Form. Secrets. Beauty.

Friends are amazing people. They don't complain, but absorb both your pain and joy; even more than that, they laugh with you and buy you pina colada's. Seriously, I can't say that I'm a role model for being a great friend, but I hope that I am what I can be...because at the end of the day, what matters most, is not how much money I make, it's really about the friends who decide to keep me.

These days, friends often communciate over the cell phone in the form of a text message, IM or voicemail, but I still believe in sending greeting cards, either ones I purchase at Hallmark or ones tht I make at home. There is something almost magical about an envelop that contains the heartfelt words of a friend...maybe I'm a sentimental fool, but just a few months ago I was cleaning and re-packing many of my belongings that my parents are storing for me at their house, and I can't tell you how many shoeboxes I have filled with greeting cards.

I can't let go... I do believe that someday, maybe after I'm gone (Can I say that? I don't mean to be morbid), that people will sift through all of my shoeboxes, and they will stumble over the one that contains the letters my grandmother sent me, and they will suddenly see me through her eyes, as her "doll." Maybe this can be noted as a miniscule detail, that I don't often allow myself to be seen in this way, because I have an image too keep...

Yeah, there are parts of ourselves that we don't allow others to see; sometimes, it's in fear that we will appear to be too vulnerable or we are too stubborn and prevent others from seeing us like that, because we will appear less like the self we try so hard to emit.

People often ask me what type of art I make, and when I say describe my work as "abstract and sometimes figurative," they ask me if I can draw people. I don't know why this is so important to everyone. Artists cannot be defined by what type of line they are able to make, but rather, they should be defined by the connection they are able to make with others; realism and abstraction have no authority over beauty, it can only be experienced, not judged or rated on the quality of a line, afterall, I will be the first to admit-I am not perfect. Don't expect it when you see my art. I have tried to fix mistakes in the past, they will either continue to reveal themselves or be transformed into something I never saw coming, an "ah-ha moment," when I know that no matter how hard I try, perfection is just another flaw that convinces me that I need to make art, to find my way, towards truth and meaning.

Anyway, all of this flows from my heart, which has been impacted by three books/magazines that I've been reading on my 5 day vacation. I almost started to complain that I didn't fill my five days with constant visits with friends and family, but the past two days have been relaxing. I don't always go back to NY relaxed due to the exhaustion of socializing with so many people in such a short time.

Anyway, here's that book/magazine list:
Postsecret, by Frank Warren
"We all have secrets: fears, regrets, hopes, beliefs, fantasies, betrayals, humilations. We may not always recognize them but they are a part of us-like the dreams we can't always recall in the morning light....I belive that each one of us has the ability to discover, share, and grow our own dark secets into something meaningful and beautiful." -Frank Warren

Angelic Mistakes, The Art of Thomas Merton, by Roger Lipsey
The perfect act is empty. Who can see it? He who forgets form. Out of the formed, the unformed, the empty act proceeds its own form. Perfect form is momentary. Its perfection vanishes at once. Perfection and emptiness work together for they are the same: the coincidence of momentary form and eternal nothingness. Form: the flash of nothingness. Forget form, and it suddenly appears, ringed and reverberating with its own light, which is nothing. Well then: stop seeking. Let it all happen. Let it come and go. What? Everything: i.e., nothing.
(Cables to the Ace, poem by Thomas Merton)

Newsweek, August 7, 2006, particularly the article on Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" film that came out today.
A few quotes from the "WTC" article:
"Forging art out of tragedy is a primal human response."
"Almost by definition, artists make thier own rules, and are hostile to restraints."

""World Trade Center" celebrates the ties that bind us, the bonds that keep us going, the goodness that stands as a rebuke to the horror of that day."


Art critic Arthur Danto, "The spontaneity , the way in which everybody seemed to do it to express their feelings-right away-through these little shrines. It taught me something about how people respond to devestation: through beauty."