E-Belle Arts Lettres - SUMMER
2009
from the
Black Feather Retreat
Box 588
Westbrookville, NY 12785
Table of Contents
(Here is what you’ll find below. This is the shell of the nut. ):
Greetings
A poetry reading in Hamilton, NJ, June 21,
2009 - Stone Monk CD
Haiku
The Blue Sailor
a Surreal Poem
An Autumn Day in the Field
Cherry Blossom Festival
Bondage (a sculpture)
Variations
Surreal Marmalade
Big Camera
Gorilla Skull Mask
Reported death of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.
Events – Artist/Model Day planned for Saturday August 22, 2009
Artists and Galleries
Wen Redmond (Mixed Media - Fiber)
Barrie Samuels (Fire Hydrants)
Call for Comments: If you are an artist, poet, writer or just have an idea you would like to share, please send your contribution to me, by mail or email artist@spiritcrow.com
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Summer 2009 Issue –
E-Belle Arts Lettres
Copyright © 2009 Mark Pilipski
Box 588, Westbrookville, NY 12785
Individual pictures and exhibits of works by others displayed
within this Newsletter are used with the permission(s) of the copyright holders.
All other pictures and exhibits are presented under the Creative Commons
License: (Basically, you may copy and distribute with proper credit and only for
non-commercial use. You may not
alter any of the contents.) For more information see http://creativecommons.org/
Greetings:
This is the second installment of this newsletter.
It looks like we’ll be able to do this for a while. Several readers, artists, friends, etc. have responded with
comments, ideas and inclusions. If
you find anything worthwhile on these pages (or in the idea of these pages,)
please act on it and forward and/or share this newsletter and your idea(s) with
others. Likeways, if you have any
questions or comments, please ask or forward them to me.
If you are working on some art or writing that you would like to share,
please send a description, photo and statement about you or your work.
Embryonic
growth, although exponential, begins on an extremely small scale.
Tiny seeds, given nutrients and time, blossom into huge organisms.
This newsletter began as a whim and we’ll see where it goes.
One of Emerson’s lesser-read essays is entitled FAITH IN THE SEED. Sometimes
(Maybe, most times) we should remember to have faith in the seed.
Fragile, feeble beginnings have the potential to become full endeavors.
If this is the first time you are
encountering this ‘newsletter’ (I’m still not sure what to call it.) and
you would like to read earlier issues, either give me a call or find them posted
on the website (http://www.spiritcrow.com/stone/index.html).
In addition to the many positive
responses received, a few readers complained that this newsletter seemed a bit
egotistical (reflecting only me.) This
is a valid complaint. However, it
was only the first effort and with a staff of one.
Now, with the help of other sources and comments, I hope to balance the
content with various artists and works. If
you would like to present some of your work or ideas, please send them to me.
Earlier editions of the online versions of these E-belle Arts Lettres
will be reworked so that previous entries reflect the current or updated status
of the original essay or project, including comments by contributors.
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Mark Stone will be reading some of
his recent works and offering the Stone Monk CD at this venue.
The CD contains more readings, excerpts from An Autumn Day in a Field
and haiku from Rice Paper Chessmen.
The title derives from an origami chess set.
“While I was composing these poems into the CD, I was thinking of
potential titles. Erik Satie’s , “Pieces Froides” (Cold Cuts) came to
mind. I considered “Peu de
morceaux de poisson”
(Little Bits of Fish) or
(Little Pieces of Fish) and tried
to find an English to Japanese translation of this phrase, something akin to
‘sushi’ but a little more
pedestrian. However, despite the
wonders of the internet, there seems to be no good translation readily
available, so I stayed with Stone Monk.”
Haiku (although, not all in the classic form.)
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Issa1, tonight you hold |
The fall moon after the rain |
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More, now, a legend of my death.
I think the rumor is a lie.
As for the legend, I’ll just hold my breath.
Floating on the semen sea
Exiled from this bay
Held in his embrace
She was moonlight.
More radiant than life,
A beautiful Caribbean made white by death.
Some would say ‘pale’
But ‘pale and ‘pallor’ is sickness.
She is dead; a seductive absence.
What was She drifted as if asleep
Naked on a waterbed.
Calypso’s lover, Muse and daughter,
Even in death proudly erect and full of desire.
The flashing silver of minnows
Jewels worn, not possessed,
Show her station to be descended of the islands
Now, wedded to the sea.
I am sorry I was invited.
I must call upon her family with the announcement.
Cherry Blossom Festival:
One year (It will have to be next year or beyond.
This is being typed at the beginning of April.
It is unlikely that I’ll get this done or you’ll read this before the
middle of April but there is the promise of next year.)
I’d like to print up several handfuls of this little book of haiku, Rice
Paper Chessmen, and pass them out at the annual Cherry Blossom Festival in
Branch Brook Park in Newark, NJ. Maybe set up a little table and encourage
people to compose haiku on the spot, while they are entranced by the blossoms
and showers of petals. This year is
the 33rd Annual Cherry Blossom Festival.
There is a cell phone camera aimed at a few trees in the park to give you
an up to the minute view of the arrival of the blossoms. (http://oxblue.com/pro/open/essexcountynj/cherryblossom).
For those of you who have not had the pleasure (and it is always a pleasure!) to
walk through the park during sakura (The blooming of the cherry trees), usually
during the middle of April in Newark, it is well worth the trip.
Death of a Poetry Festival?:
With the closing of Waterloo Village,
the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation’s backing of the biennial poetry festival
has also ceased. (http://www.dodgepoetry.org/)
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With Credit Frozen
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Photographs
of two ‘ready mades’ and Marcel Duchamp and Eve Babitz posing for the
photographer Julian Wasser during the Duchamp retrospective at the
Pasadena Museum of Art, 1963 © 2000 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP,
Paris. |
“The
goal of chess is to mate. We can thus see this picture as the record of a
tableau vivant of a word play. Since Freud, vulgar theorists have held that
chess and art, to pick two examples, are sublimations of sex. Given Duchamp’s
attitude towards wordplay versus theory, it is better to see his life long
interest in chess and eroticism as a sublimation of this picture’s wordplay!
Given that the double meaning of “mate” does not exist in French, at last we
have a satisfactory explanation of why Duchamp had to emigrate to America. In
other words: in the beginning was the word; in the center the pun.” From: A
Pun Among Friends by Steven B. Gerrard.
Bondage:
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This sculpture is done in clay and stone. I’d like to cast it in bronze. Does anyone have any experience with casting? I have one acquaintance that has cast several smaller pieces. Perhaps this will make a good object lesson: how to get it done, sold or used and displayed, etc. I’m contacting foundries, art schools and colleges to find a student willing to work on this or become a student for this project. |
Music with the pages of VARIATIONS book – the book is available for free online at www.spiritcrow.com. The physical presentation is in the form of a folio with loose pages:
A dear friend suggested that certain pieces of music seemed to almost be evoked by specific pages of this work. If anyone with a musical ear would read this short book (or even a few pages (Although, reading just a few pages might not give you the overall ‘feel’ of the work.)) and then make some suggestions for music to match specific pages. You may even want to suggest some of your own music. Bear in mind that many classical pieces are within the public domain, whereas contemporary music may require releases to use.Artisano Manifesto – Excerpts and fragments of the
work-in-progress:
Must an artist suffer for his
art? No!
But many artists are obsessed with the production of their art and
obsession, by its nature, leads to suffering.
A well-adjusted artist is a rare find.
In fact we tend to hold on the images and stories of the poor artist, the
struggling artist, the insane artist (his art drove him mad!), the social misfit
artist and many such other definitions. Begin
a conversation about artists and insanity and inevitably someone will mention
Vincent VanGogh as an example of a mad artist.
Did his art drive him mad or was he mad and produced art?
In all probability VanGogh had the seeds of his insanity planted within
him long before he pursued his artwork. The
production of art can be therapeutic but it need not be so.
Even if you believe that you are
self-taught, you should acknowledge that every piece of art or communication
you’ve experienced has shaped who you are and what you can create.
You, through your creations may urge someone (some very distant someone)
to create.
Many have argued that creativity is just
the sublimation of sexual desire. Although
the two, sex and creativity, are closely related, one can see that they are not
necessarily immutably linked. If I may misapply the expression of Propertius, "Ingenium
nobis ipsa puella fecit." (My genius is no more than a girl.)
This sentiment was also echoed by Nabakov.
Libido is art. It
cannot be normally contained. It
will rise and overflow any container any obstacle in its path.
Gorilla Skull Mask
Masks seem to do so much more than
offer us a new face. They also
evoke personalities that appear to be foreign to our normal selves.
People are often more willing to ‘talk to the mask’ rather than the
person behind the mask.
I, if I may use that word without confusion, have become intrigued by the
idea that self, myself in particular and all selves in general, may be a myth.
Our desire to create labels and relationships has, perchance, defined a
self, an ego, and stood it in good stead among all this confusion of being.
As such it stands out among the background, glowing among the dead
leaves. We think it more real than
the late dusk air, as a firefly blinks before us.
That spot of light, that instance of illumination, seems more passionate
than the damp quiet darkness that surrounded it. (I say ‘surrounded’, past tense, for it is gone, flown to
its next incineration, completely unattached to us.)
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Gorilla Skull Mask |
Does the presence of a mask imply a self behind the mask? Does a mask mirror or magnify some latent personality? Consider myth vis-à-vis archetypes. By wearing a mask does a person enable an already present personality (slightly akin to the image or perceived image of the mask) to present itself? Maybe this occurs by inhibiting other aspects of a personality. Or does does the almost ever-present personality (the one we use or see every day) create a facsimile of a personality that seems to fit the mask? |
Artists and Galleries:
If you would like to have
your work or exhibition mentioned herein, please let me know about it.
Fire Hydrants
by
Barrie Samuels, “Fire Hydrant Lady” Why
Fire Hydrants (fhs)?
I’d have to say they snuck up on me, then simply
wouldn’t unstick. They are everywhere – yet unseen. Invisible.
If ETs needed a ubiquitous ignored presence, the
hiding-in-plain-sight fh is the perfect (dis)guise.
They are anthropomorphic in the R2-D2 (‘Star Wars’ robot) vein,
with all upper body parts. All are capped, some with ‘eyes’ that
follow you 360-degrees; two eyes watch you from any direction/angle.
Once I noticed them, I couldn’t not.
I grew up in NYC where the fire hydrants are black with silver
tops…black barrels, silver bonnets, where plugs
are called pumps or hydrants because they water – street kids on steamy summer
days and fires hungry for oxygen but fed aqua instead.
Technically, they are (upright) pipes connecting a water main (with a)
valve to a firefighter’s hose. Not
to mention serious male symbolism -- Freudian or canine! If asked,
‘what color are the fhs in your neighborhood?’, most people would say ‘I
don’t know’, ‘who cares’, or ‘red’.
If you said red, you may live in NJ…as I do…, but I never noticed the
red ones until I noticed all the other colors.
Orange, yellow, cherry pink, dark blue, bright blue, light blue; greens
from hunter to hued. Tops and bottoms mix and match at local will, most
bi-colored, but I’ve seen a tri- and even a quad-!
Found one painted like an ice cream sundae, another like a carousel, and
a small community of them painted like people. The colors, I’m told, can be
arbitrary or indicators like connector-hose size and/or water pressure. I began taking their “portraits”, somewhat
compulsively. Hundreds of them. They varied so much in shape, condition, age,
size, maintenance, manufacturer (even one named “Darling”), that I realized
they were in fact individual,
unique, each one actually different! Their
valves and knobs were different, the chains around their ‘necks’ and
‘arms’ became jewelry – necklaces, bracelets, belts, locks, loose, tight,
dangling, intact, connected. Different neighborhoods, backgrounds, weather,
seasons. Personalities. Names. I had to keep reminding my self that they were
dog urinals.
My favorite photo (not here) was made during a night shoot in a beach
town with light blue fhs. I flashed
‘face-to-face’ three times. Barely
noticeable in the middle shot was an unfocused snake in the grass. Thought it
was a frog-head, ‘til I saw the body coils. It came out to see what all the
flashing was, and was gone. His head was way too close to mine…. (Yes, got out
the snake books, but couldn’t be sure...baby copperhead? corn? milk?) Back to male symbolism, are we? See that short pink one? Until recently, they protected testosterone clusters like Giants Stadium
and Meadowlands Racetrack. Ironically and predictably, no one noticed their
pinkness and barely believed they were there when told. Welcome ET! Local Galleries: If you have an announcement you would like to distribute to
fellow artists and post on our website, please send it along to me.
Artist@spiritcrow.com I’ll include it in the next newsletter and post it on our
website www.spiritcrow.com/artist The annual Artist/Model
Day is Saturday August 22, 2009 http://www.spiritcrow.com/artist/index.html Announcement of
the Artist / Model Day Presents ARTIST -
FIGURE MODEL DAY
A day of fresh air, art, artists,
figure models, performances, discussions and conversations among artists, poets,
friends and lovers of art, self-expression and gourmet food.
(All photos and content
Copyright © 2009 by Barrie Samuels)
Wen Redmond - Mixed Media /Contemporary Art in Fiber
Bottles on a Sill
Row Houses
WEBSITE http://WenRedmond.com
Wen Redmond - STUDIOS- Salmon Falls Mill, Rollinsford NH
“Fiber art has sustained my creative impulses since 1975. It is a fluid
and expanding art form. I enjoy pushing the boundaries to see ‘what if’.”
When I work, I encourage a collaborative process with spirit or my higher
self, that mind-boggling principle
of the universe. This process can also be called ‘flow’.
When you are in this state of mind, the intuitive is tapped and the work
can become more than the sum of it’s parts. I work out insights, inspirations,
feelings and reactions to the outer world. Allowing time for these inspirations
to percolate up from my unconscious is a vital part of my process.
The nature of my work permits the viewer to see different images within the very
same piece, drawing the viewer in.
I achieve this with illusionary surface design or actual physical layering to
produce one image.”
THE
Black Feather Retreat
ARTISTS' AND WRITERS'
COLONY
Box 588
Westbrookville, NY 12785
(973)-614-9101
Art, Artists, Figure Models, Performers and Gourmet food
Information online at http://www.spiritcrow.com/artist/
E-mail: artist@spiritcrow.com
Phone: call for an information brochure 973-614-9101
