About Nostalgia

I’m not sure that’s the word for it. It is a deep sense of loss with some sadness attached to it. For a time, a place and for the people that were part of it. We were young and kind of confused. Maybe that is part and parcel of being eighteen, nineteen and twenty years old. Going to school to study art was, in retrospect, dreamlike. It seemed to become history very quickly and was forever cemented into the core of my life.

Other experiences, the family that was mine until I lost my mother, my twenty-four year marriage, the years when my children were children — they all bring on nostalgia (or whatever the feeling is). But those years at school are somehow more redolent of loss. Some treasure or value that escaped perception while it was happening. Was it that we were too busy with our lives to know that we were young? Or that most of the people who were actors on that stage are gone? Even the school has been transformed: a renovated interior (bless them for leaving the outside of the structure intact). There’s a second building now and even a dormitory building. And, of course, the El is gone.

A few years ago as I rode down in the elevator (pity they changed that wonderful old elevator car*), there was a student riding with me. I said: “Good school, huh?” He said with seriousness: “Oh, yes!”. I was glad to know that the appreciation is still intact. The education has been tuition free since the beginning. The school has now run into financial difficulties so that may soon change.

I know why it is with me now. I am reading a biography of painter Joan Mitchell. When she lived and worked in NYC she was on Tenth Street on the east side at the time the elevated train ran close and noisily by on Third Avenue. She was in her thirties then and I was at school on Eighth Street and my first real love was on Tenth. The first housing of the Whitney Museum was down the street; this was in the fifties and abstract expressionism was in full bloom. It is only now, so many years later, that I know where I was then. So young and so absorbed by it all, I wasn’t able to stand back to look at where I was and what was happening. I suppose we never get the full picture of any piece of our lives until we gain some distance and look back with less involvement in the details.

*From a NYTimes article: COOPER UNION -- At the time Otis was perfecting his safety elevator, Peter Cooper was making plans for an academy on Astor Place. Cooper was smart enough to know that elevators were in the future, but he was a little too smart for his own good. Having calculated that a cylinder would hold more passengers than a cube, and so would naturally be the cab shape of the future, he put a cylindrical shaft into his building.

His geometry may have been right but his assumption was wrong, and for more than 100 years a box-shaped cab ran in Cooper's shaft, a square peg in a round hole.

Actress Jeanne Moreau: My life is very exciting now. Nostalgia for what? It's like climbing a staircase. I'm on the top of the staircase, I look behind and see the steps. That's where I was. We're here right now. Tomorrow, we'll be someplace else. So why nostalgia? 

About Validation

Do we know if we’re funny or smart or appropriate if we are not bouncing off another person? Doesn’t most of our sense of who we are and how we fit into our world depend greatly on how others respond to us? A salary, being fairly paid for our labor is warranted reward. Being told you look good is better than your mirror. Being remembered on your birthday, very pleasant. Receiving a grant is validation with cash; how nice! 

Long ago I read an interview with Eva Hesse, the German painter who died young in New York City in 1970. She said something about being strengthened by the attention she received. Art critic Arthur Danto mentioned she always felt she was fighting for recognition in a male dominated art world. That was back in the sixties but given the self-doubt she suffered I imagine it would not have been much different at a later time. I am sure that every pat on the back that came her way was much appreciated.

Another long ago article that I clipped told of how winning an Oscar helps you to live longer. Evidently an average of four more years. Hmm…that wasn’t cosmetic surgery? The writer goes on to say multiple winners average about six years longer than their peers. He quotes Dr. Donald Redelmeier of the University of Toronto: “Once you get the Oscar, it gives you an inner sense of peace and accomplishment that can last your entire life. That alters the way your body deals with stress.”

Now since most of us are more likely to watch the Oscar event this month than we are to win one, we need to find our validation through other routes. After all, we don’t want to miss out on the possibility of adding a few more years to our stay. Something I have done a couple of times is call my own phone number while I’m out and leave a warm message for myself. Fun to do but I doubt it will increase my longevity. The experience of exhibiting paintings is a two edged sword. The admiring comments that come from friends and family are great, we want their support, but there could be some bias there. While it might sound crass, the most gratifying response comes from making sales. If somebody likes your work enough to want to pay for it and live with it, that’s very real validation.  And when there are no sales it doesn’t matter much that the previous show sold out. The success needs to happen with some constancy. Whereas winning an Oscar or two seems to suffice.

From Joseph Campbell: “Any life career that you choose in following your bliss should be chosen with that sense – that nobody can frighten me off this thing. And no matter what happens, this is the validation of my life and action.”

The image above is like the one of last week of some of the collage material that I put together on my computer. It is part of what I will be doing while I wait to have a complete studio again.

About a Fresh Life

From a recent interview in Time of poet John Ashberry:

You're 84. Do you think about death?

I've never not thought about it. There are not that many things to write poetry about. There's love and there's death and time passing and the weather outside, which is horrible today.

I think about death too. It’s hard not to as one grows old. But now I’m thinking more about change. Maybe not as likely to summon the muse as are death and time and the weather, but certainly grist for this mill. I’ve experienced some: change from single to married to single again. Big ones those. Change of country and language. Becoming a parent four times over. Some losses of people to be forever mourned. Change from well-salaried university professor (an impostor at that) to living close to the bone as a painter. All difficult, all doable.

I remember something from a book by humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers, in which he compared the human spirit to some seaweed he observed from the shore at Mendocino. It was an upright weed that was flattened by every wave and then sprang erect again. He was speaking of trials far more hellish than those of ordinary lives mentioned above. I believe it is that same core of tenacity that keeps most of us plunging into our next chapters.

I notice now the upside of change as I recuperate from the tiredness brought on by the physical, emotional and every other kind of depletion caused by moving home and studio. It is the joy of a new start. Not death-like to inspire poetry, but life-like to inspire this blog. Out with the old! I am sending loads of collected-over-time objects for just-in-case moments to the Rescue Mission or the dump or Craig’s list. Some things have been given away. I don’t have to feel responsible for it all now. And I can, with a clear and free conscious, set out on fresh projects. My new studio will have storage solutions that will allow me easy access to the big boards I used to use to make large works. Once these boards started piling up, one atop the other, it became too difficult to get at them and smaller work ensued. And my kitchen will be less crowded in spite of being smaller than its previous incarnation. My entire operation will become simpler. How lovely.

The downside, and I experienced this painfully when I moved back to this country, is that I will reach for things I was used to and that I no longer own. Can you believe that occasionally I seek my wonderful wooden handled ice cream server? More than thirty years gone? There were several possessions that were the perfect examples of form serving function that I never again owned.

From novelist Arnold Bennet:  Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts. And, I will add, maybe some sadness.

The image above is of some of the collage material that is waiting for me to have a studio again. It will eventually find a home within one of the larger paintings that are happening in my fantasies at the moment.

About Disorder

Writer Anais Nin said: "When I cannot bear outer pressures anymore, I begin to put order in my belongings…As if unable to organize and control my life, I seek to exert this on the world of objects."

As I create chaos in the process of moving home and studio, I fantasize about the moment when I will look at the piles of boxes and the general disorder we have created at the new home — and at the contents of my studio which are now housed in a storage unit. I look forward to making order from that awful jumble.

I believe that is what art is about. One takes control and makes something to one’s own notion of order or beauty or whatever it is that satisfies and rewards the mind and/or the senses.

I expect to be in that mode again soon. In the meantime I will spend as much time in my fantasies of the future as the reality of today will allow.

The images above are of my studio in the past when everything was in place. 

About Missing the Muse

I miss my muse. Oh, how I miss my muse. I miss the comfort of doing something I really want to do. I miss the peace of being focused and working. I miss the satisfaction of seeing something get done. I miss being able to plan a day and living it.

I am submerged in chaos. I am without the safety of my routine within the refuge of the home I built around me. I want my studio back and my blesséd routine.

Ordinarily I start my day by reviewing the world within my walls and putting everything in order. I had a dear friend who once said that she and I needed to have everything at right angles to everything else. Well, sure ‘nuff. When the dishes are washed, the bed is made, and the bills are paid, my world is in place and I go to work. I can walk away from it all and into that place in myself that paints. I can forget everything for a while knowing that my reading chair and refrigerator will be waiting when I need them again. The phone is there too; I can temper the loneliness by dialing one of my kids. I can rest so that I can do the same next day. Is that a lot to ask?

Yes, of course it is. It is the never promised rose garden. Experiencing a minor bump in the road like moving one’s domicile, demonstrates yet again just how good a life this is. No tornados here. No major earthquake, no disaster nor tragedy of any kind. I’m moving from one very comfortable space to another that will be even better. Who would ever even think of complaining? Just a mega-kvetch, that’s who. Well, okay, a very, very tired mega-kvetch.

The half-price moving sale of paintings dated prior to 2007 and that I am not currently marketing will continue until the studio is packed, sometime in the the week of the twenty-third. The final move is scheduled for the last weekend of this month. Email me at joangold@humboldt1.com for images and prices or for information or a studio appointment. The image above is Allegro ©2000, 10" x 26.5” . It is hanging in my studio and included in the sale.

About Possessions

I have tried not to get attached to things. It just doesn’t work for me. When I left the home I had put together in Caracas, I had to leave everything behind except for my children and what we brought in our suitcases. Actually, I did pack a few things and have them shipped: albums of photos and a few other items that would be irreplaceable. And then, because there was a minimum to be paid which entitled us to a certain amount of weight, I threw in a small teak table and an artisan-made chair. Not a bit more as this was 1979 and five dollars a pound to move to the US was daunting.

Now, many years later, I still miss the cookbook collection, and dream sometimes that I am back in that house running my hands over the surface of the dining room table. I would not change the life I have now for a return to that time. But I was attached to the home that was the site of our history as a family.

Now my home is in a state of total chaos as I am sorting through it all and with the help of my girls and my son, packing and beginning to get a home assembled yet again. I don’t have the lovely furniture I had before but it’s still hard to do the getting-rid-of part. I have a lot of stuff that I have kept just-in-case. I am a child of the great depression, have trouble throwing away food and tend to keep too much of anything that could possibly serve some useful purpose. But now it’s push come to shove. Trash or pack. The choice is easy to make.

According to my not very trustworthy memory, I have moved from dwelling to dwelling twelve times, the first few parent-powered, then on my own, later married with children and now with the assistance of these. This time it’s forever. Never again. Absolutely, never again. I plan to croak in my new digs and will be very careful to keep only what is unarguably useful. Says I.

The half-price moving sale of paintings dated prior to 2007 and that I am not currently marketing will continue until the studio is packed, sometime in the the week of the twenty-third. The final move is scheduled for the last weekend of this month. Email me at joangold@humboldt1.com for images and prices or for information or a studio appointment. The image above is Flourish ©2001, 23” x 60” (framed). It is hanging in my studio and included in the sale.

About Home

Elizabeth Bowen wrote in Death of the Heart:

"After inside upheavals, it is important to fix on imperturbable things. Their imperturbableness, their air that nothing has happened renews our guarantee. Pictures would not be hung plumb over the centers of fireplaces or wallpapers pasted on with such precision that their seams make no break in the pattern if life were really not possible to adjudicate for. These things are what we mean when we speak of civilization: they remind us how exceedingly seldom the unseemly or unforeseeable rears its head. In this sense, the destruction of buildings and furniture is more palpably dreadful to the spirit than the destruction of human life."

Well, I’m not sure I would agree with the last two lines. I experienced a strong earthquake years ago in Venezuela and remember beseeching whatever powers might be listening: “Just leave me my children and my husband”. Looking back I’m inclined to think that was selfish. What about all the other precious children and husbands? But selfishness is not my topic today. Maybe another time. Now in the throes of moving from my dwelling of sixteen years, I am thinking about home. 

I have painted little houses since kindergarten. They are safe places. Drawing or painting them puts me in a safe place. This is not a conscious act. It’s like reaching for chocolate when chocolate is the right thing. Moving is like being unsafe until the new home is made. This home will be made when everything (or almost everything) is in place and the house loses its strangeness. Putting familiar things, those that have been with me for the longer haul, in their places will be good. Hanging my paintings, which is the last thing I will do, should bring home into the house. But the interim, which has started as I take this home apart, is life on quicksand. The feeling is one of un-ease.

I know people who take their houses with them wherever they go. They are like snails except that their homes are within themselves. They are good travelers, willing to be transported at the drop of a hat. I wonder if they grew up feeling safe and just assume that the force will be with them (to coin a phrase). I am not so trusting, and while I envy that serenity, I prefer to watch my back at all times when away from my own confines. But I have made homes before and will do it again now. I know how. Just wish I could get from here to there with no in-between.

From Robert Montgomery: Home, the spot of earth supremely blest, A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.

The image above is one of the Little Houses series, actually a detail from Neighborhood, ©2008

Below we have an ode written by my friend Mike Yanke in response to About Napping. Behold, I’m a muse!

RECTANGLES ABOUND

Rectangles abound

This side of town.

They’re green and they’re blue

With varying hue.

Orange ones have dots

Reds have white spots.

Different as they may be

They’re all fun to go see.

Some with white borders

Others borderless in their orders.

Rectangles standing alone

Rectangles with an accompanying clone.

There’s multiples and more

There’s rectangles galore.

The creator of all these

Is so easy to please.

An afternoon bed

To rest her sweet head.

And what time of day

Does she want to go lay?

From one until three

It’s her life’s luxury.

She calls it her nap

To avoid the over-worked trap.

A nap ‘til she rises

She vehemently prizes.

There’s no need for it to be said

The shape of her bed.

It’s always rectangular

Not square, circular or triangular.

Rectangles abound

this side of town.