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March 8, 2010
Every once in a while I try to remember to post an email from someone. We're
supposed to do that, aren't we? It's easy to get lost in creating the work and
forget to tell anyone about it.
He is in another country, so English isn't his first language, but he is speaking about the plaques and cap I made for him.
"I just want to tell you that I am very, very happy with the plates and the top. Very beautiful and artistic!!!! So much feeling! Thank you!"
February 26, 2010
I didn't know what waterboarding is. When I found out, I assumed it was
something our country was doing for the first time. As it turns out, it goes way
back.
Around 1900 the USA annexed some islands in the Philippines. The Philippines declared war to prevent us from taking their islands. And thus began the American-Philippine War in which we not only used waterboarding, but even sang at least one marching song about it. It was called "The Water Cure" and celebrated the use of waterboarding on Filipinos.
Mark Twain was so unhappy about that war that he founded an Anti-Imperialist League (there was more than one). Could it be that rather than launching negative responses, like that one - being against something, instead we should be ahead of the curve with a positive response? If we predicted what the next trouble spot would be, and therefore where our militarists next would advise sending soldiers, could we try to go there first with scholarships, students, musicians, cooks, etc., to meet hearts and minds and see if we can make it into a place that no one with a gun views it as a trouble spot?
February 25, 2010
Artist's Statements:
I prefer not to cerebralize the viewer's experience with the work by creating
what, to me, feels like a high school art instructor's dictum about what should
be kept in mind while viewing a work of art. Is there a surer way to prevent an
emotional involvement with it?
I once was walking through a museum when I passed an art teacher leading a group of senior citizens in an art appreciation course. I tried not to appear too dismayed. "When you look at this painting, look at this person in this window and think of the relationship that must exist between this person and the one on the floor below. Think up a story that connects the two people." Oh, for god's sake.
Is Mozart improved by noting cord changes? However much more than that an artist's statement might be, it still intellectualizes the experience in a way that violates the best cords art ever strikes.
February 1, 2010
Today's post is about coppersmithing, not peace, but some people investigate
this site to see if I've got the skills necessary to make their peace pole. So I
might as well post this as an example.
The teenage girl across the street was doing a science project. She was supposed to use a Peltier Module (see next paragraph if you've forgotten high school physics) in some everyday application. She decided it would be interesting to put one in an ice cream scoop. She knocked on my door to ask if I could cut a piece of metal in the shape of an ice cream scoop for her. I quizzed her a little about what she was going to do with it once cut. She had no idea. So I asked her to leave the Peltier Module with me over the weekend and I'd see what I could do.
Peltier Module - an electric current flowing through the
junction of two dissimilar conductors can cause it to act as
a heater or cooler. Flowing one way can make it warm. Flowing the other way can
make it cold. Flowing in one direction from metal A to metal B and then
continuing on into another piece of metal A cause both to occur at once. So a
Peletier Module gets hot on one side and cold on the other.
The ice cream scoop I made containing it is at right. I have the 9-volt battery halfway out of the handle so you can see it. Her idea was that the back of the scoop would get hot, to make it easier to scoop, while the front would get cold, to keep the ice cream cold. In practice, the copper conducts the heat from the back so well that the whole thing warms up. After a while the battery gets warm and warms the handle too.
I wanted to find out if contact with cold ice cream would absorb that heat leaving the back warmer and the front colder, but I didn't have any. So I pushed it into a container of ice. The hole thing got cold quickly. It probably needs more horsepower than a 9 volt battery.
January 15, 2010
Once upon a time in Berkeley, California on the street one would pass groups
of black men wearing Muslim garb and sitting with African percussion instruments
between their knees. A half a dozen or a dozen of them, even a couple of dozen,
would spend a good part of the day making rhythms. During a normal day one might
pass such groups at least several times. When I did, once in a while I leaned
over, or sat down, within reach of multiple skinned drums, and shared heads for
a bit. I would add a complimentary sound, and one that avoided interfering with
or overshadowing the fingers originally on the drums, until it seemed
appropriate to add something akin to a lead guitar weeping loudly between lines
of a lyric connecting them. Sometimes that is done by tripling the
speed with strikes across the right progression of drums. If the right drums are
in reach, melody can be created. I wasn't always sure I should do that. The
looks on the faces of black guys who held these rhythms and skills to be theirs,
their heritage,
when a 19 year old, blondish white guy did something beyond what they ever had
hoped to do. One of the gap-bridging advantages of percussion is that if you
have developed any skill with it, any place you go where they are tapping on
things, you can probably find a way to fit in. I just wasn't sure that the best
way to do that was by what might be interpreted as showing off. In music, being
the fastest or most dexterous is not to have been the best. That might be being
the worst. Blending, supporting, building together, like you'd want any
community of humans to do, requires being in tune, in sync, attentive and
cooperative. That's one of the advantages of groups in which everyone plays a
different instrument. You never go head to head with someone to match skills.
But only drums were in this mix. How to make that harmonious and bridge-building
in spite of differences in talent and skill and heritage? Could the perspectives
and diplomacy developed to accomplish that apply to building peaceful coalitions
in larger arenas?
January 14, 2010
An
oud is the Arab lute or guitar. You can buy them on line, acoustic or solid body
electric, even in children's size. And you can take lessons here in the USA. Do
we not want some students studying music in our colleges to take a course in the
oud for a year and then go to a university in an Arab country for a year to
learn from them, music, language and about their country in general, making
friends, building relationships, and all the things that happen when you are
young and learning and living in a foreign land? People with degrees in music
usually don't become professional musicians. Sometimes they find careers in the
state department - a good place for people who understand how to cooperate and harmonize.
Inviting a renowned performer over to give a concert is all well and good, but it is a distant cry from sitting down with someone and joining in creating something together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7etDp94r10
January 13, 2010
Once when I was at a clinic doing physical therapy, one of the therapists
had in her hand something designed for another purpose, but that when tapped on
resonated like a drum. A male therapist next to her reached over and tapped it
harder. She handed it to him. He started tapping out a beat. I used to play
percussion so I picked up something that would suffice and began the percussive
equivalent of harmonizing with him. Within thirty seconds he dropped what he was
doing saying, "You got me beat." He wasn't a musician. He did not respond from
the habit, from the viewpoint, of cooperating to make something happen together.
He had been an athlete. To him it was about winning and losing. Team sports are
supposed to teach people teamwork, but it is teamwork centered on conquest. Like
soldiers. If I had said to him, "Let's you and I go and show those guys who is
boss," he'd have understood. What I had said, though not with words, was, "Let's
you and I create something that might amuse those around us for a moment." For
thirty seconds the people around us had looked up and smiled. There was
something amusing about two guys unexpectedly creating music. But he didn't
speak that language. He didn't understand that way of relating to them and to
me.
When we believe that in another country there is trouble about which we need to do something, is the first, best voice to which to listen the one that speaks the language of the military, of winning, of conquest?
January 12, 2010
If you want to clean up a neighborhood overrun by crime, call some artists.
That has worked in cities around the world. Get a community of artists in the
neighborhood and wait for things to change. That is the thesis of urban theorist
Richard Florida. I personally watched that happen in Cincinnati before Florida
explained what I'd seen. But rather than make the case for that here (search on
him for that), I'd like to suggest why we should, but don't, think that way with
foreign policy.
I stumbled on a paper I wrote for a graduate course in political science. I was trying to get some boxes out of the basement. I read only the first page of it, but it was another example of how agencies and viewpoints acquire power and influence over time. When the President is worried about terrorists in some other country, military advisors explain about how many military personnel and how much equipment could accomplish what in what time frame. They have graphs and budgets and epaulets. People salute when they enter a room.
Does the President ever grant an audience to someone who says, "That Arab country has 12,000 citizens who have graduated from universities in the United States. There has not been not one citizen of our country to graduate from one of theirs. We need to get some students over there. We need to establish scholarships for them. Quick. Before the situation gets worse."
Does anyone ever say to the President, "We can deploy 300 cooks, 150 photographers, 75 videographers, 200 poets, 800 dancers, 50 rodeo riders, 8 NASCAR drivers, 50 magicians, 400 sculptors, 900 guitarists, 500 flautists, 4,000 adolescent female gymnasts (is anyone more charming and loveable than that - although the leotard issue would need to be examined), and spread them out across that country learning and sharing and cooperating with everyone possible. Once we have built relationships there, we will invite them to visit us here on the same basis at our expense. Of course it will be dangerous. Of course some will get kidnapped. Of course some will die. When they do, it will help cement our favor with the peaceful majority of their population. It will cost fewer lives than war. And ten years of this will cost less money than one week of war and do more to accomplish our goals than an eternity of fighting."
The goal is the meeting of hearts and minds achieve peaceful, cooperative coexistence, isn't it? Notice that I did not say "winning" hearts and minds, as though it is an effort to convert them to our way of thinking. We can meet to find accord, friendship and productive unions from which all parties benefit when we learn from them as well. How do they cook that flatbread in their home ovens? What could our pizza making skills bring to that? Don't we worry less about each other when we have tossed dough in each other's kitchens?
How could we get someone to try this? Would artists need to wear epaulets? Would there need to be one of them in a cabinet position? Would there need to be an Artists Corps of creative types trained and ready to be deployed?
November 14, 2009
Someone, while thinking about placing an order, was testing me about just
who I was and what my work was like. Which is legitimate. I understand that and
don't mind it. Finally, she asked if I had a peace pole in my own yard. Later I
repeated the question to my wife and we had a good laugh. I told the woman on
the phone that at that moment I had three by my front door, five around back,
several in my basement, and a few others in my garage. The problem for me is
preventing the yard from becoming overrun with them. For one thing, I make
prototypes that I want to watch weather over the years. Some I hide behind trees
where I won't see them for months at a time so that the changes will be
noticeable for not having been seen happening gradually. Others I put where I
will see them constantly. I tinker with the designs. I want to see them outside
from a distance. I want to see them at night, and in the morning before the sun
hits them, and at noon when the light is blinding. I need to walk around the
corner and happen to notice one across the yard while I'm not thinking about
them to see how they strike me. Sometimes I look up and think, "You know what
would be better . . . " Other times, "I think it was better before I . . ."
This week I figured out a different way to put Braille on a resin peace pole so that it is less noticeable to sighted people, but easier to find for unsighted people. I also came up with a Tabletop Peace Pole that doesn't need a base. So now there is a Tabletop Peace Pole in my dining room. I'm going to make another. That first one was my first without a base, a practice one. So it was made out of stock that had imperfections and couldn't be sold. The next one will be of the caliber that could. It will replace the one in the dining room. And where will I put the one being replaced? Maybe in my office, near the five-sided, four feet tall, carved wooden one that is leaning against the shelf, but higher and more front and center where I'll see it more often as I think about it.
August 27, 2009
The debate continues on about whether water boarding is an effective way to
get information out of prisoners. It doesn't matter if it is effective. It is
wrong. We are a democracy. We do not torture people.
Unfortunately, if we do not take a strong stand on this, torture will have been left as an option for future leaders. I think we have to make it clear that it is illegal and unacceptable. Is there a way to make that clear without criminal trials? We probably need to prosecute those who allowed or enabled our nation to torture.
May 26, 2009
According to P. W. Singer, an expert on robotics in war, there is a Jihadi
website you can go and, from your desktop at home, remotely detonate an IED in Iraq.
In response, should I create a website on which you remotely can have a peace pole planted someplace?
May 16, 2009
I happened to look at an entry in this blog from a year ago. Was it only a
year ago that I was experimenting with packaging to make it less expensive and
more safe for the peace poles? It seems like five years ago that I worked all
that out. In the quest to make it work better, I used to have professionals do
some of it. They never made it good enough. I figured out better solutions
myself. They seem so obvious now. It's hard to understand how it ever was done
differently.
Shipping prices stopped being volatile and came back down this year (somewhat).
May 4, 2009
Aharon Barak, past President of the Supreme Court of Israel, and considered
by some legal scholars to be the world's greatest living jurist, wrote, ""This
is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it and not all
practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must
often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper
hand."
This is from an opinion concerning balancing individual rights and security that was written on September 7, 1999. It was written in a state with a long and continual experience with terrorists killing its citizens. And it was written to explain another reason for why torture is not acceptable.
March 30,2009
In Ontario, Canada the Rotary Club of Windsor Roseland sends a questionnaire
to schools in its area. It's a self-assessment test. The schools with the top
four scores get designated as peace schools and receive Peace Poles along with
dedication ceremonies at which every student receives a jelly bracelet with the
inscription "May Peace Prevail On Earth" Each school also receives a plaque and
an invitation to a Peace Skate on February 23, which is Rotary International's
day of world peace and understanding. To transport the children to the skate,
they provide buses, lunches, hot chocolate and even skates for the rare
Canadians who do not own ice skates. The place where they skate is in a park
near their Rotary Club's peace monument.
To see the questionnaire by which they determine which schools qualify as peace schools, click here.
March 9, 2009
A
knitted peace pole? Being hugged by a skeleton? The
JafaGirls,
in England, knitted this around a telephone pole as part of their Textile Totems
project. Awareness of peace polls has grown to where random artists think to
make them. Their project wasn't about peace. That was what this one artist
brought to their project. Others knitted a Camo Barbie pole and a Poodle Tree,
along with 14 others that were not peace poles, as they wrapped signposts and
lampposts and telephone poles. One of their installations was the equivalent of
knitted wrist bands for the limbs of a tree.
November 9, 2008 - Important Peace Makers in History
Some historians, including Sean Wilentz, author of "The Age of Reagan," and
William E. Odom, author of "The Collapse of the Soviet Military," say that
19-year-old Mathias Rust had more to do with keeping peace in our time (at least
we didn't have a nuclear holocaust during out time) than The Strategic Defense Initiative and
many of the other policies, programs and efforts deployed by governments. Rust
(pronounced Roost) was the West German boy who, armed with a paper petition for
peace, rented a small, single-engine Cessna 172P aircraft at Helsinki-Malmi
Airport in Finland in the morning of May 28, 1987 and flew it to Red Square in
Russia. Rust’s flight damaged the reputation of the Soviet military giving
Gorbachev the pretext he needed to remove from the military those who opposed his reforms. The breakup of the Soviet Block and the crumbling of the Berlin Wall
might not have come about in our time without an ideological 19-year-old making
a naive, bold and virtually ridiculous public plea for peace.
All you can do is try.
September 10, 2008
Russia is becoming militarily hostile again. They have raised the pay for
their soldiers and gone on the march again. Have we taken them too much for granted during these last years? It seemed they had opened up and relaxed.
Should more of us have
initiated sister cities with them? Should more of us have organized student exchanges?
How many of us looked for ways to reach out to them? Isn't it the same now with
China? Are we not currently enjoying the best relations with them that we ever
have had while they are expanding their power abroad and increasing patriotism
at home? Shouldn't we be worried about the same thing with them and figure out
what we can do as individuals to reach out to them? Sister peace poles? We've
never forgotten the Statute of Liberty that France sent us. What if a small town
in the USA identified a small town in China (or Russia - it's not too late) and
began a conversation with them about their similarities and made plans to visit
each other? It might even be possible to get a grant to help with that.
August 18, 2008 - Equal Time
In June I quoted Presidential Candidate John McCain on an issue relevant to
this web site and then said it was too bad Presidential Candidate Barack Obama
wasn't present to weigh in on the subject. Last night he did, in a way. In
answer to a question asked of him by the Rev. Rick Warren at Saddleback Church
he said, “Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have
some humility” as we confront evil. Why? Because “a lot of evil has been
perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil.” After all,
“just because we think our intentions are good doesn’t always mean that we’re
going to be doing good."
Do-gooders often need to be less sure of their own righteousness, more cognizant of ambiguity, and more tolerant of the right of others to think differently.
August 4, 2008
I wish I could figure out a way to routinize logging onto the live chat box
on my web site. I just spent five hours at this computer responding to email and
doing bookkeeping and such without being logged into the live chat box. I was at
my computer, but if someone visiting the web site wanted to asked a question, I
wasn't available, because I forgot to log in.
July 16, 2008
When you get a pallet load of limestone and it is all too short because you
screwed up, what do you do? Think peaceful thoughts.
July 10, 2008
It is so hard to remember to write something about it here when I am
spending my time working on something new. There is no photo to show. There is
no finished product to stand back and regard. There are only containers of
liquids, discarded rubber gloves and scraps of copper and brass laid in rows to
help me keep track of the change as I push things in one direction or the other
trying to achieve something new.
June 27, 2008
If it wouldn't invite abuse, I'd make a peace pole out of slate with chalk
hanging on a cord so that people could write their own peace messages. If it
were indoors in a protected environment where the owners wrote the messages . .
. . hmmmmmm.
I probably could make one that looked as though the peace messages were chalk, but that were permanently applied. What if I updated it? Instead of black slate, what if it looked like cement, like pavement, and appeared as though the messages were applied with that colorful pavement chalk that children use, only sealed so that it would not wash off and so new chalk could not be applied on top of it? Would that be moving in the direction of a peace pole that children would cross a park to smile at?
How long does color chalk survive in sunlight? Or how about artist's pastels? Perhaps if sealed with a something that reduces ultraviolet rays.
June 26, 2008
A pollster called. I was busy, but gave brief answers to his questions about
the upcoming presidential election. I assumed my answers would be discouraging
to anyone trying to get a fix on the electorate. Then he asked if I'd be
interested in joining a Town Hall Meeting of 150 people meeting with John
McCain. So I did that today. For the record, McCain says that if he becomes
president, this country will not torture one more person. He also says that he
will close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. He says that even if they have
cleaned that place up so that not one bad thing happens there ever again, it has
become a symbol for bad things that our country did and needs to be closed
because of that. It's too bad Obama wasn't there to express his feelings on that
subject.
June 24, 2008
Last year I sold a bronze peace pole to a university. After they received it
a maintenance guy contacted me to ask what product to use to clean all that
powdery stuff off of the pole.
This year I sold copper peace pole to someone who hired an installer to plant it, a person who apparently has planted peace poles before, and who asked if they wanted him to put something on it to preserve the metal now or after the finish had washed off.
I persuaded both of them not to do anything to the finish.
Part of what is nice about the copper and the brass/bronze peace poles is the soft, powdery patina contrasting with the shiny letters. The soft, powdery nature of the patina could be lost by putting anything on it.
The finish does not wash off. It changes, but it is supposed
to. The rain takes decades to bring out the blues, but only a few years to bring
out reds in copper and the greens in bronze. I bring out a lot of blues up front
so that some of that still will be there as the rain does the rest. That is the
plan.
I’ve got a five-year-old copper peace pole and a seven-year-old copper peace
pole in my yard to which I have done nothing since I made them. They are doing
what they are supposed to be doing. I switched to a new kind of bronze recently
(it actually is brass), but a year later it is living up to expectations as
well. Recently someone from the college (where the maintenance guy wanted to
clean off the powdery patina) told me how much she loves the finish on
their bronze peace pole a year later.
Mostly what I hear from people when they first see their copper or bronze peace poles is that the photos on the web site do not do them justice and that they are better than expected. I’m not sure why some other people think I would ship something that is so unfinished that it needs to be cleaned or preserved.
June 23, 2008
Would anyone want a copper peace pole that was lightweight enough to hang on a
wall? It could be the same width and have the same cap, but be shorter and made
of much, much lighter metal.
I played again with the idea of a transparent peace pole on which the letters are frosted. The letters sort of glow when light hits them. It would be for indoor installation, or for hanging from a ceiling, or, if I made it a relief, for hanging on a wall. But I doubt anyone wants such things. So when I have another thought about these concepts, usually I explore them for a while and then set them aside without creating anything I could offer on this site.
June 13, 2008
The shippers surprised me again - new parameters on length. For years I have
been making peace poles 9.5 feet tall because that kept them under the length
that caused shipping charges to jump. All of a sudden 9.5 feet causes the jump. They
might as well be 10.5 feet long. And the shipping costs have been so volatile
that I'm not even quoting on them now. It's just included on some poles now.
Whatever it ends up costing, I'll pay it. Not including the wooden crate it was
almost $400 for the last peace pole. Up from $80 a few years ago. With the way
copper and other metals are escalating in price too, will anybody be able to
afford these?
June 12, 2008 In the news
According to the National Endowment for the Arts, the number of professional
artists (writers, architects, floral designers, dancers, etc.) in the United
States is greater than the number of people in the military. Considering that
there have been times when every able-bodied person in a certain age range was
overseas fighting, and nearly everyone else was contributing to the war effort
in one way or another, one has to find hope in it when the state of the world is
such that a country needs more artists than soldiers.
June 11, 2008
Today the fact that I never like my peace poles weighs on me to the point of
making it a struggle to work. And I don't know what to do about it. When is art
good enough? Da Vinci carried the Mona Lisa around with him as he worked on it
for 16 years. Then he died. If people didn't have deadlines for their peace
poles I might do the same. Actually, there is one that I was so unhappy with
that I put it aside made a second one to ship. The first one has stood in my
yard for five years. When I tell people that it is a reject, they ask what is
wrong with it. It appears to be fine to them. Well, patina improves with time.
It is better than it was. In another decade or two, I might be able to tolerate
it myself.
When I worked in another field, I was not dissatisfied with my work. But that wasn't art. Art is different. When I make a peace pole that causes the people of the world to say "Oh, now I see" and lay down their weapons and hold each other's hands and love each other, then maybe I'll think that that one peace pole might have turned out not so badly.
In the meantime, it is such a trial to work so much longer and harder on these than the prices justify and still be unhappy with the result. Today it is causing paralysis.
I keep thinking that I should write less and photograph more in this blog. So here is one I worked on today - well, worked on packaging it for shipping anyway (when I was able to rise above paralysis). You wouldn't think that would take so many hours. But I don't even like the way peace poles in a certain size range have been packaged. Over a certain size and I build wooden crates for them. Under a certain size can be shipped in cardboard (wooden crates are too expensive for this size). But I don't have room for cardboard box-making tools and cardboard storage, so I pay the shipper to box those, and the way he does it allows an occasional cap to get bent. I'm working on how to prevent that. The above pole has been wrapped and rewrapped and stared at and thought about and all I'm working on is packaging.
June
1, 2008
Long ago I stopped having a business card. It seemed that every time I got
one the information changed soon thereafter. I could go several years without
one, finally get one, and as soon as I did something would change making it
obsolete. So I've never made one identifying me as someone who makes peace
poles. I've made flyers and such before, but not a business card. But someone
who is happy with her peace pole asked me to send her a stack of my cards so
that she can pass them to people she believes will be interested. So I made this
one.
Does this mean my email address or my phone is about to change? Am I tempting fate?
* * *
Index of Blog Archive
(in chronological order.)
Artist's Blog Archive 1
Artist's Blog Archive 2
Artist's Blog Archive 3
Artist's Blog Archive 4
Artist's Blog Archive 5
Artist's Blog Archive 6
Artist's Blog Archive 7
Artist's Blog Archive 8
Artist's Blog Archive 9