Updates, insights, and information about the work being produced at Loveday Studio, the work place for Oliver Loveday. Visual art, poetry, music, and video works are featured in each blog.
This was in a dream some 20 years ago or more after working on a painting late into the night and in the dream I was standing in a museum and a group of children on a class trip to the museum walked up to a painting of mine and became very quiet as they all looked at it and even the tour guide stopped talking and just looked and finally one of the students looked up at the teacher and said “I can hear the music in this painting…” and that is when I started hearing the music also and remembered the dream when I woke up and got up and went into the room where the painting I had finished the night before lay on the table and still waking up from the dream I sensed the music and knew that it is humanly possible to hear music from visual elements inside there and the dream stuck with me and the painting they were looking at in the dream remained in my head so that I had to paint it also and I can remember the dream and in the recall I can hear the music of each work of art that I do as I work so that it is like creating a song and in the Old Ways of the Native American tribal cultures it is said that when a potter makes a pot from clay that there is a song that goes into the pot and you can feel the song come through your skin when you touch it or maybe even hear it when you hold the opening of it to your ear like hearing the ocean inside a sea shell but when the pot is broken the song is released back into the universe but not all of the song goes away because I’ve found broken pieces of pottery near an old village and held it in my hand and a little bit of the song was still in there singing through my skin so I could hear the song and have a bit of insight into the place and time of the clay as it became pottery and pigment that goes into painting comes from clay as all the colors come from the earth even it they are created in a paint factory like some of the man-made pigments but it was earth transformed into pigment so it makes sense in that strange manner of tribal mind that making a painting is like making a piece of pottery only with a thin skin of clay on canvas or pottery so I take this idea and seek ways to transform the experience into sound as well so that the sounds I’m “hearing” inside my head can become audible sounds in the air as guides to others so they can learn to hear the sounds that come from colors or clay or earth and expand that sense of knowing the songs that rise up from the earth that are the vibrations of creativity that transform us as we grow spiritually in the dance of dreaming a new life into each moment
It’s not polite to be radical and speak so openly about unseen energy abounding amongst our midst and how dare the soothsayer be honest in the naked truth for when to do otherwise could cause a great loss of lives but is that the only reason to be honest when the King loses face in the moment and so the soothsayer dies for yielding to the message that came forth and there in the ramparts stands the dreamer alone in this naked truth but we all look away too quickly for fear it might be contagious like I mean after all isn’t ignorance bliss while the coils like tentacles form around us in anxiety tension and the dreamer stands over there watching and singing with tears streaming pleading that we be spared but there is no salvation in obfuscation only distortion of how the water got muddy to start with and without clarity no one can see the truth so send the clowns home and dare the dreamer to dream once more alive as the pilgrims report back from the future of past lines drawn in the space of demarcation as we sing and shout our bondage to materialistic illusions that look like scattered bones in the wind
Muse this as we ride the ancient skies like a herd of buffalo across the dusty breeze of seven incarnate thieves between here and eternity and back again back again as the water’s fine water’s thrown many of us have said and it’s the pilgrims again into the night into the bleeding night as we ride like wild horses into the night and this is how they say it but I don’t believe it is true that the Muse is a woman and you entice her to give you her gifts of inspiration so you can achieve greatness in poetry song and dance but I don’t believe it is true because it sounds like a romantic relationship between a lover and a suitor and she’s no whore selling her wares but I can’t see beyond the shroud of imagination so it all sounds like some male-dominated bullshit to me like what happens when a woman wants to become a great dancer and seeks the help of a muse is the Muse and the dancer lesbians in this movie and maybe so maybe this is the way it is but I don’t think so I don’t think so I have a different feel about it but that’s not where this is all going as this is about the death of art of creativity of failed attempts to tame the muse in the midnight in the midnight as we wonder into the fields at night and pretend to not notice the wildness that surrounds us and each culture has a story about the origin of creativity and all the cultures and all the stories are correct and a true and accurate account of how we got to be so crazy and used this crazy wisdom to transform our lives into something new and different and it is very unwise to diss another culture even if I don’t think that my understanding of the information I have at hand is true because all I have to do is consider the story of the Muses in ancient Greek history and remember that those stories got handed down through a lot of translators and there’s the rub that someone establishes that this poet or that playwright is the greatest of his peers from Ancient Greece but we don’t know if that’s the way that they felt about it because we don’t have a lot of critical reviews of poetry or plays to go by all we have are the few works that have survived over time and we have no idea of what didn’t survive so it seems really stupid to me to assign greatness to that which we do have and the fact of the matter might be that the greatness is only in the ability of that work to survive because it was so bad by their standards that it got tucked away and never accessed again and that’s how it survived but God forbid that anyone suggest that there be anything greater than what has already been established as greatness and so we have this idea of a muse and we have this idea of creativity or we could go with another culture and say that spider woman brings us the songs poems dances bead work baskets weaving knitting and so forth but after a while the point isn’t about who brings what but the start of it all and the wildness and sense of freedom with the relationship with this source of creativity and we dance and sing to the new energy brought forth by the lyre poem body movement ancient or fresh off the press and over time the artist starts to cater to the tastes of the patrons like the soothsayer who tells the King what he wants to hear to save his own neck and who could blame him really but the artist starts trying to tame the muse to feed the wealthy what they want to hear see feel to reassure them that they have the power to delegate what the muse offers to humanity and as the muse starts to see the desecration of creativity the muse starts to seek a new co-conspirator in the work of creativity and after a while the artist dries up with new ideas and starts to recycle the previous work as an affirmation of the power of the wealthy to dictate creativity and thus the Muse is never tamed but rather moves on to new artists willing to ride the wild horse across the night sky like a night mare of untamed unbridled raging into the wind and storm and beauty and insanity and it is said that the Muse will drive a man mad or even a woman because we’ve already established that there is no gender preference in creativity but the challenge always is to ride and never be thrown off in the darkness of the next wave of fresh ideas and the real scope of it all is the challenge of the artist to never try to tame the muse and damn the rich old farts that sit around looking down at the rest of us like their shit don’t stink and give them the power to destroy a great ride like the muse is an untamed horse riding across the night sky I said that already and the proclamation underneath all of this was that once a friend told me that I would be a great writer but I needed to clean up my writing just a little bit and if I would let him edit my work then he would show me how to achieve that greatness and I ignored his offer because the truth is that it is easy to go back and correct the mistakes like spelling errors and sometimes it is okay to rephrase something this way or that but the fact of the matter is that a lot of times this is the way that it came to me and I’m not going to mess up a great relationship just to please the anal retentive word wizards that don’t have much to say but say it with good craft and are jealous of those that gained the favor of a muse and write like there is no tomorrow damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead into the midnight and I leave this to reader to decide with a few quick examples but nay that isn’t the answer it takes all of it the full breath and scope of it really to decide but here’s a good place to start with a few examples of poetry and art and ride like fury into that good night amen a-ho!
It is lost, most of it, due to the lack of interest. “Lack of Interest” and by that I mean, in a manner of civility, that most would prefer that it had never happened, but in that it did happen, they are contented to see it dissipate into the dust of bygone history as if it never happened. But it did happen and I didn’t go away with the “it” of this dilemma. If that exposes an element of denial on their part, that is the risk I take in remaining present and vocal in the spirit of creativity.
It isn’t just about the Industrial Culture in the Nuclear Age, but it is about that also. The impact of “The Bomb” resonated through humanity after the war. As a young man venturing into the world of art in 1971, the photographs of David Smith (sculptor) working in his studio on the farm at Bolton’s Landing in upstate New York, with drawing paper on the floor and ink or home-made egg tempera brushed onto the paper opened a new window into creativity. The drawings would become sketches for welded metal sculptures, or flow into the endless stream of new work being produced in the 1950’s as artists around the world seemed to go into hyper-drive in an effort to produce as much work as quickly as possible, because it could all be gone in a flash as the race to produce more nuclear warheads moved steadily forward as well. There was no time to carve stone any more. Creating works through the new tools of the trade made it possible to create more works, almost as fast as the drawings themselves happened. The rush to produce became an obsession. The photographs and films of Jackson Pollack doing “drip art” at the same time in an out building (or outside the old shed) on a small farm on Long Island became another example of how to work. Combined with an interest in pottery and thus, Japanese pottery, raku, and Zen Buddhism, and the styles of decoration from which all of this merged in some <rewind> fashion back into the whispers of history, gave me impetus to take up a brush and make marks on clay, paper, or canvas without touching the brush to the surface. This became my new handwriting by the time I was 20 years old.
Later I read that Jackson Pollack had observed the ritual sand paintings of the Navajo as a small child and that was a major influence on his effort to recreate something he experienced of that time and place. To reference that as a matter of importance in the early interest in his work became a bit of small print in the general consensus of this new and radical departure from the norm. Similar references of inspiration fall to the wayside in other approaches to creativity, as if humanity was “inventing” a new form of art in this Industrial Culture. Most of the work was well steeped in specific elements of ancient history if one took the time to notice. But popular culture isn’t about noticing the details. So it is easy to ignore the details of this work, the history that has been intentionally destroyed by a detached society in an effort to make like it never happened, as I stay true to the vision and keep working anyway.
I live in “public housing” rent free today. I moved here ten months ago following a period of time when I was “homeless”. Five years ago I went through foreclosure and lost the home and property I had spent many years working to have as a place for my family to live and work and host guests who had benefited greatly from that time I was there, we were there, but in the end, after a nasty divorce around the spouse’s drug addiction and the failure of a supposed-patron who had signed a contractual commitment to buy $100,000.00 worth of art over a two year period of time as part of the mortgage contract with the lender, reneged on that contract, stating that he was a Christian and I was a Cherokee Indian, and as such, he could not morally excuse himself for continuing to honor his commitment to buy art. I’ll call him Kevin C. for the same of identification. Kevin had visited the studio many times over the previous year following the divorce and my return to the property after having been falsely accused of assault and forced off the property through usage of character assassination and a court system that favors the voice of a woman over that of a man in matters of domestic violence, even if she was the one who was guilty, but never mind any of that. No one else seemed to mind, so why should we make that a sticking point today? Kevin would look at some work and admire it and ask how much. Rather than go check my price list I would name a price well below what I had it listed for on my data base, because I knew he didn’t have that much money at the moment, but since he had a large holding of real estate on the market that would allow him to buy work in the future at the pre-established price, I didn’t worry so much about it at the time. He was happy to get the work he admired and I needed what little funds he could shake loose at the time. Later I realized that he had a gambling problem and I consider that to be as much a factor in why he backed out on the contract as anything, but he gave a reason and I’m the fool that takes a liar at his word for some reason.
So I don’t have any of those works on hand to support the fact that I’ve been doing this for a while. What got sold or given away is out there, but stacks and stacks of work went into storage in 2007 and have never been seen since. I don’t know if they exist or not. I approached my sister about contacting other family members a year earlier before the foreclosure, and she related to me that none of my family cared about me. Their silence in this matter speaks for itself. I exist in a vacuum in this environment and yet the will to continue to create drives me forward. From a small stipend I have purchased some paper, oil pastel, ink, and brushes, and am able to produce art again in this makeshift studio. I make marks on the paper with oil pastel to give a pre-existing composition that my ink marks follow in creating a new work. Six pieces of paper laid together on the grass on the lawn behind the apartment, with the digital video recorder a friend gave me a few months ago held in one hand while I apply the ink with a brush or two in the other. No one comes to see the event or hold the camera. No one comes to see the work. Only one or two people have stopped by in the past six months to see the work previous to this work. I exist in a vacuum, and yet I have this sense that it isn’t the nature of humanity as a whole but of those around me that generate this vacuum, so I work and document and write and inform a greater community of this effort, like an SOS signal out there that I am being held hostage by a repressive and genocidal people who seem to hold an air of disinterest in the matter, like it is only a matter of time before they starve me out and then the matter is resolved. In time they will win because time is on their side.
Oliver Loveday February 1, 2012
A close-up of one of the works in progress
POV: Six work of art in progress (the video on You Tube)
These works will be added to a new page, "Ink 4", on my web site off the "Works on paper" page soon.
I hate journalist, newspaper reporters, media reporters, and the lot. The idea behind journalism is to give an honest and truthful account of the journey. The town crier would walk through a village at daybreak and “cry out” the news of the day. That was then and this is now. Today, journalists write fiction and call it a true and accurate account of events that have transpired. They take the truth and modify it to fit the market. When you give them a quote and choose your words very carefully, it doesn’t matter. They’ll rephrase it because they are arrogant and think they can tell the truth better than you can, so don’t even think that your words will be reported the same way you said them. Even television reporting can be edited so a phrase or sentence can be left out and make it come out the way they want it to be. It’s best to avoid those newspaper word whores as long as possible. They sell it to the highest bidder and, honey, you don’t even have any jingle in your pocket compared to what the boss man is paying to make it sound like what the advertising customers want it to sound like. Truth is stranger than fiction and their truth is a very strange account.
In the flicker flick flock fluck fling flake flim flam flame flip flop
My camera doesn’t like me anymore
Bing chaching chong chonk
Mother mystery monastery
It was my mother that started this
Doing correspondence
Write a letter
Make a greeting card
Then Dada art introduction in 1971 art books from library and seeing anti-art from post World War One (and counting) response to materialism industrial culture commercialization of everything and making something non-commercial outside “HIGH culture” photo-copy machine multiple copies of collage printouts mailed out on temporary art paper fading rapidly non-commercial value mail art cut cut
Art.heart.pushcart.fart.dart.part.start and art school collage painting into idea of decal where the ink from a photograph print in a magazine is lifted from the paper via clear acrylic polymer and pasted onto a painting transparent floating over the pigment underneath
Worked as a printer (press operator//off-set printing press) amazing view of hundreds of sheets of paper falling off roller into stack and setting up next print job pulling culls from a stack and printing over and over on the same pieces of paper hundreds of sheets used to check the setup before using clean white virgin paper for job and looking at printings of random jobs printed over each other
Frequency of seven 7 7 idea and position index cards through printer ink jet multiple runs of different images photographs fractals words random sloppy placement combining collage decal setup printer paper and introduced to mail art community again fluxus flash global community via Face Book and connect combine process anti-art postcards anarchy across international boundaries after invitation from Cathy Garcia to send something to “Nouveaux Delits” and six of these resulting
It isn’t just a matter of contrast like black and white across the landscape but the awareness that the air tastes different in the valley than it does on the top of a mountain and to stand there and feel the wind press against skin and sing and aspire to absorb this taste and awareness and return to the valley below of humans and family and share this knowingness because there’s the old timeline phrase that it has to be exotic to be real because we can’t make sense out of daily transitions in the same way that people really never change their lives until something traumatic comes along and shakes them up for a bit and makes them realize that life is slipping away with each passing or as the old blues line goes “you don’t miss the water until the well runs dry” like there’s nothing to miss as long as there’s water there to be had and it feels like its some sort of entitlement instead of a blessing so when it all goes away and suddenly life is valued in the losing instead of in the having is when it all turns around and there we are at the summit and having traversed the ascent past fear and debilitating ego constraints out of a desire to transcend the mundane but we can’t talk about it that way because the whole challenge of spiritual advancement is to eliminate desires and expectations from the mind and that’s where it all falls apart just like saying that we have to let go of ego in order to attain spiritual bliss but that isn’t true as we are animals and in being human animals the ego is tied into the drive to survive so when someone starts talking to me about becoming “ego-less” I know that what they’re trying to say is that one should have less ego and the ego that needs to be trimmed back is the part that is selfish and directed towards attaining selfish desires and attempting to get others to meet selfish expectations but that isn’t stated as such and it makes me shudder because it needs to be in there or it sounds like I need to stop having an ego (ie. the will to survive) and I look over my shoulder to see what is gaining on me in that moment because that’s what that school of thought makes me think in the perverted manner with which someone will take a little smattering of spirituality and turn it into a way to control and manipulate others which is the total opposite of what we are supposed to be learning and teaching each other but that is part of their need to feel spiritually superior to others in that spiritual ego function that is a very dangerous place to arrive at so I stand at the summit and sing and shout my liberation but then I have to return to the valley below and walk amongst others in this world but not “of this world” as it was related once in some other language in some other land long ago but that doesn’t matter now because I am just another person amongst people and that’s who we all are no matter what but my voice doesn’t count in the mix of exotic words from exotic lands as a prophet is never appreciated in his own land but that’s not my curse or cross to bear so I keep working with what I have to work with knowing that even with a small piece of paper and a dime’s worth of ink I can illustrate the journey and path from here to the ascent where one is free of selfish desire and expectations while continuing to embrace the “self-less” desire to help others because there are no limitations beyond this physical world which allows us to transcend these limitations through non-physical experiences that come through spiritual discipline wherein the challenge arises to show the invisible unseen realm like an artist trying to do a painting of a windy landscape such that there is no recourse but to show the effects of the wind on the physically visible world and these marks these marks how they fall into the cracks and crevices of the very grain of the paper and hide in the shadows as I attempt to show the whiteness of the snow blowing off the distant ridgeline with black ink marks from a brush and there over there at nine o’clock half way from center to the left hand side of the drawing are four pilgrims starting the ascent up the side of some nearby peak while down there in the valley below amongst the fields pools of water and fields lie the markings of self-imposed boundaries that reinvest the human mind into limitations filled with fear lust jealousy greed desire but we did all that already and we did that already as we taste the air at the summit and wonder at some point in the future as others stand and marvel at the unknown world that they can only dream of because of that familiar process of clinging to the mundane like it defines their identity the same way fractures in a diamond make it real but in the end we are still human and perfection isn’t a physical aspiration anyway but no one talks about it in the manner of simple style so we can all understand it so it gets lost in the exotic and I’m still standing here wondering if I should point to that point and say in a quiet voice so all can appreciate but then I know it isn’t appropriate so my voice remains silent even if I have been there because they don’t want to know because they don’t want to know that they could actually achieve this also but they don’t want to do what they would have to do in order to follow the Path and discard the comforts of pain because it makes them “real” in the illusion of selfish victim reality
