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Posted on 4/26/2018
By Donald Fox
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Once some years ago, I had been laid off from a construction job. I wasn’t too concerned because I knew I could get another one through my contacts. It was not unusual in construction to work jobs that were counted in months rather than years, but others always followed and many workers went from job to job as normal for their careers. One evening I drove over to a Seven-Eleven to pick up something and was accosted by a man asking for money. He launched into his tale of having just lost his job and… but I stopped him there and said that I, too, had just lost my job. “Yeah,” he said, “but you’ve got a car. If I had a car, I’d get me another job.”
I’ve owned a car since I was in college and had ready access to one from the time I was old enough to drive. A car quickly became an extension of my being in the world. It took me most any place I wanted to go including several cross-country trips. The dependency on a car in an urban environment is such that it is not conceived as a dependency. A car is a necessity, for it not only represents freedom and mobility; it is the tool of that freedom and mobility. Access to a car is assumed as much as anything else I may do expressively. It is a tool, and it is seen as essential.
Today there is much discourse about technology, especially electronic technology, and its power over our lives. But we humans have always assimilated some form of technology into who we are (and what we do). Language enabled us to build complex societies; writing expanded our thinking, communicating with each other and with our past, record-keeping enabled expansive trade and business. The wheel, ceramics, metals, and all the gradual improvements through one technological advancement or another moved us through the world and beyond the world in ways never before imagined. Are we addicted to technology or is the possibility of distraction just a side-effect of not understanding its potential for expression, learning, and growth?
Like others, sometimes I may succumb to a so-called mindless activity like game-playing on a computer or watching a television program or movie. Though these activities may be considered pastimes by many, for me they more often are challenges of mental exercise or critical thinking. The reasoning skills I developed through the study of math, the critical thinking skills developed through literary and artistic criticism combined with philosophical inquiry can elevate a walk in the park from simple physical exercise to intellectual enlightenment. Interaction with the creative expression of others also elevates my spirit and, as some would say, gets the creative juices flowing. For me, using my critical and creative faculties has solidified through many years of training and practice. This is not everyone’s response, and I can see the possibility of most any activity becoming a kind of addictive behavior. I was a smoker in the past and remember challenges with quitting.
I’ve also seen how someone not informed by knowledge or experience will take something as normal that may be relatively novel and with little historical relevance. I remember what it was like when radio was the only entertainment. The first television was an amazing leap into a new realm. But for me it was through television that I developed a life-long love of film. I learned American culture of the twenties, thirties, and forties through films shown on television when programming was sparse and those films filled the airways. This was combined with books and periodicals in both school and public libraries that gave me deeper understanding of the world my parents (and their parents) had lived through. History was fascinating, first by learning about those near generations but that led to previous ones and on to ancient times. I don’t see that kind of curiosity so much today among students, which is quite sad. Though technology has had its entertainment side (and potential downside), it has primarily been a tool for learning in my experience. Fortunately, I didn’t grow up with computers by which I mean that they are tools for me first and foremost. The game is how to use any technological instrument for expression and learning just as that car can take me into the mountains, to a museum, to places unseen, or to a party with friends.
Posted on 4/14/2018 9:08:48 PM
By Donald Fox
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The word thread is one of many words in English that holds clues to the power of language and the beauty of how meaning is rich and complex even in the simplest expression of a thought or idea. My own assumptions about the mind and its power to perceive are largely self-taught based on observation and contemplation but informed to some degree by reading, studying, and learning over many years. I consider myself a disciplined person in many ways, some of which I’ve learned from the traditional education process. But, I’m also impulsive, at least internally, and impatient. I may read about something and take up an idea discussed by following my intuition regarding its meaning rather than completing what the author may conclude. Eventually I may come back to finish that reading, but sometimes not. Where I have ventured with my own queries is of more interest. This is what artists often do with an idea, an encounter, an image, or a feeling – that thing called inspiration that sends the artist on a journey of discovery and expression.
We use the word thread to express moving in and around or through things like “threading a needle.” We follow a thread like a trail of breadcrumbs that may lead to some conclusion, insight, or understanding. We may thread a situation meaning we move carefully to create success. Sometimes an important circumstance may hang by a thread. These are metaphors of a kind based on what thread does in holding fabric or other material together as it weaves in whatever pattern, whatever stitch, to bind pieces into a whole garment, or many threads are woven or knitted into a single wearable clothing. Thread as a particular object is itself made by twisting separate filaments or fibers into a strengthened single strand for its dedicated purpose. Thread is a composite made by some enterprising human to fulfill a need, just as many things in nature (is to say everything in nature a stretch?) are composed of small parts that when combined add strength and durability. Life itself, although challenging to define, is no one single component but many essential parts in combination. The simplest one-celled organism has more than one part necessary to animate it, and all living things contain DNA. Animate and inanimate things are composed of atoms and molecules. The specifics of these components and how they thread together determine the entity.
The majority of my art works are made from paper or canvas, both threaded fabrics although created by different processes. These serve as the substrate or ground upon which a drawing or painting develops. A drawing can be created by a single pencil and how it is manipulated determines the result. Much has been written about marks made from chalk or charcoal or graphite. Many critics, historians, and artists have mused about when the first drawing was made and what was the motivation behind it. The oldest decorated object currently known is a shell from Java with an inscribed zig-zag design that is around five hundred thousand years old. This is strongly contrasted with a sensitive chalk drawing of a Madonna by Raphael from the fifteenth century. The latter is beautifully woven from many single linear strokes of chalk, sometimes smudged, to capture a lovely human female emanating spiritual love and compassion. There are threads in both objects that link us to the human desire to create and to express, to embellish in some way with our hands the world in which we find ourselves.
Personally, I am interested in exploring mysteries of creativity. Each mark or brushstroke is a thread leading to the next while linking to those that came before. Those can mean previous strokes but also can mean every preceding expression in the entire history of artistic expression, for all of that is deeply ingrained within those twisted strands of DNA that entwine throughout my entire organic structure. For me, every stroke is a song of joy echoing creative possibility, a song of the present and the past.
Posted on 4/11/2018 6:10:34 PM
By Donald Fox
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Just over a year ago, the Arizona ash in front of my house was damaged by an overnight windstorm. I blogged about that tree at the time (the original of which follows below). On the way to birthday breakfast today, my wife admired the portion of the tree we saved. It now stands gloriously green and tall in its spring finery. The pictures testify to our good judgment in saving the slender twin trunks that can be seen in the first photo in front of the old main trunk before that and the fallen portion were removed. I’m not exactly a pack rat, but I do save some things for future use, especially art pieces that get incorporated into new paintings or collages later on. There is a lesson in renewal here – birthday, spring, recycling, repurposing – all about continuity, which for me is a major purpose behind artistic expression. Here’s the original post from 3/25/17.
I’ve lived in my current house since buying it in 1991, so just under twenty-six years. At time of purchase the front yard contained two trees that were like mirror images, both Arizona ashes. A landscaper friend characterized the trees as overgrown weeds, but they were willowy, bright leafy green in the spring, and though beginning to show their age, my wife and I enjoyed them. Several years after we moved in, one of the trees began to lose branches whenever there was a heavy wind. Subsequently, that one had to be removed. When a city tree-trimming crew was working on the block one day to clear limbs from power lines, I asked the foreman what he would charge to have his crew take it down. He gave me an incredible price of seventy-five dollars cash. He gave his three-man crew five dollars each, and he pocketed the rest, a bonus for all since they were already being paid by the city.
The other tree flourished for another five years or so until it too began to lose smaller limbs. The main trunk grew into two trunks about five feet up, and both of those started to decay from the crotch upward. Despite this, I didn’t want to remove the tree because it gave the south face of the house great shade in the afternoon, and over all the tree was still quite lovely as it leafed out in the spring and swayed gently all summer long. The real reason I kept the tree, though, is because I came to admire its tenacity. Even with weakened trunks that grew slimmer each year, that tree withstood several hurricanes and other windstorms that took out oak trees and other stalwarts in the neighborhood. There was something almost heroic about that aging tree standing up to the elements, becoming a naked gaggle of twisted branches every fall, and reviving with rich, variegated crown each spring. It even produced two smaller trunks on its east side as though to say, see, there’s still good life in me. Hurricane Ike blew through Houston in 2008 and took out two support posts from the front porch and dozens of oak branches in the backyard and trees all over Houston, but that tree did not lose a single branch.
Each year I would have to trim out some branches from that ash tree to keep its crown somewhat balanced, I trimmed the fast-growing newer trunks to encourage them to grow taller, and I continued to admire that tree’s strength and flexibility though its main trunk continued to thin. Last night [3/2017], during a fast-moving thunderstorm with high winds, the trunk on the north side was finally blown down across the front walk and halfway out into the street. I called my landscaper friend and he contacted the tree man with whom he has worked for over twenty years.
I remembered J.W. from work he had done at my mother-in-law’s house almost ten years ago, although I did not meet him at the time. He arrived several hours later with a crew of two young bucks. J.W. is now quite elderly himself, and he made his command post at the edge of the shaded front brick planter from which he barked orders to the younger men. His forty-two years of working with trees had wizened him in the ways of growing things, and there was an air of Entish thoughtfulness in his slow movements and bark-like furrowed brow. I could sense a bit of Treebeard in his twinkling eyes.
J.W. told me that he never went to school to learn about trees, but he kept his eyes open and paid attention. He knew how to save trees that were diseased or damaged and when it was time to let one go. He could see as could I that it was time to let this old ash go, but he also concurred when I told him I wanted to preserve the two young slender trunks, and so we did. He also told me that he traveled over several states doing his tree work. He had built a clientele by word of mouth, and many of his Houston customers who had vacation homes elsewhere would always call him to take care of those treed properties. He said he never turned down a job no matter how small and would travel anywhere without hesitation. He was a fitting surgeon for my Arizona ash and made its loss a respectful win as those two young trunks now stand on their own.
Note the spindly twins in front of the large trunk.
One year, one month later.
Posted on 4/8/2018 6:47:04 PM
By Donald Fox
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Once while hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains west of Winston-Salem, I was on a trail that had emerged from woods and headed upward towards a lookout. The treeline to my left sparkled in the morning light as many leaves were still damp with dew. Vertical trunks created linear accents of light and dark against shadowed openings and variegated clusters of vegetation. With my sight caught by these visual delights, I did not notice the branch in my path until it cracked sharply when I stepped upon it. This spooked a deer I had not noticed who promptly fled down the mountain among the trees. Within a few seconds the deer was gone despite the thickness of the brush and trees. Even so, I registered that swift movement that reminded me of flickering frames from an early film. The deer was there and there and there, and then she was gone.
The impact of those few moments made me aware of the fragments of time that we piece together into the larger fabric of what we call experience. Mentally this all seems like a continuous flow of thought and feeling that is quite literally a complex jumble of sensations that are given form and meaning by the conscious mind; sensation becomes perception. The deer did not have to think how to maneuver so swiftly among the many obstacles in her path as she fled to safety from the awe-struck and somewhat clumsy human. Neither does a bird have to think consciously to avoid hitting branches or twigs while flying full speed through the boughs of trees. These animals are conditioned to their environments. It is their nature to move as necessary within their worlds. We, the humans, are the ones that must pay attention in order to avoid disaster but also to appreciate the glories constantly before us.
What we see when looking at a flower, a sleek animal, or a vast scene stretched out before us is so much more than something beautiful to which we respond with wonder and awe. We are looking at manifestations of life, aspects of creation that are in process just as we ourselves are. We have the unique perspective to not only observe but also to appreciate, and then through the mysteries of the mind to compare, contrast, relate, allude, and synthesize with other observations, thoughts, and feelings. We can create narratives, interpretations, philosophies, or images and experiences of our own, which in a sense create this creation all over again in new contexts and new forms. We add art to this wonderful mix of what is around us in every moment. We express ourselves in pictures, words, music, dance by celebrating and commenting on who we think we are and who we might wish to be.
Posted on 4/3/2018
By Donald Fox
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Another instructor said to me today that she felt her students took no pride of ownership in their work. She was puzzled by this and contrasted them with eight- to eleven-year-old young chefs on television’s MasterChef Junior, who were genuinely excited about the dishes they created. In essence, she was talking about passion, about being so involved with something that expression, action, and intention naturally blended in every moment as a particular creation – in this case food preparation – came to fruition. I have seen this lack of passion in students often but its opposite rarely. Sadly, I suspect most teachers have also experienced this.
The educational question, then, is not so much the one often asked of educators by administration (how to keep students engaged), it is, rather, how to help students discover their passion for learning so that motivation is intrinsic and expression is as natural as breathing. Many students know what to do. They are active but not focused. Perhaps this is the product of the digital age, computing, video games, television – nearly all things electronic. I don’t know. Surely there are those who study this.
Looking back, I know there were parts of my educational experience where I zoned out. I wasn’t interested and certainly not engaged. I was curious, however, and often went to the school or public library where I read and explored on my own. A friend of mine in high school was left alone by some of his teachers. They recognized his inner spark and they allowed him to sit and read in class. His natural intelligence was greatly nurtured by his inward drive and supported by perceptive teachers. How is that encouraged today? How do educators help students find that passion for learning?
I always feel excited being in a library or a book store. I feel inspired and motivated every time I visit an art museum. I feel elevated and engaged in a movie theater or a concert hall. I know the power of various arts to draw me in and to present all manner of possibilities for exploration of sound, space, image, color, and texture that stimulate emotions, memories, and ideas that can lead anywhere. My passion is always ignited by these things and places just as it is inflamed by picking up a brush or a pencil and exploring its possibilities on canvas or paper. But where did that come from? For me it’s as simple and complex as opening my eyes and mind to the world around me, for that world is as much within me as outside me. I am in it and it is in me. That fire was in there, and it was noticed and fed by the example of exceptional individuals throughout my life. Still, I had to do the work, for it was my job to tend it.
Posted on 4/1/2018 4:15:12 PM
By Donald Fox
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To paraphrase Mark Rothko – a painting is not about an experience; it is an experience. Think of a novel or play or film by contrast, and we move through the narrative scene by scene as the story unfolds over time. To fully appreciate the narrative arc, we as audience must remember what comes before as we follow characters in their decisions and actions. We experience as we go, to a degree, but we must complete the entirety before we have a full experience of the work. Even then, we must mentally and emotionally return to various parts as we digest how those parts have contributed to the whole. We want to know what it means. We might understand this as the Gestalt expression that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In a major sense, don’t we do this with our lives? We experience things in the moment, but we tend to mentally revisit past events, contemplate them, place them in context, and attempt to understand their influences and effects. We consider, and sometimes reconsider, the consequences of our choices and actions – at least I do.
Music also is moment by moment experience where each moment is linked to the next. As listeners we are moved by the rhythmic changes that propel the music forward. Rhythm is based on repetition, and larger musical structure is also repetitive (just like rime and linear phrasing in poetry). Songs and poems are often organized into verses, symphonies into movements. Are these just reflections of natural divisions like days and nights or the other segments of life we calculate as months, seasons, and years? Aren’t we attuned to internal changes that make up growth patterns, heart rhythms, brain waves, cell division? How could we not be influenced by these? The different forms of art and creative expression must grow out of these natural sensations whether referenced overtly or not.
Art, then, like life, offers opportunities to experience both in part and in whole whatever the artist has provided to our senses. We are sensory-based beings who constantly seek meaning. We cannot know the whole of life (our individual life) until that final moment of reflection given that there is the opportunity to do so. Art allows us the luxury of contemplation and reflection within the moment. Perhaps this is part of its fascination. It pulls us away from internal and external distractions and provides a space for being and experiencing in the moment, something that many spiritual teachers suggest is closest to our truest essence as spiritual beings. In a sense, the art is a catalyst, a space, a respite – an experience – an opportunity to experience the experience.
