My youngest niece is still flying on the trapeze and said she loves the bird of paradise this year. Never mind that males are the colorful ones in the birdy-verse, we get to do whatever we want in the art-verse. She’s doing the Chinese Fish Dance in her dance group…and from what I can tell from the always reliable internet, this is one of the traditional gestures…

My nephew wanted a dragon Darth Vader, a Giant Japanese Salamander Luke Skywalker, and frog clone warriors…but he forgot I was there when he brought home the huuuuuge tuba he’s going to be playing in band this year.

My oldest niece is into dragons, archery & The Hunger Games…she has a black rabbit named Katniss…and she told me her favorite color is the blue of the sky just before dark.

Art has been good to me these last few months, after more than a year struggling with the drain of a day-job and debt. Or rather, I have managed, courtesy of the dreaded day-job and the resolution of debt, to buy myself a couple of amazing art experiences that opened up painting for me once again. My participation in the Seattle CoCA (Center on Contemporary Art) Art Marathon showed me my own foundation, and forced me into working a group of paintings in bolder, more efficient ways. That transformed my notion of what I needed, in terms of time and space, to create artwork.

My trip to Montana–to visit family, do art projects with my niece and nephew, and paint–gave me the unexpected inspiration of my nephew’s fantastic eye and imagination. He was mesmerized by the camera functions on my new iPad, and became absorbed in distorting images into a series of hilarious family portraits. His instinct and natural facility with art never cease to amaze me, so it was fun for me to take this very contemporary/of-the-moment technology/artform that he created so brilliantly and transform it, backwards, in a way, with a very old school/traditional artform…a physical thing, a representation of a moment, a discovery…and add to the observation of what all that means in relation to the cycle and function of art.

“Speck was expert on barges, bridges, cafes at twilight, nudes on striped counterpanes, the artist’s mantlepiece with mirror, the artist’s street, his staircase, his bed made and rumpled, his still life with half-peeled apple, his summer in Mexico, his wife reading a book, his girlfriend naked and dejected on a kitchen chair. He knew that the attraction of customer to picture was always accidental, like love; it was his business to make it overwhelming. Visitors came to the gallery looking for decoration and investment, left it believing Speck had put them on the road to a supreme event. But there was even more to Speck than this, and if he was respected for anything in the trade it was for his knack with artists’ widows. Most dealers hated them. They were considered vain, greedy, unrealistic, and tougher than bulldogs. The worst were those whose husbands had somehow managed the rough crossing to recognition only to become washed up at the wrong end of the beach. There the widow waited, guarding the wreckage. Speck’s skill in dealing with them came out of a certain sympathy. An artist’s widow was bound to be suspicious and adamant. She had survived the discomfort and confusion of her marriage; had lived through the artist’s drinking, his avarice, his affairs, his obsession with constipation, his feuds and quarrels, his cowardice with dealers, his hypocrisy with critics, his depressions (which always fell at the most joyous seasons, blighting Christmas and spring); and then–oh, justice!–she had outlasted him.

Transfiguration arrived rapidly. Resurrected for Speck’s approval was an ardent lover, a devoted husband who could not work unless his wife was around, preferably in the same room. If she had doubts about a painting, he at once scraped it down. Hers was the only opinion he had ever trusted. His last coherent words before dying had been praise for his wife’s autumnal beauty.”

Of the millions of thoughts this story has sparked—how it is of its time and yet not; the struggles of every artist friend with living, loving, care-taking, sharing, surviving, creating, posterity; how feminism may have made room for women at the table, but we still have our natures and men’s natures to contend with—for all of those considerations and more, two thoughts rise to the top:

First, how completely different, perhaps non-existent—in fact or fiction—this tale would be, were the genders reversed. And second, the miracle of the story hinges on an 11th hour reversal in which the widow is shown to be the master of the form. She is one of those women who thrives in the male system in which she operates, understanding exactly how to use the options allotted her to advantage, how to triumph with canny and manipulative underdoggery. The mirror the story reflects, to me, is how absolutely I am not that woman, not “the Muse”—dirty job that that is. And, how, possibly ironically, I owe the awareness that I had the option to be the artist rather than the muse, to a man, a sweetheart and colleague…just as I learned from many others what the price of musery would be. I suppose I owe them all a debt of gratitude.

Jaysus. For the first time, ever, I had to turn off Jon Stewart.

Ok–granted, I really wanted Obama to take the piss out of Romney last night when he said blatantly pandering and dishonest crap.

But I also appreciated that The President–the man who stepped into one of the greatest crises in this country’s history, who cut through and rose above some of our worst, most embarrassing cultural crap, who demonstrated both faith and resilience in reaching across the aisle (and we all watched him–and I would hope, ourselves–get schooled in just how low the anti-Dem Right has sunk), who has fought such an exhausting battle for such democratic essentials as access to education, health, and a voice in government, all the while aging a century before our eyes–did nothing worse than acting like an adult when paired with a smug salesman..and today he is a joke?

I really find the backlash distressing. When you look at what Obama said–not at the things we wish he’d said, but at what he actually said–it is exactly what he always does: he spoke to us like we are people capable of listening to more than soundbites, of sorting comparative information, of grasping the relevant points, rather than like children who need to be entertained. Why is that not a good thing?

He didn’t get in the dirt w/Romney. By now, he’s had 4 years facing that same brand of smoke-blowing bullsh*t; can we really blame him for not engaging on that level?

And are we really that fickle? Do we really think all the problems of our country should be so easily solved? Do we honestly think that, because a leaner, greyer, worn-looking Barack Hussein Obama didn’t slap the confident Regan half-smirk off Mitt Romney’s face, he’s a loser? The fact that he is where he is, who he is, having done what he has in 4 years, is such a remarkable testament…I don’t know…

When Stewart showed the image of a glowing, focused, vibrant Obama storming the stage in Denver a mere 4 years ago, to me, it was the illustration of what this county has demanded of Obama. It recalled the earliest days of his presidency when he campaigned so tirelessly for dialogue to solve the extraordinary problems facing us, crises for millions losing their homes and livelihoods, millions more losing their lives because of inaccessible healthcare, two wars the country hated, our standing and relations with the rest of the world in tatters…and the implacable wall of politics and self-interest that he faced on every issue…

And now, what? He’s not shiny and new any more, so crumple that up and toss it? That vibrant face. It made me feel ashamed of us. There’s Stewart complaining that that wasn’t the guy on stage last night. Where was that guy? The well-rested, tanned and sexy one? This guy, the tired one, the hardened one, who is actually running for a second term instead of telling us to all go f*k ourselves–and he truly has every right to, now that, on top of everything we handed him on his first day, Citizens United requires him to campaign full-time, in addition to his day-job–this guy, who is strong enough to show us his humility (ever heard of humility, America? remember Bush II? ever think it might be a good thing?)–this guy’s worth nothing to us now that he doesn’t look as pretty and sound as perky? Is that it?

I feel like we’re a whole country who’ve made ourselves sick on too much cotton candy; and we deserve to be really, really ill.

And I am really unhappy with Jon Stewart tonight.

________________________________________

In continuing to think on this, I went back and found Obama’s race speech–well worth a re-read: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-th_n_92077.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

How great would it be if I lived in a place where I could just go out and find an apartment—or any functional space with live/work capacity—that only costs one third of my take-home pay??

(As opposed to the increasingly oppressive, drowning, suffocating, strangling two thirds I’m paying now…)

Wait! How great would it be if one third of my take-home pay covered food, transportation, internet access, phone, power, insurance, medicine?

canvas. paint.

friendship…

a vacation.

visits to my family.

time in Mexico.

education. workshops. new skills.

technology.

(gurgle.)

Wait! Back that up!  

How great would it be if ART was my JOB? If this was a place that thought art had a place, and I could just get up every day and go do my JOB…

How great would it be to develop just one career?  argue with just one exploitative employer about salary and benefits?  have only one structure to understand and fit into and try to make work to my advantage?

No wait! Back that up FURTHER!!  

HOW GREAT WOULD IT BE to be able to GO TO SCHOOL IN ART?   and come out with the KNOWLEDGE AND THE NETWORK,  and   …given that my education would’ve cost as much as that of any doctor or lawyer or MBA… receive an EQUIVALENT SALARY from my ART JOB??

And I could afford to pay back my educational debt within my lifetime?

And I could still get up every morning and GO TO MY ONE JOB:   ART?!!!…

What if I lived in an alternate universe? What’s the point in chewing on these things? This is how the world I live in is constructed. This, that I’m living right now, is the result of that which I can shape and effect, and that which I can’t shape and effect. This is how it is. Then again, it’s my job as an artist, to chew on how things are, right? (Irony intended.)

So I ask myself to answer questions I have an answer for.

Why have I worked for UC? In the majority of time I have spent as an “arts professional” of one kind or another, why has UCSF been my day job? Especially given that the financial side of that equation has been, undeniably, lousy.

And I actually have an answer to that. Because, if I have to give away half my time, if I have to direct my creative energies, my incisive insights, my directedness and ability to see the  big and small in things and map them out and bring them to fruition, my ability to deal with geniuses, bullies, ego-maniacs, dopes and just-folks, and get them to work effectively together—if I have to give away my juice to something other than art—then I’d at least like to bring that to bear on something worthwhile.  I’d at least like to imagine that, at the end of the day, when I look at the sum of my efforts, half was not thrown away on something I didn’t believe in, honor, or wish to help flourish in the world.

In America, there is a cost to that side of the social equation. We don’t pay the purveyors of good works, and we do so less and less in our more and more profit-driven culture. Good works are the heart-children of the martyred or the wealthy.

In the Montana where I grew up, we thought all “rich” people were evil. Because the only “rich” people there were largely the robber barons, the owners of mines, refineries and lumber operations (though more accurately, mostly the managers employed by the owners of mines, refineries and lumber operations). It was assumed the “rich” got their filthy lucre through some form of dirty dealing, ugly opportunism, the oppression of those with nothing, or all of the above. Non-profits—the good works of the better-off —largely in the interest of the less-well-off, of a  better society, to help the poor, to bring the artistic to and out of average folks, to address un-addressed wrongs, to provide legal or medical or social help to those who need it and can’t pay for it…those organizations barely existed. It might be fair to say they didn’t exist in Montana when I lived there. And I’m pretty sure there has been no non-profit boom in the conservative-leaning state in the interim, despite the population boom of the Hollywood-rich (though there may be more access for people with my interests than before, and that counts).

There was art in the public schools. And music. And theater. And journalism. And marching band, and dance team. So if you could get your fill by the time you graduated high school, you were set. If you needed more, you needed to move on.

So I moved on. To the dual life so romanticized in my college text-books—Kafka’s brilliant, twisted tales, a product of his insurance clerking; Van Gogh’s failed attempts at civilian occupations engendering a fevered artistic output that, in striving to find his voice, his place, to legitimize those failures, left us one of the world’s most compelling bodies of art; Sylvia Plath, with her legendary unquiet balance between creating poetry and the mundane demands diluting her energies—a cautionary tale for us all. (Mind you, it never even occurred to me to question why so many didn’t trod that path, why, say, Meryl Streep never did commercials. Answer: because she didn’t have to.)

I landed, half by circumstance, half by affinity, at an educational “non-profit.” I went to UCSF, fresh from teaching public school, only a few years out from hospital jobs to pay for college (both outside-circulating in an O.R. and housekeeping), overqualified, and immediately undervalued. I resented the dishonest way my skills were classified and underpaid, but I liked the breadth of characters I met there, I liked the level of discourse, I liked the safety of my “otherness,” which was a nice balance to the constantly shifting relationships and competition of theater. UC always claimed its benefits package as its justification for underpaying staff, and I guess I appreciated seeing a good dentist. So I struggled with the economics, and over more than a decade, I found various roles within that system. I worked from almost the lowest administrative classification possible, through temp work preparing grants, and into management of a major cross-disciplinary AIDS research program. I left for ten years, and returned a bit over a year ago.

Across that time, I developed a treasured collection of friends, conscientious, dedicated Real-Worlders, civilians from the academic side of my life. I am lucky for it. Those who have had the stomach to stick around have been the more consistent figures in my life. They have supported my art, both materially and intellectually. My conversations with them spur as much creativity as my conversations with the dwindling ranks of friends still in “the service,” still Other-Worlders. Over the decade when I stepped completely away from the dual life—when ART was my JOB!—when, ready or not, even while I was still teaching myself the basics, I lived almost exclusively by and for my painting, my civilian friends took me to lunches and dinners, occasionally timed purchases of work to exquisitely coincide with the date the rent was due, housed me at times, invited my perspective as an artist to their tables at moments when I couldn’t see any possible value in it myself. My friends in the service have scattered to the four corners of the earth, gone wherever doing what we do seems most doable, and each of us struggles with that duality of our lives—or triality or quadrality, if you add in any additional factor of love, work, support, responsibility…

So maybe the pain is as much the looming truth that California is crashing, and my recently-resumed, fragile, barely-functional but decades-old relationship with UCSF, along with it. And where does one go next, in a whole society that’s crashing, awash in 40-, 50-, and 60-something “displaced workers,” willing/forced to work for less? Not to mention, of course, all the freshly minted high-school, college and art-school grads looking for their place? How does all that factor into keeping the dual boat afloat…as solitary ancient mariner? Even if this is needed evidence that dreaded d.j.’s take more than they provide at this point in life, so what? What’s the alternative? If UC is crashing, it is only further evidence that the sources of support for artists—in the state that ranks dead last in per-capita spending on the arts—are merely the ghosts of another era, of a system as inaccessible as if it were in an alternate universe.

The Loop has, predictably, led to no answers. Only this. If I don’t crack out the paint right this minute, I will most likely implode. It is the one and only refuge, the one and only form of sense and comfort I can actually wrap my hands, head and heart around and make worthwhile. For at least an afternoon.

I keep repeating the mantra I developed for my civilian trade over the years: Strive for the goal. Chase the dream. Deal with the reality.

Some times that doesn’t play out the way you might think it would. Right now, the only way to deal with the reality is to paint. Possibly while California burns. Possibly while I burn along with it. Just paint.

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.