Friendship
Nina and I started this blog in 2014 as a way to share our art with each other. We unexpectedly acquired followers and connected, first, with a group of fellow artists–many like us, trying to encourage each other to return to a regular creative practice. The blog changed over the years to include more than just visual art, and many of our fellow bloggers became not just followers but friends.
Twelve years is a cycle, and after careful deliberation, we have decided that this one has reached its ending. We want to thank all the many people who have read, commented on, and supported our work through the years.
I will still be visiting blogs, though perhaps not quite as frequently, and I will still be consulting the Oracle at kblog. I’m not sure what else I’ll be doing there—it’s a different place than memadtwo. You can also find my art every two weeks, along with lots of other wonderful stuff, at The Kick-About.
every friend
remains a presence
inside each
creation–
inhabiting countless threads
woven into years
“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.”
–Jim Morrison
(this quote is the first thing I posted)
Fighting for good cheer.
Returning to warmth, friends, home.
Setting voices free.
Making sense without despair:
choosing with hope. And singing.
“Now ain’t it good to know that you’ve got a friend
When people can be so cold?
They’ll hurt you, yes and desert you
And take your soul if you let them
Oh, but don’t you let them“
They are trying their hardest, but don’t let them. Keep connecting with and supporting what is good and being a friend.
Self Portrait #23 and #24 (after Jawlensky)
My identity is sometimes a no opposing yes and sometimes a yes opposing no. I can’t discern from its past positions which will show up—the untamed glare or the subdued darkness. Even the meanings of the meanings sing differently when they are lingering in the wide spaces between a brief certainty and an indefinite ambiguity. Night provides no refuge from contradiction—dreams only confuse the boundaries further, blurring both my body and my mind.
color changes form
as light questions what is real–
face or mask? or both?
The Kick-About this week provided a painting by Alexej von Jawlensky, “The Girl with the Green Face”, as inspiration. You may recall that I used this artist for one of my self-portraits for KA #124 as part of my long-abandoned 100 Self Portraits series. Hoping to continue with it, I selected Jawlensky’s “Mystical Head”, above, to make another one. And of course, the Kick-About provided an opportunity to do a third portrait for the series. Now I need to move on to a new artist.
All of these self-portraits bear a certain resemblance to me which makes me wonder: what do I really look like?
For some reason WP would not let me reblog this Kick-About, but to see everyone’s wonderful responses, I’ve provided a link to the post, here.
Odyssey (Thursday Doors Writing Challenge)
My mind discusses possibilities with itself, running continuous films of monochromatic narratives without chapters or sequences, captioned with words too blurred to read. The past is always fast-forwarding, as images and dialogue unravel and recombine in ways both mesmerizing and terrifying, full of could haves, should haves, and what ifs.
I feel sometimes as if I am already a ghost—not who I think I am—and who is it I think I am anyway?—existing nowhere I can locate in this world. I have already moved far beyond it, or perhaps I never arrived. I am governed by screens that stand between me and me, that render my actual position unknowable.
Am I astronaut, explorer, pilgrim, avatar? Or am I but a mote of dust in the eye of the shadow of a consciousness that contains no self at all?
drifting in landscapes
of lost memories drawn in
faded black and white
Teagan’s art appealed to me because it seemed to contain so many stories. I started off thinking about my childhood (that car looks so familiar), but when I began writing it became something else. Best to follow the muse I find. And I know Teagan’s also been considering that nagging question: Who am I?
My second offering for the Thursday Doors Writing Challenge, open for the entire month of May, and hosted by Dan Antion. Anyone can join–you can see all the doors available to inspire you here.
Guardians (Thursday Doors)
These sculptures, these faces–
are they constructs,
ideas? or merely solid objects–
just images, representations?
How do we define their existence?
Do they include something
we cannot name?
Do they have a spirit?
Can we attach identity
to these visages–so still,
so seemingly inert?
Stone, clay–the earth’s matter
is full of stories. Where
are those stories located when
the essence of the land itself
is given human form?
Are these faces really
unchanging? Or do they
transform to fit the eyes
that meet their gaze?
What is a life but a narrative,
a placement of presence
in a building
we call time?
Is the universe a construct?
Is a season? A lifetime?
How do we find and set
the boundaries of between,
the neither and the both?
or is everything connected
by a substance that is defined
only by what it is not?
“rough edges,” by Elise Siegel
My poem was inspired by Lisa’s dVerse prompt to respond to one of the sculptural images she posted from an exhibit of busts at the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park–I chose the one above by Elise Siegel–and by Ooko’s W3 prompt to give voice to what is usually left unsaid.
And of course it made me think of all the guardians I’m always photographing for Thursday Doors.
I’ve also included some drawings I made of medieval sculpture (third image) and the above drawing I made of a ventriloquist’s dummy from the Vent Haven Museum. When you draw something, it reveals to you its life.
And be sure to check out all the doors at Thursday Doors, hosted by Dan Antion.
Self Portrait #22 (after Jawlensky)
The Kick-About this week explores self-portraiture. I used the prompt not only to take a look at all the self-portraits I’ve done since my 20s but to revive the “100 Self Portrait” project I abandoned in 2017. This was my attempt to do self-portraits in the style of other artists. For the Kick-About I chose a painting by Alexej von Jawlensky, a Russian painter who moved to Europe and became a member of the Blue Rider Group. I hope this will inspire me to continue and perhaps even finish this project.
Visit the Kick-About to see not only my other self-portraits, but the wonderful and varied ones produced by the other Kick-Abouters.
My real face is
etched in sparse lines,
painted hues that
merge together
in looped flashbacks–
always out of
focus–inside
a past that seems
to belong to
someone else, not
me. I peer in
to the dense fog
and see only
shadows, carried
by nothing but
invisible
thoughts that tunnel
in circles through
the ruins of
form, of pattern,
of sight, of sense
Turning it all Around
“No matter what the rules are, when one is painting one creates one’s own world.”
–Alice Neel
All the signs point nowhere–
the way is unseeable–
the entrance is a mirror
a warning a secret that has no map
The way is unseeable–
a spell-casting an enchantment
a warning a secret that has no map–
but how else to tell?
Spell-casting an enchantment
I weave and reweave my stories–
how else to tell
what exists without words?
I weave and reweave my stories
over under over under–
all that exists without words–
a song searching for a voice
Over under over under–
I am always at the beginning,
a song searching for a voice,
attempting to become visible
I am always at the beginning–
the entrance is a mirror
where I attempt to become visible,
following signs that point nowhere
In the early 1980s I took a book out of the library which was full of photographs of artists and their work. I did a series of collages based on the photos. I recently rediscovered them when archiving all my portfolios of old art.
I tried to find the book again, but could locate no trace of it either in the library or online. Of course at the time I wrote down neither the name of the book, or the artists I was portraying, titling each work with only “visage” and a number. Perhaps it’s better that way. Ironically, given the quote from Alice Neel, there seem to have been no women among the artists the author photographed. I wonder how different actually it would be now.
I constructed my pantoum from two writing fragments. As I’ve noted before, I have notebooks and notebooks full of writing, as every morning with my coffee I read a few poems and then write in response to what those poems evoke. I often use them for finished poems.
We miss you Levon.
out of context (faces)
I can’t place
the face or have I
lost the name?–
it’s all the
same–no frame of reference
exists to answer
the question
of how or even
if I’ve met
these faces–
or in what place we seem to have
crisscrossed our lives
Nina and I began this blog as a way to show each other the art we were doing without having to use email–and although she is still doing that, I’ve kind of lost that thread. So I’m going to try a few times a month to show more art, both old and new (there may or may not be poems attached). One of my problems is I now have all these photos of art, and since I rarely date things, and my memory is so bad, sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly when I did it.
I’ve always liked to draw and paint people–I save photos from newspapers and magazines to use as references–and I know I did the above painting sometime in the last year. But the one above it, with the orange background? I think it’s a few years old, but I can’t say for sure.
The ones at the top are from a few months ago, as is the one above, where I was using leftover paint from a mandala painting. My style of drawing and painting people has not changed that much over the years.
De at dVerse suggested the word place for this week’s quadrille, and it conveniently rhymes with face. I managed to make a shadorma out of it too.
Portrait (finished).
Of course I had to add color. It brought the drawing to life.
Without color.
Hope everyone had a great St Patrick’s Day.
Wedding Portrait (in progress)
My co-worker is getting married tomorrow. I decided to do a portrait of her and her husband-to-be. It is not finished; I don’t really have her mouth right. To add color or not?that is the question. Still not set up to paint but colored pencils are becoming my best friend.
Beautiful day here. I will post this drawing again when it is complete.
Unmasked
This face is not the one I wore yesterday. Recast as abstraction, it chases illusions that will pilot my borrowed dreams. Today I am a galaxy of song, light, color and dance.
If I turn around
will I recollect myself
or pass myself by?
A haibun for the dVerse prompt of Mardi Gras, using synonyms for Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday words “follow” and “lead”. The collage is based on a Cajun Mardi Gras mask. I also made the haibun a quadrille of 44 words after being inspired by Jane and Merril’s use of this very short form.
method two madness 
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