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My art time today was spent skimming a book subtitled “Reflections on the Problems of Translation” in search of appropriate text for part of the collage, since that is the theme of the piece. I came up with very little, though I might use the one paragraph that seemed right. But having spent so much time on that research, and only a few minutes on putting pencil to canvas, I feel itchy, like I didn’t really make art today. It was a very long work day and so more art will have to wait til tomorrow, but I’ll make sure it is all making.
. . . was devoted to planning and plotting. Literally plotting points, because after I’ve collaged the inside of the box, I’ll be stringing threads between various points around the outside, and doing that by trial and error would be a huge pain. So I’m doing the trial and error on paper first.
How was your day, #100days practitioners?
I won’t post a photo every day, but here’s what I’ve been doing. It’ll be an assemblage incorporating hardware and thread, eventually.
And as is so often the case, when I’m not making art, thinking about it is like standing at the edge of an icy pond. When I finally take the plunge, it turns out to be a river, miraculously warm and carrying me along on a delicious current.
This is why I need to do this every day: because when I stop, I forget how much I love it and then it’s hard to get back in.
Do you have #100days plans?
In my struggles with the bugbear Procrastination, it helps to post little successes. So here’s a recent one: knocking off a small but important, and for whatever reason, dreaded, task first thing every work day. For me, it’s listening to my voicemail messages. I have a habit tracker in my weekly to-do list–some people make one for the whole month, but I find that daunting and therefore counterproductive–and “messages first” has been one of the habits on my list for the past few weeks. Not surprisingly, it is not only fun to check it off my habit tracker right away, but the relief of not having that reproachful little light blinking at me is like an energy boost for the whole day. Also, you know, people appreciate it when I retrieve and respond to their messages promptly. Funny, that.
So as not to imply that the route away from procrastination is lined with roses, I want to report that I’ve been letting my clothes and shoes pile up instead of putting them away every evening (fortunately, this can never get more than two weeks out of hand, because I have to do it when our cleaner comes). It’s discouraging; sometimes it feels as if I have a set amount of do-it-now energy, and if I improve in one area, I have to backslide in another. But I know that’s not really true. Bit by bit, the better habits are becoming easier to maintain.
So, over to you. Do you have one task that is not actually that difficult, but that for some reason is a block for you, that you would like to take care of first thing each day? What is it? What helps you, or might help you, to remove the block?
The Trump-is-never-wrong crowd is trying a new tactic: pointing out that the occasional mass murderer favors a different candidate than Trump, or a different philosophy than the right-wing, anti-immigrant, white-nationalist, white-supremacist, and/or misogynist views of most of them, and trying out a facile false equivalent. The Dayton killer wanted Elizabeth Warren for president! So she is to blame if Trump is to blame for the others!
What revolting nonsense.
Of course one should not blame a particular leader just because a person who admires them commits a crime, even if it’s in their name. Deranged people are everywhere. It really was not J. D. Salinger’s fault that Mark David Chapman read his own alienation into The Catcher in the Rye and saw the murder of John Lennon as a reasonable response, nor the fault of Martin Scorsese or the actors of Taxi Driver that John Hinckley saw in it a reason to attempt the assassination of Ronald Reagan. (Am I dating myself? So sue me, I’m 51.)
Trump’s rhetoric is different than these for at least two reasons. One, not just one but many people citing his inspiration have attempted or committed violence that they specifically related to that rhetoric; and two, he specifically calls for violence, or applauds it when it’s suggested:
“How do you stop these people?” he asked [of undocumented immigrants, at a rally]. “Shoot them!” someone yelled from the crowd, according to reporters on the scene and attendees. The audience cheered. Supporters seated behind Trump and clad in white baseball caps bearing the letters “USA” laughed and applauded. “That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that statement,” Trump replied, smiling and shaking his head. “Only in the Panhandle.” (“‘Shoot them!’: Trump laughs off a supporter’s demand for violence against migrants,” Washington Post, May 9, 2019)
Do I need to cite other examples? Don’t you remember? There have been many.
If one’s innocent words are twisted to justify violence, one might say nothing, so as not to fuel the flames. If one’s words have said anything that a reasonable person could misconstrue as an incitement, the decent thing to do is express shock and dismay that this has happened, and stress that one does not want anyone to do harm in one’s name. Trump, in contrast, goes out of his way to wink at violent vigilantes, while occasionally mouthing peaceful platitudes after his arm is twisted into it.
The “your kid” test is useful here. If someone, call them X, continually suggested that your kid ought to be locked up, that your kid ought to be bodily removed from school, that your kid has replaced them and is a threat to other people’s livelihoods and even their lives; if X said “What do we do with people like this kid?” and smiled at the response, “Shoot ’em!”; and if someone plastered X’s name all over their van or wrote X’s name in firearms or said “X is right about [your kid],” and then shot your kid dead, would you think that X bore any part of the responsibility? Not all of it, of course–the killer bears by far the greatest part–but any of it?
Trump says all of those things about undocumented immigrants, and for that matter, about Mexicans and Central Americans in this country; asylum seekers; and legal immigrants from countries he despises. The blame for taking up arms against them, as the Gilroy and El Paso and other killers appear to have done, falls mostly upon the killers. But some of it falls upon Trump.
During vacation, I’m managing to do what I did earlier this spring for a few months, and drawing for at least a few minutes every day. Can I make a daily habit of it once I’m back into the swing of work? Let’s see.
A friend suggested that posting drawings now and then might help me, which I think is true, so here are a few.
I’ve been carrying my sketchbook with me (it’s small, about 5″ x 7″) and trying to work fast when I have a few minutes. Working fast helps me focus my attention more on the big picture and less on the niggly details, and in these four it worked fairly well. More on that challenge tomorrow.
The first two are graphite; the last two are fine-tip pen.
We are back in Oaxaca, Mexico, for three weeks. The fruit bowl has been calling to me.
There may come a year when February 21 passes without my remembering that my late ex-husband was born on this day, but this is not such a year. I think of him and how old he would be: 52 this year–so hard to imagine. I think of his family, especially his mother. I hope they have found ease and that they were able to think of him today with gladness for the 39 years he was with them.
Black History Month, day 8
I was so sleepy last night that I fell asleep while writing this. I’m not feeling so well tonight either, so tomorrow I will post two.
Did you ever read the fairy tales where someone spins flax into gold? El Anatsui reminds me of that person. With the help of many assistants, he gathers up the trash left by civilization and weaves it into something rich and beautiful.
Often his material is related to alcohol. It’s the tops of beer bottles, the labels of liquor bottles, which evoke both the problem of alcoholism in the community today, and the role of alcohol in the transatlantic slave trade that had such a drastic effect on his homeland.
One doesn’t have to be a scholar of West African folk art to recognize kente cloth and appreciate its beauty. But looking at Anatsui’s work is enriched by knowing that kente is a characteristic art form of the people of the region. (El Anatsui was born and raised in Ghana, and has made Nigeria his home since he was about age 30.) Different weaves are considered men’s or women’s patterns, to which he is surely referring when he calls a piece “Men’s Cloth.”
There’s also an element of collaboration in his sculptures, or perhaps I should say “installations,” since he delivers the enormous metal weavings to the exhibit site and gives the curator considerable discretion in how to drape them. Like fabric, each has infinite possible forms. His letting go of control over them is a model the viewer can emulate.
Sermons in Stones 
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