MINDSCAPES





DREAMING THE DRAWING, DREAMING THE POEM: 
ART AS TRANSFORMATIVE RITUAL

Adapted from the exhibition catalogue for "Mindscapes: 104 Drawings" held at the 
New Jersey State Museum and the Minneapolis Institute 



I like to follow my mind as if it were a stream meandering down a hill, speeding up, slowing down, taking unexpected turns. I don't want to know ahead of time what the next word will be or the next image or how it all is going to end (if it does end). I write and draw in order to find out. I like to surprise myself and I do everything I can to make that possible. 
     
      Like a photographer who carries his camera everywhere (I think of Cartier-Bresson), I wait for my own internal "decisive moment." My landscape is my mind, and I need speed and candor. Bresson did not crop his photographs; I do not erase a line. Nor do I pre-visualize or draw erasable guidelines or create written outlines. What is important is that I allow what is real to emerge with spontaneity, unedited and uncensored. What is real to me is what is born of necessity--candid, raw, vital, urgent, natural, direct, resonant.


Left Side Drawn by Right Hand, Right Side Drawn by Left Hand

As I create, I feel as if I am asleep, dreaming the work, while being simultaneously awake, observing, analytical. My poems and drawings, like dreams, have their own unfolding life of surprising landscapes, strange animals, monsters, bizarre characters and unexpected juxtapositions. As these works unfold, they frequently seem strange to me--as my dreams often do. Part of me knows that this seemingly unreal world is my internal world wearing a mask of strangeness.

 

Mandrill Lion King


      As my hand moves across the page, drawing a line or writing word after word, these works seem to be creating themselves. As the drawing or poem emerges, my conscious mind behaves like an audience in a darkened theater, watching a drama unfold on the stage--sometimes whispering, sometimes silent. My hand plays out this drama on the page in spite of occasional storms of protestation from the audience. Critical judgments by my conscious mind must be suspended or, at the very least, subordinated to the performance at hand--the unfolding. Occasionally awareness surges up from the depths of this immersed state and boils to the surface. Ah hah! This is what it means! At these moments I must resist the impulse to interrupt the process as one might awaken oneself from a dream. Whatever the poem or drawing is becoming, I wish to see it as it is.


Runner Caught Between Dinosaur and Bully
      
With each willful continuing there is new growth into new dimensions of self. 
In the act of creation, I accept myself. 
In the conscious flash of recognition of what the work means, I accept myself. 
Through these acts of acceptance, I change. 
As I change, my drawings and poems change. 
With each change I become more of who I am--more real, more realized.


Cardplayers with Figure Heads and Breast Eyes


"My 

young men                 

never 
work. 
  


Men who 

labor 

cannot                              

dream 
 
and wisdom 

comes 

through 

dreaming." 

 

-Smohalla, 
   
Nez Perce Indian religious teacher 
   
of the "Dreamers"



Initiate with Robot and Octopus Armed Peanut


Whether frog or prince 

the image is me. 
  


Part of me wants to 

greet the stranger.

Part of me wants to
bolt the door 

and sound the alarm.

The stranger that's welcomed 

comes but once.

The stranger that's rejected 

returns again and 

again.



John Randolph Carter