Speak

This is another retablo I did because they are really fun.  I had another idea and an extra frame and wanted to try it.

I have always wanted to paint a woman on a wheel.  I have always loved the tarot cards of the Wheel of Fortune, and the Universe with its cosmic dancer.  And I often saw a woman on a wheel when I would hear when I would hear a certain song.

                                

The song is on this old cd I have called “Music of Medieval Love” by New York’s Ensemble for Early Music.  It is a song about St. Katherine.  The voices repeat and blend into each other, over and over and over, like the turning of a wheel.  I used to listen to it a long time ago, walking around New York at night with the neon lights all glowing.  The lights and the turning sounds and the story of a woman on a firecracker wheel- I always wanted to paint this somehow.

                                                                                     

I am not Catholic or anything and do not know much about saints.  But maybe people do and maybe someone would like to sincerely pray to St. Katherine, and this is a retablo and that is what it’s for- praying, I mean.  So I tried not to get all distracted by firecrackers and tarot card and just stick to some classic St. Katherine imagery.  So there needs to be her, and a wheel, and a book, and some spikes.

A book: as it turns out she is the patron saint of learning and students.  She was a brilliant Christian philosopher in Alexandria.  The bad guys tried to best her in religious argument but she beat them.  They got mad.  But the emporer liked her and wanted to marry her on the condition she renounce her religion.  She wouldn’t.  A wheel: they strapped her on a wheel.  Some spikes: the wheel had spikes on it.  It rotated over her and killed her.  Then they cut off her head. 

But then, the turning wheel exploded!  Shards of spikes and gigantic sharp splinters shot out into the crowd and killed everybody.  Then from the sky, Christ whizzed towards her, scooped up her body and took it safe into the desert into the sun, to Mt. Sinai.

I wanted to do this painting because of the visual image of a woman in a circle.  Not because of the story.  This tale, like most tales of medieval saints, was not appealing to me- very bloody and vengeful and all that stuff you try to overcome if you are into peace on earth and everything.  But I was also dealing with some very heavy issues at the time of heartbreak and shame.  You might listen to Patti Smith at a time like this and you might get all into St. Katherine.  I could empathize with what a medieval woman might have seen in that story.  In a world where you couldn’t speak your own mind, of the incredible pain of childbirth, abuse and humiliation, it might have been cathartic to pray to a saint who said anything she wanted to and sent sharp pieces of an exploding wheel into the hearts of her enemies.  That could go for this world too, I think.

Out of the story, what remains precious for me is her courage to speak her truth.

P.S. The words on the painting are hard to read on the computer, so here they are-

Around the frame (taken from “O laudanda Virginitas (Katerina)” New York Ensemble for Early Music

O laudanda virginitas
etas sexus conditio!

passa regalis dignitas
iam regnat a supplicio.

(translation ) O Praiseworthy virginity, youth and the condition of womanhood!

As royal dignity suffers, now she rules free of all humiliation.

Within the picture:

Katerina.  The story of courage tears apart my shame. 

Brooke Houston 2011.

                                                      

                                                      

Life gets in the way

I can’t really write my blog entry because I am not working on art.  I can’t think of anything to show you.  The truth is, Life has gotten in the way of art.

It’s hard to admit this.  But I feel I am not the only one who has gotten in this disagreeable place.

Sometimes keeping art in my life as a living flourishing thing is like trying to keep alive a very delicate flower that needs a certain kind of soil and air temperature and filtered water from a certain spring and I don’t even know what all and it’s hard.

My studio was in my apartment.  But I had to move out of my apartment, and kind of in a hurry.  Because I have no sense of space in the third dimension, I thought that all my stuff would fit into the smaller new apartment.  Wow, it totally doesn’t.

I will have to find studio space outside of the apartment, a big pain in the… no, must try not to be negative on blog.

There’s this part of Patti Smith’s Just Kids that really resonates with me.  There is a point where she and Robert Mapplethorpe are moving from one place to another for like the forty seventh time.  Just seeing their portfolios, pencils, art books, everything- all packed up and ready to be hauled- she gets depressed, defeated feeling.  Just from the physicalness of the STUFF.  (I would quote this for you, but my Just Kids book is packed in one of the boxes and as good as lost at the moment.)  For a moment, she just wants to throw all the damn stuff away and become a busker or something.

I’m a painter so obviously my artworks are physical; a painting is an object.  The space I need to make paintings is very physical- I mean the space matters.  It has to have light.  It has to be clean.  It has to be quiet.  It has to be private.  If even one small thing is out of place that does not belong to that painting’s particular mess, it drives me crazy and I can’t work.

That’s not the same for all painters but for me… Sometimes I envy conceptual artists, and writers.  When I write, it’s different.  The room can be a mess and I wouldn’t even notice.  It could be a lovely quiet room, a library, somebody’s closet, a bus, a coffee shop.  The workspace is far away in the infinite space of my mind and nothing can harm it.

Until things settle, what can I do? 

What about a sketchbook?  Brooke, did you forget being a student and carrying the sketchbook around everywhere, a safe refuge from crowded Brooklyn apartments and art schools with a lockout?

Maybe this is a chance to discover a new way.

Concept of The Frame

So lately I discovered the concept of the Frame.

The reason is the Dia de los Muertos show at Lawndale. They give you a retablo tin upon which to paint. The tin measures 8 by 10 inches, and for me that’s really small. But they let you cheat! As long as you use the tin, you can add stuff. I decided to add a frame because then it would be bigger.

This presented a cool new set of visual problems to solve. 1. The frame is part of the picture and not part of the picture. 2. The frame makes the work…. 3D. As someone whose favorite dimension is definitely the second one, I saw this mad crazy wild stuff.

Traditionally in Mexico retablos seem to portray a disaster or misfortune that was survived by intercession of a saint, Jesus or Mary. I painted a memory of being in New York during September 11, a disaster that was not averted. (Lawndale lets you change the rules a bit).

September 11 was ten years ago. The painting is the event, but the frame is the space of memory, ten years. It is the space where I contemplate that memory. The prayer is taken from a chant from the Greek Orthodox Church. Because my photograph is a bit blurry, I will type the words here:

Who is weak, and I am not weak? Say who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized? Who is scandalized, and I am not on fire? And I am not on fire? And I am not on fire?

Underneath, are two prayers: Christe Eleison is Greek for Christ give me mercy (The Jesus prayer of the heart). Ar-Rahim is one of the 99 names of Allah, it means Allah is merciful.

I think the frame must also represent a space beyond time. The birds escape the picture’s calamity, but the people do not.

A surprise gift the frame gave me was the duality of space: inside, outside. I could really create a strong movement with this, a movement from left to right. You read the words from left to right. The fire pushes to the right. The birds break out of the frame in a diagonal, going faster, free.

The person falls out of that left to right movement. The person drops out of sight.

(Well, that’s how I saw it, anyway…)

Well, do you know what? I had been so excited buying that lovely large frame at Hobby Lobby among the glitter and stickers and beads, I failed to notice the fine print of my Lawndale rules: the entire work can’t exceed 12 by 14 inches. Mine was too big and they couldn’t take it. So I made a new frame really fast before the deadline; it’s a bit smaller and not the one pictured here. I don’t think it’s that different, though.

The Dia de los Muertos show is at Lawndale from October 17 through November 5. I got a sneak peek when I turned my piece in and all the works were so beautiful, I wish I had a million dollars to attend the auction with! For more information on Lawndale and how to get there and stuff, go to www.lawndaleartcenter.org.

Looking for Sasha (part 3)

I went through this same process with all seven brothers, and their sister. Here is the final picture.

PS. AAh! I’m confused! Why does her blog make no sense? Of course you are confused! But it’s not your fault. This blog entry has 3 parts. The best way is to look at the right hand margin. See where it says Blog Archive? Okay now see where it says Looking for Sasha, Part 1? Yep. Start with that one and read them in order, it will make more sense.

Looking for Sasha (part 2)

I took away the flowy pants. I gave Sasha teddy-boy pencil pants and here’s how he came out.

My mom says he is her favorite of all the brothers because he looks like Project Runway. (Sasha would probably be too snobby to watch Project Runway, but better that than bell-bottoms.)

Looking for Sasha (part 1)

I’m illustrating the novel. My story has at its center seven brothers and their sister.

Sometimes the concept of illustrating is kind of hard for me. I went to an art school in New York called the New York Studio School, where pretty much the worst thing you could do was paint something narrative. That was like a dirty word. So was illustrative.

Well, they did have their point. They were trying to teach something very profound. I think they were trying to teach me, in particular, that you can’t get all carried away by your subject’s facial expression before you’ve worked out the formal structure and composition of the work itself. My teachers came from a background of Hans Hoffman, Rothko, Matisse, awesome guys like that. I’m glad I learned that formal lesson and went to that school because that’s how I learned that the language of painting goes much deeper than the surface.

But now I am long out of school and on my own and enjoy getting reacquainted with my narrative streak. The art most dear to my heart is both formally strong but also very narrative. The two can and do co-exist. The Genii scrolls, Henry Darger, Masaccio, Charlotte Salomon, The Bayeux Tapestry Miyazaki’s cartoons, silent films, to name only a few…

Well, so I wanted to do some storytelling with this picture of the seven brothers. I wanted the painting to be about both their essence but also their surface personalities. The ways I would express these things would be: the clothes they wear, their faces and expressions, the way they are standing, and the way their feet relate to the horizon (that means, if one of the guys is floating, you can bet he’s not a very grounded person).

I went through a process new to me in finding all these things out about all these brothers. Writing (and reading) about all seven would take all day, so I will just write about looking for Sasha.

So Sasha, he is a brother somewhere in the middle of the family. He’s about 21 or 22 years old. He has magical eyes that can see anywhere, anything, if he concentrates. He is vivid and theatrical, he dresses very well. He’s witty. He’s beautiful and small, pretty as a girl. He’s also nervous, he has too much energy but, being a fairytale prince, nothing to do. He drinks too much and doesn’t know it. He’s beginning to get cynical. He’s never alone, but he’s lonely.

I don’t know anyone from my actual life who is like Sasha except the younger brother of a high school friend who’s not around so he can’t model for me. But I used my memory of him, a distrustful, intelligent ten year old child with large green eyes by a swimming pool in the summer of 1996. Then I put in the” Sense and Sensibility” movie and sketched Hugh Grant because a big part of imagining boys was imaging their hairstyles, I never appreciate before how many ways boys style their hair and how hard some of them work at it. And then, how would Sasha stand? Sasha stands almost walking forwards, because he is nervous and restless. His ankles are turning a little bit. He’s not the most stable of the seven brothers. He’s walking towards us, away from the horizon, because he wants to interact with you, he goes head on into life.

I always knew the hardest part would be the clothes. I never paid much attention to men’s clothes. I mean, when I played Barbies as a child Ken usually came in a wedding tux or swimming trunks. He didn’t have many options. And most of the actual real-life men in my life have worn T-shirts and jeans.

I thought Sasha would wear something really classy and yet eccentric and so went shopping for him by googling “Comme des Garcons mens.” I mean, if I were a man I would wear nothing but Comme des Garcons! (Well, maybe not, since even as a woman I rarely manage anything but T-shirts and jeans, but you know. In theory.)

The picture above is the picture I found.

I did a test drawing of Sasha in one of these outfits. I was proud. I showed it to my parents and the word “bell-bottoms” was heard. Oh dear. I showed it to my sister Melissa, the co-author of our story who is currently writing Sasha and who knows him very well. “I don’t know,” she said dubiously. “Sasha’s really vain. I don’t think he’d wear loose pants. He’d want to show off his butt.”

Why are Cicadas so Cool?

I love cicadas so much. I think there should be some sort of spiritual festival in August of September called the Festival of the Cicadas. They make the dog days beautiful and mysterious. The days are so tired in this drought. The cicadas sound like a slow sad tambourine or like the long sigh of evening and long hours.

Not always though. Sometimes there are a lot and they sound like urgency. If I didn’t know they were tree-dwelling insects what would I think of that sound? I’d think the trees I pass under were filled with rattlesnakes, or ravens, with a voice like walnut shells, or spirits who speak in tongues. When I walk under a tree with ten thousand cicadas making their gypsy shaking music, I want to belly dance if I knew how.

Here’s a cicada poem.

***

Tree Voices in the morning-

white light spotting

a falling of a waterfall

a foamy gurgle

a silver cat purr.

Tree Voices in the evening-

yellow tambourines round as the sun

tiger growls in my time of great sorrow

rattlesnakes who rattle trees

shamans who Shake, and Stop danger.

sagas

(above: Melissa and I long ago circa 1998 when we first started writing this story)

Not long ago my sister sent me six new chapters of the Fehran story and I was reading them more avidly than I read the last Harry Potter book (which is really saying something as Harry Potter allowed for neither eating nor sleeping). When she finishes this section, we will be almost finished.

Fehran will be a (probably really long) illustrated novel. Missy (actually as she is now a grownup she goes by Melissa calling her that feels weird for me) offers this description of the book:

“Fehran is a dark fairytale about how a broken heart can consume the whole world. It is set in two kingdoms. In one, a tyrant king searches for something to feed his ambitions. In the other, seven magical princes and their sister grow up and nourish the seeds of tensions that will destroy them. The story follows how the two kingdoms crumble the closer they are intertwined, as a great betrayal brings love, escape, revenge, and finally losses that cannot be repaired.”

The story began actually years ago. I was nineteen pretending to work in a temp job in Houston, but as they had actually nothing for me to do, I just stared at the computer screen and imagined a story in my head that played itself out before my eyes without effort, like a secret tv. Missy was sixteen, in high school and a big fan of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” It turned out she too was imagining and dreaming a story. By combining our two stories, we found an excellent form of entertainment.

This was nothing new; we had been inventing stories together our whole lives, the notes of which filled many manila folders and which we called Sagas. Most of the earlier Sagas were about hot tempered brave ladies in Victorian times who fought pirates or something. But this new one was different. We called it Fehran after the world in which it took place. We even started writing it down. After all, the Brontes had written down their Gondal story, the one the children had all imagined long before Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights. We wanted ours to last also. I had to draw pictures of all the characters because I like to know how people look. Soon we were writing a book.

We never finished. I went to New York to study art; Missy went to Rice in Houston to study anthropology, and Fehran went the way of the other childhood sagas. Ten years went by. I don’t really remember why I started writing Fehran again. I was unemployed, always a blessing for artistic endeavors. Soon Missy was writing it again as well. It has changed a lot from its original version, but the characters, like the two wayward princesses, the seven magic brothers, the waifs Eani and Henri, and the tyrant King, have all remained.

Plum Village and the Moon

Summer in Houston is wearing me out. I’m so sorry Houston. I try very hard to love you in your most difficult times no matter what people say about you. In the beginning of the summer I rode my bike everywhere. I loved the magnolias, the haunted sounds of music coming from Herman Park not far away, the black grackles at Empire café with their blue sheen and their evil dinosaur eyes.

But now it’s August. There’s not much rain. It’s dusty all around Montrose and smells like car exhaust and dried cat poo. It’s okay. It’s also the time of nothing to break the light of the sun. If you go to the rose garden it’s copper needles drying in the heat, little flames of roses, cicada’s sad tambourines, blonde grass, and sunsets so heavy with color they are pressing honey and melted butter through the black trees at dusk.

At this time one year ago I was in such a different place and as they days get hotter, drier, and longer and longer and longer, I like to remember that time. I stayed two weeks at Plum Village, the monastery of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, in the countryside outside Bordeaux, France. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, there was “nowhere to go and nothing to do,” so I spent a lot of time wandering through tall grasses, watching sheep bleat to each other, watching a nun throw back her head and sing the moon up. I wrote so many moon poems there and I wasn’t the only one! Lots of people were into the moon… it’s so different when you can really see it. I so miss the moon and I miss the insect sounds in the field and I miss Plum Village, so I will share some of my journal from that time.

Plum Village Moon Poem

Half moon:

parts itself

pushing out

like the breasts on a young girl growing

giving birth

or the sky is giving birth to her pale form.

You are growing, like me

you’re giving birth to yourself,

like me.

The moon was a sharp half piece

like the chip off a diamond.

Yellow was soaked all around it.

Fresh as a shot of sun

inside the water, this moon.

If you see a stone under flowing water flashing

It seems to be waving.

That’s the way the stars tremble.

Waxing moon:

a rose kiss

a rose eye

an opening eye.

pink moon playing

bobbing in a rainbow

rolling in the trees.

Full moon:

now you turn towards us your full face.

Now you show up, you open your eyes wide.

You are awake.

I and the corn and the flute insects wait for your voice.

A mother is come home.

Full Moon Festival

Down by the lotus pond the children

are holding rushing sparklers.

What’s that immense silent firework

showering sparks behind the trees?

Plum Village Insect Poem

The insects are earth’s singers.

I hear tambourines. The night is full of a thousand tiny bells.

And reedy flutes, rattling grass.

But a bird’s song is sweet as a baby laughing,

a brook in the forest,

a surprise of bright flower.

If I find you, smaller creature,

in the shower or the hallway,

you are green and glazed with gold.

Your legs are blue. Your eyes are soft.

Your legs catch at my finger like the bow catches a violin string.

I have to carry you out into the soft blue night

And lay you on the first leaf I can reach

A leaf in a darkening linden tree

So you won’t die.

Spiders in the shower

you ride so high

you weigh nothing on your eight airy stilts.

Even a drop of water

will crush you high world

but I’m careful

***

The point of Plum Village Buddhist teachings though, is to live in the present moment, which right now means H-town. So I will try to have some nice poems about shiny, trembling, plenteous roaches and fluffy feral cats as soon as possible.

Learn more about Plum Village here:

http://www.plumvillage.org/