i am luminous in my loneliness
there is no one else
to tell morning from evening
water from sky
light from shadow
no one to divide
idea and the symbol
representing it
the it from the i
and the i from the you
trying to find a bridge
back from nonexistence
reaching for stars
that burn in a distant sky
a sky that is a cold tent to dreams
conceived around hearth fires
we realize that
we cannot loose what is ours
and we cannot gain what is not.
The empty skies are where we want to go now
released of our desire
to conceive the next beautiful thing
We prefer the leaden days and starless nights,
industrial landscapes, gaping emptiness,
toxic waste and boredom of no-man’s land
(and no woman decorating a corner with market flowers)
You would not understand
if you thought we wanted to leave for silver shores
or even suburban homes, given the opportunity,
we prefer the empty skies and their agents
to the messenger of a glory
unsung
I thought it would take at least two more nights to finish this acrylic sheet but as I couldn’t stop drawing I finished it last night. I drew five layers altogether until I felt more lattice pattern would obscure the interlacing layers (which I drew on both sides).
It’s intriguing that working on a transparent sheet creates a drawing that feels at the same time tangible and elusive.
I think it would be great to multiply “y” further but this time not by adding more layers but by creating additional pieces in the same format. Five to ten sounds good for starters. I have always had a taste for the non-identical multiples in art. By the way, each sheet is about 1,30 m high. But I could also start by using up all the small panes I still have (about eight), drawing layered monsters, then proceed to the larger sheets.
Back to home depot it is …
Art is time travel, no question. I didn’t know I still carried this monster around – but here it is. I learned how to read pretty early, before school, scanning my grandfather’s newspaper and imitating the strange throat clearing sounds he produced every now and then while reading. It was quite literally his newspaper, he was a co-publisher of some small town daily newspaper, back in the days when they were still independent.
Anyhow, reading and drawing quickly grew into something alike to breathing and running around for me. Imagine my bewilderment when in first grade I discovered that someone had torn all the words apart and stuck them into a strange primer expecting me to study each one of them separately. I decided not wanting to have anything to do with it and skipped to the end of the book where most letters founds themselves tidily arranged back to sensible words and stories.
I was quickly found out though by our teacher who then consulted with my mother, complaining about my absolute messy reading habits (being able to read but not to practice sound exercises with random letter-combinations). The following week she caught me with a book under the table again – and I still refused to fill out the worksheet according to the primer. We were at war. She took away my book and I kept busy studying the colophon in the reading primer.
Before you give me credit for my precocious rebellious behavior I have to admit that I plain did not understand what was expected of me, and for some reason the teacher had such a vague personality that I found it incredibly hard to focus my attention on that pale, almost transparent if upset presence who did not stop elaborating on how I was not supposed to read what I hadn’t been taught to read. It seemed to me that I could see the squiggles on the chalkboard behind her – through her. I could literally look right through her. It was a mess.
At home my mother followed up on my homework assignments and had me fill the lines of my notebook with squiggles and squabs. It was monstrous, it really was. I had absolutely no clue what I was doing and why. My mother meticulously instructed me how to fill a page with doodles, then she left me to it. When she left the room I took out a book and read instead. There were tears that night.
I don’t know what would have happened had we not moved to a new suburb. I got a new teacher who very nice about my keeping a book under the table and even encouraged me to put it on the table instead. While in the first school my teacher had insisted on my using the phonetic approach which was still brand new back then to acquire a skill I already possessed, in my new school I was allowed to spell with the whole word sight system which happened to be the way my reading comprehension just happened to work anyways.
Later I did learn to take the words apart, by the way. Today I am the master of the monstrous spelling mechanism. I wonder if the second elementary school teacher ever knew that she was a life saver. Thank you, Frau Bock.
I like this illustration for it’s neither jolie, pretty, nor ugly, it’s a celebration, a meeting of some of the characters that constantly remind me that I want to draw instead of doing whatever else it is I have to do. It’s probably actually a fairly accurate illustration of my (non-verbal) thoughts when I am not focused on law or writing and it explains why it sometimes costs me quite some effort to focus on the mundane aspects of life when all these people are spoking around in my brain.
iamlumi nousinmyloneli nessthereisno oneelseyo ucanno tloosewh isyo ursyo ucan notgainw hatisnot
Back to the subject of pretty: Even after granting myself the liberty to let go of my need to create things that are at least scraping on the verge of comical, ugly, surreal, infantile I still do get a slight stomach ache looking at these new works. The drawing you see here at least is a bit dark, the creature in the front displaying its rib-cage like an x-ray – but the execution is doubtless pretty, shining dark (Edding marker and Poyurethane) and gold with snippets of legal text incorporated on glass.
I have two large, eight medium and multiple small acrylic plates waiting for me, and I think I will continue drawing in this very calm and slightly upsetting manner of “pretty” even if it is just to find out WHY it matters so much. Maybe it is the surface itself, the ephemeral, light quality of the glass pane rather than the coffee and potato sacks I was layering paints and disposed off objects on before.
The only rule I play by is that there must be no preliminary drawing, no careful execution – and I am thinking about incorporating more precious materials (chocolate wrappers, glitter etc.) to make it even more intolerable to my eyes.
Yes, there is a fun element here, observing myself how much “pretty” I can take.
Interestingly, parallel to these glass drawings I am working on a translation from a small English novel I have published some years ago into German, and I find that this folk-tale that sounded sober enough in English to work for me now has a pretty ring to it in the translation, too, as the words just have different associations (while pointing towards the same thing).
Ideas about that difficult relationship between pretty, sober and ugly, would be very welcome at this moment.
English version / German translation
Few travelers have ever reached the end of the world, even in the days of the Aelvor, for it is such an awful long way to go and full of obstacles, too. Yet when my grandmother told me about the Willow as I tell you about her now, it had seemed to me that I almost remembered her as if I had seen her with my own eyes and touched her with my own hands but couldn’t quite remember anymore where or when that could have been.
Of course you know that the earth is a ball and that consequently there cannot be an edge over which to lean to catch a glimpse of eternity. And yet, our elders might not have been as naïve as we are told today by believing that the world is located on a disc and that you can walk only so far before reaching an end. In our hearts we are closer related to ways that must end eventually than the Aelvor were who soberly talked about the eternal cyclic renewal of all times and beings.
Wenige Reisende haben jemals das Ende der Welt erreicht, selbst in den Tagen der Aelvor, denn es ist ein furchtbar langer Weg dorthin, wie jeder weiß, und, wie es die alten Märchen erzählen, voller Hindernisse und Gefahren. Und dennoch, wenn meine Großmutter mir von der Weide am Ende der Welt erzählte, eben so, wie ich Dir jetzt von ihr erzähle, belebte sich ihre sonst oft müde Stimme und sie sprach so lebhaft und anschaulich, als erinnerte sie eine Geschichte aus ihrer eigenen Jugend, und mir, die ich ihr zuhörte, kam es wirklich so vor, als könne ich mich selbst beinahe erinnern, dass ich den Baum einst mit meinen eigenen Augen gesehen und mit meinen eigenen Händen berührt hätte, auch wenn ich, gefragt, nicht mehr zu sagen gewusst hätte, wann oder wo das hätte gewesen sein sollen.
Natürlich weißt Du, dass die Erde eine Kugel ist und dass es also keine Kanten geben kann, über die man in einen Abgrund stürzen oder über den man sich auch nur hinauslehnen könnte, um einen Blick der Unendlichkeit zu erhaschen, wie es in den alten Geschichten heißt. Und dennoch waren die Menschen früher vielleicht nicht so naiv wie wir es mit ein wenig Überheblichkeit heute gerne glauben wollen, nur weil sie annahmen, dass die Welt eine Scheibe sei und man nur so weit gehen konnte, bis man an ihr Ende kam. Wenn wir aufrichtig sind, ist uns auch in unserer Zeit die Vorstellung, dass jeder Weg schließlich endet, immer noch vertrauter, als es die Geschichten der Aelvor sind, die nüchtern von der Unendlichkeit und der zyklischening, Wiederkehr aller Zeiten und Kreaturen zu erzählen verstanden.
The first article of the German Constitution. Actually the wording in German (“ist unantastbar”, tranlslated: is untouchable) could be read in two different ways, one being “it cannot be touched”, the other “it shall not be touched”. Last week, in my legal class, I started a discussion with my students about whether human dignity can actually be denied or be broken (by the state, an authority, a group etc.), or whether there might be what could maybe be called a core of human dignity that remains untouched no matter which forces are used against it and under which circumstances a person is forced to live. No wrong answers, a strong discussion ensued.
It is a strange reality that humans are bound to such an abstract idea, dignity, something that is expressed in and through circumstances of their lives but also seems to reside deep within them, that they are bound to this in a way that life will seem desirable no longer once “it” – dignity – is effectively denied and that they, we, are incredibly inventive to defend at least a display of individual dignity in the face of even overwhelming adversity.
This illustration seems to lean towards the interpretation of human dignity actually being the unchangeable core of an idea, located in the brain but held by our hands (actions). I do know it can be denied like but I believe that it can’t be broken. The naive quality of the drawing insists on the relevance of the question in the face of a reality that is unforgiving and not as much in need of such contemplative studies and pretty pictures but of real change.
The title offers itself as an afterthought to the completed drawing. Or: almost completed as these are works in progress. “No fear” seems like a big title for such a pleasing drawing but it actually refers to the relative beauty of the subject – very unusual for me. I do have a deep appreciation for the seemingly ugly, small, cheap, scratchy, discarded quality of objects and ideas, for those scraps and pieces deemed not to measure up. I am deeply suspicious of the superior quality of a single piece of work (not mine), of the brilliance and self-sufficiency that is in no need of a contribution by whoever may chance to look at it because I feel that our visual environment is saturated with ideas that are complete and in no need of further discourse, thereby actively discouraging original creative failure. Seems at times we all live in a society of mad overachievers. So I love the frail, the ugly to the point where I censor my own work when it’s getting too pleasing. But these drawings I have let go uncensored by myself, not even knowing why. Maybe I am in need of some beauty. And far be it from me to think that these are perfect. Maybe quite the opposite. So for a while, I will be like a child at play, drawing and arranging these small characters, without fear that they shall be considered too light. Let there be some light ….
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