The Artist Journal

I had the above photograph on my home page for quite some time and when I took it down I thought I should comment a little bit about it.  In case you are unable to read the actual journal entry handwritten on the left I will quote it below.  It was written while in Kyoto photographing:

"Looking through a Japanese Arts and Culture Magazine I was reviewing an article on Japanese Modern Art and came across a piece of work that was quite simple and like above (see drawing on the journal page) simply budding limbs of a tree.  I will take my pictures of isolated cherry blossoms and remove all background so as to leave the lone blossom lying on white paper.  A sort of Modern Japanese aesthetic."

The photograph was taken later.  The image became entitled "Lone Blossom".  

Journals are a major part of my artistic process.  They assist in working out ideas and are a venue for thought.  One can air out concepts.  Some work out and many do not.  However one thing that I notice most of all is that in reviewing back through entries you can see an overall arc of creativity.  One can see how current ideas germinated some time ago and how a long forgotten "failed" idea has now finally come to fruition.

Finally, artistic journals have a long tradition.  I'm sure there are many examples of artist journals throughout time but one that comes to my mind is the art form of haiga in Japan.  Haiga is an art form in and of itself.  It involves short, terse prose and haiku.  So periodically I also add poetry to my journals as another mode of expression.  Poetry is a nice way of expressing universal concepts in an abbreviated form and allowing the reader plenty of room for mental movement and reflection.

return to place

As I walked to the Brooks Estate I thought of its history: a preservation land with roots to the first Puritan settlers in 1660 (I wonder what Native American tribe was there before?).  Since its inception the estate has dwindled, sold off by ancestor after ancestor.  More recently the battle had become one between Brooks preservation and Oak Grove Cemetery.  I thought: when I die throw my ashes in the Brooks Pond, a more appropriate place of burial.   Allow my monument to be the images that remain, signifying my vision - better than any tombstone.

I circled all three ponds today in snow often to my knees.  I thought - how would you explain this beauty to a child - a child who grew up with the over-saturated media blitz of television, video games and internet.   It's a sensitivity to the unembellished detail that's needed.  An ability to look at nature and find within its often tangled branches and inconvenient places a symmetry, detail or beauty that transcends the flashy stimuli of modern culture.  A return to place and "here and now".

beauty in the sky

the small

       myopic 

       views

                               the close looks 

the thin 

      vaporous

      whim

small, subtle, overlooked and temporal

a wave of the hand, a brushstroke

against a mottled plain

of trees

    sky

      pond

of large

     breathtaking

     muted tones

god exists in both:

the small, subtle, overlooked and temporal

the wide expanse that opens ever more

caught up with the bigness of life

its ever changing scale

often lost in its future

the goals that bring us there

the minute

the detail

the frail

of which there are thousands 

upon millions

seem unimportant

but through the smallness

                                          bigness

close looks

                    wide horizons

frailty 

               strength

beauty in the sky

connections...

What I like about combining poetry and photography is that it is an invitation to stop and perceive the experience.  To be in the moment and to reflect back on other moments.  To take a break from the rapid motion of life and just be in the experience.  Art is always a way to step outside.  Anything that enables this, provides further dimensions, is a welcome art form.  Art is about connections, connections between image and poem, viewer and his past, observer and now.

New Work: a start

I read Sol LeWitt's "Sentences on Conceptual Art" and found them to be basic logic principles for the field of art.  They are like those laid down by Euclid many years before (science and art are much more connected in their operation than most think) that set forth the rules of geometry in that they provide a hierarchy of knowledge so that one can create.  I think the key to take away from these sentences is not that they are hard-bound rules to live by but that one can make his or her own logic principles, and should so that he can become conscious and in control of the creative process.

The current "concept" that I'm working on is narrow depths of field and intentional blurs of nature, using the Brooks Estate and its surrounding environment (pond and forest) as the context.  Because it is just a short walk from my studio, I'm able to spend an hour or so capturing nature as it slowly turns from season to season.  I've become more aware of the incremental changes that occur during each season: partial freezes, crumpled leaves long past their life yet still clinging to barren branches, as well as all-out storms that define the essence of what a season is about.

I've experimented with writing short poems on selected favorites and then using a line from the poem to title the image.  This adds subjectivity and brings the imagery into the realm of thought: taking reality, revealing its ephemeral aspects with blur and selective focus and bringing it into the high position of interpretive thought.