Hallelujah

I keep staring at the New York Times map of the midterm election wins as if it's a magical icon of faith. One of those thirteenth century madonnas that was thought of as not merely a painting, but the embodiment of divine love.


Guido de Siena, Madonna and Child, c. 1270

I'm a very secular person, so I take my divinity where I find it. And right now "the thumping" does pretty well. For as long as I've had any idea of political life in this country I've known one thing: Democrats do not get out the vote at midterm. They are good hearted but lazy about everything but presidential elections, and because Republicans have a built in forum in which to organize (churches), they have a built in structure to get out the vote.

The last elections really depressed me. I knew smart people who did not vote because they thought Republicans and Democrats were all the same. When I think about this I get so angry I veer off into long winded mental speeches that involve explaining the difference between rattlesnakes, rabbits and garter snakes and I make myself ridiculous.

I didn't have any hope for the midterm elections. I was more deeply appalled by the reigning administration than I'd ever been at any other moment in my life, so I imagined other people were also angry, but I figured that we'd lose because this administration is so smart about spin.

Even Bush's language in defeat is good. Calling it "a thumping" makes him seem likeable. The administration's ability to blandly turn the focus of the talk about Iraq away from their mistakes to the Iraqis "taking responsibility" is mystifyingly impressive. He's one of those bullies who secretly fascinates me because they seem to have no conscience, no shame, and no ability to criticize themselves. I don't admire this quality, but I envy it. One wishes there were some possible combination of megalomaniacal, theatrically astute personal confidence and moral defensibility that we could elect next time instead of the weakness of the typical democrat, who lives with a conscientious awareness of the complexity of issues. I think Clinton had that combination. Anyone who saw his "I was a fat kid" speech on the night before the election knows what I mean.

This election seems miraculous to me because it overturned what had become, for me, essential truths. Articles, if you like, not of faith, but of pessimism. That Democrats were lazy about everything except presidential elections. That otherwise smart people could be so idealistic they could talk themselves right into giving up all the power they have, and that they regularly do this in great enough numbers to allow truly evil policies to flourish.

A couple of days ago I saw a young university woman ask her classmates to explain who Dick Cheney is. So it's not as if I'm about to banish all my pessimism, but it has been, as they say, dampened. But on that note, this is an amazing post election article.

Kelmscott Chaucer

Kelmscott Chaucer lives in the treehouse. If you walk in the front door of Temple University's Paley Library, you see what appears to be a rickety elevated fort built against the back wall of a large atrium. The building is standard issue 1960s concrete and glass institutional style, but the treehouse is a friendly wooden structure that looms over a bank of computer terminals in the atrium below.

My favorite person at Temple lives there. Thomas Whitehead, the head of Special Collections, is an ex letterpress guy who presides over the best collection of artists' books in the city. Going into the special collections room in the treehouse is like sneaking into the back room of a museum: there are amazing things everywhere you look: illuminated manuscripts, old woodblocks, books the size of your fingernail and the size of your torso. Not to mention sci-fi posters and pieces of type with the entire, apparently, Lord's Prayer carved on their tiny tops.

I see Thomas Whitehead once or twice a year when I take people to look at artists' books. The man has and knows everything. He shows us artists' books made of latex, soap, quilts, bras, and glass. He tells us to sniff the beautiful book from Vietnam that smells of the tobacco leaves that are used in the paper, and he once got out a can opener and opened one edition of the two books-in-a-can he'd bought so we could see what was inside. He's got a great collection of rare books, sci-fi and propaganda posters, as well as political literature from the sixties. And it's his job. He's up in the treehouse, preserving the culture.

Today I went to a presentation he gave on the Kelmscott Press Chaucer. This is a book by William Morris' Kelmscott Press, and it's insanely gorgeous.



This is William Morris. He also wrote books himself, like this one, The Story of the Glittering Plain or The Land of Living Men.



The Chaucer is illustrated by Edward Burne Jones, a Preraphaelite painter, with initials and borders designed by Morris. There's plenty of information about it on the web, but I thought I'd post some pictures it in case anyone has not had the good fortune to run across it yet. Or wants to know what I want for Christmas.


(Click the image above to enlarge.)




Every illustrated page has these incredible borders, and the type is hand-set with beautiful elaborate initials.


(Click to enlarge)

It's in English, and lots of libraries have them. If you live in San Francisco you can go to the public library's rare book collection and just check it out for a few hours. They give you white gloves and watch you to make sure you're not taking out your scissors or anything, but you can sit there and just read it. You could come back every week and read a chapter. (I asked. And then, sadly, I moved to the East Coast.)


(Click to enlarge)

The Kelmscott Chaucer is an amazing testament to, among other things, the value of work.


These are the printers working on the Chaucer.

I've been working on another very slow, large drawing lately, and I'm really enjoying it. I was thinking today, as I took five hours to shade in the ends of two banners and some drapery, that I really love work. That work in itself has become a value to me. I don't mean that any work is its own reward- any ex-temp knows that's not true- and it's not that I actually enjoy every moment of working. Nor do I count my job as work. But work directed towards something one loves is a powerful thing. Work on art opens up artistic possibilities. I feel, lately, like it's possible to access the kinds of visual gestures and bravado that were common in other eras if I remove the pressure to make my art quickly. It might be that given enough time, I really can do fake Victorian engravings with my ballpoint pen.

It's tremendously liberating to commit to that endeavor- to work much longer than I usually would on making something look good, even if that seems fantastically inefficient. It feels rather revolutionary too- there's something neat about putting so much effort into transforming a single piece of paper with the disposable pen I bought at Office Depot.

If I give myself five hours to spend working on carefully shading my drapery, I can get a really good looking image. My image looks old fashioned, and that's partly because I'm giving the piece the time that people used to put behind their work. I don't mean thinking time. I mean hand on the paper time. Work.



It's not a new impulse. But I think it's a good one.

There are some great large Morris images here, courtesy of one Florence Boos at the University of Iowa, who also happens to be president of the U.S. chapter of the Morris Society, and there's also a good article on the Kelmscott Press Chaucer here.

The Smartest Dog in the World

In case anyone who knows me has failed to notice, I'm obsessed with animals. It's a long standing obsession, and I'm particularly interested in the ways we draw the line between humans and animals. Which might explain why I have an old children's book called Bob, Son of Battle. It's all about the noble dog Bob's noble exploits, but really I just bought it for the cover.



It's pretty much unreadable because a lot of the people talking about Bob are doing so with multiple apostrophes in each word.

"Yo' may well say that," cried Tanitnas in a kind of
ecstasy. "A proper Gray Dog, I tell yo'. Wi' the brains
of a man and the way of a woman. Ah, yo' canna beat 'em
nohow, the Gray Dogs o' Kenmuir!"

But forget the grey dogs of Kenmuir. Today I heard about Faith.



Faith is a helper dog to a Ms. Leana Beasley. But here's the deal: when Ms. Beasley took the wrong medicine Faith started barking at her. Then when she had a grand mal seizure Faith pushed her into seizure recovery position, knocked the phone off the cradle, pushed the 911 speed dial button with her paw, and barked at the operator when she heard a voice.

I heard the tape of the 911 call. It goes something like this:

"Hello, Emergency!"
"Bark!"
"Hello, can I help you?"
"Bark!"

The dog definitely waits for the human to stop speaking before replying with a bark. When the ambulance came, Faith looked out, recognized the police, and unlocked the door. Thus saving Ms. Beasley's life.

Faith got an Award for Canine Excellence, but really, I think someone should write a novel. Or at least make a painting of Noble Faith dialing the phone.

Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal

I try to keep this blog focused on things that are driving my artwork, but there are some times when one loses focus. When one's vocabulary shrinks to the quickest way of expressing one's emotion. When having a public forum in which one can post a picture of McCauley Culkin at six years old with his pink hands slapped to the side of his enormous open mouth and write "OMG!!!!" over and over again seems like a really good thing. When one feels that the world would understand, and in fact needs to. I'm sure this will be all over the news later, and that the rest of the world will be doing that same face soon, but I just got the news, and I feel compelled to add my useless voice to the storm of voices that will be offerring intelligent political analysis of Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal soon. Which is to say this:

Oh holy crap! Can we please, please, send this administration home?

Also. If I know you and you don't vote I'm going to hit you.