I Do Not Want ...

I do not want to travel to distant places to give talks about art I made half a century ago. Minimalism does not need to hear from me. I do not want to travel to distant places to give talks about art I made yesterday. Contemporary art is making enough noise without me. I do not want to be filmed in my studio pretending to be working. I do not want to participate in staged conversations about art—either mine or others past or present–which are labored and disguised performances. I do not want to be interviewed by curators, critics, art directors, theorists, aestheticians, professors, collectors, gallerists, culture mavens, journalists or art historians about my influences, favorite artists, despised artists, past artists, current artists, future artists.  A long time ago I got in the habit, never since broken, of writing down things instead of speaking. It is possible that I was led into art making because talking and being in the presence of another person were not requirements. I do not want to be asked my reasons for not having worked in just one style, or reasons for any of the art that got made (the reason being that there are no reasons in art). I do not want to answer questions about why I used plywood, felt, steam, dirt, grease, lead, wax, money, trees, photographs, electroencephalograms, hot and cold, lawyers, explosions, nudity, sound, language, or drew with my eyes closed. I do not want to tell anecdotes about my past, or stories about the people I have been close to. I refuse to speak of my dead. The people to whom I owe so much either knew it or never will because it is too late now. I do not want to document my turning points, high points, low points, good points, bad points, lucky breaks, bad breaks, breaking points, dead ends, breakthroughs or breakdowns. I do not want to talk about my methods, processes, near misses, flukes, mistakes, disappointments, setbacks, disasters, obsessions, lucky accidents, unlucky accidents, scars, insecurities, disabilities, phobias, fixations, or insomnias over posters I should never have made. I do not want my portrait taken. Everybody uses everybody else for their own purposes, and I am happy to be just material for somebody else so long as I can exercise my right to remain silent, immobile, possibly armed, and at a distance of several miles.

Robert Morris, Artist

This amused me so much that I had to share.  Morris was replying to Robert Knafo's request a studio interview and he is very clear on precisely why he won't give an interview.  

You can read more on the story over on the Slow Muse blog.

 

Magazines from Home

Mana from Heaven ... or that's how the 3 New Zealand magazines I was given have seemed on this lazy Sunday afternoon.

Not that I was lazy.  I have a bin full of paper on the floor next to my desk and my desk is less littered with papers and notes and ... stuff.

Each time I reached a 'clearing/organising' milestone I would allow myself to read another of those 3 magazines. 

North & South was probably my favourite.  Then again, it always was.

I'm aching with flu.  It's been all around me but I had no plans for it myself.  I thought it might have been a food allergy.  I slept yesterday afternoon and then all night too.  A rare feat for me to do both.  I woke feeling better but by lunchtime I was aching and ready to sleep all over again.   I guess it's the season so I'll just concentrate on the fact that I am so glad to see Spring.

I was lucky, I had the book At Least You're in Tuscany for company, so I powered through it these last 24 hours.  Jennifer Criswell offers another take on giving up your career and moving to Italy.

Last night I dreamed I flew home to New Zealand.  It was a long and difficult journey.  A complicated dream.  And so it was incredibly disappointing to wake and find myself still here in Belgium.

There was a red rowboat, parked up on the beach, last time I was home ...

Habas con Jamon, by Yaiza

My parents grew Broad Beans out in the garden of my childhood but never did we make anything as interesting as Habas con Jamon with those beans ...

Today Yaiza had to use water for the final part of the preparation.  That would be instead of beer or white wine but still ... it was delicious.

Thank you to Yaiza who patiently taught me these recipes, and put up with my camera, and with my constant note-taking too.  Details were recorded and my big hope is that I can recreate tonight's dishes next week.

Learning to Cook Spanish Food

Today I learned how to cook 3 different Spanish dishes ...

Yaiza came over, armed with the ingredients I didn't have, and showed me how to create a delicious Tortilla.  And an Aioli sauce that is so divine I'm not sure how it won't be on the menu for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Or that's what everyone was saying as they handed the pot of it round the table. 

Then there was the Habas con Jamon ... and I was left wondering how it was that New Zealanders could have failed to create that dish with their Broad Beans and ham???  Then, as the final touch, Picaillo.  A divine salad, small pieces of boiled potato and eggs, cherry tomatoes, green beans, and tuna.

And oil.

So much oil but it was truly divine.

Tonight I'm realising how much I missed in life due to my mother not knowing to send us out into the world - to the beach, the forest, or simply 'out', with a package of cold Tortilla to save us from hunger and associated horrors.  Ithink my childhood might have been that much happier if my mother had copied the Spanish mothers and done this simple thing.

Oh my ...it was all so good.  Here is a close-up of the two Tortilla's created here in my kitchen.  More of this Spanish cooking is planned.

Today ...

Today is all about creating ... text for the workshop descriptions, and more text for the Newsletter I'll be sending out soon. 

Then I want to process Federico's photographs from those days in Genova.  And I have a range of interviews almost ready to publish.  And some more to transcribe.

But that photography workshop last Sunday ... it's still making me smile.  Ellen sent this photograph she took of Anna.

That Photography Workshop for Women Last Sunday ...

I led a photography workshop for women on Sunday and all I can tell you is that I absolutely loved it.

My intention was to introduce this small group of women to their cameras ...  so that they understood how to use their cameras off Auto, how to work with light and take the best possible photographs.

But I need to mention how much fun it is to bring women together.  It's always so powerful somehow.  There's a different kind of energy that flies between us all.  There are the conversations over lunch, and the curiousity about each others lives, the sharing ...

I know that part of the pleasure I get from putting these workshops together is simply about the people I get spend time with.  Remarkable souls.

Anne Lamott, writing from the last Saturday of her 50s.

This is the last Saturday of my fifties. The needle isn't moving to the left or to the right. I don't feel or look 60. I don't feel any age. I have a near-perfect life. However, I grew up on tennis courts and beaches in California during the sixties, where we put baby oil on our skin to deepen the tan, and we got hundreds of sunburns. So maybe that was not ideal. I drank a lot and took a lot of drugs and smoked two packs of Camels (unfiltered) a day until I was 32. I had a baby and then forgot to work out, so things did not get firmer, and higher. So again, not ideal.


My heart is not any age. It is a baby, an elder, a dog, a cat, divine.
My feet, however, frequently hurt.
My skin broke out last week. I filed a new brief with the Fairness Commission, and am waiting to hear back.
My great blessing is the capacity for radical silliness, and self-care.


I'm pretty spaced out.  . I don't love how often I bend in to pull out clean wet clothes from the washer, and stand up, having forgotten that I opened the dryer that's above, and smash my head on the door once again. I don't know what the solution to this is, as I refuse to start wearing a helmet indoors. I don't love that I left my engine running for an hour last week, because I came inside to get something, and then got distracted by the dogs, and didn't remember I'd left the engine on. It was a tiny bit scary when a neighbor came to the front door to mention this, and I had to feign nonchalance, and act like it was exactly what I had meant to do all along.

Anne Lamott, an extract from her Facebook post.

Impulse and Whimsy ...

I can rarely rely on myself not to need to take actions that would test my dignity were I not constantly wearing trousers of some kind however ... today I was tempted to buy a skirt.  It's the first in years. 

It was all about the colours.

Tim Heatherington, War Photographer

Really my works are narratives, I am really interested in stories. I find different visual ways to talk about narratives, political narratives. My work is about conflicts and politics, but it links in very kind of intimacy like soldier sleeping. I am interested in getting very close to my subjects, and I live how they live, or share things with them.

Tim Heatherington, extracted from an interview on Periscope.

I have read war photographer Robert Capa's book and more than a few books about him.  Over the years I have collected and read the stories of war journalists John Simpson, Christina Lamb, Frank Gardener, Kevin Sites, Kate Adie ... and more.  I have the dvd titled War Photographer, about the work of James Nachtwey too.

There is something I have been trying to understand. 

Tonight I watched 'Which Way to the Frontline - The Life and Time of Tim Heatherington'.  It is a documentary created by Sebastian Junger ('The Perfect Storm', 'War') and in it he seems to take the whole 'conversation' about motivations and understanding war to a level I've never really found before.

In tracing Tim's career back through the years, Junger's intention seemed to be about honouring, remembering, and revealing the truly fascinating man who was a war photographer. 

Tim Hetherington was killed while covering the front lines in the besieged city of Misrata, Libya, during the 2011 Libyan civil war.

 

I Had Mail ...

Sebastian Junger's documentary about Tim Heatherington arrived in the post today ... Which Way Is The Front Line from Here?  It joins my collection of dvds and books about war photographers and journalists, mountaineers too.  People who fascinate, or who have fascinated, me.

Director Sebastian Junger gracefully weaves together footage of Hetherington at work and moving interviews with his family, friends, and colleagues to capture his compatriot and friend’s unique perspective, compassion, and intense curiosity about the human spirit.   The Sundance Institute.

Also in the package, randomly selected from my Amazon wishlist by Gert as a surprise, was Bright Star.  Jane Campion directed this one and it looks rather marvelous, an antidote to that time spent studying Keats work in dusty old university rooms back in New Zealand.

And the final delight came in the form of Dani Shapiro's book, Still Writing - The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life.  This one appeared on my radar via Terri Windling's blog, Myth & Moor.  She wrote a series of posts about this book over days ...

It's another deliciously warm April day here in Antwerp, we're up over 20 celsius and my clothes-line is heavy with laundry drying.  Winter seems to have been so much less painful this time, perhaps to make up for the one before ... the one which traumatised everyone here. 

And now, to work.

Albatross, Dunedin

Sometimes, the temptation to play with photographs ... as was done in the darkroom, is too much and so I play.  But I resisted the polaroid frame and opted for a simple edge.  And stuff ...

Back home in New Zealand, we had Albatross circling one day, down there at the end of the Otago Peninsula.  I adore them.  For me, it feels a bit like seeing God go by, in that they are these enormous graceful birds, quite unlike any other I know.

Abe Streep writes about Matthew Power.

I discovered a rather fabulous man but sadly it was because he had died in Uganda.  Matthew Power was clearly a talented writer but more than that, it seems he was some kind of superb human being.

His friend, Abe Streep, wrote an article about him and titled it Relentless Generosity - the amazing true-life adventures of Matthew Power.  I can't recommend the article highly enough but then again, my interests may be different to yours.

Abe's final paragraph has stayed with me, long after I finished the article.  It seemed like wise and real advice to me.   And from all that I've read since, it seems to capture what Matthew was all about ...

In the past couple of days, I’ve found myself thinking back to a night at the Brooklyn Inn, one of Matt’s favorite bars. This was last year. I had fallen in love with someone who lived far away and sought out Matt’s advice. The crooked grin vanished, and his brow furrowed. “The thing about life,” he said, “is that one day you’ll be fucking dead. Lay it out.” I bought a one-way ticket to Colorado, and Matt drove me to the airport. For this, among so many other things, I will be eternally grateful.

Read through a few of Matthew's articles and you'll see it for sure ... he laid life out.  Excuse Us While We Kiss The Sky was surely a favourite.