Quotations

This quotation captured me yesterday: 

 "by 'poet' I mean the broadest sense of a creative maker of meaningful space."  

 (in Radical Hope by Jonathan Lear)

Here are a few others that are engraved in my heart:

"we live in a world of suffering in which evil is rampant, a world whose events do not confirm our Being, a world that has to be resisted. It is in this situation that the aesthetic moment offers hope . . . For an instant, the energy of one's perception becomes inseparable from the energy of creation. . . . All the languages of art have been developed as an attempt to transform the instantaneous into the permanent. Art supposes that beauty is not an exception--is not in despite of--but is the basis for an order. . . . . the transcendental face of art is always a form of prayer."  

(John Berger)

Don't ask yourself what the world needs.
Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
(Howard Thurman)

Art Exstallation Manifesto

If art is cash,

credit, investment, and status,

I am dross.

Value is a flexible cup

that runneth over.

Beauty is a warm soldier

with nonetheless weapons

of brilliant harm.

If art is making and

giving, I am full,

and the glad opposite

of finite.

Color is a form of
consciousness, of spirit
holding faith in fountains.

Shadow is the substance
of waiting for euphoria.

If art is holding and collecting,
I am a loose thread meandering,
a loose cannon rolling
significant light shows
against the pregnant dark.

Line is a singular map
condensed and waiting
for a vision to release its direction, thrust,
and purpose.

Contrast is a multiplier
of sensation, a confluence
of rivers, and an omelet
both savory and sweet.

If art is a tiny gift
that magnifies a glance
into an embrace, and
a stitch into time itself,
I am wealth personified.

Abstractions are deep
reflections in the
skewed mirror of
the sky’s eyeballs.

  

If art is bold
along the seams of loss,
making a forever
juxtaposition of empathy
and grief, I am
the process of mourning that
beholds joy
and treasures delight.

Texture is the way fingers see
grains of sand
and the print of stars
on the bedclothes. Texture
is the nutritional supplement
on top of the nurturing meal.

If art is the measure of

 kindness is courage,
I am love.

The elements of art are
here, there, and
everywhere: the glare on
the pill bottle by nightlight,
the crumple of black leather gloves,
the myriad shapes of calligraphy,
the feather of down and the
feather of dawn.

Forbidden is but one of the ways
art is hidden and lost in this world.

If art is marketing, product placement,
and public relations, I am
an intriguing whisper
in an empty room.