Art Heals: Making It

I am so lucky to have many friends who are artists.  For many of them, despite the hardships, this time of quarantine has given them a period to explore their creativity in new ways.  They are “relooking” (A French word, believe it or not, even if not officially sanctioned by the Académie Française)  their art or their process, experimenting in new directions,  addressing issues of reuse and recycling born out of environmental concern, but nurtured by the present scarcity of available materials (one artist posting that she is painting over older work, reusing the canvas  to express new concepts).  The gift of time can be inventiveness.

But I have come to realize that all my friends are artists, in one way or another.  My friend, artist Mona El-Bayoumi said it best, “Like everyone else I was born an artist, but I seriously continued to express myself since.”  She believes, as do I, that we are all born artists.  We create our world with every childhood act, because everything we do as children, a thing, a thought, a sound is created for the very first time, unique to us.  Then some of us grow up, and circumstances and inclination move us away from our artistic roots, but our artistic souls remain, dormant within us.

Corona has brought with it much pain and heartache but has also awakened that dormant creativity in many of us.

In her 1982 essay Material as Metaphor, fiber artist Anni Albers said “Most of our lives we live closed up in ourselves, with a longing not to be alone, to include others in that life that is invisible and intangible. To make it visible and tangible, we need light and material, any material. And any material can take on the burden of what had been brewing in our consciousness or subconsciousness, in our awareness or in our dreams.”

A longing not to be alone, to include others, defines perfectly our covid-contained lives.   Making takes on new meaning, as people bake bread, sew masks, build backyard amusement parks for their children, compose poetry, sing, keep diaries, and yes, draw and paint and sculpt and quilt and stitch and weld and use light and materials, any materials, to express themselves, to comfort themselves, to release the creativity with which they were born.

We are making it, in both senses of the word, making the bread or the painting or the pillow fort, and making it through these horrific times. Art truly does heal.

I offer a colorful construction seen in Australia.  Make of it what you will.

Art Heals: Out of Step

As you probably have noticed by now, I think about art, and artists, a lot.  (I also think about Pringles a lot, but I am trying to stop that.)

I think about artists, nationally and internationally famous ones with studios and staff, locally famous ones working from home, and the vast majority, artists and makers just striving to create under these conditions of adversity and scarcity.  Historically, we know of great art that was created during or in response to pandemics.  Titian’s Pietà was finished just before he died of the plague in Venice in 1576.  Edvard Munch painted Self-Portrait After the Spanish Flu a year after he survived it.  But much great art never survived that epidemic, because the great artists who might have made it did not survive.  Egon Schiele never finished his portrait, The Family; he and his wife died from the flu in 1918 before he could.  The poet Apollinaire and artist Gustav Klimt are both said to have died of flu complications in 1918 as well.

How will the art world respond to today’s epidemic?  What will art look like post-Covid? There certainly will be changes in the way art is seen, and marketed, and sold.  Artists, gallerists and collectors are rethinking the damage that all that air travel to art fairs does to the environment, now that they are forced to consider art virtually.  Materials and process might change, as artists, coping with inaccessible studios or scarcity of materials, consider 60’s philosopher Marshall McLuhan’s dictum, “The medium is the message.”

IPhone art, Zoom interviews, repurposed materials, virtual viewing rooms; the internet is taken seriously now as a medium.  Blockbuster shows are, for the foreseeable future, a thing of the past, as large gatherings continue to be dangerous.

And what of subject matter?  Just like the rest of us, some artists respond politically, pouring outrage onto the canvas or the film.  Others respond narratively, producing artwork that tells the story of their own or others’ struggles.  Others respond humbly, creating beauty for its own sake, as solace and comfort.    Every response is a valid one, because every response is a human one.  Consider the response of the artist Giorgio Morandi, who during WWII, remained silently in his studio painting the ethereal ceramics for which he is famous.  I mention him because  of the comment the art critic Giuseppe Marchiori made about him, “Amid the clamor of war his silent and lonely steadfastness was a bulwark; it was a noble protest of the man the most ‘out of step’ in the world.”

I take this as a lesson to myself.  On days when I feel tired of coping, and guilty about not responding more vigorously to the present circumstances, I tell myself it is ok to be “out of step.”  Artists have much to teach us; the most important lesson may be that it is all right to just be human.

This is Mindful of Morandi, by Bud Hensgen.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: She

For those of us old enough to remember, (meaning, me) the cartoon character Popeye the Sailor Man declared "I yam what I yam….”  Those existential words popped into my head during my second cup of coffee this morning. Existentialism being a coffee-driven construct.   Living here in isolation, with one male figure IRL and a lot of disembodied voices and flickering visages populating my world, I have begun to question my sense of identity.  Who yam I?  Woman, friend, wife, zoomer, curator, short person.  But in all these rather shaky incarnations, I identify as feminine.  (Well, in the harsh light of the bathroom mirror, pre-coffee, let’s just say female.)  This is easy enough for me as I speak English, a language that allows me my choice of genderless nouns (like curator, or shorty.)  In addition, gender-neutral neologisms are entering mainstream English to encompass those who identify as non-binary or as genderless.  Myself, I am generally identified as she (as in, she needs more coffee to become herself).

However, I also speak German and French, and there the battle of the sexes takes place in the arena of the Article. For example, in French, the masculine gender (le)

supplants the feminine (la) when both, man and woman (they) are referred to in the plural. This inevitably leads to those masculine professionals such as doctor (le médecin), firefighter, (le pompier) and dentist (le dentist) among whom I am sure you have never seen a woman.

But the really interesting thing about this linguistic stereotyping is that grammatical gender can influence one’s thinking. (And you thought all those charts you had to memorize in English class were only to pass Wednesday’s pop quiz.)  There have been some fascinating experiments about this.  In one study, native speakers of Spanish and German, who were all fluent in English, were given English nouns to which they had to attach adjectives.  So, “key”  was seen as “hard, heavy, jagged, metal, and useful” to the German speakers, where the noun in German is masculine, while the Spanish speakers judged it as “ golden, intricate, little, lovely, and tiny,” as the Spanish word is feminine.  I yam what I yam doesn’t apply.

This kind of semantic sorting hat can, and does, sway our thinking in any culture, stereotyping qualities that lead to judgmental and often discriminatory behaviors.

This takes me to the coronavirus (doesn’t everything these days?)   In France, some people have been saying "le Covid," that bad boy.  But the august body of linguistic purification 

the Académie Française has protested! The acronym is feminine! They declared that “the use of the feminine gender would be preferable, and it may not be too late to return the acronym to its proper gender.” Whew.  Blame the girls. Adam and Eve all over again.

Thought I would give you a girl, this time, by Helen Zughaib.  Don’t know about the cat. Art Heals.

Art Heals: Tuesday

In my ongoing campaign to keep the days of the week straight in my head during the amorphous time blob that is the virus week, I decided to research Tuesday.  Now, for me, Tuesday is the lost sibling—not the firstborn (Sunday or Monday, take your pick) not the middle child (Wednesday), not the last child to stay at home before they all go off to school (Thursday) and certainly not the happy twins, Friday and Saturday, off to the type of fun that usually involves adult beverages.

Tuesday, in many cultures, and in astrology, is associated with the planet Mars, and yes, Mars is that god of war.  In case you are not clear on what this means, take note that in the Thai solar calendar, (which I happen to consult daily, of course) the word Tuesday means "Ashes of the Dead." Wait, you say.  You grew up thinking Tuesday’s child was full of grace, didn’t you?  And to all of you born on a Tuesday, I’m sure you are all lovely.  But that line, from an old English nursery rhyme from 1838, was meant as a protective fortune-telling device, as were the other lines of the poem.  Not an identity card.

In Greek and Spanish cultures, Tuesday is considered unlucky (probably harking back to that association with war).

The superstition holds, "On Tuesday, don’t get married, embark on a journey, or move away.” ('En martes, ni te cases, ni te embarques, ni de tu casa te apartes'.) In Islamic culture, Tuesday often becomes the middle of the week, (many Muslim countries designate Friday and Saturday as the weekend), yet another hump to be climbed over.  (On the bright side, due to Biblical references, in Judaism Tuesday can be considered a particularly lucky day.)

At any rate, Tuesday is not my favorite.  Having gotten through Monday, when I have to leave behind all thoughts of the merry abandon of the previous weekend (you know, longer sleep, longer walks, more adult beverages) I am faced with Tuesday.  The only memories I have are of Monday (see above).  Work has not abated, chores have not abated, virus news has not abated, even the federal government hands down the federal budget on a Tuesday.  And what do I have to look forward to?  Wednesday, whose lumps and bumps jostle and jolt my bones on the long trek to the precious weekend.

I just looked it up.  It seems I was born on a Tuesday.  I take it all back.

I offer neon art from Los Angeles.  Looks like a Tuesday to me.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Sauerbraten

Throughout the covid captivity, coping by cooking has become the ultimate meme.  But not just cooking, no, I mean “creative cuisine.”   Ordinary weekday grub just doesn’t cut it in the competition for the corona confinement crown.  People (women, mostly, but men are increasingly showing off their mad skills too) are baking, broiling, grilling, roasting and occasionally scalding their fingers (though this is usually edited out of the video).  Competitive cookery has elevated simple sustenance into a moveable (make that movie-able) feast.

Frankly, I’ve almost lost my appetite.  Don’t get me wrong.  I actually love to cook.  Dinner parties were my thing, mainly because of something called “tablescapes.”  This is when you go all out to match your table décor to the food you are serving—a curator’s dream.  I mostly gave these parties upon returning from a trip— “A Night in Venice” featured sarde in saor,

a “Mendoza Menu” meant Argentinian wines.  I invited friends, turned memories into food, and shared happiness.  But the happiness came from the sharing in real life.  Not for me the planning, shopping, substituting, cooking, photographing, filming, and Zoompreening of today’s isolation fight nights.

But I’m not alone here in captivity, especially on the weekends when my companion in quarantine and I break our 9-5 sequestration and spend two whole days in each other’s company.  That is something to celebrate, a little bit of real life to savor, along with a meal a bit more elaborate than the ordinary M-F repast.

So, sauerbraten.  It’s a German dish dependent upon a thrifty cut of beef, which is marinated for 4 days, then cooked for hours in its own gravy made with gingersnaps and served with red cabbage and kartoffel knoedel (potato dumplings).  Don’t be too impressed—all this happened because in my pantry exploration I came upon a half bag of gingersnaps (they last forever), a jar of red cabbage (newer—purchased in the early lockdown frenzy along with canned garbanzos I haven’t yet used) and, mirabile dictu, a box of knoedel (they come in little bundles that you put in  boiling water until they metamorphose into dumplings.) Why, you ask, did my pantry contain these culinary gems?  Because I probably made sauerbraten 6 or 7 years ago, and I always buy two of everything, a habit from my years living abroad. I am a pack rat.

Anyway, we had it last weekend, and since you have to make a lot of it, we will have the leftovers this weekend.  Not a competition, no tablescape, no photos, but a really nice meal shared in real life with a real person that I love.  Happiness.

Wonderful meals will be made this weekend by my Muslim friends, to whom I wish a warm and happy Eid.

Here is a glass-art plate made by stained-glass artist Corinne Whitlatch, for a 2013 exhibit featuring The Ultimate Washington Dinner Party.  This plate is for would-be invitee Hanan Ashrawi.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Sensitivity

As do many of you, I have been breathlessly following the news about possible reopening of our cities (breathlessly sometimes in the literal sense as I try to increase my walking pace in this city while wearing my mask). As I am a visually oriented person, (I perceive; therefore, I am) the lack of variety offered to my optic nerve has seriously debilitated my sense of wellbeing.  Translation:  I need to look at new stuff!  Especially art.  I am not alone in this.  There is a Facebook group, created by artists, called Art I am Looking at Every Day—During the Stay at Home.  The artists post art, their own or by others, that they have in their homes or are looking at, to share visual wellbeing with others.  I have a lot of art in my home, but after months of indoor light, it has become like wallpaper, visible but not really seen.  I have lost focus—in both senses of the word.  I am out of focus

(in the sense that I am out of Pringles—both things diminishing my quality of life).  I don’t see things clearly anymore—everything is filtered through the lens of my daily measure of optimism or the lack thereof.

Focusing on work takes most of my energy, (the rest being used up in the hunt for Pringles).  Despite my best efforts—daily walks, web surfing (or in my techo-challenged way, crawling), Netflix viewing, pantry exploring, there is a sameness to the things I see that I seriously think is damaging my eyesight.  Most of all, I fear the knife edge of my sensitivity is dulled to that of a butter knife.

So now it is time to bring in philosopher Gilles Deleuze.   I trust philosophers because reality doesn’t get in the way of their perceptions.  They live in their heads, and consequently see the world in new ways, make new connections about observed phenomena.  This lockdown has forced me to live in my head more than in my body, and new connections are what I crave right now.  Deleuze is also my kind of philosopher because he is mainly making connections about art.   Deleuze posits that art reintroduces bodies to “experiences of sensible chaos to which they may be resistant or increasingly immune.”  Oh yes!  Sensible (meaning the ability be felt) chaos was the definition of my life pre-covid. You only had to look at my office to understand that.

Deleuze proposes that “artworks are containers for essentially illusive or explosive forces that have no other means of being presented. Art introduces something new into the world and can take one by surprise.  Art can resonate with… primal sensitivity…

affecting one in ways one cannot pre-determine or prepare for. In doing so, art reactivates the sensitive core of the body…provoking new feelings and engendering deeper thresholds of vulnerability. This means that art can expand one’s experience of what it means to be embodied and what it means to sense. As something radically new and experimental in the world, art can make one anew. It can make one sensitive to things that can’t be codified, systematized or named.”  Yes indeed.  This is what I want and need—surprises, in real time, in real life, not this artificial one of the fun-house screens I am currently trapped in. 

So when things finally open, you will find me at a museum, getting my primal sensitivity on.

Here is some art to reactivate your sensitive core, an abstract construction by Ben Belghachi.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Freedom

After all these weeks of living in pandemic purdah, I can’t help but think about freedom.  My first instinct is to list all that I have lost—the freedom to go where I like, when I like.  The freedom to see friends in person, to travel, to hang art on real walls, not just post on virtual ones.  I never thought of myself as a primarily free person—I felt encumbered by restrictions of time, and obligations, and opportunity.  Working where I did, and living where I do, I was aware of my greater freedom relative to the social injustice and inequality faced by people of color, of those under occupation, of those falsely accused or judged because of their ethnicity or religion, or systemic poverty.  In comparison, I was free as a bird.  But my privilege itself magnified minor impediments into obstacles to my happiness.  But now, looking at that list of loss, I have to reassess.  Nelson Mandela said, “to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”  I am free to choose to do that.  My choices about how I spend my time, my funds, my actions, are freely made choices.  I can support my friends, assist my neighbors, succor the less fortunate, advocate for my causes, and freely think and write and publish my thoughts.

Have you ever noticed, that when you read or think about a word, that word seemingly pops up everywhere in your world?   It happened to me with “freedom.”

I stumbled upon a public artwork created under the auspices of a platform for artists called FOR FREEDOMS.  Founded by artists Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman, FOR FREEDOMS “is a platform for creative civic engagement, discourse and direct action.” Inspired by FDR’s Four Freedoms (freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear), the non-partisan group’s exhibitions, installations and public programs “use art to encourage and deepen public explorations of freedom in the  21^st century….and inject the critical thinking that fine art requires into the political landscape….”

The particular artwork that I saw is by Jamila El Sahili, a  Beirut-born, New York- based artist whose work “aims to dissociate the Arabic language from its media-driven narrative of terrorism, fear, and oppression, and realign it with its human connection.”  In this large-scale artwork mounted on the façade of a building in Washington, DC, titled “Human Being” she posits these questions to onlookers: “What does it mean to you?  What explicit and implicit associations come to mind?  What do you feel?”

This is “Human Being” by Jamila El Sahili.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Serendipity

Novelty. In search of.  If I were to post an online ad, that would be it.   There is a sameness to my life at this moment, a predictability that stretches time like taffy.  After sixty-eight days of quarantine, I know exactly how the hours will shake out.  My tasks are tedious.  Conversations with friends have become routine (“what’s new” doesn’t start a talkfest like it used to). I’ve even gotten used to the stresses (grocery shopping, self-imposed deadlines, and that weird adaptation of FOMO where I feel guilty for not having a sourdough starter).

The only variety in my life comes from my daily walks.  Every afternoon I set my red-shoe shod feet on a quest for serendipity.

Which brings me to Horace Walpole and the year 1754.  (Well obviously not my well-shod feet, but my meandering mind.)  Anyway, Mr. Walpole,  who prided himself on being something of a wordsmith, was writing a letter describing an apocryphal tale, “The Three Princes of Serendip”  (Serendip being the name for Sri Lanka in those days) in which the traveling princes were always making accidental discoveries, unrelated to their actual quests. Describing these happy accidents, Walpole coined the term “serendipity.”

So, as I traipse along the paths and arteries of my downtown neighborhood, I am in constant search of something novel (something not followed by the term coronavirus).  Being a curator, I find I am trying to assemble my visual impressions into artistic categories—actual outdoor art--sculptures on museum grounds, statues in front gardens,  that Barbie installation in the Dupont yard (cover your eyes, some of them are nude).  Architectural art is another category.  Looking up,  I find caryatids with really strong shoulders holding up the government ( well, at least the government buildings), gargoyles conveying their displeasure as they spit, and of course those muscle-bound wrestlers grappling with snakes, bears and each other that  mark the most innocuous of buildings as arenas of combat.

But mostly I wait for serendipity, the accidental discovery of something that was placed in my path for no reason other than to give joy to the maker and bring joy to me.  I don’t stumble upon it every time, but when I do, I can quote Archimedes, whose cry, Eureka, means “I have found!”  

I give you my shoe, and some serendipitous sidewalk art.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Monday

“Monday, Monday, can't trust that day;
Monday, Monday, it just turns out that way.
Oh, Monday, Monday, won't go away;
Monday, Monday, it's here to stay.”
That’s the Mamas and the Papas, and this Kid concurs.  And for present day mamas and papas, and their kids, it really, really just won’t go away.  For many of us, we are living in a perpetual Monday.   Perhaps we tried to avoid home schooling and chores and keyboarding on the “weekend,”  but for most still in lockdown, there is no end to the week, and Monday is just a wedge on the wheel of fortune that seems to  come up with every spin.
It wasn’t always that way. Historically, the Greco-Roman week began with Sunday  (sun-day being a much cheerier construct than moon-day,  that day that moons around, lethargically booting itself up to reluctantly get some work done).  Monday is called some variant of “after Sunday” in many Eastern European languages, or, in many ecclesiastical traditions, “second day” (Latin, Greek, Arabic).  Seriously, after Sunday, second rate is more like it.
But here we are, stuck in the era of melancholy Monday.  For me, it shakes its reproachful finger at me,

chiding me for breaking all the promises I’d made to myself for the previous weekend (vacuum the whole apartment, put away the winter clothes, finally set up the Bluetooth for the printer, step on the scale, reassess my life goals).  Not until I hoist myself upon my chair and start WFH (working from home) does the carping abate.
But then something happens.  That precious spark of energy that had slowly drained away by Sunday night begins to return.  I have things to do!  Thoughts to think!  Places to go—well no, still no place to go, except the other room, or the refrigerator.   But still. 
Monday is here to stay, but each time it comes around in endless pandemic procession I get closer to the exit.
Artist Rajie Cook provides me with an exit today, in three-dimensional copper.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Together

As many parts of our country and countries abroad are “opening up,” (a fungible concept that raises an image in my mind of twisting the key on a can of sardines and trying to get them out without crushing them), I can’t help but think about all the people with whom I would like to be together IRL. 
I have a cousin in Italy, who by an accident of bad timing, was separated from her husband by 400 miles throughout the lockdown.  Italy, which had the longest lockdown in Europe, is now partially opening up, and separations are being eased, but as my Italian grandmother would have said, è complicato.   As the prime minister laid it out, Italians could visit their congiunti, which means relatives, but in Italian could mean others as well. Confusion reigned, exacerbated with the subsequent clarification that it meant affetti stabili, someone of “stable affection.” Who are these people? Spouses, yes, But lovers? Partners?  Best friends? Your favorite butcher?  What makes your affections stable?  How long should that take?  What about love at first sight?  What about who is taking care of the dog?  Since Italian privacy laws mean that the police cannot force anyone to reveal the identity of the object of their affections, Italians were forced to improvise, something that I think they do better than anyone.
So I am thinking about the Italian solution for myself.  Who are my affetti stabili?   (My partner in quarantine has been here the whole time, but since he spends the day in the other room, I vote to have him come out before 5 pm now.) My best friend and college roommate.  Definitely.  My new friend-- who, as I suddenly counted up the years I have known her, oh Lord, twenty-two years!—is really a wonderful old friend.  My old friends from my years abroad, most of them living elsewhere now, but still close to my heart. Local friends with whom I shared dinners and drinks and good talk.  My work colleague, who consistently put up with my quirks and made my life easier. My small family of relatives, all of whom live far away.  Dozens of artists and poets whose creativity nurtures and sustains me.  The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker.  I need them all.  I want them all back in my life, in real life. 
Pre-lockdown, I never thought about making such a list.  I took for granted the people who gave my life meaning.  Now I want to “open up” and crowd together with all of them. Maybe even get a dog again. 
This photograph by Katie Archibald-Woodward reveals the solution to the Italian dilemma, and mine.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Roses

The tulips are gone.  Decapitated by wind and rain and time.  They were my favorites, sculptural in form, painterly in hue. 

So many things that were, are no more right now.  I must find substitutes.  So, roses.

While I was never promised a rose garden, I am finding one now—bushes in front gardens, in parks, even in empty lots.

Their forms are a bit too amorphous for my taste, no sharp edges. Their colors seem muted and pastel, even the reds don’t set me on fire. 

But with time on my hands and a hunger for visual pleasure, I am learning to appreciate them.  I find they have a lot to teach me, especially in the time of corona.

In the flower world, roses are revered elders, having existed over 35 million years (tulips mere infants at 1,000 years.)  You can’t exist that long without learning to change with circumstances (as I am discovering as I contemplate upcoming birthdays).  Over those eons, wild roses evolved and adapted to survive in changing environments, unto the present day.  As time went by, people in their ever over-arching desire to manipulate, change, and have it their way, cultivated modern roses, finessing variations in color, form, and frequency of bloom.  (This being the horticultural version of brunettes transmogrifying into blondes, who seem to be worth more, in the hair-care version of the Chelsea Flower Show.)

But cultivated roses, like cultivated people (refined, educated, discerning, enlightened) actually offer us much to be grateful for.  Their good breeding has resulted in disease resistance, something scientists are certainly trying to cultivate in people these days.

And one more thing.  If you like apples, or plums (and I do), you like roses.  It seems these have been recategorized as sub-families in the rose ménage. 

So, until next year, when my tulips return, I’m with Robert Frost, who wrote:

The rose is a rose

Was always a rose.

But the theory now goes

That the apple’s a rose

And the pear is and so’s

The plum, I suppose.

The dear only knows

What will next prove a rose.

You, of course, are a rose—

But were always a rose.

Here is a delicate one by Amr Mounib, dressed all in white.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Outside

As the weeks of pandemic lockdown fly by (well, crawl by), my world has shrunk to exactly two places—Inside and Outside. I have three rooms in Inside (four if you count the supermarket). The building lobby, mailroom and elevator do not really count, as we are told to wear masks and pass through as quickly as possible. No lingering, no sitting, no socializing, no more than one person per elevator, so it is really Outside. As for the supermarket, there is the mask thing (Outside) but I have to touch things (Inside).  I see new faces there-- well, half-faces (Outside), but I spend more time than I like breathing air in an enclosed space (Inside).
My mind, what’s left of it, is immured Inside most of the time, Inside things being keyboarding  (like surfboarding without the sun or water or waves or—well not really like surfboarding at all) or cooking or cleaning or reading or sleeping  (which can actually qualify as a partial Outside if the dreams are good).
So actually going Outside is major.   But different.  Before, Outside had elements of Inside that I liked a lot, like going to the restroom when I needed to (often), stopping for a glass of wine when I wanted to (often, hence the restroom thing) or walking to a museum and actually going in.
Now of course, Outside remains Outside and I have to make the best of it.  Enter, tah dah, ART (but you knew that).
Walking around, I search out al fresco art.  There is plenty in and around the Mall and the Smithsonian (mostly fenced in but you can lean over and look). 
More accessibly, all over town there are scads of sculptures standing around waiting to be admired. “Encore,” a sculpture of Duke Ellington by Zachary Oxman at the Howard Theater. Yinka Shonibare's  colorful sculpture on 14th Street outside the Liz building (there is a second one, "Wind" by this artist, outside the Smithsonian African Art Museum). In front of the Zaytinya restaurant across from the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Albert Paley's abstract sculpture, engraved with a poem by DC’s poet laureate the late Dolores Kendrick.  And there are at least nine stabiles by my favorite, Alexander Calder, dotted about under the trees here and there.  Many more artworks are indeed hidden by this particularly verdant spring (check out the swirly Frank Stella near the East Wing, if you can find it).
Painters are getting in on the Outside act.  MuralsDC put

out a mural locator map to treasure hunt magnificent murals and grand graffiti.   And there is Andy Shallal.  When one of his Busboys’ windows was broken, rather than boarding up, this kind and creative man replaced it with a joyful painting, giving rise to #paintthestorefronts.  Artists paid by Shallal and now others, are recruited to paint the urban streetscape with colorful images in an open-air museum of optimism.
Outside just got a whole lot better.  If only there were restrooms.
Here is one of the Storefront images by Kris.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Savage Beasts

“Music has charms to soothe the savage beast.”  Well, not always.

(And anyway, the line is actually misquoted—it should read “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.” 

This is the line from “The Mourning Bride,” a poem by William Congreve, 1697:

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,

To soften Rocks or bend a knotted Oak.

Some scholars think Congreve read/stole/interpreted lines from a Latin epic poem Pharsalia by the Roman poet Lucan, which was translated into English

and published in the 1620s and 30s:

...Whose charming voice and matchless musick mov'd

The savage beasts, the stones, and senseless trees

Artistic license?  Plagiarism?  Who cares?  Thus endth today’s history lesson.)

Back to savage beasts.  I have written about the musician who plays his trumpet on our street, busking the stopped cars for cash.  His repertoire is somewhat limited, comprising three songs, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the theme from “Chariots of Fire” and that of “Star Wars.”  Complaints have been voiced online regarding:

1.        Lack of variety.

2.        Lack of musicality.

3.        Lack of consideration for those working from home.

4.        Lack of ability to differentiate day from night.

5.        All of the above.

A few nights ago, around 10 pm, the savage beasts came out in force. Hearing, from inside my apartment, yells loud enough to be discerned over the trumpeting and the traffic noise, I ventured onto the balcony to see three police cars surrounding the street musician. Incensed neighbors flooded their balconies with cries of outrage and aural pain, the most common of which was an unkind version of Keep Quiet. The savage beasts were obviously not soothed.   After lengthy confabulation among musician and forces of law and order, squad cars departed, musician gave one more tentative toot on his horn, and so far, has not been seen or heard again.

During the corona quarantine, we have been inundated with music, from Zoom orchestras playing Beethoven (how do they get the timing so perfect?) to Italians singing opera from their balconies, to little kid concerts on front lawns.  In San Francisco nurses and doctors came out to sing along with Tony Bennett

remotely telling them where he left his heart. (He’s fine—heart still where it belongs). 

For some, music can be uplifting, distracting, consoling, stirring, restorative.  

For others it is just noise.

We have never before lived so close to our neighbors, literally and figuratively.  Even urban New Yorkers, used to density and constant contact, have lodged an unprecedented number of noise complaints with the authorities.  We usually live in our own bubbles, consciously choosing the ambient sounds sluiced into our ears from headphones worn to commute, eat, read, even sleep.   But now fresh air from open windows surges fresh sounds with it.   We are living with other people’s choices now, telling us when we can go out, whom we can see (or not), what we must wear, eat, think.  Other people’s music is just a symbol of our lack of personal agency.

This situation is not going to be resolved any time soon.  So we need to rein in the savage beasts into which we mutate.   Cooperate amidst the cacophony.  Someday the sounds of silence will again prevail.  Meanwhile, I have rescinded my request for my husband to play his saxophone on the balcony.

Here is some sweet, silent music by Samia Zoghlami.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Mothering

On this coming Sunday, we are all children.  For a single day, whether we take note of it or not, that is one obvious, inescapable truth that ethnicity, geography, gender, politics, religion cannot erase.   Some of us still have our mother’s presence in our lives, others have only memories.  For all of us, those are the ties that bind, not only to our families, but to everyone in the world.  And right now, we need mothering more than ever.
But mothering comes in many guises.  Care is not a pie.  No one need get the last slice.  Care is an infinite spring, with life-saving waters for all to drink.  Fathers are mothers. Husbands are mothers. Siblings are mothers. Nurses and doctors are mothers. Teachers are mothers.  Friends are mothers.  Strangers are mothers.  Stepping outside ourselves to listen to someone, to soothe someone, to make someone laugh is mothering.
So, honor all the mothers in your life, give them a call, give them a break, give them a heartfelt thank you for being in your life. And know that no matter your ethnicity, geography, gender, politics or religion, your kindness, your tolerance, your generosity, your availability to others is mothering at its most important.
On this coming Sunday, we are all mothers.
This haunting image by Qais Al-Sindy poignantly expresses the burden and love of mothers.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Long Spoons

Yesterday I went to the grocery store.  Ordinarily, this would be a mundane event, a chore I would put off until the cupboard was nearly bare (or I ran out of Pringles, whichever came first).  When I live in France, I love to shop for food. But there, I visit the traiteur, the boulangerie, the patisserie. I offer my bonjour, madame to the fishmonger and bonjour, monsieur to the butcher.  Choosing fresh vegetables at the Marché Bio is like visiting an art gallery (look, point, but don’t touch), the stallholders mound them in pyramids of freshness.  The entire experience of grocery shopping is one of visual pleasure and social communication. 
But for me, shopping in the age of covid is like a nightmarish supermarket sweep.   Go early, before the crowds, don’t forget the list, get masked and gloved, enter and follow the one-way signs, which means 3-aisle detours when the aisle I need is blocked by the restocking cart.  Throw away the list—search for substitutions. 
Speed past the empty bins where the chicken used to be.  Don’t get crazy when that gloveless shopper picks up the apple, squeezes, puts it down, picks up another, sniffs, puts it back.
Move fast.  Unlock the shopping cart wheels when they jam because you are moving too fast.  Remember to breathe.  Smile big at the cashier so she can see it in my eyes despite the mask.  Thank her.  Load the bags as fast as possible because the next shopper is right there up in my space.  Leave.  Get home, disinfect the gloves, the mask, every single item in the bags. Forgot three things. Not going back. 
Check my privilege here.  I live close enough to walk to the store.  I have enough funds to shop for the foods I need and the foods I want, not always the same. I contribute to the food bank funds when I shop.  But to be frank, the whole experience drains my empathy well almost dry.  All I can think of is me, me, me—what I want, what I need and how much I hate this.
So, in trying to replenish the empathy well, I discovered the parable of the long spoons.  It seems that in a certain town, all the people were invited to a feast. Seated opposite one another at long refectory tables, they were given very, very long spoons.  Delicious platters of food were placed before them, but try as they might, they could not manipulate the spoons to their hungry mouths. Elbows bent, arms over heads, nothing worked.  Then one person realized that his spoon could reach the person opposite, and vice versa. If he fed his neighbor, his neighbor would feed him, and all would eat.
Lesson learned.  Grocery anxiety will remain, but I will try to temper it with empathy and care for those who only wish they could fill their carts.
Mona El-Bayoumi’s Tangerines comforts me today.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Agora, Agapē

Aside from watching the daily dramas of working-from-home, living room yoga, and balcony horticulture in the apartments directly opposite my window (those opera glasses have come in handy), my world view is filtered by screens these days.  Not the bug repelling kind (murder hornets please pass us by) but the alphabet soup of LCD, LED, E-INK screens of iPads, Kindles, televisions, phones.  And filtered is the apposite word.  By and large, the information I receive is passively or actively chosen by me.  I choose the channels, the social media, the news feeds, that feed (yes, feed) my hunger for information and opinion.  But that nourishment is the alimentary equivalent of choosing Pringles over Lay’s chips, yummy, but neither satisfying my nutritional or informational needs.

So of course, I started thinking about ancient Greece.  (Please do not make the leap from the chips—Pringles are not greasy.)

In our longing to reopen, to go anywhere and do anything, to take our public spaces back, we are hankering after the agora.  Originally, the agora was a public space in ancient Greek city-states where citizens would gather to hear military or political pronouncements.  Later, market stalls for commerce were set up around the gathering place, subsequently inducing the artisans who made the goods to erect workshops in the area.  As more people congregated, the agora became the principal place for athletic competitions, artistic endeavors, political and religious pronouncements.  It is thus we have two Greek verbs ἀγοράζω, agorázō, "I shop", and ἀγορεύω, agoreúō, "I speak in public."

Direct link to today’s clamor for opening the shopping malls and political conventions.

In today’s world ( well, yesterday’s world, pre-covid) our public spaces had already begun to shut down to the free expression of opinions (louder voices prevailing) but it was still possible to go to city centers or town squares and see and hear a diversity of people; young, old, racially and ethnically heterogeneous, car drivers and cyclists arguing loudly,  authentic Gucci bags warring with fake Gucci bags, used Starbucks cups littering the sidewalk; all the bad and good cacophony of people being people out in public.

Which brings me to agapē.  Agapē is a form of charity, in the sense of altruistic, humanitarian behavior. It is the unselfish love of one human for another, even for those who litter while carrying fake Gucci bags.

Right now, we are in a period of transition.  We need both the agora and agapē in our lives.  Once this pandemic is finally under control, I want to resume my interaction with others different from myself.  I want, in place of accidental exposure to the virus, accidental exposure to information I didn’t curate for myself.  But I also want to see kindness, to be kind, to accept all that diversity out there as the proper exercise of freedom in the public space.  And I really want to shop.

Agora, courtesy of Adnan Charara.  Art Heals.

Art Heals: Clouds

The other day we were treated to the spectacle of the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds flying in formation straight down our street.  It was a magnificent show and immensely cheering.  Knowing they were coming, but not sure exactly from which direction,  I stood on our balcony, head swiveling from side to side, visually raking the sky, when suddenly to my wondering eyes they appeared, like Santa and the sleigh,  majestic, swift and fleeting.
Afterwards I realized how little time I used to spend looking at the sky.  My apartment is surrounded by high-rises ( actually 12-story buildings, which are what pass for high-rises in DC) so that even though I have floor-to-ceiling windows,  the vast span of the sky is really just a sliver of blue (or, grey, mostly) glimpsed as I walk by.
Ah, but life in the time of corona has made some changes.  Less walking by the window, more time supine on the couch, a position terrible for my posture but pretty interesting for my outlook.   I have been studying clouds.   There is just enough sky visible from that aspect to allow me to track the cloud trains chugging by, slowly like a fully loaded freight train, or with the swiftness of an express.  Often there will be a gap of azure, followed by a hurrying little ball of cotton candy that must have fallen off the train and is trying to catch up.  And sometimes, the nebular mountain peaks fool me into believing I have been transported to the snowy Alps (especially if the air-conditioner happens to kick in just at that moment.)
As Joni Mitchell sings,
I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It's cloud's illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all.
Back in my pre-covid busy days, I related more to Carly Simon singing that her dreams were clouds in her coffee.  Clouds were obstacles, interfering with the sunshine in my life.
In some ways, my life has gotten smaller.  But in better ways, it has expanded to the vastness of the sky and the majestic, swift and fleeting show offered me there.
We know that so many people in the world face a smaller world every day, through poverty or oppression.  But clouds transcend borders, and are there for all, as in Phoebe Farris’s photograph, Country Without Borders.  Art Heals.