Sun and Moon, a collaboration with Broadus Mobbs from two years ago when he was seven.
Mixed media, oils, charcoal on printed canvas, 6′ x 4′ approx
Pardon me for tooting my own horn but I ran across the following writing from amuirin and wanted to remember it, so I am posting it here in my raw materials page. It’s nice, in those sad and lonely (self-centered) times of the artist to remember we are appreciated.
Artist of the Portrait
With a failure of imagination, I say
“Illustrate a book.”
Full up with understanding
that if I went dancing into mystified air
with my portal, your painting,
it would be tragedy to
invite everybody there.
“your imprint detached itself from the great cloud, giving up
forgetfulness and unknowing, taking up memory and knowledge,
wearing once again the clown suit, cheering me from my great longing,
pushing me back from the edge of the hollowed out place
where the tangled mess of old toys, broken screen doors,
rusted refrigerators and old tricycles waited.”
We try to slot you into familiar context-
market our wonder
reproduce what resonates
in the tired, pillaged heart.
I’m better for you staying
out of the open meadow;
close by the twisting forest,
obscured by dark.
For I can only see
the vibrant star of morning
under the purple shadow
of twilit skies.
Bewildered memories fill up
my mind before these visions:
That such elusive wonders could meet
ordinary eyes.
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*art work and linked words are by artist Rick Mobbs of Mine Enemy Grows Older. This is a tribute to the artist
this is a thanks from Rick
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NOTES TO MYSELF
Gerard Manley Hopkins, ends his poem, “God’s Grandeur”, with the line,
“…Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
In the previous post I matched one of my paintings with a poem or song I wrote some time ago. Both the song and the image have always brought a favorite poem by Hopkins to mind. When amuirin asked why I referenced Hopkins in the post I wanted to share the private reference and his poem.
God’s Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 to 1889)
I have always loved the poem, the poet’s love of wordplay and especially the last line. Not to mention the interesting man; an Anglican convert to Catholicism who became a Jesuit priest, a wordsmith, and who died young. Wikipedia has this to say about his death,
“…Although he probably suffered from what today might be diagnosed as either bipolar disorder or chronic unipolar depression, and battled a deep sense of anguish throughout his life, upon his death bed he evidently overcame some of that despondency, at times stygian in its intensity: his last words were “I am so happy, I am so happy.”
I just noticed the date of his death and see he was only 44 when he died. It makes me think of passages Robertson Davies wrote in Fifth Business, or maybe, What’s Bred in the Bone, where a priest is reflecting on his evolving understanding of the life of Jesus. The priest (if I remember this correctly), now an old man, is speaking to someone he knew in his youth, when he was new to the priesthood and his fervor was strong and his ideas about Christ and religion seemingly set for life.
“How do you feel the same now as you did then?” his questioner asks.
“I am twice as old now as Jesus was when he died,” said the old priest. “Things do look different now, from where I am today.”
Forgive the paraphrasing and the misremembering, all you Davies fans. What struck me at the time I read the passage was the likely truth of the old man’s words. I was younger then – 33 or 34, about the age of Jesus when he died – and I thought that some day I might look back on those words and weigh them.
Well, I am too busy to weigh them now. All I can do is hold them up in the light of this coffee shop window and turn them a bit. They seem true, the light shines through them. I can reflect on the life and pain and glory of Gerard Manly Hopkins from a new perspective, that of outliving his 44 years; that of surviving some hellish years of my own.
I don’t have any great wisdom or insight to offer, just that yes, things do look different from the perch at the end of the branch. Flight is inviting, it always has been. Endurance is important, if only because we say it is. Not leaving the branch before our time means everything in the world to those who’s lives we light, and to those whom in turn light our own.
Chicago, a magical evening: also an update on the Great Untitled
July 15, 2009 by rick mobbs
Bravo Art Project turnout .( Scroll to the the end of these passages.)
…and I’m looking out over the city from a Priceline room in a Four Star hotel. I bid $60 on a $150 room in a 2.5 star hotel in the (stellar) Millennium Park/Loop part of the city. (By the Art Institute, near the Shining Big Sea Waters.) Priceline wrote back: sorry, none available; but there is one in a 4 star there and we’ll upgrade you for free.
It comes with a stocked fridge: Red Bull, $7. A weightless package of cookies is 5 bucks. A rack of little soldiers that rattle around in the fridge at night whispering, “Drink me, no, drink me, no, drink me, rattle rattle, rattle rattle.” No, no, no, I say.
I just went downstairs to catch the air, and it is beautiful, the brilliance of the city lights and the black backdrop beyond. It reminded me of trying to paint the city lights of Boston, the reflections on the wet streets after a storm had passed. I couldn’t capture it, until I came back from three months in a place that has no streetlights, and few paved roads- F.U.N.D.E.C.I. - outside Leon, Nicaragua. That was in 1986. Sister Anna Creamer, if you are still kicking around, Good Working, please call.
I was trying to paint the lights without painting the city. I added the city, and some of the people of the city. “City Flowers“, my brother-in-law, Bryant Loftin, called them. And then the painting vanished. Poof! Just like that. Call if you have seen it, please.
But we have the photo. City Lights, City Flowers, oils, 3′ x 4.5′ approx, Rick Mobbs, 1986
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Brooding Beauty
On her blog, Brooding Beauty has this to say about Reality TV. Beneath the post are comments by artists who attended the Bravo Unnamed Art Project Casting Call in other cities. The value in the trip for me is going to be the fun of the scramble to pull it together to compete, and the fact that when the competition is over I will still have it together, and I can take my own little mess of togetherness home and try and figure out something useful to do with it. Maybe I’ll see you standing in line this morning, Brooding Beauty. I’ll be the half naked blue man with the cat on his head, just like the guy in the picture. I hope you will say hi.
I appreciate the notes of encouragement, and even praise left here. I have a pretty good opinion of my abilities as an artist and a right-brained kind of road map of where I want to go. Which means the road lurches and hiccups a bit but I compensate, and usually keep my feet.
The art that strikes me here in the city, in the alternative media and venues and on the web is edgy, energetic, doing awesome things with imagery. Mixing media, doing it quickly, slicing through the old rules like so many bundles of knots. Not even in-your-face doing it; just doing it.
charcoal on paper, portrait of Bryant Loftin, by Rick Mobbs, 1985
My direction now involves listening for the voice of a much softer calling. I remember my father’s eyes welling up with tears as he told some story that touched him. I didn’t see his tears as welling from springs of humanity, compassion, humility, understanding, a deep awareness of our shared predicament, our shared condition. It was years ago and I saw something that frightened me. Was it his tears; or our condition?
This is disjointed but it has something to do with my art and healing, a sort of slowgoing, ongoing awakening. I’m drawn to the contemplative life but I don’t want to miss anything. My edges are worn and softened. The places I am drawn to explore are places I cannot really see. I have to feel, and listen. I imagine the presence of other hands, other minds, with scars that date back to the beginning.
I imagine their fears and memories and dreams and passions. I look for the names beneath the names of my nameless longings. My energy will return and my work will probably always come from and lead in all directions, spurred by the moment, by whatever feeling. I feel inclined to listen now for gray murmurings and incantations. But maybe I am just tired.
Do I know what I am saying? Hell, no, I don’t know what I am saying. I just spent the last four hours standing in the Chicago Sun with 2000 artists, waiting our turns in a slowly shuffling line, giving each other the gift of recognition, trains rolling overhead, passersby flowing around, drivers shouting to ask what’s going on. “We are artists!”someone shouts back and we laugh like that means something.
I’m dozing over my laptop. I’ll come back to this and broadcast a note to the NYC group assembling their stuff. Don’t take it too seriously, enjoy it, make some friends, strut your stuff.
By the way, the Bruce High Quality folks had a table here today but I didn’t get by to meet the. They seemed subdued compared to the vid from Miami I posted a few days ago. B.H.Q, I hope you’ll give them hell in NYC. This experience was useful and interesting but a “reality” project that featured and even exploited communication and collaboration, instead of competition, would have been so very much more interesting and useful both for the immediate and the long run. Why is that idea so hard to understand and explain? A bunch of smart and capable creatives dreaming up a project showcasing the talents and abilities of other creatives and they fall back on the same old competitive formula.
Posted in Art Institute of Chicago, Bob Cormier, Bravo Untitled turnout, Bravo’s Untitled Art Project, Bryant Loftin, DaVinci, F.U.N.D.E.C.I., Fenway Studios, Leon, Michelangelo, New Haven/Leon Sister Cities, Robert Douglas Hunter, School of the Guild of Boston Artists, Sister Anna Creamer, Sister Margarita, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, bravo casting call, brooding Beauty, charcoal drawing, city flowers, city lights, collaboration, cutting edge, millennium park, nicaragua, reality tv | 3 Comments »
“You are going to lose a testicle over this.”
July 14, 2009 by rick mobbs
Title quote by Bruce High Quality, from the ARTSTAR audition diary of the mighty Bruce High Quality Foundation. (Lifted from the ARTLURKER article featured below and in the video embedded at the bottom of this post.)
The ARTLURKER link will take you to an amused analysis of Bravo’s Untitled Art Project (anybody want to buy my ticket to Chicago?), and to two interesting articles on the artlurker page. One on The Hellstrom Chronicle, 1979; another on The Pirate Bay – A legacy of exasperating morality.
from the ARTLURKERFebruary 28, 2005. Hopefuls line up for ARTSTAR, the world’s first art reality television show presented by Deitch Projects and Gallery HD. Photo credit: Seth Sherman.
“…On a frigid Monday morning in Februrary, 2005, as line of miserable looking student types clutching crappy paintings snaked three blocks from Deitch Projects on Wooster Street in SoHo, New York, a large pinched foam head attached to a trolley came rolling into view. This was the debut of Bruce High Quality, a character based around the idea of a dead artist, a social sculptor, who although much of his oeuvre was destroyed according to his wishes upon his demise, his legacy lives on, again according to his wishes, via the efforts of The Bruce High Quality Foundation, a group of Brooklyn based emerging artists. With satirical abandon and a great deal of skill, the Bruce High Quality crew – huddled together behind the head beneath umbrellas and plastic sheeting – lip-synced the foam head to adlibbed text-to-speak responses typed into an on board computer throughout the audition. With comebacks like “I am a lonely creature, as an artist must be. I am the long-sustained, langorous keynote, waiting for a wish, fearing its fulfillment” Deitch, famed among other things for touting the unconventional, offered their offensive yet brilliant asses a place on the show. Their subsequent refusal to participate evidenced their integrity.
Too often contemporary art pretends or rather portends to be something of important social, cultural and aesthetic value, but in the context of reality television it can really only be about money. This is tolerated of most industries, however, art is supposed to have more to it…”
Below is the ARTSTAR audition diary of the mighty The Bruce High Quality Foundation for Jeffrey Deitch’s ARTSTAR reality television show.
Posted in 1979, ARTSTAR, Pirate Bay, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, The Hellstrom Chronicle, artlurker, bravo casting call, the untitled art project | 3 Comments »
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Blog Reorganization and Bravo cattle call update
July 13, 2009 by rick mobbs |
Returning from work taking me so many months away from this blog I have started back by rearranging the furniture here (so to speak), an old, old way of getting control over my life. I used to do it so often I finally put everything in my studio on wheels – workbenches, couches, chairs, work stools, tables, easels. I even put myself on wheels, rollerblades, constantly rearranging myself, I suppose. I’ll look for some studio pics to post later.
I have added new pages:
words, dreams, images; for my own writing and painting.
Notable Collaborations; for submissions to the collaborative storybook which have particular potency for me. This page will grow as I comb through the year of submissions, and as you send me your favorites.
blog history, to explain what we are doing here. What began purely as a place to post works in progress grew more complex as people started contributing writing to accompany the images they responded to here. I set aside a page I called the Storybook Collaborative to post the hundreds of contributions. It grew messy and confused by becoming a family and personal blog, especially when our newborn daughter contracted a serious illness. (She is strong and sassy now, just having celebrated her first birthday; but her illness was very frightening.) I wrote about her illness and the support from readers and contributors here touched and encouraged us. My return to work in the film industry blew away any hope of getting back to this blog, until this week, when I finished a year-long stretch in the movies.
tapestry; an evolving story about a blind child and his ability to read the past in the weave and texture of weavings and tapestries, and his startled recognition that he, and a mysterious woman share histories, the threads of which are woven into the centuries. They keep missing each other, naturally. Or maybe she’s avoiding him, or hanging with a drummer in a girl’s band, or they are just star-crossed, or working towards some ending, or some future, or some eternity, or something else. I haven’t figured out what yet. We have collaborated on everything else. Suggestions? Maybe Orson Scott Card can help me.
See? Now you don’t have to read it.
Storybook Collaborative; not intended from the start, but what this blog has come to be about. I supply the images, readers make up the stories. This is ekphrasis, telling the story found in a piece of art. Amazing the number of stories, myths, poems that people can find in the same piece of art.
There are hundreds here. Browse through them. As you find favorites email me and I will consider moving them to the notable collaborations page, or putting the matter up for a vote. Visit the blogs and contact the authors if you are moved to do so. Let them know you are paying attention. You may not know how important those words and visits can be to artists and writers struggling in isolation to remain true to their callings.
About, which just gives you a little more information about yours truly.
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Bravo’s Untitled Art Project
“It’s so wrong, it’s right.”
“We have all seen you make a fool of yourself, but not on national TV. Do it.”
“You are a casting Director’s dream.” (But you should get a haircut, buy some shoes and fix that broken tooth.)
Great response to the previous post concerning Bravo’s Untitled Art Project. Awesome. Hits shot through the ceiling. Most had nothing to do with me but indicate a high level of interest in the subject. Good luck, all you contenders.
My plan is to have fun with it, use the application forms and requirements to answer questions I need to be asking myself and to push myself to do things I need to be doing anyway: putting together a portfolio of current work and greatest hits, cleaning up this blog , bringing my resume up to date, thinking about my work in the film industry and my desire to move my career to the direction of becoming a rich and famous artist – or a self-supporting one, at least.
The wisdom of the ancients is that everything passes and my experience so far confirms it. If I had a turkey and a bucket of frogs for every time I have publicly embarrassed myself I would truck them to Central Park and release them, and then we’d really have some fun. So I’m not worried. Too much. If I’d gone ahead and shot myself, like sometimes I thought I oughta, well, there wouldn’t be much left of me, now would there?
So I’ll fly to Chicago Wednesday morning, attend the casting call Thursday morning, and fly back to Albuquerque Friday morning. Call will be held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A place I have always wanted to see. Anyone want to offer a couch to crash on or suggest a cheap motel near the school?
I’ll be the guy in the clown suit, life in a backpack, pushing a shopping cart full of old newspapers, crushed carnival horns, rusted crap (I love rust), a sketchbook, a notebook, an ocean, a seahorse, marbles, some shiny hooks, snakes enough for two… also a basket of frogs, a cornfield, a waterfall, a house big enough for all the family, and all the friends, and all the ghosts of our ancestors, the unborn, and everyone who never had a chance, and all those who got burned, and all who are frightened, and all who are alone, and all who search for meaning, and all who follow a calling, and all who know the gods, in all their many shapes and forms, and all who recognize them in the people around them, and all who don’t.
I’ve heard this somewhere before. Oh, yeah, here.
Posted in Bravo’s Untitled Art Project, Chicago, Uncle Orson’s Writing Class and Literary Boot Camp, blog history, dreams, hatrack.com, images, notable collaborations, storybook collaborative, tapestry, words | 3 Comments »
