Give It [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on September 11, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

half and half copy

Janus is a Roman god with two faces. He looks to the future and peers into the past. He is the god of beginnings and endings, transitions, doorways, and passages. He is the god of gateways, the liminal spaces, the between.

Janus must certainly be the god that we dance with on this island, a community defined by divisions, married to its conflicts but also, at least rhetorically, desiring peace.

Kerri and I are the stewards of a performing arts center that is, as Julian Dawson said, punching above its weight. It is the symbol of division in the community, the epicenter of discord, the rope in a very ugly tug-of-war. All of the fault lines run through it. Yet, as Janus would remind us, it then must also hold the path to unity, the potential for common ground.

All in the community want the doors to be wide open; none want the responsibility that comes with access. They want the center, the art, to serve them. They do not yet comprehend that any alive and vital art space is, in fact, the opposite: a place of service to others. Arts spaces and the artists the enliven them are keepers of the commons, the stewards of the stories that unite.

In another life I ran an educational theatre company. It boomed into life the day that the artists, the students, grocked that art was in fact a gift given to others, something they brought to people, not something (like attention or fame or a spotlight) that they got from people.

This island, this center, will someday boom into life. They will discover that the rope in the tug of war goes slack when they walk toward each other. Pulling in opposition exhausts everyone. They will come alive when they cease asking, “What do we get?” and start asking, “What do we bring?”

 

read Kerri’s blog post about EDGES

 

handshadowstones website box copy

 

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Contrast [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on September 10, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

contrast principle copy

It is the ultimate cliche’: we only know light because of dark. 20 calls this the contrast principle. Images juxtaposed illuminate. It’s how stories are told in film. Once. Upon. A. Time. It is how images pop off the canvas, blue next to orange, green meets purple. Contrast makes the eye move. Contrast makes shapes emerge. Movement has no meaning without stillness.

It’s relative. Related. Relationship. Without relativity, without contrast, nothing makes sense. Or, more to the point, nothing is sensed. Difference, in fact, is the secret sauce necessary for knowing anything. Category. Class. Classification. Group. What is like what? What is related? What is unrelated? Cubicle. Caste. Lines on a map.

Contrast can be wielded like a sword. They are not us. Division.

Or, contrast can be used to unify. A crossroads of diverse perspectives, innovation.

Nature is dynamic at its edges. Water meets beach. Earth meets water. Air breathes fire. Hot meets cold. Convection current. Contrast. Changing energies. Creative movement.

Kerri stopped during our walk. “Look!” she exclaimed. Her eye was drawn to the lone daisy in the midst of the sea of black-eyed susans. “Beautiful,” she whispered as she approached with her camera. “Look at the contrast.”

So similar. So different. Yellow meets white. Black meets yellow.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about CONTRAST

 

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daisy in the black-eyed susans ©️ 2019 kerri sherwood

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Open To It [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on September 4, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

stripes of grey copy

I stood gobsmacked on the deck. The horizon, the straight line bank of clouds. It was a piece of contemporary art worthy of Richard Diebenkorn or Ellsworth Kelly. A study in grays and greens and purples. Monumental.

Sometimes I forget that the very best art can only approximate what already exists in nature.  Try to capture the totality of a sunset. We simply can’t do it. We can approach the feeling but our scope will always be smaller, less dimensional. Our work is to see it – to see beyond the thought of it. To dance with it. To be vulnerable to it. To share the dance.

Last night we saw author/musician Michael Perry on stage. He closed his performance with thoughts about gratitude. He told his audience that, as an artist, he is vulnerable every time that he takes the stage or publishes a book. Opening himself to the thoughts and judgements of others is not an easy thing to do. It is, however, a necessity for an artist. But, here’s the gift: vulnerability becomes gratitude. If you are never vulnerable, living in a fortress, you will never arrive at gratitude. Gratitude is forged from the fire of vulnerability.

Openness begets openness. There is a full spectrum of color, an embarrassment of riches that vibrates between vulnerability and gratitude. Grays and greens and purples. Stand on the deck and open to it. Stand on the stage and open to it. Stand with your neighbor and open to it. The best of contemporary art. Monumental.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about GRAY

 

sunsetonisland website box copy

 

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Constellate [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on August 26, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

constellation poem copy

Just outside our favorite island gem, Fair Isle Books, is this poem by former Wisconsin poet Laureate, Bruce Dethlefsen. We have stopped at the shop more than once and reread the poem.

our lonely stars though bright
and strong will quickly fade

unless we string the stars
together   choose illumination
then in constellation hope is ours

bring on another day
sing light in common song
~constellation by bruce dethlefsen

It is a lovely poem and captures perfectly how we now see our work on this island. In our short tenure it has become abundantly clear that the people in our sphere most often work as “islands.” Islands on island. That is, although very well intended, few actually recognize the impact of their actions (or inaction) on others. It is part of the evolutionary dna of the place. Everyone works multiple jobs. Divisions and territory define the island arts organizations.

I have long held (and experienced again and again) that the arts cannot thrive in a community until the artists turn to a common center, recognize a shared purpose, and realize that one cannot thrive without the other. Thriving is a team sport. If one theatre creates a large audience then it creates audience for all. If one painter sells a painting, a market is created for all. Reaching into the common space, facilitating shared experience, is what art is meant to do.

If an arts community falls into the mistaken notion that its members compete for limited resources, they will inevitably define themselves by their limitation.  The center turns to a battle ground and the art is diminished. Dog-eat-dog has no place in the sacred space of art.

It is why we visit the poem. The necessary guide star is already here. “Our lonely stars though bright will quickly fade unless we string the stars together – choose illumination – then in constellation hope is ours.”

 

read Kerri’s blog post about CONSTELLATION

 

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Meet Your Graces [on DR Thursday]

Posted on August 22, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

ThreeGraces copy

Brightness. Joyfulness. Bloom. Or, charm. beauty, and creativity. They have many names, these Graces. Also known as the Charities. They are also known as Zeus’  daughters.

Sun. Joy. Bloom. At the end of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, is a monologue. Emily, saying goodbye to her life (she has already died), revels in the beauty of life that we simply do not appreciate. The smell of grass. The sound of leaves rustling. Morning coffee. Stretching your legs. “Oh, earth,” she says, “You are too beautiful…” To the Greeks, in that final moment, Emily is being visited by a Grace.

These posts often take me down rabbit holes. Here’s today’s surprise: I bumbled into a bit of research on Buckminster Fuller, one of the great minds of the 20th Century. I learned that, as a young man, he was deeply depressed and was considering suicide. In a crucial moment, he had an experience. In the midst of his despair he was lifted into a ball of light and very clearly heard, “You belong to the universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.”

Convert your experiences to the highest advantage of others. A visit by the Graces. Creativity is divinely given. You belong to the universe. What else?

 

ThreeGraces copy

three graces,, 32 x 56IN, acrylic

 

read Kerri’s blog post about THE THREE GRACES

 

HH coffee cups website box copy

 

threegracescopyright2012davidrobinson

 

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Note The Milestone [on DR Thursday]

Posted on August 15, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

David RobinsonYoga Series 7 - Version 2

Some paintings are milestones, markers of change. This is one of those paintings.

And, although I recognized it as a marker, I had no idea what to call it. Since it was the seventh in a new series of experiments that I called ‘yoga’ paintings, I cleverly named this piece Yoga Series #7. A catchy title, don’t you think?

It became the lead image on my website. It was the banner image on my society6.com store. It was the image that identified this blog site for a few years.

I painted it a full two years before I met Kerri. Early in our lives together, I showed her my paintings, this painting. She asked me what I called it and I told her. #7. Sometimes my wife looks at me like I’m an idiot. Actually, she stares at me with a searing look of utter incomprehension. Her thought bubble carries a single word, “dullard.” This was the first time I experienced “the look.”

“That just won’t do.” she said. “It’s your icon. I think you should call it Iconic.”

Not only was it the first time I experienced “the look,” it was also the first time I received “the correction.”

“Iconic,” I said, pretending to try it on for size, feigning that the decision was mine alone to make and secretly loving that the decision was now – and forever – a joint affair. The moment was iconic.

“I like it,” I said.

David RobinsonYoga Series 7 - Version 2

iconic, 54 x 54IN, mixed media

 

read Kerri’s blog post about ICONIC

 

 

BootsWeddingBoots website box copy

 

iconic ©️ 2010 david robinson

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Balance [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on August 13, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

prayer flags 1 copy

Each day we sit on the deck and watch the personality of the lake change. We are witness to the power of the elements at play. Wind drives wave. Wave evaporates and moves wind. Lighting hits earth. Rain feeds the plants. Too much rain, too much wind, too much fire, devastates.

Balancing the elements. It is the central thought in many traditions. The cardinal directions are associated with a color and an element. North, south, east, west. Air, fire, water, earth. People need associations in order to talk about things. In order to know where they fit.

The colors differ from tradition to tradition. Sometimes black, white, red, and yellow. Sometimes blue, green, yellow, red. Sometimes there is a fifth element. There is always a center. When there is the understanding of center point there is also an acknowledgment that separations, experiences like north, south, east and west, are illusions.

Balance is a radically different intention than dominance. Taming-your-nature is not the same as balancing-your-nature. In the tame-your-nature idea, nature, your nature, is corrupt and needs to be controlled. In the balance-your-nature idea, your nature is neither good nor bad, it is a dance of energy, a push-pull of wind and fire, air and earth. In the balance-your-nature idea, there is no such thing as “wild.” because there is no intention to “tame.”

As you might imagine, the artist that explores the tame-your-nature mindset understands their artistry much differently than the artist that explores balance. I was born into and oriented toward the culture of tame-your-nature and so I divine through brush and story the push-pull between goodness and badness. Combat, combat everywhere. Right/wrong. Us/Them. Good enough/lacking.

I desire to see through the other lens. I suspect this desire is the epicenter, the driver behind my paintings. To understand the world I inhabit as energies at play, to know beyond an intellectual understanding that the distinctions don’t really exist; wind is not separate from water, earth is not separate from fire, people are not separate from planet. Illusion. Our division is a play of shadow puppets at best.

I think it is why we hang prayer flags at our littleislandhouse and at our home. Surrounded by combat, we are drawn by the desire to balance, we are enticed by the possibility of harmony.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about PRAYER FLAGS

 

 

 

 

skylake website box copy

 

island prayer flags photograph ©️ 2019 kerri sherwood

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Harness The Energy [on KS Friday]

Posted on August 9, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

boundaries song box copy

Lately, in my new role as co-managing director of a performing arts space, I find myself repeating the same simile/metaphor over and over and over and over… (insert Kerri’s eye roll). This week, my favorite-simile-repetition goes something like this: communication is like a river, it needs proper banks if it is going to flow. Without banks, it spills out all over the place flooding basements and creating havoc.

Needless to say, our job thus far is largely about placing proper banks on this flood plain of communication. Placing proper banks, at first, creates consternation and resistance. No one likes a limit until the limit works in their favor, until the constraint makes life easier.

Boundaries. Limits. Constraints. It is what I adore about the arts: freedom of artistic expression is the result of discipline, technique, and practice. And, the heart-desire of discipline, technique and practice is unfettered play. It is a paradox. It is boundaries placed on a rushing torrent so it can flow. The harnessing of creative energy. Communication is an intentional art and art is communication with an intention.

Kerri’s BOUNDARIES is a bubbling brook, bright with the morning sun, tumbling and playful within its banks. It seems so easy, her flow. But I know the truth. This ease and flow, this call to put your feet in the brook and rest for awhile with the sun on your face, comes from the years and years of hours and hours and hours of practice. Boundaries. A riverbank, a limit that will work in your favor. It is the creative flow through a heart that desires to play and play and play.

 

BOUNDARIES on the album RIGHT NOW is available on iTunes & CDBaby

 

read Kerri’s blog post about BOUNDARIES

 

tpacwebsitebox copy

 

boundaries/right now ©️ 2010 kerri sherwood

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Say It [on DR Thursday]

Posted on August 8, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

Icarus-detail2 copy 2

Icarus flew too close to the sun. The heat melted the wax that held together his wings and he fell to his death. A monumental occurrence. And nobody noticed, so distracted were they by the gossip of the day and the many tasks on their lists. There were clues that something happened. There were feathers everywhere, little bits of wax.

The word distraction has two meanings: 1) diversion, and 2) delirium. ICARUS is the closest thing to a political/social statement that I’ve ever painted. It was painted in the early years of this century and, these days, is as relevant as the day I felt compelled to “say something.”

Like Icarus, the painting fell unnoticed into the stacks in the basement. Feathers and wax. Something happened. But, as Arnie taught me, sometimes it is not really as important to be heard as it is to say-in-paint what’s troubling your mind.

Icarus-withEdge copy 2

icarus, acrylic on canvas, 30.5 x 59.5

 

read Kerri’s blog post about ICARUS

 

 

skylake website box copy

 

icarus ©️ circa 2005, david robinson

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Listen Well [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on August 7, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

act well 2 copy

When I wore my life/business coaching hat, many of my clients secretly wanted to be painters or writers. After wading around in the depths of their dissatisfaction, they’d finally say something like, “What I really want to do is write a book.” And then, they’d divert their eyes and say, “I just don’t know how to get there.”

The path was always simple to say but difficult to execute. Write. Write everyday. There is no magic path. As Tom would say, “A writer writes. A painter paints.” The action is rarely difficult to do; the story wrapped around it is…well, another story altogether.

The difficulty comes in the form of a many headed monster called vulnerability. “If I write (paint, dance, act…) people will judge what I write (paint, dance, act…).” It’s a heavy cloak to wrap around the creative heart. Yes. They will judge. Some will diminish you and some will praise you to the sky. However, that has little or nothing to do with being a writer or painter, with becoming a better writer or painter. Neither the praise nor the derision is truth or accurate or meaningful.

Both accolades and critiques can pull an artist off-center. To listen to either is to ignore  the quiet prompting of the muse. The essential will be lost in the chatter.

My mind is a tumble of truism. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” etc. There is no other way to be a writer than to sit down and write. There is no way to become a better painter than to stand at the easel and paint. And, while writing and painting and acting, there is a necessary skill for an artist to develop: learn to let the opinions and judgments of others pass through. They have nothing to do with creating and everything to do with what others are seeing. The artist’s job is not to determine what others see. The job is to write and paint, to create what the muse whispers in your ear.

There is no other way. Artistry is not an achievement. It is an action, a relationship.

Act well your part. Paint well your painting. Write well your novel. Listen well to your muse.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about ACT WELL YOUR PART…

 

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