketch, there would be no problem. This large piece, however, is a challenge. I am constantly reminded of the physician's motto: "First, do no harm", and every time I touch it I check to see if the increase in coherence has detracted from the vitality of the whole. So far, things have gone well, new moves have proven useful, added richness, and the painting has progressed. I have nothing but time to work on it, but there is no roadmap here, I am in uncharted territory. The teacher in me knows what to tell the painter in me. The other three new paintings, just raw starts now, are waiting to see what happens with this one. It is the existential meeting of artist and image that the abstract expressionists lived by back in the 1950's. But the world is not watching and waiting for the result this time. This painting is being born into a different world, one saturated in imagery, where images can be compiled with great facility using software and sampled visual fragments. It is easy to find reasons not to work. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">So is it worth going through all this work for just another painting? That is a post for another day. Now it is Saturday in the studio, and time to get to work.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">February 28, 2013, Cleveland</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">What a difference! I have been back from Honduras for three weeks. There was a lost week of jury duty and the rest of the time has been catching up on little things. I did have time to paint a couple of murals, clouds and a blue sky on the ceiling of a lucky little girl with a little girl's bedroom full of soft toys, quilts and throws and pastel colors. The sky on the ceiling is very nice and after the kid peeked in to see at the end of the first day's work, I heard her say: "Mommy, it's beautiful up there!" It was quite a contrast from the little girl in the photo below but, after ten trips to Honduras, I have become inured to the culture clash. Just before I left on the trip I did the murals in the pictures below. A cute little third grade boy who wanted giant versions of animals that usually get eaten by predators dominating birds of prey; hence the eagle, peregrine falcon, snowy owl being dwarfed by a rabbit, a chipmunk and a chinchilla. The painting was a blast to make. Kids make for a very appreciative audience.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There are Honduras plans afoot but it is too soon to blog them right now.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">January 30, 2013 Nuevo Paraiso, Honduruas</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">Back at work. When I am away from this, people ask why make all of these portraits? And I work on a good explanation. But when I sat down today in front of this kid, it was once again crystal clear. These are lives that matter, I simply cannot ignore the fact that I have met them, seen their homes and little villages, and I have to document them, because I can.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">January 23, 2013</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is one of the very early portraits that needed a few minutes of work before putting it in the roll with the others. I leave for Honduras on Monday and will keep in touch whenever I can get online. It is freezing here right now in Ohio and while I never really mind winter that much, it will be nice to get to Central America for a few days.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">January 14, 2013</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In early with Pablo to work on my new painting. Yes!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">January 4, 2013</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">December 30, 2012</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">How can I not blog on my birthday? If the connectivity of the new media doesn't permit, even encourage, sharing my precious self to the world at large, well, what good is it?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today is perfect. There is fresh snow on the ground, the sky is that flat, featureless gray, bleak is the word. I took a little run yesterday in the snow. The squirrels were out digging up their nuts and for some reason always in pairs. I chased several duos off the path as I jogged by. Their heads would pop up almost in unison from the holes they had burrowed in the drifts, squirrels always look a little panicked anyway, and they would scamper up their tree. Winter runs are the best around 32 degrees F. Body heat keeps up pretty well if there is not too much wind and the falling snow makes a nice surface if you don't go too fast, which I don't. And there is nothing like the feeling of walking back home surrounded by white.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Most important, I am spending today with those I love. There will be time for art tomorrow.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">December 19, 2012</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">More artwork from over the years, including a couple of the free-lance projects. These did not fit within the grant application guidelines. Looking forward to creating new work, it is good to look back just a little.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">December 17, 2012</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">A few days ago I submitted a grant proposal, no illusions about chances for success but it was a useful exercise, especially at this juncture. They wanted me to summarize my career as an artist, and I labored over a three page creative bio that changed completely between first and final drafts as I drilled into the past and decided what is essential. The narrative will post at some later time, after the grant is decided, but it was accompanied by 40 images of artwork from the past 40 years. (Yikes! did I write that?) I had to be selective, so there are no free-lance projects, just some of my abstract paintings and the recent portraits from Honduras. Here are the images, they did not upload in chronological order but that is fine. 40 years, wow! ...hope it was worth it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">December 3, 2012</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 14px;">It will be on the wall of a little boy's bedroom, over the bed, his guardian, a magnificent Siberian tiger. Great fun to paint. Hope to finish in a week. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">December 2, 2012</span><br />
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No sunset? No problem:</span><br />
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8:15am and it is pouring in Cleveland, temperatures fairly mild, the sound of rain everywhere. Winter weather is fine with me as long as it has a little character, as this day does. It is when a day is flat-grey, with no definition in the clouds or sense of space in the landscape, or cityscape, that it can get annoying. It is just that kind of day, however, that poses interesting challenges for a painter. How does one make something out of a day like that. Actually, there are some paintings that do just that; a Bonnard landscape at The Cleveland Museum, several by Monet, that meet the problem of a dull day head on, as do some great regional painters like Karl Gaertner, or Florian Lawton. (The late Randal Tiedman worked his version of this territory with amazing results. What a loss, his untimely death last month when he was at the top of his game.) But back to what I am seeing this morning. There is a very dark and poetic piece by Charles Burchfield called "Rainy Night", in San Francisco I believe, that really struck a chord with me when I saw it as a boy. It looked and felt like today, when interior light in windows is brighter, far more welcoming and warm, than the light outside. In high school I remember painting a dark abstracted landscape in oil. It was based on the sky that I would often see at dusk as I delivered newspapers on winter evenings. I overworked the image, and didn't appreciate my idea back then, but the painting has stuck with me. I look now for what is essential on days like today, days not at all promising or picturesque. There will be no sun today, and no sunset.</span><br />
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BTW, strike that bit above about "temperatures fairly mild". My better half just opened the door and let in the cold wind; it is flat-out nasty out there today, very glad not to be delivering newspapers. </span><br />
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December 1, 2012</span><br />
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The last two drawings are done. So I have a show. Now what? I confess to being very worried about sending this work away. It is some of the best stuff I have ever done and I still do not know how it is going to get to Honduras. Carrying the work myself seems like the best bet, but customs and insurance are still up in the air. </span><br />
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This business of being on my own has its moments of stress. When I was an employee for decades, I was creative and inventive in my little sphere; but the big stuff was handled by the boss. Now I am an entrepreneur and it is all up to me. It does make one a bit more conservative, risk-averse, more attentive to detail and procedure, and yes, more disciplined. You take work home with you and lunch hour is no longer really free time. My days of free-lance in Newport were a bit like this, but things were more direct. I was the agent of all that happened. I hustled the jobs, did them on my own schedule and hired those great Newport craftsmen to build and install what I could not. Now, with so many moving parts to my enterprises, it is often difficult to proceed on matters that are pressing. Drawing was the easy part.</span><br />
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Tuesday is a photo shoot at my studio. I want to make big posters of ten of the drawings and try to sell them. A percentage of the profit would go to help the Honduran kids. I know that a good entrepreneur could make good money with this work. I need to be that guy.</span><br />
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November 21, 2012</span><br />
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Called FedEx today to inquire about shipping the drawings to Honduras for the exhibit. The issue is unresolved at this point. It would cost about $2500.00 to ship to Tegucigalpa, one way only, and there would not be enough insurance. Works of art are tricky because once that is declared there are all kinds of protocols that come into play. Never have I had this much art, this good, travel this far. It will work itself out. </span><br />
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I have two important drawings left to do. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, but Friday it will be back to work.</span><br />
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November18, 2012</span><br />
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And then there is the matter of the large unfinished painting leaning against the wall in my studio that a lot of people like just as it is. One couple actually took measurements to see if it would fit in their home. Originally, I stretched the canvas for an aborted free-lance project. (It is big, 56"x 82", made to fit the bedroom wall of a kid who wanted a real basketball hoop with a crowd painted behind it so he could play fantasy nerf hoops from his bed.) The unused canvas sat for a year or so until I brought it in to school and began to work on it at random times during class. My students loved watching me play with the paint. The sporadic and interrupted work sessions prevented very much elaboration, ideas and effects piled up in their raw state, rich surface textures, very tactile, not overworked. The overall image is random, accidental, diffuse and unfocused. But every couple of days this painting stops someone in their tracks outside my studio door, they walk in and say: "I love it". I take very little credit. But this has my attention.</span><br />
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November 17, 2012</span><br />
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Fortunately the election was decisive enough so that all of the voting issues did not matter. </span><br />
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As work on the portrait exhibit comes down to the last few drawings, it is time to think about what is next. There are large canvases started, and a giant watercolor as well and multiple prints of certain of my pieces will certainly be part of the mix. The transition from salaried teacher to artistic entrepreneur has been eye opening, taking me back to my free-lance days when taking a lunch hour meant losing money. I know that a good artistic businessperson could take the cards that I am holding at this moment and play them into a fabulous second career. I need to be that guy, it is all right in front of me. The portrait show was a gift, a process that required little in the way of new thinking, just more and better of what I have done so far. But then, the paintings, marketing, networking...that is new territory for me. I am getting used to the free time to work. It is the freedom to choose my direction that still feels very new.</span><br />
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November 6, 2012 #2</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 14px;">I called the Board of Elections and they were very nice, took my name and number, if there is a problem with my ballot I will be notified via mail, so I am going to relax a bit. Provisional ballots get counted very soon.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 14px;">Just voted in Ohio and was challenged. My DL has my old address and though I have legally changed address 2 years ago and already voted in this new location, ( I saw my signature right there on the roll from last election), I had to get a provisional ballot. There were a bunch of people in line with me in the same boat. People who voted easily before and now have to jump through hoops. This is almost certainly because of the vigilantes on the right who have thrown a scare into the process and I do not have confidence that my vote will count. Our conservative attorney general, a shallow pretty face from the soaps, now has a chance to nullify my vote if one tiny part is amiss on the provisional envelope. So after all my support and posts I could be disenfranchised thanks to the ongoing-slow-motion right-wing-coup going on out here in fly-over country.</span></span><br />
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November 5, 2012</span><br />
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Has anybody heard about the hurricane? It has been all "Sandy" all the time for the past week. This town is a mess and I just got back to the studio after it was without power for days. Just finished #44 of the portrait series and there is not much time or energy to blog about much else. Actually some good writing has been done for some grant applications but that has to be saved for the purpose it was intended. Here is a draft of a poster for the Honduras show but it is already out of date because new drawings are getting finished regularly these days.</span><br />
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Thinking Eye</span></u></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">"The Thinking Eye" is the book of the studio teaching of Paul Klee from his years at the Bauhaus; and the name fits for this ongoing blogpost. Klee is of a breed of painter that goes back to the renaissance, when artists saw the cosmos as their domain; and could be mathematicians, a philosophers, architects. The world of practical knowledge today makes it a little tougher to aspire to that. But I was formed in a time when "art" was paired with "science" as in "arts and sciences", instead of the more contemporary and far more limited "arts and entertainment" or "arts and leisure".</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ben Shahn said it in the passage below that I came to know in my student days. It hit a nerve then, stuck with me and is how I have aspired to live my life as an artist.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Attend a university if you possibly can. There is no content of knowledge that is not pertinent to the work you will want to do. But before you attend a university work at something for a while. Do anything. Get a job in a potato field; or work as a grease-monkey in an auto repair shop. But if you do work in a field do not fail to observe the look and the feel of earth and all the things that you handle – yes, even potatoes! Or, in the auto shop, the smell of oil and grease and burning rubber. Paint of course, but if you have to lay aside painting for a time, continue to draw. Listen well to all conversations and be instructed by them and take all seriousness seriously. Never look down upon anything or anyone as not worthy of notice. In college or out of college, read. And form opinions! Read Sophocles and Euripides and Dante and Proust. Read everything that you can find about art except reviews. Read the Bible; read Hume; read Pogo. Read all kinds of poetry and know many poets and many artists. Go to an art school, or two, or three, or take art courses at night if necessary. And paint and paint and draw and draw. Know all that you can, both curricular and noncurricular – mathematics and physics and economics, logic, and particularly history. Know at least two languages besides your own, but anyway, know French. Look at pictures and more pictures. Look at every kind of visual symbol, every kind of emblem; do not spurn sign-boards or furniture drawings or this style of art or that style of art. Do not be afraid to like paintings honestly or to dislike them honestly, but if you do dislike them retain an open mind. Do not dismiss any school of art, not the Pre-Raphaelites nor the Hudson River School nor the German Genre Painters. Talk and talk and sit at cafés, and listen to everything, to Brahms, to Brubeck, to the Italian hour on the radio. Listen to preachers in small town churches and in big city churches. Listen to politicians in New England town meetings and to rabble-rousers in Alabama. Even draw them. And remember that you are trying to learn to think what you want to think, that you are trying to co-ordinate mind and hand and eye. Go to all sorts of museums and galleries and to the studios of artists. Go to Paris and Madrid and Rome and Ravenna and Padua. Stand alone in Sainte Chapelle, in the Sistine Chapel, in the Church of the Carmine in Florence. Draw and draw and paint and learn to work in many media; try lithography and aquatint and silkscreen. Know all that you can about art, and by all means have opinions. Never be afraid to become embroiled in art or life or politics; never be afraid to learn to draw or paint better than you already do; and never be afraid to undertake any kind of art at all, however exalted or however common, but do it with distinction.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Photo taken on the SS Rafaello, Italian Line, crossing the Atlantic, 1974</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b>This shot was taken returning from my last year in Italy when I crossed the Atlantic on this sleek Italian beauty. She had a sister ship, the Michelangelo, and there was a Leonardo too. The crew said that she was being sold to the Iranians, who were converting her to a cruise ship. Of course about three years later came the revolution in Iran, the overthrow of the Shah and the advent of the Islamic Republic, and a few years after that the disastrous Iran-Iraq war. During that conflict, the ship was sailing off the coast of Iran where the Iraqis bombed and sank her in shallow water. What is left of my beautiful Raffaello can still be seen</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b> </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b>on Google earth. Her capsized hull appears as a tiny white smear in the blue of the Persian gulf. Seeing her always leaves feelings of sadness and nostalgia, mixed with warmth and gratitude for the memory of my ocean crossing long ago on this magnificent ship. </b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "gillsans"; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-51165384370446584352012-08-09T23:51:00.000-07:002012-08-11T06:40:23.704-07:00I still see him with his hands on the steering wheel as his truck hurled past me. It ended for him then and there and I have gone on. He was a hero, and I thank him every day.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I owe this story to a man who gave up his life to save mine.<br />
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I was one of several people that day in Italy, sipping espresso and enjoying the view from a tiny cafe at the edge of the via cassia, a two lane highway that climbed a couple thousand feet from the floor of the valley to the rim of the surrounding hills.<br />
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We were half way up the grade sitting in front of the bar, enjoying the view of the hills around us, the valley below us and directly across from our tables, floating in space across a two mile abyss of soft June air, the city of Orvieto, perched on its rock. The road dropped from the ridge far above us, turned a 180 degree switcback right in front of our tables and continued on down out of sight before climbing back up to the town. It never seemed like a particularly dangerous spot. We were unaware as we drank our coffee and watched the busses and big trucks ponderously negotiating the hairpin turn with strangely graceful skill, (like laboring pachyderms, or maybe piano movers), that on this particular day in this particular place we were in great peril. A mile or two up the road, the brakes had just failed on a heavy truck as it was beginning its long descent. The truck was almost as big as the cafe and far heavier, loaded with tons of logs and if it managed to stay on the road as far as the hairpin curve, the cafe would be obliterated.<br />
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The terrain above the hill was nearly flat for miles and the driver would have been able to control his speed with gears right up to the point that the road dropped quickly away, he probably had no warning that his brakes were gone until his truck was already out of control. He must have realized at once that he was in serious trouble.<br />
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The first thing I noticed was a distant roar that got louder. My eyes were already on the little curve a few hundred feet up the road from where I sat when the truck reeled around it into sight, logs flying wildly off the top of the load with a loud rumble. The guy was still trying to drive because he steered the truck back to the pavement, and straight at me. He must have seen me as I rose from my table by the road. This was exactly the moment when he could have jumped, he had to have been considering it. I stood up but hesitated, clearly the truck could not stop but seeing only the front of it for what seemed way too long a time, there was no hint of which way to run. At last I spotted part of the driver's side of the cab and I moved right. The truck was veering left, passing less than ten feet from where I stood.<br />
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It was over in a couple of heartbeats. The truck had veered to the left, missing the cafe by a couple of feet. I caught a fleeting glimpse of the driver, hands on the wheel, as the truck left the road. It chopped off two very large Italian pines next to the pavement, sheering them at ground level the way a razor shaves whiskers, then it plunged over a steep embankment planted with olive trees, stopped maybe two hundred feed down and burst into flame. We watched in shock from the top of the slope as the tires began to explode one by one, like cannon shots out of the orange flames and black smoke. The truck, its diesel fuel, all its logs and its driver burned until there was nothing left. The next day I examined what remained of the truck. It was clear from the shape of the cab that the two pine trees at the edge of the road had killed the driver instantly. There was also the transmission and the hand brake, bent in desperation, jammed back as far as it would go. There were axels, a half melted engine and frame, not much else.<br />
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Of course, the wreck of the big lumber truck was all anyone could talk about and apparently I knew more than anyone else. But not everything it turned out, and as the days passed I learned much more. The crash made the national press, which printed lurid, sensational accounts of the driver burned to a crisp, "carbonizato". It also came out that the man died on his birthday, he had just turned fifty, but there was no other useful information in the papers. Nobody else had seen what I had, that this man made a clear choice to miss the cafe that suddenly sat in his path. By missing the cafe he missed his chance to abandon ship before those pine trees ended everything.<br />
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But there was more. There was the story of the taxi driver who was going up the hill and saw the runaway truck coming straight at him on the wrong side of the road. The uphill lane ran along a sheer rock face and there was also an escape road on that side. The truck driver had crossed into the oncoming lane and was trying to slow his truck by running it against the rock while shooting for the escape road. I drove my little Fiat 500 up to take a look and, sure enough, the rock wall was streaked with long fresh scars from the truck. But the marks in the rock stopped and, sure enough, there was the escape road. The cabbie said he thought he was dead but the truck veered to miss him at the last moment. The driver of the truck missed hitting the taxi, and missed his escape ramp. Seconds later his truck rounded the curve where I first saw it and he faced the little bar full of people, with the tall figure rising up in alarm from a roadside table. There were no moves left.<br />
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I went to the commissariat and told my story. These guys knew me. My first year in Orvieto I had tried to teach English lessons but as a foreigner this was not allowed and they had to tell me to quit. Moreover, all of my friends were communists and for both of my years in their town the police had me on their radar. But we always smiled and said hello. Now they listened to what I had to say and promised at least to tell the widow and family of the man that he had died a hero, and that the end had been mercifully quick, before the flaming horror described in the newspapers. I left Italy the next day.<br />
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Some months later, I received a letter in Italian from the widow of the truck driver, thanking me for telling the whole story of how her husband died. I have the letter somewhere, and the hope of finding it is the only reason I have not thrown out several boxes of crap from those years. If I can find it I promise to post a scan. Her husband was given a posthumous award for heroism, there was a little money as well. But the most important thing was to set things straight and ease her mind. I take no pride in it, and I cannot forget him. I still see him with his hands on the steering wheel as his truck hurled past me. It ended for him then and there and I have gone on. He was a hero, and I thank him every day.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-51180513202182913782012-07-22T11:30:00.001-07:002012-07-31T09:20:26.546-07:00...one day, one person will enter the gallery, someone inclined to learn about the lives of others. This person will become involved, travel to a place where there are children like these and while there... one child will reach out and steal their heart.<br />
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Working for the Portrait Exhibit</div>
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50 drawings</div>
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Tegucigalpa, Honduras</div>
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2013</div>
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This is a working shot of a nearly completed portrait of my first Honduran friend whom I met when she was 13 and has since grown into a young lady about to enter college. It began as a live drawing session of nearly two hours and the result was nice enough to be displayed as it was. But this was a person whom I knew well, and there was more to do. It took a couple of years to get around to it. It also took a week of hard work to get it right and during the hours spent refining this image there was plenty of time to reflect on what I am doing and why.<br />
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It seems to me that photography has lost authority as evidence, while drawings seem to have gained a new persuasiveness. The integrity of photographs has been compromised by the phenomonon of photo shop. Drawing, done by hand, using a craft that demands time to practice and years to acquire, can have a more convincing authenticity. Photo images now may be clever, striking, powerful, truthful as art in the way that paintings have always been, but photos are no longer seen as being factual. Besides, photos are everywhere. Drawings, on the other hand, are more unusual and express a different kind of truth. Though they can obviously be manipulated, drawing is pure manipulation, they can also discipline the artistic vision to the service of visual reality, in this case a child's face. What the artist knows about that child's circumstances shapes the creative process and transforms a simple portrait into a statement. </div>
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And if one drawing makes a statement, what about fifty, or the one hundred envisioned for my Honduran portrait project? I have no interest in sales, the drawings need to remain together as a group to make their full impact. My preference would be that they not be simply hung on gallery walls but rather on free standing displays throughout an open interior space. People should be able to wander among the images of these children, share their own personal space with them, read some of their stories. If the artist has been true to his vision and his craft, something of the remarkable quality of these wonderful young people will come through.<br />
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It would be great to change the world with art, but there is not much hope of that. My hopes for these drawings are far more modest. My hope is that one day, one person will enter the gallery, someone who enjoys a comfortable life but is curious, inclined to learn about the lives of others. My hope is that he or she is moved by the drawings and that curiosity will find a focus in these poor children. This person will become involved, travel to a place where there are children like these and while there, (it always happens) one child will reach out and steal their heart. If my drawings connect a single person with a single deserving child, with any chance at all of changing a single life, the entire enterprise will have been worthwhile.<br />
<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-84224243316403998342012-07-12T20:07:00.004-07:002012-07-15T11:39:17.589-07:00I packed a change of clothes in some kind of bag, walked to the nearest main street and stuck out my thumb. I was hitch-hiking to Mexico City to see The Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I had to see the Pyramid of the Moon. <br />
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That June I was fresh out of The Cleveland Institute of Art with a BFA, and in that last year we had studied pre-columbian art; Palenque, Tikal, Copan and most of all for me, Teotihuacan, with its majestic pyramids. Besides the majesty there was the mystery. Practically nothing was known of the builders of the place, but I could imagine them among their new pyramids, proud of their brave gesture of permanence in a universe that, for all their protective myths and rituals, must have seemed to them just as uncertain as ours today. That world came to an end, the conquistadors found an empty city. The civilization that built these pyramids was gone long before they landed in the new world.<br />
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While still in art school I read the little story in "Labrynths" by Jorge Luis Bourges, of "Tlon, Ukbar and Orbis Tertius"; unknown civilizations, tantalizing, eluding confirmation, with evidence of their presence indirect but undeniable, like the Higgs boson. English class at art school also introduced me to my very favorite poem, "Epistle to be Left in the Earth" by Archibald MacLeish. This literature resonated with my own personal fascination with the scenes of decline that I had been witnessing in the city of Cleveland. I had begun my teaching career in the inner city as an art instructor in various settlement houses. As I rode across the city I could not take my eyes from the gaunt and decaying remains of what once had been proud homes and regal facades. I was mesmerized by the contrast between the vanished culture that had produced the beautifully crafted houses and apartment buildings and the present one of decay and violence in dying neighborhoods. The dark spirit of abandonment that haunted the city, also haunted the poem and the stories, and all had in them something in common with the empty vistas left to us in the monuments of Teotihuacan. I had to see it.<br />
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I had given up my student lodgings on Cleveland's legendary Hessler Street and was living at my brother's house the summer before graduate school. There were a couple of weeks in June before my summer job began, and there were a couple hundred bucks in my pocket. I packed a change of clothes in some kind of bag, walked to the nearest main street and stuck out my thumb. I was hitch-hiking to Mexico City to see The Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span">I must have been nuts, even for those years when kids could still try things like this. My luck was incredible. In a day and a half I was in Brownsville, on the Texas-Mexico border. I took a bus over the border and down to Monterey, where I spent the day, saw a bullfight, made friends with an interesting man who spoke excellent english and explained all kinds of things about the city, its culture and history. In retrospect, he was probably gay but such was my innocence in those days that it never occurred to me. Another bus took me overnight to Mexico City where I somehow found a decent hotel near the great park of Chapultepec</span><span class="Apple-style-span">. The next day I took an early morning bus to "los piramides", San Juan de Teotihuacan. I have no memory of how I managed all of this. I knew only a few words of high school spanish and the whole trip was a kind of blur, what with the fatigue of sleeping in cars and busses. The bus to the pyramids was pretty colorful, there was rain, all kinds of peasants getting on and off and at last we reached the town of San Juan, site of the pyramids. I think it was five days since I had left Cleveland. Fortune sometimes watches over the innocents and fools of life.</span><br />
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The day was spent walking all around the pyramids. The experience was truly otherworldly. There they were. I walked all around them, climbed everything I could. The pyramids were certainly there. But an aura of unreality clung to the day, the oddly shaped buildings, not classic, not Egyptian, the site followed a cryptic and alien plan towards an order profoundly dissonant with our own, yet sought to answer the same fundamental questions. It was like magically being able to watch beings on a planet in another galaxy light years away as they looked up at their sky, asking what was up here. This was definitely worth the trip.<br />
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The excavations on the site backed right to the little houses in the town and the kids played in the piles of dirt and broken pottery, which were a goldmine of artifacts. From them I purchased an obsidian knife, a broken ceramic whistle figure and some carved beads. I got a little room in the only hotel in town and had dinner in the restaurant. There was some kind of army post near by and my meal of roasted chicken was served by a sequence of waitresses. One would bring my first course and then leave with a soldier who would appear at the door. A younger girl brought the chicken and then another soldier took her. It was an old grandmother who finially brought my coffee.<br />
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The town was full of dogs, filthy, copulating on the street, and that night they woke me. Several times, a chorus of barking would start with one dog and spread to dozens of barking animals out in the dark.<br />
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I think it was waiting for my bus back to Mexico City that I witnessed a horserace along a dirt road. I have a great photograph of it. I brought along my sister-in-law's little automatic camera, but it did the trick. The Mexico shots still look good.<br />
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By the time I was back in the city I was tired but I did visit the Archeological Museum. I took one of those jitney taxis with the cabbies who drive with fingers up in the air out the window to indicate how many empty seats are in their cab. <br />
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I took a bus back to Texas and hitched back to Cleveland. Not bad for a couple hundred dollars and ten days, I had discovered guacamole, seen a bullfight, a country horserace and climbed The Pyramid of the Moon.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-29032128395987303162012-07-08T20:41:00.002-07:002012-07-09T07:39:56.685-07:00My close friends know this story and I confess that I would not believe it if I heard it second hand from a stranger, but this remarkable incident did happen... I have the memory and a xerox of the evidence.My close friends know this story and I confess that I would not believe it if I heard it second-hand from a stranger, but this remarkable incident did happen to me about twenty years ago. I have the memory and a xerox of the evidence. <br />
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I was divorced, single, available, and recently had been sharing some nice conversations at work with an attractive teacher who was in the same boat. It seemed worth pursuing so we decided to meet at the coffee shop of the new Borders. Neither of us had been there before. I showed up early on a saturday morning and, sure enough, the new bookstore had a coffee shop. The place was empty except for some contractors having a cup before starting their day of construction. I picked a table near a window and sat down to wait for my friend, lamenting that the coffee shop was bare and I had brought nothing to read. <br />
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Then I noticed a newspaper on the window sill near my table, within easy reach of where I sat.<br />
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The newspaper looked used. I thought at first that it was from yesterday, but soon it became clear that the paper was much, much older, about thirty-five years older. The paper was a section of The Cleveland Plain Dealer from 1961. Odd, I thought, and the date stood out. It was a time I remembered well, for my father had died that year at the end of the first week of that month. I looked closer at the paper: February 9, 1961. It was the Metro section of the sunday paper and, yes, it contained the obituaries. I opened the yellowed paper to the death notices. My father's obituary was there. He had died a day or two before.<br />
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At this point my friend showed up, took one look at my face and asked what was wrong. I explained as best I could. I was pretty shaken and wondered how much time I had left before the fates took me to join my dad. And at this point those workers having their coffee intervened. They said I could read the paper but had to give it back to them, it was theirs. They said their company headquarters was in Canton, Ohio and this newspaper had turned up there that week in an old trunk. They had brought it because there were some old company ads that they wanted to show the work crew, and I also saw a printed notice of a newspaper boy with the same name as that company receiving an award.<br />
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So the original reason that the paper was saved and how it got to Border's coffee shop was clear. But the word coincidence does not even begin to convey the improbable reality of how the paper sat for thirty-five years in a trunk, to be discovered and brought to a spot within fifteen minutes of my arrival there for the first time in my life, placed three feet away from where I would sit, see the paper, pick it up and read my father's obituary.<br />
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The work crew were nice enough to take a xerox of the obituary page for me. I will scan it and add it to this post as soon as I can. Meanwhile, this is my dad with my mom, years before I was born. <br />
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Some pretty extravagant claims are made for coincidence as offering a key to unlock the mystery of this vale of tears we call life, and as an agnostic I try my best to simply report what I see. But this story still gives me chills, and an odd sense of comfort. My folks had me late in life, neither of them lived to be very old and both passed away when I was still pretty green behind the ears. Huge gaps in what I know of them have been impossible to fill. And then this. Is it wishful thinking to say that this brings them closer? I know what they would think if they could read this story.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-1181724453508237542012-07-03T08:08:00.000-07:002018-11-18T19:47:40.389-08:00Dog moment...<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I stood upon a vast and level plain that stretched away in a grey twilight to distant hills.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Across that plain, a stream of silent animals slowly moved together, walking past me in an endless procession.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Dogs, cats, a river of former pets that people loved and who loved them back, walking over arid land to arid hills.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">They are your companions now, they share your common grave and I am told it is a nice place, though I still haven't had the heart to visit.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I looked for you among the crowd and soon found you, your eyes down like the rest, keeping the steady pace. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But as your part of this quiet parade moved closer to where I stood. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And for half an instant as you passed before me,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">You almost hesitated.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Your pace slowed, almost stopped. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Your gaze seemed about to about drift up from the path you had to take.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And look at me. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I know you would have done it had you known I was there.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But you were already a shade, a passing shadow that could not recognize an old companion, and yet it seemed for a moment...</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The moment passed. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rejoining the others, you continued your walk toward the hills that now seemed so very far away.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<br />
(He was a golden retriever and he's been gone a dozen years. He was very sick and I put him down, I remember this dream that I had soon after he died. I still miss him)<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-3989203047441084032012-06-26T16:09:00.001-07:002012-07-03T08:49:10.556-07:00Give us a good year...(September, 2011)<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Give us a good year...<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Keep our school safe from storms in every season. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Give us another beautiful autumn, bright October days out our
windows, deep blue sky, amazing formations of clouds; dark cold rainy November
days that make the school seem like the only bright and warm place in the whole
world, clear nights with millions of stars. Give us great days on the
ball fields. Give us hard fought games, give us strong opponents that
pull the best from each of us, but win or lose, let us always do it with grace
and class …and give us mud, mud always makes it more fun. No rain for
Halloween, but some of that wind to blow the dead leaves around.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Give us a real winter, we can take it...from the very first
random flakes to the last dirty snow by the parking lot, melting in the sun.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And throw in a couple of snow days.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Give us a spring that is welcome as only a long, long winter can
make it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Help us listen.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Help us to always laugh together<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Keep our families safe. Keep everyone safe, children,
parents, grandparents, friends, pets.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If things do not work out as we want, help us understand, help
us to be brave, to become smarter, to become wiser, to show kindness, help us
remember what it was like to be small and imagine what it will be like to
become old.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Give us the kind of year that ends way too soon, yet lives in our
hearts forever....</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> (given at the end of opening assembly, last year of teaching, September, 2011)</span><b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-17835534174701182012012-06-25T04:34:00.001-07:002012-07-03T08:50:02.181-07:00one last time... (June 2012)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 13pt;">Let us look around one last time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 13pt;">Once more, for a moment, let us rejoice that we all
move together to a familiar rhythm, as we have for years. Let us never forget that
we have always needed each other to share the joy and freedom of this amazing
adventure of being alive. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 13pt;">As things change, as we prepare to part, let us savor
this moment together, our last moment, our best moment. Let us think of our
school filled with boys, learning how to be men. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 13pt;">Your teachers, your families all trust you now to
finish what they began, to grow up to claim your place in the world. They are proud of you in ways that you
will fully comprehend when you too see the work of your years standing tall, as
you stand tall before us today. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 13pt;">May all who love you long remain with you to
witness and celebrate the unfolding of your lives. May each of you grow from strength to strength, to seek
goodness and truth, beauty and peace for all your days upon this earth, but may
you find them first, last and always, in the hearts of those you love. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 13pt;">Amen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: 13pt;">(given at the close of graduation on June 6, 2012)</span></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-32039241710776458752012-06-21T23:13:00.001-07:002012-07-04T11:08:45.740-07:00The watercolor, maybe eight inches high, is straight-forward and optimistic. It is not ironic or angry, jaded or knowing... In an age that was turning more cynical by the year, this picture still sought to capture an antique splendor in paintingThe world has changed since I painted this little watercolor, "Song of Umbria". The painting had a romantic beginning in 1970. It was painted in Orvieto, Italy, in one long night at a kitchen table, under the light of a single lamp, to the sound of American country music mixed with radio static and a babble of languages fading in and out beneath a starry sky above the continent of Europe. It was dawn when I put down my brush.<br />
<br />
It was a breakthrough, a small but solid achievement of vision and creativity. I look at it today in an old faded Kodachrome and can only marvel at the directness and originality. I had found my voice. It is a celebration piece, like all of my abstractions, about the joy of being alive. It combines many skys and many landscapes without referring to a specific scene, depicting an ideal world too lovely to be expressed in a single view. The forms seem to be moving with a gentle breeze and music too is implied, the kind of music poets write about.<br />
<br />
The watercolor, maybe eight inches high, is straight-forward and optimistic. It is not ironic or angry, jaded or knowing. No drugs or even alcohol were involved. In an age that was turning more cynical by the year, this picture still sought to capture an antique splendor in painting, still pursued what once were called the ideals of art and beauty. Belatedly, the post modernists have tried to get back to that after the great revolutions at the start of the last century and the great unravelings at the end. This artist was still young enough to believe the ideals in something like their original form, and foolish enough to ignore the gathering headwinds facing his vision.<br />
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Do people still seek that, do they even want that kind of thing from art anymore?<br />
<br />
I have no idea. But it is what I do. The post entitled "Orvieto" details the end of the early life of a young artist. Now I am a much older artist and this week, this month (June, 2012), I start again with the tools that served me well in a very different kind of age. Time will tell if there will be another song as sweet as "Song of Umbria".<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-75972723769587590052012-06-21T21:12:00.000-07:002012-08-01T18:46:44.264-07:00View of Orvieto, Italy, Corpus Domini, 1974...Rising from the center of the valley floor was a gigantic rock, easily two miles long and hundreds of feet high. The cliffs at the top of the rock became the walls and battlements of the medieval city where I would one day return to live and paint.<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">Montefiascone, Italy,
November, 1967:</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 32pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;"> I
recall being awakened before dawn and noticing that the rain had stopped.
I must have asked for a wake up call from the pensione the night before because
a vague memory persists of a voice on a telephone in the dark, speaking
Italian. I don’t remember getting dressed or checking out, but I am sure
that as I walked down the hill from the town to seek the road I needed to take,
I was wearing tennis sneakers and my good luck traveling jacket, an old Harris
Tweed sport coat. I do not recall, and frankly, it would have been hard
to tell, whether or not I had a beard. It was definitely a Sunday.
I had set out from Rome on Saturday, hitch-hiking along the Via Cassia with no
particular destination in mind. It had rained heavily all day, most of
which I spent trying to see the Italian countryside that was somewhere beyond a
wind whipped curtain of rain and fog that spattered the windows of the cars
that picked me up. Now I had to return to Rome and was not at all sure
how long that might take. My map showed that the Rome-Florence autostrada,
which seemed a good bet, passed only a few miles east of Montefiascone, at a town called Orvieto.</span><b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 32pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;"> At least I had an early start,
standing in the dark at 6 am. by the road to Orvieto as the first dim contours
of the Umbrian landscape began to emerge. Over my shoulder, the buildings
of the town I had just left placed themselves up the hill like steps of a
stairway. Before me, fields, vineyards and dark trees began to form out
of gray mist, hinting that the real Italy waited at last nearby. Clouds
became visible, thick and low; more of yesterday’s rain was probably on the
way. After ten minutes of stillness and absolute solitude, I had
company. First came the sound of a distant motor and moments later a
moving light someplace out among the fields. The engine noise and the
light both reached the road and halted at a point about a mile from where I
stood. Silence, followed by shifting gears. The engine noise
resumed and the light became a pair of headlights that were now coming in my
direction. Sound carried with perfect clarity across the damp morning air,
making it possible to hear the car’s progress through the twilight; clicks and
thumps of the gears and clutch precisely filled brief interruptions in the
whine of a tiny motor. The reason for the laboring engine became clear as
the car approached; it was a Citroen, a “deux-chaveau,” the outlandish little
French car with a sewing machine motor. I stuck out my thumb and the
Citroen stopped. I was on my way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">Venice, Italy, June, 1974:</span></b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;"> This afternoon, hazy, dull
and unremarkable, would be my last in Italy. The trip to Venice was
unplanned. My wife and I had forgotten our passports at a pensione here
two weeks before and now I had to make a special detour en route to England to
retrieve them. I had left Orvieto alone the previous evening and now, my
errand complete, was killing a couple of hours at a café table just across the
canal from the railway station where I had to catch my train. There was
not enough time for museums or sightseeing. Besides, I had already said
my good-byes on the last trip. This time it was strictly business.
I was already tired from a night on the train and there was one more night and
a day to go before I would rendezvous in Bristol with my wife and my brother
and his wife, who were in England for a meeting of chemists. We planned
to tour Devon and Cornwall together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">The canal beside which I
sat was a working commercial thoroughfare. The station was on the edge of
the old city in a section of relatively new buildings. But, being Venice,
the scene was still wistful and romantic, and it remains especially clear in my
mind. Boats plied the water while the crowds of people and pigeons milled
on the banks and over the bridges. Albinoni’s adagio played over a loud
speaker someplace nearby. The soft, nondescript light fit my mood,
elegiac, valedictory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">The situation was more
poignant than I imagined. As it turned out, I was destined to search
without success for a tenure track college teaching job for the next five years.
I would also keep making paintings and they only became better as my job
prospects declined. A few would sell and there was even a one-man show at
a decent gallery in New York. Breaks would come, but not fast
enough. With the birth of my son, responsibilities began to impose
demands far greater than the resources of freelance and part-time teaching
could satisfy. Teaching at the secondary level began to look pretty good
and when an opportunity opened up; I was ready to take it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;"> I was of course
unaware of what was in store as I sipped my espresso by the water and watched
the light begin to fade. True, my goal of finding a college job was
proving more elusive than expected, but I believed that would surely change now
that I had won a major grant and done some fine painting. What was clear
at the time was that a chapter of my life had come to an end, and I knew I had the
talent to be a painter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">It would be less than
honest to say that I have never looked back. A day does not go by when I
do not think about Italy, or of my studio in the Umbrian hills. My life
as an artist has instilled in me a belief in limitless human possibilities.
Teaching would become my attempt to make others see those possibilities in
themselves and the life around them. There would be nothing altruistic about
it. I just didn’t want to be the only one with a Renaissance spinning
around in my head. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">Of all the images of Italy
that I recall, my favorite may be my first view of Orvieto that rainy morning
east of Montefiascone, when the little Citroen dropped me off at the top of a
ridge overlooking a vast deep valley. Rising from the center of the
valley floor was a gigantic rock, easily two miles long and hundreds of feet
high. The cliffs at the top of the rock became the walls and battlements
of the medieval city where I would one day return to live and paint. The rainsqualls
momentarily broke apart, letting weak sunlight move along the valley floor and
up over the city. I don’t remember picking out the shape of the great
cathedral, but there was a rainbow. It did not take long to get another
ride into town. As we started down the ridge I was unaware that we were
passing an old monastery that would be my studio five years later and from
which, every morning, I could watch another dawn reveal the magnificent
panorama that I was just now discovering. The road descended past my
future studio and down into the valley, then it wound back up the rock and into
the town. Heavy rain had returned by the time we reached the city
gates. It poured all the way back to Rome.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">Orvieto, 1974</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><b><br /></b></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-25542256426685425052012-06-02T20:54:00.001-07:002012-11-27T12:41:55.433-08:00MAIN STUDIO LOG... Nov. 27 update, #50...Angie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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#50...Angie</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">With this portrait, the commitment for the March exhibit in Tegucigalpa is fulfilled and the work will come with me to Honduras in January. I hope to be able to do another group of five to ten while I am there that will be finished enough to just leave with the museum. I have been working so hard the past few weeks that it has been easy to forget what a big deal this is going to be. The focus shifts now from straight production to preparation of the work for shipping and display, planing of events and workshops to be given at the museum while the show is up, and publicizing the exhibit with an eye to finding support for the bigger show in the future.</span></span></div>
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#49...Paola</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Here is #49. I don't know if it comes across in the drawing, but this girl's face has haunted me since she posed back in 2010. The Honduras I know is full of soulful, charming or handsome faces, almost all filled with irrepressible vitality. This girl was different. She was new at the home and when she sat for her portrait her expression had a sadness that has been hard to forget. When I spoke with her she managed a weak little smile that vanished in an instant into the same flat gaze. I hoped that it was only temporary, or that I was just my projecting my own concerns. I looked for her on my next trip, hoping that I would find a more animated child, but she was gone, and nobody seemed to remember her.</span></span></div>
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#48...Alan, Flor Azul boys' farm</div>
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#47...Edgar</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He lives in the village of El Campo, at 17 already a young man. The unfamiliar faces fascinate me. Clearly, there is a story there but, unlike the kids I know from the homes and the boys' farm, it is as unknown as their future in this tiny town. This guy was very patient and posed perfectly for a long time. He must be popular because a bunch of kids and groupies gathered around to watch, until they became bored after a half hour and left us alone to work.</span></span></div>
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#46..."down payment" portrait...</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He is hard working and quiet, I don't really know him well, but he is in one of my favorite photos, taken out by the field where the boys play soccer at Flor Azul. An American and two Honduran boys are sitting on the ground and, with great care and patience, this older boy is explaining to the much smaller one that the American student whom they are sitting with has just decided to be that boy's sponsor. This drawing had to be done quickly and it is just a "down payment" because this boy is the salt of the earth and has a truly wonderful face that deserves the full treatment. I want to try to do him justice if he can pose for an hour or two in January.</span></span></div>
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#45...Jose Angel...five to go</div>
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#44...Oscar</div>
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This is a quick portrait of Oscar from Flor Azul boys' farm. I have know this guy since 2006 when he must have been about ten or eleven years old. Even then he was striking and time has only lent more character to this rugged face. He rides his horse as if he were born on it, bare-back while rounding up the cows. He appears every bit the rough and ready ranch hand but it becomes clear that Oscar is also a scholar when he speaks in English, clearly, thoughtfully and with growing command of the language.</div>
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#43</div>
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I see this look all the time when I draw boys of this age. No longer the carefree little rug-rats playing in the dirt; and not yet teenagers. Kids like this must be trying to figure out how they are going to deal with a rough and dangerous life that they are just beginning to realize they will be facing on their own. This little guy is probably all over the world, wherever societies, governments and institutions fail in their duty to raise and protect their children.</div>
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# 42...she has a friend</div>
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Here is #42, just finished. This little girl lives in one of the villages, away from the homes that care for children. She must be about ten and has a friend, another little girl who never leaves her side. Even while she was posing for her portrait, her friend set a chair right next to her and as I drew, they held hands. I wish I had the photo.</div>
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a word about Carmen...</div>
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I met her on my first trip to Honduras in 2006 at the Pedro Atala home in Tegucigalpa. She must have been maybe eleven or twelve but already caring for toddlers. I remember seeing her, in the little group kitchen, holding a kid on her hip with one hand and stirring a pot of frijoles for diner with the other, and thinking that people simply do not get better than this. She also played a mean game of kickball in the little courtyard at the home. Last year I made it back to Pedro Atala for the first time in a long time and Carmen was still there, grown up but not really changed, still taking care of the little ones. She remembered me, posed for her portrait, and I just finished it off today.</div>
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Carmen... #41</div>
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Melissa... #40</div>
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ten to go...</div>
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Kevin... #39</div>
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eleven more to go...</div>
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#38 twelve more to go...</div>
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I knew two things: One, this kid would not hold still for more than fifteen minutes and two, even if she sat still all day, I would never do justice to that elegant little gesture. I kept things light, knowing I would have to revise most of it when I got home.</div>
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So, I took my back-up photos and had her sign her portrait.</div>
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Back in Cleveland I got to work, she took about four days in the studio.</div>
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I can't wait to show it to her. I hope to make good quality prints on heavy paper to give to the children who posed for me. This child lives in a little village in the country, not under the care of any organization, so it will be hard to keep track of her. I will get what contact information I can in hopes of following up when she is older.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">We made it. The Kicstarter proposal has been funded, thanks to a very strong last couple of days and some very generous people. I will be traveling to Honduras in January to do more drawings. This one is just completed this afternoon.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">5 days left...and it looks like the Kickstarter proposal may not make it. I am sending out one more mass email but it would take all of the "maybes" coming through along with some new people to reach the goal. Drawing is going well. This little girl from one of the poor villages posed so prettily with her little hand on her temple. I knew it was hopeless to try to capture it on the spot but here is the result from back-up photos.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Gabriela</span><br />
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Emerson, finished last week, already working on the next one.<br />
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Walkian, the biggest smile in Honduras...<br />
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Karla's portrait, finished Sept. 4</div>
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The back-up photos are not very clear for this portrait, but they are lovely images nonetheless because this girl cannot take a bad picture. I'm not worried. The face is familiar and I have high hopes for the drawing. I've known this kid for six years and watched her grow up. But she is far more than a pretty face. She is now in charge of the group home of small children who are cared for by older girls and has done remarkable things with the place. There are a couple of tropical birds in cages hanging by the doorway, and plenty of hanging plants. She can be seen watering the flower and vegetable garden that is now outside. Now that she is coming into her own in the community, her touch is everywhere at the home and the atmosphere is wonderful. I started the portrait last year and when we talked she told me that her ambition is to become a lawyer and advocate for abused women and children. That is a long way off, but if she pulls that off she can certainly have her portrait for her office. I know I will do my best to do justice to this remarkable young lady.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Hpv-fmR6nlk/UDeT5EajOxI/AAAAAAAAAL8/HbehOdVwEMQ/s1600/Photo+on+2012-08-24+at+10.21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Hpv-fmR6nlk/UDeT5EajOxI/AAAAAAAAAL8/HbehOdVwEMQ/s640/Photo+on+2012-08-24+at+10.21.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Done...<br />
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Closer, but not quite there yet...<br />
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I really am more a good draftsman than a natural portraitist. I can find a way to render what is in front of me and occasionally really nail a portrait from life. But I have learned a lot from watching gifted portraitists work. They posses the knack of measuring three things at once, recording all with great economy, capturing a likeness. I guess I am more of a counterpuncher, usually getting it a bit wrong on the first drafts but adjusting and finding the patterns through hard work. Interestingly, many gifted portrait painters I have known are not the most artistically profound, but their facility at seeing the human face usually makes up for that. When I work I am constantly reminded of the words of John Singer Sargent who, along with Ingres, was the greatest natural portraitist of all: "A portrait is a painting with 'something wrong about the mouth'".<br />
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This one needs one more day of work if she is going to look like the little girl I remember.<br />
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Studio shot, August 13, 2012.</div>
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The big portrait in progress on the easel just to the left
of Pablo (who is seen here relaxing on the rug) is a challenge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two reference photos can be seen
attached to the drawing, and neither one captures what I saw when this child
posed in her tiny Honduran village.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
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This is Orlin, lives at the boys farm, parents both
deceased.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The portrait only hints
at how striking this kid really is with his meztizo coloring. The drawing is
smaller than the last two but still counts as the drawing finished for this
week and puts the project almost on schedule.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finishing it took two days work and there are a few others
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and a tough image to catch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stand
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work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile, here is Orlin.</div>
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There is a story in the haunted eyes of this boy, and it probably is not a good one. The memory of the face with scars will not go away. He readily volunteered to pose when I was drawing last June at the boy's farm in Honduras, but he quickly lost interest when the face was only roughed in. He wandered off and when one of the highly respected older boys asked him to return and at least sign the drawing, the attitude turned to angry resistance.<br />
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Sulking, eyes lowered, he seemed to shut down, this was behavior rarely if ever seen at this farm for neglected, abandoned and abused boys. The farm is a place that, for all its poverty, reminds one of nothing less than the island of lost boys from Peter Pan. True, there is plenty of work to do, both on the farm and in the school, but there are horses to ride, soccer to play and a joyful fellowship and brotherhood among the boys that always amazes Americans who come to know it. This was something very different.<br />
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He finially wrote his name on the paper. The back up photo was taken earlier at the start of the pose, fortunately, but knowing what I do about what followed, it has not been much of a stretch to read sadness into the eyes in the photo, or to try and express it in the portrait. There is no telling what is behind the look in the eyes, the scars, the angry withdrawal or how this boy will turn out in the end. <br />
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The story in the eyes is not finished.<br />
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This second eye took an entire day.</div>
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First of the new work, mid-July, 2012</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-90657033277606432172012-06-02T20:36:00.001-07:002012-07-04T11:01:14.533-07:00There are thousands of unseen children in this picture, in huts, villages and shacks throughout the landscape. Open, friendly, proud, they are as invisible to the wider world as they are in the drawing. Far too young to bear responsibility for their circumstances... Ignored and neglected, they have no voice.<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Ronald, and a
bit of background…<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The Honduran
landscape is included in the background of Ronald's portrait. It is my homage
to the beauty of the country, and my chance to write about this fascinating
place. Those hills are full of
stories. I know just a few….<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Ronald works
at the store at Nuevo Paraiso and when business is slow does his homework out on
the veranda, where he sat for his portrait. He is a boy of tremendous promise. He has taught himself English. Besides the store, he works on Flor
Azul farm and attends high school several miles away in the little town of San
Francisco, hidden from view in this picture beyond that mountain. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">At the time of
my first trip to Honduras, in 2006, the yard that surrounds the little palm tree
behind Ronald was an empty lot full of trash. Since then four new buildings have
been constructed on the site: the store, an Internet Café, a computer classroom
and now the tree is gone, replaced by a large social room. Honduran boys, Ronald and others, did
most of the construction, with help from groups of American students on service
trips. The boys who built the store now tend it, selling needed items to visiting
Americans, with profits helping maintain their farm at Flor Azul.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The mountain
frames the sunsets here, and it dominates the landscape of this part of the
valley. Flor Azul boys farm
and the poor tiny village of Flor Azul are both to be found out there in the
countryside. The boys farm, where
Ronald lives, is to our left, at the end of the dirt road seen behind him, and
the path to the village runs through the sugar cane that begins just past those
trees, then climbs up into that break in the hills to the far left of the
picture. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">On its way to
the boys' farm, the road leads past Nueva Esperanza, a tract of tiny concrete
dwellings, built for families who lost homes when hurricane Mitch flooded the
valley in 1997 with seventy-two inches of rain in one terrible week. The water rose to the tops of those
trees, where people hung on for their lives. Up that road is also a brick factory with kilns, and another
that makes bricks from dried mud and straw, still used here as a building
material. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">At the side of
the same dirt road, at a distance of about a mile, is a tiny children's cemetery. In it are buried perhaps two-dozen
infants and toddlers who died from HIV/AIDS at the nearby hospice of Montaña de
la Luz. Ohio State University
helps support Montaña and it is called a hospital now, thanks to anti-retroviral
drugs. But in the early days there
was not much hope for babies born with the disease. There are no tombstones at the roadside, just simple hand painted
boards with the dates that tell the story, birth and death often the same year,
never more than a couple years of life.
Garden fences and flowers grace some of the graves, others are
neglected, easy to miss beneath the brush and tall grass. Sitting at the edge of the cane fields
with the mountains in the distance, it is an unforgettable spot, a scene of
haunting, desolate beauty. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">At the foot of
the mountain, in the town of San Francisco, is an amazing bakery. It produces
the very finest of fancy cakes, all baked in a wood-fired stone oven, situated
out in a back yard, surrounded by chickens, dogs and a horse. When I was there, a woman wearing an
ancient Tulane University t-shirt was pulling cakes out with a big wooden
paddle. No party is complete
without one of the finished cakes, with layers of fresh peaches, custard and
elaborately sculpted frosting. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Near the
mountain, sitting among the dusty sugar cane, scrub bushes and the odd donkey
is an entirely incongruous public swimming pool, complete with tile deck,
diving boards, bathhouse and an empty concession stand. None of us has a clue as to who
built it or how. On our service
trips with students we sometimes have a pool party, with all the Honduran and
American kids splashing around together.
<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Once, on the
road back from one of those parties, our bus passed a grim congregation of
forty or fifty buzzards eating the carcass of a dead horse. Huge buzzards, almost black, usually
appear at sunset, a chilling and demonic sight, skimming low through the trees
on powerful wings like messengers of doom. In the sugar fields are enormous cane toads, poisonous to
touch, scorpions, really big spiders, small brown, and very deadly, snakes,
free ranging horses and cows randomly wander everywhere. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Somewhere near
the top of the mountain is an isolated settlement, populated by Hondurans with
blond hair and blue eyes. I have never been there but know people who
have. The inhabitants do not
travel much, but there they are nonetheless, and nobody seems to know how or
why. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7F-7ZqWi3h8/T8rbl8evDqI/AAAAAAAAADw/Mtd9VN_z8CU/s1600/P1015290_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7F-7ZqWi3h8/T8rbl8evDqI/AAAAAAAAADw/Mtd9VN_z8CU/s320/P1015290_2.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">There are thousands
of unseen children in this picture, in huts, villages and shacks throughout the
landscape. Open, friendly, proud, they
are as invisible to the wider world as they are in the drawing. Far too young
to bear responsibility for their circumstances, a few lucky ones, like those
who find sanctuary in places like Flor Azul farm and Nuevo Paraiso, at least
have a chance. The rest, like the
children of the poor village of Flor Azul, are pretty much on their own.
Ignored and neglected, they have no voice. My hope for my drawings is that
these young faces can speak to us about what may well be the central task confronting
the 21<sup>st</sup> century: addressing the imbalance between the unsustainable
abundance of our lives and the burdensome poverty of theirs. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-68904741056994862352012-05-31T19:23:00.001-07:002012-07-16T13:25:01.285-07:00The world must contain unnumbered thousands of these tiny, desperately poor settlements, each one of them, in its own way, the very end of the earth.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I know nothing
about this child beyond where she lives.
Her village is hidden up among the hills that overlook the boys’
farm. I suppose I had unknowingly
set eyes on the location many times from a distance when visiting the boys at
the farm every year.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">It is
impossible to adequately describe the desolation of this place. The world must contain unnumbered
thousands of these tiny, desperately poor settlements, each one of them, in its
own way, the very end of the earth.
The road we folowed, if you can call it that, winds through a couple
miles of sugar cane fields, through mud deeper than the tires of a truck, past
half starved donkeys and cows barely breathing in the dust and heat. There is another town along the way,
poor and ramshackle enough as it is, but vibrant and functional compared to
where we were going. The road
begins to climb into the hills, winding another mile or two up a dry
ravine. On the switchbacks a
thrilling view of the landscape opens up over the cane fields to the mountains
many miles away. Dozens more villages
are in those mountains, each with a name, as if it were more than a cluster of huts
with tin roofs. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Everything is
covered in dust. After the long climb,
the first mud brick houses begin to appear behind broken walls of random stones
and barbed wire. Chickens and
donkeys stand in the yards amid drying laundry, and of course there are the
dogs, ribs clearly visible as they move about. There is no center really, just a fence by the road that
encloses an open patch of scruffy hillside that is the schoolyard. The school is simply three open one-room
concrete buildings for classes.
Inside the school are the children in their worn uniforms… and the most
heroic teachers on the planet.
There is a little electricity but no plumbing, (water is miles away from
this village). An unspeakable out
house serves the entire school.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">When class let
out the kids gathered around.
Three little girls looked like promising subjects but the first two were
not sure. The third was more than willing. She not only posed perfectly but her natural expression was
a shy little smile, which I was just able to catch, a rare feature in a
portrait not copied from a photo. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I love this
drawing, but it always brings a lump to my throat. It is difficult to separate the artistic qualities from what
I know of the circumstances surrounding its creation. Someone in this little outpost of humanity took time with this child,
fixed her hair, laundered her school uniform. Someone in this village wants this little girl to have
a life.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9S7XWS35YLY/T8gnmvIHLdI/AAAAAAAAADU/dBZg_DNLKd4/s1600/PressReleaseHonPortraits2012b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9S7XWS35YLY/T8gnmvIHLdI/AAAAAAAAADU/dBZg_DNLKd4/s320/PressReleaseHonPortraits2012b.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Here she is.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-47857106660345098122012-05-31T19:11:00.001-07:002012-07-17T19:26:45.636-07:00This is the younger sister of a girl I sponsor, daughters of a father now in his mid 80's. The old man is still impressive; a full head of iron-grey hair, the physique of a man whose working life was one of hard physical labor. Those days are behind him now, and his young daughters need to be raised. Other siblings are grown, but nobody can afford to take care of the sisters, and they came to the homes at Nuevo Paraiso in their early teens. I learned of the depth of this old man's concern for his two young daughters on a hot summer afternoon in a darkened sickroom.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">This is the younger sister of a girl I sponsor, daughters of a father
now in his mid 80's. The old man is still impressive; a full head of iron-grey
hair, the physique of a man whose working life was one of hard physical labor. Those days are behind him now, and his
young daughters need to be raised. Other siblings are grown, but nobody can afford to take care
of the sisters, and they came to the homes at Nuevo Paraiso in their early
teens. I learned of the
depth of this old man's concern for his two young daughters on a hot summer
afternoon in a darkened sickroom. <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">I was back in Honduras, a year after I had become sponsor to the older
girl, and met him as well. This
year, the father was recovering from a hernia operation, and both girls wanted
me to go with them to see him. He
was nearby, at the home of a grown daughter who worked at Nuevo Paraiso. The
two girls brought me into his room, barely large enough for us to sit down. The blinds were drawn and as our eyes
became used to the dark we could see that he lay on his back, a sheet covering
all but his bare chest and shoulders, dark skin against the white linens. He was not allowed to move. We sat by the bed and he began to speak.
<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">He remembered me. It
seemed clear that he had asked Yuni and her sister to bring me to him so he
could thank me for taking care of his girls. In reality I was only giving a dollar a day for one daughter,
but there was more involved and we all knew it. I tried, with the Spanish I knew, to give some assurance. I was not rich, I said, and would never
be in a position to guarantee the necessities for his girls. But I promised that I would never
abandon them, that I would be their friend, help when I could and that, as long
as I was alive, they would never be…and at this point I hesitated, looking for
the word, but he finished my sentence for me: <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"Solos" he said for me. "Alone". They would never be alone. <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">That seemed to mean a lot, and he held my hand when we said good-bye.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-64046365247059651162012-05-31T19:09:00.002-07:002012-07-16T13:20:09.251-07:00What I saw when I looked up took my breath away: a totally unfamiliar expression, absolutely direct, uncompromising.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">It is amazing
what you can miss, even in a place like Honduras. I had always, more or less, overlooked her. Shy and
awkward, with dirty face, ill-fitting clothes and disheveled hair, she was
easily lost in the crowd. She had been at the orphanage since 2007. Both parents were dead. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">It was an hour
after noon on a blazing hot day and I was sitting on the concrete, trying to
stay in the shadow of a wall, drawing.
A group of little girls had gathered to watch me make a portrait of a popular
girl, her best friend and her opposite in nearly every
way. Of course, I failed to notice
that she stayed behind after her friend and the others had moved on. But I felt a hand on my shoulder as I
was about to get up and leave. “Would
you draw me next?” This took me by surprise; it was out-of-character. Her dusty little face was barely
visible behind the falling hair, her eyes were completely hidden. I said, “of course I would” and began
to prepare my materials as she sat down where her friend had posed a few
moments before. I didn’t expect
much to come of it, but the kid had asked, so… <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">What I saw when
I looked up took my breath away: a totally unfamiliar expression, absolutely
direct, uncompromising. I could
see the eyes now and they were looking straight through me. Amazing eyes. The intensity of the gaze
was beyond description, and everything in that look asked me to somehow do
justice to the soul of this little kid, starting her life in the hills of Central
America. I reached for my
pen. “How”, I asked myself, ”am I ever
going to do this?” The face was
simple, without any strong features to work with. How to measure, where to
start? <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7o91bpk7OFc/T8gkRsiDlHI/AAAAAAAAAC8/T3bf5D3-U30/s1600/P1015136.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7o91bpk7OFc/T8gkRsiDlHI/AAAAAAAAAC8/T3bf5D3-U30/s320/P1015136.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The sketch was
tiny; it only took about ten minutes. She was pleased. Line for line, it may be my best work,
and I hope that people who see it will notice this child, looking out at a
world that has left her on her own, sitting for a portrait in the only patch of
shade to be found on that blinding afternoon in Honduras. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-72004379617763296972012-05-31T19:05:00.002-07:002012-07-04T10:51:37.380-07:00His name was Osmin Rene and it was clear that he would pose perfectly for hours if asked. I had only minutes.<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Osmin Rene<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I really
wanted to draw this portrait and it nearly did not happen. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Art-wise, it
had not been a great day. For one
reason or another, nothing worked.
Now things were wrapping up at the village and time was short. A crowd of people watched me draw. When I asked if anybody else wanted to
pose, a boy about ten years old sat down in the chair before my easel. Calm intelligent eyes, set in an open
innocent face, were looking back at me with a rare combination of sweetness and
confidence. His name was Osmin
Rene and it was clear that he would pose perfectly for hours if asked. I had only minutes. I did what I could, took back-up photos
and hoped for the best. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">We sat on a
veranda of the kindergarten room. The
contrast between this boy's self-possession and his surroundings could not have
been greater. The poor little
village was a sad tableau of poverty and isolation, worlds away from the
orphanage in the valley. People
were hauling their drinking water on donkeys from a rusty pipe two miles away,
a teacher who worked in the very schoolroom where we sat had seen her infant
killed by its father, nearby lay poor little Milton, crippled with cerebral
palsy, lying on a rug on a back porch where he spends his life. We hear of
delinquency, abuse, gangs and drugs.
Would young Osmin or his friends fall prey to all that? Were the kids already lost once as guileless
and trusting as he was now?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The drawing
was completed in Ohio. The fifteen
minutes of work in Honduras were barely enough to begin drawing Osmin Rene. But I will never forget him. And I keep coming back to this portrait. At times when Central America seems far
away, this drawing reminds me of the reason I keep going back to Honduras. For nothing in the shabby dysfunction of
that country can account for the joyous nature encountered routinely in the children
who live there. They give us far more than we give them, and the spiritual debt
for that gift is enormous. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-86919142110745978972012-05-29T19:54:00.001-07:002012-07-04T10:54:29.240-07:00Africa, India, Central America, if you have been there then you know that there are two things that Americans do not comprehend: the extent and depth of the poverty that you have witnessed, and the shining humanity of the people whom you have met.the work of the century...<br />
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In less than two weeks I will be in Honduras, drawing portraits of poor, orphaned, neglected and abused children. Well-off Americans tend to focus on the impoverished circumstances of their lives as compared to ours, but it is not their poverty that sets these kids apart; it is their dignity. <br />
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Anyone who has been to the "third world" and connected with the people, particularly with children, comes back with their hair on fire, talking to anyone who will listen. Africa, India, Central America, if you have been there then you know that there are two things that Americans do not comprehend: the extent and depth of the poverty that you have witnessed, and the shining humanity of the people whom you have met. Photos, statistics, stories, they all seem to reduce those whom we have befriended to abstractions, stereotypes, a demographic that poses intractable problems without answers.<br />
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But that is the work of this century. Every age has a few big tasks to complete, often clearly understood only in retrospect. Simply put, the 18th century, whatever else it did, gave us the end of monarchy and the birth of democracy. The 19th gave us industrialization, ended constitutional slavery. The 20th was one vast experiment in big-state totalitarianism. Two world wars and a cold war settled that. <br />
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The internet age has a better chance to find a way to reconcile the extremes of world-wide wealth and poverty, to reconcile the unsustainable bounty of our lives with the destitution of so many places on earth. We have never had more useful tools and information, and ignoring such injustice requires ever greater feats of denial. The decency and intelligence of people who survive in awful places, the bravery with which they confront their circumstances, the heroisim of simply puting themselves together every day to face the world with pride, leaves the visitor with one thought. "I cannot turn my back on these people."<br />
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We tend to accept such "savage inequality" as part of life. But serfdom, slavery, the divine right of kings were once part of life and many of our own ancestors lived out their own lives on the wrong end of those systems. It was the work of past centuries to change those things and we are the beneficiaries. With our freedom to shop, work and enjoy life, we need to give a little back.<br />
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We do what we can. My portraits of poor children, when they are good, can bring them into our presence a little more clearly than photographs and, to that extent, are my way of trying to push things a little further along the way. One cannot live only with such grandiose, utopian goals. But neither should one neglect the dream of what could be, for any hope for change begins with a dream. It is my hope that portraits of Honduran children will somehow nurture that dream in those who view them; the dream of the kind of world that these kids deserve.<br />
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I will be in Honduras for a week (June 10 to 17th) and hope to complete ten to twelve new portraits. I have already done over fifty and am trying to put together an exhibit of well over one hundred in a couple of years.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-87440629326236669192012-05-27T20:30:00.001-07:002012-07-03T09:05:45.628-07:00bad doggie...bad doggie...<br />
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Whatever else retirement accomplishes, it should be a big plus for at least one individual...<br />
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Pablo has just turned seven. By now, it is clear that he may never really find his perfect place in the world. For starters, he should have been smaller. <br />
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His energy is boundless and when he sees something he wants to go after, all attempts at training go out the window. Walking him requires complete concentration. I learned not to let my mind wander after suffering a series of injuries when I was caught by surprise. Dog parks are out. I've never known Pablo to start a fight, but he finishes them very quickly with impressive economy of motion. He can puncture an aggressive dog's ear in a split second. He is playful and friendly to a fault, but not gentle and once in a blue moon his prey response kicks in. I've learned to manage him very carefully, completely avoiding bikes, skateboarders and children. He has great potential as a frisbee catcher when there is nobody at the dog park, but he simply cannot be off leash in public. Once I took him to the fenced-in tennis courts to play catch, but his powerful leaps tore the pads on his feet when he landed on the asphalt. He is not naturally destructive but he lives at full speed and destroys a lot of stuff just because he is so big and strong and happy. His tail alone can knock over furniture.<br />
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He is the best looking dog I have ever owned. His mother was a Rottweiler and he has a bit of the classic Rottie coloring, black with tan around his face, but Pablo is built more gracefully than a Rot and looks to be perhaps half German Shepherd. His feet and legs have more of the same handsome tan, giving him a dressed up appearance, at once rakish and formal. His hair is longer than a Rot, a bushy tail with black wisps on his neck and haunches, almost like golden retriever fur. People complement him whenever I take him out, often from the windows of their cars as they drive past.<br />
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He was a perfect match for me in the years that I lived alone. I am an artist, I love beautiful things, and Pablo is certainly that. But, I would have loved this guy if he were the homeliest tramp in the pound. Now my life has changed for the better but Pablo does not fit. He requires so much energy and concentration that I'm not sure he could be placed successfully. I dread putting him through another failed change in his life, he had been given up by two owners before me and I would be the third if I let him go. Someone with other dogs or kids would not keep him for long, and I fear that in the end he would be out of luck. <br />
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I have a plan for Pablo, now that my time is my own, and it has a chance to work, but first let me tell Pablo's story. <br />
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It was in late October of 2005 that Pablo chose me.<br />
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(to be continued...)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1044254566327609504.post-4857714496177543062012-05-25T20:01:00.001-07:002012-07-04T11:19:20.491-07:00benediction... Now the truth comes out...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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benediction...<br />
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Now the truth comes out...just ran two miles, showered, had a scotch and an India Pale Ale with some great Chinese...corn soup, pepper chicken, veggie delight with tofu...how bad can that be...?<br />
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I did the dishes. The woman I love is upstairs watching some teeny-flick with her kid, fine, it is friday night, whatever. The older one is playing video games with a friend in the den. I still have a little buzz from the scotch and the ale but it only makes the Mozart G major piano concerto, K453 (I didn't have to look that up BTW) playing now on the Bose, sound even better. So I am tucked into the futon in the living room to start this blog. I started writing earlier today, all very literate and civilized, nobody will give a crap...but if you have read this far then my impulse to start it off in a tipsy mode, (a la Li Po, or Emily Dickinson "I taste a liquor never brewed") is amply confirmed.<br />
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The G major concerto is done, now the D minor has started (K466). Artur Rubenstein, old school. The kind of performance that made me fall in love with this music decades ago. Ipods are amazing!<br />
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I retire in June, 2012, after teaching middle school art in a private school for 32 years. No complaints. It was a good gig. I raised two sons, bought a house, yadda yadda. Now....now I need twenty good years. I am an artist. Over the years of teaching, I have kept the studio work respectable (see website: markkriegerstudio.com), but clearly the work could never be what it might have been had I worked at it full time. But I am much more savvy now, so with a little luck.... (I won't bore you with a quote from the close of Tennyson's "Ulysses", but look it up if you have a mind to, it applies.)<br />
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Here is what I wrote earlier today....a bit prosaic, but it counts nonetheless:<br />
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The last days of May; seventh grade art class. The room is on the third floor, under
the roof, there is no air-conditioning. Work for the year, fortunately, is done; because the kids are
useless. Like an abandoned city
that has lost a war...in the deathly pause between evacuation of the government the entrance of an enemy army...the whole school is unraveling in terminal anarchy, civil order has broken down and civilization hangs by a thread. Unattached kids roam the hallways, empty lockers are looted, broken pencils, discarded notebooks, the lost-and-found has been emptied out onto big tables, the detritus of the middle school year is kicked about underfoot. Odd noises and shouts in the halls ("...voices are crying an unknown name in the sky."...from my favorite poem by Archibald MacLeish). As the school year expires, the schedule is shot to hell, with events and exceptions crowding each other out. Things that actually come off are hot and futile, people come in late, rush out early. Very little attempted at this time of year ever gets done, and it does not seem to matter. There are reports to write that no one will read, decisions to make that will be forgotten, awards to give that will wind up on refrigerators, then in drawers, then in the trash.</div>
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In the final week of school the kids in my class are studying for exams while I clean up the room.<br />
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I am also writing a benediction which, as retiring faculty, I have been asked to present at the close of the graduation ceremony next week....There is lots of good stuff online to read, but any fool can look up a poem...I'm an artist, right?<br />
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We have moved to the C major concerto, K 467 on the Bose...<br />
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Absolutely lovely.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07186953215598016634noreply@blogger.com0