·:[ Stephen Vincent ]:·
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Closed down for a while. Feel free to visit the archive through out!
Back in a couple of weeks.

Be well.

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In 17th century metaphysical poetry, the work is described as a blend of emotion and intellectual ingenuity, characterized by conceit or “wit”—that is, by the sometimes violent yoking together of apparently unconnected ideas and things so that the reader is startled out of his complacency and forced to think through the argument of the poem (From the Encylopedia Britanica).

I was trying to think why this baby outfit is so instantly disturbing. Then it struck me - going back to the high-sounding metaphysical conceit, it is the way the pink outfit yokes together an image of implied parental warmth and care with the warning image - one found frequently on California highway signs near the Mexico border - for drivers to be on alert so as to not hit a family of “illegal” Immigrants on the run And, I suspect, most of us know from whom. Metaphysical conceit indeed.

At least somebody has a sense of humor in the neighborhood. That kind of humor that goes way down deep into the core of the stomach. Ain’t no bad spleen inside this guy. He’s just laughing it up. I wish I knew what “it” is. I don’t know if he’s actually a Buddha. It must be, at least, an acoloyte of some deity somewhere. He is great, however, just takes me right out of my mind, and, maybe, your mind, too?

Go with this story where yee may. Tickled-Pink I am just still astonished to find him or her looking reasonably happy at home under a bush up this ordinarily very quiet street. No telling what really lurks behind the restraints of local walls!

My life - a building full of rooms - it stood for all to see -
An open book.
The way things announce themselves on the street!
The blank canvas, the white pages, irresistable!

Someone kindly suggests, these spaces would be great for the haptics,
a wheeling explosion of non-commodity Energy into the center of the City. Framed on such walls, such ‘pages’. That would be nice!

It took me a while to ferret out the echo in the opening sentence here:

My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun –
In Corners — till a Day
The Owner passed — identified –
And carried Me away –

Interesting to ever imagine Emily Dickinson on the downtown streets of any metropolis! Unlike Walt Whitman - his eyes and arms so open to the polyphonous visual character of space - I suspect Emily would totally freak. However, back to those blank pages, blog pages, what have you.

Well, as I was walking on Liberty Street, I thought I had run into/chanced upon an original Raushenberg. Here was a dusty window, a white door leaning up inside the room against it with intervening angle of wallboard against the glass. The board appears as if a torn piece of paper in a fragment of a Braque or Picasso circa 1910. My initial impression is that of a collage so simple it might be called Erased Raushenberg, obliquely so, in the manner of Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning. No way. I take the picture and bring it up on the monitor screen and I am suddenly looking at a poor man’s version of Walt Whitman. Look at all the crazy detail! Reflections of branches and leaves layered over the window frames a shingled house across the street, and, looking closely, a reflection of a San Francisco skyline in the bottom right corner. So it is and it isn’t a Raushenberg. It is one of those Raushenberg ghosts! That is, the way a significant body of an artist’s work will keep refracting fractions and portions of itself through out the culture. Rauschenberg, when I think about him much, is actually similar to Whitman in his energy and celebration of objects and people. Rauschenberg is also similar to another poet, Frank O’Hara - they clearly had an influence on each other, the way both artist and poet took whatever might float up from the street and/or the media to embrace, illuminate and make a unique music from these objects.
The other day I asked my 92 year old mom what she most enjoyed now about her life.
“Seeing the music,” she answered.
In their work, O’Hara, Rauschenberg and Whitman also love to make and see the music. As one might see ‘the notes’ in a street window.

For the first time, it took me several days to complete one of these large (20 x 23′’ vertical haptics). I started by responding to Ornette Coleman’s mostly percussive album, Mega Body. Then I switched back to listening again to John O’Keefe’s video performance of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself. Things were still coming up too nice, too shallow. Then I put on the NBA playoffs, Washington Wizards versus the Cleveland Cavaliers. Simultaneously my brother let me know my mother was being put in the hospital for ‘observation’. (Her appetite is good, but she is sleeping and unwilling to get up. This all can be side effect from an antibiotic she is taking for an infection. Nevertheless, at 92!) Then, down to my last brush, I brought up the velocity to a level of the game, a very close one, letting myself respond to the crowd, the announcers, & the speed of the players. I let the whole piece wax volcanic. Here is one detail shot:

Haptic Detail

I try to imagine there is a relationship between my ‘haptical’ motions/marks and basketball, the game that I have loved most of my life, but do not ever play these days.

Walt Whitman (Song of Myself as performed by John O’Keefe) haptics Ornette Coleman (Body Meta) haptics Walt Whitman. A work in progress.

To be fully realized, soon! And, better photographed!

As the sun rises, in the kitchen this morning about 6:30, I grab the camear. I forget the name of the flower, forget to ask! The art is from an artist (name on the other side of the paper) who makes his or her work at Creativity Explored. Impossible for me not to like the combination - fleurs et l’art au printemps. Really not necessary to indulge my French! It is what it is.

Since the Fort Funston w/Brenda Hutchinson piece in the previous entry, I am further exploring the possibilities of making haptics on a larger sheet size (roughly 21 x 23 inches on different textures and colors of heavy-weight archival papers). As a tool I am using a combination of a brush pen with India Ink, and a thin point ink-pen. I start out by making a foundation with the thin point.

Both of these pieces were done in my living room sitting in a rocking chair surrounded by the light from my Bay Windows. This first one was done purely by listening to various late afternoon ambient sounds - cars stopping and starting at the corner stop sign, an occasional siren, spring pigeons cooing, pedestrian voices rising and fading under the window, etc.

The haptic below - also done at home - was shaped by two accoustic events. Recently I received a DVD of John O’Keefe’s performance of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself at The Marsh, a local San Francisco performance venue. Bill Farley, the film maker, documented the occcasion last summer. During the making of this haptic, I listened to O’Keefe’s performance - which is terrific - without looking up at the monitor screen. I let the pen move with the melodies, rhythms, cadences of O’Keefe’s robust voice. After I had listened to the piece twice, I switched the television on to one of the NBA playoff games. There the pen picked up the crowd excitement, announcer’s voices, advertisements - the different shifting tones of a high stake’s game between Dallas and New Orleans. Ironically, as I expected, there was connect between the national reach of the basketball tournament and the national aspirations of Whitman’s work - the fabric of one playing off the fabric of the other. This haptic was started about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and was only partially completed by 7 o’clock. This morning I played the O’Keefe Whitman again while between 10 and noon, I completed the work.

Yesterday I went to Fort Funston to make a new and large haptic. Fort Funston is part of the Golden Gate National Park system of small parks along the coast from San Francisco to the North. Fort Funston - which no longer has a fort - occupies a promontory bluff overlooking the Pacific, just south of Ocean Beach on the western edge of San Francisco. I was joined by Brenda Hutchinson and her 12 foot long pipe with and through which she makes a variety of sounds that echo variously from inside or outside the pipe.

Yesterday, the unusually warm heat brought in a low fog that settled very close to the ground. We took up our positions not far from the edge of the high cliff overlooking the beach, and parallel - behind us - to large earthen berm that contains an empty, open bunker. From 2 o’clock until 4:30 - using a variety of pens - I made marks, much of the work in response to a diversity of sounds: the mouth sounds that Brenda explores through the pipe, but, equally important, the persistent ryhthym and swell of small waves landing on the shore, the caw sounds of crows, occasionally barking dogs, a group of teenagers atop the bunker, their voices swaggering and challenging each other to jump off the top down some 25 feet to he ground, as well as the voices of an occasional couple or parent wandering by on the nearby sandy path, some with a dog and/or children; a few times. a siren wails down the nearby highway in some kind of hot pursuit. Yet, maybe induced by the low fog, a sense of calm is in the air, and, all in all, it is a varied and rich textured atmosphere in which to work. Not to add there was to be a fullish moon later on in the evening

As much I have previously talked about process, along with various ventures into theory and intentions, I never really know what I am doing when I make a haptic. Intentionality is formed by the size of the paper sheet with which I work. This one is Large for me - 20 x 22″. I do know - for myself - the finished piece must have some kind of balance about it. However, the formal realization of that balance - even imagining a shape - remains a total mystery until the piece begins and, on some level or other, when the piece tells me the work is done.

When we finish, I tell Brenda I want to take her photograph. She has taken the other ones posted here. When she stands up with her quite tall pipe, I suggest she “Pose like the lady in Grant Wood’s American Gothic“, though the reason for the pipe in the picture might not be clear, Gothic she looks not! But the way the haptic on the masonite board resonates against or with the landscape, I find pleasing . In some odd ‘non-representational’ way, the shapes within the image appear to fit - as if, on some level, the haptic, indeed, is a landscape, that is, a vibrant member/participant in the landscape.

As postscript - and for those interested in a curious close-up angle view of haptic-marks - here is a totally accidental photograph which I think captures the perhaps ‘floating’ & “fluid’ characteristic of the marks in-process.

I have learned today that Ann Chamberlain - the much revered artist, great teacher and friend to many of us, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area - passed away last night after long period of cancer. Brenda Hutchinson was one of her closest friends, and during the last few years was very involved in the care of Ann - particularly helping in helping Ann keep alive her creative life and work, often on a daily basis. While Brenda was making voices and sounds through the pipe at Fort Funston, I could sense the presence of Ann in the spirit of the tones - in the way that a passing body releases its spirit to speak through other channels.
I dedicate this haptic to Ann Chamberlain’s presence and memory.
There will a memorial next Sunday, April 27 from 2 - 4 at the San Francisco Art Institute.