Budapest: Day 11: It All Comes Together.

It is 11:15pm in Budapest.

My mind is swirling, my heart is weeping, and my eyes are watering my cheeks.

I can hear the wind outside, which means I can feel life around me.

My focus of thought the last few weeks has been revolving around Cosmos in Chaos: The Harmony of Spirit and Matter. Tonight, those thoughts have come to an abrupt defining moment in time. I wrote this poem the day before on the bus after a few hours in the studio as I made my way to the far reaches of Budapest.

All things reaching, striving, breathing,

noticing each other,

all things know harmony,

all things wish for light and life,

balance and air,

wind and touch and taste,

dirt to skin, lungs to dust, blood to water, ocean to song,

all things know.

The husband of a friend of mine is very near the end. She and I met through art and social media, close to 12 years ago (maybe). She happened to be connected to a few dear friends on mine from over the years and we hit it off, due to our love for creating. We had the chance to share coffee and conversation once in San Diego, discussing all things life and art. She is a few years older than myself, which is a rarity, most of my friends are quite a few years younger than me. A few years later, after we met, she ended up moving to England where she met and fell in love with her soon to be husband.

On May 23rd, 2014 her husband was involved in an accident on his scooter while riding back home to the family after a day of mountain biking and good conversation with a close friend. He suffered a broken pelvis, femur, jaw and arm as well as traumatic brain injury. I never had the opportunity to meet him in person. We had emailed back and forth a few times as when he was working on a Kickstarter project for a Font book he was creating. We never did hop on the phone, something I was looking forward to, I know we had a lot of similar loves in the world of the arts and music. He had a son that he brought into the new family when they married and a few years later my friend and her husband had a beautiful daughter together, making their family equal the number four.

(That is a quick historic overview of my friends story, since I have known her.)

Over the last 2 years I have payed very close attention to her wonderful blog that has chronicled their story and journey post-accident. He never returned home since the day of the accident. For the last few years he has been in hospitals recovering and declining and never fully recovering his old self.

The vulnerability and honest emotion she shares on a regular basis is as true and real as our blood and tissue. A rare glimpse into what we all feel, see, show and hide deep inside ourselves. Sharing the things that most people are too afraid of releasing into the air.

Cosmos in the Chaos: The Harmony of Spirit and Matter…….every second of the day, I think on these words. 

There is a reason I am sharing this story tonight. I came across a video that she posted today from the hospital room  where one of his friends sang “Fake Plastic Trees” by Radiohead to him. (He was moved to hospice this week because his body is in sepsis and his organs are shutting down.) His son sat close by watching his father, she and her mother held each other across from them, at one moment she leans over and kisses his face whispering words that arent heard on camer. I don’t understand their pain. But I feel the suffering and the love, both equally powerful and refining on their own terms. My tears pour down my face and I watch, singing quietly, swallowing hard and also recognizing a pure feeling of love in the looks on the faces, in a spirit on the screen. I am in awe of the perseverance of her story, standing by him the last two years, pushing through the extremely difficult moments and there were many, only to be surprised by extravagant bursts of joy filled moments along the way. She honestly and wittingly writes of every emotion as she welcomes you into their story. You can visit the blog here: http://sansoxygen.com

Here is the video: Fake Plastic Trees:

Where and why do these roads intersect?

We are born into this world from womb and water. 

We leave this world through ash or soil. 

The Cosmos may welcome us, bringing us from the chaos into things unimaginable. 

Our spirit exits in this world to become one with the Creator. 

For these reasons line plays such an important and defining role in my artwork. Our story fills in the moments between the first mark and the last. Straight, crooked, up and down, sloppy or perfectly straight. All stories are different and many stories converge. As lines cross, touch, cover or cross out, they are reacting like our human stories. Moving across a sea of open white or a river of rushing colors. Tonight I realized a line that has come across my own has taken me to a thin place here in my room in Budapest. In a moment, through a song, through a face, my world and the divine have met; for only a brief moment. They met, and I am now different. I am again new, and changed. Tomorrow I will paint these thoughts in the studio, and listen to “Fake Plastic Trees” while my emotions, through prayer, will lift up Allison, Vernon, Maki and Justine.

“He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a         craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.” —Francis of Assisi

-1:35pm the following day.

My morning took a little while to get going. I read for a few minutes, spent time in solitude and prayer. I knew that my day working in the studio would be heavy, so I needed to be prepared. I created a playlist that I titled “Cosmos in the Chaos”, that held some songs that I felt reflected my thinking and the world of Allison and Vernon. You can listen here: COSMOS IN THE CHAOS PLAYLIST. 

My time working today felt like a 16mm film. My hands, heart and head felt scratched and dusty, flickering through the chaos moment by moment. I knew that I needed to be obedient to the work. I think I did just that. Madeline L’Engle sums up my time today.

 “In art, either as creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious      things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we are asked to endure…

 The artist must be obedient to the command of the work, knowing that this involves many     hours of research, throwing out a months works, of going back to the beginning, or,             sometimes, scrapping the whole thing.

When the art means even more than the artist knew they meant, then the artist has been        listening. And sometime when we listen, we are led to places we do not expect, into            adventures we do not always understand.” - Madeline L’Engle

This video is from my morning session. After reflecting on these things I created the piece for my exhibition here in Budapest. "Cosmos in the Chaos: The Harmony of Spirit and matter: When All Things are Made New Again."

Thoughts move heavy from this chaos,

the electric rush of rivers swarm,

the heavens breathe down from the cosmos.

as gravity holds us to the dirt,

the journey moves onward

in search of sweet harmony

between the spirit and the matter,

to the sea, 

to the sea. 

Budapest: Day Seven: Cosmos in the Chaos

Today is day seven of my residency here in Budapest. I have just finished lunch ( a Hungarian potato and bean soup with a fresh baguette, a nectarine and sparkling water) and am sitting in my apartment listening to Agnes Obel. I haven't really wanted to write for the last few days, I haven't slept great yet, so that may be a little of the no writing angst. It also could be the stories of the local people and the generations who suffered under the hands of German Fascism and the Russian Communism. I have experienced both sides in other countries and lived in a communist country for a while. I do feel a new confidence amongst the youth, but also feel the years of suffering and worry of the elder generations.

I took these two pictures in the dome of Buda Castle.

For the first 5 days I explored the city with the other residents, from Canada and San Antonio. I could probably write about all the museums, streets, architecture, and beauty that this magnificent city holds. But I am here for art. To grow as an artist, in another culture. Taking everything that I feel and observe and transform it all into artistic growth. This can be easy and difficult as an artist. For me, creating art is often times more a time of prayer than a subject. As an abstract expressionist I often need to empty myself to experience as much of the divine that I can come close to grasping. 

Madeline L’Lengle writes, “It is a frightening thing to open oneself to the strange and dark side of the divine; it means letting go our sane self-control, that control which gives us the illusion of safety. But safety is only an illusion, and letting go of it is part of listening to the silence, and to the Spirit.”

Taking some time to enjoy some literature and Hungarian wine.

This may be why I have refused to write over the first few days. I have felt emotional “heavy”, I have experience magnificent art, art that was created in forms that is longer practiced. Stood before Mogdiliani and Picasso exhibits. Two artists who have influenced generations and that will continue to do the same, long after they have died. As I paraphrase L’Engle and add my own words, “Each of these men, whose paintings I stand before and admire in a great fashion. They are just that, all men, and all dead, Their distance from us in chronology seems to give them an overwhelming authority. But they were not dead when they painted, and they were as human as the rest of us.”

I moved from powerful exhibitions of the created and spent a day in the Terror House Museum, that walked you through the history of German Nazi rule and Russian Communist rule. The power of death, betrayal, hatred, and ugliness has virtually left a small stain on my heart as I moved through relics of Nazi Germany, the torture chambers connected to tunnels under the city from Russian Communist rule. I needed to experience a visual representation of people that overcame these cruel moments in history. I have heard the stories from our Residency Director of her family suffering at the hands of both Nazi Germany and Russia. Family in camps, bombings, raising chickens in the house, hiding in the basement, moments from books and film. I am changed, again. My eyes have observed many peoples and my ears have heard similar stories first had, all over this world. “Leonard Berstien says that for him music is cosmos in chaos. And it is not true only of music; all art is cosmos, cosmos found within the chaos.” (page 17) I have truly found cosmos, here in Budapest, cosmos that is resting amongst the chaos of history and story. And this has led me to create. The reason I my journey has led me here to this specific moment in time.

Yesterday, I set up my tools of the trade in my momentary studio. This is were the cosmos met my soul and my hands. My working space is in our Director Beata’s studio basement. This space holds stories from Hungary’s history, from her families history. The house was built by her grandfather, and during German occupation the house was bombed. There were multiple families seeking refuge here in the house. They kept chickens upstairs, for eggs and food. One evening her grandfather was upstairs checking the chickens and he was spotted from the Palace moving around in the window. Orders were given to bomb any house where people were seen moving. The house was bombed. The families were able to survive by taking refuge in the basement. Where I now sit, amongst their memories of fear, joy, tears, laughter, love and chaos. As my hands reach for pencils or pastels, I think about children playing amongst these stone walls and bricks, not knowing the chaos that existed above. 

I knew coming into this residency that there would be challenges for me as an artist. Challenges that I knew if embraced fully would only help me grow in my craft. The first is working small. For the last two years I have primarily worked no smaller that 4 feet in scale, with multiple paintings in the 9 and 10 foot range. The second is the theme. Since I have been working in bodies of work from my personal writings and literary classics, having a theme outside of my current idea sphere would be a challenge. Our theme is environment. Not something that has been in my working map before. The challenge for any artist is creating a piece that truly speaks, that allows the audience/observer fresh eyes to see. 

I began processing what this could look like a few months back and my thoughts led me to begin working on a thesis based upon the harmony of matter and spirit, asking questions based upon the relationship between creation and the created, nature and humanity. 

How does life outside of humanity react and live alongside of us? 

Do our actions/spirit/emotions/relationships affect our natural surroundings? 

What is at work in the air, in molecules, in the environment that we cannot see?

When we feel happiness, sorrow, anger, joy, hope, distrust, love, hate…does nature feel the spirit of these feelings as they come out from our souls, mentality, attitudes, actions and reactions? 

Does tension, reconciliation, discrimination, judgment, hate, mercy, in our communities/cultures seep into to the air and disrupt nature’s harmony- having an affect on climate change or environmental deconstruction? 

Could these things add to nature’s disruption? 

These thoughts are all built upon the theory that the Creator of the Universe is in a love relationship with all things created. All things created continue to create themselves towards the image of the Creator.

I am only beginning to write, read, study, think and paint through these thoughts. I will write more as they develop. Here is a video from my first day in the basement painting. Please leave comments, thoughts, ideas that you have. I would love to talk through these ideas and this world with you all! Here is a short 1:00 video from my first day working through a few studies.

i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday, this is the birth

day of life and love and wings; and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth…

now the ears of my ears are awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened. 

e.e cummings