Blog
Posted on 10/9/2017 3:03:34 PM
By Donald Fox
Comment on this
Throughout the history of civilized art there has typically been a political component in most eras. Even before individual artists were recognized for their work, the state or whatever regime was in charge utilized art for propagandistic purposes to raise the profile of those in charge and often to intimidate enemies as well as to exert control over the general population. These days many artists eschew politics except when it cannot be avoided, for example, if an artist’s work should be deemed controversial or offensive in some way. Politics then arises from the top down via some censorship arm of the government or from the bottom up via family, religious, or other social group (consider books banned from libraries). In my own work, I have no political interest other than freedom of expression, which in America is a politically guaranteed right under law.
However, these days I can hardly write about art without thinking politically because of the current social environment that has exposed long-festering resentments between conservative and liberal factions and the abuses of power (and money) from both sides of the political fence. Religion, race, sex, class, sexual orientation, and freedom of expression are all reeling from sometimes overlapping conflicts, concerns, and confusion with little clear leadership to help address issues. As much as I disagree with positions of the Catholic Church, I have to admit that the current pope has shown more leadership than most world leaders on important issues like climate change and maintaining open dialogue among disparate groups of people. But that church also has a long history of abuse of power and privilege as a result of its authoritarian structure, and so many of its policies are suspect in my view. Admittedly, I am not a religious person and therefore am suspicious of any that claim to know firsthand the mind of some higher power to which all others should be subservient. All the major religions make this claim and yet all come to different conclusions that tend to exclude the others.
My own country has a president who does not know how to lead or to be an example for those he was elected to serve. He acts as though he is running a personal business with no board of directors. Every issue eventually comes down to what is best for him or who disagreed with him or criticized him. As one Republican Senator recently noted, the White House has become an “adult day-care center.” Perhaps if there were arts and crafts in the White House as in many day-care centers, there would be more effectiveness and productivity. Just a thought.
For most Americans, art is not a central issue in their lives; they are not directly affected by it though some may enjoy aspects of it (music, movies, literature, theater, for example). Politics, on the other hand, does affect them daily, for it hits them in their pocketbooks and news media keep most social issues front and center. One issue or another will also be of concern as a direct impact or as a challenge to personal beliefs. Central among these beliefs for Americans is the right to free expression, what we designate ‘free speech.’ This includes the right to worship, right to choose, right to learn, right to opine and a free press, right to peaceful assembly, and right to speak truth to power. There is artistry as well as utility within our Constitution.
In spite of the checks and balances within our political system, we are experiencing a time where many things are out of balance. The hurried pace of our lives and the complexities of our cultural and spiritual challenges have added to a kind of national dissociative disorder wherein fractious factions believe that answers exist within a narrow framework rather than a universal one. Many of the great artists of the past have looked to nature for principles that have helped them define and organize expression into artistic statements whether visual or literary. Nature functions according to ecological systems that interact and express a fractal-like web of life on this planet. Nature balances itself, and we would do well to pay heed to its lessons.
Ref: the 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance with film score by Philip Glass.
Posted on 10/6/2017 10:29:01 PM
By Donald Fox
Comment on this
Emerging Yellow
It doesn’t take much imagination to consider that there are consequences for actions. It does take some self-awareness, however, but even this can be denied when something more important – or seemingly so – takes center stage. Denial is the primary action for self-preservation in the short term but leads to destruction in the long term. What can I possibly be talking about here? As a child I sometimes told lies or exaggerated truths in order to avoid punishment for the results of my poor judgment. These half-truths I did not see as moral lapses since I was self-protecting, but this kind of behavior can become a pattern of behavior that over time may result in moral corruption or lead to more severe consequences. And this could be the basis for a novel about disintegration of character. It would readily be a modern moralistic tale.
Many modern cities are built on land that once was pristine forest. Forests, as scientists have discovered over the past hundred years or so, are remarkable ecosystems among many other ecosystems all of which make up the largest ecosystem that is the planet on which we live. Forests change over time. Trees and plants and animals grow old, die, and return to the Earth from which they came becoming food for new growth. Nothing is wasted in nature. Even lowly species like termites serve a specific purpose. In their case, they are part of the clean-up crew, and they are remarkably adapted to that task.
Early man may have noted the various components of natural order in the birth-death cycle. He would have seen the predators and how that whatever was left over from one of their kills would disappear given time. Scavengers would have made quick work of cleaning carcasses leaving only the bones to decompose more slowly as lesser and even microscopic creatures carried out the task of bone disposal. Certain creatures were admired for their efficiency and ingenuity. Some were elevated to the status of gods or demigods.
As people banded together and created the beginnings of civilizations, they sometimes emulated what they saw in nature but more often moved toward isolating themselves from the natural world as their imaginations enabled them to create new forms of habitation often through manipulation of that natural world (examples are all around us in wood, stone, concrete, glass, metal and continued as more was discovered about nature – “better living through chemistry,” for example). Much of our innovation, however, has come at a price that is often ignored or worse, denied. The manipulative, possibly innocent, child will lie to protect his interests, but the child that continues to lie and deny is no longer innocent and is on a path of self-destruction both morally and physically.
All those beautiful homes constructed from timbers extracted from increasingly decimated forests can still serve as food sources for those tiny, blind creatures that continue to perform the tasks for which they were designed. We fight back against them by pumping the constructions and the ground with chemicals to kill or inhibit what we see as their destructive nature. Ironically, we add to the destruction of a larger segment of our own environment as those chemicals leach into groundwater and waterways. This story has been repeated with a variety of creatures we call pests by us utilizing a variety of chemicals that are poisonous, carcinogenic, or hormone disruptors – all part of our concept of better living. That we are perpetually surprised by nature’s response to our arrogance is in itself surprising.
Posted on 9/30/2016 7:45:43 PM
By Donald Fox
Comment on this
Time Passage
Days are growing noticeably shorter; that is, the hours of daylight are lessening. This has been a gradual change since days were lengthening up until the Summer solstice in June. We are now about a week and a half past the Fall equinox when length of day and night are equal, and we are moving towards the Winter solstice that occurs December 21st. Since I leave for work about the same time each day during the week, I can easily see how the sun rises a few minutes later. I’m still at work when the sun goes down, so I miss the sunset and am unaware of its timing. There is pleasure in noticing the small shifts I do see in a continuous natural cycle.
I also watch the moon as it goes through its phases day after day and week after week. Several cloudy days in a row may hinder that vision, but it is comforting and pleasurable to match my guess of how much the moon has changed since I last saw it when it once again emerges into view. Earlier in the year we experienced several so-called supermoons when the full moon is closest to the Earth in its orbital path, and we should see one this October. It does appear noticeably larger in the sky at these times.
These phenomena are always present on a continuous basis but so easy to overlook as we may be distracted by the events in our lives that seem so pressing, artificial though they may be by nature’s calendar. In a way this is our dilemma as self-aware human beings. We look outward to our place within the natural order while also overlooking that place as we shift vision to some imaginary world, a virtual reality, if you will, of our own making. Nature has consistency compared to the short chronology of our lives, yet we constantly alter our own sense of reality by the inventions of our minds, which often includes intentional alteration of the natural order from which we sprang (changes in agriculture, communication, transportation, habitat, construction, extension of vision microscopically and macroscopically, theories of creation and meaning, deciphering the genetic code…).
I am not necessarily suggesting any of this is bad or wrong, but I do think we are altering who we are and may be exaggerating our importance within the grand scheme (if there is such a thing). Ultimately, all of the challenges we face come from within rather than from without. Yes, there are massive natural forces that reign down horrendous destruction from time to time, and we cannot always predict that. But we have also unleashed power more destructive than nature’s ferocity, power that can obliterate us all within seconds, or, as we may be doing now, slowly over generations. And yet we continue to create positively within the midst of the self-created hazards. From this there is hope.
It is the unmindful work that is deleterious, the doing without regard for consequences, the impatience and intolerance with natural differences, and the misunderstandings grown from self-aggrandizement, what many have in the past called slights of omission or slights of pride. The wisest among us have recognized this and given this message again and again like so many fragrant flowers that bloom repeatedly wherever there is the slightest nourishment to support their fruition. Here, too, lies hope.
Posted on 9/18/2016 6:03:36 PM
By Donald Fox
Comment on this
In a recent Smithsonian e-mail, a link was provided to an online article by Colin Dickey in response to a recently published book entitled Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences of a Cuddly Killer, a new book by conservation scientist Peter P. Marra and travel writer Chris Santella. Marra and Santella argue that cats are an invasive species that have negative impact on environments in which they have free range or live in feral colonies. The domestication of cats began a long process of symbiotic relationship between cats and humans that has resulted in cats becoming parasitic and the cause (or potential cause) of certain bird species going extinct. It should be noted that Marra is an ornithologist and therefore may be somewhat biased. But, so am I, being a cat lover.
Cats are natural predators, or at least their distant cousins are, just as wolves (cousin to dogs) are predators. Feral cats certainly will forage for food, but what creature would not if not provided with a constant source of nourishment? Sometimes domesticated cats will hunt small creatures including birds or squirrels, lizards, frogs, snakes, or insects, this from impulse deep in their feline genetic coding. I don’t deny this and have even saved numerous critters from the clutches of my cats when their main interest was a playful (although potentially deadly) game of diversion rather than consumption. That Marra and Santella blame cats for upsetting some concept of natural balance seems quite exaggerated given the evolutionary history of our planet.
Frankly, I would rather place focus on humans and call them an invasive species that has done far more damage to other living creatures both plants and animals including many varieties of cats and birds. I’m not referencing global warming – not yet – I’m thinking about destruction of habitat, clearcutting of forests, pollution of streams and rivers, devastation from pesticides (anyone remember Silent Spring?), nuclear disasters, the development and release of countless chemical poisons, hormone disruptors, destruction of coastlines, squandering of natural resources, strip mining, acid rain, destruction and devastation caused by centuries of wars, weapons of mass destruction, genocide, nuclear proliferation, spread of disease, mountains and islands of garbage on land and at sea, and continuous development with little regard to natural habitat or natural beauty. The Earth and environmental movement of the late sixties and seventies often showed satellite pictures of lighted cities at night and pointed to their uncanny similarity to images of human cancer cells. Some have even gone so far as to claim humanity is a cancer unleashed upon the Earth. Our track record is not so good.
Animals of whatever kind adapt to their environments, or they die. We humans continue to think that we should adapt everything to us. It is our birthright, isn’t it? Most creation myths, however, place us in a caretaker role. We have the ingenuity to do this, but our excesses tend to dominate. We have made many short term decisions with very long term consequences, and we continue to act as though there is little concern. Perhaps we have unwittingly unleashed cats to alter an already altered environment, but we continue to do worse on a more massive scale. Certainly there are positives from our trek through time, and some of us are working to undo the worst of what we have done. Our positive efforts need to be amplified, but this will not happen without a general raising of consciousness and acknowledgement that our actions always have consequences.
Posted on 8/26/2016
By Donald Fox
Comment on this
There was a time in my life when I planted and raised vegetables year after year. It was gratifying to work the soil, feed it with compost and manure in preparation for planting. Many plants were jump-started by seeding them in peat pots and then transplanting the young plants rather than just tossing seeds into the garden. Typically I grew a range of basic vegetables like tomatoes, broccoli, kale, snow peas, corn, lettuce, Brussels sprouts, eggplant, asparagus, and also fruits like cantaloupe, watermelon, blackberries, and strawberries. During this time, I studied organic methods and avoided pesticides and fertilizer but paid attention to nurturing the soil in order to nurture the plants, which in turn nurtured my family and me and select friends.
Not only does growing food provide delicious and nutritious eating, but also the pleasure derived from watching plants grow day by day, caring for them, and building relationships with them is immensely appealing and satisfying. The adage that you are what you eat had special meaning in those days. Anyone with access to fresh produce also knows there is no comparison between food from the garden and that from a grocery store.
What I learned from growing my own were skills, sensitivity, and attention to detail (especially what works and what doesn’t, how to resolve certain issues, and the unique character of individual plants) I have applied to the creation of art and its unique challenges through many years of practice. Thinking of the creative process metaphorically as a living process of growth and development seems totally natural since art is metaphor, and much art comes from the artist’s interaction with the world around him or her. On some level art is always about the connection between self and the world.
Posted on 8/4/2016
By Donald Fox
Comment on this
A tree has no agenda. A flower does not scheme while it waits for the sun to rise. And the sun, neither does it balk to share its light with the moon and the tree and the flower. The parts of nature move and shift according to their design. Life expresses and declines. Life transforms from one part to another, and underneath it all atoms and molecules spin and turn, combine and recombine as energy ebbs and flows. It is the human heart that longs for something it does not have, plans and maneuvers and manipulates in order to make something that may enhance or destroy. Like other living beings the human seeks survival, and like other living beings that survival sometimes takes from other living beings. But the human heart also dreams of things beyond itself, seeks understanding, shares its spirit, and on occasion sacrifices itself to a higher purpose though that purpose may be elusive.
It is the human flower that blooms with poetry, with music, with dance, and with art of all forms – ideas and feelings molded into symbolic shape. Like leaves these human flowers transform light into energy that carries from generation to generation. We cannot mine for gems more precious in the hard rock of Earth no matter how difficult the task may be or how deep those veins may run. The light of imagination illuminates from the inside out and reflects back to the sun and moon and as far as the farthest star.
Posted on 7/1/2016 7:30:55 PM
By Donald Fox
Comment on this
I grew up along the southeast coastal area of North Carolina, an area known for its long leaf pine trees but also lots of oaks and other deciduous trees. Bird species included many varieties of shore birds as well as the state bird, the cardinal, and other songbirds, the most melodic of which has to be the mockingbird (and those we know we shouldn’t kill). There are many similarities of flora and fauna in southeast Texas where I’ve lived for nearly forty years. I’ve also had opportunities to travel and to compare the mountainous regions of the east coast with those of west central and western states. The latter is far more rugged and dramatic, but that is because the Appalachian chain of mountains is far older and more worn down from the ravages of time.
One aspect of most any landscape that is fascinating and intriguing is the adaptability of the creatures that inhabit it. From the bright plumage of male birds that enables them to attract mates to ingenious camouflage of snakes and certain animals that enable them to remain hidden, we find an incredible array of shapes, forms, and colors, all of which appeal to the artistic eye (or that of any nature lover). I am also intrigued by the ways animals navigate and move through their respective landscapes.
How is it exactly that a bird can fly full speed through dense foliage and branches and barely ruffle a feather? How can a full grown deer race down a thickly treed mountainside and disappear within a few seconds without crashing headlong into one or more of those trees that are not moving away from the deer? Some extra sense beyond that of humans enables these animals to move with grace and elegance through their landscape. We can say that they are one with their environment.
I think of those creatures sometimes as I lay down lines on paper or strokes on a canvas and begin to build a collection of marks that suggest substance or space, form or value or color. The lines that I may use create boundaries that either enclose or exclude and actually do both simultaneously. Artists often use the terms positive shape and negative space in discussing how an image is revealed on a flat surface or understood as existing in space. In our uniquely human way, we are as adept at maneuvering among the conceptual, the perceived, and the realized as animals move through their inhabited space. We think, plan, make judgments, and choose. We imagine and create and recast our world with symbol and metaphor. We maneuver through present observation, memory, and projected plans called goals to create our own thick forest where we have learned to see both part and whole as inseparable partners joined by the experience of existence.
Through our art we celebrate nature just as we reinforce our part as natural beings. We become the thinking side of nature, record its and our motion, give voice to its irascible energy, and interpret its moods and colors. We reveal nature to herself and our nature to ourselves
Posted on 9/4/2015 11:40:06 PM
By Donald Fox
Comment on this
Back in the 60s a number of social movements were underway. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, but years preceding that the struggle for racial equality had been waged throughout the South. Vietnam was an unpopular and divisive war that was rooted in inequality for young men, both racially and economically. College students had deferments from the draft as long as they maintained adequate grades and remained in school. The burden of military service tended to fall on the poor and the less well educated.
During this time also was the birth of the environmental movement. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) brought awareness of the dangers of DDT and hazardous pollution. Many turned their attention to information about nature’s cooperative workings, and the study of ecosystems became an expanded branch of science. The counter-culture movement spread first among the young and then throughout society. The publication of The Whole Earth Catalog had a major impact on environmental awareness and the nascent concept of sustainability in those days before personal computers and the internet. Information spread through different kinds of social networking: publications, television news, radio, college campuses, underground newspapers, and face to face contact.
The Whole Earth Catalog introduced the ideas of Buckminster Fuller, Noam Chomsky, and other social and science writers interested in Gaia, the Earth Mother. The Human Potential movement was born, and increasingly scholars and social thinkers looked at larger systems and their components – microcosm and macrocosm became frequently used terms.
Philosophers and artists noticed and utilized basic forms upon which our world and universe are built. The spiral, for example, prevalent in nature and found in many ancient designs, had been mathematically considered by ancient Greek thinkers in their concept of the Golden Mean. A rectangle proportionally divided produces a spiraling set of smaller rectangles contained within the larger. Much later, botanists noted the spiraling growth of all manner of plants around a central axis from seedling to mature structure. A weed, a tomato plant, and a towering sequoia tree all followed similar spiral development. Biologists observed growth patterns of animal horns and other body structures, and eventually discovered the double helix structure of our own DNA. Whirlpools, cyclones, hurricanes, tornados, and even larger weather patterns follow spiraling energetic movement. Astronomers observed the spiraling arms of galaxy after galaxy including our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Again, from microcosm to macrocosm, a collective sense of unity appeared built into the very core of life.
Poet William Butler Yeats in the early 20th century developed an arcane philosophy centered around what he called gyres and cones. He applied this to historical movement in time, essentially a spiraling upward momentum that intersects with another spiraling movement, and ultimately an infinite number of spiraling movements that energetically represent individual expressions in a continuum of life. The Chinese concept of Yin and Yang expresses a similar idea of energetic movement between opposing yet symbiotic forces. Yeats has basically taken artistic inclination for imagistic and symbolic thinking into a complex explanation, or attempted explanation, of creative energy. Not all artists will philosophize in such a way, but they do make use of their affinity for images and symbols. That most of these symbols are found in nature should not be surprising when we consider that we are nature expressing itself through imaginative thought and action.
(originally published as A Little History 3-11-12)
Posted on 7/12/2015 5:40:26 PM
By Donald Fox
Comment on this
The Rolling Bridge - Heatherwick Studio
A show at the Cooper Hewitt museum in New York focuses on the design work of Heatherwick Studio in London, the brainchild of Thomas Heatherwick. It is likely that anyone unfamiliar with the name Thomas Heatherwick will have seen some of his studio’s design work especially if an Olympic sports fan. He designed the cauldron for the Olympic flame at the 2012 London Olympics.
From an article discussing the exhibit on the Cooper Hewitt website: “Heatherwick Studio, established in 1994, is recognized for its highly inventive approach to everyday design challenges, frequently combining novel engineering with new materials and innovative technology to create unusual, often sculptural, building forms. The project that first garnered Heatherwick international recognition was the Rolling Bridge near London’s Paddington Station. Asked to design a bridge to span a small inlet through which boats pass, Heatherwick acknowledged that most drawbridges are unattractive when raised. His solution was to create a hydraulic bridge made of eight sections that rolls up into a circular snail-like form. The bridge won the 2005 British Structural Steel Award and continues to attract crowds.” http://www.cooperhewitt.org/2015/02/05/cooper-hewitt-to-present-special-exhibition-provocations-the-architecture-and-design-of-heatherwick-studio/
Another article on the Smithsonian Institution’s website discusses more fully the innovative ideas emanating from Heatherwick Studio. Also, at the end of that article is a link to Thomas Heatherwick’s TED Talk, roughly twelve minutes, in which he discusses and illustrates some of his most innovative designs including a retractable footbridge that curls up on itself, a power station shaped like a mountain, and the famous Seed Cathedral designed and built for the UK pavilion at the 2010 Expo in Shanghai.
This kind of creative work gives me great hope for the future.
Posted on 7/4/2015 4:21:04 PM
By Donald Fox
Comment on this
As a National Geographic subscriber through my school library, I receive weekly emails with links to stunning natural photography by professional and non-professional photographers. A recent email included links to several short videos utilizing time-lapse photography. One featured video is titled Illusions of Light: A Journey into the Unseen by Goldpaint Photography (Brad Goldpaint). The video begins with night scenes of Los Angeles and streaks of colored lights from moving cars and flashing signs sped up by the time-lapse trickery. A narrator tells of the 1994 earthquake that caused massive power outages and how many residents called 911 when they observed a strange silver cloud in the night sky. They were among the estimated 80 million people on earth (at the time) who had never seen the Milky Way, the band of stars most visible in the unpolluted night sky that is the galaxy in which our home planet, and we as its progeny, reside. The remainder of the video is an incredible series of views of the Milky Way from various Earth vantage points as that band of stars appears to move across the sky. We know, of course, that it is Earth’s rotation that makes the stars appear to move just as we experience the apparent movement of the sun and the moon.
The 1982 documentary Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance was a narration-less film largely shot with time-lapse footage. An insistent, repetitive score by Philip Glass, noted for his spare, almost monotonous (minimalist) compositions, emphasized the urgent energy of the imposition of civilization on nature. The title, Koyaanisqatsi, in the Hopi language means “unbalanced life” as indicated in the film’s subtitle. Although there is much beautiful photography in the film, a viewer is left with a disturbed feeling and uneasiness at being witness to the impact that our modern lifestyle has had on the planet and ourselves.
Illusion of Light, on the other hand, is a video with positive intent to illustrate the beauty of nature captured through time-lapse sped-up imagery particularly the effects of sky (and space) as an expansive adjunct to the already expansive natural settings on Earth. It emphasizes the grandeur of the world we inhabit. Time-lapse photography collapses extended natural movement into seconds rather than hours. Therefore, we can easily experience transitions we might not otherwise notice so easily like the arcing motion of the galaxy’s luminous path across the expanse of night sky from horizon to horizon. In fact, the entire visible field of stars moves together. The creators of the video illustrate for the rest of us what ancient ancestors so carefully observed as part of natural changes, daily and seasonal rhythms. Ancient Egyptians, Persians, pre-Columbian Peruvians, Pacific Islander seafarers, and the Celts, among other ancient cultures utilized the stars for both practical and spiritual purposes.
Art teaches us the wisdom of our ancestors as well as reminds us of what we have forgotten or may overlook in our haste to attend to what seems important in the moment but has evaporated by the next day if not the next hour.
To watch the video: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/short-film-showcase/time-lapse-lose-yourself-in-the-night-sky?source=relatedvideo
Posted on 4/22/2015
By Donald Fox
Comment on this
Today is Earth Day, first celebrated in the United States on this day in 1970. It’s hard to believe that was forty-five years ago, two years before I started graduate school and two more years until the OPEC oil embargo that created gasoline rationing in the U.S. The earth still suffers from our energy addiction, for in spite of increased environmental awareness, we haven’t been able to reduce our consumption. Since that time we have become not only increasingly mobile but also increasingly global, both in our interactions with others and with the ways in which local actions affect the global landscape. Oil is still a resource over which there is much contention. Access to clean water is the next major challenge, one that is potentially far more serious than declining oil reserves.
The earth has been celebrated in art and literature, and our understanding of its intricacies and balances has increased through science. Yet the “better living through chemistry” idea has also unleashed scourges with which we continually are forced to resolve, or at least attempt to resolve. We have moved far beyond the simple clearing of a forest to make a field in order to plant crops. We have created massive disruptions, devastated forests, polluted waters, depleted the soil, and poisoned the air that we breathe. Progress has come at a very hefty price, one that may well have rendered us bankrupt though we are loath to admit it.
As we look to the past and all those civilizations that have vanished, what we know from many of them comes through the art that has been left behind. The majority of all that has been created has been lost forever, but we have enough to be able to reconstruct some ideas about some of those ancient cultures. What about a thousand or ten thousand years from now? The artistic wealth currently housed in museums and private collections may well have disappeared with the lack of energy to sustain them. No more climate-controlled and shock-proof buildings within which to house these amazing artifacts. People will not care for they will be too busy trying to sustain themselves and will likely have long forgotten their creative roots. Such a dystopian world is not so unlikely. Let us hope, however, that current artists can show us a better way.
