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.