The Poetry of Silence

My work is often described as quiet, or peaceful, or restful or subdued. I really do not know where that comes from.

I recently wrote a post on my library in my home. Libraries are usually considered quiet places.
I still remember, as a child in the school or city library, being told over and over to be quiet. "Shhhhh...." or the finger on the lips....

Silence can be found in many places, like the above interior of a Japanese temple in Kyoto.

Vilhelm Hammerchoi (1864-1916) was a Danish painter of haunting interiors. His work has been described as quiet, empty, silent, solitary spaces in which the passage of time as been suspended. His colors are subdued, his interiors simple and minimal. This handsome book is the first retrospective of his work and is available on Amazon.com.

"Hammershoi is not one of those about whom one must speak quickly. His work is long and slow, and at whichever moment one apprehends it, it will offer plentiful reasons to speak of what is important and essential in art." Rainer Maria Rilke

His interiors are often dark and empty, with a single window creating a sunbeam of light. This window represents the connection with the outside world to the isolation within.
Some of his interiors have a single, solitary figure who is detached from the viewer.

James Castle (1900-1977) was born deaf. He never learned to speak, read or write. He grew up on a farm in Idaho and never traveled far from his home. He used stove soot mixed with saliva (spit) and sticks to create his drawings on discarded papers, packaging, and backs of old cards.
He also cut up found papers and cardboard and stitched them back together with found string.
His work was noticed in the 50's and 60's, and is now recognized in museums and collected all over the world. The above book is curated and published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and available at Amazon.com.

Never educated, James Castle lived in a world of silence, isolated from the outside world. Through his eyes, he recreated his every day life, giving his work a singular, unique, natural quality.


Now. Close your eyes and take three deep, cleansing breaths.

The Spirit of Stones

Silence is intensified into a stone:
broken circles are closed:
--Pablo Neruda, Stones from the River

The Shiva Lingam rock is the sacred stone from India and gathered once a year from the Narmada River, one of 7 sacred places of pilgrimage in India. They are naturally formed gray and tan stones with reddish markings. Since the beginning of time, men have been collecting stones with the inherent belief that many of them were vessels that hold life force energy.
The message of the lingam stone is UNITY - balancing light and dark, and uniting all aspects of self and accepting the differences in others. I have a small collection of lingam stones in the bowl above.

The stone was there before the wind,
before the man, before the dawn:
its first movement was the first
music of the river.
--- Pablo Neruda, Stones of the River

Bill Dan balances rocks on top of other rocks without any glue or adhesives. He is an artist who defies gravity with his vertical sculptures. He has been creating these rock towers for 15 years along the San Francisco shoreline. He teaches workshops and tells his students when their sculptures fall over, "Nothing is permanent. Just go along with nature."

Nina Judin is an artist who makes one of a kind books as art. She made this book using stones for the covers. THE SKIN OF STONES is an artist's book about the silent life of stones and hidden things. You can find more of her wonderful hand made books at her website and blog here.


Fiona Watson, a Scotland artist, works with real stones. She also does etchings. Her beginnings in science led to her love of nature based art works. You can find her flickr.com stream of her photos of stones and other nature based objects here. You can find her flickr.com stream of artwork here. And you can find her wonderful website here.


Sometimes I sleep, I go back
to the beginning, falling back in midair,
wafted along by my natural state
as the sleepyhead of nature
and in dreams I drift on,
waking at the feet of great stones. --Pablo Neruda

A Way of Life

"All works of art, it may be said, are more beautiful when they suggest something beyond themselves than when they end up being merely what they are." Soetsu Yanagi, The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty.

The following elements of Japanese design were taken from this book, written by Boye Lafayette De Mente. Japanese design is a way of life. There is no separation between life and art. They are the same thing.

ISHI: The Use of Sabi Stones. The Japanese imbue stones with spirituality and use them in many aesthetic ways. Their stones form a link between humans, the earth, nature--and they have a calming effect on the spirit.

TAKE: The Beauty and function of bamboo. Bamboo is the foundation or frame of so many Japanese objects-- some estimates are above ten thousand. Bamboo is a symbol of virtue, fidelity and constancy.

KI: Humility in Wood. In the Japanese concept of aesthetics, wood that is less than perfect is regarded as "humble" or more natural, and therefore more appropriate for humans, who need to be reminded by nature that imperfections are good.

SABI: Savoring the "rust" of age. The basic meaning of sabi is rust, or to decline or to become solitary. Revering nature involves an appreciation of weathering, aging and the passage of time.
This naturalness and simplicity exudes a sense of tranquility.

FUKINSEI: Symmetry vs. Asymmetry. Fukinsei means "without balance". Artists learned a long time ago that asymmetry could be used to give designs a fresh, surprising, charming look.

KATACHI: Making Things Shapely. Katachi relates to the perfect union of form and function.

WABI: Desolate beauty--an Indefinable Wistfulness. Wabi refers to rustic beauty, both natural and man-made. A deeper essence or meaning is more important than the material it is made from.


The evening bell, solemn and bronze
In the grandfather temple
down the hill.
Slow beat of the mountain's heart, perhaps
or determined pulse of the pine tree
growing out of a crotch of the
slippery monkey tree.
All one, perhaps---
bell, mountain, tree...

Come Into the Quiet

New collages, acrylic on rice papers on wood supports.

"Come to my quietness. I shall cover you with it, like a white sheet that has blown all day in the sun, like a mountain lake filled with spring, it shall slip over you..." Diane di Prima

Come into the library.

Sit at the desk.

Look at the birdcage collection.

Look at the shells and fossils.

See more shelves of books.

Sit on the comfy sofa with the Alex Powers painting hanging above.

Sit on the window box and look at the zen gardens.

Sit in the chair next to Suki the cat.

Choose a good book.

Have a cup of green tea and some treats from Kyoto.

Touch the new ammonite collection

Art is a language, instrument of knowledge, instrument of communication. --- Jean Dubuffet

Collage Exchange

I have been working in my studio on a group of small collages for an upcoming collage exchange.
I like to use hand painted (acrylic) rice papers and textured papers with old book pages and old postage stamps. You can find out more information about this collage exchange at the end of this post.


There are a lot of good collage books:

1. COLLAGE: Lost and Found by Giuseppina Cirincione
2. COLLAGE ART by Jennifer L. Atkinson
3. COLLAGE TECHNIQUES by Gerald Brommer
4. COLLAGE FOR THE SOUL by Holly Harrison
5. COLLAGE SOURCEBOOK by Quarry Books
   

Dale Copeland, looking for rusty treasure at her 'secret' beach in New Zealand.

Dale Copeland, a collage and assemblage artist, lives in Puniho, New Zealand. She is a former math and physics teacher who eventually made the life change to full time artist. She has a fabulous website which showcases her collage and assemblage works for sale. Her website also includes many links to other collage artists, collage exhibitions and opportunities and can be found here.

Some of Dale's Assemblages

One of Dale's collages

Soon, Dale will organize her 12th International Collage Exhibition & Exchange, in New Zealand. Artists are invited to send her up to 13 small collages. There is an opportunity to sell a collage, exhibit a collage and exchange collages with other participating artists. The deadline is March 20th, and you can find out more information here.

Visual Poetry

Japanese book cover, weathered and worn

And it was at that age--
Poetry arrived in search of me....
Pablo Neruda, Poetry

"Words begin as description. They are prismatic, vehicles of hidden, deeper shades of thought." Susan Brind Morrow, THE NAME OF THINGS
Ellen Meloy, artist-naturalist wrote such beautiful prose in her luminous mix of memoir and natural history, THE ANTHOLOGY OF TURQUOISE: Meditations on Landscape, Art and Spirit. As you read her words, visions of landscapes rich with light, shade, textures and colors spark your imagination.


"Art can be much more than eye candy. By appealing to the senses, one can evoke a deeper response--one that is memorable and lasting." Lisa L. Cyr, ART REVOLUTION

One such artist who seems to go deeper, to a more poetic place is Linda, from Quebec. Her imagery, like poetry, seems to peel away the layers to reveal a simpler, more elemental, yet more mysterious human connection. You can find her blog here, and more of her luminous imagery at Les Brumes flickr page here. (The above 3 images and the one below are from
her Flickr stream, with permission.)

...I don't know where it came from,
From winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not words,
nor silence...and it touched me. Pablo Neruda, Poetry

Another artist who speaks to me as non-verbal visual poetry is Lissa Hunter. You can find her book, LISSA HUNTER: Histories Real and Imagined by Abby Johnston at Amazon.com. You can find more of her beautiful poetic works here. (The following 3 images are from Lissa's website, with permission).

"Lissa makes visible the architecture of an internal universe, revealing the corners, the doorways, the attics where our histories accumulate." Abby Johnston

"...Effort to understand, to make understandable, not necessarily intellectually. How do you 'understand' a bird in flight?" Lissa Hunter

"I came to feel that an artist is doing most when he is projecting his own humaness and doing this with utmost intimacy, candor and precision." Elmer Bischof