July/August/September

2006

moving earth in Austria

Living an "uprooted" life is quite a normal occurrence in our modern day society. Our culture seems content with any motion that appears to be forward moving. Being on the go is a sign of success. Any motion, even moving backwards, is accepted because..."hey, it's motion." I'm starting to understand in myself a deeply held and barely recognizable fear of being still. In our modern western society we equate movement/motion with progress, but in nature a deep "rooting" must take place before there is any significant growth. Nature directly shows us a contrary view to a culturally accepted concept.

My most recent installation in Mittersill, Austria dealt with our "uprooted" and "cut-through" lives. A large circle of earth was sited inside the exhibition space of a historic castle. The dirt, out of its natural context, forced viewers to rethink their generally held cultural norms. Energetic drawings referencing botanical images lined the walls of the room. The obvious gap between the flowers and the dirt pointed to ideas of separation and dislocation. The installation spoke directly to an "uprooted" nature.

To read more about this project and the thought process behind it click here to visit my blog in the community section of this site.

As I sit in my studio I'm surrounded by drawings, wood sculptures, bits of fabric, paintings, pastel sticks, tubes of paint empty beer bottles, and various shoes. All of those things are somehow fuel for my creative fire.

Currently I am finishing some small works on canvas. They are paintings that are built out of fabric cuttings, acrylic paint, charcoal and sand. The works are furthering my understanding of surface and color. They are conduits for expression. The elements in the paintings are become more abstracted and the color is rooted more in emotion than in nature. For me, it is important to strive to find the most effective way to truthfully communicate my experience in this world. The slice I represent is necessarily narrow because there is much more of life I've not experienced, but in my narrowness I hope I'm not communicating ignorance. These new, intimate works are at the least interesting visual fields and at the most deep, narrow valleys filled with personal life experiences that share common roots with every viewer – the emotions that define our humanity.

Summer Event Feature

Simon Edwards Gallery

August 10, 2006 5:30pm-7:30pm

In August I'll be installing a show at Simon Edwards Gallery in Yakima, Washington. This exhibition will include wall-mounted, glass rondels as well as paintings and small bronze wall panels. The gallery is located at 3105 Summitview, Suite 101 in Yakima, Washington. If you have any questions regarding directions to the opening event please call the gallery at 509.248.6886.

Traditionally this section of my newsletter has been dedicated to my personal writings. However, for this particular newsletter I thought it would be good to include a reaction from someone other than myself to the installation I created in Austria. Tom Zwitser a critical thinker and writer from Groningen, Netherlands recently wrote his thoughts about the work. With his permission I am including selections from his essay titled "The Art of Nihilism."

The Art of Nihilism

Thinking an Exhibition by Squire Broel

A circle of dirty earth spread on the wooden floor lit by a spotlight from above. It is both spread and anxiously gathered together in a perfect disc shape. Painted fabrics hang on the walls. Cottons and vilts. Painted upon the fabrics are cut-through views of flowers. Views, right to the construction plan of nature, painted on a product from the nature factory, the cottons. Or is it a view to the construction plan of creation? In sofar it is a technical product, that it shows the displacedness of all the artworks. It doesn't belong in here. Maybe it shows even its non-placeness. Somehow these pieces don't like places at all. They have flown away from their origin.

The flowers are cut between the roots and its blossoms. What do we see in this incision? Circles formed around a hollow centre. We see the empty canals where we ought to see the streams of life flowing from the roots up to the blossoms. But these paintings are aware: when we see the flowers life-canals, we only see the emptiness of the canals, not the streaming life. The life has gone because it has been cut through. The question can be raised, "Was life really ever there?" Or is it our melancholy expecting to see life in there? Melancholy to era's which never were real.

We don't see the blossom and we don't see the roots. Nor do we see its life. We see the moment of its separation. The painting doesn't complain about the moment of severing, and neither does the circle of dirty earth. The circle suggests a place to root upon. But under the half-foot of black dirt there are borders imposed by the floor and the room. This suggestion of rooting can be a comforting illusion but that doesn't make this dirt true ground. So, what has it left to us? Has it left us our roots? Has it left us our blossoms? No, these have been cut as well.

Does it show us our intentions to hide ourselves in what nature gives us: the material of cotton? No, for that's nothing more than the material. More camouflaging are the colours we imitate. Nature foresees in colours we need to imitate now because nature is no longer a living creation, but rather a dead space of relations. It will offer nothing else than its calculated techniques to imitate. We will only build up relationships by imitating. In our imitations we camouflage ourselves. In our imitations we even deny what we cannot deny: being created and being created alive. Stop now. Who have we become? A structure of hollow relationships without characteristics? In this white space even an imitation is without meaning. And that's why our last job – building up relationships – seems so nihilistic.

We have here a nature that has become empty inside. There is no life stream and therefore nature is dead. We have only an outside to imitate. We see its colours and structures. But when the flower has been cut through, the blossom bows her head and dies. The camouflage cotton wants to imitate nature. But nature lost every meaning to life. It's not alive anymore. Therefore is it impossible to imitate something wich has been cut-through. There's only the moment of incision that is left to us.

Copying the techniques of nature has never brought our minds the treasures of life. There is – visually – emptiness inside. Therefore we focus on the outside. We camouflage our outside in fluid natural colours. And to depatternize this flat structure, arts are laid upon it as the most upper layer of our culture. It shows art being a product of the elites. Art is the upper layer. But the contradiction shows up here. This artist doesn't depict our cultural state, but focuses on our lack of a cultural and rooted life. In his work he understands the fact that there is no elite in the will to be an elite. He focuses on our cut-through life, which is not alive (anymore).

To read his entire essay please click here.

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak." – Hans Hofmann

"The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity." – Alberto Giacometti

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." -– Albert Einstein

"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery." – Francis Bacon