Child's Mind

"[Erik ReeL's painting:] micro-stories told via little tetches of color, via efficient tagmemes of emotion. The strange mixture of distance and intimacy. ..."

- Jae Carlsson


I've recently run across the delightful work of Alison Gopnik, a psychologist and philosopher currently at UC, Berkeley. I highly recommend her most recent book, The Phiilosophical Baby, to anyone interested in how our mind works.

Gopnik doesn't so much say that children are philosophers as that philosophers might do well to pay more attention to children. She and others have made an interesting case for how very young children [1-4 years] learn and work with the world in terms of Baysean nets, experimental strategies in their behavior and play, and progressions of cognitive development that set up adult behavior and thought.

As an artist, I find her work intriguing on several levels: it is intrinsically wonderfully fascinating work pertinent to every human being; philosophically, her work supports suspicions and my own experience in terms of what it is like to paint improvisationally.

I have received a fair amount of input lately from others who claim that my recent painting--if given sufficient viewing time--seems to impact their cognitive processing in some way that they had not expected. In trying to make sense of this feedback, I have found certain observations and insights of Gopnik's, in terms of the implications of her and her colleagues' research on adult congiition, to be unexpectedly relevant.

To a certain extent, this painting leads one into an adult version of a sort of "child's brain" state, where visual relationships are newly fluid and conversant within the pictoral field, but, as adults, we do this while excluding -- or postponing?-- it's relevance to everything else.This means it engages without mimesis, representation of an "other" -it's otherness is contained wholly in itself, as itself.

Micro Tetches of color

"... Micro-stories told via little tetches of color, via efficient tagmemes of emotion. The strange mixture of distance and intimacy. ..."

- Jae Carlsson




Primal Marking

Human marking, the initial urge, homo sapiens emerge, on cave walls, an ax shaft, stones, earth, bodies.

We make our mark. The mark of the hand echoing the mark of consciousness. Some turns into written language, the rest, no less meaningful, seeps from our depths like the gutteral howls of Janis Joplin, the improvised riffs of a deep bulerias. Words, explicit signs, are not necessary, not sufficient.

Improvisation accesses subtler states of consciousness, edges, communal communications, attained, transferred, transformed, followed, lost, found and expanded again. A higher determination enters into the improvised moment, a greater presence is demanded; a deeper sense of time.

The hand speaks directly, free of the planned intrusions of the intellect, the deeper nuances emerge, like music. The play of Imrat Khan, Charusia, Debendra Krishna Chattoppadhyay, Flamengo, Miles Davis, Theolonius Monk, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Dewey Redman, the Sabri brothers. Play emerges triumphant, ecstatic, dancing across the moment, the eternal Now. The heart of art.

Enter into these visual worlds. Take time, drift around in them awhile and ask yourself if there is a mark without meaning, a nuance you have not felt?

A Survivior's Tale

The man who survived both the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki passed today: aged 93.

He was visiting Hiroshima and walking outdoors only 2 miles from ground zero when the bomb hit. He is one of the few eyewitnesses who has recorded what actually happens that close to a nuclear explosion.

He was badly burned and took the next train to his home, in Nagasaki, to rest and recover. Heavily bandaged he actually reported to work, at a Mitsibushi plant, a few days later to tell his coworkers what had happened [the bomb knocked out all communications and most Japanese still had no idea that anything had happened] and what to do if something like that happened again. That you had to get behind as much mass as possible and not leave any part of your body exposed in the open, that this thing could melt flesh and burn anything not protected by lots of concrete, etc.

His boss overheard him lecturing to all the engineers in the room and chastised him, saying that what he was saying was treason, that he must have suffered a head injury, that they were all engineers and should know better, that there was no such thing that could cause the non-blast effects he described or destroy an entire city in seconds.

Just as the boss finished admonishing him, a blinding flash filled the room, the Nagasaki bomb had hit.

Everyone in the room quickly followed his advice. The 30 men in that room were the only ones in that entire Mitsibushi plant of over 300 that survived that day.

The man eventually came to feel it was an omen and calling that he had survived both blasts, and in places where almost everyone else around him had perished instantly. He, predictably, became an activist for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. He worked with youth and people at risk and felt it was necessary to fight evil at its very roots- in the hearts of young men before they turned to destructive thinking and habits -- or became leaders, engineers, politicians. That what had happened that week in 1945 was the essence of evil on earth ...

So I offer this post in honor of the memory of these things and the need to prevent the unleashing of such evil in the future. In remembrance of what happened, I watched Hiroshima Mon Amor as part of my Remembrance observation. I urge others to do the same ... this is an issue that has not gone away ... only gone silent, into forgetting, which is the theme of Hiroshima Mon Amor.

Today, weapons as destructive as those used on Japan are stockpiled as cannon rounds, the actual weapons loaded onto our missle warheads are a hundred to a thousand times more powerful and destructive. These weapons detiorate, are expensive, and have to be constantly maintained - with our taxes. Part of the huge hunk of military spending that we spend every year - more than all the other major powers put together. Every April 15 each of us collaborates in the insanity. For the most part, silently. Think about it. Do not let oblivion and forgetfulness rule.

Primal Marking

My work is about human marking, the initial urge, seen as soon as homo sapiens emerge, on cave walls, on an ax shaft, stones, earth, bodies.

We make our mark. The mark of the hand appears, echoing the mark of consciousness. Some of it turns into written language, the rest, no less meaningful, seeps from our depths like the gutteral howls of Janis Joplin, or the improvised riffs of a deep bulerias. Words, explicit signs, are not necessary, not sufficient.

Improvisation is necessary for certain states of consciousness, for certain edges, communal communications, attained, transferred, transformed. A higher determination enters into the improvised moment, a greater presence is demanded; a deeper sense of time.

The heart speaks more directly, free of the planned intrusions of the intellect, the deeper nuances emerge, like music. Witness the play of Imrat Khan, Charusia, Debendra Krishna Chattoppadhyay, Flamengo, Miles Davis, Theolonius Monk, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Dewey Redman, the Sabri brothers. Play emerges triumphant, ecstatic, dancing across the moment, as the eternal Now. The heart of art.

Enter into these visual worlds. Give them time, drift around in them awhile and ask yourself if there is a mark without meaning, a nuance you have not felt?

Ventura Elections

The theme of this election echoes the theme for a lot of activity at city hall in relation to the arts: lots of good intentions and ideas, really lousy, often terrible execution. This city could become a serious art center if it ever got its act together.

Recommendations and comment:
Measure A [increase local sales tax to help a lot of good causes]: A great idea; totally wrong solution. A sales tax hike at this time is completely wrong: it hurts the arts; it hurts small business; it hurts consumers; it's regressive, right at a time when people at the bottom are hurting the most. It is a contracting move at the depth of a contraction. Further, classic economic theory says it won't work: if you raise a sales tax during an economic contraction, you are more likely to DECREASE overall tax revenues because you are going to hurt sales volume to a point where you offset the tax increase. During a contraction, if you want to increase sales tax revenues, you have to increase sales: something this city seems to be real good at not doing. There was plenty of room for improvement on the city's part in terms of efforts to get creative and try to increase sales. But they chose not to do that. This ordinance is truly a case of too many people at city hall drinking the cool-aid.

Measure B [give power of creating building height ordinance to VCORD]: Great idea: the city really needs a view protection ordinance; but again, totally wrong implementation. Giving all this power to VCORD is NOT the way to go. We need to reform city hall, not give new power to special interest groups who have no responsibility to voters.

Measure C: Again, great ideas, really bad solution. This ordinance is written so badly it's insane. It cannot possibly accomplish what it claims to do.

City Council:
I have to confess I am conflicted here. I usually vote Democratic/Progressive, but they are all so strongly for Measure A, I have to pause. Also, a lot of the arts community, including myself have been very unhappy with recent actions and lack of arts leadership on the present council [for the supposedly "New Art City" - the Auto Center is still the number one priority on the city plan - which is really helping the city right now, right?]. I personally could not bring myself to vote for one incumbent. City Hall desperately needs new blood and new thinking. I went for new blood. I have no specific recommendations other than that William Knox III, Wendy Halderman, and Maureen O'Hara were the only candidates who seemed even dimly aware of the current arts situation here and the arts role as the most viable engine for the revitalization of this berg.

Wired for Ecstasy

Remember we are built for love; wired for ecstasy.
For our hearts to open, our arms to embrace;
Our fingers to touch gently and feel the delicacies of skin
For our legs to dance and run and climb up to the bluffs above the sea,
Our voices for shouting and laughing and singing and talking so softly
that it breaks another's mind, its resistance, the walls around the soul
so that tears wash our eyes that we may see all the more clearly the beauty
that this life offers each one of us and to each of those around us
Never ending, without pause, continually, a music surrounding us
below the world's terrors and fears, in the depth where our lips know
and kiss and touch the ends of fingers before we finally arive at death's door
and are no more

Re-Emerging

(painting: Oceanic Atmospherics)

OK. Graymoth emerges out of the chrysalis. Got onto Facebook - part of the process. That is an education in itself. Thanks, everyone, for the support. It's been quite a dance!!

Into the Flame

Well Grey moth flew into the flame. Back on again, buzzing homeward to the red weed flowers, night moths, grey moths, all drinking deep the nectar of life. If you've ever seen Jimi Hendrix singing at Monterrey, you know what I mean. Or heard the UK single release of his Wild Thing- which is not on any of his albums and was never released in North America.

What's up with that anyway? They've never put Buddy Miles' double album LIVE on CD either. One of the best rock albums of all time and it's not even on CD. Shows how depraved the situation is. OK, a lot of people never heard it or know it exists- that doesn't make it any the worse- and that's mostly because Buddy Miles studio work is lousy and flat and he had only one so-so hit single and when he played with Hendrix it was only for his drums- which is not his great talent. What he was good at was putting on a live show and singing improvisationally, live, to a responsive audience - and the only time that was ever published was on his LIVE double album- which has an incredible 20-plus minute improv of Neil Young's Down By the River during a live concert in Seattle, which is one of my favorite cuts of music ever recorded. But you can get an edited version of it on You-tube,where it can be confirmed by the adulation of others there that I am not hallucinating here.


Great art languishes, threatened with extinction, but oh my god, a corporation, which hasn't contributed one cent to real culture or to anything worth remembering, and that no one will give a damn about 100 years from now, starts stumbling and it's hey, here's a 100 billion bucks to help you out. While art that makes you thankful that you lived- that that artist lived, so you could witness these incredible moments, that will be rippling out with that feeling for centuries, no, that kind of thing isn't worth a dime.

Speaking of which, you can't get the very good English translation of Carpentier's The Chase in the United States either-- one of the best novels of all time-- nor the last three books of the US edition of the great new translation of Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

Or as Scott Moncrieff would have us have it, Remembrance of Things Past - but then Moncrieff calls the fourth book (Sodome et Gomorrhe) Cities of the Plain instead of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the second book, Within a Budding Grove (A L'ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs) instead of something like In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. A slight suppression of the poetry and sex there, Scotty boy? You can see why we need the new translation.

All because of some stupid corporate copyright shenigans, Americans will have to wait till the next decade to read Proust in a better translation. Wait. That is what they tried to do; but you and I know better- just order the UK cheaply bound Penguin version and you can have the UK version which is almost the same, as long as you're willing to put up with faded, near invisible, microscopic type ... it's so good to know we can get anything we want here in the US of A, land of the free, where we don't have any censorship (Carpentier is Cuban), or anything like that ...

It's over

Direct Hit acrylic on paper 2009

It's over. Direct hit sustained. Those who know what I'm talking about, know what I'm saying. End of an era. Short one at that. Eight years lived in 2 and a half. At least. Over 400 paintings. No regrets. But the Swedish Fish is going down, down, down. Down. Don't know when I'll come back up again. Bye for now. Good fishing all ...

Economic Plummet

State of the state.

Graffitto

Yes, there is a relationship between my imagery and graffitti. The original meaning of the root word for graffitto referred to inscribed marks, which I frequently use. My work is more in line with pre-spray paint, or as we learn to not use so many flourocarbons, post-industrial graffitti. All those signs and marks scratched and drawn onto walls in the spur of the moment. The residual of signs covering our walls, buildings, and streets that need no industrially advanced technology or tools to make. Many of the works on paper have marks literally lifted off the alley walls. But I use the other usual sources as well: the drawings of children and the marginalized, impromtu remains of fleeting moments, left behind with the visual detritus of the damned.