Prepping For Class

Kem Nunn's first novel, Tapping the Source; Bushmills; and the Eelfish.

In between chapters, I'm contemplating Point Molate and a quick kayak-run in the Bay this weekend.

Coomer: "Three Things Worth Doing"

"There are three things worth doing: making something new, caring for something old, and finding the lost. The fourth thing is your hand deep in dog fur, talking about the first three."

--Joe Coomer, Sailing in a Spoonful of Water

At A Gallop

Happy Thanksgiving

 Pilgrim (cork and construction paper):
elementary school project from the 1960s.

Watching The Boats Sail By

Visual joy: 

the view from Ferry Point.

Visual toy:

study aid, truly, to model knockdowns, whale attacks, and skulduggery;

stand-in for the Essex and, soon, for the Hispaniola.

Wistful

Mermaid w/Fin:
sculpture mix; green glazing.

Defying Gravity

The Buckeye and the Beast

Rembrandt's Mirror; Facetious Echoes

I snapped this selfie to check the lighting from this direction at this time of day, and I both laughed at how that mask and I happened to echo each other here and found myself snagged in the rush of a memory-whirlpool.  The image pulled me towards something, someone, some other image . . . .

I had recently picked up Christopher Wright's Rembrandt: Self Portraits as a consequence of another memory-snag, though I have only flipped through some of the reproductions, haven't quite read the text itself.  I had obtained Wright's book because of my recently recalling, once again, how Prof. Andrew Griffin, one of my major influences at Berkeley, used to teach a unit on Rembrandt's self-portraits in his autobiography/biography seminar, and while I did not take that specific class from Prof. Griffin, he generously shared in office-time much about the subject.  (That the Dutch master had painted himself so often, so many times, over the course of his life was a compelling conceit to me, particularly caught as I was between Joyce's young Stephen Dedalus and my sense of the older Shakespeare-As-Lear, As-Prospero.)  I was drawn to these conversations by the professor's compelling and humorous delivery, but also by my own compulsions in the areas of self-representation and Rembrandt himself.  That Pocket Library of Great Art edition of Rembrandt pictured above was a book that just happened to be stuffed into the family bookshelves in the back bedroom I shared with my brothers, a book that I happened to discover in my childhood, far before I could understand the words or the images beyond the obvious, a book that I have puzzled over and studied from my earliest years.  I have carried that book from the family home to my first apartment and to every subsequent dwelling, though I can't say that I've actually looked into or, perhaps, even at this pocket volume for years and years now until today.

Still, once I looked away from my mask laughing in the background and thought, "What image am I aping (unconsciously) here?", well, "Rembrandt -- the cover portait!" was the immediate answer.  (I was then compelled to root out that specific volume, though that took two days.)  Now, reading this and comparing (contrasting?) the two images may not bring such an answer to your mind.  The link may be more emotional than anything else.  As a maker, I bow with the utmost respect from a station far far below the great Dutchman.  And, as a child, I was probably fascinated by the age, the agedness, in that cover shot, by the old, old man with the funny hat.  As an adult, Rembrandt seems steady, steadfast and sober, weighing himself in the scales of life, not entirely happy with the balance at hand; the artist doesn't seem near as old, either, as he must have seemed in my relative infancy.  But my peers will understand that shiftiness of perspective, I think.  (There's a key scene in John Fowles' Daniel Martin in front of one of Rembrandt's portraits, perhaps this one, and that novel was quite formative as well.  Another echo, another mirror.)  Even as a boy and a young man, I'll bet Rembrandt's gaze held me, for it certainly holds my own gaze even now.  Rembrandt's mirror, each of us looking at, looking into, this portrait, don't you think?

Maybe so; maybe no.  Hats, brows, noses, lines, chins, cheeks: I see likenesses, though differences too.  I could have dressed the part, certainly, to heighten the linkages, but that's an accidental shot, more or less.  Anyway, the way I'd like to see it, the Dutchman's looking back at me, back at us; and, I'm looking at him, at you.

Facetious echoes, as I've announced above.

The mirror, I'm forgetting: the mirror and the making.  Rembrandt is gazing into that mirror, that reflective canvas, into himself, weighing and balancing; and, therefore, he's a fine model for yet another painting; therefore, a fine model for himself and for us.

Flow (With Tentacles)

More Than A Handful: 
sculpture mix; stormy blue, celadon, and transparent brown glazes, layered.

Profile Pics

Seamus Heaney: The Boat-Funeral from "Beowulf"

Shield was still thriving when his time came

and he crossed over into the Lord's keeping.

His warrior band did what he bade them

when he laid down the law among the Danes:

they shouldered him out to the sea's flood,

the chief they revered who had long ruled them.

A ring-whorled prow rode in the harbour,

ice-clad, outbound, a craft for a prince.

They stretched their beloved lord in his boat,

laid out by the mast, amidships,

the great ring-giver. Far-fetched treasures

were piled upon him, and precious gear

I never heard before of a ship so well furbished

with battle tackle, bladed weapons

and coats of mail. The massed treasure

was loaded on top of him: it would travel far

on out into the ocean's sway.

They decked his body no less bountifully

with offerings than those first ones did

who cast him away when he was a child

and launched him alone out over the waves.

And they set a gold standard up

high above his head and let him drift

to wind and tide, bewailing him

and mourning their loss. No man can tell,

no wise man in hall or weathered veteran

knows for certain who salvaged that load.

-- translated by Seamus Heaney

Talismanic

Robert Graves' "Apple Island"

APPLE ISLAND

Though cruel seas like mountains fill the bay,
Wrecking quayside huts,
Salting our vineyards with tall showers of spray;

And though the moon shines dangerously clear,
Fixed in another cycle
Than the sun’s progress round the felloe’d year;

And though I may not hope to dwell apart
With you on Apple Island
Unless my beat be docile to the dart —

Why should I fear your element, the sea,
Or the full moon, your mirror,
Or the halved Apple from your holy tree?

— Robert Graves

In Memoriam: Keith, Fishing

You left us too too soon, my friend.

This would have been your 52nd birthday.  Should have been.

Peace.

Eye, Aye: A Medley

Irish Music on the Avenue

Great buskers!

They Told Me The Moon Was Made Of Green Cheese

The Drowned Man: Mask and the moon.

Can you see the moon?  Follow the arrow to the right of the mask's "ear" . . . .

Shell and Foam

Aqua-Duck

Aqua-Duck: Head --

Sculpture mix; shiny black and denim glazing.

Looking Out From Ferry Point

Vercingetorix: Two Views

Vercingetorix: 

sculpture mix; sea-foam glaze, too thinly applied.

Or, The Apple Man.

Twigs and Visions

The Sleeper, Green: 
sculpture mix; copper carbonate oxide and clear glazing.

(30-minute exercise with model.)