Relics Scroll 10: Time Stops for No One

For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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Like many of these cliches, "time stops for no one" urges us to move on and not linger in the past. It also suggests that we cherish the time we have, since we don't know when our lives will end. I was struggling to find a sub-text for this one when the poem Good Bones by Maggie Smith came across my Facebook page in the aftermath of the Orlando shooting. It's a beautiful poem if you haven't read it. I chose one line:

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways

Haven't we all.

Tech notes: The background was printed on an uncarved wood block, the black circles printed in sumi ink through a stencil on the same block. The large text was stenciled through a hand-cut acetate stencil and the small text rubber stamped.

Relics Scroll 9: You Only Live Once

For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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"You only live once." Which kind of means "just do it" or "carpe diem." You've got one life to live, so live right. Live life to its fullest. Take a chance.

I took the phrase literally, though. Do we only live once? Popular science says that the human body replaces itself every 7 years or so. This isn't actually true, but many of the cells in our body have very short lifespans -- stomach cells last about a week, skin cells no longer than 3 or 4 weeks, and fat cells 8 years (that explains a lot). At the cellular level at least, we constantly make ourselves anew.

For this scroll I chose a verse from the Upanishads that is a metaphor for rebirth:

When a caterpillar has come to the end of a blade of grass, it reaches out to another blade, and draws itself over to it

Tech notes: The background is three colors (yellow, blue and magenta) with circular masks cut from paper and stencils for the large cell shapes. The large text is stenciled and the small text rubber stamped.

Relics Scroll 8: What Goes Around Comes Around

For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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"What goes around comes around" we say, especially when it seems like someone is getting away with doing something unethical without consequences. The phrase can also be applied when someone does a good deed without reward. We say "what goes around comes around" to indicate that eventually someone will do a good deed for them as well, that their good karma will return to them.

My own feeling about this is that our good or bad deeds might or might not come back to us in our external lives, but that "what goes around comes around" applies more accurately to a cycle of thoughts and actions that happens constantly inside each of us. I chose a quote about this inner cycle from the Upanishads:

As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.

One of my own primary spiritual practices is to keep an eye on my thoughts and desires and try to catch the ones that might harm me or others before they become deeds.

Tech notes:  The two-toned background was created on an uncarved block using both a mask and a stencil for the middle ring of circles. The gray in this piece is liquid graphite, which has a subtle sparkle to it that I really like. The large text was stenciled, the small text rubber stamped.

Relics Scroll 7: Time Heals All Wounds

For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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"Time heals all wounds" they say. I was nursing some fresh wounds as I made this work, having just lost Ty, my 13 year old labrador retriever. At the moment I post this, 33 days have passed since we euthanized him. That's certainly not enough time for the wounds to be healed, and part of me doesn't even want healing. I want to remember. I want to remember the sensation of patting Ty's head or throwing my arms around him, I want to remember how his face seemed to smile at me whenever I came into the room. I think at best time fades all wounds, and there's some sorrow even in the fading.

Many of the Psalms in the Bible's Old Testament are lamentations, people crying out in pain and grief. I chose a few words of lamentation from Psalm 39 and wrote them in my own voice along the edges of the stream of dots:

Help me Lord, hear my prayer

 Tech notes: The background is a woodblock monoprint on an uncarved block, the circles are stamped with a hand-carved rubber eraser stamp, large text was stenciled and small text rubber stamped.

Relics Scroll 6: Oh My God

For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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Although OMG is a new-ish social media abbreviation for it, "oh my god" has been a much used exclamation ever since I was a child. I remember my mother frowning on it, like it was a kind of swear word. But it's interesting to think about when we say it. We say "oh my god" when we're surprised. We say it in the face of a stunningly gorgeous scene. We say it when something unthinkable happens. We sort of mean it when we say it. For the small text (not visible in this photo) I used a line from the Mahabharata, when Lord Krishna shows the warrior Arjuna his divine form, a form so awesome it can barely be withstood by a human being:

Seeing that amazing form, wonderstruck Arjuna, his whole body tingling in ecstasy, bowed his head in obeisance to Lord Krsna

The pattern on this print is called the Flower of Life mandala and it is said to represent creation in sacred geometry.

Tech notes: The background and top and bottom bokashi (gradations) are woodblock monoprints done on an uncarved block. The mandala of circles was printed on the same block through a hand cut stencil. Large text was stenciled, and the small text was rubber stamped.

Relics Scroll 5: Nobody's Perfect

For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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Everybody makes mistakes, right? It goes without saying that nobody's perfect.

I used a Japanese image/drawing for this scroll called an enso. Enso is a brush-drawn circle, a calligraphic spiritual practice in which the calligrapher makes an uninhibited brushstrokes to express continuity, balance, wholeness and completeness. Enso masters strive for perfection, yet every enso is unique and thus the practice expresses the beauty of both perfection and imperfection.

There are several religions that claim that their prophets or adherents are perfect or can achieve perfection. When I hung this show, I put this scroll near a print of the Virgin Mary, who as the mother of Jesus (said to be a perfect human being) is believed to be the most pure and perfect woman who ever lived. Mohammed is believed by Muslims to be perfect, Buddha is said to have achieved a perfected state. But the text I chose to pair with my enso is a translation of a Sanskrit mantra. It reads:

Om. That is perfect. This is perfect. From the perfect springs the perfect. If the perfect is taken from the perfect, the perfect remains. Om.

  My own feeling about perfection is that there is a perfection in the sum of the parts that can rarely be seen in the parts themselves.

Tech notes: I made the enso with watercolor pigments and a large brush (this was the seventh enso I made). The large text was stenciled, the small text was hand written with colored pencil.

Relics Scroll 4: Everything Happens for a Reason

For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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Like many of the cliches and platitudes I'm working with in this series, "everything happens for a reason" is a thing that people often say when they want to move on and move away from an uncomfortable thought or situation. "Everything happens for a reason" is often used to absent ourselves from grief and regret. But it's also a phrase that reflects the human tendency to want to make meaning from our lives. I paired this one with a portion of a verse from Ecclesiastes (Bible):

[To every thing there is a season,] and a time to every purpose under heaven

Although the verse seems to say that everything happens for a reason, Ecclesiastes 3 actually advises us to pursue our earthly activities in their proper time and order without worrying about reasons.

Tech notes: The whole background was printed on an uncarved block with circular stencils. I then added pencil lines and used pencil for the lettering. The small text (barely visible here) was done with rubber stamping.

Relics Scroll 3: #Blessed

For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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#Blessed is a hashtag that's used on social media in a couple of different ways. Sometimes it's used earnestly to express gratitude for good fortune in everyday life, but often it's used ironically by people who find the hashtag to be a form of "humble-bragging." I've mostly seen the second use and in fact the NY Times wrote an article about the use of #Blessed back in 2014 if you want to find out more.

I combined #Blessed with a text from the Quran, which explicitly and without irony instructs devotees to speak about their blessings:

You shall proclaim the blessing Allah has bestowed upon you.

Tech notes: The background and top and bottom bokashi (gradations) were made on an uncarved wood block, the center circle was printed on the same block through a stencil, the small circles were stamped with a rubber eraser stamp I made, the large text was printed through a hand-cut stencil, and the small text was rubber stamped.

Relics Scroll 2: It's All Good

For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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Another phrase/cliche that we use a lot which is interesting to ponder is "it's all good." When we say this we usually mean "don't worry about it" or even "I don't care." It's dismissive, like "it is what it is." I paired this phrase with a bit of text from the Old Testament book of Genesis (you can see the tiny text extending like five rays from the bottom of the sun shape):

God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good

Putting these two texts together made me feel a little sad. It is indeed all good — the land, the seas, this beautiful planet and all the beings that dwell here. That would be a great thing to remember every time we hear this phrase.

Tech notes: I printed a circular orange-to-yellow bokashi on an uncarved wood block at the top of the paper. The orange lines that create the sun shape over the bokashi are a transfer drawing (see this post for an explanation of that method). The small orange and yellow circles were stamped with a rubber eraser stamp I made. Large text was applied in watercolor through a stencil, small text was rubber stamped.

Relics Scroll 1: It Is What It Is

It is said that although America is still one of the most religious nations in the western world, we are on our way to becoming a much more secular society than we have ever been before. We like to think of ourselves as rational and free of superstition, but there are many vestiges of religion in our culture that seem to go unexamined. One of my favorite ways of excavating unexamined ideas and attachments is to look at colloquial language, especially platitudes and cliches. For my Relics exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings.

I started with "it is what it is." I'm sure that, like me, you hear (and/or use) this phrase several times a day. We toss it off to mean "whatever" -- things are as they are and we're not going to try to change them any further, but I think "it is what it is" is a deep insight. Accepting what is rather than fighting against reality can alleviate a lot of suffering.

On each of the scrolls I added smaller text from various spiritual traditions. On this one, below and to the right of the main text, you might be able to make out a small circle of white text. It says "I am that I am that I am that…" in a repeating circle. This text actually comes from two traditions. In the Old Testament of the Bible, Moses meets God as a burning bush and the voice of God says "I am that I am." There is also a Vedic (Hindu) Sanskrit mantra "Soham" which means "I am that." "I am that" is a way of identifying oneself with the universe or ultimate reality.

For the printmakers who want to know how I made the image, it's a woodblock monotype with paper prints. I made a background blue on an uncut block, then cut some circles out of paper which I inked, laid on the block, and printed with a baren. The darkest circle was made by inking the block and printing through a circular stencil. The large text is stenciled in white watercolor ink; small text is rubber stamped.

I mounted Japanese decorative paper (chiyogami) onto the print top and bottom by creating a paper tape with strips of mulberry paper and an adhesive called "Gudy 870" that I learned about from Karen Kunc when I took a workshop with her at Anderson Ranch.

Nine more scrolls to show you…

RELICS at Oxbow Gallery Northampton MA

RELICS
watercolor woodblock prints and scrolls
30 June - 31 July, 2016
Oxbow Gallery, 275 Pleasant Street, Northampton MA
Reception Friday, July 8, 6-8 pm
Hours: Thursday - Sunday, noon to 5 pm
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My apologies for the long silence here on my blog. At the end of 2015 I applied to become a member of Oxbow Gallery, an artist-owned and -operated gallery here in my hometown of Northampton, Massachusetts, and I was accepted and put on a waiting list. At the beginning of April I got a call letting me know that there was an opening and that I was up next on the waiting list. As it turned out, the opening also meant that the large front room gallery (approximately 450 square feet) was available for the month of July and I could have a solo show there. I jumped at the chance, but had to immediately shift into high gear in order to get enough work done to fill the space, so no blogging…

I knew I wanted to show the Relics halftone prints I was working on, but at the time of the phone call I had completed only two of the seven I had planned. I also had a list of 15 or so platitudes that I wanted to print along with the halftones -- common American platitudes that could be construed to have religious or philosophical meanings (phrases like "what goes around comes around"). I realized that I would have to work in some new ways in order to get it all done in three months, so I decided to finish the halftones as planned and then do the text pieces as one-of-a-kind mixed media pieces mounted as scrolls.

There was no way to speed up the halftones, so I worked long hours and finished the last of those on May 20, giving me just about 4 weeks to make ten scrolls. I'll show you the scrolls in some subsequent posts, but below are a couple of installation shots. The show will be up until the end of July, so I hope if you're in the area you'll stop in. And let me know if you come to town -- I'd love to see you!