As Peter Gabriel said: “I’m waiting for ignition, I’m looking for a spark
Any chance collision and I light up in the dark.
Besides experiencing the art displayed at an opening, I usually spend most of my time chatting with fellow artists. I move between the emotional visual adventure that the art work takes me on, and the hugely satisfying emotional touch and connection within this tribe of old and new friends.
I rarely visit at the many Shopping Malls in Northern New Jersey where I live. The enormous density of humans I encounter, and the predictability of what is available for sale does not appeal to me. I do however, as necessary, take advantage of the value of household and kitchen goods sold at the large box store, Costco. This past weekend I visited the largest of these box stores in the region. The drawing here poetically represents hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of humans I encountered. As a Synesthete, my senses are particularly sensitive and exhausted by an afternoon in this environment.
As a synesthete, if I care to “look” at what I feel, I can draw it. This is what a sore chest felt like. It was all sort of squeezey pressure with points of pain like a very sore throat in the wrong place. The fabric piece is sewn directly on a commercial 12″ square stretched linen canvas. I am quite well now, and all that remains, thankfully, is the artwork.
12″x12″ linen canvas, silk and linen, cotton and metallic thread and floss
If you haven’t heard Linda Everswick’s music, please give a listen. If I must say so myself, her use of my drawing for her cover art has just exactly the right bouncy look for her bouncy aural textures.
Epson Legacy Platine rag paper, archival inks 8.5″x 11″
Do I made a decision based on the context, but clean and straight in front of me,
or is it colored by all that has gone before?
Epson Legacy Platine rag paper, archival inks 8.5″ x 11″
My reflection on 2016. This is a graphic interpretation of the ways I see time. The rectilinear lines and boxes represent days and months. As part of my synesthesia, this is how time looks. Each row is a month, the days are individual boxes. The circles are the broadly defined significant experiences I have had over the last year, and the ripples are what resonates from those experiences moving into the future. The future is behind these images in the center. I cannot as yet see how things will play out. It is in these colors as I was initially seeing this with my eyes open in a darkened room prior to its creation: a night time echo of my experiences in 2016.
1/3 5″ x 11″ Epson Legacy Fibre Paper, Archival Inks
We Are Transmitters
As we live, we are transmitters of life.
And when we fail to transmit life, life fails to flow through us.
That is part of the mystery of sex, it is a flow onwards.
Sexless people transmit nothing.
And if, as we work, we can transmit life into our work,
life, still more life, rushes into us to compensate, to be ready
and we ripple with life through the days.
Even if it is a woman making an apple dumpling, or a man a stool,
if life goes into the pudding, good is the pudding
good is the stool,
content is the woman, with fresh life rippling in to her,
content is the man.
Give, and it shall be given unto you
is still the truth about life.
But giving life is not so easy.
It doesn’t mean handing it out to some mean fool, or letting the living dead eat you up.
It means kindling the life-quality where it was not,
even if it’s only in the whiteness of a washed pocket-handkerchief.
by David Herbert Lawrence
After hearing Nick play with his band Zinc Nine Psychedelic, including Dave Ballou and Kevin Norton.
This past week I noticed the sun wakes up later and the mid day heat glances gently across my skin. The sky colors move over the days from severe blue to cornflower and azure, from steel to royal or to denim. And I am so joy filled as I am changed by this light. Late August……………………………………….
Drawn after spending an afternoon with interesting women friends. Each is a different flavor of deliciousness. Part of my synesthesia is to “taste” the essence of things and people I find beautiful-not like vanilla -more like eating sculpture – still very satisfying!
Living Out Loud: The Art of Geri Hahn 