Your Art History Prof. Speaks!

A rainy night in San Francisco
funny- by the sound of the cars passing by on the street i knew that the rain had started,
even though when i arrived here it was clear.

A strange thing about inspiration-
often my ideas and urges to create overlap.
All day I wanted to write, an inspiration that I almost never recieve-
and so i wanted to honor that and see what came out-
I sat down after dinner with my disused "serious" journal
(as opposed to my "bits" journal which is mostly other people's words which inspire me)
and wrote a bit- about the mix tape I was listening to...and what i read into the lyrics
and just let myself float into writing without thought or plan or narrative...
and then almost against my will I put my book down,
walked into my bedroom and started picking up and cleaning fantasizing about
deconstructing and reconstructing some of my clothing,
trying to embroider on velvet for patches ,
and went to the point of dragging out my sewing machine when I realized I had stopped writing.

Sometimes I feel that I am a vessel for these whims.
It could be a disconcertingly religous thought:
one a bit too close to the idea of being a "vessel for the word of a God",
and inspiration being the divine fire that it is your duty to obey.
I don't believe in God,
so I would describe these whims, these inspirations, these itching fingers,
this ceasless puttering and creating that I do without (often) thought or deliberation,
as a communication with some other part of myself,
a higher and more pure part maybe,
an unconscious or subconscious part that lies deep next to the core of who i really am,
as a person,
as an individual animal.

I don't know.
I like this unknowing too.
Almost makes me feel spiritual sometimes:)

I got an amazing Taschen book from work, "Alchemy & Mysticism: The Hermetic Museum", which is a thick little thing, and just about impossible to put in the scanner, but as we all know, old engraving and minitures that illustrated alchemical texts are strange and intense and compelling in this wierd way. They are totally surreal and indescipherable and often perverse-seeming. I like these ones though they are more simple than most of the stuff in the book, the concentric circle is one that I return to again and again in my artwork. The first is from Robert Fludd (circa 1617), for whom the divine act of creation was a concrete visible process. He illustrated this in a series of engravings, all circular. He thought that our planet was such a "vale of tears" because it had emerged by this process from the "sludge of creation where the devil dwells":




This is part of a large series of engravings circa 1718, which detail how to make "Lapis Philosophorum" or a "Philosopher's Stone" (of Harry Potter fame. hahaha.) a healing material with all of it's elements in perfect harmony.



BUT, as a tie in first place for my favorite mystical illustrators are Hildegard Von Bingen (introduced to me by my father, who likes to put on her musical compositions on Sunday mornings), who was, to understate, no slouch. Talk about being constantly in the thrall of the divine spirit of creativity. Read about her
Here. You'll be glad you did. Here is her highly abstract and beautiful vision of the universe:



Tied with Hildy is Hieronymus Bosch:



This concludes the art history section of this blog! There will be a test on Friday, open notes, 10 AM sharp! hahaha.