Somethings I learned from a pile of leaves collected with my son as they whirled about in back of our house on a sanguine autumn day:

These leaves are not “ours” they are the sycamore’s across the street.

This tree will, given good health and reasonable neighbors, outlive both my son and myself.

The sycamore tree is a deciduous tree which belongs to the family of Platanaceae, this being one of the oldest plant family in the wold.

It is said that Hippocrates taught beneath the canopy of a sycamore on the island of Cos.

Six seeds, born of the Theresienstadt — Tree of life, witness to horrors — were brought to San Francisco to germinate in Golden Gate Park. (There are 600 direct descendants of the Tree of Life planted across the globe).

The vascular system of the leaves resembles my own.

The leaves are almost leathery when dry.

Looking at the smallest things opens up worlds.

This is a drawing of a crumpled printout of the album cover for Erykah Badu Live. I printed the image for my son, who loves the album and regularly sings lines from it. He carried the printout with him for a good month - like a security blanket. The final drawing became a form of collaboration. My toddler imbued that printout with love and worn reverence, and I “recorded” the fragile paper through drawing while reflecting on the importance of the album in our family.

Symphony No.3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (Polish: Symfonia pieśni żałosnych) by Henryk Górecki. One of the most achingly beautiful, haunting and mournful pieces of music written (and sung heart-wrenchingly by Dawn Upshaw). It is composed of three laments from three perspectives, each a parent or child calling out to the other. The second movement is built around the text of an inscription scrawled on the wall of a cell in a German Gestapo prison by 18-year-old Helena Wanda Błażusiakówna, a highland woman murdered by the Gestapo on 25 September 1944. It read “O Mamo, nie płacz, nie. Niebios Przeczysta Królowo, Ty zawsze wspieraj mnie (Oh Mamma do not cry, no. Immaculate Queen of Heaven, you support me always)”.

That the song, the doing, ones response or reflection, is necessitated on the care you take in creating it. Whether a song, a work of art or a thought or statement made, the care that one takes is paramount in its effectiveness.

But there is also a longing and tenderness imbued in the poem. A tenderness in our caring. A tenderness in our doing. It’s something I often think of as I am making work. Tenderness. Care. Quietly. Singing. A Song.

My son and I have started a new practice. When we go on hikes he looks for things on the trail for me to draw. He’s very particular and finds “just the right thing” for me. They often are, and more times than not, initiate a journey of discovery for myself as I begin a process of deep looking and research into what he has found.
—
After gathering samples in Australia on board the vessel of Captain James Cook, European botanists gave the trees the name “eucalyptus” because of how the flowers are in hard, protective cup-like structures: The Greek root “eu” means “well” and “calyptos” means “covered.”

These seed pods and leaf are from the Blue Gum Eucalyptus, Eucalyptus globulus (Tasmanian blue gum), brought to California by speculative growers thinking the fast growing hardwood would be a cash crop, taking over indigenous land with invasive plants. After their mills and plantations failed, the poorly planned groves were sold off as a “guaranteed return on your investment” often to families looking to make a life in the “new”, colonized West. Many groves were just left - too expensive to remove and not worth much commercially. Now the trees, planted in the millions in the 1800s, are nearly synonymous with coastal California.

This now seems like an all too fitting metaphor for the occupation of the unceded lands and murder and displacement of a people who had long taken care of the land.

I was first introduced to Pauline Oliverios’ Deep Listening in grad school at Mills. The practice of deep listening always resonated with me but recently I’ve been thinking about it more in relation to my current work where I’ve adapted my mindset to “deep looking”. Opening oneself up to what one is observing. Allowing the mind to focus, wander, create associations, daydream and come back to the subject being observed. Often the day is too distracting. Too quick in observation to stay with something. This practice has given me time and space to settle my mind. Focus. Leave while being very present.

to sweep
up or sweep away
to sift through
or throw

to hold up or
hide away
to let spoil
or grow

to dismiss
or cherish or
hold tight
or banish

to collect
the debris
or let blow
to the breeze

the detritus
around us
underneath
and between

a sense of
dirt or of clean
of what is
and has been

granular
particle
capriciously
contained

brought
together
once
again

This is a drawing of a diagram I jotted down years ago in an attempt to flush out how a painting functions. The note has been pinned on the wall of my studio since. These are more the elements of painting as it functions for the viewer than the elements handled by the painter during the process of creating a work...

The IMAGE (or subject, whether representational, abstract or other) is presented through the COMPOSITION (the arrangement and positioning of formal and conceptual concerns of the painting) which in turn becomes the TRANSMITTER (the work itself) to the RECEIVER (viewer) this signals INTENT (the artist’s “voice”, style, purpose, etc) through the treatment of the SURFACE (through elements of design, brushwork, etc) and the STRUCTURE of the work (flat, sculptural, thin, thick, materials, etc) the CONTEXT informs the work through its PLACEMENT (where, how and why it is displayed, etc) this fuels the INTERPRETATION (a combination of the viewers reception of the work and the artist’s intent) all of which bring a sense of MEANING (a mostly subjective culmination of all these) to the work.

A tool for looking to bend light and shade to translate it to the curvature of my natural lens. Spectacles for the spectacle. New prescription needed…

They fell
from my face
as I strained
to contain

a toddler’s rage;

to hold to protect
the delicate body
in the fiery,
passive resistance

of tantrum.

They slid,
past my full hands,
slow in motion,
as legs kicked

and sound pounded,

off the ear
to the ground
to split in two;
a comic break —

clean division, now monocles.

The cries dry.
The flailing calms.
Words emerge where
howls once wailed.

We sit
on the floor
together
and look,

“What happened
to your glasses?”
he asks
in a soft voice.

It will take some time to de-associate 6 feet from COVID - maybe never. Here’s hoping we can be closer both in the physical sense and in our dialogues and social relationships. Maybe incrementally it is possible. Each foot closer, inches, millimeters, nanometers. Hello.

Sometimes things break. Sometimes someone breaks things by mistake. This is part of my studio guitar I’ve had for more than 20 years. It survived trans Atlantic moves and the regular abuse of me playing it, but it took my toddler knocking it over in the studio, in just the right way, to do this. What are the odds? From the functional to the observable. The object has now shifted in meaning and presence. What becomes of the broken?

How long
can one hold
the struck match
before the flame
blisters the fingers
and
how long
can the flame
hold the fire
when met
with the wet
of flesh

Simple
common
treasures,
from such stupid
things,
like pasta and
string.
These materials,
not actually
stupid,
in fact,
substantive,
rooted;
core
to our very
survival.
Like love.
Like making.
Like care.
“Here,
I made this
for you”,
is said;
a gesture —
consideration,
acknowledgment,
looped together
and tied
with a bow,
taken to
form;
to show
Love.

laid
atop
another

single
now
coupled

they
form
a third

two
selves
combined

two
projections
overlaid

a new
being
made

neither
one
other

neither
negative
now

It is not enough
to simply say,

No
More
War.

It is more
to ask,

how can we
change ourselves?

To
Hold
Peace

in our inherited
masses; full of chemical
reactions, bred bodies and
permeable biases.

War is a human condition
as long as we continue
to understand meaning
through conflict;

entertainment through
barrels, projectiles,
explosions, flesh to flesh
bruising, maiming.

As long as physical scars
go unnoticed and psychic
scars go
unvalidated.

What makes a person
hurt another? A person —
in all their complexities.

War is not the answer
it is the question
of what it is to be human.

Why do we remain
in this state of violence?

Peace
Is
Evolution.

War
Is
Stagnation.

Where broken systems prevail….

Where the wood in this pencil was probably not sustainably harvested….

Where graphite mines bore the mantel, ground particulates, chemically alter “green” new energy…

Where erasing my mistakes does not absolve them as the dust does not decay and will outlive me but not my retracted missives…

Where mistakes happen but often are repeated…

Where there is the beautiful possibility of peace and mutual wellbeing but not the will to make it happen…

Where we need to fix what we broke on this sphere spinning through space…

Where I grow tired… and old… and my matter will move through these cycles much faster than my makings…

This postcard, featuring a picture of the moon taken from Apollo 11 on its way back to Earth, has followed me for years. From frig to studio to studio. I believe I picked it up in Alabama when I visited my father when he was working at NASA. I keep coming back to it. I’m trying to pay attention to these objects. The casual object that inhabits a space, sometimes not seen despite it being right there in front of you, yet still commands a presence. It is tied to its image and the thin, fragile object it is. Moonlike in its constancy and its tendency to phase in and out of view.

One foot. Whose foot? When I think about systems of measurement I can’t help but think of all the complexity layered on top of what seems like a arbitrary or simple decision - like deciding what an inch is and what a foot is. Those small decisions magnify and affect our day to day existence. Micro decisions equal maximum impact. How are you measured and by whose rule?

The Redwood Valley Railway is a 15 in (381 mm) gauge miniature railway in Tilden Regional Park near Berkeley, California. It was established in 1952 by Erich Thomsen as the Tilden South Gate and Pacific Railway, on a 12 in (305 mm) gauge, and has since expanded to 1+1⁄4 miles (2 km) of track and carries over 160,000 passengers a year. @redwoodvalleyrailway

https://redwood-valley-railway.business.site

Thank you to whomever nominated me. I’m grateful for the acknowledgment of the work I have done and of work to come.

Process

To fail
is to quit,

which I have
many times…

To begin
is either

explosive
or corrosive

or is simply
a foot in front

of the other,
plodding along

laborious
and delicious

in its fits
and stops;

gains and
retractions.

The way
restarting something

breathes new life
into it or gives it

its proper
rest. Closure.

Resolve. That
is the cycle’s

touch point.
The end

beginning
again.

Deep wooded scent,

slow smoke,

heavily suspended

in tense air

It has been too long

too much held in

the chest, the head;

the heart.

I’m not letting go.

I’m loosening my grip

to allow the blood to flow back

to my pallid fingertips

The smoke is

said to clean; 

to smudge;

to open up

It is not my practice. I acknowledge

I am appropriating.

My apologies

and thanks.

A found, well-played cassette of Fela Kuti. It reminds me of the times when these ‘vernacular’ tapes were the only way of accessing music - especially revolutionary, non-mainstream, music. Often copied down from friend to friend. Exchanging ideas and experiences along with them. I mention this not as a nostalgic throw back but as a marker to understanding the movement of cultural production, particularly the personal absorption and dissemination of it. We find ways. The web has overtaken many of these and is a tremendous resource. This tape reminds me to look beyond that. Look around. Close. Closer. It’s there. In front of you.

Tools for addition or subtraction. There is no line between. Only the dance between. Only possibilities. Under doing. Over doing. Sometimes fixable. Sometimes not. All possibilities.

This is my wedding ring. It was my father’s father’s wedding ring. I never knew him. My father barely knew him. He passed on when my father was young but he kept his ring as a point of connection to him. When my wife and I got engaged my father told me he had this ring and how he had kept it for all these years. It meant a lot to him to pass the ring on to me to carry that memory and association forward. It is modest, thin and worn. Like that memory but present with a new polish and new associations with it. Compounded and smelted together. Forged in those kinds of love that deny the age. Cyclical. Ongoing. Love.

Almost

too good 

for now,

yet

so right

somehow.