Art Heals: Weights

Many years ago I used to be a gym rat.   Well, OK, a gym mouse.  A back injury forced me to find a trainer, and I spent a couple of years doing what the body-building world calls “lifting.”  (As opposed to “hoisting,” which is done with vessels of liquids and is way more fun.)  Squats, deadlifts, cleans, bench presses, pull-ups, I learned it all and did it all, more or less.  As I progressed, my trainer would gradually increase the weights, and the repetitions.  Needless to say, this progression was marked by grunts, complaints, pleading, outrage (all me, not the trainer, a pro who had heard it all before).  But despite the torment and the indignity (my form was execrable and I really, really hated what sweat did to my hair) I persevered, knowing that this was the only way I was going to be able to stand up straight without pain in the future.  And, not surprisingly, it worked.  But surprisingly, while I never came to like it, I did feel a certain pride of accomplishment in my ability to lift those **** weights; 2 lbs., 5 lbs., 10, 15, 20, 25….  Ultimately, I bench-pressed 75 lbs., more than half my weight.                    For me, an Olympic gold. 
Then we moved away, and I started working full time, and lifting weights became a thing I used to do.
Yesterday a colleague drove by to drop off a few more things I had left behind in my hurried decampment from my office. 

Among them was a pair of 5 lb. weights.
We are all lifting weights now, mostly far above our weight class.   The weight of anxiety, of exhaustion, of feeling inadequate to the ceaseless daily tasks.  The weight of the sadness of the world,  the weight of knowing that ultimately, whatever changes this pandemic will bring into our lives, we won’t like them, but they will be real, and we will have to carry them into the future. 
Yesterday I lifted those 5 lb. weights for the first time in years.  My form was execrable, 10 reps in my triceps hurt, and I had to wash my hair right afterwards.  5 lbs.  But it’s a start.
The weights in our world don’t get lighter, but we get stronger.  We can lift them, and we will.
I am a fan of graffiti.  Here is some from an anonymous tagger in DC.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Chores

At present in my apartment there is a sewing box on the open ironing board, ready to attack a fallen hem.  In the sink is the baking dish that I left soaking overnight.  A duster is waiting on the windowsill to chase the bunnies left over from Easter, dust bunnies, that is.   And my formerly curated shelves, closet and refrigerator (yes, I was a bit obsessive) are an unedited jumble that define the words higgledy piggledy.   Chores. 
Before WFH (working from home) I had little time for chores.  Because of this, they got done efficiently.  A swipe of the duster before I left my job.  A deeper clean on Saturday morning.  Grocery shopping on Sunday, from a list created Saturday night.  Clothes to the dry cleaner on the way to visit a museum, laundry while watching Meet the Press.  You get the picture.  Well, I still watch Meet the Press, but that is the only constant in this woeful tale.  Now even though I seem to be clocking days lasting far more than their allotted 24 hours, the chores remain a reproachful reminder of my lack of enthusiasm.  My lack of energy.  My lack of initiative.  Ok, my lack of excuses.
In my 42nd day of self-quarantine, I realize I need to analyze this reluctance to accomplish things.  I used to be a list maker, taking inordinate pleasure at crossing things off.  No lists now, and not just because I can’t find a scrap of paper in the kitchen junk drawer.  While I realize that the more I do in a day, the faster the day goes, I can’t seem to get up the go to get up and go.  Thinking deeply about this, while in a prone position on an increasingly uncomfortable couch (style over function?)  I reached a conclusion.  (I also reached for the Pringles, but we won’t go into that.) 

Having things left to do comforts me.  Somehow, irrationally, as I contemplate the endless, open-ended span of quarantine days to come, I am afraid of running out of things to do.
Irrational indeed. But it’s not the chores per se that spark this fear. With illimitable time on my hands, I am afraid I will run out of creativity, and thus out of hope.  Is the well of my resourcefulness bottomless?  I don’t want to find out, so I don’t send down the bucket.  As we navigate this new normal, coming up empty is not an option.
Here is Kerry Vander Meer, Potato Print.  Made for another time and another more serious subject, I see it as a metaphor for satiating hunger, for creativity and hope.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Virtual Touch

I have been thinking about how the phrase, keeping in touch, no longer includes actual touch. For a long time now, even before our forced confinement, we have been “bowling alone” to borrow a phrase from the title of a book about community by Robert Putnam.
We reached out via Facebook, emails, FaceTime, Skype, text.  But rarely did we find time for the in-person visit. Traffic, the press of work, all reasons that the phrase “we really must get together soon” never actually came to fruition. We were socially isolating before we ever heard of the term.
Those virtual methods might have been convenient, then, but now they are a lifeline. People such as those in Gaza understand this all too well. For some of us, living alone in our homes or apartments, the possibility of actual touch is remote, if not impossible. We stand 6 feet away from the woman who delivers our meal or groceries, both wearing  gloves, and sharing only a smile (and if you can afford it, a larger than normal tip, so that those who risk everything to bring us our pizza are at least a little compensated.) If we have relatives in nursing homes, or in the hospital, the comfort of touch is sadly denied them, and us.
So for our art heals moment today, I ask you to touch with your eyes.
Here is an image by Meriem Elatra, titled L'Envolée II, made when her grandmother died at 96 years old. 
Virtual touch heals too.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Tea

I am a coffee drinker, the stronger the better.  No sugar, no milk.  It’s part of my identity.  In the morning, not a word is spoken until I am on my second cup, hands cradling the warm mug, letting the, to me, life-giving liquid enter me by osmosis alone. Later, as I arrive at the office, the aroma of our communal pot greets me, and I partake before greeting anyone else.  Throughout the day, I return again and again to the sacred spring.  Have a curatorial conundrum? (laugh if you must) I get a coffee.  Hungry before lunch?  Coffee.  4 o-clock slump? Coffee.  A goodbye chat with co-workers?  Please let there still be some fresh in the pot.  Monday morning, when the timer for auto drip cannot be set the night before, is my special kind of hell.  Waiting.  Maybe I’ll check my emails.  Is it ready yet?  One more trip to the desk.  Back again.  Ahhh. Slurp.
You get the idea.
Bu now, as for all of us, the familiar rhythms have altered.  I still need my morning fix, but the tempo of my day has slowed, and the coffee kick plays a jarring note, pushing me toward activities no longer under my control.
I have discovered tea.  There, deep in the recesses of my pantry, I find tins and boxes with unfamiliar names, probably kind, long-ago gifts from well-meaning friends.  The only one I bought myself is chamomile, left over from the days when my mother taught me to cure a cold by steeping the tea  in a bowl over which I hung my head, draped in a towel, breathing in the vapors. I certainly didn’t drink it.
So looking for a little stimulation in the contents of my pantry (I already ate all the Pringles) I found tea.  Lovely names.  English Breakfast (I thought that was kippers.)  Who was Earl Grey? (Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, British Prime Minister in the 1830s—ok, you didn’t really need to know that.)  Orange Blossom White Tea.  Ginger Pear. Bentley’s Peach Tea.  (I know you are thinking “she sure had a lot of tea-drinking friends.  Why did they even like her?  Missionaries?”)
Tea is lovely.  Elevenses means English Breakfast.  Afternoons I share with the Earl (wish I had a scone and some clotted cream).  “Quitting time” (step away from the laptop) is brightened by a fruity cup full of flavor and aroma.  As we all adjust our pace to the new reality, our identities will be subtly altered, our self-definitions changed at bit.
My name is Dagmar.  I drink tea.
These images of another kind of comforting drink, erk sous , made from licorice, showcase the sellers in Egypt (photographer, Amr Mounib), and in  pre-war Syria  (photographer, Molly McCartney). Many such vendors, also dispensing karkade, made from hibiscus flowers, and other teas, roamed the streets in happier times. Art Heals.

Art Heals: Soft Rain

It has been raining since yesterday and will continue to do so intermittently throughout the weekend to come.  Pre self-quarantine, I never liked a rainy morning. Walking to work was a wet mess. Taking public transportation guaranteed close proximity to soggy coats, dripping umbrellas and drenched seats.  And in those days when I used to drive to work, exasperated drivers cut me off as I attempted to exit the highway, spraying my car with a sodden mass of mud and ire. 
Frankly, now that I’m mostly housebound, I still don’t like it much, never mind about April showers bringing May flowers.  I need sunlight in my life.  Covid-clouds are ever-present, no matter the weather, so for me the addition of rain clouds is a drizzle too far. 
But artists, poets, songwriters come to my rescue every time.  With their fulgent imaginations they make a metaphor from a downpour. Hence the transformative artist statement by Susanne Slavick on her art piece, made from iron oxide, acrylic and glue on paper, Soft Rain Seeps:  "Soft Rain Seeps takes its title from the last line of Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “And We Have Countries.”  The transparent drops water the “dry heart” as well as a deprived land and people.  The droplets are also like tears.  It is the imagination that determines whether they spring from pain or joy.”
I am letting the artist soul transform my rainy-day outlook.  I want those transparent drops to water my dry heart.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Sky

Working at my table in the window, I spend a lot of time looking at the sky these days. The street is quiet, the sidewalks almost empty.
So the sky is my beacon. Remember the old lyrics “sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy”? The sky directs my mood. Clouds portend rain; perhaps I won’t be able to take my daily walk. The occasional sighting of a plane tells me that somewhere someone is on the move, something I long for. A helicopter flying overhead makes me anxious; is that someone official carrying bad news?  I used to work in an office where I never saw daylight; my schedule set by tasks to complete.

Sunrise and sunset set my rhythm now. I am an urban woman, but this connection to nature is nourishing. My friend, the artist Najib Joe Hakim quoted June Jordan in the title of a piece he made (for me! and for my last exhibition) “I was looking at the ceiling and then I saw the sky.” That says it all. Here is his piece, and some sky from photographer Mohammad Zaanoon. Art Heals.

Art Heals: Recreation

I love writing these letters every weekday, as it connects you with the work of some of my artists. (Follow them online if you like their work; many of them are posting new work and need those eyeballs.)

But I also look forward to not writing on the weekend.  It’s my form of not working in this freeform system of “working from home” to which we are all adapting in our own ways.  I  think many of us  are putting a lot of pressure on ourselves to be productive, as a way of coping with the anxiety we feel in this  mutable situation, whether it is monitoring the words per page we put out, the reports we write, the numbers we can still crunch for our  bosses, the quantity and quality of the at-home lessons we teach the kids, or the gourmet  dinners we feel we must produce because we now “have the time.” The impulse is understandable, we need to feel in control of this uncontrollable situation.   But we are in this for the long haul.  As so many people have said, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.   We shouldn’t, we mustn’t work all the time, no matter how we define work.

Which brings me to the weekend, and recreation.  Ok, I can already hear you saying, is that woman crazy?  Recreation means baseball (yes, I know the season opener has already pa without a trace), it means going out to brunch, it means swings in the park, or drinks at an outdoor beer garden.  I hear you, but I have been introduced to a new take on the concept, which I would like to share.  (Credit for this idea goes to a comment I heard from Nancy Pelosi, of all people.)
Recreate. Recreate. Same word but shift the accent and you have a plan for action.  Rec’create,  to refresh by means of relaxation and enjoyment, as restore physically or mentally.  If you do that occasionally, then you can Re’create, to create anew.
Shift the accent in your life.  Take the weekend “off.”  Find something to do that gives you pleasure. No guilt. (Ok, eating that whole bag of Mint Milanos gives me pleasure, but you know that is not what I mean.) Then on Monday you can shift back into work mode refreshed, ready to work on recreating the life you will have again someday.
Here is an image of fun with Mr. Potato Head by Adnan Charara (remember that?) and some birdwatching thanks to Najib Joe Hakim.  Relax.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Quantum Physics

Recently I found myself with a little extra time on my hands.  It seems that housecleaning, blogging, Facebooking, Zooming, cooking, walking, Netflixing and creating new verbs do not fully fill the endless “today” that ceaselessly appears on my calendar.
So, I made a choice—learn Serbo-Croatian or think about quantum physics.  Obviously, I chose the easier one.
Actually, QP or QM (quantum mechanics) as those of us in the field like to call it, has a lot of relevance to our present situation of quarantining.   Both begin with a Q.
Aside from that, QP deals with mathematical abstractions that exist, but that no one has seen. (Such as all that stuff that I stored in the “cloud.”)
But these abstractions, known as waves in the quantum world, have very real effects in our world.  Except that no one can agree on what these effects are— they can only predict probabilities.  Tucked in there somewhere is something called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.  I am uncertain what this is, (which probably means that I understand it perfectly), but the principle of the principle is that you can only know some things with certainty, but not all things.  I know with certainty that I will be staying at home, but I certainly have no idea how long that will be.
But for me, the most important thing I  have learned in this in-depth study, is the Observer Theory.  This theory posits that the mere observation of a phenomenon inevitably changes that phenomenon.  Quoting the texts, “the relational interpretation allows that different observers can give different accounts of the same series of events, depending on the information they have about the system.” 
This describes my whole life.  The other observer in this apartment opens the refrigerator and posits that we have no mayonnaise, based upon the information gleaned from a glance. I observe that there is a large jar of mayonnaise located on the top shelf behind the butter, based on the information gleaned from moving the butter.  Voila, quantum physics.
But the idea that by observing something, we can change that something, presents a powerful tool in coping with our present circumstances.  Observe your reaction to a disturbing news report.  Is it a wave of anxiety?  Or could your observation follow the QP principle of Superposition, in which things can be in two places at once.  Could you feel anxiety and empathy at the same time? Anxiety and determination?  Anxiety and hope?
Observe yourself. Be mindful.  You cannot change the circumstances, but you can change yourself.  It increases the probability of happiness in these troubled times.
I can think of no better painting to illustrate the behavior of energy than this delightful one by Adnan Charara, a composition of the joy of chaos!  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Pulled Apart

We are being pulled apart. That is the title of this painting by Mona El Bayoumi, made for another time, another crisis, but so true for today’s. Those of us in isolation, in self quarantine, are pulled apart from family and friends and colleagues. We are pulled apart by our circumstances, our politics, the inequities more than ever visible in our society.
Today’s Art Heals selection makes me think about “pulling together,” a phrase perhaps cliched but apt.
I am waiting for the balance of my inbox to lean toward kindness rather than division. It is happening, but slowly. Strangers helping strangers in ways small and heroic. Solidarity in song, in poetry, in art.  Sharing, even though resources can be scarce.
 Let the diversity of our society be its strength, separate threads that hold us together, and weave a safety net that supports us through this time, not pulls us apart. Art Heals.

Art Heals: Pennies

I have always found that walking helps me think. A Stanford University study found that walking can actually help you improve brain function, leading to greater creativity.  Now that we are sheltering in place, for many of us  the daily walk is our only form of exercise, our only contact with the world outside our homes (besides the  grocery store or pharmacy, both of which have led to an increase, rather than a surcease of tension lately).
I do spend a lot of my walking time looking down, as an accident some years ago put me in a wheelchair for almost a year, so I am extra careful to avoid tripping and falling.  ( I do look up and around, of course, but  I try not to be moving forward when I do so.)  Looking down offers a different perspective on the world.  There is much to notice down there.  Sidewalk cracks and fallen blossoms become nature’s Jackson Pollacks.  Discarded objects tell tales of earlier passers-by.  And there are pennies.
I used to pick up the pennies I’d spot on the street—but under strict rules.  If they were heads up, they were mine.  Tails, I would leave them for someone else.  Sharing the luck equitably, I figured.   As a child I would supplement my allowance by checking the ground around  parking meters. Very lucrative in those days, when your allowance was 50 cents.)
So today, I walk along, masked and gloved, and as I spot the pennies, I regretfully pass them by.  I don’t want to touch anything outside my home, even gloved, these days. It saddens me a bit, passing up the luck.  My world seemed so much wider in those long ago 50 cents allowance days, when finding a few pennies, a nickel, and wow, a dime, could open up endless possibilities of future purchases, or maybe even savings.
After I got home yesterday, I dug into my purse and found a few pennies lurking there.  I have decided to scatter them on my next walk, to try to bring back the feeling of the wider world of possibilities, to share the luck once again.
I love this collage painting by Dina Charara, scattering Pixie Dust.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: New Old Friends

Looking at the calendar, as I do every Monday morning (yes, it’s Monday—just trying to be sure), I noticed that I started these weekday art emails on March 19.  So here we are on April 20.  Time flies when you are blogging.
My weekdays are pretty well regulated by now, so I turn to the weekend for new experiences and observations that might provide food for the thoughts I share with you every Monday through Friday.  Most of these thoughts arrive while I am taking my long weekend walks (3 ½ hours yesterday—my new record.  Well, I used to walk that long, but it included a stop for lunch at a favorite restaurant.  Now, wearing the mask, I can’t even munch on a Kind Bar. See how proud I am of this?)
So, unlike The Thinker on his pedestal (apologies Rodin) my thinking is done in motion.  But not always.  Some of it occurs when I am on the phone.
I usually like to pace while I am on the phone, having read in the dim distant past that even small movements speed up the metabolism,  but when I am chatting with friends, I curl up on the couch for a good “natter” as the British like to say.
We are all reaching out to friends and family and mere acquaintances much more often now, cherishing the human voice in place of human touch.  (I am not including those computer-generated voices that assure me “your call is very important to us, please hold, you are caller 1,257”—no, I still don’t need those, at least not yet.)
But I’ve noticed that for me, talking to friends takes on a deeper, better meaning now. I haven’t got the usual “news” to share—the new restaurant I found, the office birthday party I  am organizing, the weekend trip I am planning. Instead I find myself taking a verbal stroll in my mind, and in theirs, and learning something new about my friend as we explore random topics that somehow just pop up on the winding paths of discourse. Case in point: riflery.
This weekend I was chatting with a friend whom I have known for a number of years.  We seemed to have a lot in common when we met at a long-ago party—we  were both interested in the arts, in design, in travel, in aesthetics. We had similar tastes, although she was far more minimalist in self-presentation than I, more chic in black and white, more cool, more Zen.  (It’s always good to have what I call “aspirational” friends, meaning I aspire to be more like them—gives me something to strive for.)
So there I was, like John Donne, “wandering among the fair gardens of Art and the Hesperides,”  when we somehow got onto the topic of camp.  It seems my chic friend adored it all—the canoeing,  the campfires, the open air cooking, the archery, the sleeping lodges and to my stupefaction, riflery.  So there I was, picturing in my mind, my friend in her high maintenance haircut, hoisting a rifle to  her shoulder, taking aim and hitting the target over and over. I was overcome with astonishment and admiration.  Within a few moments of desultory conversation, I had found an entirely new friend.   (Those of you who know me know that my idea of camping out is the balcony of the Hilton, so you can imagine how this new information hit me.) 
In our isolation, we might have a bit more time to reach out to friends. And if we allow time for the talk to wander, we might meet an entirely new person hidden in the depths of personality we were too busy to explore, before.
How cool is that?
This print by Melanie Yazzie is titled “Seeing Each Other.”  Made for another time, it explores the connections two women have forged from different paths and histories and cultures.  I think it can speak to the friendships of today as well, as we see each other in new ways, alone together.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Love

I was prompted to think about love in the age of Covid (with apologies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez) by a post from one of my artist friends, on the 36th anniversary of being together with her” best mate ever.”  What struck me was her term “the investment in being the best mates ever.” 
With many more weeks to go in the quarantines we are all enduring, tensions are building, anxieties are high, and often patience is wearing thin.  For those of us confined with other people, be they partners, family, roommates, or just the odd delivery guy who never left ( kidding!), our physical spaces, be they 1-bedroom apartments, live/work studios, or 5-bedroom houses, seem to be shrinking by the day. 
Small annoyances ("please stop rubbing everything in sight with that disposable wipe", oops, that's me) become big deals; an eye roll can spark the moral equivalent of WWIII.  And that’s natural, we are only human, and most of us have been lucky enough not to have experienced long-term confinement in close proximity to others. 
You don’t have to look far for examples—prisoners, dwellers in overcrowded mass housing projects, anyone involuntarily confined, for whatever reason, suffers stress that can become cruel and unusual.  During the Blitz in WWII, Londoners crowded into the Underground tunnels, sheltering from bombing raids without a defined end.  For all the stories of banding together in song, and there are many, there are also stories of one remark setting off its own firestorm among the frightened strangers.  And on a macro level, hoarding, racism and just plain meanness are inescapable features in our daily news feeds.
Which is why investments in being best mates resonates so with me.  It’s not too late to start making those investments and reaping the benefits.   When I married (yes, I had that write your own vows, daisy bouquet kind of wedding, but you already guessed that) one of the readings was from Antoine de Saint-Exupery.  “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
We can all do that, whether in reference to those we are confined with now, or, for those of us living alone at the moment, to our friends in their own states of confinement.   Let’s not gaze at each to find fault (or at least try; we are only human.  OK, I’ll go first, darling.)  Let’s look outward in the same direction—the direction of coming out of this crisis with our lives and loves intact.
Here is a beautiful image of love, by artist Mona El-Bayoumi.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Lights

Tensions are rising as we complete yet another week of self-isolation.  Nerves are getting frayed.   The phrase “rubs me the wrong way” takes on new meaning as people sharing tight quarters collide in a jumble of laptops, spilled snacks, disinfecting wipes, pets and fingerprints on the refrigerator.  Those who live alone begin to question their sanity—is that cough or sniffle a sign of something worse?  Venturing out is less a pleasure than a trial by fire—will we make it home unscathed?  Is that passer-by, that jogger, that clerk, an unknowing carrier of the virus?  Did we get too close?  Weariness sets in.  How can there be so much dust when I hardly ever open the windows?  Home as refuge begins to take on the character of home as chicken coop.  Television and social media are less entertainment and more information overload.  All the good advice, all the coping strategies, make me want to scream.
OK, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I can go back to good advice. (Ha, you didn’t think I could write one of these blogs without advice, did you really?)
I recently heard a podcast featuring the philosopher Alain de Botton.  He expressed his advice on how to cope in a beautiful metaphor.  “Turn on the light in the room of your fears.”
Years ago, we moved to Holland for my husband’s job.  I left my job to join him in a lovely country called one of the “low countries” for a reason.  Sunlight was a precious commodity.  Many days I would turn on the lamps upon getting up in the darkness, turn them off for an hour or so around 2 pm, and then turn them on again until we went to sleep.  Until I found a job, I seldom left the apartment.  The lack of light began to seep into my soul. 
Luckily, I found Dutch friends who shared with me the national “coping strategy”—gezelligheid.  This is a special form of coziness that embraced the circumstances rather than rejecting them (or cursing the darkness.  Sorry, couldn’t help myself there.) Cafes suffused with sweet orange light, tables covered with miniature oriental carpets, little cheese snacks called borrel happjes  served with drinks at 4 pm,  tea service on trains.  And a copje caffe, a Dutch  ritual of delicious coffee, offered at any time to soothe and lighten the mood.
De Botton’s words reminded me of those days.  If we illuminate our  fears, shine a light on our unhappiness, it lets us name them, acknowledge their reality, and then gives us a moment to breathe and to find a way out of the darkness. Find a bit of coziness.  Turn on the light in the room of your fears.   It helps.
(Just for your information, the average number of hours of sunshine in Holland in January is under 50, but in May it is over 200.  Light!)
I offer a beautiful room, suffused with light, painted by the late Nabila Himli.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Birds.2

I woke up this morning to the sounds of chirping.  As I noted in a previous blog, the urban bird population has increased in either quantity or ubiquity, or perhaps both, since we are inside our cages looking out at them for a change.  Aside from seeing them on my daily walkathons,I am graced with hourly flybys across my street-facing 6th-floor windows.  Aerial ballets, and actually more often aerial combat missions, take wing over my balcony.  Wide-winged black Raptors, (well, probably crows) create turbulent vortexes to spin the little Cessnas (yes, OK, starlings) downward in a seeming death spiral that ends in a dramatic upswing just above the sidewalk.  Acrobatic Beechcraft (nuthatches—you are getting the picture) perform atmospheric choreography while red-bodied fighter jets streak their contrails across the sky. (Easy one—fill in the blank.)  Of course, the price of admission to these avionic exhibitions is the occasional fuel drop now that their tanks are filled to capacity with the annual springtime supply glut. But worth it, except for that splotch down the unreachable, uncleanable windowpane opposite my dining table. (6th floor, remember.) Never mind.   I’ll just squint and I won’t even see it.
So this morning I woke up to the sounds of chirping.  It was the batteries of my three smoke alarms all failing at once.  I forgot to change them when setting the clocks forward last month.
I offer Helen Zughaib’s “Spring Flight,” originally made to remind us of those people caged by oppression, yearning to fly free, but now equally apt in referencing the cages of isolation from which we ourselves wish to break free.         

Art Heals: Hump Day

As we are all working to flatten the curve, can there still be such a thing as hump day?  You remember that Wednesday nickname that carried hope for weary workers navigating deserts of toil and strife.  The promise that there were only two more days left before we reached the oasis of the weekend, that glimmering space of sleeping in, no emails, and bottomless mimosas.
In this time of WFH (Working From Home) one day seems to merge into another in a miasma of chores, screens, dirty dishes and the endless hunt for toilet paper.  Is hump day a mere mirage?
We can feel as though we are treading an endless pathway, getting we know not where.  Trudging up one sand dune only to see an endless multitude of dunes ahead.  Exhausting.
So of course, this made me think of famous desert explorers. 
Ibn Battuta, born at Tangier in 1304, set out as a young man on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He subsequently traveled for 27 years and 75,000 miles, and climbed more than his share of dunes, I am sure.
“He was the only medieval traveler known to have visited the lands of every Muslim ruler of his time. Battuta travelled the world including Jordan, Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Tanzania, Crimea, Balkans, Russia, Central Asia, India, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Assam, Bengal, Malaya, Indonesia, China, Spain and the West African states.” He wrote The Travels of Ibn Battuta, a fascinating book that details his observations on architecture, landscapes and customs.
And then there is Lady Hester Stanhope, a shall we say, unusual personality, but a very persistent one.  In the early 1800s she visited the city of Palmyra, taking the route through the desert dressed as a Bedouin and taking with her a caravan of 22 camels to carry her baggage. (A woman after my own heart.) She pioneered modern archeological analysis, and to her credit, resisted the looting of her finds in Palestine, despite pressure to take them to England.
OK, enough history.  Back to hump day.  I cite these examples to address our own metaphorical treks through the unending deserts of bad news, inclement weather, financial worries, boredom and anxiety as this virus dictates our lives for the foreseeable future.  Let’s try to create our own hump day.  Mark Wednesday in some way—cook a different breakfast.   Pick out a shirt that you only wear on Wednesday.  Save a favorite video to binge watch only on Wednesday nights.  Anything to celebrate that you have gotten halfway through another week of confinement, that you will be able to make it  to the weekend,  when you will be able to cross off another week and be proud of your skill in conquering this new landscape, ultimately leading your family and friends safely to the oasis at the end.
So, I couldn’t help myself—here is a lovely painting of camels, painted in the traditional idiom, titled Early Morning, Prepared to Leave, by Iraqi artist Hashim Al-Samarraie, who still lives in Baghdad.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Cling to the Earth

Good morning. The sun is shining here, so I thought the title of this beautiful painting by Qais Al Sindy, We Will Cling to the Earth to Survive, is appropriate. I have moments of despair, as do we all, but try to take solace in the irony of the fact that the things I wished for before, like more time and more silence, are things I have too much of now!
But like all of us, I am learning to adapt. I do everything more slowly now, even eating; I used to always be in a hurry as there was so much to do, to finish. It is kind of nice to adapt to slowness. Things actually taste better, thoughts come out a bit better (still working on that!). My slow dance with the earth enables me to cling tighter to my world, and the people and things I cherish in it.
Let’s cling to the earth, and each other, and we will survive. Art Heals.

Art Heals: Flowers

I happen to be an urban woman. The scene out my window of a four-lane road filled with cars is my version of Venice’s Grand Canal. But I have a secret addiction to gorgeous images of flowers. I have books on my shelf with nothing but pictures of tulips. The symmetry of Islamic Gardens gives me a thrill. This image by photographer Amr Mounib is a clue to my addiction. I think of flowers as sculpture. So, if you are able to go outside, look at some flowers on your daily walk (but not the DC cherry blossoms, please, crowds are cruel to us all). Or as in my case, find some images online. They won’t fade and you can linger as long as you like. Be safe, be kind. Art Heals.

Art Heals: Hands

As I was washing my hands for the umpteenth time yesterday, unsuccessfully substituting yet another song for the ubiquitous Happy Birthday  (speakers of foreign languages,  please tell me what song you use for that 20 seconds) I thought about how suddenly our hands have taken center stage in our lives these last few months.

Yes, they have always been there, hanging off the ends of my arms, serviceable but not, in my case, particularly glamorous. (I am usually on a ladder applying spackle to nail holes in my gallery walls with my index finger—the only paint my nails receive comes out of a can from Home Depot. Not for me the 2-inch talons bedecked with sequins—how do people type with those? I barely have the dexterity to slide out my credit card from its hidey hole in my wallet.)

So of course, I started thinking about Peche-Merle, France in 20,000 BC.  (As would you, I’ll bet.)

In Peche-Merle, a cave painting of horses, circa 20,000 BC is silhouetted with human hands, which scholars believe may have been painted by a shaman to induce magic within the hunting culture. Also, in Catal Huyuk, Turkey, excavations have revealed frescoed walls with rows of hands from 7,000 BC. 

Similar prehistoric hand imagery has been found painted on rocks in Wadi Sera, Libya and in the Dumboshawa region of Zimbabwe. In the Punic era (from 250 BC) Carthaginian funeral stele incorporated carved stone hands as symbols of divinity. In addition, cave paintings and carvings of hands have been found in Algeria dating from 3,000 BC. 

Every culture seems to have elevated the hand, Pre-Columbian, Toltec, Ancient Egyptian, Phoenician, Roman, Nubian, Berber, and Arab as well as Christian and Jewish.  The hand appears both as talisman and symbol.  It is named, revered, feared, its power protective and mysterious.  Did you know that the wearing of wedding rings links the hand to the heart by the third finger of the right hand, the veins of which are said to connect directly to the heart?

Our own hands carry that power now.  While the rite of the King’s Touch, the laying on of hands to cure disease, persisted in the English monarchy into the 18th century and in the French until the 19th, healers, religious and secular all over the world, practice it,  literally and figuratively, today.

We have the healing hands of doctors and nurses, the hands of cooks and delivery persons, of postal workers and firefighters and all who touch the things that bring us nourishment and entertainment and solace and even life.  And really, our future is literally in our own hands, chapped from the soap, tired from the daily tasks, hungry for the touch of a handshake but communicating by the touch of a screen or keyboard.   Wash them (please, I really need a new song) rest them, use them to create comfort and change and to win the fight against this pandemic.  Touch hearts.                               The power is in your hands. 

Photographer Najib Joe Hakim’s hands created this powerful art moment.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Getting Dressed

My interest in art has always been wide-ranging.  While painting and drawing have always been my first love (not sure why—perhaps because there are so many ways to make a bit of color or ink on a surface come alive) I admire all forms.  I don’t hold with the distinctions made between fine art and craft—in my opinion, if something is made by hand, made well, original, the materials from which it is made are irrelevant to its beauty and value as art.  To me Rauschenberg’s Combines put paid to that argument a long time ago.  Also, when I can afford to, I like to support the independent clothes designers and jewelers whose creations fall under the rubric “wearable art.” 

Sonia Delaunay, an artist of equal talent to her more famous husband, Robert, painted stunning multi-hued canvases on the principle of simultané, a concept in which the contrast of colors creates dynamism, championed by Sonia and Robert all their lives.  But Sonia also designed, made (and wore) vibrantly chromatic garments.  Early on she stitched a little blanket for her baby son, a patchwork of pink, cream, green, maroon and black, not exactly typical of baby blankets in 1911. Her dresses were bright, abstract, and made for dancing, something she also loved.  As mentioned in a review of a retrospective of her work at the Tate in London,

“It may also have been that Sonia and other modernists saw no distinction between fine art and applied art. She was after all a cross‑cultural polyglot, accustomed to translating and changing modes of expression. Why shouldn’t her aesthetic manifest itself now as a painting on a wall, now as a dress, now as a book-binding? Her art was wearable, it was the lifestyle statement of a new breed: the creative modern woman.”

So getting dressed for me is a way of supporting, honoring and enjoying the work of the talented artists who dye,  weave, stitch, bend, fold and shape mere fabric into kinetic sculptures for me to dance in every day, even if just on a visit to the grocery store. Same goes for jewelry, whether I am wearing a torqued silver bracelet made by a silversmith from the hill tribes of Thailand, or a necklace formed of ping pong balls, wire and ingenuity.

I saw a sign the other day, while I was on my daily walk, that read “Dress for the day you want to have.”  Now that we are working-from-home, staying-at-home, sheltering-in-place, with no one but our companions in isolation and our mirrors to note how we appear, it might be easy to abjure “getting dressed.”  But for me, I won’t cede that pleasure to the virus.   The day I want to have is filled with art, so I’m going to dress for it.

A painting by Gamila Nawar with a lady in my favorite color, red, and a neckpiece by Annemarie Feld, might inspire you today.  (And for the guys, my companion in isolation wears a French-cuffed shirt to the office (aka guestroom laptop) every day, except one, when he wears a turtleneck and calls it casual Friday.)

Art Heals: Fresh

I made my weekly foray into the supermarket this morning.  Now that I am home and cooking every night (my husband loves this, as he doesn’t cook) I am on the hunt for fresh vegetables,  which are sometimes in short supply, and flowers, (

as many of you already know, my addiction.)  I am lucky to have a grocer within easy walking distance, and for now, enough income to shop for these things.  I know that even before this crisis, many of my fellow residents, in DC and elsewhere, live in “food deserts,” those areas underserved or not served at all with grocers selling fresh and healthy food.  Now even the farmers’ markets, which sometimes took food stamps, cannot operate, and most of those were located a long way away from the neighborhoods that needed them the most.

So I started to think about the concept of fresh.  Fresh air, fresh flowers, fresh fruit, fresh tomatoes.  Fresh thoughts, a fresh attitude, even “don’t be fresh,” to be which was NOT a good thing when I was growing up.

 (Stream of consciousness: have you ever noticed that when you write a word frequently the spelling starts looking wrong? Or is that just me?)

Many of these fresh things are not available to us now or seem to be rationed.  Even the fresh air we so easily share is a precious commodity now, as I stay 6 feet away from my fellow humans and their dogs on my daily walk.

But perhaps we can take a fresh look—at our companions, whom we took for granted, coming home tired after work. (“Did you get a haircut?”  “Yes, three weeks ago.”)

At our living spaces (my clutter drawer is finally getting a cleanout.) At our priorities, at our plans, at our faith in others and in ourselves.

This painting by Athir Shayota offers you a fresh look at beauty, and a new meaning for Still Life, in these times.  There is still life.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Flying Lessons

I like to think of myself as an activist, a doer, a problem solver.  The work I love as a curator involves all aspects of body and mind;  envisioning the story my artist will tell in the exhibition, planning the layout so that the artworks speak to each other as well as to the viewer, painting the walls, climbing the ladder, wielding the hammer. And studio visits, and travel, meeting artists in their natural habitats, visiting museums to see the best (hopefully) and the latest trends (often, unfortunately).

No matter what our jobs, or interests, moving around, travelling,  freedom of movement defines who we are, what we can accomplish, whether it is to see family in another part of town, or the world, or meet with business associates or clients, or friends.  Not being able to do this right now is hugely frustrating. Learning to “accomplish” things virtually is a new and hard-won lesson.

Let us learn it from those who have had, sadly, the most practice.  The healing art piece for today is Hani Zurob’s Flying Lesson #4.  Years ago, the artist was exiled from Gaza, unable to return. At the time, living in Paris, he tried to explain to his then small son, why he could not board a plane to go home.  In this painting, a print made from the original work on canvas, there is an echo of our feelings today, our sadness in isolation. But ours is temporary. We will be free to fly again.  Flying lessons are difficult to learn, but once mastered, can get us through much adversity. Art Heals.

Art Heals: Family

I saw a report on the French news that after May 11, France will authorize family members to visit relatives in nursing facilities or isolated in their homes, on a limited basis, no more than one person at a time, for no more than one hour, and no touching. 

If America is the land of hugs, which have taken over from handshakes in social and even some  professional settings, France is the land of the kiss. La bise, the kiss on the cheek ( or one on each cheek, or three times, starting with the right cheek, or  maybe the left depending on where you are in the country or who proffered a cheek first.) 

No touching  means no kissing,  no sweet bisou  on  your grandmother’s soft cheek.  Even air kisses are hard to throw when your lips are covered by a mask.  We must kiss with our eyes now.

For us Americans, if our parents and grandparents are still living, we are continuing  to protect them by not entering their spaces, by sharing touch hand-to-hand against shielding glass, for a while longer, until it is safe again to hug and kiss.  But  I can’t help but think of the many who cannot overcome  these barriers even without a pandemic to hinder them. Immigrants, with families far away in unreachable  countries.  Those at  war, and under occupation, locked away from each other with no end in sight.  For me, the pain of losing my parents these last few years is mitigated by not  having to worry about their safety, but I still miss being able to share moments, to look into their eyes, to touch.

No matter who we are, no matter where we are, we carry our families with us.  We pack them heedfully in the suitcase of our memories, opening it carefully to unpack the souvenirs of our times together. 

I thank artist Adam Chamy for giving me this metaphor with his painting, inside a suitcase, Diptych 1952 (Mom & Dad). Art Heals.

Art Heals: Dreaming

Hope you had a good weekend and were able to make it feel a bit different from the work week in our isolation.  Playing games, video or real board or card games, perhaps a bit more TV (yes, we are getting real here), making or playing music, and for me, sleeping a little longer.

With information and stimulation coming to me from different sources than before, I have noticed my dreams are getting more vivid, and my ability to remember at least part of them is getting stronger. It has been shown that the things you look at and think about before sleep can influence your dreams. So here I suggest another way that art heals. Try to fill your eyes and your mind with images that soothe or inspire or delight you. 

Look at the moon or clouds or flowers in your garden, if you are lucky enough  to have one. 

Look at art books or art online exploring the work of historical or favorite contemporary artists, everything just a few clicks away.

I leave you with an image that will soothe your slumbers,                                      Helen Zughaib’s Moonlight Fishing. Sweet dreams. Art Heals.

your dreams,  Helen Zughaib’s

Art Heals: Bread

I’ve spent much of my life working with, and envying creatives. My artist friends always seemed to be working on new projects, responding in brilliant new ways to the events in their own lives and in the world. On the occasions I developed a “concept show” for my gallery, my artists gifted me with unique and original takes on my theme, beautifully executed in paint or clay or poetry or photo.

I, and I think many of us without these talents, have come to rely on artists to give us these gifts. To illuminate our moods, to interpret our feelings, to shed light on the darkness of injustice, to offer beauty when we feel pain.

I want to thank them all for this, and to offer a thought.

The current crisis can put a lot of pressure on artists. While they are worrying about illness and finances and families and confinement, and for many, severe economic hardship, we somehow expect them to be our physicians and psychiatrists, providing us with an endless array of creative efforts to entertain and solace us.

How often have I heard “this isolation must be wonderful for your creativity and production,” or “what are you making to address these issues creatively?”

Stop. Artists, we need to give you a break, and you need to give yourselves one. Do what you need for your hearts and your minds and your hands, to solace yourselves. Put yourselves first. Play. Bake bread, or brownies. Nourish yourselves and those around you in the way you feel is right. Sure, make art, share art if that is what you wish to do. We will always be here, no matter what.

I will be trying, with the rest of us, to find ways for you to thrive, and survive economically, and create a future when you can share with us again, all those talents. Art Heals.

This image, by  Claudia Borgna, titled “Crumbs of Land: Khobz, A Word for Freedom#4,” was made for another time and another issue, but her comment about it has resonance for today. “…I am still tied in the same cosmic string of molecules: humanity trapped inside a spasm of drops bleeding across territories.”

Art Heals: Boredom

This is the age of the Quarantine Olympics--dodgeball (avoiding the maskless heavy breathers in the park), sprints (running through the one way grocery aisles in search of that last roll of toilet paper), swimming (through mountains of disinfectant wipes, homework papers, sticker books, juice boxes, piles of cardboard Amazon boxes on the floor), mountain climbing (to reach that elusive packet of microwave popcorn lurking in the corner of the top shelf of the pantry), fencing (verbally, with your partner in isolation, or your concerned relative over Facetime).  It may seem counter-intuitive to talk about boredom while we are all competing  in the Creativity Classic,  the Homebound Hustle, the Perfect Partnership Playoffs, or the Flying Solo Follies.  But despite all the endless, thankless tasks imposed upon us by others ( bosses, teachers, the IRS) and by ourselves (NO MORE PINTEREST), many of us are fighting boredom as well.  I know I am.   My to-do list seems to get longer every day, and my energy level gets shorter. There are a lot of musts, and very few want-tos.   Tolstoy said the defining feature of boredom is “a desire for desires.”  It’s not that we don’t have more than enough to do, it is that we lack reasons, motivation, to do those things.  We do the musts, they fill up time,  but they don’t fill us.  If we can, after we complete the life sustaining tasks of grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, teaching, exercising, report writing, Zoom meeting, recreation organizing, we need to carve out some time for the sanity sustaining moments, through the magic of boredom. (OK, she must really be bored, thinking of it as magic.)

But boredom is what nourishes our imaginations, gives us new perspectives, sparks desires.  Sit on the couch  with “nothing to do,”  stare at the ceiling. This is not meditation ( which is also good, but different from this).  Sink into the kind of tiredness that  only comes from boring, repetitive tasks (however necessary they may be). Let boredom do its work, which is to awaken desires.  Don’t tamp those desires down despite not immediately having time or energy or means to fulfill them.  (ukulele lessons?)  Those dormant desires will nurture your dreams and fuel your energy to get through the long days ahead. Rumi said “what you seek is seeking you.”  I am waiting, working, dreaming, and getting through another day.

Here is The Dreamer Dreams Worlds, a photo-collage by photographer Michael Keating. Art Heals.

Art Heals: Birds

Yesterday we went for a weekend walk, 2 ½ hours this time. (During the week, we meet at 5 pm in the living room, having gone to our respective workspaces at 9 a.m. and not communicating again until 5.  “What is he finding in the refrigerator for lunch?  Don’t look Dagmar, none of your business.”)  At 5, if it is not raining, we take a shorter walk, usually about an hour, and continue our tally of the city’s dogs—with many of whom we are getting on a first name basis, albeit from 6 feet away.

But the longer weekend walk offers a different perspective.  Different neighborhoods, different architecture, different trees and flowers.  We are incredibly fortunate that we are still allowed to go for long walks, as long as we keep 6 feet apart from others. 

In Paris, the rules are far stricter.  In order to go out you must carry an “attestation,” a form with your name and address, date, time and signature, stating that you are going out for the allowed reasons, such as medical visit, groceries etc.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe clarified the rules : "Going out to take the children for a walk or for physical exercise must be within a distance of one kilometer maximum of your home, for one hour, and obviously alone, once a day," Philippe said.

Because my husband and I separate ourselves all day, walking together is a pleasure for us.  I would find it hard to have to do it alone, with one of us staying home if the other went out, but in Paris, those are the rules for now.

So, for now, we take our extended walks on weekends, blessed with gifted fabric masks. (My joy in knowing artists has no bounds!)

It has been several weeks now that more and more people are on lockdown, and I have noticed some interesting by-products of the restrictions.  Birds.

Usually when I walk in the Spring, I can hear distant chirping coming from some tree or other, but don’t usually spot anything. ( I am not a birdwatcher,  so I can’t tell you the names of anything I do see, except maybe a cardinal (red, my favorite color)  and  once I saw a woodpecker, which I recognized from the jazzy ratatattat  sounding around him.)  But now, as I head past deserted government buildings on my way to the Mall, I see birds on the ground, right in my path, pecking at whatever pleases their palates, and they don’t move away at my approach. Rather than scurrying rapidly across the grass or making a hurried wing-flapping escape into a bush or nearby tree, they stand their ground, because now it is their ground.  Our stay-at-home orders have ceded the outdoors to the ancient and rightful owners of our landscape.  More birds, and bees, and butterflies, and my suburban friends tell me, more furry four-legged creatures too.

It is probably too early to tell if the climate is benefiting from less auto emissions and industrial pollution, but I hope so.  In the meanwhile, I am happy to step aside and let the birds have the right-of-way.  I can get a closer look, and maybe, if this goes on for a while, I might even learn their names.

This bird beautifully painted by artist and filmmaker Anna Kipervasser is called Nightjar.  Do note the headcovering.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Alone Together

As everyone does, I scour the news reports for some good news in the barrage of predictions, statistics, data and advice with which we are inundated. This makes me think about  the words affect and effect.

(As you probably have noticed by now, my thought patterns do not  proceed in a straight line.)

According to the dictionary, “Affect is usually a verb, and it means to impact or change.”

“Effect is usually a noun, an effect is the result of a change, ‘something brought about by a cause’; ‘a result’; ‘the way in which something acts on something else’."

Seems simple. But wait, these words are the Ginsu knives of language. 

Affect can be a noun:  It means ‘a feeling or emotion, as distinguished from cognition, thought or action; a strong feeling, having active consequences’. Effect can be a verb: It means ‘to bring about’; ‘to cause to occur’; ‘to produce as a result’.

I find everything about our present situation contradictory.  In order to do something, we are asked to do nothing.  In order for the statistics to get better, they must get worse.  Verbs become nouns, and nouns become verbs.  I want to affect change, but my affect is still one of a powerless person.  I want the effect of  my  actions to have a result, but that is too passive for me.  I want to effect change, meaning I want to DO something, to act, not to sit back and watch.

We are asked to be alone together.  We need to physically separate ourselves from our  friends and loved ones, yet  for our mental health, we need to reach out to as many as possible.  We are  told to depend on our screens for work, and education and entertainment, when just weeks before we were told that too much screen time is bad for our health.  We are asked to avoid contact, yet we want to find ways to help those in need.  We are asked to physically distance, and wear masks, but we want to go out for runs and strolls and dog walks, without viewing every oncoming pedestrian as a potential instrument of our destruction.  And  I, as an urbanite, long for the definition of “the city” to be associated again with the energy of the crowd,  the vitality I feel while passing, and yes, bumping into people all hurrying toward a job, a meal, a meeting, a love, and not with the  present definition of a vector for disease.  I yearn for the time when the sounds of traffic energize me, rather than sadden me when I hear only the sirens. 

I listened to Queen Elizabeth’s speech  the other day.  She quoted an old  World War II song, that my late father used to sing when I was a child ( he was in  the British army).  It made me happy.  I hope it does you too.

 We'll meet again

Don't know where

Don't know when

But I know we'll meet again some sunny day

Keep smiling through

Just like you always do

'Till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away

Here is one of my favorite evocations of “the city” all cosy together in symbiotic support.  This is Once Upon A Time” by  Najwa Al Amin.  Art Heals.