C Sharp and Violet

Hi friends, 

Most of the time these writings focus on everything but what I really do everyday. Just to review, we recently touched on relativity, ostriches, the ship of Theseus, border collies, atomic bombs, hummingbirds, space telescope thermal regulation, beer, Pi, bunnies, Stonehenge, atlatls, laser beams and birefringence. Weirdly, there is no mention of coffee. Need to rectify that. But, this go-round, let's talk about art. Time to focus. 

Music has the capacity to alter time, fire emotions, put a listener in another state, literally; it stands apart from "normal" existence. It is an experience that occurs as much in the head as in the world in front of the listener. I recently saw Chris Thile and before that, Pat Metheny. The band plays and yet the experience you have standing beside me is different from the experience I have, even though we are listening to the same notes. One band I hardly knew. The solo guitarist I have listened to for forty years, from a dorm room in Philadelphia to the plains of Wyoming in a German car going 140 with a brother at the wheel and the stereo on eleven. My mind is not the same as yours. (Lucky you). And your neural firings generated by the guitar chord are entirely different. Same song. Different evocative waves of memory and emotion. Each time you hear a familiar song, it's different. Every time you listen to that same song in the car, there's a different landscape tearing by. Even in your living room, that familiar tune goes into your ear to a different brain from the last time you listened. These are nuances. And they matter.

A painting hangs on a wall. Soundless. Walk around the room. Same painting. I'm in love with "Vir Heroicus Sublimis" by Barnett Newman, painted in 1951. It's huge and RED and spectacular --  an international treasure in MOMA. It's emotional. Part of its majesty is its simplicity and solidity. It stands as a monument in art history. It's always the same to behold. 

But, a sculpture outdoors is dynamic. It changes from moment to moment while being the same object. How does that work? Light. Light is always changing outside of the box we know as a museum. Visit "Cloud Gate" in Chicago. It is different every time you see it and changes throughout the day. This is the conceptual framework that ties what I do more closely to music than to painting. I believe my work is best in a home filled with changing light than in a gallery. Early morning, lunch time, night time, blue skies, Spring, snow on the ground, November grey skies, Florida light is different from LA light, shimmering light off the ocean, the glow of a sunset over the lake. A client sent me photos of his piece of mine on a sunset evening last summer lit with the red-orange fierceness caused by Canadian wildfires. 

I don't make stand-alone outdoor sculptures outdoors (much). I make sculptures that play with the light in your space. AND, the intention is to enhance your experience of visible electromagnetic radiation, to make you more aware of how your eyes and mind perceive this world. When our eyes are open, vision accounts for two-thirds of the electrical activity in the brain. Forty percent of all nerve fibers connected to the brain are linked to the retina in the back of your eye, and fifty percent of the cortex is dedicated to processing visual stimuli. This is my leverage. I want you to spend enough time with my artwork to tune up your sensibilities regarding the light reaching your mind. I want the subtleties to matter. When we are standing in front of my art, we are seeing different things -- parallax is working, light is refracting and reflecting at different angles. And relax, take in the nuance, and then step two feet to the right and relax again. New. Fresh. Sit on the sofa. Different. Turn on a lamp. And on and on. The more time spent, the more one finds -- old friend glimmers, new separations of background and foreground, lines connecting that you never noticed before.  And, as with any repeated experience, you will see more and better. 

This mission aligns with music as a way to make our time on the planet more magical. If we listen a lot we hear more. Ask any birdwatcher. Or music teacher. Or DJ. My efforts are to make you more aware of this superpower that we all are gifted. If you spend time with my brushwork, my vocabulary, my energy fields and scribbles and geometries and shapes and smudges and vectors and arcs and... It's like ear training for your eyes, yoga for perception, dancing to learn how the body moves. 

When I write to you, I want you, dear reader, to come away with something fresh. These are words to do what my visual art does in a more primitive way. Fire the visuals again and again and you will apprehend the experience of sight with just a smidgeon of more notice, a little more awareness of the subtleties and the loud wavelengths. Your memories of artworks and the zoo and weather and architecture and twilight and the shimmering afternoon light from a boat and that eclipse! and movies and morning fog through the trees will be different from mine, but I hope the experience of spending time with my arrangements of wavelengths will elevate your joy in all of these. It's a weird, didactic mission that organically evolved. Thank the gods it's fun. Not done yet. 

Rock steady, Buy art. Hang it. And then email me what you see and feel. I'm a piano tuner; my art is the song; you are the piano. 

Happy Spring!

Refresh!

Love and big hugs,

B mac

P.S. We have been slow changing seasons in Vermont. Two days ago I read that paleontologists can identify a point in Earth's history when it rained for a million years. Ok. I'm good now. 

P.P.S. Crank the stereo.