Watching Paint Dry

All over the East Bay artists are working busily to prepare for Open Studios. I am one of them.
Unlike the old stereotypical image of the artist as a Bohemian living in a garret on the outskirts of society, the twenty-first century artist has to be a hardworking, dedicated individual, developing her/his art in a world parallel to work and relationships.
When we get into the studio, we have to lock the door of our mind in order to engage in the love affair that is art-making. We try to remove ourselves from all the pop culture images, slogans, and values in order to "think outside the box", a phrase that has become,itself, a cliché.
What does it mean, to think outside the box? For me, (I can speak only for myself because every person's process is their own) it means sinking into a place of no thought at all. My fingers join my eyes in seeing, and my eyes join my fingers in perceiving the visual and sensual materials with which I work.
Then there is the leap! The daring act of marking a clean surface. The audacity of putting a hole into a canvas in order to attach wire and bits of fabric. I scribble and scrape, spray water, attach objects. I enter a state of creative inebriation. . .if I'm lucky.
Then there comes the moment when the artist must let the materials do their own thing. Yes, time to watch the paint dry.
This is not an idle time. It is a time of practicing restraint. A period of meditation and study. I look around the studio and play "what if":What if I sanded it next? What if I rub in some crayon? But I do nothing but watch.
In Freeing the Creative Spirit I wrote that creativity is a process of making something happen, then letting something happen. Every now and then I realize that life is just the same.

A Face Without Lines

I did the drawing on the right as another meditation on age and beauty. It's titled: "A Face Without Lines is Like a Book Without Words".
I've always loved the elderly. My grandparents were my special guardian angels. They taught me about my ethnicity and the original language that has nearly been gutted from my family by anglo-American culture. I know that my experience was very unusual, especially in the U.S. where most kids don't grow up around their grandparents, and I'm still grateful for that opportunity. I'm realizing now, that they also taught me to value aging.
Women, of course, are more sensitive to cultural prejudices against aging than men. After all, there is a tradition in Hollywood to cast the youngest starlet as leading lady opposite an aging actor. Richard Gere, Harrison Ford, now George Clooney: all seem to have a phobia about love scenes with a woman their own age (on or off screen).
The only bias not considered politically incorrect, in fact, is derision toward age. Sure, it's against the law to say that a person is fired or not hired because of age, but it's not against the law to do it, as long as it's done for another, permissible, reason. Listen to advertising. Products for hair color, and especially make up and face creams openly warn us of the debilitating signs of AGING. With so many people of all ages looking for mates, AGE is the single most marginalizing or discrediting feature. It's true our culture hates fat, too, but body size is alterable, age is not in our control.
If humans didn't learn through experience, if we didn't change and evolve over time, we'd live in a world of Barbies and Kens. How would we destinguish ourselves from the masses? Youth, itself, would lose its meaning. What I advocate is a culture-wide multi-dimensional understanding of beauty. Why should we idealize skin with the light-reflective quality of ceramic glaze?
Imagine a world in which the title of my drawing were printed on billboards and in print ads across the Internet. "A face without lines is like a book without words." Lets believe in that. Let's encourage our daughters to get smarter, wiser, and more compassionate.
I remember discovering Confucius and Radhakrishnan in college. It was as exciting as science fiction. My face was young and fresh, but my mind was excited by what is ageless in the world. Then, reading Jung's Memories, Dream, Reflections for the first time, I realized that the mind itself was a vast universe.
Developing my skills as an artist took me deeper into the study of line, and that's when I understood what makes the aesthetics of visual humanity most interesting. Line can be read like words. Some lines are dark, gouged by time into canyons of anger or hatred. Some lines are playful, they develop through the habits of laughter and play. There are worried lines, sorrowful lines, loud lines, and quiet lines.
Each of us has our own book imprinted into our faces and our bodies. I think it was Lincoln who said, 'Anyone over forty is responsible for his face'. Our habits write our story. Take a look in the mirror; don't be afraid. Read your story. What will be written there tomorrow?

I said I'd post a photo of myself so here I am with my dear friend Morrie Turner. Morrie Turner is one of the lesser-known heroes of the civil rights movement. He was the first nationally-syndicated African American cartoonist in America. His endearing Wee Pals cartoon strip was the first to depict people of color, making Morrie not only a pioneer, but an inspiration for young cartoonists of all colors. The wisdom that comes through the children in Wee Pals is equal to that of the Peanuts gang, and the strip often takes on issues of race with amazing charm and candor. If you are a reader of the Oakland Tribune, you're familiar with Wee Pals, but you may not know much about Morrie. To learn more about this talented, modest, and genuine man, please go to: http://www.creators.com/comics/wee-pals-about.html.
In the photo, we were at the San Francisco Library where a special exhibition celebrated Morrie's illustrious career. I'm so proud to call him a friend, and I'm sure you will be glad to know about his unique and creative contribution to the world.

Your face

I just did something I hadn't done for a very long time: I Googled myself. First I saw a terrible picture of me, God only knows where it came from, and then several pictures of beauty queens half my age who share my name. Frankly, I am not well represented by any of those images.
I realized, then, that I don't have a picture of myself anywhere. There is not one here, nor one on my Facebook page (that's a new thing), and not even a portrait on my website. Frankly, I don't trust cameras, never did. This drawing I did a while back represents what I really believe about our face: it is not contained within itself, it spills forth through our words, our smile, our kindness, our impatience, and our attitude.Our face is a representation of who we are, and that's not just about two eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
People have told me that I am photogenic, I translate that to "lucky". Women are, after all, valued by their looks, and only as I grow older do I understand how tenuous that value can be.
We live in an age-ist, sexist society. . .ah, now I'm sounding feminist . . .and women know this personally, men only agree with it when they are intellectually savvy or it somehow touches them on a personal level (like someone saying, "Hey, what's an old man like you doing with a 25 year old girl?").
It's kind of a game for me, I think, because I look quite good for my age. Being a dancer, I stay in shape. I pay attention to Olay commercials, wear sunblock and moisturizer, and night cream, etc., etc. I walk that line between "I'm an intellectual, an artist, and a writer, I don't have to worry about what men want to see. I know that the male gaze has been the controlling factor in advertising, fine art, and pop culture for centuries, and I'm smart enough to be in charge of my own self-esteem. And on the other side of that fine line I live with the woman I've been, young enough to get attention, second looks, and long gazes. Sure, they felt good (most of the time), but the depth of personhood I have now, after forty (okay, after 50) could not be traded for anything.
I will put a photo on my Facebook page as soon as I figure out how to do it, and then I'll even put one here too . . .just as soon as I get one that looks. . .good enough.

Bravo, America!

It's wonderful to feel patriotic again. I had actually forgotten what it felt like, until the night of Barack Obama's election. Joy and peace reigned in the city of Oakland that night, in a way I have never seen it before.
When I decided to write a blog entry about this happiness, though, I found that it was amazingly harder to write about than my complaints and disgust with the previous administration. The darker emotions are such powerful muses that they seem to write about themselves; I hardly have to do any work at all. But happiness, now there's a slippery fish!
I'm sure that our new president will give us plenty of things to complain about, we can't imagine he will please all of us all of the time. So when he does, I'm sure to speak quickly, and hopefully with some eloquence and critical wit. For now, I am just happy to breathe in the autumn air and kick colorful leaves along the curb.
Mostly I'm writing today to say "Bravo, America!" Thank you, thank you, for recognizing a good and intelligent man. Thank you for discerning the subterfuge of some, and the inadequacies of others.
Maybe the film industry played a part in teaching folks how to judge a good performance from a bad one. Then, thank you Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep and Al Pacino, along with those other nameless film professionals who taught us to recognize bad acting when we see it.
May the great creative spirit who goes by many names bless our country, and our planet.