I have spent the summer intentionally unhinged from my usual concerns, lord knows the playing card sculptures on my vacant studio table have long ago fallen, reshuffled as no one\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n
I barely make it to the page.\u00a0 In the overwhelming evidence that I make everything including avoidance of the page, I wonder what it helps.<\/p>\n
I look over at Malevich looking out the screened wooden porch into the chirping night, quietly waiting until he cares about what I\u2019m doing. \u00a0Without changing much of his leisurely stance, he turns his wrist to reveal a fan of lit silvery images of the Victory Over the Sun costumes, which he flashes me like a secret poker hand, or undrawn tarot cards, and I am reminded. \u00a0Then he paints a quick, black near-square in my own rods and cones, the ghost of the screen hovering over the silvery night pond, \u00a0and he says, \u2018simplicity is not to be discounted\u2019<\/p>\n
What\u2019s performance, what\u2019s disclosure, what\u2019s conjuring? \u00a0These are the questions that await me, leaning into the studio table.\u00a0 Perform-ance – to play out, to bring into process, not to be confused with playacting, which is sometimes called performance.\u00a0 Simplicity. \u00a0performance of an object.<\/p>\n
There are rings and packs of coyotes on the rim of the listening horizon, crinkling the edge of the night so that you could never tell what lies beyond.<\/p>\n
I bring peace, that\u2019s the only thing a person can bring, because joy and love reside in the self.\u00a0 Let me bring peace from the beginning.\u00a0 There is nothing else to remember.\u00a0 Be Love Bring Peace.<\/p>\n
I think of the work. I will have Klein pliers for hands left and<\/em> right, taking the wire straight across to where I see it already, knotting it, standing it in for the thought of itself, becoming itself, I never look at it, I look ahead of it, at the installation space, plotted in night stars. I imagine the wall-like sculpture beest that the mind of dear E transmitted to me, in top-level CAD design, like I work for NASA or something, there wasn\u2019t enough time to be astounded.<\/p>\n At the installation, ‘turn on the lights,’ E said. \u00a0I flipped half the bank of overhead fluorescent lights. ‘show them like this.’ \u00a0Pale and uncooked outside of darkness, all my making in the bright photons, like the wig-naked scalp of Cleopatra, the installation with the room lights on, 2 kinds of identical wire, plus mesh, fabric, grommets, glass objects, my soldered illuminators, and a certain organic sensibility achieved with hand working, and small batch machining, lovely knots of themselves,<\/p>\n \u2018…huh?\u2019 I said, looking up, beginning to align my eye with the pinhole view of a whole nuther world inside this work, \u2018Whoa E!,\u2019 I was unable to say because of the force of what I was about to see, \u2018!we were just…\u2019 and there wasn\u2019t even a chance to think it in future writing, there was the installation in the light, in the half light, illuminated, still throwing its ______<\/a> (word I am prevented by a spell from finding out<\/em>). lightfalls. All the fragile x-ray-looking ______ disappeared under cover of lumens, I marked it with a fluorescent mental stake so that later, walking back through the work, I will remember to look into how those tender but very real photonic arrangements can be shown, I just marked it, and tore myself away from wondering about it in order to get back to the conversation, because at the rate, I hadn\u2019t any time even to think<\/em> to grab a recorder, E was going on and on\u00a0immersed in the work with a completely new set of investigations and reflections, each one instantly recognizable, familiar, and I was seeing the works anew like unsealed catacombs, like extra rooms in dreams, and already a dozen comments ahead of me when Muse snapped like mamma in church.\u00a0begin now<\/em><\/span>! listen now<\/span><\/em>! I came to, halfway through the installation, with E nearly done talking about the work as it is, and \u00a0beginning to visualize works that might emerge.<\/p>\n I had to keep listening. On the inside of my mind E projected a CAD rendering of a possible piece that requires hours of speculation about what it even is, architecture or sculpture or fixture. \u00a0It looked too much like a boxcar and not enough like the graffiti, but that\u2019s how I knew it\u2019s not my rendering, but E’s. It had the instantly palpable aura of a silenter, heavier emptiness, projected life size so that it barely fit in the studio. I saw it in my own imagined hand, all the iterations and locations and applications and inquiries and the journey back into object-ness. Sort of. Nothing changes but the light switch.<\/p>\n Then I am remembered by the summer night porch, how it all comes together and I\u2019m not supposed to make faces or else it docks my enlightenment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have spent the summer intentionally unhinged from my usual concerns, lord knows the playing card sculptures on my vacant studio table have long ago fallen, reshuffled as no one\u2019s hand. I barely make it to the page.\u00a0 In the overwhelming evidence that I make everything including avoidance of the page, I wonder what it … Continue reading can you turn the lights on?<\/span>