June 10, 2022 Weekly Musings

A tiny little garden within,
triumphant.
Ivory orchid,
seductive centers of passionate
periwinkle,
lavenders,
plum and
mulberry.
Suggestive tenderness
and enchantment.

My muse in life is my art and the art of living creatively and in harmony with my own self. I live my life as if I were a work of art. Art creates happiness. Happiness inspires me. Art shouts to me, “Be yourself, be unique, be one of a kind.” The concept of art is my muse on a daily basis which is why I believe art should be defined but also abstract and undefinable.

As a ”wordy,” I find the word, paradox to be playful, fun and intriguing. It means that there is a concept, an idea, that goes against what the majority of people believe. Paradoxes have been found in literature throughout history. The most famous book of paradoxes is the Bible and some of the comments that have been attributed to Jesus.

This word, paradox, makes so much sense to me because there are always two sides to everything. In our current culture we seem to have forgotten that.
Using an art example, I think of the work of Robert Raushenberg, a favorite 60’s artist of mine that was known for his ideas of breaking the rules and pointing out the complexity, paradoxes of our culture. Rauschenberg frequently put drawn 3-D boxes in his work. See the below example. I have always wondered about those boxes and have written frequently about what they could possibly mean. Today is no different. I think that boxes will begin appearing in my work as a reminder that there are two sides to everything. A box has a front and a back, a left and a right, a top and a bottom. And then to confuse the issue further there is the inside, a front and back….. you get the idea.

Photographer Chris Rauschenberg, son of Robert Rauschenberg, on his father’s desire to ‘talk about the world in all its complexity’ with Buffalo II — sold for $88,805,000 on 15 May

1964 was a year of socio-political, technological and cultural change in America: the nation mourned the murder of President John F. Kennedy; Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act; and The Beatles led the ‘British Invasion’ of the American pop market. But 1964 also marked a pivotal moment in the canon of post-war American art.

Featured image: Scarlet Tanager

The scarlet tanager’s habitat is huge. If you draw a straight line through the Dakotas down to the southeastern tip of Texas and then draw a line easterly to include all the mid-west, eastern coastal states, and the southern tips of Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, you would then have its habitat.

The scarlet tanager is a medium-sized American songbird. Until recently, it was placed in the tanager family, but it and other members of its genus are now classified as belonging to the cardinal family. Wikipedia

Scientific name: Piranga olivacea
Black wings: Male Scarlet Tanagers allaboutbirds.org
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Cardinalidae
Kingdom: Animalia

I love birds, I love painting birds. I love identifying birds and what they are called how they are classified. Taxonomies are defined in an online dictionary as: the branch of science concerned with classification, especially of organisms; systematics.

• the classification of something, especially organisms.

• a system of classification.

 BUT….
It seems to me that the classification system, the taxonomies created by scientists, is a problem, for things aren’t just what they are classified. They aren’t just a sparrow, they are unique each and ever one of them. Just like I am not just a white female…. I get so very very upset every time I am asked that question – it identifies the ‘other of me’…. Which is ok but when it classifies the two of us, man, that upsets me. There is more to me than the color of my skin as is there is more to my ‘other’ than the color of their skin. I dislike being plugged into a taxonomy of human beings. As an artist that has never set well with me. I would rather rewrite the rules of classifying. I think of art as a useful example for reference. And I think of birds the same way.

I never look at a bird as just a sparrow, just like I don’t look and think about an individual as just….

But I think about all living things as unique, beautiful, and one-of-a-kind. Classifying a bird is one thing, but classifying human beings is totally different and divisive.