Layers of Inspiration

Work by Parrish Relics

I love to write about art. I’ve done it as an undergraduate, in my PhD program, for my work at the historic site, for PBS Annual Auctions’ art/antique nights, while covering the local arts scene here in Boston, and for my own pleasure as a poet.

This is the first time, although I hope not the last, that I wrote about work an artist is featuring online. I can follow SEO best practices, but here mainly Creativity was called for. I’ve always found this artist’s work evocative and inspiring, and the fox and rabbit prompted me as much as the medieval French tapestries inspired her.

I’m so pleased to be part of the launch of these pieces at Parrishrelics.com!

Her contribution is in the image, and mine is below: Please visit both at her site.

1.

A fascinating aspect of beautiful medieval tapestries is the sense of many things happening, but not quite in real time or space. That strange perception can wake us up, as our eyes move along the flat woven surface. A flower here, an animal there. We notice a cat, a fox, a rabbit, a variety of plants.

When we take a moment to notice each one, we appreciate the whole tapestry more. Life benefits from the same kind of Looking. When we take a moment to notice, or to wear, one beautiful element of the natural world, we remember each plant or creature is part of Nature, and we can see that Whole in each one of them.

2.

Tapestry Life

The fox was not hungry

for anything

but beauty, for a little

grace, its own place

in the colors, among

the strange stitched plants,

to sit, and some breath

of wind behind

the tapestry, to bring it

life. Being Art,

both sly and soft, and

wise and tricky, fox

eyed the weave to hunt

meanings. Also soft,

signing luck and plenty,

the rabbit climbed

across the tapestry, across

time and space, from one Art

to another Art, to offer

a small shine of

new Beauty,

inspired by old Beauty, one

living thing to another.

– by Lin Nulman

Lin Nulman has wide experience writing for herself, for the historic site where she works, for creative journals and anthologies, for theaters, for public television art auctions, and for websites about real estate and design. She invites creative people who need writing and/or editing services to get in touch. She’s fortunate to have a job she loves; newly self-employed freelancing is her side hustle, so she is mellow and all-around reasonable to work with. Find her at https://thecreativeparttimer.wordpress.com or lin.nulman@yahoo.com

Uplift of the Week II

“From one extreme to another” defines my 2020 so far. As do the initials of my friend Wilhelmina Twinkletoes Forestbather.  (We’re at home all these hours, and we’re allowed to make people up. FYI.)

From early January to early March, all I did was…keep going. An elder relative’s long hospitalization in the state next door had me juggling two jobs, two households, and that crisis. Let’s just say time was spent on trains back and forth. That’s fortunately past, and in the current wider chaos, I can’t even cross the state line and come back. Understood.

That’s the background to this Uplift, an artist who added a lot of fun and eye-pleasure to many hours on many trains, BEK. Or BEK 86. I’ve tried to look up the right way to introduce BEK, and I’m going to go with Graffiti Letter Artist. No idea who BEK is, but their work on buildings, track walls, and freight train cars became the best part of many stressed, tired commutes. Looking for a new BEK. Spotting a new BEK!   BEK fan!!

BEK’s letters sometimes angle sharply, sometimes bubble. They always seem cheerful and eager to connect with eyes. I like the letters’ strong “feet” and the way they take up their space. And I love BEK’s colors. They get attention from BEK and deserve attention. Melon orange darkening upward to rich red. Lavender and purple.  A stunning sort of pearly blue-white.  Simple black and white with turquoise, but also some complex combos.

I took these two and other photos through the dirty windows of a moving MBTA commuter rail train and am irrationally proud of them. BEK’s Instagram gallery was clearly NOT taken through dirt while in motion and displays the real Beauty.

Like body art, graffiti art has a past and a mixed reputation. To some, it’s putting images where no images should be. I’m not a property owner, so I can’t comment on that. In the last few years, I’ve learned a lot about graffiti and street art from student papers.

(The college where I teach dates from the era that loved concrete, and, apparently, felt  windowless, cinder-block classrooms in shades of white with fluorescent lights were a great idea for humans. I’ve always felt the best thing would be to give these artists one wall in every room, and then just walk away and leave them to it. I write about real estate, and I can tell you, accent walls are Out for 2020, but this is an emergency.)

I find Creativity in places not intended for it fascinating. I like these artists’ engagement with spaces and surfaces not really made to be looked at or enjoyed. This art stands up to weather, and even to rules, and I like that, too. My BEK search has made me see the talent, effort,  humor, and Creativity they’ve got going on.

The hope of getting back to seeing BEK out there uplifts me now as much as seeing BEK did then.

 

 

Uplift of the Week

So many ways to experience Creativity. Including when it sneaks up on you and throws a little surprise party just when you really needed one.

Some days just, as we used to say in Rhode Island in the 70s, rot. I recently had such a day, a bit of an inner Nor’easter.  Well, an inner “car swerves to slam a wall of puddle water onto you” anyway. Somehow, two of my favorite creative people suddenly appeared to offer some serious uplift.

One was “writer who draws” Austin Kleon, who books are delightful, advice-filled kicks in the pants for creative people. His recent newsletter called my attention to the soul-swirling fact that artist, writer, and goddess Maira Kalman has illustrated…are you ready?…wait for it… Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.   I know!

And not only that. Kalman has done a short film, performing excerpts from the book as Alice B. Toklas, presumably in her, or someone’s, apartment in New York. It is outrageous and splendid and sort of nail-biting. I will watch it many, many times.

There was no choice but to be lifted. I love to explore and consider Creativity in many forms in our brimming-over world, but sometimes You and Someone’s Art is just a joyful encounter. Someone’s Creativity helps you find the spring breeze on a bad day, and up you go.

So Creative, It’s Scary

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s exhibit of Richard Avedon’s photography focused on his fashion work, with evolving style and glamor over the decades it covered. He used the camera over the years to say many things about humanity, and even these images had his Creative Muscle in them.

We’d just seen the last gallery and were thumbing through the coffee table books on the benches by the exit. The long wall near us contained an unusual photo shoot, with the models posed in an urban, post-apocalyptic world that I remember as windy-looking and trash-strewn. But artfully. The couture, of course, was flawless as they posed together, one model a lovely young woman and the other a skeleton in male attire. She seemed not to notice.

I liked them because they worked well as, and also laughed at, fashion photography. But if I’d been a little kid, I would have run. Petrified of skeletons back then, I would have felt the earth shake beneath as the nice museum betrayed me with this unexpected Terror. The photos brought back that old fear of coming upon skeletons in museums and historic sites. I could laugh in the gallery, but once upon a time, it wasn’t funny.

There was a little girl, about five, in the gallery with us, looking with her adults. She was wearing a pretty little dress, the sort of outfit that makes girls look all sugar and spice. After viewing these images, she walked back to where they started, gathered herself, and began an assertive stomp-march along the wall. Marching with as much attitude as any runway requires, she pointed up dramatically at each photo and declared, “Scary! Scary! Scary! Scary! Scary!” Her tone was 10% outraged complaint and 90% putting these pictures in their damn place. And then her work there was done.

Wasn’t I vindicated. Maybe an Art Critic was born. But also an artist: this was performance, with space, action, and dialogue carefully planned and executed. It was splendid.

I have no conclusion or message to add here. Two expressive people impressed me with their Creativity, one in answer to the other. I think I’m writing about it just to join a Creative conga line I admired. I guess sometimes Inspiration can be the feeling of “I want in on this!” The only thing better than going to spend time with a Creative you know is suddenly meeting a new one while you’re at it.

The image is of Production Design by my Creative Cuz Elvis Strange, of Designing with Strange, Inc. Skellylicious, and used with his permission!

First Love

I clearly remember my First Time, and it was with someone very special. I always have and always will love him. It was a stormy summer night, outdoors in a park, and we got rained out halfway through.

I’m talking about Theater, Darlings. My first real Major Playwright relationship was with Edward Albee, and we’ve been at it since 1982. And when I say “at it,” I mean he was writing, being a Towering Pillar, winning Tony and Pulitzer awards. And I was adoring him, reading him, watching him, among others, working backstage (creatively) part time, and coming to love his and all related art forms.

The thing I can tell you that all the recent articles and obituaries could not is how lucky I am to have someone like this writer come early into my creative (part-time) life. That play in the rainy park, and I did get to see it whole and dry on another night, was my first experience with live, non-musical American Drama. It was The Ballad of the Sad Café, based on the short story by Carson McCullers. I was fifteen, a novice without context and with a blown mind. I learned from him that the Uncanny is where Humanity is, not just with Victorian people on darkened moors. He taught me the huge, truthful power of the utter Absurdity of Us, and the possibilities of a wide-open imagination. He still reminds me that language is a precision tool, an echo chamber, and an animal howl, All at the same time. I met Beckett, Brecht, Sartre, Marina Carr, August Wilson, and probably even Salvador Dali, holding his hand. He touches my shoulder with a finger when I write, gently directing me away from what I think other people will understand and accept easily. His first lesson, that writing for the theater is writing for the THEATER, not WRITING for the theater…well, I seem to have annoyed a lot of people in academia with that one, but I hold up my little banner and always will.

Rest in peace, Edward, and thank you.  I’m glad you’re the one I met at the door because it made me want to stay, and it’s a fabulous party.

(BTW, my First Love that I actually knew personally is in the picture. Theater’s so great.)

Hey-la-di-la, my blog is back.

Hello. I’m back. I haven’t posted in recent weeks, and I also haven’t

• gone on vacation, pilgrimage, or silent retreat.
• faked a plunge down a waterfall with my archenemy in my grasp, and then traveled in disguise while my dear Watson thought I was, um, done for.
• entered a peaceful writers’ colony somewhere mountainous or ocean-adjacent.

What I have done is Live Out a particular aspect of being a Creative Part-Timer, and now I’m going to blog about it, which is awfully convenient for me.

A couple of weeks ago, I was out in picturesque Waltham, MA, where I visited the wonderful More Than Words Bookstore and Cafe, where they do good community work with young people, and where I bought a used copy of Take Ten: New 10-Minute Plays, edited by Eric Lane and Nina Shengold. Short plays have long interested me as an art form, partly because I’ve been lucky enough to see so many good ones, and partly because, unlike full-length plays, they don’t Terrify me as a writer. My contributions to theater have been mostly backstage, but several years ago I drafted some plays under the influence of that delicious drama-feast of Shorties that is the annual Boston Theater Marathon. Then I heard me just spinning my wheels, didn’t like the sound, and drifted away. I do that.

I read my new book straight through, play after play, with no performances to take my attention from Exactly What the writers were Doing. Turns out it was an excellent way to absorb the pure craft. Mind you, reading plays can give you the how-to’s, but that’s not the whole enchilada . You truly know plays by watching them, just as you know people by being with them, not just by looking through their clothes closet. Sure, you get an impression of who they could be, but you’ve never actually met them. The craft I cracked while reading these experienced people was how to write a play For Performance, not for Good Writing. That’s a shift I had to make, and it helped mightily that I am a seasoned, loving theater audience. Just saying.

I took out my drafts from years ago and got excited because they aren’t bad at all. I need to chill out as the wright and ask them to do a lot less. And I need to make my characters stop talking like me when I teach, saying everything 1 ½ times to make sure it gets across. Actors’ job, getting things across.  So I made marks and notes. I revised and wrote new bits. And I forgot all about you, Kindly Readers of the blog. That’s the CPT experience, emphasis on Part-Time, that I’m back to comment on.

As usual, I had only so much time to write, and I used it on those plays, which left me focused and full of joy. “Honey, love the one you’re with” is a credible working philosophy. Yet I didn’t write other things that sat patiently waiting, including the blog and my “Daily Grind” work. That bothered me, but I quickly acclimated to feeling bad about them. I do that.  I did not sacrifice pleasure-reading, Jeopardy, or wasting time to create more time to Be Creative. And there it is, the best of CPT and the worst of CPT: everything I accomplished tumbling into the abyss of what I did not write, and all the unwritten blog posts spilling out in a few play characters suddenly alive and speaking. Now that I have the blog, a binder full of poem drafts, notes for two big projects, AND four plays in progress, what choices am I going to make about what gets how much time? Same or different? What will I learn about being a CPT and an artist from those choices?

 

 

Saying Neigh

When I was little, I liked Bobbie Had a Nickel by Frieda Friedman, a picture book that follows Bobbie’s thoughts on what to buy with his five cents. A toy? A bubble pipe? In the end, he chooses a carousel ride rather than a thing. Thus the naturalization of the positive capitalist construct expressed by the assumed empowerment paradigm inherent in material possession is challenged, and, indeed, somewhat overturned. Blimey. The academic’s gotten out. I have asked everyone please to keep that gate closed. Wait a minute…c’mere. C’mere…okay, safely back inside. Anyway. Many artists know all about deciding what to do with the one actual nickel in their pockets, and for the CPT, there is also deciding about the small coin of time you have to spend on your Creativity. I don’t always have/find/make the time I need to unroll the whole red carpet for an idea, or to let what’s sitting in my bowl rise slowly while I wait to roll it out at the exact right moment. (Two metaphors, both using “roll”. Woo.)

I feel the same five-cents-only pinch when I try to make time to experience other people’s Art. Part of me pants to explore new things as I come across them. Another Part of me, the wiser bit, smiles like the Buddha, knowing that it’s necessary to say No. There is nothing wrong, is there, with pursuing a couple of passions in depth while leaving other worthy things alone. Except for how that can feel, of course. But there it really always is: all the Books not read, all the Art not experienced, swarming around us like bees with sharp backsides. We have to limit ourselves. But these limits—call them renunciations when they sting enough— help us honor what choreographer Twyla Tharp calls our “Creative DNA,” that which we truly Are and Need to be Doing in the time we have. Knowing that doesn’t make it easy. Readers and art lovers have FOMO all their own, and it can be raw.

Riding a carousel was meaningful back then. My parents took me to Roger Williams Park in Rhode Island many Sunday afternoons, where I loved to pick my colorful horse and happily go around. OK, sometimes more than one horse…they were all pretty, you know.  Naturally I was a Bobbie fan. As I am now a fan of the 18^th century, literature, and theater. And poetry, Modernist art, Bohemian style. And good nature writing about the shore and good spiritual writing. And I literally have no time for it all, never mind the rest of the fascinating world. More or less. Sometimes I worry that’s close-minded, my Ego demanding to see itself reflected in the art I engage with. There’s enough truth in that worry to make sure I stretch mindfully and take a spin outside the comfort zone. But at the same time, doesn’t any Creative, especially a CPT, need to acknowledge the bright horse in the mad swirl she recognizes as her own, and, as the song says, ride that painted pony?

I admire people whose passionate pursuits aren’t peppered underfoot with gravelly bits of the roads not taken. I suspect they understand that the Rest of the Art is for someone else to connect with. We love the world together; it only works as a group effort. That’s not a bad thing to realize in trying to spend your nickel well on your own art and other people’s.