On Friday, September 19, my friend Sam Fisch left one of his burlap paintings in our loft. I couldn’t stop looking at it. The technique itself is mesmerizing: painted with a hypodermic needle, dots of paint deposited on different sides of the burlap fiber. From one angle you see one image, from the other angle a perceptibly different one. I was impressed by the patience involved in making this work, the exacting attention. It gave off an aura, and as it drew me in, I found myself bobbing my head left and right, astonished at how the images shifted.

viewed from the left. art by Sam Fisch

view from the right. art by Sam Fisch

Two days later, during the Fractal brunch, I ran into Daniel Eigler-Harding, Marcus Saldarriaga and James Hunt — three artists in one gathering. It was a little nod from the Universe. It became clear what I had to do: organize an art exhibition for all of us, and for other artists amongst my friends, at Merlins Place.

Sam’s painting would be the seed around which an entire art show could crystallize. Inspired by its burlap texture, I called the event the Weave. I’d invite visual artists and musicians to each share original work. Each Weave would have a suggested theme to give coherence to the grouped works. Since I’d run into three artist friends by chance, I chose Synchronicity as the first theme. I set the date for November 15. It would give me less than two months to make a painting as well for the show.

Early October I spent a weekend in upstate New York at my friend Oliver H.’s family cabin, a place that ran on generators and solar panels. The toilet was a Portapotty set down in the driveway. On Saturday we went canoeing on the beaver pond nearby. Samson and I paddled around as the sun was setting. I was impressed at how large the pond was. And that a little creature like the beaver could make such huge hydro-engineering projects. At one point, we heard a big splash in the water, too big to be a fish. It was a beaver.

Late October I went to Puerto Rico for a weeklong visit, to experience life at Casa Chironja, my friend Gillian’s coliving house. It turned out to be deeply relaxing, like a long exhale that went on for days. I swam every day in natural water, usually the ocean which was just a minute’s walk away from our house, but also once in a rain forest waterfall and another afternoon in a mountain lake. Being cradled in these clean warm waters was therapeutic.

Swimming in a rock basin carved by waterfalls. Photo by Ian Howe.

One day, Oliver F. rented a Jeep and drove us to the Cuevo del Indio, a site Gillian recommended we visit. We each had to pay a 10 dollar fee at the parking lot, which I thought was expensive for a public beach. As we started to walk along the dirt paths that led towards cliffs, I realized we weren’t here for the beach. The rock formations went on for miles, sculpted by relentless waves and wind into arches, pillars and caves.

The path had us approaching from the top of the cliff. Looking down at the crashing waves and the sharp rocks, my body balked. I knew that if I were to fall from that height, my bones would shatter on the rocks far below.

La Cueva del Indio, Puerto Rico. Photo by Ulysses Chuang

There was one cliff that was hollowed out. It had an internal cave that was mostly protected from the waves, with just a few tongues of wave that tunneled through holes in the rock. I stood on the tall ledge and looked down to a protected area, a sandy floor. It was like being on a high balcony in a round theater, looking down at the circular stage. It seemed possible to climb down, and the climber in me suddenly piqued up. Even though I didn’t have my climbing shoes– I only had my sneakers with their soft snub toe– I gave it a try. I left my backpack with Ian on the wide cliff edge and downclimbed towards the patch of sand below.

There was no crashpad below, so I’d have no room for error. I found little eroded pockets to place my toes, natural crimps and jugs for my hands. Finally I was close enough to the ground that I could let go and land on my feet.

Only when I was down there did I see the images carved into the rock. They were all around me, intricate and so weathered that they seem to emerge directly from the rock, like ripples on a liquid surface, like giant fingerprints of the rock itself.

I spent a while exploring the cavern. To the south was a tall round space, like a round chimney, accessible through a tight passage. This would have been a perfect resonance chamber for singing and drumming. To the north were tall rock domes with nests of bats. I could see them flying in and out, and hanging upside-down, black clumps in the shadows. I had a Batman-in-the-batcave moment when a small squadron of bats burst into flight past me. To the west was a sandy cove surrounded by rock walls and open to the sky, but to get there you had to cross a water-channel that was periodically blocked by waves rushing in through a hole in the rock. I timed my steps well going in, and used a boulder to cross to over to that cove as the waves were rushing out. But on the return trip, my sneakers got soundly soaked.

When I climbed back out of the cave, Ian was still there, watching over my backpack and making sure I was safe.

I hadn’t been expecting to see art in the cave at all. I had actually been drawn by the climbing problem, the “I wonder if I could climb that?” feeling. But then coming face-to-face with the petroglyphs was a shock. I kept thinking of a scene from the English Patient, when Kip the Sikh sapper takes Hana the nurse to a war-damaged church. He ties her to a rope and harness, puts a lit magnesium flare in her hand, and then hoists her up into the shadowy dome so she can see the renaissance frescoes there— peopled with gilded angels and figures clad in silk.

Of dozens of tourists that afternoon, I was the only one to downclimb into the cave and see the rock art. I heard there used to be a ladder, but they took it away, probably to prevent crowds of tourists from carving their initials next to the petroglyphs. Here then was this marvel that only I got to see, because it came with a tricky price of entry: downclimbing a chimney problem.

The carvings were simple– concentric circles, spirals and radiating lines, but also human faces and animals. They reminded me that humans have been making art– singing, dancing, painting, and carving on rock– for hundreds of thousands of years. And that for almost all of that time, there were no such things as art galleries, art magazines, auctions, critics and competitions. There was a pureness and directness about the carvings in the rock wall. For days I couldn’t stop thinking about that cave.

La Cueva del Indio. Video by Ulysses Chuang

As the day of the Weave approached, I was increasingly anxious and preoccupied. Two of the artists dropped out at the last minute. Would I have enough art on the walls?

And, most of all, what would I paint for the show?

Finally, the Wednesday before the show, I made a pencil sketch on two blank canvases. I’d been holding on to them since my neighbor Miles gave them to me when he moved out of his apartment. He said he didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t use an easel, but placed the canvases on my dresser instead, leaning them directly against the wall.

The next day I painted for nine hours straight. From about 1 PM to 10 PM. My eyes were sore when I lay in bed trying to fall asleep. It felt good to be deeply immersed in solving painterly problems. The dry spell was broken. I was painting again.

acrylic on canvas, art by Ulysses Chuang

Finally it was the day of the Weave. I thought I might keep working on the painting, but instead decided to spend the day preparing our loft and the party. I cleaned up the apartment. I made a vegetable korma. It was meditative to chop the vegetables and aromatics, to temper the whole spices, measure out the ground spices, and blend the thick fragrant paste of cashews and coconut. Samson arrived early and helped me fry okra with chili and cumin. We served all this with steamed rice. I felt good seeing people dig into the food I’d prepared. Yes: cooking was an art too and I wanted it to be woven into the arts we were sharing tonight.

I unrolled some butcher paper on the dining table and set out some art supplies. As people sketched and conversed, enjoying the food and wine, I went around and told the artists to be ready to say a few words about their art and creative process. Amaku was getting his guitar plugged in and tuned.

the Weave getting started…

This is when the Weave took an unexpected turn. The short of it is that one of our participants had a fainting spell. I went with him to the hospital until I was sure he would be okay, and then came back to the party. But that’s a story for another time…

When I got back from the hospital, people were hanging out downstairs while Mercer set up for his piano performance.

I joined a circle of friends sitting on mattresses set upon the floor: Marcus, Elliot, Oliver, Spencer. We listened to Mercer’s performance, and his funky improvisations with Amaku.

I started talking to them about beavers.

“Beavers like to live near the water. They are probably drawn by the sound of water. But it has to be just at the right pitch. If the river is too broad, too broad to build a dam across, they are not attracted. And then when they do settle near a damable stream, if the pitch of the waterflow goes above a threshhold, that’s what triggers their dam-making instinct. Scientists have studied this in the lab using recordings of different waterflow frequencies. It’s as if the sound of water flowing too fast made beavers feel restless.

And just as beavers have to make dams, humans have to make art. If we don’t, we feel like something’s off. That’s why I wanted to host something like the Weave, a place where it’s the norm for everyone to make and share art.”

“And what do you think is the human equivalent of hearing water flowing too fast?” Elliot asked.

We all thought about this for a while.

installation view of the Weave