Hello everyone!
So, I just wanted to give you all a quick update on something exciting as it pertains to my blog!
I have struggled for years to find a rhythm with keeping my blog active. I kept wanting to discover some magic structure that will allow me to be more regular and offer more of what is going on in the creative world around me.
With the wealth of new projects, ideas, undertakings etc, I have once again allowed my posting here to slip and I want to change that going forward.
So here is what is happening. . .
I am pledging to post each and every Friday of the month. To try and make this a reality, I am going to give each Friday of the month a "theme".
Starting with October, (my favorite time of the year), I will be offering posts on the following general topics based on the number of the Friday of the month.
1st Friday of Each Month - New work. This will not just be newly finished creations but I a peek into the actual making of one of those new items each month. From start to finish. Photos, materials, techniques etc.
2nd Fridays - Inspirations and Oddities - Links and topics that I've come across that inform my work, my writing and just my insatiable curiosity for the strange and wonderful in the world we live in, past or present, and beyond. Research is a big part of my creative world and I can think of no better way to stir that "making pot" than to share those things I've found.
3rd Fridays - The Maker-of-Things - a look into how I got "here", from an over-reaching teenage dreamer to being a full time creator. So, snippets of those early childhood memories, the long and winding road of experimentation and failure along the way and all of the other creative ventures I tried and moved on from. Plus some all-around advice for creating a life that supports living as a creative soul and working maker. This will be only my experience so it will not resonate for some, I know, but I think it worth expressing to hopefully help those who wish to follow in those creative footsteps.
4th Fridays - The World of Bewilder and Pine! - Many of you know that I have been focused on writing a novel and short stories centered around the world I created, the Bewildering Pine. So these 4th Friday posts will offer small peeks into that world. Details about the folk, the place, the history etc. Where these things come from in me and where I'd like to see them go in the future. Eventually, maybe early next year, I'll even offer snippets from the book itself as it moves forward.
5th Fridays, on the rare occasion it happens, well, we shall see!
Hoping Autumn is shining in your worlds!
Thanks for coming along for the ride. . .
nicolas
Showing posts with label creation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creation. Show all posts
Friday, September 29, 2017
Friday, January 13, 2017
The Grace of Jizo
"Most prominent today in Japanese Zen, Jizo is understood to be the protector of those journeying through the physical and spiritual realms. This bodhisattva is closely associated with children, believed to be their guardian before birth, throughout childhood, and after death."
In India he is known as Ksitigarbha, in China as Dizang, in Korea as Jijang Bosal,
and in Japan as Jizo Bosatsu.
Long before many of the fantasy and fairy elements of my world showed up in Bewilder and Pine, I was making Jizos. I had learned about them while studying Zen just after the turn of the Millennium and when I was trying to find the comfort zone in my desire for solitude and silence around me.
I fell in love with the figure and the meaning behind him.
Visiting a monastery that had a "Jizo Garden" with statues large and small, each dedicated to a child who had died and lovingly placed and cared for along the forest paths, my interest deepened.
Then I read about the Onegai, or "wish granting" Jizos at Nihonji Daibutsu, where thousands upon thousands of tiny Onegai Jizos surround the larger statues, all placed by folks making wishes or prayers as they visit. The Onegai is one of over 70 various Jizo versions I have seen described!
Over the years I have been so blessed to have created a few hundred or so of these little guys and they have grown along with me. I change the listing photos every few years as they mature and grow with my skills.
The story in the Times led about 15 or so folks to the shop, all within this last week, and I have been graced with making Jizos one after the other to meet the demand there, as well as with the few little boutiques I sell thru who also happened to see the article. I've also been graced with the stories of some of these new customers who are buying them who read the article, searched the internet for Jizos, and happened upon my little guys. They sometimes share stories of the children they lost in childbirth or far too soon thereafter. Some purchase them for just that purpose, others as travel companions for protection. and some just for their own altar in the role of a "wish-granter".
The thing is, and many of you know this about me, I am usually not fond or making things over and over in short spans of time. But I have to say that I felt none of that this last week creating two dozen or so Jizos to fill the purposes they were requested for. It's a whole other realm. It feels like a deep and true service. . .
It's possible, especially when Bewilder and Pine is fully stocked, to miss them altogether among the fairy magic and mythic gargoyles and such. . . but below are a few of the images of some that I made this last week. If you have never heard of Jizo, there's a lot of information out there. But if you are truly interested in the meaning behind Jizo, I'd recommend the book written by my previous Zen teacher from that time, Jan Chozen Bays called: "Jizo Bodhisattva - Guardian of Children, Travelers and Other Voyagers". She has worked with and studied Jizo for years. There's no better introduction to Jizo than her book.
It's been a hectic week. . . but every step of the way it's been a wonderful reminder of how you can touch people with creativity. The meaning found within and the wealth of warmth and love one can receive from the service of creating. . .
Hope the New Year is treating you all so wonderfully thus far!!
nicolas
 |
| Onegai, Wish-Granting, Jizo |
 |
| Just over 2 inches (5cm) tall |
 |
| I offer them in the same aged patina finishes as my statues in Shadow of the Sphinx too. |
 |
| I hope you enjoyed the glimpse of these little guys. |
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Signposts along the Road - The Keymaster
I have been thinking recently that it would be fun to write about the little things that, throughout my life, seemed to point to me finding my way back to the depths of my childhood imagination and ending up "here" becoming a maker of things.
Having the luxury of looking back always makes it easy to see these things from the distance. Most of them, of course, I could never have known or reasoned out at the time. . . but it is interesting to see the way they lined up, or returned again and again periodically, to point me in a certain direction or to act like signposts along the road. . . even talismans at times.
I don't usually think of things as foretelling or "signs" but actually believe they are indeed placed there to allow us to see, with this hindsight over time, that we made the right choices.
So today's look back is at one of the more ethereal ones (they are always fun to write about aren't they?) and one of my favorites.
The Keymaster
I - I have written before about one of my early childhood friends, Becky. She was the only girl who played with us boys at the apartment complex where I lived with my mother til the age of 12. Becky was a few years older than me and was a great sci-fi fan and she got to play all the juicy roles as elf and fairy queens, Sara Jane Smith, the Bionic Woman, the scientist trying to help Godzilla, Zira from Planet of the Apes (to MY Cornelius), aliens and astronauts etc etc.
When we would play games that were crafted more from our own imagination, she used to like to call me the Keymaster. She probably saw it in a movie or show that I never saw but it was also due to me having an old skeleton key that my grandfather had given me. I would always bring the key along as a prop for our little adventures. Because, ummmmm, you ALWAYS need a key! The funny thing is, while Becky and I played together alone only once in awhile, whenever other kids joined in, they always wanted to be the Keymaster (everyone wanted that key!) . . . but Becky, taller than most all of us boys, would just shake her head and say, "No, Nicolas is the Keymaster and that's the way it is!" I was 10 years old and I felt like such an adult. lol
II - Truth be told, I've always loved keys. When I was 16, I also learned how to make illicit copies of keys. I saw it in an old bank heist movie, using card stock paper and crimping pliers to make an indented copy of the key in the thick paper and then, carefully cutting it out and gluing it to a key blank, You could buy blanks in any five and ten back then and I got my hands on one, glued my paper key to it and filed the blank down to the shape of the key. It took months of filing (it wasn't exactly fun "play") and, when it was complete, the key worked once in the lock I had and that was enough. I felt like I had really achieved something and, basking in my own small glory, I thought then too about those days of being the keymaster. . . I laughed about it and went on my way. . . back to the more relevant games of my teen years. . .
III - Fast forward to adulthood and the middle of my creative "lost years". Early Thirties. Looking back now I can see I was teetering on the brink of packing the creative world, the one I loved and nurtured for all those years so dearly, away.
I never knew the girl's name but she was like something out of Through the Looking Glass. The first few times she came into the coffeehouse I managed, I remember thinking she was, in a city that prided itself on keeping it weird, the perfect ideal of that off the wall weirdness. She would order a pot of tea, usually Lavender Earl Grey, sit up in the huge front window of the shop and read a vintage book. She was hard to miss with extremely pale, white face powder makeup which allowed her pale blue eyes to really glow, vintage, colorful dresses and bows and shoulder length ringlet curls (a wig I believe) and ruby red lipstick to add the finishing touches.
One day she popped her head into the shop on a busy day and yelled out, "Hi Nicolas!!!" and waved at me with such enthusiasm. The girl I was working with that day asked me "Who is that?" and I had to say, "I actually don't know her. . . and you know, now that I think of it, I've never told her MY name."
A few weeks later I got a call from another employee asking me if I could come down to help with someone who they thought was a little "disturbed". When I got there, I was told the person was in the bathroom. A few minutes later, the Looking Glass Girl emerged. Dressed sort of the same as always but everything was just a bit . . . askew.
Hair
Makeup
Clothing
All a bit disheveled. . . she got in line and I motioned to the girl working that I would take care of her.
When it was her turn, she ordered two cups of tea, asked how I had been and then spoke a few lines of quick dialogue, very low, that I couldn't make out at all. I got her teas, set them on the counter and before I could say anything she said, "Did you put enough honey in them honey?"
Caught off guard I replied, "Oh, umm, no. . . I didn't know you wanted any honey in them."
She bristled (literally and visibly) shutting her eyes super tight. . . and launched into an unexpected, diatribe of undecipherable nonsense and broken sentences which lasted about 15 seconds. After which, she looked me right in the eyes again and repeated, "So I ask you again. . . did you put enough honey in them honey?"
And my reply, this time, without hesitation was "Yes, I did, the perfect amount."
Her face lit up with the biggest smile I had ever seen on it and she said, "Thank you honey." and she took the teas, put her own honey in them anyway and left, beaming.
I think it's unnecessary to go into her decline beyond that because it was alarming but, a few weeks later I saw her for what would be the last time. Many of my employees had told me that she came in on occasion and would "act up", mostly the babbling and what some described as "mean looks" directed at them and other customers. . . but it seems that, if I was around, she was always calm and collected and held it together.
That last time though. . . when she came in, she went straight back to the bathroom and was in there for a good half an hour. When she came out, she stood at the far end of the counter and waited til she could catch my eye, then frantically waved to me to come over to her.
When I did, she handed me a half used packet of gardenia scented bath salts, a bottle of her perfume, a deck of cards in a little velvet pouch. At this point I noticed she had one more thing in her closed hand. She leaned over and whispered, "Nicolas, please take care of these things for me until I come back.". . . then she held out the last item in her hand, reached out, and put it into mine saying, "Nicolas, you must keep this safe. . . you know you are the Keymaster." and there it was. . . in my hand . . . a beautiful, tiny, skeleton key. The other kids working that day, who were concerned as I went to talk to her, overheard every word and for months after I was referred to as "the keymaster" quite often in the shop, especially when a problem of any sort needed to be solved or handled.
In retrospect, I do not want to appear so casual about the Looking Glass girl's mental health. The coffeehouse was just a block from a church parish dining hall that served the homeless and displaced and two non profit facilities that dealt with many troubled people. It was, looking back, just an almost daily part of life in that neighborhood during those years.
And please know that I could never look at an event in the stream of someone's personal, mental decline as a "sign" for myself from the universe. I do have to say though that the Looking Glass girl, always in her own paracosm, even when seeming to be even-keeled, was in that way definitely a kindred spirit of some sort. My own paracosm may be a conscious choice but it is as far removed from most people's view of our world's reality as can be in many ways.
The idea of her calling me the keymaster, some 25 years after I was first anointed with it by Becky, makes me think that there is grace to be found within every situation. And the threads, no matter how much we may have lost our way, are always there revealing themselves.
We never really can let them go. . .
And though I never saw her again, I held onto the things that the Looking Glass girl entrusted to me until I sold the coffeehouse. . . just in case she ever returned.
So to each of these parts of my path, I must bow graciously and remember them all as equal parts of my path. Important in their own way.
All a small part of what led me "here".
Having the luxury of looking back always makes it easy to see these things from the distance. Most of them, of course, I could never have known or reasoned out at the time. . . but it is interesting to see the way they lined up, or returned again and again periodically, to point me in a certain direction or to act like signposts along the road. . . even talismans at times.
I don't usually think of things as foretelling or "signs" but actually believe they are indeed placed there to allow us to see, with this hindsight over time, that we made the right choices.
So today's look back is at one of the more ethereal ones (they are always fun to write about aren't they?) and one of my favorites.
The Keymaster
I - I have written before about one of my early childhood friends, Becky. She was the only girl who played with us boys at the apartment complex where I lived with my mother til the age of 12. Becky was a few years older than me and was a great sci-fi fan and she got to play all the juicy roles as elf and fairy queens, Sara Jane Smith, the Bionic Woman, the scientist trying to help Godzilla, Zira from Planet of the Apes (to MY Cornelius), aliens and astronauts etc etc.
When we would play games that were crafted more from our own imagination, she used to like to call me the Keymaster. She probably saw it in a movie or show that I never saw but it was also due to me having an old skeleton key that my grandfather had given me. I would always bring the key along as a prop for our little adventures. Because, ummmmm, you ALWAYS need a key! The funny thing is, while Becky and I played together alone only once in awhile, whenever other kids joined in, they always wanted to be the Keymaster (everyone wanted that key!) . . . but Becky, taller than most all of us boys, would just shake her head and say, "No, Nicolas is the Keymaster and that's the way it is!" I was 10 years old and I felt like such an adult. lol
II - Truth be told, I've always loved keys. When I was 16, I also learned how to make illicit copies of keys. I saw it in an old bank heist movie, using card stock paper and crimping pliers to make an indented copy of the key in the thick paper and then, carefully cutting it out and gluing it to a key blank, You could buy blanks in any five and ten back then and I got my hands on one, glued my paper key to it and filed the blank down to the shape of the key. It took months of filing (it wasn't exactly fun "play") and, when it was complete, the key worked once in the lock I had and that was enough. I felt like I had really achieved something and, basking in my own small glory, I thought then too about those days of being the keymaster. . . I laughed about it and went on my way. . . back to the more relevant games of my teen years. . .
III - Fast forward to adulthood and the middle of my creative "lost years". Early Thirties. Looking back now I can see I was teetering on the brink of packing the creative world, the one I loved and nurtured for all those years so dearly, away.
I never knew the girl's name but she was like something out of Through the Looking Glass. The first few times she came into the coffeehouse I managed, I remember thinking she was, in a city that prided itself on keeping it weird, the perfect ideal of that off the wall weirdness. She would order a pot of tea, usually Lavender Earl Grey, sit up in the huge front window of the shop and read a vintage book. She was hard to miss with extremely pale, white face powder makeup which allowed her pale blue eyes to really glow, vintage, colorful dresses and bows and shoulder length ringlet curls (a wig I believe) and ruby red lipstick to add the finishing touches.
One day she popped her head into the shop on a busy day and yelled out, "Hi Nicolas!!!" and waved at me with such enthusiasm. The girl I was working with that day asked me "Who is that?" and I had to say, "I actually don't know her. . . and you know, now that I think of it, I've never told her MY name."
A few weeks later I got a call from another employee asking me if I could come down to help with someone who they thought was a little "disturbed". When I got there, I was told the person was in the bathroom. A few minutes later, the Looking Glass Girl emerged. Dressed sort of the same as always but everything was just a bit . . . askew.
Hair
Makeup
Clothing
All a bit disheveled. . . she got in line and I motioned to the girl working that I would take care of her.
When it was her turn, she ordered two cups of tea, asked how I had been and then spoke a few lines of quick dialogue, very low, that I couldn't make out at all. I got her teas, set them on the counter and before I could say anything she said, "Did you put enough honey in them honey?"
Caught off guard I replied, "Oh, umm, no. . . I didn't know you wanted any honey in them."
She bristled (literally and visibly) shutting her eyes super tight. . . and launched into an unexpected, diatribe of undecipherable nonsense and broken sentences which lasted about 15 seconds. After which, she looked me right in the eyes again and repeated, "So I ask you again. . . did you put enough honey in them honey?"
And my reply, this time, without hesitation was "Yes, I did, the perfect amount."
Her face lit up with the biggest smile I had ever seen on it and she said, "Thank you honey." and she took the teas, put her own honey in them anyway and left, beaming.
I think it's unnecessary to go into her decline beyond that because it was alarming but, a few weeks later I saw her for what would be the last time. Many of my employees had told me that she came in on occasion and would "act up", mostly the babbling and what some described as "mean looks" directed at them and other customers. . . but it seems that, if I was around, she was always calm and collected and held it together.
That last time though. . . when she came in, she went straight back to the bathroom and was in there for a good half an hour. When she came out, she stood at the far end of the counter and waited til she could catch my eye, then frantically waved to me to come over to her.
When I did, she handed me a half used packet of gardenia scented bath salts, a bottle of her perfume, a deck of cards in a little velvet pouch. At this point I noticed she had one more thing in her closed hand. She leaned over and whispered, "Nicolas, please take care of these things for me until I come back.". . . then she held out the last item in her hand, reached out, and put it into mine saying, "Nicolas, you must keep this safe. . . you know you are the Keymaster." and there it was. . . in my hand . . . a beautiful, tiny, skeleton key. The other kids working that day, who were concerned as I went to talk to her, overheard every word and for months after I was referred to as "the keymaster" quite often in the shop, especially when a problem of any sort needed to be solved or handled.
In retrospect, I do not want to appear so casual about the Looking Glass girl's mental health. The coffeehouse was just a block from a church parish dining hall that served the homeless and displaced and two non profit facilities that dealt with many troubled people. It was, looking back, just an almost daily part of life in that neighborhood during those years.
And please know that I could never look at an event in the stream of someone's personal, mental decline as a "sign" for myself from the universe. I do have to say though that the Looking Glass girl, always in her own paracosm, even when seeming to be even-keeled, was in that way definitely a kindred spirit of some sort. My own paracosm may be a conscious choice but it is as far removed from most people's view of our world's reality as can be in many ways.
The idea of her calling me the keymaster, some 25 years after I was first anointed with it by Becky, makes me think that there is grace to be found within every situation. And the threads, no matter how much we may have lost our way, are always there revealing themselves.
We never really can let them go. . .
And though I never saw her again, I held onto the things that the Looking Glass girl entrusted to me until I sold the coffeehouse. . . just in case she ever returned.
So to each of these parts of my path, I must bow graciously and remember them all as equal parts of my path. Important in their own way.
All a small part of what led me "here".
Sunday, February 16, 2014
The Thread
I think my blog will be taking a turn in the coming weeks.
I have, for two years, been telling myself I wanted to write (seriously) more often in the hope of sharing and explaining my creative path and the way my childhood informs all of my creations today. I’ve been successful in fits and spurts. Yet it has been extremely hard to write about the most important details of that childhood and share them.
To be truthful, I had no idea why.
Last night I read a wonderfully thought provoking short story called “Mr. Goober’s Show” by the esteemed sci-fi writer Howard Waldrop which, today, has me going deeper into my own world to understand why some things “work” and some don’t for myself, for others and for and within the creative life so many of us wish to live.
In the story a man relates the experience of his sister and he in the 1950’s when, while visiting with an Aunt, they uncover a mechanical (pre-war) television that, according to the Aunt, does not work because the way television is transmitted in the story’s active time (1950’s) has changed and so there are no programs broadcast the old way anymore.
The children, left alone one evening, plug in the old TV and, after a bit of fiddling with the knobs, they DO find a broadcast which, since there is no sound, they can only watch. They dub the show “Mr. Goober’s Show”. The genius of not explaining exactly what they see is part of the draw of the story. The years pass, the sister becomes obsessed with discovering what they saw as the brother seems to be less concerned and interested over time. The sister goes to work in the technical/ TV field and, in a series of letters over the years to her brother, explains the futility and ever-increasing obsession with wanting to know what they saw. How it was even possible given the technology and the science.
I won’t give the end away but, the thoughts that are now in my mind began with my own recollections of two shows I saw as a child that I simply have never been able to find in adulthood, even in this vast internet age of every little detail of every single movie, show and program being catalogued. They seem to not exist.
Now, the two characters, the brother and sister, go in opposite directions with Mr. Goober’s Show. While they both are totally taken with it as children and talk about it into their young adult lives, the boy, we are led to believe, simply loses interest and the girl becomes obsessed with unraveling the magic though the obsession leads her deep into the technical aspects of what it COULD have been and away from the early experience of it.
To me, it reads as a dual warning for adulthood.
When I was a child, my world, from a very early age was filled with my inserting myself into many roles and fantasy worlds. These were based on historic or dramatized events. At one time or another I was an astronaut in a cardboard capsule fitted with hundreds of christmas lights and switches I taped in place or poked through holes. I was a high seas pirate on a front porch ship, a Shaolin monk, an Egyptian scribe (and sometimes pharaoh) , I stormed the beaches at Normandy and climbed Mt Everest, explored alien worlds and fell through time portals. I lived in Medieval castles and fought dragons and demons time and again the victor. I lived on the Prairie along with the Ingalls family and solved crimes as many 70’s TV cops (often Kojak because it involved the lollipop and wearing my grandfather's fedora). I created entire sports leagues in the back yard and invented my own futuristic sports, made up board games and card games of my own in winter too.
What happens in adulthood is clearly a duality that we often choose one or the other path as laid out in the story I read. We either lose the sense of magic and wonder of childhood and move on leaving it behind, or we get so caught up in the explanation of all things magical, how things work, what they mean, that they must make sense and what is and is not possible, what we imagined versus what is “real”. We get so wrapped up in this that those early worlds are torn down by the time we reach adulthood and left in tatters around us.
But adulthood is just another fantasy world. And while people look at artists as dreamers, it is often the average 9-5er who is living just as distorted a dream. Usually one that is constructed of, and constricted by, equal parts “have to” and “reason” that the magic is often left out altogether.
Have to and reason can destroy artistic magic too. . . which is why I think art schools ultimately damage as many as they help. . . so why would any other lifestyle be any less damaged by the same factors?
What’s the balance then? For me, it seems to be that we never should leave that magic behind or totally understand it either. This is why, in a nutshell, I have been unable to write about those early experiences.
Technical explanations and scientific certainty can be fascinating but deadly to the imagination as well. I’d rather not know how things work and I’d rather not try to explain where my ideas come from or how they are completely linked, every one of them, to something within that has been nurtured since my childhood. There's a magic in them that I lived, have understood as inherent, and I have tried to explain without success even to myself. And there are those few events that are truly and simply unexplainable. How can I write about them without feeling like I have to explain them or say, "This is what I have come to understand about that day, that event or that memory."
I think the key to telling great, compelling stories, and that is what all artistic outlet can be reduced to, is in what you do not reveal. I tell bits and pieces of the whole but I leave just enough out to allow for the viewer to have a door in for themselves to my world and my work. I want to create things that inspire imagination and open to larger landscapes within. It’s pure storytelling and it is the core of every creative being.
It’s the ephemeral, untouchable essence of who we are. . .
In the simpler sense, there are parts of me that desperately want to know what those two old shows I saw as a 6 or 7 year old were. . . and an equal part of me that never wants to see them again. I want to maintain my own memory of them as they were experienced then which, in seeing them 30 years later, can never be the same, can they?
So this creative dream I live now. . . yes, it is a construction of my own. No one wrote the book on living it and no one told me how to make it happen.
I am asked constantly, "You can make a living doing THAT?" and while the simple, actual answer is "Yes." it leaves out all the magic because, in truth, not everyone can. It's not enough to be good at something or to excel in business or have great people skills and even a staunch self belief matters only a smidgen. The creative path requires the absolute presence of magic. And the magic requires that we never answer all the questions ourselves. We leave them for others to discover and to find within their own creations in their own time.
That’s the magic of the story.
Of life.
I’ll be trying to create a more revealing feel here in the coming months. Posting more updates on projects and little bits of inspiration here and there going forward. Turning the focus into more of a daily process of what I am actually doing and how.
Focusing on the magic of my todays as much as my yesterdays.
In those posts, some of the larger story will come through but, in the grand scheme of things, the magic I want to convey is not from the past.
It’s in the here and now.
Today.
It’s not a memory but the one constant and unbroken thread of my life.
The one, as in the William Stafford poem, that I will never let go of.
I hope you will continue creating the magic of YOUR life
And follow along with me too. : )
nicolas
I have, for two years, been telling myself I wanted to write (seriously) more often in the hope of sharing and explaining my creative path and the way my childhood informs all of my creations today. I’ve been successful in fits and spurts. Yet it has been extremely hard to write about the most important details of that childhood and share them.
To be truthful, I had no idea why.
Last night I read a wonderfully thought provoking short story called “Mr. Goober’s Show” by the esteemed sci-fi writer Howard Waldrop which, today, has me going deeper into my own world to understand why some things “work” and some don’t for myself, for others and for and within the creative life so many of us wish to live.
In the story a man relates the experience of his sister and he in the 1950’s when, while visiting with an Aunt, they uncover a mechanical (pre-war) television that, according to the Aunt, does not work because the way television is transmitted in the story’s active time (1950’s) has changed and so there are no programs broadcast the old way anymore.
The children, left alone one evening, plug in the old TV and, after a bit of fiddling with the knobs, they DO find a broadcast which, since there is no sound, they can only watch. They dub the show “Mr. Goober’s Show”. The genius of not explaining exactly what they see is part of the draw of the story. The years pass, the sister becomes obsessed with discovering what they saw as the brother seems to be less concerned and interested over time. The sister goes to work in the technical/ TV field and, in a series of letters over the years to her brother, explains the futility and ever-increasing obsession with wanting to know what they saw. How it was even possible given the technology and the science.
I won’t give the end away but, the thoughts that are now in my mind began with my own recollections of two shows I saw as a child that I simply have never been able to find in adulthood, even in this vast internet age of every little detail of every single movie, show and program being catalogued. They seem to not exist.
Now, the two characters, the brother and sister, go in opposite directions with Mr. Goober’s Show. While they both are totally taken with it as children and talk about it into their young adult lives, the boy, we are led to believe, simply loses interest and the girl becomes obsessed with unraveling the magic though the obsession leads her deep into the technical aspects of what it COULD have been and away from the early experience of it.
To me, it reads as a dual warning for adulthood.
When I was a child, my world, from a very early age was filled with my inserting myself into many roles and fantasy worlds. These were based on historic or dramatized events. At one time or another I was an astronaut in a cardboard capsule fitted with hundreds of christmas lights and switches I taped in place or poked through holes. I was a high seas pirate on a front porch ship, a Shaolin monk, an Egyptian scribe (and sometimes pharaoh) , I stormed the beaches at Normandy and climbed Mt Everest, explored alien worlds and fell through time portals. I lived in Medieval castles and fought dragons and demons time and again the victor. I lived on the Prairie along with the Ingalls family and solved crimes as many 70’s TV cops (often Kojak because it involved the lollipop and wearing my grandfather's fedora). I created entire sports leagues in the back yard and invented my own futuristic sports, made up board games and card games of my own in winter too.
What happens in adulthood is clearly a duality that we often choose one or the other path as laid out in the story I read. We either lose the sense of magic and wonder of childhood and move on leaving it behind, or we get so caught up in the explanation of all things magical, how things work, what they mean, that they must make sense and what is and is not possible, what we imagined versus what is “real”. We get so wrapped up in this that those early worlds are torn down by the time we reach adulthood and left in tatters around us.
But adulthood is just another fantasy world. And while people look at artists as dreamers, it is often the average 9-5er who is living just as distorted a dream. Usually one that is constructed of, and constricted by, equal parts “have to” and “reason” that the magic is often left out altogether.
Have to and reason can destroy artistic magic too. . . which is why I think art schools ultimately damage as many as they help. . . so why would any other lifestyle be any less damaged by the same factors?
What’s the balance then? For me, it seems to be that we never should leave that magic behind or totally understand it either. This is why, in a nutshell, I have been unable to write about those early experiences.
Technical explanations and scientific certainty can be fascinating but deadly to the imagination as well. I’d rather not know how things work and I’d rather not try to explain where my ideas come from or how they are completely linked, every one of them, to something within that has been nurtured since my childhood. There's a magic in them that I lived, have understood as inherent, and I have tried to explain without success even to myself. And there are those few events that are truly and simply unexplainable. How can I write about them without feeling like I have to explain them or say, "This is what I have come to understand about that day, that event or that memory."
I think the key to telling great, compelling stories, and that is what all artistic outlet can be reduced to, is in what you do not reveal. I tell bits and pieces of the whole but I leave just enough out to allow for the viewer to have a door in for themselves to my world and my work. I want to create things that inspire imagination and open to larger landscapes within. It’s pure storytelling and it is the core of every creative being.
It’s the ephemeral, untouchable essence of who we are. . .
In the simpler sense, there are parts of me that desperately want to know what those two old shows I saw as a 6 or 7 year old were. . . and an equal part of me that never wants to see them again. I want to maintain my own memory of them as they were experienced then which, in seeing them 30 years later, can never be the same, can they?
So this creative dream I live now. . . yes, it is a construction of my own. No one wrote the book on living it and no one told me how to make it happen.
I am asked constantly, "You can make a living doing THAT?" and while the simple, actual answer is "Yes." it leaves out all the magic because, in truth, not everyone can. It's not enough to be good at something or to excel in business or have great people skills and even a staunch self belief matters only a smidgen. The creative path requires the absolute presence of magic. And the magic requires that we never answer all the questions ourselves. We leave them for others to discover and to find within their own creations in their own time.
That’s the magic of the story.
Of life.
I’ll be trying to create a more revealing feel here in the coming months. Posting more updates on projects and little bits of inspiration here and there going forward. Turning the focus into more of a daily process of what I am actually doing and how.
Focusing on the magic of my todays as much as my yesterdays.
In those posts, some of the larger story will come through but, in the grand scheme of things, the magic I want to convey is not from the past.
It’s in the here and now.
Today.
It’s not a memory but the one constant and unbroken thread of my life.
The one, as in the William Stafford poem, that I will never let go of.
I hope you will continue creating the magic of YOUR life
And follow along with me too. : )
nicolas
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
The First Creations
It has taken me a long time to get to where I am comfortable talking about my creative path. And a couple of years to realize what I want to share here, in blog form, as well. Many a New Year's resolution to write more, blog more, share more have come and gone without success.
Some things just can't be forced before its time.
The delay was, mostly, because part of that story is about the events of my childhood. Not all of them pleasant and several outright harrowing but, in fact, they are a part of that creation inside.
So, no better time than today, on the cusp of a New Year, to start. . . without a resolution or promise. It's just time.
I would count myself among the millions who probably utter this phrase, "I have been creating since I can remember" more than I would like. It is, of course, true but I always have a bit of an issue with non specific statements like that.
I could say that it was a finger-painting a did at age 4 ( and vividly recall making) that my mother still has framed and on her wall almost 40 years later. I can still see the spot where I started to finger paint my name before realizing that did not constitute a "picture" and promptly smeared over it with a blend of paints.
That was done in the bedroom of the apartment my mother ad I lived in the first 10 years of my life.
But the memories of my first creations artistically are blended with the meory of my first creations in my head of the sing-songs, games and mantras that were to keep me safe from what can only say was a very dark entity in my room.
That is not a cloaked statement alluding to someone evil or any sort of abuse. It was most definitely some "thing" that I feared. And it haunted my horrible nightmares from my earliest memories. I would fight to not have to go to sleep in that room and often would convince my mom to let me stay up and fall asleep on the sofa in the living room or on the floor. Then she would get me into bed once I was already out.
In the nightmares it was something about the curtains/window of my room. The hideous floor to ceiling orange curtains might have been enough without their animating and speaking in those dreams. lol I also had a series of health issues then. Spontaneous nosebleeds that would not stop but, luckily I was told, I awoke just before they would start every time. So it seemed a battle of forces and, in my mind, I did all I could to appeal to the forces of good.
So, in that part of my paracosm, I found it useful to create ways, in my head, to defeat that darkness. I had games that, if I won, would keep me safe. Chants and sing-songe repeated the right number of times or for a minute straight etc.
In the case of the nightmares, perhaps it helped.
One night, in a most frightening dream where the darkness was closing in on my bed and the curtains were flailing across the room trying to grab me, I watched as that the ceiling of my room split and a shower of millions of gold spinning snowflakes (sort of shaped like little nuclei with tiny round orbs at the flake points but all gold and sparkly) , the size of a dime, cascaded down from the sky spreading over my entire bed. In the dream I sat uptight as the snowflakes poured over me and, then, awoke, sitting in my bed, still able to feel the last snowflakes falling on me and I could literally "see" them as well. Once they stopped falling I realized it was still very dark. . . late night. . . and I was alone. But then, as I stared into the darkness waiting for my eyes to adjust, I saw one spinning gold snowflake appear in front of me. Hovering and constant. I lay back down in my bed, realized I was sweating and got up to get a drink of water. When I returned, the snowflake was gone.
I never had another nightmare again.
In fact, to this day, I only remember dreaming once every couple of months or so and I sleep, most of the time, only 5 hours a night (which may be a hold over from those childhood years).
Also I should mention that anytime since that night that I think of those little spinning snowflakes one, and only one, will appear right in front of my eyes be it dark or daylight . . . as one is here in front of me now as I type. I'm used to it and, in all honesty, I find it most comforting.
All those little games, rhymes and songs were invented to keep me safe. To help me cope with nightmares, fears and the darkness. . . it would not be a stretch to say that now, in my adult life, they came back to do the same though the shadows were most definitely more internal and they had names we all know like expectation, self-doubt and all around general adult world illusions and societal programming.
The stories to come get stranger. . . but the power of creativity will be the theme throughout. The struggle to stay close to that possibility and wonder that permeated my youth. . . to this point where, once again, my whole life revolves around it now.
So I'll tell it as best I can and hope that it leaves something behind that will resonate with someone else one day.
Wishing you all a happy start to your new year!
Create it to be pure magic!
nicolas
Some things just can't be forced before its time.
The delay was, mostly, because part of that story is about the events of my childhood. Not all of them pleasant and several outright harrowing but, in fact, they are a part of that creation inside.
So, no better time than today, on the cusp of a New Year, to start. . . without a resolution or promise. It's just time.
I would count myself among the millions who probably utter this phrase, "I have been creating since I can remember" more than I would like. It is, of course, true but I always have a bit of an issue with non specific statements like that.
I could say that it was a finger-painting a did at age 4 ( and vividly recall making) that my mother still has framed and on her wall almost 40 years later. I can still see the spot where I started to finger paint my name before realizing that did not constitute a "picture" and promptly smeared over it with a blend of paints.
That was done in the bedroom of the apartment my mother ad I lived in the first 10 years of my life.
But the memories of my first creations artistically are blended with the meory of my first creations in my head of the sing-songs, games and mantras that were to keep me safe from what can only say was a very dark entity in my room.
That is not a cloaked statement alluding to someone evil or any sort of abuse. It was most definitely some "thing" that I feared. And it haunted my horrible nightmares from my earliest memories. I would fight to not have to go to sleep in that room and often would convince my mom to let me stay up and fall asleep on the sofa in the living room or on the floor. Then she would get me into bed once I was already out.
In the nightmares it was something about the curtains/window of my room. The hideous floor to ceiling orange curtains might have been enough without their animating and speaking in those dreams. lol I also had a series of health issues then. Spontaneous nosebleeds that would not stop but, luckily I was told, I awoke just before they would start every time. So it seemed a battle of forces and, in my mind, I did all I could to appeal to the forces of good.
So, in that part of my paracosm, I found it useful to create ways, in my head, to defeat that darkness. I had games that, if I won, would keep me safe. Chants and sing-songe repeated the right number of times or for a minute straight etc.
In the case of the nightmares, perhaps it helped.
One night, in a most frightening dream where the darkness was closing in on my bed and the curtains were flailing across the room trying to grab me, I watched as that the ceiling of my room split and a shower of millions of gold spinning snowflakes (sort of shaped like little nuclei with tiny round orbs at the flake points but all gold and sparkly) , the size of a dime, cascaded down from the sky spreading over my entire bed. In the dream I sat uptight as the snowflakes poured over me and, then, awoke, sitting in my bed, still able to feel the last snowflakes falling on me and I could literally "see" them as well. Once they stopped falling I realized it was still very dark. . . late night. . . and I was alone. But then, as I stared into the darkness waiting for my eyes to adjust, I saw one spinning gold snowflake appear in front of me. Hovering and constant. I lay back down in my bed, realized I was sweating and got up to get a drink of water. When I returned, the snowflake was gone.
I never had another nightmare again.
In fact, to this day, I only remember dreaming once every couple of months or so and I sleep, most of the time, only 5 hours a night (which may be a hold over from those childhood years).
Also I should mention that anytime since that night that I think of those little spinning snowflakes one, and only one, will appear right in front of my eyes be it dark or daylight . . . as one is here in front of me now as I type. I'm used to it and, in all honesty, I find it most comforting.
All those little games, rhymes and songs were invented to keep me safe. To help me cope with nightmares, fears and the darkness. . . it would not be a stretch to say that now, in my adult life, they came back to do the same though the shadows were most definitely more internal and they had names we all know like expectation, self-doubt and all around general adult world illusions and societal programming.
The stories to come get stranger. . . but the power of creativity will be the theme throughout. The struggle to stay close to that possibility and wonder that permeated my youth. . . to this point where, once again, my whole life revolves around it now.
So I'll tell it as best I can and hope that it leaves something behind that will resonate with someone else one day.
Wishing you all a happy start to your new year!
Create it to be pure magic!
nicolas
Friday, November 29, 2013
Protectors
I believe one of the many things we tend to leave behind as adults from our childhoods is the many forms of a Protector that we create in our imaginations and in our creativity at those young ages.
For me the role of protector came in many forms. From improvised sing-songs and night time routines that kept me safe from scary movie creatures and dark shadows to the devotional candles my grandmother kept burning round the clock in our home to the many little internal bets I made about how long I could do a certain task, with the inevitable success granting me safe passage or dreams.
There also were dream images themselves. And voices. . . which, as it turned out, DID save my life on two occasions but that is all for another time.
My draw to the pantheon of ancient Egypt dates back to when I was 6 or 7 and the treasures of Tutankhamen were touring the US for the first time. The images of Tut's burial treasures were on the cover of every major magazine and many books were released about the discovery and the history of the tomb.
It was in grade school that I first was shown one of those books by my teacher. That was followed by a trip to the library and a venture through our family encyclopedia. (Anyone remember those? )
I was completely enchanted by the anthropomorphic Gods and Goddesses and the amazing array of symbols and meanings attributed to them all.
I fashioned many of the objects I saw out of whatever materials I could find. The tin foil roll was a favorite target of mine, much to the dismay of my mother, and I made countless small little statuettes of the figures out of it. This led to my first bit of sculpting clay but i was not good with it at all. I was much better at drawing and so, in short order, the walls of my bedroom closet became a tomb with hieroglyphs drawn on all three walls.
This also did not go over well with mom. :)
I can tell you that I felt protected by the strange and wonderful figures. I memorized their names and forms. . . Horus, Isis, Anubis and Hathor were my favorites to render and, by age 10, I had taken to drawing them on the tops of my feet in felt tip pen, also with the understanding that they would protect me. Though I never felt I needed protection against anything in particular.
So when took up polymer clay work a few years ago, it seemed natural to want to create something from my childhood. Perhaps something I never could then. And while it did not leap off the page into my head to make Egyptian statues, it was not far behind the first thoughts.
One thing that had NOT changed was my lack of ability with clay. Art, in almost every form, comes somewhat naturally to me. But clay, even polymer clay, just felt so foreign at first.
Once I began trying to create votive statues of the ancient Egyptian pantheon, it all fell into place and I suddenly had the incentive and the motivation to stick with the clay. It has, to say the least, paid off.
I never knew there were so many forms and deities spread throughout the history of ancient Egypt. I'll never master them all but I do so love the time spent researching and learning just as I did as a child. It is as important as the art that comes from it.
One of the forms I never knew of in my youth but who I am so drawn to now, is Bes, a multifaceted and infinitely interesting Deity of many faces and forms. Celebrated as the full-service protector god who served as the champion of everything good and the protector against anything bad, Bes had a long and impressive list of deity duties, including:
Protector of Women
Protector and Entertainer of Children
Guardian against Nightmares and Dangerous Animals of the Night.
Patron of Warriors, Hunters and Travelers
Patron of Music and Dancing
Guardian of Families and Keeper of Domestic Happiness
God of Good Fortune, Luck and Probability
God of Commerce
Guardian of the Vineyards
Guardian Against All Manner of Misfortune
Now, the world is filled with guardian spirits, angels, entities and deities. Bes is just one of many form cultures of every corner of the globe.
But what is often missing in the adult versions we hold to is the child's ability to take the image, the idol, the entity and expand it in our own universe.
Essentially, to reinvent and create it. And then, in doing so, to believe in it fully.
And while many people I know tend to believe this is because we "know" too much about the world around us and it's inherent dangers, I think it is quite the opposite.
We have forgotten far more than we have learned since childhood. For some, that is not a choice. Bad things. . . terrible things, definitely do happen to us. Sometimes placing us beyond the point of return.
For me, each statue and amulet. . . or each fairy world or gargoyle . . . or each elf or miniature house I create is a protector. Everything I create in fact could be seen as such. I find that the mystery is everywhere around us. . . and, unfortunately, there are still a few monsters out there too.
The deal we make with these created protectors is a simple one to strike.
I believe fully in it as I create it and, in doing so, it opens the door for another to believe in it as they decide to bring it into their own world. In whatever form, when it arrives, it is an acceptance of something that binds from the earliest days of our creativity.
It is a desire to make sense of the world around us in the very same way the ancient Egyptians belief in their pantheon came to be. It changes, it grows, it adapts and it reinvents itself over and over and over. . .
As we should too.
Every piece I create is a step into that reinvention. It's a claiming of something that was inherently mine all those years ago and, for whatever time I have left in this world, I want it back as completely as I can manage.
And, along that road each day, I leave these little markers. These Descansos. All of them protective icons and imagery that allows me to step forward without fear again tomorrow.
Into the unknown and the well known.
All at once.
For me the role of protector came in many forms. From improvised sing-songs and night time routines that kept me safe from scary movie creatures and dark shadows to the devotional candles my grandmother kept burning round the clock in our home to the many little internal bets I made about how long I could do a certain task, with the inevitable success granting me safe passage or dreams.
There also were dream images themselves. And voices. . . which, as it turned out, DID save my life on two occasions but that is all for another time.
My draw to the pantheon of ancient Egypt dates back to when I was 6 or 7 and the treasures of Tutankhamen were touring the US for the first time. The images of Tut's burial treasures were on the cover of every major magazine and many books were released about the discovery and the history of the tomb.
It was in grade school that I first was shown one of those books by my teacher. That was followed by a trip to the library and a venture through our family encyclopedia. (Anyone remember those? )
I was completely enchanted by the anthropomorphic Gods and Goddesses and the amazing array of symbols and meanings attributed to them all.
I fashioned many of the objects I saw out of whatever materials I could find. The tin foil roll was a favorite target of mine, much to the dismay of my mother, and I made countless small little statuettes of the figures out of it. This led to my first bit of sculpting clay but i was not good with it at all. I was much better at drawing and so, in short order, the walls of my bedroom closet became a tomb with hieroglyphs drawn on all three walls.
This also did not go over well with mom. :)
I can tell you that I felt protected by the strange and wonderful figures. I memorized their names and forms. . . Horus, Isis, Anubis and Hathor were my favorites to render and, by age 10, I had taken to drawing them on the tops of my feet in felt tip pen, also with the understanding that they would protect me. Though I never felt I needed protection against anything in particular.
So when took up polymer clay work a few years ago, it seemed natural to want to create something from my childhood. Perhaps something I never could then. And while it did not leap off the page into my head to make Egyptian statues, it was not far behind the first thoughts.
One thing that had NOT changed was my lack of ability with clay. Art, in almost every form, comes somewhat naturally to me. But clay, even polymer clay, just felt so foreign at first.
Once I began trying to create votive statues of the ancient Egyptian pantheon, it all fell into place and I suddenly had the incentive and the motivation to stick with the clay. It has, to say the least, paid off.
I never knew there were so many forms and deities spread throughout the history of ancient Egypt. I'll never master them all but I do so love the time spent researching and learning just as I did as a child. It is as important as the art that comes from it.
One of the forms I never knew of in my youth but who I am so drawn to now, is Bes, a multifaceted and infinitely interesting Deity of many faces and forms. Celebrated as the full-service protector god who served as the champion of everything good and the protector against anything bad, Bes had a long and impressive list of deity duties, including:
Protector of Women
Protector and Entertainer of Children
Guardian against Nightmares and Dangerous Animals of the Night.
Patron of Warriors, Hunters and Travelers
Patron of Music and Dancing
Guardian of Families and Keeper of Domestic Happiness
God of Good Fortune, Luck and Probability
God of Commerce
Guardian of the Vineyards
Guardian Against All Manner of Misfortune
 |
| I almost never make the exact same form of Bes twice! This is my latest. |
Now, the world is filled with guardian spirits, angels, entities and deities. Bes is just one of many form cultures of every corner of the globe.
But what is often missing in the adult versions we hold to is the child's ability to take the image, the idol, the entity and expand it in our own universe.
Essentially, to reinvent and create it. And then, in doing so, to believe in it fully.
And while many people I know tend to believe this is because we "know" too much about the world around us and it's inherent dangers, I think it is quite the opposite.
We have forgotten far more than we have learned since childhood. For some, that is not a choice. Bad things. . . terrible things, definitely do happen to us. Sometimes placing us beyond the point of return.
For me, each statue and amulet. . . or each fairy world or gargoyle . . . or each elf or miniature house I create is a protector. Everything I create in fact could be seen as such. I find that the mystery is everywhere around us. . . and, unfortunately, there are still a few monsters out there too.
The deal we make with these created protectors is a simple one to strike.
I believe fully in it as I create it and, in doing so, it opens the door for another to believe in it as they decide to bring it into their own world. In whatever form, when it arrives, it is an acceptance of something that binds from the earliest days of our creativity.
It is a desire to make sense of the world around us in the very same way the ancient Egyptians belief in their pantheon came to be. It changes, it grows, it adapts and it reinvents itself over and over and over. . .
As we should too.
Every piece I create is a step into that reinvention. It's a claiming of something that was inherently mine all those years ago and, for whatever time I have left in this world, I want it back as completely as I can manage.
And, along that road each day, I leave these little markers. These Descansos. All of them protective icons and imagery that allows me to step forward without fear again tomorrow.
Into the unknown and the well known.
All at once.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Fairy Tales
It occurred to me very recently that perhaps the main reason I drift in and out of blogging is because I feel that so much of what I want to say and convey about the creative path I am on and the origins of it in my life are not spoken but, rather, find a way into my work each and every day. Often, at then end of the day with a number of visual images, gargoyles, fairy houses and Egyptian Gods and Goddesses all coexisting on my studio table, I realize my entire day has been filled with unspoken dialogues and enough words to fill a three volume set. :)
It also seems to make sense to me that I can choose the pieces to display here in blog form, not for publicity sake but for an opportunity to reveal what is behind them. Bit by bit to find the core ofmy place of origin and to, in a sense, add to the map of my life.
The other day I completed this piece as the first of a set that will be featured next year in Bewilder and Pine,
This piece speaks to many of my origins. The worlds I would create within my childhood. Often invested in them alone and keeping them close to my heart as I just felt that any outside input or exposure would change them. Alter them and, in fact, weaken their power and place within my own mythology.
Second, as a pre-teen, my love for model railroading and building entire scenes of a new layout every year remain one of the most treasured ways that I spent time in that older-youth era. Of course, this was a pursuit embraced by my family as well so I could work on it in the open but, I am positive, no one ever really saw INTO that world I created each year. Every figure and every part of the overall scene had a backstory. A dialogue and a plot that often changed over the two months it was up and running. I'd add to it and rearrange it each year with a fresh view of it. In reality, the train was the least of my concerns. It was about taking these little pieces, people and structures and making something new from them that fit wit my own paracosm.
And fairy tales. . . I simply adore them. The dark, the light, the rambling and the brief. They remind me, simply put, of the worlds I create as well as the possibility of anything becoming our reality in this world.
Once, when I first moved to the Oregon Coast, I considered renting a piece of property/that had been started as a retreat space with a beautiful A-Frame house. The price was truly way out of my price range but I debated and schemed how I could manage it all because the original owner had built, in the middle of the woods, a large, free standing mushroom room. Seriously. it stood 8 to 9 feet tall at the peak of it's red spotted mushroom cap roof and was about 7 feet in diameter on the inside with stained glass windows, electrical outlets and a hardwood floor. I mean, it felt like a portal had opened and this mushroom had somehow slipped to our side from a fairy tale side of existence. What magic!
So, my point is that I truly believe that every person must create from what they know inherently. Or it comes off seeming false somehow. That doesn't mean it should or will be easy as often the most difficult roads are the ones that lead us back to ourselves.
And if we are lucky we find that trail of crumbs that the little Hansels and Gretels in us left behind. . .
we find or way thru the dark woods and past the scary creatures of this world. We survive to create new and personal tales. . . .and we all do this no matter what the path we take.
So, you'll likely see me around more often and I hope you won't mind the display of my work in the posts. It is how I get to what is inside and to what I truly want to say. . . . and quite often, it is all I have to say. :)
Thank you, as always, for reading. :)
nicolas
It also seems to make sense to me that I can choose the pieces to display here in blog form, not for publicity sake but for an opportunity to reveal what is behind them. Bit by bit to find the core ofmy place of origin and to, in a sense, add to the map of my life.
The other day I completed this piece as the first of a set that will be featured next year in Bewilder and Pine,
 |
| Miniature N Scale - Hansel and Gretel Discover the Witches Cottage |
Second, as a pre-teen, my love for model railroading and building entire scenes of a new layout every year remain one of the most treasured ways that I spent time in that older-youth era. Of course, this was a pursuit embraced by my family as well so I could work on it in the open but, I am positive, no one ever really saw INTO that world I created each year. Every figure and every part of the overall scene had a backstory. A dialogue and a plot that often changed over the two months it was up and running. I'd add to it and rearrange it each year with a fresh view of it. In reality, the train was the least of my concerns. It was about taking these little pieces, people and structures and making something new from them that fit wit my own paracosm.
And fairy tales. . . I simply adore them. The dark, the light, the rambling and the brief. They remind me, simply put, of the worlds I create as well as the possibility of anything becoming our reality in this world.
Once, when I first moved to the Oregon Coast, I considered renting a piece of property/that had been started as a retreat space with a beautiful A-Frame house. The price was truly way out of my price range but I debated and schemed how I could manage it all because the original owner had built, in the middle of the woods, a large, free standing mushroom room. Seriously. it stood 8 to 9 feet tall at the peak of it's red spotted mushroom cap roof and was about 7 feet in diameter on the inside with stained glass windows, electrical outlets and a hardwood floor. I mean, it felt like a portal had opened and this mushroom had somehow slipped to our side from a fairy tale side of existence. What magic!
So, my point is that I truly believe that every person must create from what they know inherently. Or it comes off seeming false somehow. That doesn't mean it should or will be easy as often the most difficult roads are the ones that lead us back to ourselves.
And if we are lucky we find that trail of crumbs that the little Hansels and Gretels in us left behind. . .
we find or way thru the dark woods and past the scary creatures of this world. We survive to create new and personal tales. . . .and we all do this no matter what the path we take.
So, you'll likely see me around more often and I hope you won't mind the display of my work in the posts. It is how I get to what is inside and to what I truly want to say. . . . and quite often, it is all I have to say. :)
Thank you, as always, for reading. :)
nicolas
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Full Circle
I was a small child when the first grand tour of the treasures of Tutankhamen came to America. The madness in the art world that surrounded it filtered down to my childhood world and, through books and magazines, found it's way into my soul. Not long after it was a tour of the permanent exhibit at the Carnegie museum's antiquities section that really stirred my imagination.
For all of the luster and glitz of KingTut, I was even more taken by the simple, everyday possessions of the ancient Egyptian that I saw in that museums cases. It was that first glimpse into the life of, what I imagined to be, a boy just like me, that inspired the life long love I have held for that era and the pantheon of Egyptian deities.
So, now with my adult self creating statues and amulets that are all directly inspired by ancient pieces and primarily those of everyday worship in that ancient Egyptian world, I have received a very meaningful nod to my work that ties hits whole cycle up in one small way.
Yesterday two of my pieces were purchased by a woman who is part of the La Habra Children's Museum in La Habra CA. They are having an installation come October that will be a walk through tour of a scribe's life in ancient Egypt.
The pieces are these below:
Bes and Taweret
She also sent me this description of how the exhibit will be set up.
***The exhibit is called Egypt: Land of Ancients, and it basically follows the life of a scribe named Peneb. The gallery is rectangular in shape and is about 1000 sqft. Guests will enter through a gateway following the river Nile, which cuts through the room diagonally (blue carpet, with fiberglass rocks, papyrus reeds, a fiberglass crocodile etc). On the East side of the Nile is Peneb's house which will simply show daily life for a scribe's family; a market place with food and livestock, a textile stand and a spice stand; and a temple to Thoth, which is also the scibe school, where touring kids can learn hieroglyph-to-alphabet symbols and spell out their names with wooden blocks, and also a simple number system.
There will also be a small copy of the Rosetta stone and an explanation of it's importance, an alter to Thoth, and an area on papyrus. Across the river to the West will be a wabet, where kids can wrap a mummy, with explanations regarding egyptian beliefs on the afterlife. We then move upriver to the present to an archeological campsite and Paneb's tomb. Inside the tomb will be a wooden coffin and artifacts, plus a DVD on egyptology.***
Needless to say the best part of this, for me, is that it is for young hearts and minds! I can only hope, looking back over the years and the way those early exposures to ancient cultures helped form the person and maker-of-things I am today, that there will be one or two who come away with the same intrigue and sense of awe. . . as well as the comfort and connection I felt then, the kind that permeates the soul and settles there to reappear at some point in adulthood when it is needed most.
For me, every piece I send into the world is a wonderful affirmation that those ancient spirits never die. . . and these two, going to be part of something that will open new eyes and minds, well, that makes me feel incredibly joyful. . and I just wanted to share that with you today.
nicolas
For all of the luster and glitz of KingTut, I was even more taken by the simple, everyday possessions of the ancient Egyptian that I saw in that museums cases. It was that first glimpse into the life of, what I imagined to be, a boy just like me, that inspired the life long love I have held for that era and the pantheon of Egyptian deities.
So, now with my adult self creating statues and amulets that are all directly inspired by ancient pieces and primarily those of everyday worship in that ancient Egyptian world, I have received a very meaningful nod to my work that ties hits whole cycle up in one small way.
Yesterday two of my pieces were purchased by a woman who is part of the La Habra Children's Museum in La Habra CA. They are having an installation come October that will be a walk through tour of a scribe's life in ancient Egypt.
The pieces are these below:
Bes and Taweret
She also sent me this description of how the exhibit will be set up.
***The exhibit is called Egypt: Land of Ancients, and it basically follows the life of a scribe named Peneb. The gallery is rectangular in shape and is about 1000 sqft. Guests will enter through a gateway following the river Nile, which cuts through the room diagonally (blue carpet, with fiberglass rocks, papyrus reeds, a fiberglass crocodile etc). On the East side of the Nile is Peneb's house which will simply show daily life for a scribe's family; a market place with food and livestock, a textile stand and a spice stand; and a temple to Thoth, which is also the scibe school, where touring kids can learn hieroglyph-to-alphabet symbols and spell out their names with wooden blocks, and also a simple number system.
There will also be a small copy of the Rosetta stone and an explanation of it's importance, an alter to Thoth, and an area on papyrus. Across the river to the West will be a wabet, where kids can wrap a mummy, with explanations regarding egyptian beliefs on the afterlife. We then move upriver to the present to an archeological campsite and Paneb's tomb. Inside the tomb will be a wooden coffin and artifacts, plus a DVD on egyptology.***
Needless to say the best part of this, for me, is that it is for young hearts and minds! I can only hope, looking back over the years and the way those early exposures to ancient cultures helped form the person and maker-of-things I am today, that there will be one or two who come away with the same intrigue and sense of awe. . . as well as the comfort and connection I felt then, the kind that permeates the soul and settles there to reappear at some point in adulthood when it is needed most.
For me, every piece I send into the world is a wonderful affirmation that those ancient spirits never die. . . and these two, going to be part of something that will open new eyes and minds, well, that makes me feel incredibly joyful. . and I just wanted to share that with you today.
nicolas
Monday, February 25, 2013
Silent Running
The little wooden sled never went very fast
But that never mattered
The first few trips down the gentle slope of the back yard
Were tedious
Cutting and packing the path that the next 4 or 5 dozen passes would follow,
Those first few leaving rusty orange runner lines in the pure white snow
Once the path was defined, I'd bring out the flags
Sixteen or so of the countries of the world
The ones that I included in my own backyard olympic event
Nordic and European
The US, Russia and Canada
Each tiny one drawn by hand, cut out
Pasted to a popsicle stick
And off I'd go
Each trip, after a running start, flowing across the yard
Down into the vacant lot
Then winding back along the sidewalk in front of the neighbors house
The last 20 feet, the sled moved just slightly faster than a crawl
And when all motion would stop,
A flag would be planted in the snow
The mark to beat
And back up for the next nation's run. . .
These games were always played when my mother was at work
And my grandmother likely sleeping or watching the soaps
I knew, if they looked out the window and saw me,
The inevitable questions would come
"What are you doing honey?"
"Are you just going to ride that sled all day?"
"What are those little pieces of paper down there?"
My grandfather, though he would check on me out the house windows as much as anyone,
Never asked me those questions
Never interrupted the games
Never seemed confused by the 10 or 11 or 12 year old's imagination
To me, that silence always spoke volumes about what we shared
And every moment I sit and indulge my imagination today
The silence connects us
Again~
nicolas hall
But that never mattered
The first few trips down the gentle slope of the back yard
Were tedious
Cutting and packing the path that the next 4 or 5 dozen passes would follow,
Those first few leaving rusty orange runner lines in the pure white snow
Once the path was defined, I'd bring out the flags
Sixteen or so of the countries of the world
The ones that I included in my own backyard olympic event
Nordic and European
The US, Russia and Canada
Each tiny one drawn by hand, cut out
Pasted to a popsicle stick
And off I'd go
Each trip, after a running start, flowing across the yard
Down into the vacant lot
Then winding back along the sidewalk in front of the neighbors house
The last 20 feet, the sled moved just slightly faster than a crawl
And when all motion would stop,
A flag would be planted in the snow
The mark to beat
And back up for the next nation's run. . .
These games were always played when my mother was at work
And my grandmother likely sleeping or watching the soaps
I knew, if they looked out the window and saw me,
The inevitable questions would come
"What are you doing honey?"
"Are you just going to ride that sled all day?"
"What are those little pieces of paper down there?"
My grandfather, though he would check on me out the house windows as much as anyone,
Never asked me those questions
Never interrupted the games
Never seemed confused by the 10 or 11 or 12 year old's imagination
To me, that silence always spoke volumes about what we shared
And every moment I sit and indulge my imagination today
The silence connects us
Again~
nicolas hall
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Escapism
Listening to the NY Times Book Review podcast yesterday and one of the guests was Joe Queenan who was discussing his habit of rereading books again and again.
At first I was intrigued because I have a few titles of my own that I could read a dozen times (and have) and always find something new within.
But what struck me most was a comment he made about how reading is, for so many people, an expression of the desire to escape their world into another. And he believes this is especially true of those who read voraciously as he does.
As he spoke of his own reading habits, it became clear that it is something more than just enjoying books and stories. . but that they are truly another world for him to exist in. He copies lines, passages and quotes for future reference, then organizes and stores them. So the escape continues outside the covers of the books themselves into his own world. . .
He connected this pursuit to being similar to anything people do in excess. . . and, for me, the light went off imediately in my own head.
*** *** ***
As a child, I did not create to escape anything horrible or unjust.
I had a rather charmed upbringing in a simple, working class, urban home in Pennsylvania. My hours and hours of "escape" were fueled by the fact that I simply preferred those self created places and imaginings more than most of the possible interactive reality with kids my age. (this from ages 7 to 17 really. . . and, in truth, through most of my adult years as well) My interests from sports, to ancient Egyptian art to sci-fi fantasy, writing stories, music and building miniature railroads was all something I felt most at ease delving into totally alone so as to be created by just one set of rules. My own. . .
And I was a voracious maker-of-things within each of those elements. The worlds I created extended beyond the time spent within them. In my head, there were constant dialogues and imaginings of what would come next. Sort of like previews of upcoming shows. This was the main part of my world for many years.
Somewhere along the way, in my early 20's, that got sidetracked . . . set aside. . . and I lost my way for awhile in life in general I think.
It seems to me that so very often, under the guise of growing up, we think we have to leave much of that early escapism and creation behind. Also, there are people who perhaps never had that in their own childhood years and they actually discover it later in life. Sadly, they relegate it to "hobby" or "interest" status as that is the more grown up way to give it voice.
Now this, it seems, is all in the interest of having these things fit into our adult lives and this is, in my world, backwards thinking.
Do we ever find it if we venture far from those childhood places or allow our passions and loves to be compartmentalized into being called indulgences, hobbies, interests and a few-hours-a-month-when-time-allows activities??
In my life, after all these years, those indulgences and worlds of my own creation are front and center again. They occupy almost EVERY waking hour and they are how I make my living now. They are the very essence of my world today, as they were all those years ago and, yes, that comes with costs that few would be willing to pay.
With the exception of the computer, where I do indeed sell most of my items and creations on the internet, I have left behind the modern world almost completely. I am certain that it is not a place where creativity can reign or be nurtured because it is all about the moment and the minutia of our lives. Instant and constant flooding of the unimaginative and mundane.
Creativity, on the other hand, takes time and effort and imagination and solitude to discover. . . to unlock something magical within.
The desire to connect in today's instant access world only serves to push more and more people into forced community instead of celebrating the unique, the individual, the mystery and, maybe most importantly, the solitude and aloneness of us all.
Which is, to me, the best thing we can slow down and explore.
And this, I think has trickled right down to every form of escape, even reading which, as Mr Queenan states in his thoughts about e-readers,“ they have purged all the authentic, non-electronic magic and mystery from their lives.”
It's all about magic really. . .
And taking the time to create it is the best thing I believe I can do every day. Because ithas paid me back ten-fold in ways I have yet to even tally.
I hope you will take the time and create it too.
nicolas
At first I was intrigued because I have a few titles of my own that I could read a dozen times (and have) and always find something new within.
But what struck me most was a comment he made about how reading is, for so many people, an expression of the desire to escape their world into another. And he believes this is especially true of those who read voraciously as he does.
As he spoke of his own reading habits, it became clear that it is something more than just enjoying books and stories. . but that they are truly another world for him to exist in. He copies lines, passages and quotes for future reference, then organizes and stores them. So the escape continues outside the covers of the books themselves into his own world. . .
He connected this pursuit to being similar to anything people do in excess. . . and, for me, the light went off imediately in my own head.
*** *** ***
As a child, I did not create to escape anything horrible or unjust.
I had a rather charmed upbringing in a simple, working class, urban home in Pennsylvania. My hours and hours of "escape" were fueled by the fact that I simply preferred those self created places and imaginings more than most of the possible interactive reality with kids my age. (this from ages 7 to 17 really. . . and, in truth, through most of my adult years as well) My interests from sports, to ancient Egyptian art to sci-fi fantasy, writing stories, music and building miniature railroads was all something I felt most at ease delving into totally alone so as to be created by just one set of rules. My own. . .
And I was a voracious maker-of-things within each of those elements. The worlds I created extended beyond the time spent within them. In my head, there were constant dialogues and imaginings of what would come next. Sort of like previews of upcoming shows. This was the main part of my world for many years.
Somewhere along the way, in my early 20's, that got sidetracked . . . set aside. . . and I lost my way for awhile in life in general I think.
It seems to me that so very often, under the guise of growing up, we think we have to leave much of that early escapism and creation behind. Also, there are people who perhaps never had that in their own childhood years and they actually discover it later in life. Sadly, they relegate it to "hobby" or "interest" status as that is the more grown up way to give it voice.
Now this, it seems, is all in the interest of having these things fit into our adult lives and this is, in my world, backwards thinking.
Do we ever find it if we venture far from those childhood places or allow our passions and loves to be compartmentalized into being called indulgences, hobbies, interests and a few-hours-a-month-when-time-allows activities??
In my life, after all these years, those indulgences and worlds of my own creation are front and center again. They occupy almost EVERY waking hour and they are how I make my living now. They are the very essence of my world today, as they were all those years ago and, yes, that comes with costs that few would be willing to pay.
With the exception of the computer, where I do indeed sell most of my items and creations on the internet, I have left behind the modern world almost completely. I am certain that it is not a place where creativity can reign or be nurtured because it is all about the moment and the minutia of our lives. Instant and constant flooding of the unimaginative and mundane.
Creativity, on the other hand, takes time and effort and imagination and solitude to discover. . . to unlock something magical within.
The desire to connect in today's instant access world only serves to push more and more people into forced community instead of celebrating the unique, the individual, the mystery and, maybe most importantly, the solitude and aloneness of us all.
Which is, to me, the best thing we can slow down and explore.
And this, I think has trickled right down to every form of escape, even reading which, as Mr Queenan states in his thoughts about e-readers,“ they have purged all the authentic, non-electronic magic and mystery from their lives.”
It's all about magic really. . .
And taking the time to create it is the best thing I believe I can do every day. Because ithas paid me back ten-fold in ways I have yet to even tally.
I hope you will take the time and create it too.
nicolas
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