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| Welcome to SKETCHES, Michael Gerrish's WhyART.com newsletter. I offer thoughts to stretch your mind and spur your actions to produce positives for you and those you touch. Author Daniel Pinkwater said, "I believe it is impossible to make sense of life in this world except through art." Artist Francis Bacon said, "The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery." This "talking head" sees truth in both statements; let's start making sense by exploring and expanding the mysteries which surround us! |
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The More Things Change.... (Moving From Memory to Memory) "We are shaped and fashioned by what we love." Goethe "The art we love first is the art we love best." Harold Rosenberg (attribution) I am looking out of a window in my new studio. The studio is the rear half of the third floor of our renovated brick row house in Troy, NY. It's late afternoon on the first day of the new year, but I'm not seeing the backyard, or the yards next door, or the Hudson River, even though they are close. Instead, I'm looking out at the fig tree behind my grandmother's home in Los Banos, California on a day similar to this one, except that it happened more than 45 years ago. Isn't memory wonderful! I'm not looking back in time because I don't like what is really outside. As some of you know, we have a new home. We are city folk now, my wife and I. Troy may not be a big metropolis, but it has sidewalks, streetlights and places you can walk to instead of drive. We love it. I don't know why I looked out the window and saw my grandmother's fig tree. But the memory came back, and I smiled at the thoughts of climbing the tree and recalled how it smelled when I sat among its branches. Memory is a powerful agent in our lives; it has the power to intrude and entertain. It even makes a great title for a painting. But its power is strongest and it is at its most poignant when connected to what we love. Where do you find your "fig tree"? Part Two... Memory stimulates creativity; it carries the past forward to dwell in our present. Artists use their skills to help others remember; sometimes the things artists want us to remember are troubling. Picasso's Guernica grew out of his pacifism and opposition to Franco's alliance with Hitler; contemporary artists are using a variety of art media to protest the American coalition's presence in Iraq. For some, the Internet is a natural way to express and distribute their opinions. I am a pacifist. It troubles me that in many parts of
the civilized world the politicians who govern the nation I love are
considered war criminals whose cavalier attitudes about international
treaties encouraged many in the US military to engage in torture. There
are many voices which encourage
peaceful alternatives. It is way past time to listen. "The ability to step aside and contradict oneself is the nature of art." Lynda Benglis |
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Sketches
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Michael Gerrish • 159 1st Street • Troy, NY 12180 •
(518)266-0304 • mrg@whyart.com |
