What Coyote Wanted

Loki, Coyote:
Those tricksters
Pull me in
They make so much
Sense -- yet a second glance
Guides me, mocks me.
Tricksters make only nonsense
And I am a ranger
Law and order
The lessons of my father
The lessons of my mother
Taught me to follow my conscience
Follow my better self
For the betterment of us all
For the best, for the rest of us.
Follow Intuition
Follow the order
Within that intuition.
Maybe that’s what
Coyote wanted,
What Loki—deep
In his Utgard/Asgard heart—
Wanted.
You know,
The right thing.

Can You See The Seal?

This wily fellow followed me as I kayaked, keeping behind me even though I kept shifting directions, spinning the boat, and then paddling--I thought--away.  Then, when I entered the water, I couldn't spot the harbor seal near me underwater, but when I would rise for breath, twice he made great splashes a few feet behind me, startling me each time.  After about 15 minutes, I decided that I should perhaps swim somewhere else.

Sing A Blue Song

Blue Coyotes, Singing:
soldate clay;
abalone glazing.

Singing Your Song

Soldate clay, still drying.

Welcome to the Labyrinth

Happy Autumn!

Clay mask: 2013
Rudi's apples.

Kayaking Mendocino: Four Shots

(Sorry about the waterspots.  I need to figure out how to get the water off the lens better.  Maybe keep a small spray bottle of fresh water handy for the amphib camera.  I think that the waterspots are part of the experience and that the photos work, but that may not work for everyone.)

This last photo shows a tricky spot a bit to the south of Van Damme State Beach. If you go through this narrow archway, you find a cathedral-like cavern open to the sky, The trick is that there's a mass of kelp growing in the center of that archway passage that will slow your kayak to a crawl. (I vividly recall past experiences digging, digging, digging with the paddle to get through and out.) This day, the swell was working, and I couldn't tell how much clearance I was going to have at the top of the swell's rising, and I did not want to get spiked; also, the tide was rather low at this time, which may have meant more headroom, but which also meant at the surge's drop the kayak would be in a too narrow space that wouldn't matter with a higher tide or with a mellower surge.

I looked, shot, and paddled on. Another day for entry. See, I am maturing (finally).

Puck or Joy?

Two hummers are nesting in the hedge by the garage and frequently hang out in the orange tree by the holly and sing.  These shots are of one of the hummingbirds, for the other one wouldn't stick around for a profile pic.

Puck and Joy -- not twins I realize, but mates.

Encouraging Apt Engagement?

When I encounter art of any sort, 
I find myself with these questions: 

What am I feeling now?
What is the piece saying?
What's the story (and backstory)?

[Oh, and how is it made?
--among many, many others.]

Now, my students usually want to start with "What does it mean?"

(A fine, though often
misleading or reductive
question to get to know
something, someone,
anything at all.
Where to begin,
then?)

Artists (and fellow audience-members), 
what responses 
and what responsive questions 
would you encourage 
me to encourage 
in my students?

Foolery and Rembrandt's Faint Echo

Friend:    Matt, you are absolutely the master of the selfie!

Self:    Well, that's not a thing to be proud of, entirely, but --hey-- Rembrandt created almost a hundred selfies, and he had to paint each one. My point is not that I'm a Rembrandt, but if such were good enough for him, it's golden for me. I'm the easiest model I have to work with, and I have fun with the lines, the shadows, and the (oft silly) scenes. Tomorrow, there'll probably be one with me in my new leather medieval English helmet. How can I resist?

Friend:   If I posted the ones I've tried taking, you'd see why yours are so good.  Looking forward to the helmet.

Self:    Oh, I delete so many. Oddly enough, the first few tend to be the best ones.

Aside: Watching myself age seems hardly the epitome of vanity.  The posting is a measure, a formality, a witnessing more than any sort of declaration.  Besides, who is watching?  This blog doesn't get that much traffic, frankly, and if my self-portraits bother anyone, well, they don't have to look, right?  In part, my natural diffidence has been encouraged to the point of stultification, or so it has seemed in the past, and here I'm countering that; in part, self-portraiture seems honest, an honest art, and this blog is my canvas, after all.  (Should I create a spectrum to chart Vanity/Hubris, Art/Artifice, Foolery/Foolishness?)  Finally, I also use this blog as a way of auditioning for further pursuits, attempting to woo the muses to help me with that novel, those short stories, or that documentary non-fiction; practice-sessions.  Clay feels freer than words do, and yet that doesn't feel quite right.  Posting images, self and non-self, is a way of seeing my way towards the words that matter, I am hoping.

I mean what I said above about lines and shadows and silliness and the easiest model to work with.

Also, if you look back upward at the first self-portrait I've provided by Rembrandt, will you not admire the work with lines and shadows and maybe a bit of silliness there too?  I admire so much of Rembrandt's work, and I hadn't appreciated that drawing until I posted it for this entry.  Witnessing comes in various forms, not all of them self-serving.

(I'm tempted to remake that last sentence into something metaphorical with a tree of many branches, but if I do, I just may end up hanging myself in effigy there, and I don't quite want to do that.)

Most times, I don't quite even look like myself.  Do you know what I mean?  That self in my head, that self I'm conjuring up and projecting from the images of earlier days, childhood and youth and what-have-you.  That's what I am tracking, keeping track of, witnessing.  The syntax of self over time and through time.  A quixotic quest, no doubt.  And one worthless to all but the wandering tracker.

Previously, I've reflected and quoted Fowles on the reflex toward self-representation, even excessive self-representation, as a move from subjectivity toward objectivity, from the first (and fallible) person toward the third (outsider) person, (which you may find in a link here in "Don Quixote's Mirror").

I find the grammar of self to be almost as amusing as the syntax of identity and authenticity, but that comment belongs to a separate blog entry at another time.

*Prof. Andrew Griffin taught me of Rembrandt's many self-representations in office-hour conversations in my undergraduate days.  His energy and his style have helped to shape my teaching style, among other things.  I owe him a debt I haven't yet repaid, and at this late date, I am not sure how.

The images in this entry are all photos of reproductions from and of Christopher Wright's Rembrandt: Self-Portraits, The Viking Press: New York, 1982.

Twigs and Visions

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

(30-minute exercise with model.)

Autumnal Spirit: Bovine

Mask: Bovine For The Labyrinth --

Sculpture mix; celadon, denim, and transparent brown glazing, layered; copper wire.

 Detail:

The Spirit of Autumn

Hernest: sculpture mix; brown glazes, layered.

(You can learn more about this luck-piece here.)

One-Trick Sea-Horse

I may be a bit of a one-trick pony with water and clay, but I haven't bored myself yet, and at age 52 I think that's one of the few sure guides to living well.

The Druid's Eye

Practice piece (sculpture mix, unglazed).

Crossley-Holland's "Idling"

IDLING

The way waves fold into themselves, sigh, then
play themselves out high on the foreshore,

a man draws and redraws the crescent contours
of the salt-woman he loves to draw to love.

--Kevin Crossley-Holland


P.S.  There are riddles here that I am working to work out; the images and unfolding of the lines draw me in here.

Crossley-Holland is a renowned translator of Anglo-Saxon riddles, a popular genre in the medieval period, among others.  His own poetry, as above, often shows such trickster influence.

Trickster: Glimpses

Trickster: sculpture mix; brown, black, and maybe shino glazes, blended; copper wire, hammered.

(I've posted shots of this live model exercise at various times in this blog; if you are interested, please use the label-link "Trickster" below.)

Strong Woman

Trickster: I've posted shots of her a few times, at least twice. Here's the link to her August 2012 appearance.

Moya Cannon's "Prodigal"

PRODIGAL

Dark mutter tongue
rescue me,
I am drawn into outrageous worlds
where there is no pain or innocence,
only the little quiet sorrows
and the elegant joys of power.

Someone
businesslike in his desires
has torn out the moon by its roots.
Oh, my tin king is down now mother
down and broken,
my clear browed king
who seemed to know no hungers
has killed himself.
Old gutter mother
I am bereft now,
my heart has learnt nothing
but the stab of its own hungers
and the murky truth of a half-obsolete language
that holds at least the resonance 
of the throbbing, wandering earth.

Try to find me stones and mud now mother
give me somewhere to start,
green and struggling, a blade under snow,
for this place and age demand relentlessly
something I will never learn to give.

--Moya Cannon,
from Oar

Bathing Beauty

Trickster: sculpture mix; brown, black, and maybe shino glazes, blended; copper wire, hammered.
I've posted on this particular clay piece before here, though I did just give her the jewelry last week.  (Thanks, Trisha, for modeling so many years ago--and for the teaching.)

Reprise: Puck, Sleeping

I've posted photos before of Puck, Sleeping here.