Think Tank

I am a podcast addict. I listen in the car, on runs, in the studio, while cleaning-several hours a day. I love to listen to the public radio stars like This American Life, Studio 360, Weekend America, The Splendid Table, and A Way With Words, but I also love the niche ones. I love listening to photography podcasts like Jeff Curtow's (both his history class and Camera Position), and Focus Ring, some I listen to even though I am not real fond of the hosts, but I'll spare them the criticism as I am just happy they are putting it out there for free. (Besides, I learn stuff all over the place, irritating factors aside.) There are the Design and Architecture and art ones, like Debbie Millman's and D and A, the crafty ones, like Craftsanity, Crafty Pod and Craftcast, the sewing ones, the health and fitness, the poetry, and I have gotten so much out of them. But recently one podcast has really made an impact on my life. So much so that last weekend I found myself gazing into a tank at Iwajimaya and trying to do a vulcan mind meld with a tangle of shrimp. I've decided to go Vegan.

Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's "Food for Thought" podcast has made me really think about the treatment of animals raised for producing eggs and milk. I have been off land animals for over a decade, but have still consumed eggs, dairy and fish (though infrequently). Well, her podcast has made me realize that consumption of dairy and eggs contributes greatly to the suffering of those animals I refuse to eat the flesh of. It makes no sense. So I am trying. And thinking. Ultimately, it brings up a lot of questions. I think what I find interesting is that in taking the action to avoid those foods, I am invited to live with some very interesting questions in a clearer way than I would if I only thought about them, but stayed in my comfort zone. You know? I don't claim to have any answers, and I don't believe you have to have everything worked out before you do it. I am not even sure I am not being ridiculous. But I keep trying to think, if I look at the creature, and could wish it extinguished for my benefit, OK then, eat it. I realize tons of people would have no problem with that. So OK. I mean, I am not sure I got through to the shrimp, but for now, I am going to consider that my deficiency, not theirs.

New Idol, Joseph Hecht, new ideas, new world

Check out this artist, Joseph Hecht, at http://www.armstrongfineart.com/searchresults.php?start=1&artistId=3346&artistId=3346.

So, I'll go further into it a paragraph down, but I got turned on to engraving recently. Weirdly enough, it was the tool at first. I love the way the graver cuts, sends up a tendril of metal, as the line grows, vine like, like peas. Oh, and it prints like sculpture. I have been thinking a lot about sensitivity, or rather, specificity of line, whether sensitive or brutal or whatever. Anyway. It seems to me that this medium offers so much in terms of working with this idea.

So I went out on a search for information about the technique, and for contemporary artists who have used it as an expressive medium. The first artist who gets trotted out is always Durer, of course, but he is much too, oh, I don't know, I can't breath in his prints. They stop energy to me, personally, though I do not presume to deny his genious. So I found several books at Powells, the best being John Buckland-Wright's, Etching and Engraving, Techniques and the Modern Trend. He actually discusses the creative potential of this little used medium, and shows examples of several engravers, Joseph Hecht, the author's (John Buckland-Wright), Mauricio Lazansky and Roger Vieillard being of most particular interest to me. I love what the author says about what the medium demands, and he has bracing, cautionary words about mindless hatching and mechanical line. Here he quotes William Blake, "The great and golden rule of art, as well as life is this:Thet the more distinct, sharp and wirey the bounding line, the more perfect the work of art; and the less keen and sharp, the greater the evidence of weak imagination, plagiarizing and bungling.' Buckland-Wright goes on to add that, "Outline is, in effect, the most important factor in line engraving. By outline, or rather contour, is meant the bounding line which, in the hands of a good artist, suggests the third dimension, implying what lies in front of it and that which is behind. It can possess immense subtlety in line engraving due entirely to the intrinsic character of the burin line." Which all comes to a truth I've felt weaving through my entire life. Everything is in that line of thinking. Presence is there, intention, breath and love. I am a dancer above all, but in this my chosen venue, I forget to dance sometimes.

I just finished taking a continuing ed class in intaglio at P.N.C.A. I avoided doing something like this for a long time, the list of reasons being exactly the kind that succeeds in stopping a person, that is, it was made up of vague wariness, stubbornness, and all kinds of whispering haints. It was desperation that got me over to the other side to do it. Several years ago, after focusing on theatre, performance art and exercise/dance for my young adult life. I followed my life long dream to seriously pursue my development as a visual artist, returning to school in my early thirties to get a degree in printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute. I trained in all the old, glorious toxic ways, especially interested in intaglio print making and book arts. Unfortunately, as I neared graduation, my biological clock began to ring in my ear and I became increasingly alarmed at the toxic nature of what it was I had been doing. If I was going to have a baby, and work, I needed to follow green printmaking procedures. There sunk several years of frustration in printmaking, though on the way up side, I gave birth to someone I had been missing my whole life. So anyway. In desperation I took the course. I had been setting up my own shop and knocking around making mistakes for several years, so I decided I deserved some clarity, and answers to questions that onlly come up when you are alone by yourself after graduation. Anyway, it was so worth it. The teacher was amazing, And it turns out so much of this stuff isn't so toxic, and I've learned scads. And the teacher there was the one who turned me on to engraving and in from my research I now have Joseph Hecht, my new art crush.