Laugh Together [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on November 5, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

pt barnum quote copy

 

“Why don’t people care?” I frequently loop back to Stephen’s question – asked so many years ago – about art. He’s a prolific and gifted painter. I have so many responses, mostly contradictory. Everything from ‘People do care, it’s just inaccessible,’ to ‘Why should they care, it’s so personal to the artist (not communal, not inclusive) that it’s not accessible.”  The common word in all my inner-Stephen-musings is ‘access.’

My pot was irrevocably stirred during my time in Bali. There, the arts are practiced in the temple – a place, the central focus – for everyone and everything in the community. Every aspect of life is rooted-in and practiced-through the temple. That is to say, all things are still considered sacred – even and especially ‘the arts.’ As sacred, the arts belong to everyone, not just the artist or the elite who can afford it. They are accessible because they are not a possession, they are a sacrament. Additionally, the temple does not stop at the end of the compound. The whole world is the temple. In this temple, the arts serve as the binder, the carrier of the story that holds the treasure of the community: its identity.  The arts are not only accessible, they provide access. They affirm belonging.

In this temple, through this sacred story, laughter is highly valued. Laughter, foible, whimsy, – all reminders that, 1) we should not take ourselves so seriously, and 2) laughter is a potent force, like gravity. It joins us. It cuts through division, turns fear into powder. It provides perspective. Laughter is the sound of appreciation, the music people make together when worshiping the great mystery of life.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE NOBLEST ART

 

 

laughing website box copy

 

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Figure It Out [on KS Friday]

Posted on November 2, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

figure it out songbox copy

Sometimes I am surprised at the memories a piece of music evokes. While listening to FIGURE IT OUT I was propelled way back in time into a specific moment, an acting exercise Jim Edmondson led with actors in the company at PCPA Theaterfest. It was an exercise in belief. He told them to imagine that their toddler had wandered away on the campus and was lost. “Find your child.”I watched Lisa, a terrific actress, tear across the campus calling out her child’s name. Searching, desperate. She was so committed that campus security came. People left their administrative offices to help with the search. She created belief. She brought us into her play. Jim stopped the exercise before the search for the imaginary child got out of hand.

It is the power of the artist. To pull us into a common story. To propel us into our distant past. To open possible paths forward, to stand in a shared vision. To help us across the boundaries of time and space and belief.

FIGURE IT OUT will propel you. The only question is where Kerri, through FIGURE IT OUT, will take you?

 

FIGURE IT OUT on the album RIGHT NOW is available on iTunes & CDBaby

 

read Kerri’s blog post about FIGURE IT OUT

 

shadow des plaines river trailwebsite box copy

 

figure it out/right now ©️ 2018 kerri sherwood

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Wait [on DR Thursday]

Posted on November 1, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative
WeWait Morsel copy

morsel of the painting They Wait

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” – Aristotle

My studio often serves as a retreat, a place to escape the noise and nonsense-of-the-day. It is a quiet place. A sanctuary. I recoup perspective when I step into it.

Lately, when I am painting, I find myself pondering the paradox of living in the time of Google. I rarely have a conversation these days that doesn’t include a quick dip into Google to check a fact, pull up a statistic, check spelling or a date or data. We rely on it. We can investigate or verify anything in an instant. Yet – and here’s the paradox – no amount of data or information seems to put a dent in people’s beliefs. In fact, we’ve learned, that confronting a belief with data that contradicts it will serve only to reinforce the belief. Information threatens, and so, is useless.

My dad once told me in a fit of frustration that I had educated myself into stupidity. I question everything. He grew up in a simpler time, in a smaller town. I understand the opposite to be true, the path out of stupidity IS education. The capacity to question, to doubt, to consider, to compare what is said with what is provable, is what makes us powerful. Propaganda is only useful in a society that does not or will not question what it is being told.

Collaboration, cooperation, the capacity to organize, to contemplate and pursue possibilities, to unify disparate points of view is only possible in a mind that doesn’t fear being wrong – in a mind that opens (chooses to open) and isn’t constrained by fear of what it doesn’t understand. Fear makes us stupid. To be educated doesn’t mean to be rigid or buried in knowledge. It means the willingness to question, the ability to look, experience, to see, to reach. To learn.  Fear blinds. Curiosity illuminates.

This painting tumbled out of my Google meditation. It is a sketch, a quick gesture. I used to tell my students that daydreaming was an essential skill. Looking out the window and pondering, imagining,…daydreaming is the first step of invention. Waiting, too, is also an essential skill. It is invaluable when entertaining a thought….

 

 

 

read Kerri’s blog post about THEY WAIT

 

k&dbw backs website box_ copy

they wait ©️ 2018 david robinson & kerri sherwood

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Light A New Hearth Fire [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on October 31, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

HalloweenTree copy

Even during the summer we call it the Halloween tree. An ancient oak, gnarled and twisted, surely a home to gnomes and sprites, a rest stop for wandering spirits. An inciter of wild imagination. It watches our passage through the seasons, our walks though the woods.

Halloween has a history, an origin story. It has evolved and changed from a sacred to our now secular celebration. It once marked the end of the year, the line between the end of harvest time and the onset of dark winter, the day when the boundary between the living and the dead became soft and permeable. A liminal day when the future could be seen and told. Ghosts returned. People donned costumes to fool the spirits and speak for the future. Mischief was made. The hearth was stamped out and then reignited from the communal flame. With the sunrise came the new year and the boundary between worlds and the future was restored.

Costumes and carved pumpkins. Neighbors coming out of their houses for trick-or-treating. Corn mazes and haunted houses. We are not so different, not really. In this way, whether we acknowledge it or not, through our coming together to carve scary faces, through our meeting on the street to watch our children walk the neighborhood and perpetuate this yearly ritual, through our parties and dressing up, we light a new hearth fire to keep us warm and full of hope through the cold months of dark winter.

KDot Halloween Tree

k.dot at the halloween tree

read Kerri’s blog post about THE HALLOWEEN TREE

 

halloween box copy

 

 

 

 

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Ask Why? [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on October 30, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

 

On a recent walk I was lost in thought and suddenly realized Kerri was no longer holding my hand. When I turned to find where she’d gone I saw the usual. Kerri crouched on the ground, phone in hand, photographing something. It is common on our daily walks for her to gasp, pull out her phone, and snap a picture or capture some small critter adventuring through its existence. She has hundreds of beautiful photographs of leaves, curious bark markings, corn stalks, seed pods, sunsets, spiders, shadows, grasses, and butterflies. Each photograph is her record of a marvel, a snapshot of a miracle. “Look at this!” she exclaims, her voice rich with awe.

Showing me her caterpillar movie, she said, “Why would anyone do that? Why would someone shoot a video of a caterpillar!” It’s an existential question.

“I will call this, “Why’d the caterpillar cross the road?”

Another existential question.

Kerri edited the final few seconds of her film. She cut the part where I warn her of an oncoming cyclist. Fearing for the safety of the caterpillar, she stopped shooting her movie and stood in the path of the cyclist, protecting the caterpillar. The irritated cyclist, unaware of why this crazed woman refused to step aside, swung wide around her.

My favorite existential question in this sea of existential questions is this: Why did the woman help the caterpillar cross the road?

 

read Kerri’s blog post on CATERPILLARS CROSSING ROADS

 

alice's restaurant, california websitebox copy

 

 

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Reach The Other Side [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on October 29, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

lifebelowzeroquotesueaikens copy

Nope. This is not a political comment. Though it could be. Context is everything though I couldn’t blame you for assuming this is a statement of ideological division. Simple statements are rarely friendly in divided environments. They are meant to reinforce the division, to broaden the divide. We are inundated with divisive simplicity. We are drowning in out-of-context sound bytes.

No, this saw concerns the simplicity of survival. It’s quote from an episode of Life Below Zero. Sue lives above the arctic circle. She measures and ties guide ropes on to  her buildings so she can find her way around her compound in white-out conditions. If she reaches the knot in the rope – a knot that marks the exact distance to the door she seeks –  and hasn’t yet reached the door – she knows she must hang onto the rope and scribe an arc. Left is always left. Right is always right. The door will be there. If it’s not, if things go awry and she can’t find the door, she can follow the rope back to the safety of the place she just left.

Sue is a font of simple maxims born of the harsh necessities of her environment. Her rope is a statement of preparation. Her rope ups her odds of survival. No rope, she dies. Her simplicity is not ideological. It is necessary. It is meant to cross divides, to help her reach the other side.

On second thought, maybe this is a political statement after all. Or, perhaps an appeal in our harsh environment. Maybe Sue will come down to the lower 48 and teach us how to use a rope and give us a few simple suggestions for how to reach the other side.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about LEFT AND RIGHT

 

hands across tree WEBSITE BOX copy

 

 

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Hear The Whisper [on KS Friday]

Posted on October 26, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

hear you whisper song box copy.jpg

One of my favorite books is John Irvings, A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY. The narrator of the book, after losing his mother, tells us that when we lose someone we lose them in pieces, not all at once. A birthday comes. A holiday. A graduation day. The absence is acute, fresh.

Kerri told me that when she listens now to  HEAR YOU WHISPER, she hears it differently than when she wrote it. Distance and time have transformed it. The experience of loss that inspired this song is mostly remote, with the exception of a few notable days when she discovers another piece. Like the song, distance and time – and the experience of loss – have transformed her.

Early in my career in the theatre I had the opportunity to assist old warhorse directors in auditions. They’d watch an especially talented actor do an especially polished and heartfelt audition and afterwards say, “They were great but they haven’t lived enough life yet. They are operating out of an abstraction.” Artistic depth comes from experiences and many experiences are painful. It takes artistic heart to walk into the hurt, take hold of the tender pieces and rather than wallow in them or add yet another layer of armor, work an alchemy and share them through image or dance or song.

Give yourself a gift on this KS Friday. Let this huge artistic heart work her powerful alchemy on you through her song, HEAR YOU WHISPER, so you might transform your life experiences, your pieces, from base metal into life’s gold.

HEAR YOU WHISPER on the album AS SURE AS THE SUN available on iTunes & CDBaby

 

read Kerri’s blog post about HEAR YOU WHISPER

 

john denver sanctuary in aspen WEBSITE box copy.jpg

hear you whisper/as sure as the sun ©️ 2002 kerri sherwood

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Read The Image [on DR Thursday]

Posted on October 25, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

“I paint the way some people write an autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages from my diary.” ~Pablo Picasso

Kerri and I love to dance. This painting was inspired by one of our spontaneous backyard dances. We don’t know how to do the tango but that has never stopped us from making it up.

When I was much younger, my little brother told me that my studio was one of the darkest places he’d ever been. I didn’t see it at the time but now, looking at my few remaining early paintings, I can’t deny it. Painting, for me, is the log book of a spiritual quest and, like all spiritual quests, the real work is in retrieving the lost pieces and making a greater whole, walking into the wound and transforming it, stepping firmly into the realm of the possible (and becoming it) instead of being transfixed on the monster obstacle.

What once seemed so complex now looks so simple. What once looked so bleak and impossible is now practical, immediate, and infinitely rich. I am lucky. I delight that my diary these days is filled with dances and quiet appreciation.

 

 

read Kerri’s blog post about TANGO WITH ME

 

slow dance party cropped website box copy

tango with me ©️ 2018 david robinson & kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Creativity, DR Thursday, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Put It On A Post [on Not-So-Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on October 23, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

littlefreelibraryBOX copy

Paul often told the young actors he taught: never underestimate your power to influence or impact another person’s life. Stepping onto a stage comes with a responsibility. I loved his advice and thought it was much more universal and should be heeded everyday. What you do matters and it matters in ways you probably will never understand. We are always and in all ways participants in the butterfly effect.

In a short walk around our neighborhood you’ll discover several Little Free Libraries, an idea that came from Todd Bol as a tribute to his mother. She was a lover of books and his idea to honor her caught on like wildfire. In 2009 he built a little schoolhouse shaped box, put books in it, and stuck it on a post outside his house. He invited his neighbors to borrow them. He had no intention of creating a worldwide movement yet in the 9 years that have elapsed since he built his box, Little Free Libraries have popped up in over 80 countries. It became a movement. An entity with a mission. People borrow books. People share books and ideas. Neighbors stop and check out what might be new. The boxes themselves are often little pieces of art that Joseph Cornell might have assembled. Little Free Libraries are community connective tissue.

Todd Bol died last week. It seems only right on this Not-So-Flawed Wednesday to stop and take note of the very big ripple one small box on a post set into motion.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about Todd Bol

 

 

buffalo adirondack chair website box copy

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Sit In It And Listen [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on October 23, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

megaphones copy

When the world seems upside down – as it does often these days – we retreat to one of our favorite sanctuaries, a place of quiet where we can walk for an hour or so beyond the noise and division of the day. Our beloved Bristol Woods.

A few weeks ago, we retreated to the woods and came upon two curiosities. First, something that looked like a large wooden dunce cap, like some bratty giant was made to sit in the corner for disrupting class and, after his punishment, tossed his cap into the woods. We climbed in it and wriggled through it. We sat in it and absorbed the autumn sun. Napping in the dunce cap, we made up outlandish stories about what it could possibly be and how it came to be in our woods. If not a dunce cap then certainly it was a megaphone of epic proportions!

And, it turns out that we were right. The naturalist told us at the nature center it is a nature megaphone. Sit in it and it amplifies the forest sounds: leaves rustling, squirrels scampering, trees swaying, branches clicking, chipmunks darting. Disgruntled, the naturalist said, “They moved it so it points toward the highway and now it mostly amplifies the road noise. There couldn’t be a worse spot for it!”

Curiosity #2. Why would they move the megaphone to the worst spot? To a place where it amplifies road noise instead of the sounds of nature as intended?

Pocking our route through the woods we saw trees marked with red tape. Red and green flags were planted in a line cutting across the woods. Occasionally, trees were marked with ‘caution’ tape. “I think they’re going to tear down the woods,” Kerri sighed. Not possible, I thought. It’s land set aside for sanctuary. It’s written into their slogan: ‘Putting People In Touch With Nature.’

But, it turns out that Kerri was right. An aerial adventure park is coming soon. “The board says it will bring more people -what the means is more revenue – to the woods,” says the naturalist, her face turning red.”Does it make any sense to tear down the woods to bring more people to the woods?” she asks. “It has nothing to do with the woods. Do they think we’re idiots? It’s all about the money.”

And, it turns out I was right, too. Well, I was partially right. A bratty giant is disrupting the classroom but instead of being made to sit in the corner and consider the ramifications of his actions, he is quite simply removing the classroom. No self-reflection  required. He will eliminate Bristol’s reason for being. Horatio jumped into my mind with a simple and sad statement, “It’s all upside down,” he said. “If it doesn’t make money, we don’t value it.”

I didn’t say it. Wittingly or unwittingly, the megaphone is now a metaphor. It is in the perfect place to amplify what is now most valuable in our very upside-down world.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about BRISTOL WOODS

 

 

 

cropped head kiss website copy

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