Cross Check [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on January 31, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

“It looks like a horses head,” she said, snapping the photo from her window seat on the plane. We were on approach to land, coming in over the bay.

I remember teaching myself to draw horses. I had (and still have) a passion for drawing people so my foray into horses was more an academic exercise than an inner need. I thought I should expand my horizons so the 8-year-old-version-of-me acquired a “how to draw animals” book. It suggested beginning with geometric shapes. Two connected circles defined the torso, the head – a circle and a trapezoid.

It was the same technique used by the teacher in my very first art class. See shapes. Arms are two tubes connected by a circle/elbow. Knees are circles, too! Foreground and background, what’s in front and what’s behind was taught using spheres and cylinders. Perspective was taught using a box. Transform a circle into a sphere through proper shading and you’ll know forever the magic secret of artistry. See a dragon in the clouds and you’ll know forever the magic secret of the human mind. It projects. It seeks sense from chaos. It projects order onto nature.

All the while Kerri is snapping photos of the island that looks like a horse’s head, I am pondering the normalization of hurtling through the air in a tube. People chat. Some are reading. The man across the aisle is asleep. “Prepare to land” is ordinary, uttered thousands of times each day. It’s the flip side of seeing dragons in clouds, another key to the human mind. Miracles made commonplace through repetition.

One human child is a miracle. It’s why we are making the trip. To meet a miracle. Yet, 7 billion miracles walking on earth?

“We’re flying,” I said.

“It’s been a long time,” she replied, showing me the picture on her phone, “Look! Doesn’t it look like a horse’s head? Well, like horse heads that I draw. No ears,” she qualified and smiled.

Miracles and magic. All the way around. Seen and unseen. Cross check. Wheels down. Prepare to return to the ground.

read Kerri’s blogpost about the HORSE HEAD

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Perspective, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Fill With Wonder [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on January 11, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Upon seeing the first tree at the entrance gate I asked a question that I repeated all night, “How did they do that?”

My question was rhetorical. I did not expect an answer. I might as well have exclaimed,”OMG!” or, “WOW!” or whispered, “Unbelievable!” Instead, my wide-eyed-awe expressed as a quiz-to-no-one.

Kerri sometimes quotes from Anne Lamott’s book, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. I realized, walking through the Garden, astonished by the lights, that I was immersed in one of Anne’s prayers. I’m not a big prayer guy so it amused me that my enthusiastic WOW was voicing as a question. The images projected on the mist. The field of dancing firelight. The light cathedral. How-did-they-do-that-how-did-they-do-that-how-did-they-do-that?

As we left the Garden and wandered toward the car I was delighted not to have an answer. The lights moved me to tears. I laughed heartily. I was stunned to silence. I watched children and adults alike, dancing into the dome and running toward the many-colored fireflies. Knowing the “how” would have diminished a bit of the magic. The more important question was obvious: there is no better “why” than to fill people with wonder.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE TREE

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Flawed Wednesday, Play | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Look-At-Me-Look-At-You [on KS Friday]

Posted on January 6, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Crossing the soggy path, the deer left hoofprints pressed deep into the mud. “Those weren’t here before,” she said. It was our second loop around the yellow trail.

A half a mile down the path she suddenly stopped, grabbing my arm in the way that let me know to stand silent and still. She pointed into the woods. The deer stood frozen, looking at us. It’s ears twitched, deciding that we were not a threat. It flicked its tail, a shock of white, and walked a few steps, stopping again to scrutinize us. We stood that way for several minutes. Look-at-me-look-at-you. Boundaries dissolved.

And then, as if released from a spell, we walked on, filled with delight at our communion with the deer. “They’re usually not out this early,” she said. We encounter them at sunset but rarely in the late morning. We decided it was a gift, a sighting of encouragement. We embraced the deer-symbol of life’s regeneration. Moving with grace through obstacles, having a fresh perspective on old impediments. Good perspectives to carry into the new year.

We rounded the corner and crossed to the middle of the bridge. A week ago during the polar freeze we imagined the river was solid ice. Now, it stirred into motion, puddles atop frozen sheets, the current pulling below. The sky and trees reflected on speckled patterns of ice in transformation. It looked like a grey whale swam in for a rest.

Once again we found ourselves under a spell with the river. Moving in an ancient dance with water and sky. Look-at-me-look-at-you. Our stinging fingers brought us back. Time to go home. Warm up. Sip a glass of wine, and revel that deer-spell and river-magic would make it on the list of our Daily Gorgeous.

[this piece of Kerri’s breaks my heart every time I listen]

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes & streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE RIVER

last i saw you/this part of the journey © 1998 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Gratitude, KS Friday, Metaphor | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

See The Unique [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on December 20, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Just for kicks I Googled “The secret life of snowflakes.” You’ll not be surprised to learn that there is a book by a scientist, Kenneth George Libbrecht, entitled…The Secret Life of a Snowflake. I think I must read it. Five stars. It traces the journey of snowflakes, which means it’s a story. And, it’s aimed at readers aged 6-12 so it’s right in my current-mindset-wheelhouse.

If you catch me reading The Secret Life of a Snowflake and ask me why-on-earth I’m reading a children’s book about snowflakes written by a snowflake scientist I’ll tell you with a straight face that I’m doing research. Kerri has a raindrop story that I want to illustrate – and will someday when she’s bold enough to share the full manuscript. It’s hidden somewhere in her studio and I know enough not to go poking around in other people’s studios. Snowflakes are raindrops in crystal clothing.

Each snowflake is unique. I’ve heard that tidbit of truth so many times that it’s become cliché. As I stare out my window at the accumulating snow, the full impact of the cliché hits me: my yard is stacking up with crystal uniqueness. This is no ordinary moment. These brilliant little forms falling from the sky and joining together to blanket my world will never pass this way again. Suddenly my mind is awash with a tune by Seals and Crofts.

This time of year we have snowflakes cleverly placed around the house. They are not real; you can tell because they are identical. And, they don’t melt. And, they are enormous compared to the real deal stacking up just outside on the lawn. They make us smile.

If you are like me you’ll find yourself suddenly in awe of human beings. We create plastic snowflakes to decorate our warm houses while the real-deal falls just outside our doors. Both the real and the symbolic give us pause. Just like the special adorned tree in our living room, e.e., we want to bring nature in-the-house for our celebration of renewal. Magical moments abound, snowflake by beautiful snowflake.

[I love Kerri’s Silent Night. Hear the sound of snowflakes…]

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes or streaming on Pandora...or all over the web…]

read Kerri’s blogpost about SNOWFLAKES

Filed under: Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Arrive At Magic [on saturday morning smack-dab.]

Posted on June 25, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

It’s true. We read to each other. We read poetry to each other.

Lately, Kerri’s reading to me from Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions. First, she reads the question in Spanish and makes me guess what Neruda asks. It’s important to note that she doesn’t know Spanish. Her first poetry pass is lyrical Spanish-sounding-gobbledygook-syllables followed by a studied look of expectation (remember, she’s a composer and musician – even her gobbledygook sounds lovely). “Well?” she asks, arching her brow. I make up an answer or stare dumbly. After I fail miserably, she hits me with the English translation. Lovely either way, coherent and incoherent.

Lovely either way. The bluebells and dark hazel can come to us through the yummy words and imagination we share or while slow-walking a trail. We may not have the power to invoke a well-timed Amazon delivery but, truth-be-told, I much prefer the way we arrive at our blue-bell magic. Coherent or incoherent. Either way. Lovely.

read Kerri’s blogpost about POETRY

smack-dab. © 2022 kerrianddavid.com

Filed under: Love, smack-dab | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Sing, “EEE-AAAWWW!” [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on January 4, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Drive across the country with Kerri and one thing is certain to happen: the moment she sees a donkey, she bursts into a rousing chorus of “EEE-AAAWW-EEE-AAAWWW!” She loves donkeys. She wants one. Or two. “They’re like big dogs,” she assures me. I have my doubts but I confess to picking up her quirk. Now, if I spot a donkey before she does, I point and launch a festive “EEE-AAAWW!”

Bill and Linda have two donkeys. We arrived after dark so had to wait until morning to go to the barn for a donkey-confab. She wiggled all night with excitement. “Smack-dab material,” I thought. I’ll be drawing cartoon donkeys soon. I can’t wait to figure out how to make the Kerri-cartoon character wiggle in anticipation.

Linda knows of Kerri’s donkey-love so she had donkey treats ready. I stood back and watched. “This is my future,” I thought. “Can I have another?” Kerri asked and Linda smiled, handing over the plastic container of orange donkey-cookies. Those lucky donkeys hit the cookie lotto.

Donkey cookies. Who knew! There’s more amazing wonders in this world than any of us can comprehend. Stand outside of anyone’s world, peer in at their passions, and you’ll have to try hard not to drop your jaw in fascination. From inside their world, the quirk seems boringly normal. I try to remember that when people stand agog at something in my world that seems normal-to-boring. “What’s the big deal,” I think.

People are great at reducing the magic in their lives to seem insignificant. I’m a “people” so, like all people, am guilty of my own diminishment. Beware of the word, “normal.”

Bill and I bumped fists. We are brothers-in-quirk. While Kerri and Linda stuffed the donkeys with cookies, Bill and I talked about the-things-that-come-out-of-our-mouths that get us into trouble. We think they are obvious. Ordinary. But, the response to our commentary indicates otherwise. He just retired from a board position and, his peers, in their farewell speech, described him in two words, both beginning with the letter “o”: outspoken and opinionated. All laughed. “It’s true!” he said, “And I’m proud of that,” and added, “No one wants to be a rubber stamp.”

What a perfect summation. EEE-AAAWWW-EEE-AAAWWW. Donkey cookies! Magic-in-the-ordinary. No one wants to be a rubber stamp.

read Kerri’s blog post about DONKEYS!

Filed under: Creativity, Identity, Navel Gazing, Perspective, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Get Lost [on DR Thursday]

Posted on November 4, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

We delight in taking Sunday drives. Sometimes we have a destination but most of the time we have no idea where we are going. We head “out into the county,” the farm land, and with great intention, we get lost. “Left or right?” Kerri asks when we come to a crossroads. “Left.”

The goal is to “not know.” Drive down roads we’ve never experienced. There is a direct correlation between “not knowing” and “clear seeing.” When lost, we open our eyes. It’s something that every artist understands, “always-knowing-where-you’re-going” is a killer of the magic. It is the dividing line between art and craft.

I’m currently working with a team of analytical minds. “Lostness” is often interpreted as failure. It’s not welcome. But, to my great delight, even in the most analytic of creative processes, the engineers and entrepreneurs, shaking their fists at the sky when adrift, find their greatest magic arrives only after time spent wandering the wilderness.

After many twists and turns, rolling country roads and, “Which direction are we headed?”, we pop out of lostness and know exactly where we are. “Hey!” we laugh, “How did we get here?”

The art of getting lost. The art of exploration. The art of having an experience without a predetermined outcome. The art of having an outcome and letting it go, making space for something better. It is the art of cultivating surprise, allowing for the bigger idea to come through. “Left or right?”

It’s a practice. Learning-to-see and letting-go-of-needing “to know.” It’s the same thing. And, a great way to practice, is taking a nice Sunday drive.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE ROAD

www.davidrobinsoncreative.com

pax © 2015 david robinson

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Metaphor, Seeing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Meet The Saw [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on August 30, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

As the magician saws the woman in half, he tells her that, “Magic is not an exact science.” It is among my favorite Flawed Cartoons.

“There’s nothing sadder than a forty year old production assistant,” she said, sipping her drink, looking across the room at a man she clearly thought was a loser. I was living in Los Angeles and was at a party with movers-and-shakers. The gathering also included a few of the people who carried the cables, loaded the trucks, moved the electrics – the lowest rung on the ladder. The runners. I swallowed hard. At the moment she said it, I was thinking the exact opposite. There is nothing more interesting than a forty year old production assistant. I wanted to be standing with the very man she considered a loser. He’d have stories to tell. Experiences to share. The movers-and-shakers bored me. Dulled by their dedication to security, thoroughly protected from the unknown or surprising experiences, they sneered at the people who’d actually lived. I found my way across the room and spent the rest of the evening sitting in the kitchen talking with a man who traveled the world.

Were I at the party today, she would look across the room at me and whisper, “Sad.”

Life is like magic. It is not an exact science. Ideals collapse. Dreams implode. Yet, the luckiest people I know are the few who have stepped out of their seats and volunteered to climb on to the stage. They’ve taken chances. Built wood buses or put their lifeblood into starting a theatre company or went boarding instead of dying in a cubicle. They’ve stepped beyond traditions and expectation. They’ve been cut in half, opened, challenged, surprised, disappointed, scared, triumphant, awed. They’ve learned. They’ve questioned their beliefs and perceptions. They’ve made titanic mistakes. They’ve stared down their demons. They’ve opted for curiosity rather than being right. They stepped off the edge. They followed, “What if…”

There’s no shortage of people who watch life from the safety of their seats. As Tom used to say, “They paint with a limited palette.” There are those lucky few who, if you see them at the party, most likely the people serving drinks, who’ve been cut in two and know from scary experience that there’s nothing more numbing or illusory than certainty. Follow them into the kitchen and ask about their lives. You’ll be amazed at the full spectrum of colors you find in them.

read Kerri’s blog post about SAWED IN HALF

flawed cartoon ©️ 2016 david robinson

Filed under: Awakening, Edges, Education, Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Perspective | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Don’t Tell 20 [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on June 14, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

I do not take for granted that I live a few short blocks from Lake Michigan. It is a powerful presence with wildly changeable moods. Sometimes I lay awake at night and listen to the boom: the sound of the waves pounding the shore. Sometimes I stand on the rock wall marveling that it is glassy, barely moving. Some days, if you didn’t know better, you’d swear you were staring into the Atlantic Ocean. Lake Michigan is a shape-shifter. A trickster.

We used to walk the shore almost everyday. We’d circle the marina and, sometimes, we’d go further. To the band shell. Once we walked to the college. When the pandemic came, we moved our walks to the woods. Actually, we regularly walked the paths of Des Plains or Bristol Wood but since we encountered less people on the wooded paths, we stopped walking the lake altogether. Everything, even our walk-location-choices, were pressed through the weird calculus necessitated by COVID. They still are.

20 likes to tease Kerri. He knows that the assertion that “It’s cooler by the lake,” will be met by her New York style push back. She’s a detail girl so blanket assertions are always met by contrary statements, “It’s not ALWAYS cooler by the lake!” she counters, her Long Island indignation rising. 20 looks to me and asks, ” How do you live with this?” My standard answer is: “It’s why I drink.” She pinches his arm as if he was responsible for my answer, he feigns ferocious pain. We laugh. They are siblings by choice.

Like much of the country our temperatures have been too-hot-too-soon. After dinner, we decided to take a walk around the neighborhood. “Look at the fog!” Kerri exclaimed. It was rolling in, houses a few blocks away were disappearing like Avalon into the mist. We walked toward it, into it, and were immediately cooler. While Kerri took photos I turned to the west, the lake lapping at my back, and watched the sunset color the fog.

The foghorn began to call. The lake literally disappeared from sight. Orange and red fingers reached across the sky. “It’s magic,” I said.

“It’s also cooler,” Kerri smiled, “But don’t tell 20.”

read Kerri’s blog post about COOLER BY THE LAKE

Filed under: Family, Gratitude, Love, Merely A Thought Monday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Step Into The Overlap [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on April 27, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

The guy on the horse called out, “I love those. They’re called May Apples!” Kerri was taking photographs of the strangely creature-esque plant when the man in the cowboy hat and chaps rode by. “They’ll blanket the forest floor and be gone by Father’s day,” he said as rode down the trail and disappeared.

It is probably an understatement to suggest that life can sometimes be surreal.

Actually, I’m either not aging well or my eyes are finally opening to the utter strangeness of day-to-day life. The whole ride is surreal. Salvador Dali was a realist and society missed the joke.

Where did the cowboy come from? Considering his outfit, he could well have come from another era. The strange army of plants assembling for their march across the forest floor definitely gave the impression that we’d stepped out of linear time. We could be walking through a Venn Diagram of ages and had stepped into the overlap. Cowboys and prehistoric plants. I took a moment and scouted for dinosaurs since, if my Venn-Diagram-suspicion was accurate, we could be back in the food chain, a snack for a Velociraptor. It’s best to check when reality twists.

It tickled me to think that we might have wandered into the golden age of fairies and spirits. These plants may be watching us. They might have Rip Van Winkle intentions for us; we’d snap photos, continue on our walk and return to a parking lot only to discover that 300 years had passed. What would we do then?

We would do exactly as we are doing now. Navigate the strangeness. Take one-pandemic-day at a time. Orient and reorient to a world seemingly caught in an angry spell, conspiracy theories galloping down the info-trail and disappearing into the mad e-forest, lies bellowed as truths and truths shouted down as lies. The globe warms, the deniers deny (loudly), the religious faithful embrace the outrageous salvation of the pumpkin-orange-grifter. We would sip wine at day’s end and compare strange stories of magic, confusion and wonderment sometimes known as “news”.

Salvador Dali was a realist. I’m now certain of it. The Grimm Brothers were historians and not purveyors of folklore. We walk in the woods, Hansel and Gretel could be just around the bend. If we come across Rumpelstiltskin, we’ll be sure to share the gold spun from straw. Or not. By the time we get to the car, gold may have been a passing fancy, worthless, and tin foil will be the market standard. Who knows! This place is a miracle of possibilities and unpredictability. Avalon disappears into the mist. Time bends or at least drapes lazily in our vast dream-scape.

We walk in the woods. The May Apples assemble for a march. Their ultimate intention is anyone’s guess.

read Kerri’s blog post about MAY APPLES

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