the a list

  In case you were wondering

 As art goes, with the pandemic, my propensity for obsession, and a near death experience as an excuse to relearn the use of my right hand, ALOT. It's good that I opted for small. I've produced well over 1,000 pieces of art - not to mention music, poems, photographs, graphics, and videos since 2019.  My proliferation of expression was bolstered by the isolation of these COVID times. As we near - knock on wood - the transition from pandemic to endemic, I woke up this morning with this thought.  If art, like any form of expression, is communication, am I getting what I want from it?  That's a big question (share first, synthesize later).  I'll label it for future consideration.

  This multimedia print came to be eight or nine months into the pandemic. It spans a few decades in origin.  The number 3 recalls a numbered series of paintings I created before my kids were born. The relief number print shares space with some abstract mono printing, an ascemic treatment of our nation's motto E Pluribus Unum (Out of many, one), and some colored pencil. As you can see here, during the most intense periods of the pandemic, I signed all works with the acronym CVP - for Corona Virus Pandemic.

I take comfort and joy having this chapbook in my house and its language so close to my mind.  Sara's work as a word witch is mystifying, disturbing, and masterful. Also check out her Ethelzine

Forty-eight miles per second every million lightyears My memory and I walked our childhood backyard. Often enough, we’ve looked over its green clover  with empty sidelong glances. Sometimes we’d climb the great pine long fallen,  or admire the flowers of sharon and irises whose dust was swept down river in summers, until the swamp took over. This time we set feet firmly, pocketed hands and lifted chin. Meditating in the space between my father and us. Leaving the hydrangeas and nightshade behind, the universe – on the wave of a singularity – expanded, but this sloping pitch to the river somehow looks smaller. It must be true that only the spaces between are growing. Published in Levee Magazine November 2018

How it's made. walk around, a lot. see things, stick them in your pocket, or take a picture. store them in boxes. organize the boxes. throw out some of the things. use others. combine them with other things. make variations. go back to the first impression.  someone else picks the 5th one. puts it in a magazine .  you take it from here.

  A reminder to myself.  share first, synthesize later touch it, feel it, see it incompleteness is the rule Looking back on this photo from 2013, so much comes to mind.  I see irony - the photo of the Prudential building in the fog carries the notion of "prudence", a recollection of the Tower of Babel, and fog. I like it because there is no place for any feeling of clarity to land. So the picture keeps pulling on me.

  I'm starting anew without many constraints.  But blessed are the constraints, for they bound the chaos. share first, synthesize later touch it, feel it, see it incompleteness is the rule So, of course I have ignored my title and risk disappointing the reader (that may be an assumption worth stating).  What should you expect? Well, I am organized, so I have thoughts, but let's agree to get to the actual thoughts later. Here's what I expect you can expect, as those thoughts go: art  poetry  music  travel & connections Philosophy Buddhism (all thoughts will include and be influenced by the thoughts of so many others) <end of original list> 

free, light, a clean slate. a fresh start.  an interface between me and the world.