Flying Dragons

About twenty years ago I read a biography of Miles Davis after seeing him from the front row of the Flynn Theatre in Burlington, Vermont and having my head ripped off with bliss and funk. It was a mind/ear/spirit/horn blowing couple hours compounded by a day spent getting reasonably sunburnt and overly hydrated (say no more) on a sailboat. In the book, Miles described a young brilliant cornetist named Olu Dara as "just other and next." This morning on NPR I heard a blip for Ozy, the online source for "what's new and next." When I clicked over I found it is named for "Ozymandias", a fabulous and favorite poem and the title of a piece that I sold back in February of this year. Miles' phrase has stuck with me all these years as my professional, if formally secret, mission.

Step to the left. Last Friday I was at one of my boy's soccer matches in the middle of north central rural Vermont. As dusk fell during the game and the shadows stretched over the field a fleet of dragon flies were having a seriously uptempo dinner. Dozens of four inch long clicking and whizzing little choppers darted about hunting some invisible hors d'oeurves. They were way better than the pre-season scrimmage going on. I announced to my friends there, "You know dragon flies migrate. Some fly 4000 miles from India to Africa and back." I got the look I always get. The one that says, "Dude, you are making this stuff up."

So, I came home and did my homework. I have always loved these little critters, all brittle and scary, and seemingly built by aeronautical jewelers. Years ago we watched them appear at twilight on a canoe trip in Canada to pluck biting flies right out of the air. Their heads are all teeth and eyeballs. Each eye is 30,000 individual eyes, and because of the size and placement they can see nearly any direction. EVERYTHING is in their field of vision; one researcher believes they can see better than any other creature. They showed up on the planet 100 million years before the dinosaurs. They can fly 30 mph and, with a tailwind, they have been clocked at 80. Fossils exist with a 25 inch wingspan.

Miles' music for me has always had this feeling of perfection. Like Mozart, the theme doesn't feel written. It just is and always was. He "found" it. And then played it. It is timeless. Dragon flies have been around for 300 million years and have changed very little in all that time. Why? Because they are perfect. They are just bugs that can flap 30 beats a second. And hover. Or jet.
Or migrate thousands of miles.

I have found in my life a yearly migration, a cycling from one place to the next with an annual rhythm. Over Labor Day once again I will be standing around chatting about what I do and why. In California, per usual. And the following weekend I will be in New York City with my work and the work of friends: Joel Urruty and Gabriella Firehammer. My mission for years now has been to be "just other and next." I want my art to feel discovered more than composed. Look at Joel's work and one will feel this. The best art is timeless. Miles and flying dragons, every time feels like a blessing, every beat a window into prehistory, the exposed mind of the creator.

Eating Spiders

The New Horizons spacecraft just strolled past Pluto at ten miles a second, cameras blazing. We now have some sweet photos of 11,000 foot mountains that are likely composed of water ice. (Are they making that up? Where did the water come from?) The lack of craters suggests that these are recent geological formations that are 100 million years young, or so. One of the mountains is informally named for one of my childhood heroes whose name has poetically rolled around in my head for decades--Tenzing Norgay. He is the Sherpa who helped Mallory summit Everest. Say that name a few times and don't be surprised if floats in and out of your head. Try Sylvain Chavanel, or Daniel Teklehaimanot, Lars Boom, or .... If you are watching the Tour de France these are familiar names. Weird ones, but fun to say. My fave is from NPR--Ofeibea Quist-Arcton.

But I digress. Intentionally, I suppose, because I'm circling around to the close and familiar from the truly far off and distant. In my yard is a plant that is the only surviving genus of a class of plants that for 100 million years dominated the understory of late Paleozoic forests. It's a weird looking thing that once had cousins that grew to 90 foot tall trees. Equisetum. Reproduces with spores instead of seeds and happens to fix silicates in its stem. And it is the plant that fixates titanium in its tissue more than any other living thing. Titanium is the elegant metal that we are using to make bracelets this summer in the shop AND the correct material for building the SR-71 Blackbird. Fastest plane ever and almost 90% titanium. It has the highest strength to density ratio of any metallic element.

But I digress. It's really about the black raspberries that grow all over the fence next to my house. Turns out that these fixate 10 different metals that we need to keep healthy. And they are free. And right there. And really tart and sweet. Did I mention they spontaneously appear? I've been picking these almost daily, eating all I can stand and then putting the rest in the fridge. Later when I open the container there are plenty of different kinds of little spiders sneaking around in there.

So I'm busy doing my Elements homework, cranking out the heirlooms, watching the Tour and pushing light around in the studio. The deep space probe is telling us all about the farthest dance partners. Meanwhile, these primitive horsetail plants are invading my yard. (The story is Equisetum helped John Napier discover algorithms.) I, apparently, have daily been eating teeny spiders without noticing.

Just trying to get those sweet antioxidants. I will keep you posted when the super powers appear. In the meantime, pay attention. Stop mumbling. Sit up straight. Summer is fleeting.

Friday June 19th - 5 pm Art, 7:30 pm Music

Years ago, could be thirty three give or take, I saw a fantastic Laurie Anderson concert with Adrian Belew on guitar and a moveable stage set of screens and props. Amidst all the melodic electricity was a mini lecture regarding the power of music. She began by showing a binary representation of a number. I think it was the date, just a brief string of ones and zeros. Math is clean and concise. Then, she projected on the backdrop a binary representation of a page of text, Hamlet's soliloquy or a doughnut recipe. Yikes! Lots of ones and zeros. Finally, she justified her career as a musician by projecting a veritable ocean of ones and zero on the backdrop of the stage. "This is the opening four bars of Beethoven's Fifth…"

Please forgive the paraphrasing of an evening of brilliance from decades ago but the concept is profound. Music is an all consuming, all devouring beast at its best. It's an experience of mind/body/spirit. Alan Watts wrote, "To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, 'I am listening to music,' you are not listening."

Music can transport those who are not listening/listening. Handel's Messiah, Sigur Ros, Louis Armstrong, Mozart, Danny O'Keefe, Keith Jarrett, Pat Metheny, Eric Clapton, can bring tears, stop time, uplift. The Gospel tent at Jazz Fest in New Orleans can change the way you feel about music forever. Go there. Trust me.

Laurie Anderson was speaking about the volume of communication made possible by music. But the real "crux of the biscuit" is the communication itself - one human mind to another human mind, a purity of communion, a sharing of the same stuff. With rhythm. You don't need to know the words. You just need to give in and let go.

To this end HAVOC gallery is hosting a free concert on Friday, June 19, 5-10 p.m. Party and Art starts at 5 p.m. and concert at 7:30 p.m.

Headwinds

Hello,
:)

Years ago I saw Furry Lewis at the Memphis Blues Festival. He told us he was 92 but a little fact checking shows he was exaggerating by 5 years. Blind, with a wooden leg, he played an electric guitar that looked like a cigar box with a neck. He was grumpy but rocking the blues on stage to a mob of ecstatic fans.

B. B. King passed away a month ago. He was born on a cotton plantation to sharecropper parents, drove a tractor as a teenager for money. After years of playing and singing he worked up to making $85 a week in his early thirties. Later on he won 15 Grammys and became the legend we know today. The King is dead. Long live the King.

I ride my bike a lot. Maybe too much. When I'm cranking along on a road and a car or a truck rolls by just a bit faster than I'm moving I check my six and slide out into the turbulence of the tumbling air and put the hammer down. The fastest anyone has ridden a streamlined, recumbent bike is 83 mph, but the crazy man motorcycle racer Guy Martin (look him up--he rides the Isle of Man TT every year) has ridden 112 mph behind a truck. Drag coefficient increases as a square of speed so with the sweet spot of turbulence…

One of my brothers has told me for years that the point of difficulty is the place where growth occurs. Just this week he wrote, "Nothing is stable, balance is the only way. Doubt haunts the self until it tires of its own voice and withdraws, freeing the energies of possibility to find their potential." Yep, he is a genius and needs to write more, I know. He also introduced me to Clapton and the Allman Bros. so he knows the real sound of the blues. And last week he paddled a 102 miles in 15 hours on a stand up paddle board. Wind and waves.

The goodness of turbulence, my friends, is its ability to pull us up to our potential. Sure, coasting is great too, but you have to suffer to sing the blues. If you truly want to sing, you have to face the dragon trying to eat you. He's got fangs; you have skills you have forgotten about and far more strength than you use day to day. Pull into the turbulence and put the hammer down…

But, "the eagle flies on Friday and Saturday I go out to play…"

Chrono Logical

I was hiking next to the Na'ili'ili-Haele stream and thinking, "Time is a construct." The biggest company in the world is telling us we all need a new watch - the "Watch"- to help us keep track of how much time we spend doing things we should or should not be doing, like sleeping or running or sitting or checking our phones. And I was thinking I don't need to know the time exactly as my boys and I were walking through a bamboo forest in the middle of the classic discussion of "how fast does bamboo grow?" Compared to what? It's the fastest growing plant as we know - some species can grow as much as 3 feet in 24 hours or a millimeter every 2 minutes. That's pretty speedy, for organic stuff. But, cheetahs can hit 60 mph in 4 seconds and a falcon can fly/dive 240 mph.

The bamboo we were surrounded by was up to 60 or 70 feet tall; the tallest species of this giant grass gets up to 130 feet. But we have 6 feet of DNA in the nucleus of every cell in our bodies. And as far as speed goes, our microscopic biomechanical machinery replicating DNA and fabricating protein molecules is without peer - 100 trillion molecules of hemoglobin is being created per second in every person reading this.

So back to Time in the forest of fastest growing plants, bamboo also produces flowers and has the distinction of being the plant with the longest time between blooming. One species only blossoms every 130 years. There we go - fastest and slowest.

Do I need a watch? Do you? There's a guy in Britain named Krzysztof Szymaniec. I'm pretty sure he doesn't. He is the keeper of the "Caesium Fountain," an atomic clock accurate to one second every 158 million years. I hope he takes hikes with his boys. And by the way, uphill of the bamboo forest is a 400 foot waterfall. Take a dip when you get there. Without your watch.

Ice whine and sunshine

"Write about Spring," said my gallery director. Rite. No problem. Let's see - reawakening, pick-ups plunging through rotten ice, daffodils, ice jam flooding, thunder, buds on a hillside as a pale chartreuse mist on the familiar dead sticks, a crocus, an umbrella…Immediately comes the recognition of the local, individual, aspect of this stanza we call spring. Mine is radically different from my cousin's in Virginia or Maui. Literally as I write, the rain this March morning just turned to snow. Vermont! It's falling now with intent, vertically.

So, I won't. Spring is your pivot not my poem. It's personal. It's the moment when exiting the house you don't layer; you put golf clubs/bikes/boats in/on the car; you pause at the top of Nose Dive with acres of corn snow waiting, super hero surfing snow, like butter; your forsythia explodes; you stroll rather than brave the elements; you sow; buffleheads reappear; music returns to the breeze...

The crux is the angle of light. That is what changes and what clicks in us all. For me my whole career hinges on exactly that, the angle of light, that subtle differentiation, diffraction, diffusion. Open wide those eyes my friends. Go walk the dog even if you don't have one. The light is higher and ready for you to notice.

Oh, and just so you know, the snow quit. 

But here in the gallery we have snow continuing. A book full of snowflakes, all 14 created so far by Bruce R. MacDonald, is almost at the printer. We will keep you privy of the release date. For now here is a taste.

Jookin' Wanderers and Baltimore, Maryland

The earth doesn't revolve around the sun. In fact none of the planets do. We all revolve around the center of mass of the solar system which changes constantly. Sometimes it is near the center of the sun and sometimes it's in space around the sun. Technically, that shifting, looping point is called the "barycenter," in case anyone is on Jeopardy tonight. And, relative to the surrounding space, that point is moving 144 miles a second. Thataway. 

Now apply this principle to your life. Your axis is constantly shifting. Work, your partner, your kid(s), your obsessions, your horse, FB, music, skiing, vacation planning… Yeats famously said, "The centre cannot hold." I posit, the center is a fiction. We are just dancing around other stuff dancing around. All the time. I hope you got rhythm.

Dance on over to The American Craft Council Art Fair in Baltimore, February 20-22, Baltimore Convention Center, www.shows.craftcouncil.org/  baltimore. I will be in booth #711 with some hip hop, ballet, krumping, waltz, polka and jookin' collection of Elements and fresh light sculptures.

Tokamaks and Moringas

A few weeks back I mentioned in writing some electromagnets being built in France that were twice the power of a Saturn Five's rocket thrust. Indoors. With an on/off switch. This prompted readers' questions of "what the hell?!" Ever heard of a tokamak? In essence, it is a star in a bottle. The visionary physicists out to solve long term the energy needs of the planet have a project going in the south of France to make a fusion nuclear reactor. All reactors today split atoms, fission, to generate power; and in the process generate nightmarish trash, radioactive by-products that will be toxic to humans and all living things for hundreds of thousands of years. And then there is the toxicity of uranium mining and processing, the preparation of the fuel.

A fusion reactor will basically run on seawater and generate massive amounts of power with no waste products. The challenge being faced is how to contain the hellfire of a star's guts inside a building. The solution is an electromagnetic torus, a tokamak, a doughnut shaped force field of pulsing energy constraining the forces capable of incinerating any material in existence--metals, vaporized; ten foot solid diamond walls, utter toast, instantly. But this power plant is being built, partly the construction project of a forty nation consortium, partly an improbable science experiment. Humans. We can do this.

Meanwhile, in Saharan Africa facing the droughts of climate change, researchers are planting Moringas. It's a tree sourced from India that is fast growing and nearly impossible to kill. "Extremely drought tolerant" is the applicable descriptor here. Its leaves can be eaten raw, cooked, or ground into baby formula. They contain four times the calcium of milk, four times the Vitamin A of carrots, seven times the Vitamin C of oranges, three times the potassium of bananas and 150% the protein of soybeans. Their seeds can be pressed into an olive oil-like unsaturated fat or crushed into a powder that can purify water, the electrolytes in the powder attract impurities and precipitate them out of the fluid. The Moringa is the leading edge of food research to feed all of us and especially those where sweet rainfall is scarce.

So there we go. Farmers and physicists. Saving the world.

Likely none of these folks will read these paragraphs but the strength of their efforts has to reverberate. We can all focus wherever we can to dance forward. Little steps can preface big leaps. You have to love the fact the Wright brothers were bike mechanics first.

And of course Beauty with a capital B. There is a piece of my work hanging on the dining room wall of the director of the Hubble Space Telescope. This makes me happy and hopeful. Science and art. We got this...

Havoc

I looked up the word "havoc" in my desktop Webster's and it's there on the very bottom of the page, five entries below the name of my college. Hmmmm. Anyway its derivation is from Old High German "heffen" meaning "to life up." Also referenced just above "great destruction and devastation," is the definition from Old French and Middle English "to take booty." Now we are talking. Aside from the general understanding we all have of "total chaos" is the notion of "booty" with "havoc." HAVOC is my gallery project to share the talents of some of my artist friends with the rest of you fine people. HAVOC is where one might find "booty" to uplift one's existence. To this end HAVOC Gallery will have a strong presence during The Art Basel week in Miami at Red Dot Art Fair, December 2-7, 2014. www.reddotfair.com. Come see wood, metal photons, glass and air working their magic in booth A108 with HAVOC gallery exhibited artists: Joël Urruty, Sam Stark, Gordon Auchincloss and Bruce R. MacDonald. Attached is complimentary admission for Wednesday and Thursday. See you in Miami to uplift your existence with HAVOC Gallery.

Critters, us and daily courage

The Golden Crested Kinglet is a bird that winters in Vermont foraging in little flocks for the insects that are its only source of food. He weighs as much as a nickel. Dressing in drab camo, he's somewhat hard to find, unless he is riled up and then he sports a crest of brilliant lemon yellow that magically appears on his dusky head. One of his specific survival adaptations to deal with his Siberian winter home is his ability to reduce his heat loss by minimizing his surface area at night. He cuddles with his mates. Snuggling together they handle sub-zero windy nights. And they weigh exactly as much as two dimes.

Big deal you say. Well, this guy is my new hero. Picky, brave, resilient, choosing to stick around rather than move to Miami. Dapper when he wants. Efficient. Sings now and then. Sticks close to the family. If I grow up I want to be like him. Happy Holidays all you fine people. Love, hugs, warmth and may a bounty of bugs to eat come your way in 2015.

Oh yeah, and buy more art. It's part of what makes us humans humans.

The Force Now - Chicago

May the force be with you. This has always felt like the blessing most empowering to give. THE force. Not just any old force but THE force, the one that matters, that really works. As usual I think scientifically, first. Gravity is a good one. In even an everyday star like our sun gravity is so strong it takes a hundred thousand years for heat and light to escape and warm my face on my last bike ride. That's a nice feeling from a four hundred quintillion megawatt power source ninety-three million miles away. Yep. Force.

Some scientists in Europe are building an electromagnet as part of a project to solve the energy challenge that will likely end our world as we know it within a hundred years. Their design can generate inside a building the repulsion force equivalent to twice what the rockets lifting the space shuttle generate. And then there is the Strong Force which takes over from that repelling force once positively charged protons are brought close enough together. This is the force that binds atomic nulei. Squeeze two protons tight enough, so they are 0.000000000000001 meters close together and the Strong Force takes over uniting them. The Strong Force is about a hundred times stronger than electromagnetism.

Mostly I just like the name - the Strong Force. Can you feel it?! Well. Actually. No. Not so much. The strongest force I feel everyday is love. I love my kids. I love my brothers. My family is everything. Everybody knows that this is the real Force. Holidays are coming where we visibly and invisibly join hands to celebrate our religions and the solstice, but mostly there is an extra couple of logs on the fire of compassion and togetherness. Be warmer this season my friends than ever before. Take extra time to squeeze those hands tightly. The real strong force is love and may it be with you. For real.

Oh, and by the way. I'm bringing artwork to the midwest. I got a little distracted there. Again. Pismo Gallery from Colorado will exhibit the newest and latest stainless steel light sculptures, inspired by forces, at The SOFA Art & Design Chicago Art Fair, Festival Hall, Navy Pier, Chicago, November 7-9, 2014. www.sofaexpo.com

The human race is the size of a sugar cube

Anyone reading much of anything these days saw the news recently that the human body strolling about being you is 90% other microorganisms. Yep, apparently only 10% of your body is composed of cells that contain your individual DNA. The rest is all bacteria, viruses, molds, flora and fauna that populate the planet You. Do you feel special?

Next, consider that humans are about 60% water. Two Hydrogen atoms and one Oxygen, not exactly personal ingredients, compose most of what you are as an animal. In fact 99% of the human body by mass is just six Elements: Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Calcium, Phosphorus. Of these six, four are the same as the most abundant Elements in the Universe overall. The exceptions being Helium and Neon which are too gaseous to hang around and be useful.

Ok, basic, right? We are space stuff. But even more humbling is that we are overwhelmingly space itself. If the nucleus of an atom were the size of a marble the first electron whirling around it would be a football field away. Atoms are 99.999999999999% empty space.

If we could remove the space and pack all the electrons, neutrons and protons the way you pack your carry-on bag, the entire human race would be the size of a sugar cube. Sweet!

So we are simple chemistry sets and mostly nothingness. Great. The Universe is 13.7 billion years old and I hope to live to be 80. I'm just a temporary fog of almost nothing, literally. So folks, get busy. Make the most of today. Whatever you do keep in mind that you are nothing but what you do. That's it. Do good stuff NOW.

'Till next time.

Thanks
Love you all.

The Elements, KABOOM!

Hope your holiday was a fabulous celebration.

Green is Barium, #56. Red is Strontium, #38 or Lithium, #3.

We had our annual fireworks at the camp where I grew up in the summers. On a warm July evening that was wonderfully dry for a change we laid on our backs on a ball field by the lake and watched the pyrotechnics blossom and bang. Thwunk…. up up up, up, and then, POW, cascading stars, fizzing streaks of brilliance burning into our eyes.

Silver is Titanium, #22. Blue is Copper, #29.

Shock waves of sound echoed off the ridge behind and rolled off toward the mountain. Thwunk… Thwunk...again and again while the kids jabbered and the adults oooohhed and ahhhhed on cue. Boom, KABOOM… showers of light, gargantuan flowers in the deep cobalt blue of twilight.

Orange is Calcium, #20. Yellow is Sodium, #11.

As I closed my eyes after the explosions I could still see the image in negative on the backs of my eyelids and I wondered what makes that flash flash purple. (A careful mix of Strontium and Copper I discovered later).

White is Magnesium, #12 or sometimes Aluminum, #13. Is that coincidence, those numbers, that light color? Magic or just chemistry or both…

The fireworks ended my week on the lake. Seemed fitting. It's a special place. My father's first summer there was 1936. Boys' camp. I have five brothers. On and on, my two sons are there...generations…As my brother Kevin and I drove away to bring me back to Burlington and to deliver him to the airport to return to California, we passed a familiar farmer's field in a little lowland depression by the road. I glanced and we came to a sudden stop, parked the car and got out in the blackness of a moonless summer night. The Summer Triangle and Milky Way shone above. In the field before us was a hatch of thousands upon thousands of lightning bugs madly twinkling in the featureless darkness. It was as though the brightest stars in the Milky Way had descended to sparkle one flash at a time across the backdrop of pure black nothingness. With complete arrhythmia, in absolute silence, the sparks of tiny bug butts transformed the emptiness of a peaceful Vermont night. I have witnessed very little as sublime and simple as our half hour in the darkness. A few cars passed and we screwed our eyes shut to preserve our night vision. The fireflies were having their moment and we were fortunate to be witness.

The next day I got to work to find an email from a friend which contained a composite image from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cassini Probe showing auroras on Saturn. They are huge, bigger than the Earth and they last for days. Stiff solar winds were creating ion storms lighting up the poles on our big ringed neighbor.

Incandescence, bioluminescence, and massive auroras… It's all about light my friends. Whether it's oxygen being excited or luciferase (from the Latin, "Lucifer"-- bringer of light) or burning Barium, we are surrounded by photons. It's why I do what I do--pushing light. Cheers to a summer of light and luxury, lassitude on a reasonable scale and magic everyday. Life is a wonder.

Please visit the website, www.HAVOCgallery.com. The Elements project is in full swing. Who wants Strontium?

Who needs K?

Acuity

Let's assume that the earth is the size of a typical classroom globe. The moon which is about one quarter the size of the earth is how far away? What's your best guess? While you are thinking, consider in this little scale comparison that the ISS would be floating 3/8" off the surface of the globe. Ok. So, the moon would be about thirty feet away. You all got that one. Right? OK. Now how far would it be to Mars?

Researchers have been studying the way elephants communicate and have found that there is a special stance that these massive animals assume when they are listening. There are nerve endings sensitive enough in their front feet and trunk that they can hear sound waves passing through the ground up to twenty miles away and actually communicate over distances of around ten miles. When they "talk" subsonically through the ground they have muscles in their ears which can constrict to increase the sensitivity to vibrations through their bones. Their bodies can accurately triangulate location miles away. 

And then there are blue whales which are capable of communicating in good conditions over a thousand miles of ocean. "Hey guys, the krill over here is on special. Swing by." These guys don't need the internet. They are just paying very close attention to their own species in a completely organic way. Millennia of evolution has gifted creatures with unfathomable sensitivity. So what about us? Did we miss out on something? I can't hear through my feet. 

No. But I can and most of you can triangulate with our ears to within one degree of accuracy.  We can differentiate as many as ten million colors according to some scientists. While we focus on traveling to Mars and speeding up the next chip in the little screens in our pockets we lose track of our innate superpowers. My kids can ski though trees at frightening speed, their minds over clocking texture, gravity, twigs, stumps, drops, ice, their brother sailing out of nowhere and stealing their line… Go to Youtube and search up the Isle of Man TT and consider the computations those guys are making on the fly--country roads at 170 mph… We are gods of capability. 

So celebrate and scrutinize. Play that music and wiggle that body. Jump, swim, run, pedal, sing, paint, and fire every last nerve you possibly can before they fizzle. We are superheros. It's all a relative thing. And by the way, Mars is a mile away.

Truth is beauty is magic.......Palm Springs and Baltimore

Wow.  There is a lot going on. I was looking out the window from seven miles up and thinking how much the earth down there looks like one of my art pieces, except much flatter. And then how the most dominant feature is all these tracks left by one animal--us. Shouldn't there be buffaloes?

I read recently that the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone created all sorts of unexpected results like the resurgence of the songbird population. This led me to thinking of one of my favorite lines in all the movies is when the alien hands a monk a key and says, "Time matters not, only life." We are collectively pretty damn focused on time these days. Researchers have come up with circuit boards one atom thick of a form of tin and graphene that processes near instantaneously. Yay. But can whales hear each other? When was the last time you listened to Handel with a kid? Yoga or Facebook?

And so, how about a little less tempo and a little more listening to songbirds? I had a music prof back in school explain how art, music in particular, can suspend time. Please, take some, my friends, and consider the alien's advice. Slow down. Breathe and see the patterns we make. And consider the ones we make without intention.

I know this is a very crunchy missive, but then, I live in Vermont. Stop by and say hi in Palm Springs or Baltimore.

Ciao. And thanks for being an active agent. Next time we need to talk about glide ratio and Phi.
Happy stormy weather.

2014, Unlucky plus 1

Swagger. Say that a couple times. Swagger. Swagger. Or make it a verb. Swaggers. It is like sauntering but with confidence, swiveling the hips with intention, subtly or with gusto, swerving through space as we go to signal that we are happy to be here and doing what we are doing. It is so different from marching in every way. And really the opposite of plodding, though plodding is a great word to say. Swaggering I am thinking is also uniquely human. Things and critters don't do this. Check that; things made with swagger can.

And at the inception of a new calendar this concept comes to the fore in my mind as something to embrace. Let go of any derogatory connotations of the word and make this motion an outlook. Swagger not because you are superior to others but that you are superior, period, the pinnacle of evolution, the highest form of life on the planet, with an awareness of self and of place. Put some swagger in your day and let the neighbors know that you are here for a reason.

What does this have to do with art? Well, glad you asked. All art is swagger. Why is any image worth creating, recording or preserving? Because it has swagger. It is a thing in space with intention and a smidgen of pride. It is because it is believed, (by somebody, at least one person) to be worthy, expressive, uplifting. That trumpet solo, that cast aside of the bat as the ball sails over the fence in center, those tights, those boots, that hat, the new wheel set, this photo, that painting, even that guy tromping patterns in the snow in a storm somewhere up high is doing something with swagger.

Go this route my friends. Take on 2014 with style and confidence. Be inspired each day and express it will just a little swagger.

Come see my latest in stainless swaggering at Art Palm Beach, www.artpalmbeach.com, with the Maria Elena Gallery, January 23-27, Palm Beach County Convention Center, Florida. I will be there to discuss the imperative of the original and its impossibility. And why James Brown is best for tree skiing.

See you in Florida. Thanks. Enjoy the turbulence.

Birefringence and NYC

Some words just jump off the page. I was reading along and "birefringence" leapt out and whacked me with the realization that a group of scientists are spending their careers studying something that I have been looking at for years as my personal cool optical phenomena awareness. Wood like tiger maple has "chatoyance" or the ability to change its luster depending on the angle of the viewer. I first noticed this playing with my corduroy pants in grade school. Light, then brush it the other way, dark. I could make stripes on my non stripey pants with careful brushing instead of listening to the teacher talk about the Civil War. Again. A guitar maker friend years ago explained how some woods will shift their highlights as the angle of the light changes.

And then I noticed the way the groundskeepers at Fenway can make stripes in the grass with careful mowing. There is a whole cadre of aestheticians riding around the ballparks and golf courses in the summer unleashing "birefringence" on the unknowing general public. Why is the grass two different colors when it's the same grass? Well obviously it's the propagation of light reflectance along multiple axes. Sweet. And this is exactly what I do for a living. I push light. Gently but with determination I make light do stuff. Ambient photons, light from ninety three million miles away, or waves from a halogen bulb on the ceiling are the pushees, the dancers, and the scratched facets in the stainless are the pushers. I'm just the coach.

With a little homework I discovered this fathomless field of non Newtonian materials, liquid crystals, polymorphism and the next level which is all about refraction and not reflection at all. We will discuss that later. Meanwhile, please come see what this humble choreographer is making the dancers do. "High stepping into town..." at The Affordable Art Fair in NYC next weekend.

HAVOC Gallery will be exhibiting the latest in my stainless light adventures alongside the smooth, wood lines of Joel Urruty's sculptures and Susan Madacsi's vibrant steel at The Affordable Art Fair, www.affordableartfair. com/newyork/, October 3-6, 2013.

See you in New York City.

Reflecting on not reflecting

Hi every last one of you,

Just returning to the studio after a fabulous two shows on the west coast. Seattle, as usual, kept a group of my new pieces and San Francisco pretty much took the rest. I returned home with one piece and commissions to keep me more than busy. Merci, gracias, and thank you.

Attached to this missive are images of brand spanky new wood sculptures, pieces that reflect years' of my focus on wood as a visual medium. Almost antithetical to the intangibility of my light sculpture work, these pieces are a fixation of the organic time inherent in the grain of wood. Wood grain is time manifest. Air, sun, water and years and years grew these Douglas firs which were then milled by the Rasco Wood Products Company of Clarks Grove, Minnesota (says so in stenciled faded black lettering) into laminated curved beams which have been holding up a barn in Vermont for ninety years or so. I dismantled said barn seventeen years ago.

These sculpture are generated by slicing the beams on the three different axes, X, Y, and Z and then reassembling. They are all the same material: pink in one, blackened by leaching iron nails in another, rock solid here, decaying and faded grey there, raggedy and fuzzy from time relentless...

They are not stained, by me anyway. One has a little oil rubbed in. One, a bit of wax. They are rugged chronicles and they are smooth in places; they are rhythmic and history fixed. They feel old and grown and a little bit fresh and unpeeled. Trees have souls. There. I said it.

So, thanks for looking. It's nice for me to stretch and share.

Hope August has been full of sun and vegetables, hammocks and beaches, cool drinks and many hugs.

New words for the old friends

I like numbers. They exist in a place in our brains that is completely different than words. But for me it's the big ones that really dance. Knowing that your brain is three pounds of tangly mush says a bit, but knowing that in the mush are 100 billion neurons that make 100 trillion connections is the real magic. That is more intersections than there are stars in the galaxy, IN OUR HEADS. And these connections are constantly updating, reforming, refilling. Just the notion that you read this information has changed your head forever as well as the actual imprinting in your mush of the numbers themselves. Some of us will remember the numbers. Some of you will remember the idea.

And then throw in the poetic that for a moment here we are like chess pieces suddenly aware of ourselves, our choices and a game going on. AND to continue the metaphor, in a game of chess, in a little over forty moves there are more possible moves than there are atoms in the universe. Kind of makes one want to sit down. Maybe sip some tea. I guess I like numbers and brains. But mostly awareness. Thanks and enjoy your tea.

But wait, there's more. The Annual Art Hop is upon us which is even better than tea. Stop by on Friday, September 6th from 5 until 9 or Saturday the 7th from 10 until 4. Leave your email on an official scrap of paper and we will randomly select one out of the official hat to receive the panel 'Arc Light' free. No charge, just happiness.

Not just passing through

Neutrinos (meaning "small neutral ones" in Italian) are sub atomic particles so small that their mass has never been accurately measured. 65 billion are passing through every square centimeter of your body and then continuing on through the Earth and away. Yep. Now. And now. Now.

How does this have anything to do with Art? Glad you asked. Turns out they have "flavors."

Yep. So even this infinitesimal bit of the universe has style, a manifestation of difference. You should too. And maybe not so subtle. Carry on.