Comments on: Revolutionary airs

By: Birgit

Birgit — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 19:47:38 +0000

The first image is incredible. What comes to mind is Brennpunkt. The light focuses attention roughly into the middle of the image. We talked about placements on A&P recently.

By: Melanie Hulse

Melanie Hulse — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 03:55:53 +0000

As I’m sure you know from your various reading, “transience” is an important part of some Japanese art — both as content in the image and as an idea deliberated evoked by the content. The value of lives and living is always a worthwhile meditation.

There may come a time in the unfolding of this work when you would do well to let go of the fear of being sentimental and just give in to it. Sometimes, after you’ve had a good wallow and truly have exhausted all the cliches, you stumble into genuine sentiment and the perfect, authentic, singular, idiosyncratic expression of it.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 05:33:15 +0000

What’s different is that we know the function of empty space in a wheel, a pot, a house, but we may have trouble with the meaning of a pictorial emptiness. I suspect a more successful picture would supply not only Useful Space like Pooh’s pot, but also something to put in it, at least a damp rag of a suggestion that the viewer might elaborate. For example, in the sky gap, a faint trace of evaporating clouds might suggest thoughts of transience that could extend to the leaves and beyond. Perhaps a facile and trite-sounding idea, but one I’ll probably try when opportunity presents. As Arlo Guthrie says, I’m not proud–or tired.

By: Melanie Hulse

Melanie Hulse — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:57:37 +0000

This idea of focusing on the space, makes me think about the verse in the Tao Te Ching [from a translation for the public domain by j.h.mcdonald, 1996] :

“Thirty spokes are joined together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that allows the wheel to function.

We mold clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that makes the vessel useful.

We fashion wood for a house,
but it is the emptiness inside
that makes it livable.

We work with the substantial,
but the emptiness is what we use. ”

So it’s not really emptiness, is it? It’s a kind of matrix of potential, described or circumscribed or in some way realized by something tangible.