I just stumbled on the entry in my journal from that performance, and it got me thinking about it again.

As a theater artist, the whole theme of “audience participation” strikes a certain dread, having seen it done badly so many painful times. So often these engagements begin with the wrong premise. Actors start exhorting the audience to GET UP!! or JOIN IN!! –failing to acknowledge the basic, fundamental fact that audience and performers enter the sacred space of the theater with different expectations. Even in street theater, performers and audience occupy a different psychic space. And, however you as a performer want to engage your audience, you must begin from that premise, that understanding.

Shortly after the performance, while I was still thinking on it, and trying to articulate what the company had done so right, I heard an NPR Science Fridays broadcast about the Sun. It mentioned the concept of differential rotation. The Sun is a huge ball of gas, rotating at its two poles at a rate of once every four days; at its equator, it is moving at a rate of one rotation every thirty days.

It struck me that that was exactly the concept that Dean Moss and his troupe understood: while all encompassed in the same body that is Nameless Forest, the performers are operating at the polar rate of rotation, while the audience is rotating at the equatorial rate–or vice versa–it doesn’t really matter how you frame it, only that you must understand this differential. The company approached the problem of the production with the right science, so their calculations were true, and the formula they arrived at worked.

They began by setting the right tone with the audience members they brought on stage. They were not overly friendly, they were not confrontational. They were direct, clear, serious, somber, kind. They made themselves trustworthy from the outset, aware of the surroundings and their unknowing partners, they made gently clear they were in charge. The dynamic their approach elicited, what it allowed the actor/dancers and the theater to set up–that effective use of/collaboration with audience, who could not possibly know what was happening, and yet were an integral part of the story–was truly remarkable. It created a kind of synergy, of sympathy, engagement, and interaction that truly couldn’t have been achieved any other way. It required the interaction of knowing and unknowing “performers.” And it was wonderful to feel how that reflected life. And to see what theater can do.

The link below is to Dean Moss’ site on Vime0–it doesn’t come close to the experience of seeing it in person, but it allows a peek. If Nameless Forest ever comes to where you are, go! Whether you join in or watch from the outside, I guarantee it will move you.

When I heard from Rip’s wife, right after he died, that there would be no memorial, that he had been insistent on the point, I felt my heart drop—like the last quarter in a vending machine that’s going to spit out something very bad. It wasn’t just the evaporation of that image of gathering loved ones, but what it told me of Rip’s frame of mind at the end that saddened me.

He had lived longer than he wanted to. He had been a vigorous man, in remarkable health until maybe six or seven years before his death, and he was intolerant of living compromised. When he first began having problems with his eyes, with sleeping, with balance, with his blood pressure, with swallowing, with driving and then walking—he absolutely hated the restrictions, the experience of himself as diminished–and I remember feeling certain he would simply opt out. I prepared myself for it. And then it didn’t happen. He adjusted: to each new medication, each new routine. He submitted to the tests and the solutions and the regimens, all of it growing more and more time consuming, more demanding of his attention, more intrusive on his life. The day he died, I realized with absolute clarity that he had taken this long road, this slow, painful decline, for us—mostly, I think, for Rosary, his wife—so that we could adjust, could see him disappearing, aid him in his exit, and truly know he was gone when he was gone.

But I also think forcing himself to take that long, slow, progressively humiliating journey took its toll. Rip was one of the sanest people I have ever known. His impulses were generous, his grievances were thought out and mastered. He was almost courtly in his demeanor; he was giving, liberal with his knowledge and experience, thoughtful in his interactions. His optimism, his ability to renew and reinvigorate his artistic vision, again and again, with the wonder of a child and the focus of an old master, was inspiring, wonderful. In the last years, I saw a fissure in his composure, a sort of resentment of his place in the artistic cosmos…and I felt that his decline had colored his view of his own work, his own place, made that too seem diminished. It seemed he judged himself not worthy of memorial.

Not that there isn’t every reason to resent the “art world”—it’s a ridiculous construct, and it embraces very few—but Rip never really pursued the approbation of the “art world.”  He didn’t move to New York or Los Angeles, his work was not radical or game-changing or controversial or constructed of bold new materials or forms such that it would mark out unique territory for him. He was not a self-promoter, his ego did not overwhelm all obstacles in his path or demand a forum. He chose to have a family, partnership, a stable home, a career in academics—he chose to make absolutely beautiful “pictures,” as he liked to call them. He kept his inspiration close to home, creating beautiful relationships with a wide range of people as he either taught them to paint or seduced them with his genteel admiration into becoming subjects–in all his actions, he chose to be close to home, to make beautiful work and beautiful interactions that made a more beautiful world…maybe with a small reach, but an unquestionably worthy one. His approach was like an art version of the Hippocratic oath: first, do no harm.

And yet he dreamed of ending up in the museums and history books. Every year or so, he would re-evaluate his work, examine his beliefs and tastes, write manifestos for himself, artistic to-do lists, establish new goals, find new ways to energize his commitment to his work. In my opinion, the work changed very little—it always came back to a very similar style, approach, subject matter, treatment. But what amazed and inspired me was that this frail old man never allowed himself to succumb to boredom, to go to sleep, to check out…even when he felt he had fallen into auto-pilot in his work…he would find a way to refocus, to challenge himself, to continue working, to face the tedium of repetition, the always-looming terror of inadequacy, of failing to meet one’s own dreams and expectations and potential, and he would get back to it. Over and over again right up to the last week of his life.

So there are many, many things I could—and should—say about Rip Matteson. They have been with me over the decade-plus of our exchange, they have been at the forefront of my mind, in my tears and silence over the last year. So I believe I will try to give them voice over the next couple of months, because I was given an extraordinary gift in this man. It was sheer dumb luck that brought a steelworker’s daughter from Montana into intimate conversation with this great soul, this well-educated academic, this remarkable vessel of knowledge and spirit and humanity. Our work was very dissimilar–oil paint was really the only bonding agent–but the very differences allowed me to come up against and articulate what I was, in contrast to what he was. My work with him as a model gave me an inside track to that experience, and supplemented in important ways what I knew about getting at character from theater with what it was to be a “subject”–and helped me to work out the approach to and relationship with the people I paint to create the experience and the painting that I want. His struggles with the limitations of his choices, the way he reevaluated and always arrived back at an acceptance and embrace of the life he had chosen taught me that there is struggle and compromise and reward, no matter which path you choose. So I will try to break out a few of the lessons I learned from him and share them here.

I guess I am now officially a member of the modern world, because, to answer my own question: what do you do with your tributes when there is no memorial? You blog.

There are so many parallels between Mexican life and traditions—I should say Oaxacan life, as Oaxaca is to D.F. what Montana is to N.Y.C.—and the Catholic traditions I was raised with, that they always fire up my pen. I wrestle with the yin and yang of the quinceañera tradition–so beautiful that this transition is acknowledged, honored, ritualized; so maddening that the future it predicts is so limited. The quinceañera, the wedding, the validation of one’s spouse and legitimization of oneself through childbearing…and one’s role in the world is complete. More to the point, these are the only roles open to women…on the Good Girl side of the equation. Everything else is some version of Bad Girl.

These pieces in La Loteria Mia series look back at the decades that followed, for me, once I stepped off that Catholic gameboard. I wish I had done it with kindness (to myself and others) and integrity, but especially in the earliest years of re-invention, I think I was a little cruel, fighting a battle for that version of myself I wanted to define…and that probably had no other enemy–certainly no greater enemy–than myself…

La Veintañera–The Twenties

The world beyond Montana was a wonderland, a banquet laid out for my consumption, as ripe, vibrant, and sexy as I was…bold, cocky, exposed, certain there were no limitations I could not find my way over, through, or around…an emotional adventure, a circus in which I was ring-master, trapeze artist, and caged animal all at once…

La Treintañera–The Thirties

I was into my thirties by the time I came to the understanding that raw talent was only half the picture—maybe less—and that anyone could learn to do anything, you just had to access the lessons and take the classes…down to business, work, work, work…I had enough living behind me to have some weight; enough ahead of me to believe I could move mountains…enough vision, strength, and self-knowledge to actually move them…through work, work, work…

La Cuarentañera–The Forties

In my forties, I stepped out. Out of the work, work, work–at least work for money, and work for other people (certainly I’ve worked as hard to teach myself to paint and build a body of work); out of my country; out of my roles–my job description, my history, my community, my possessions and mementos–and therefore out of my definition; out of my language. I stepped away from tragedy. I returned to the creative, but in an art form I didn’t know. I embraced not “knowing how” and the pleasure of finding my own way through—observing, experimenting, practicing, hitting the wall, leaving it until I knew what to do next—stumbling through painting, which was at first a comfort, and then an even deeper fire that seared me to the bone, burned the drama off like ether and left me essential and committed.

The Fifties

The financial crisis, re-entry into the “straight world” workplace, and the commencement of my fifties all coincided. I have some thoughts about what that reflection will look like…and a new card is on the way…but I am holding off until the end of this decade to sum up La Cincuentañera…and hoping very much that what has begun with so much dark will be required by physics, if nothing else, to balance itself out with an equal, or at least substantial, measure of light.

The American Woman Triptych was one of my first paintings. The line drawing and a first pass at underpainting were in place when I went to Oaxaca in 2001. When I came back, I picked it up again, though my painting had evolved a lot in that year, and I wasn’t sure where to go with it. Didn’t want to start completely over, though my skills at “verisimilitude” had improved–but it was what it was, the best I could do at that time. And I liked the freedom, the unconcern for accuracy, the greater focus on story…so I painted it up and let it live that way for some time.

It’s been out for a couple of showings since then, but I don’t think I was ever fully satisfied with it. Then this October, Jacqueline Cooper of Autobody Fine Art, and the Artistic Director of Hayward’s Sun Gallery, asked for some of my Mexico-influenced work for a show, and I started thinking on this piece again…what it was intended to express, the rightness of Mexican imagery for the base-line realities of living, and also about graphic story-telling. So I transformed the faces into calavera masks related to the roles in a woman’s life represented in the piece. And then I decided to take the graphic element further, flirting with a color version of the  “Notan” concept, outlining the figures as in a comic book–which my sisters and I grew up on…and I think it’s creeping towards satisfactory at last…

and she’s done… for now.

The Flirt

The Hostess

The Professional

Though the Fates did gift me a precious change-up in 2005. I was in Montana for a short visit to do some work for my sister and her husband, expected to return well before Christmas. But weather closed the airports, and the first flight back was after the holiday. So I sat in their kitchen, night after night, researching, drawing and coloring cards for the whole family, as Lars and Rhiannon draped over the table or perched on a chair for a vulture’s eye view of work in progress. And finally, Tia Susana was not Echo’s mommy or tall, blonde, indulgent Aunty Bert…Tia Susana was the one who made the cards.

This year, Rhiannon fell in love with The Tiger Saga books, she started playing softball and the family made it back to her favorite place on earth, Clalock Beach on the Olympic Peninsula.

Since I’ve been asking the kids about their year and what they want in their own cards (as opposed to asking their parents), Lars has embraced the possibilities with hilarious gusto–his shy reserve has completely evaporated. He imagines detailed scenarios–and thank the gods, he’s started giving me URL’s for the specifics–this year it was Nerf Vortex Blasters. Last year was an epic adventure, fueled by Leggo Atlantis; this year it’s an epic battle.

The amphibian obsession continues; he’s still into salamanders, and quite specific that he wanted an army of ten salamanders (ok, I let him down a bit), four Blue Dumpy Tree Frogs, led by a Japanese Giant Salamander, armed with all four styles of Nerf Vortex Blasters, at war with a “little green frog with a spray can of glitter–a Glitter Warrior!” His dad thinks he got that from his last visit to San Francisco. (Snap! Little does he know!)

This year Echo said she wanted to be a blue Amazonian butterfly, she wanted to be on a multiple trapeze, as this is her new love, and she wanted to be listening to her new lime green iPod, which she is very proud to have purchased with her own earnings. (Hmmm, maybe I should apply for her job?)

Rhiannon at 12, Lars and Echo at 9, captured, ever so slightly, in 2011. With lots of love from Tia Susana.

please open the holiday season

with some wine,

some nature-inspired art (which some would also call gifts)

of the two- and three-dimensional kind,

and a bit o’ fellowship

…nos vemos en Claudia’s, eh?

Reception this Saturday for group show, Hot Color of Culture, at the Sun Gallery, in Hayward. A lovely show, curated by the lovely Jacqueline Cooper of Autobody FineArt.

Music, dance, food and drink in a family-friendly community center…and I’ll be there!

Artwork will be onsite through Sunday, August 14. ADS Hats is going to be taking a hiatus thereafter, so most hats in the store are marked down to reduce inventory. A fabulous opportunity to indulge!

Hope to see you there!

Susana Montana

If you stayed in the Bay Area for the 4th of July weekend, you’re in luck! I will take 15% off any artwork at ADS Hats this Sunday. Elina is also offering a broad selection of hats at 30-50% off, with an additional 20% off many styles, this weekend only. Come get a hat for the sun and artwork for the soul!

                                                                                                                                                       –Abrazotes, Amiguitas/os!

About the piece:

MY BOOTS HANG THERE follows an image-thread through the geography of my life. Much of my upbringing in Montana was spent on my grandparents’ farm, and my first encounter with a decomposing skeleton has always stuck with me. My grandmother handled the bones—and my horror—with an easy combination of respect and irreverence, telling me we were all headed for the same place, so there was no point in being afraid of it. Years later, I recognized in Mexican art a kindred mix of the sacred and profane, and it provided my entrée into art. The painting included here is from a series called Bone Women: The Taunting Embrace of Life as an Artist. It draws from the Mexican alignment of life and death, each always viewed in the context of the other, with boldness, mockery, wit and empathy.  In the first decade of my life as an artist, I literally carried my artwork—and what little else I had left—on my back between Oaxaca and San Francisco. This piece is an homage to Frida Kahlo’s My Dress Hangs There—an ode to the foreignness, exoticism, and perspective of the outsider.