Right now, I am feeling at peace. I am done with a project I have worked on for the last several weeks, and I feel accomplished. I don’t think what I am feeling is pride or proud. Just centered and on a plateau.
Hydrangea-0829204—How am I feeling?
Yesterday, I drew a Tower Tarot Card from my Rider-Waite tarot deck while thinking about the past. The way I interpreted the card was that it singled a change. The change was not accompanied by good or bad. Just change, and I can accept that because of what I was feeling as well after 22 years of teaching and running and working in an art gallery for five years. I see it beginning in the fall and ending in late August. Thinking about it further, I realized that my birthday is tomorrow. With my website ArtChangesLives(Dot)Com reorganized, I am happy with the documentation of the artwork posted. I do… I feel accomplished and thankful.
A friend, who is a Friend at the Minneapolis Friends Meeting, called me today and shared Carroll’s quote with me. What struck me about this quote is that it addresses an experience and the concept of time. I have read in several places that, according to quantum physics, time is not a linear analog; instead, it is one moment stacked on top of another, and we experience time all at once. Therefore, our planning and setting of goals is a form of remembering a time in the future. I know, deep, huh? I am not a physicist, but these concepts inspire my work as an artist.
Door05192024, Mixed Media, Pen and Digital, Hendricks 2024
Stern Expression — Ink on paper — 7″ x 5″ approximately
Art isn’t complete until it’s shared.
~ Seph Lawless
As some who follow ArtChangesLives(Dot)Com know, I retired almost three years ago. I knew I would begin building a body of work. So, I began drawing before retirement. At the Friends General Conference (FGC) workshop titled Photography as a Contemplative Practice, Peter West Nutting jumpstarted my process. That workshop was followed by a Zentangling Workshop with Sadelle Wiltshire the next summer at the FGC Gathering. Both workshops provided a sufficient role in giving direction to my work.
After retirement, besides exploring my artistic leadings, I supported my meeting, the Minneapolis Monthly Meeting and Northern Yearly Meeting (NYM) (Quakers), designing and producing the yearly meeting’s monthly e-news and a quarterly publication, NYM Journal, with two skilled editors Doug Kirk and Tom Darrow. The journal features poets, articles, and artwork produced and shared with members of the yearly meeting.
I am excited to share some of my work in the journal’s current issue. I hope you enjoy it; along the way, you might enjoy several articles and poems.
In order to experience a poem, we must understand it; in order to understand it; we must hear it, see it, contemplate it—convert it into an echo, a shadow, nothingness. Comprehension is a spiritual exercise.
Octavio Paz, Alternating Current, p. 49
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Floating through Space and Time, Mixed-media, Hendricks@2023
I don’t think I am creating anything as profound as Paz describes, but as I said many times in this blog—I am on a path, which is not totally visible to me. I get glimpses, but never too sure what I see. I do want to say that just because I post works of art, I do not think they are grand, that the technique is refined, or the lines sure and sharp. I know they are not. However, as I do and study my ideas, my voice and path will clarify. There is one thing I want readers and friends to know, and that is that I believe in a power greater than ourselves, and there is a piece, a bit, of that power, that Light within each of us. I don’t know if I am a theist, non-theist, pantheist, or panentheist. Whatever I am, I seek to reach, connect, and engage with that Light that exists within me… and you. I am saying this partly because I have avoided saying it in the public eye of art critics and peers. OH MY GOD! I just came out again. 😆
“Every work of art is a culturescape of you, your memories, the moments you spent working, your hopes, energies, and neuroses, the times you live in, and your ambitions. Of the things that are engaging, mysterious, meaningful, resistant over time.”
― Jerry Saltz, How to Be an Artist
Finally, I got a gallery set up. I have to explore more because I am still determining if the plug-in NextGen Gallery is worth it.
I am reading Jerry Saltz’s book—Art is Life. I like it. He is very entertaining. I am unsure if I like him, but he speaks his mind. He seems to have compassion too. So I guess I do. But he would be a challenge, I think.
Loved his story of himself laying down the idea of being an artist. He speaks of creating art… akin to meditation and communing with the unknown. His question about … Is There Great Art on Instagram?I appreciated that he seemed to honor all the artists working… discovering… exploring… and most of all, creating art as an unknown but still creating.
Then this article/chapter—Iconoclasm Now: Charlie Hebdo and the Lethal Power of Art. That chapter was a show-stopper for me; as a Quaker and even as a young man, I believed that what I created on paper, sculpted, and images I made, I breathed life into the work. So whether it is seen or unseen, it has life cause it was/is a part of me. He didn’t go there exactly, but when he spoke about the image breakers that believed the images that “the thing itself and, as made not by God, they contain demonic spirits.” So I identified with that some people believe similarly about an image as I do—the demonic bit … not so much. But as a Quaker, there is the “Light of God” within the work.
The short of it, I am learning a lot, and Mr. Saltz’s book is good. It is approachable and entertaining.
