ancestry | The Direction of Intention

Follow The Hummingbird [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on May 14, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

If you want to understand the power of story – if you care to discover how every cultural story is both universal and deeply personal, take the time to read and reread and reread Martín Prechtel’s small book, The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun. After telling the story, he peels back the layers of understanding, the story of the daughter’s disobedience is a roadmap to an intentional life. It is connective tissue to generational wisdom:

“…that though we as listeners have the illusion that we have jumped into the story, the story has actually jumped into us and uses our lives to tell out its story.”

Sitting in our backyard, the sun lowering in the sky, the hummingbird arrived. A hummingbird is featured prominently in the The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun and this little visitor brought the story to my mind. Like all deep-story-roots, it is a tale as relevant to us as it is to the Indigenous people who live it – to keep the story alive.

“This is a commentary on the inevitable human problem of tribalism and the tragic results of ethnocentricity. It reminds us that a preoccupation with purity is a sign that a people have lost their real stories, lost their place in history, lost their land and relationship with nature and in an effort to be “someone” they engineer mythologies that are rationalist inventions to corroborate a pure ancestry. This same rationalism probably killed their stories and their Indigenous relationship with the land to begin with.”

Have you ever read anything that so accurately describes our struggle in these un-United States? As we witness the scrubbing of DEI initiatives, the blatant and brutal whitewashing of our nation’s history in order to engineer and perpetuate a mythology of white male purity, a made-up tale planted in the shallow barren soil of nationalist Christianity…we see the undeniable sign that we have lost our real story.

As is true of all great storytellers, Martín guides us toward hope and renewal:

“The story of their cultural loss should be their story, and from that grief they could grow a new culture. If you go back far enough, all people are mixed no matter what they say, and that is no disgrace.”

There is a path. It begins with grieving our loss. Together. And then, there is this:

“The story also says that a peoples’ attachment to their homeland and customs is necessary, wonderful, and life-giving, but should never be allowed to fuel a destructive chauvinism that excludes the rest of the world’s love for its own life and land.”

These are just a few of the lessons carried within an ancient Mayan tale. They are relevant to us today. We need only care enough to open our hearts and listen. And listen again. And then simmer in the slow opportunity that avails itself in the land beyond “problem-solving”.

The promise of our crossroads nation: to grow a new culture. Isn’t that the heart of our matter? Out of many, one.

There’s a hummingbird that can show us the way.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE HUMMINGBIRD

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Metaphor, Story | Tagged: ancestry, artistry, culture, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, hummingbird, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life giving, loss, martin prechtel, relationship, story, studio melange, the melange, tribalism | 1 Comment »

Stroll With Alexander [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on July 4, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

20 knew we needed a get-away. He suggested a stroll through Milwaukee’s Third Ward. Knowing it was our favorite, he offered to treat us to a bowl of gumbo and a glass of wine at The Public Market. It was a successful temptation. We chose a beautiful day and drove into the city.

Among the many gifts that day as we strolled in and out of shops was the very present spirit of Alexander Calder. Almost every shop we entered featured a mobile or some variation of sculpture suspended from the ceiling. Paper planes, vibrant lemons in tidy lines like a Sunny-Roman-legion on parade, colorful shapes and orbs delicately balanced and dancing in the air, casting shadows. All paying homage to the art work of Calder. My bet is that few of the shopkeepers knew the origin, the ancestry of their twirling displays.

Calder’s mobiles were radical when he made them. He changed our understanding of sculpture and opened a new world of possibilities. Nearly 50 years after his death, his innovation is commonplace. Incorporation into the norm is the hallmark of profound innovation. Computers are ubiquitous but when they first hit the scene they were revolutionary. Electric light, the telephone, automobiles, televisions, cameras, elevators, air conditioning…They change us. They change our expectation.

So, too, the work of artists. The Impressionists shocked and appalled their contemporaries when they initially showed their paintings. They did not know that they were Impressionists. They were reacting to the latest innovation-of-their-day known as the camera – a device that could easily record reality, important events, make portraits of royals… the job of painters – so they either had to explore new avenues of painting or become irrelevant. To our eyes, 150 years later, their work is anything but progressive or shocking. It is everywhere.

Artist not only change what we see, they change how we see. They challenge us to see what we do not yet see.

A-I is currently stirring our dust and is already being incorporated into the daily grind. The pace of change compresses the distance between the moment of profundity and incorporation into the everyday. The realities of the pace-of-change are, like the camera, changing the nature of what it means to make art.

It’s good to remind ourselves that it hasn’t always been this way. What’s twirling over my head is clever and is the ripple of a revolution. It’s why I loved my stroll with Alexander Calder through the Third Ward. 20 didn’t know it, but he gave me so much more than a getaway, a bowl of gumbo and a glass of wine.

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read Kerri’s blog about MOBILES

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Seeing | Tagged: Alexander Calder, ancestry, artistry, change, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, impressionists, innovation, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Milwaukee, mobile, origins, progress, progressive, revolution, sculpture, seeing, story, studio melange, the melange, The Public Market, The Third Ward | 1 Comment »

Walk The Path [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 30, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

It’s been awhile. I’ve fallen into an art book, Ancestral Modern: Australian Aboriginal Art. I bought this book after attending the exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. It was – and still is – one of my favorite exhibits, reaching me on many levels. I went back again and again so I might spend quality time with a few of the paintings.

The paintings of the Aboriginal artists are mythologies, though not as we think of mythologies. They are more than dusty stories. Explanatory. They are active guides on a life path. Were I Aboriginal I’d “read” them. I’d know the stories so each piece would speak personally to me. The paintings would escort me along my life-path. Mythology as my story.

This is what amazed me most: many of the pieces were as abstract as a Rothko or Frankenthaler. Vibrant lines and color. They shimmered. Dreaming. Living foundational narrative carried in energetic swirls and dots of paint.

In my experience it is not uncommon in a gallery or museum to come across someone puzzling over a painting by a master artist and hear them say, “I don’t get it.” The abstraction is a closed door. “I could do that,” I heard a man huff while staring intently at a Jackson Pollock painting. The door is not closed between the Aboriginal artist and his or her community. The mythology has not broken down. The artist is not exclusively serving an individual expression, rather, they are maintaining an ancient connection, drawing from and carrying forward the deep well of communal story. “Meet Blue-Tongued Lizard Man…” Artists paying homage. Artists serving their role as keepers of the flame.

Kerri and I talked of our artistry as we walked the paths of the John Denver Sanctuary. He was a guide-star for her and continues to influence her work. Simple lines. Music that does not rely on acrobatics or embellishment. It was poignant that we had the sanctuary to ourselves. Sometimes it is nearly impossible to know whether or not our work-in-the-world reaches anyone or serves any real value beyond satisfying our imperative to create it. And sometimes, like that day walking the path through the sanctuary, the clouds rolling over the mountain, the Roaring Fork River singing at our side, the ancestry is clear. “This is where I come from,” she said. “This is where I belong”.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE PATH

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Gratitude, Identity | Tagged: Aboriginal Art, abstraction, ancestry, ancient, ancient connection, artistry, connection, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dreaming, guide, guide star, Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollock, John Denver, john denver sanctuary, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Mark Rothko, mythology, Seattle Art Museum, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Share and Renew [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on December 25, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

As additions-to-traditions go, the bauble-on-the-tree is a relatively recent inclusion. People have decorated their dwellings with pine boughs, a symbol of renewal and rebirth (of the light), for many, many centuries. Placing ornaments-on-trees only began in the 1800’s.

We decided this year – for reasons that reach beyond words – to bring out Beaky and Pa’s ornaments. We are minimalists mostly so in the decade of my Wisconsin life these ornaments have lived in a box in the basement. We look at them every year but have never – until now - hung them on a tree. They are glass and fragile so we worked slowly, placing them with care.

Having them with us this season has been more powerful than I imagined. Having them with us this morning is more meaningful than I thought possible. Family is with us. And, isn’t that, after all is said and done, the point of it all? Given family and chosen family. To feast our long line of belonging and celebrate our brief time on this earth together. To honor that we are, as Jean Houston wrote, “…the burning point of the ancestral ship.” To gather, adding to the rich bank of shared memory. We reach back in time with gratitude. We live forward through our children and their children and their children…

This morning we sit quietly, sipping our coffee, sharing stories, hanging out with Beaky and Pa, in our recognition and deep appreciation of this time of life’s Renewal.

read Kerri’s blogpost about BAUBLES

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Filed under: Gratitude, Merely A Thought Monday | Tagged: ancestry, appreciation, artistry, belonging, celebration, christmas, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, family, feast, Gratitude, Honor, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, memory, Ornaments, rebirth, recognition, renewal, sharing, story, studio melange, symbol, the melange, togetherness | 1 Comment »

Climb The Ladder [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on August 2, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Very few images are as potent as Tom Mck’s story of finding his 90 year old aunt Bunty on the roof of the farmhouse. There had been a storm. She’d hooked her cane on a rung and climbed the rickety ladder to make sure the shingles were intact, “Papa put a fine roof on this house,” she said, staring down at her alarmed nephew. Bunty was a farm woman. She saw no reason why she should not be on the roof. As the elder of the family, she was the keeper of the legacy. The house and ranch were the tangible creations of her ancestors and she was the steward.

Years later, when Bunty was gone and Tom was the ancestral steward, his task was untenable. The city was spreading like a fire, gobbling up farm land. He knew it was only a matter of time before the ranch was consumed. A Walmart was being built and he could almost see it from the porch. “What am I going to do?” he asked, knowing that he was the end of the line. His question was rhetorical. Sometimes the steward’s job is to close the door on an era. He knew what he had to do.

After Tom passed and the ranch was sold, I imagined him, like Bunty, standing on the roof of the farmhouse. He made sure that, as the land was lost, the legacy remained intact. He was strong, like Bunty. His ladder was rickety but he climbed it none-the-less. He made sure the shingles were intact. He met his task without self-pity.

I learned from him that life can forge you into strong metal or, if you choose, if you feel sorry for yourself, it can break you into tiny pieces. Jonathan told me that a tree must split its bark to grow and I understood that as a metaphor for aging. The bark splits because the spirit outgrows the body’s capacity to contain it. Beaky was like that. And, Dorothy. Mike. Grandma Sue. H. I admire them. Bodies break down. Aging hurts. Spirits, on the other hand, need not wither.

I’m told that, in her elderhood, Margaret stopped what she was doing each day to go out back and watch the sun set over the desert. She was made hardy by a hard life. She was made kind by how she chose to live within her hard life. Drying her hands, stepping out on the back porch, the sky electric with peach and pink, she met each sunset with gratitude. Intentional thankfulness for the day.

Gratitude is not a soft thing. It is an attribute of the strong. Hard won from a long life of choices. Bitterness is easy, a lazy thing. Climbing the ladder, standing on the roof, feeling the aches and the loses, facing the running sands with a smile and admiring the day’s end, celebrating the shingles that held fast through the storm and those who placed them, that takes grit. Courage. And, an understanding of the connected power and responsibility of standing in the long line of ancestry.

read Kerri’s blog post about STRONG WINGS

Filed under: Edges, Emergence, Family, Gratitude, Heroes, Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor, Power | Tagged: aging, ancestry, appreciation, Bunty, connectivity, courage, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, end of life, farmer, Gratitude, inner strength, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lineage, power, rancher, responsibility, strength, studio melange, sturdy, Tom McKenzie | Leave a comment »

Appreciate The Marks [on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 13, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Life leaves marks. When I look in the mirror these days, I see my grandfather staring back at me. Or, to be more accurate, I see aspects of both of them, all akimbo in a variation that I now recognize as “me.” The topography of DNA, crafted by my unique life, now sketched into my mask.

Quinn left marks in me. So did Tom. And Doug. And Kathy. I could go on. The list of amazing humans who had a hand in shaping my perception, molding my thinking, in informing my walk through this world, is lengthy. They are my fortune, the gold in my pocket. Their marks serve as my credo, define my intentions. Their marks have become the scale upon which I weigh value and importance. Laughter, according to their marks, carries enormous weight.

As we carried boxes out of the house, I couldn’t help but notice marks on the walls, scuffs on the floor. Each marked a memory. When the movers lifted the couch, its impression in the carpet was deep. It had sat in the same spot for years. In its absence, the entire space reeled. Soon it would find a new equilibrium as another family sculpted the now empty space. They will, no doubt, remove the carpet. The impression is too deep, the placement and accompanying memories are not theirs. Erasure is the necessary first act of new inhabitants. Eliminate the marks. Paint. Sand. Demo. And freshen. Clean the palette.

Leigh is an authority on rock art. Cave painting. The marks left by humans. Prophesy and map. Ritual and graffiti. Not all cultures are obsessed with leaving marks. Many try not to. My relationship to my marks, my paintings, changed the day I helped carry Duke’s brilliant paintings out of his basement. He’d passed and now the question was, “What do we do with all of his paintings?” I knew, someday, someone would ask the same question of my paintings. Carrying his paintings up the stairs and stacking them in the truck, I became less invested in the notion that my paintings, my marks, need matter. They no longer need to transcend me. They are immediate, fulfilling for me and perhaps me alone. That is enough. Bits of ego easily fall off when the perspective of age comes calling, when the marks are undeniable.

Marks fade. Life is what is happening now. A cliche’ that could not be more relevant. The couch, seemingly so permanent, will someday be hauled out. The marks will remain for a while. Only a while. And new life will move in and fill the old space, as it should.

read Kerri’s beautiful blog post on IMPRESSIONS

Filed under: Art, Body, DR Thursday, Identity, Perspective | Tagged: aging, ancestry, art, artist, artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, ego, impressions, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, marks, Rock Art | Leave a comment »

Weave With Intention [on KS Friday]

Posted on April 16, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

I have on my studio altar Demarcus’ paint box. Sitting atop the box is the nutcracker my grandfather used. He kept it next to the pool table. The nutcracker rests on a batik that Judy gave me. There is a laughing Buddha, a dancing Shiva, a sturdy White Buffalo. There is a woven braid of palm from Bali. Special rocks.

Dots that connect me to my heritage, to the people that inspire me. To ideas that open me and remind me to see the universal, the metaphoric.

I wrote a post this morning about history as events and history as interpretation. I tossed it because I lost my way, I lost what I really wanted to say in a forest of complexity. What I wanted to say is simple and that is why I lost it. What I wanted to say was this: I weave my history through the dots I connect, as do you. My history is not pre-wrapped. I crawl into bed each night and assign a story to the events of my day. Was it a good day or bad? Meaningful or insignificant?

There are events. DeMarcus and my grandfather have been gone a very long time. Yet, they are with me everyday. Encouraging me to play and discover. Crack nuts. Open my paint box. Feed the connection. Judy’s batik, a reminder to see the beauty. It’s all around if we care to see it. Connect the dots. Laugh. Dance. Stand sturdy. Weave the story. Weave with intention. Connected.

kerri’s albums are available on iTunes

read Kerri’s blog post about CONNECTED

Filed under: Family, Gratitude, Identity, KS Friday, Story | Tagged: ancestry, connected, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, history, inspiration, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, released from the heart | Leave a comment »

Catch The Glimmer [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on March 2, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Yesterday a treasure arrived in the mail. Mike sent it for my birthday. It is a painting, a study for class that her father, DeMarcus, did when he was a young art student. He was learning to see and use color. This painting hung in her hallway. More than once I stopped and studied it, his color swatches carefully placed at the bottom of the page. She must have noticed that I was drawn to this painting.

Many years ago, Mike gave me DeMarcus’ notebook from this same class on color. It is from a time before it was possible to go to the drugstore and buy a notebook. DeMarcus cut the paper, made a cover from old Levi’s, starched for strength, and stitched it together. The pages, a hundred years later, are tender, so I am careful when I read them. Reading his notes always buoys my spirit since they are a record of his revelation, of training his eyes to see.

During the bitter cold of the past few weeks, an entire ice-age played out on the top of the awning over our backdoor. A creeping ice shelf moved slowly down the awning, crawling over the side. One evening, the long fingers of the ice-age reaching for the deck below, became brilliant with the winter colors of the sky. Kerri grabbed her phone, flung open the door, frigid air blasting into the warmth of the room, she stepped out and snapped photos of the fingers.

“Look!” she said, showing me the screen. “I love this picture!”

Just above the center of the photograph, a glimmer of electric blue. Amidst the suspended bubbles and greens and purples and light-reflections, a tiny beacon of vibrant blue. I could almost hear DeMarcus laughing.

read Kerri’s blog post about ICICLES

Filed under: Art, Gratitude, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: ancestry, artisitc ancestor, artistry, color, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, DeMarcus Brown, icicles, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Marcia McKenzie, seeing | Leave a comment »

Carry The Message [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on June 24, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

*everyone is a messenger copy

Rick Stone, founder of the StoryWork Institute, began his workshops with this fill-in-the-blank prompt: I come from a people who___________, and from them I learned____________. Try it. You will be surprised by the characteristics that jump up, the things you don’t really think about that you hold dear or that you resist. The connectivity that, for better or worse, defines you. The seedling of the answer to “Who am I?”

Jean Houston Jean Houston called it the burning point: you are the living flame, the burning point, of an ancestral line. You carry those who came before you. You will live through those in your line who come after you. It is the greater story, “Where do I come from?” It is the greater story, “Where am I going?”

One day, I caught myself standing with my elbow bent, just as my father stands when he is thinking. It is the posture his mother took when she was deep in thought. I imagine it was how her father or grandmother stood. An entire line of elbow tension reaching back into dark history. My elbows connect me. Kerri said, “This DNA thing is real!”

With all the time, money, ego, and energy we spend in life trying to distinguish ourselves as individuals, as distinct, as separate, it is actually the opposite, it is our connective tissue that gives us definition. It is in and through our relationships – our stories – that we generate meaning. It is through our roots – our stories – that we understand who we are.

I come from a people who___________, and from them I learned_________. We are messengers, all.

read Kerri’s blog post about MESSENGERS

Filed under: Family, Merely A Thought Monday, Story, Uncategorized | Tagged: ancestry, connctivity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dna, Jean Houston, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, messenger, relationship, Rick Stone, roots, story, storying, StoryWork Institute, studio melange | Leave a comment »

Look Back [on KS Friday]

Posted on October 19, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

Every artist has a root. They stand firmly on the shoulders of other artists that inspire and inform their work. They have experiences that color their expression. Every artist walks a seeker’s path. They, of necessity, stand at the edge of their village so they can 1) see clearly the machinations of their community, but more importantly, 2) they serve as a bridge to help their community across boundaries of time and space, providing necessary access to the unseen world, the greater things that cannot be grasped in law or calculation or bought with currency. Inspiration. Ancestry. Purpose. Love. Soul. Aspiration. Perspective. Hope. Possibility.

It is a happy accident that for this week’s Studio Melange Kerri shared a new piece of music, YOU’RE THE WIND, a song never before recorded, while also choosing this piece for KS Friday, WHERE I’M FROM, recorded over 20 years ago. It traces her path. It speaks to her sources.

WHERE I’M FROM is an appropriate title. It is a reaching back, recorded before Kerri met broadcast constraints and the squeeze of the music industry’s labels (New Age) expectations. It radiates innocence. It took me back to my childhood, transported me to carefree days in the sun, mountain meadows, games of four square with the neighborhood kids, my dad teaching me to ride a bike. She took me across the boundary of time, she helped me touch my source, a visit to where I am from.

Take the time to let this artist hold your hand and take you across the boundary, back to your source, to touch for a moment the greater things that live beyond the day’s achievements. Let her remind you of all that truly matters as you turn and look back and visit your mountain meadow and perhaps, as I did, appreciate the riches of the life that you’re living.