Fail again

Knowing I have failed before I know I can fail again…

I had been dumpster diving in the alleys, looking for art materials. That may sound like looking for a needle in a haystack, but truly I found many treasures in Seattle's trash, just waiting for me. Once, I found an entire box of new picture framing glass. Another time, it was a carton of mat board. (The frame shop's trash bins could yield big payoffs!) Most often, however, I would find things like old canvasses, either quit on or discarded due to dislike, which were easily resurfaced for reuse; and, most especially, it was not unusual to come across beautiful (and not always slight) scraps of good wood for my woodblocks.

This day I found a large sheet of wood, bigger than any woodcut I had yet attempted. It was the lid of a large crate, measuring approximately four and a half feet long by two and a half feet wide. Being so large, it would require oversized paper when ready to print. However, I was not worried. Daniel Smith’s was my go to place for art supplies, as it was in the neighborhood and, at that time, specialized in printmaking tools and materials. Their stock of fine imported Asian papers was superb, and I had no trouble finding large sheets, without the need to buy expensive rolls. First problem solved!

I took it home and began composing, then carving the piece. I picked a spot to begin and I traced my drawing of a horse, in a mirror image. Then I composed the next space, working with no preconceived or overall plan. So it was constructed as a collage of sorts, which I spontaneously pieced together, ending up with the most complex composition I had yet attempted – an investment of months of effort – carving, burning, sanding and attempting to print.

The piece, which I entitled “Death Mother Lover Muse”, not only took a great deal of time and effort, but also cost me a rotary drill, which I fried in the process, and two wood burners, which just said NO. The wood itself seemed to be a thin, light plywood – somewhat flexible – but the surface proved to be as hard as oak, so difficult it was to work with either hand tools or electric tools. I actually furrowed my whetstone with the repeated sharpening of my gouges and knives. As soon as there was a dangerous 'skid' with a gouge, I’d stop and sharpen it. That was around every three cuts! I should have quit right there, but I was stubborn. I wanted this monumental-size, FREE sheet of wood for art! I was determined to make it work, and I'd be damned if I would quit on this monster! I was a co-founder of Pressworks Printmaking Collective, which had a HUGE electric press we bought from Peter Ramsey, my first printmaking teacher. This thin wood would run perfectly through that press! It seemed a one time opportunity to execute a block that size, and with such a nice tight, clear grain!

Finally, after the death of my 2nd wood burner, I just stopped and decided to print it, since it was 90% done. Besides the unreasonable difficulty posed by the hardness of the wood I was dismayed (to put it nicely!) to find out that the ink – perfectly prepared – heated up and worked with a knife, and rolled out so thinly you would hear that certain snake-like hiss when passing the brayer over the glass palate – the ink simply remained on the roller and did NOT transfer to the block! That's impossible! I thought, though obviously it wasn't. I could roll ink on the wall or the sidewalk out front, so I must have done something wrong... but what?

After going through the usual check lists twice, I became confident that I hadn't screwed anything up. I had changed ink, modified it to make it tackier, changed brayers – using differing durometers, but no matter how creatively I tried, the pigment just wouldn't stick. It became a mystery. I showed it to other printmakers, and mentioned it to Peter, and we all concluded it had a spell cast on it for resisting being processed. It was a vile, rebellious, anti-social, unwilling piece of tree that would not bend to anyone's will and would haunt anyone who was simple-minded enough to lay hands on it. I had cut it, burned it, and abraded it, sanding it to get a rougher surface for better ink adhesion… and finally, the ephipany! Clearly, this 'block' had a memory! …and I was its torturer …and it would rather die than yield to my imagination!

I took the challenge to another level! I washed the damned thing – Nay! I drenched it, first in turpentine, then in paint thinner, then lacquer thinner… Gradually, the ink began to stick... here and there. After attempting a couple prints (and wasting my precious handmade Japanese paper!), I put it away for another day. Next, I thought of painting it, but paints didn't adhere either! Out of ideas, I set it aside.

Not until nearly a year later, almost the anniversary of my largest woodblock, did I decide to try again. I got one – just one – weak, shy print off the block. Then and there I gave up. I washed my hands of the whole fiasco! I would use the 'dry' looking relief print for a transfer to lino, perhaps, but that block was a goner! I told a friend I was taking it to a beach to burn it. He said that would do me good, since I had invested way too much of myself into this project. “Cut it loose”, he said, “There are many fish in the sea, and this one got away. Just buy a sheet of birch plywood, for god sake, and stop being such a cheapskate!”

Ah! The wisdom of failure, I thought, as I splashed a whole can of charcoal lighter fluid on the block with some crumpled paper, and the fire jumped up roaring when I torched it. I couldn't help but think of a scene from Moby Dick, when Ahab, having received news of the White Whale, calls his men back to the ship while they are in the midst of the slaughter – a pod of whales, an obviously huge 'harvest'. So perplexed were they, that they stood frozen in disbelief while Stubb replied, that the men had their blood up from the slaughter and couldn’t be expected to suddenly stop for no good reason... I too, couldn't help myself now, and there was no Captain to call me back. I piled on old newsprint, paper cups and plates, trash and beach wood – anything that would burn. It was burning furiously and I was pouring sweat... but just watching it for fifteen minutes, it became obvious that the damn woodblock wasn't going to ignite!

The fire danced around it, licked its edges, but no flame stuck to it any better than the relief ink! It looked back at me defiantly, in its muteness and immobility, from a bed of hot ashes, like the body of a witch that could not be burned at the stake. It refused further transformations! So I left it there on the beach, a holy relic – a warning – singed around its outer dimensions, smoke stained and darkened, propped up like a surf board that had been struck by lightning. It was a loose fish for sure. It would not roll flat out, nor would it spout black ink! I would have to find other leviathans to harpoon, because this hunt was officially called off!

To Sleep... Perchance to Dream.

That drawing skills were due to magical powers, I had no doubts from the first. I can still see my young hands trying vainly to draw a perfect circle. Again and again, over and over, a series of imperfect zeros, like eggs. Drawings, paintings and, most especially, the engravings and woodcuts that illustrated the old fairy tale books, in the library, filled my imagination with wonder and wild fantasies.

The illustrations were always printed in black and white. Black and White became a separate world for me... one very different from waking life, with its dirtied colors that photography and painting idealized, purified and improved. Those woodcuts and engravings, on the other hand, stripped away all the distractions of the rainbow, and showed you the bare, bleached bones of the subject.

Black and white film contributed, heavily, to this aura of mystery surrounding the monochrome world that I loved so much. In fact, when color films became the norm, I disliked them so intensely that I stopped going to movie theaters for years. Color distracted me. I always thought the colors were unnatural and garish. They seemed a caricature of real life. I never dreamed in color, either, and so black and white seemed to me the best mode of representation (to the waking world) for those oneiric, nocturnal flights, where one is both observing the dream and often in the dream, simultaneously. I tried to see colors in dreams many times but never succeeded.

It was the atmosphere of monochrome that both mystified me and seemed to lift the veil of reality, revealing the irrational or chaotic stuff that hid beneath the surface of life. Dreaming was the most potent element in my creative development.

I had a long childhood romance with the darkness... first through the epic dreams of a child’s imagination, and later because of my insomnia, which drove me out all night for secret peregrinations about town, while everyone else slept. In High School, I would climb out of my upstairs bedroom window, after my parents were asleep, down to a shed in the back yard and, from there, to the streets, with their puddles of light and intervals of darkness between. The street lights were islands in infinite darkness on moonless nights. God! How I loved that atmosphere. I loved those night sojourns almost as much my dreams – and my nightmares. (Yes! I loved my nightmares, too.)

I could fly in my dreams! But what was most wondrous for me, and still is today, was revisiting dream-locations. Ever since childhood, I have had dreams that repeated – the same dream each time, but with slight changes and sometimes even different outcomes. I still dream of standing on the rooftop of a crumbling townhouse in Camden, NJ. I would fly there and look out over the wasteland that Whitman's "invincible city" had become. It was sad and heartbreaking. Contact with poverty – extreme poverty – had changed me forever. Even now, I continue to find my dream-self in ghettos and blasted landscapes, and it feels, in some strange sort of way, like a homecoming.

Ironically, my early insomnia was due to getting over-excited about going to sleep. I couldn't wait to escape the waking world and enter the “other”, magical world; but the more I longed to fall into sleep, the more wakeful I became. Thus, long midnight walks replaced dreaming, until the lack of sleep affected my performance in school, and I was forced, by exhaustion, to hit the sack earlier (by 3am rather than 5am). It still affected my work at school, but I grew to like feeling “Zombie” in Geometry class. I hated reading. I likened it to mowing the lawn with my eyeballs. The very act of reading bored me. My natural laziness grew exponentially, but I was always a mediocre student, hovering just above failure. I would make an effort for a passing grade, but nothing more. I was bored – insufferably bored – most of the time; walled in and controlled, at the worst of times. I felt held back, but I didn't know what from.

In fact, for a long time in my youth, the entire organized social world of adulthood with so many rules and regulations, sins and punishments, bored me – when it didn't frighten me. More importantly, the constant punishments and humiliations, from my mother and step-father at home, added to this desire to escape into the night, compounding it with urgency. Waking life was usurping more and more of my reveries, my fantasies and my day dreams, and demanding ever more of my attention – which I resented. So-called “responsibilities” cast a dark shadow over my dreams, inflicting future anxieties upon the present – where all good things grow, if they get enough light.

Unfortunately, one of the regular childhood punishments doled out to me was solitary confinement. I would get on my mother's nerves, and she would put me in a closet and close the door. One day, she was going berserker (which happened every month). She shoved me into the large, deep closet under the stairs. There was a thin strip of light shining in through the slight space between the door and the carpet. I focused on this. I was scared of the dark, so I clung to the light.

I stood there so long I lost my sense of time. I became disoriented. I couldn't tell up from down. I felt like I was falling. At first this frightened me, but suddenly I felt like I was free of my body and then I saw! Images came rushing into and out of my mind so swiftly I could barely keep up with them! It was as if my head had split open and myriad beings and objects poured out of my eyes into the darkness, where they lingered like fading light on a wall – a black wall – a wall that moved! The darkness had come alive!

I had fallen into an abyss and then the blackness was all around me... It became my dark body. It was as if I had become my shadow… Then I was hearing voices that were not wholly human singing in a choir. I felt fearless, even facing the monsters – and there were plenty of them prowling around in the shadows of my flight… I was overjoyed and tears flowed down my face... I learned that I could change the course of the vision itself just by wishing for it...

I lost my balance and fell… suddenly the door swung open. It had been hours. She had forgotten me, and somehow, it was my fault. Dazzled by the light, disoriented and confused, I heard her sternly say “Go outside and play!” And so I did go outside, but with a new glow about me, as one in possession of a great powerful secret. I could fly in my dreams with my eyes open! There was magic in my head!

*

3am: Attempt to write an Artist Statement during a Bout of Insomnia

I am a lazy man who loves to work; a non-conformist who is a traditional artist; and a pessimist who gives thanks for his life every day. Imagination precedes all events. It is also the last straw and the first and only path of escape from the mind control of socialization – that mass trance-dance of consumption, anticipating the well planned trans-human singularity, when the true extent of our bondage, to the monster we birthed, is revealed to all.

Fear made us what we are. Not our own fears, because they were implanted and incubated between our ears and in our bellies. What is in that can of soup? That bottle of rum? Yo ho ho… Dead man clutches his chest while his heart falls into smart dust. See it in your own dreams. Write them down every night, or invent some. You will feel the hated habits, the job, all the phony relationships based on authority, the whole spectacle of distractions, the whole hierarchy of slavery to the illusion of material reality fade into the wall paper, as soon as you remember how to live in your dreams again and then how to drag them from the underworld into the light. Even Orpheus failed there. You dare to risk everything. You try. That's all.

*

Insominia is the result of irreconcilable or uncontrollable conflict which can manifest as depression, anxiety, or as a health condition such as chronic pain, stress and disease.

I was a physically sound child but I was beset by anxieties while growing up, much, as I supposed, like any other kid in the neighborhood. However that might be, I seemed to be the only one nodding and suffering the minutes as they crawled by – or seemed to stop – while planted behind a desk at school. Everything took longer, too, as if I were living in slow motion. I could understand most of what people said to me, but I couldn't respond in a timely or interested way. Conferences with my grammar school teachers, from first grade on, became a regular disruption in my life that always led to punishments and exercises in proving oneself – in one way or another – to be competent and to gain approval. But I could not sleep. I would pray for sleep – to enable me to dream, to escape, and thereby enter the magical world within. From the earliest days, I can remember I believed somehow that I would find an alternative to the waking world of adulthood, whose absurdity was profoundly disturbing to me. I had no concrete plans as to how I might do this, but I clung to that belief as if to a life preserver.

Everything amazed me - clouds, birds and insects – all animals for that matter; climbing trees, collecting stones, tasting leaves and berries. My personal childhood life was nothing like that of the adults and what they did with their lives. I talked out loud to stones, to the landscape itself. There was a place I called the Sacred Willow – a vacant lot with a ravine cut through it (which later became the site of a new shopping mall), with a weeping willow tree at the center. In that place I confessed my dreams to the air and the red and blue clay of the earth which I stood on. The tree listened silently as I questioned my life. It must be a mistake… and these parents! These could not be my parents. I was on voyage after voyage on my ship in the sky; there were monsters and gods and creatures from other worlds in the clouds, if only you knew how to see them - but these were wonders! The monsters at home were not! Those were banal and predictable, relentlessly critical, and the overall situation seemed to be permanent – unlike the denizens of the sky who would slowly, but slowly, dissolve into other life forms. Everything was alive in my eyes – at least when I was alone. Solitude was where the magic happened!

Solitude - relief etching

The Devoe Appartments - Part 1

There was a swinging door adjoining the living room and the kitchen – a narrow hallway of a room with stove and refrigerator on one side, counter and sink on the other.    The appliances were at least 30 yrs old.  The linoleum on the floor was the original, dried out and curling at the edges.   There was a back door, which opened off one side of the room, onto the alleyway.  The stove was an ancient monster that partially worked (sometimes).  The rings on the stove top were four in number, but only two worked reliably well and another was hit or miss.  The tiny refrigerator was a magnet for more roaches than should exist on the entire planet, but more of that another time.

Walking in, you would inadvertently kick a piece of linoleum off, sending it flying the length of the room, like a hockey puck on ice, cracking against the back wall.  I thought it was cool – Hell! I was in my twenties then – and so a scoring system eventually developed.  Points were rewarded for launching a piece to counter height, or for perfectly landing a fragment on the lip of a box...etc.  The highest points went to curve shots that flew out the side door, into the alleyway.

I had just escaped from New Jersey to the Pacific Northwest, Seattle to be precise.  The apartment was in the U-district, not far from the University of Washington and all the great college cafes.  This building, The Devoe, must have been erected in the ‘20s or ‘30s.  We tenants were mostly artists, poor working folk, students and people with pets.  It was an “anything goes” kinda place that might not always supply hot water, or heat in the winters, but was cheap.  As such, I felt no compunction in turning the kitchen into my art studio.  I used the old, deep kitchen sink for my copper etchings, with Dutch Mordant, and my zinc etchings, in solutions of nitric acid.  I would print my woodblocks, with a barren, on the various counters, or I would cover the huge stove top with a piece of plywood, snatched from the dumpsters, to use as a large table top. 

While doing this one night, I smelled smoke…   Sure enough!  I had inadvertently flipped on one of the burners that worked, and it was cooking my plywood!  The smoke was getting thicker by the second.  I snatched the board up and ushered it quickly outside, to the alley, to cool.  There, as the smoldering subsided, I studied the circular impression branded into the panel of wood by the hot rings… and suddenly, inspiration struck!  This, I thought, could be printed!  

A quick proof on newsprint, using a rubbing stick, and Wow!  I saw the potential... potential to create layers of these rings by burning them multiple times. And so I began…  First making two or three “burns" on a selected wood block (old oak cutting boards from 2nd hand stores were most prized), filling the narrow space with clouds of smoke, then clearing the air with the aid of a large floor fan and the original sheet of plywood, which I kept at hand and used like a paddle to waft smoke out the door.  Burning and ventilating, alternately, until the desired effect was achieved.  More than once, during these sessions, a concerned passerby in the alley would knock, or call into the room, as smoke billowed outside through the open the door, propped open by a big box fan running on high speed.  I would tell the concerned neighbors, who thought surely the building was on fire, that I had “just burned some bread” and not to worry.   And that… was the beginning of the “Rings” series of woodcuts.