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copyright 2009 by Stan Berning

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Berning, Stan

about art : a novella / Stan Berning.

ISBN 978-0-578-00623-9

1. art memoir 2. artist american 3. art psychology 4. art theory 5. art 21st century 6. travel North America 7. title

Library of Congress Control Number:  2009900577

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Contents

1 - a terrible-beautiful dream

2 - Bisbee and beyond

3 - letter to a friend

4 - midnight at the Meckstroth’s

5 - you have asked me what has transpired …..

6 - a sojourn to Santa Fe, a cabin fire, and a fishing trip

7 - deep water

8 - Avalon, Salt Spring Island, Victoria, and a ferry ride

9 - “Take any space you want.” he said.

10 - dancing impossibly close to the edge

11 - a mad rush down the coast

12 - into Mexico

13 - grace

14 - about art

15 - the escaped prisoner story

16 - what I choose

17 - taking leave

18 - a shrine of lilies

19 - my borrowed place

20 - postscript

In the street of a small rural town, surrounded by milling people, I was assisting with the lighting of candles.  These candles were then placed inside translucent papier-mâché balloons.  Some were no more than small paper bags clasped tightly in both hands above the head.  Others were slightly larger and attached to fragile wicker frames one could uncomfortably crouch within.  Once each person made the tremulous decision to ascend, they would grasp hold of these improbable contraptions and be lifted high into the air.  The blue sky was soon filled with a hundred or more.  Later, the candle light of each soul flickered impossibly high in a deep night sky.  These pinpoints of light converged or drifted apart in random movement on the still night air; a gathering of fireflies in the complete blackness of a starless night.

With a quick tremor of fear, I thought, “The candles will soon burn out!’” No sooner had this thought come to me than the first of the lights was extinguished and the body of that soul plunged to earth.  Soon more and more were falling.  Two lights came together, were extinguished, and the two fell as one.  From the vantage point of a bird poised just above them, I saw four who had come together.  Their bodies, intertwined, fell rapidly away from me, disappearing into a foggy, obscuring blackness to perish on the desert floor far below.

Standing upon a small hill, gazing up at the few lights left flickering in the sky, I sensed with dread the bloated and decaying corpses that in the darkness surrounded us.  To the man standing next to me I said, “When daylight comes there will be bodies to collect and bury.”

This morning I am contemplating how we humans, awkwardly tangled in dreams of salvation, struggle to lend meaning to a physical world that is most often brutally indifferent.  It may be that the one thing of substantial power left to us is our own imagination.

As a painter, I grew up seeing the world through the prism of art.  As clear and true a prism as any other, art elevated me above the poverty of my everyday existence and conferred upon my life a spirit charged with potential.  That potential seemed to explode onto the public stage on March 3rd of 2005 with a one-man show at New York’s Lincoln Center and the premier of the film Off The Map.  In this very special movie, the story of which is, in part, about a man’s transformation from lost soul to artist, my paintings play a significant and pivotal role.  Though I am forever grateful to the films director, Campbell Scott, for the opportunity to be a part of his exceptional project, out of it came some surprising and devastating personal consequences that left me shaken to the core and in doubt of all I had once taken for granted. Two months after its release, I sold my home and studio and, with a profound sadness, abandoned all ties to the place I’d called home for 25 years.  With only the vaguest of plans and no idea of what was next required of me, I thrust myself out onto the highway in one last desperate reach for clarity.

Originally these stories, posted online at livejournal.com, were intended simply as a travel log to keep friends and family informed of my whereabouts.  The writing and rewriting of them soon became an integral tool in my quest for understanding, healing, and redemption.

This is a true telling of a decisive moment upon which my world turned and, as such, it is a bridge.  There will always now be that which came before and that which followed.  This bridge is for my father.  He never had the opportunity to make his own crossing, but through his music, despite his hard life, he bequeathed me the desire and faith to dream.

Herbert Anthony Berning

1915 - 1965

My dog and I have been on the road for eighteen days.  The weather is cool, foggy, and quite beautiful.

The first day out from Santa Fe, New Mexico, I drove to Bisbee, Arizona.  I found Bisbee unique and magical.  A huge open-pit copper mine encroaches on its eastern edge and mountains of tailings surround the site for miles, but the town itself is picturesque and quite impossible to imagine.  The downtown of two and three-story brick Victorian warehouses is surrounded by a series of makeshift homes clinging precariously to the cliffs of two converging canyons.  Stair-steps cut into the cliffs appear and disappear in blind turns between the houses and run all the way up the canyon walls.  While giving one the impression of being on an island in the Mediterranean, it is a hole in the ground in the middle of some of the hottest desert in North America.  It is the kind of architecture dreams are made of.  The people of the town seem open and friendly though far too familiar with each others’ business, being only about 500 people.  I met one genuine artist there; a woman by the name of Sam who paints like a man and loves the place.

Dixie and I stayed in a hotel that seemed ready to tumble off the cliff (not a straight floor in the place) operated by a woman who did not wish to be bothered.  During dinner I overheard a conversation about the encroachment of Californians that I’d heard almost word-for-word 20 years ago in Santa Fe.  The next morning, after several conversations (an actor just moved from Tucson - a local just returned from the Amazon) the heat of the day set in.  By the time I reached Phoenix it was over 100.  The next day,117.

I had planned to spend more time in Arizona with a stop in Palm Desert, California, but it was so impossibly hot that I changed plans and drove two hard days to get off the scorching desert floor.  We landed for a time at a campground in the Los Padres mountains north of Los Angeles.  There was a stream running through the site and when Dixie laid eyes on it she lost her mind, plunging in and out of the water, running madly about on a terror.  She found a boyfriend, went feral for a bit and came out of the experience with ticks and an elevated sense of herself, which has rapidly disappeared since last night’s bath.

I have been working my way slowly up the California coast, stopping at a number of small beaches only accessible by foot.

……….

We spent last weekend in San Francisco with Howard and Joyce.  It was a tough visit for Dixie, since Joyce has allergies and we had to keep her at Howard’s studio.  Despite all that, they were gracious as always.

My first hour with them was an adjustment after days by myself on the road.  Howard is a fine painter and Joyce is the top sales person for a large art publishing house.  Their new condo is absolutely beautiful, with no expense spared to make it so.  It is an accomplishment to be proud of.  Near the summit of Potrero Hill, they live with a view that is quite transcendent, though their hearts and minds are planted firmly in this world.

On Friday, I made a surprise visit to my gallery.  Mel E was on the phone in his office while his dreadful little assistant ignored me obtusely as she always does.  I stood in the center of the cavernous room, my heart pounding in my chest.  Unable to catch my breath, I turned and left without a word.  Later I picked up my prints at Andrea S’s Gallery.  I found myself very comfortable with her, rambling on about my disappointment and disgust with the business.  “I’m just burnt out, Andrea.  I can’t do it anymore.”  Soon after those two visits, Howard and I had the conversation for which I had come to San Francisco.

In Bisbee I had been in a gallery that handled the paintings of a man who obviously had copied Howard’s work (the tendrils, broken rectangles, and shaped canvases, even palettes).  The director had bragged about having sold 90 of his paintings last year.  Upon seeing some of Howard’s new work I said, “This is head and shoulders above anything that copy-artist in Arizona could possibly imagine, but if you were to put this work in that space they wouldn’t be able to sell it.”

He replied, “Yes, I know.  Isn’t it amazing.  I have come to the conclusion that, as a general rule, people have mediocre taste and look for things that validate those tastes.  You can be too good.”

“I know you’ll understand this.” I said “What we as painters have to offer is that ‘Oh Yes!’ experience when we surprise ourselves with breakthroughs and revelations.  Those inspired moments are the lynchpins of all artistic experience and the only reason it has value.  I always thought when I achieved that level of expertise where I could consistently elevate the dialog to find those moments, then I would be rewarded in the real world.  Instead, I am finding the opposite might be true and I cannot describe the almost crippling disappointment I feel.”  This was the first time I’d acknowledged the toll the last few years have taken.

Later that night I lay in the dark, lost in an oversized mattress amidst a forest of pillows, listening as the sounds of the city drifted up and through the open bedroom window.  In the darkness, memories of my last month in Santa Fe rolled over me with the surprising force of consecutive lightening strikes from a dangerous, too close storm.

Eight weeks before, David P, an old friend and now gallery director, having heard that I was leaving town and knowing I did not have representation in Santa Fe, arranged an interview with Rita N, the owner of the gallery where he worked.  David, Rita, and I visited for two hours at my studio.  She spoke at length about her spiritual work, a thing she seemed genuinely connected with, and discussed with understanding the difficulties of the business.  For my part, I stayed open and curious.  We were interviewing each other and for each of us the interview went well.

‘Yes,’ I thought with surprise as she drove away, ‘I might actually enjoy working with her.’  She had been charming and direct and, though I had never much cared for the predominantly mediocre tastes of her gallery, many of my friends had shown with her in the past and done well.  And I had always wanted to work with David.  It seemed important that, if possible, I not leave town without a local dealer.

“I’ve not seen enough of this new work to make an informed decision.” she had said.  We agreed that I would continue painting for the next month while my work-study students packed for the move.  On the last day, with the rooms empty and the walls pristine, I would do a presentation of all the work I had done.

So I spent the last month madly painting as Amy and Weston disassembled all the portions of my life and placed them in labeled boxes left scattered about me on the studio floor.  There was no time for contemplation as, between those hours of submersion in the focused process of painting, the demands of the move compelled me from project to project.  The movers arrived and in one ferocious ten hour surge all the chaos disappeared behind the metal doors of a storage locker two blocks to the east.  As I put the finishing touches on the new paintings and prepared them for hanging, walls were patched and windows cleaned.

At 2 AM I had been scrubbing sinks and toilets, but now, at 8 AM, I stood at the center of a large empty white room, its walls as pristine as any museum’s, and gazed at the twenty or so paintings hung carefully about.  A pot of coffee brewed on the kitchen countertop next to bottles of wine and paper cups (later in the day I would be hosting an open house; a farewell to friends) when the phone rang.

It was David, his naturally tense voice edged with apology.  “Stan, I’m so sorry, but I’ve overslept.  I have to open the gallery and won’t be able to make the meeting.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, David.  I was looking forward to seeing you.”

“Well, Rita will be there soon.  So, how goes the move?  How do the new paintings look?  I hope all goes well with your meeting this morning.  Will I see you before you leave?”

Five minutes later he called back.  The nervousness in his voice had taken a tick upwards.  “Stan, I’ve bad news.  Rita can’t make it either.”

On my part, a stunned silence ensued as I absorbed this information and my mind raced to register its implications.

David was saying, “….. forgot all about it.  This is her day off and …..”.

“What do you mean?” I interrupted.  “Do you mean she’s not coming at all?”

“Well, she forgot all about it, Stan, and this is her day off.”

“Not at all?”  I asked again.  Perhaps I hadn’t understood.

“No.” David said.  “She lives twenty miles out of town and this is her day off.  She had a rough week and she says she needs to rest.”

“Does she realize that this is it?” I asked, searching still for clarity.  “There’s no rescheduling.  I’m out of here tomorrow.  Does she understand this?”

“Yes, I told her.  I told her you’d be disappointed.  But this is her day off and she’s had a rough week.  She’s not coming into town.”

David was saying, “I’m sorry, Stan, but you know I can’t tell Rita what to do.  She’s decided she …” when the implications of his words overtook me.

“Do you realize how FUCKED that is?” I interrupted, and with the explosive uttering of that profanity my anger broke loose.  “Do you have any idea how hard I’ve worked to make this happen?”

“Stan, I don’t know what to say …”

“And now you have the audacity to blow me off?  HOW DARE YOU!”

“I’ll be right over.” David said as he turned on his dime.  “I’ll be right there.  Just a few minutes late.”

“David,” I said, unmollified, “You don’t have any say in who shows in Rita’s gallery, do you?”

“No.  No, I don’t.  You know I don’t.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, David.  You know I love you but, tell me, what goddamn good does it do me then for you to come?”

During the course of this conversation I had moved from the light filled studio into the small bedroom.  Naked without its furniture, no morning light ever entering its windows, I stood in its darkest corner as I heard David saying, “….. don’t know what to tell you …” and, trembling with indignation I said quietly, “Fuck you, David.” and hung up.

I stood there in the sudden silence, the phone dangling from my hand, vibrating like a just struck cast iron bell.

For an hour I seethed, guttural cries of outrage and pain echoing about the hollow chamber which had once been my studio.  Its emptiness now seemed a monument to this, my ultimate failure, illustrated so clearly by this last blow, this ignorant and thoughtless act of cruelty.  The graphically strong paintings which, in the last month, had taken on such importance now appeared frail and of no consequence.  ‘One cannot care enough to make others care.’ I thought.  ‘What a horrid lesson; to learn that no power resides in these paintings when others may simply choose to ignore them.’  As the morning passed in silence the inevitability of this cruel thing Rita had done took root in my consciousness to become a metaphor for my last 25 years in Santa Fe.  I asked myself, ‘What have I done to deserve such terrible disrespect and contemptuous refusal from these dealers?’

By noon, though I was still shaken like a man recently beaten about the head, I found myself no longer willing to bring myself to anger.  Over the course of the afternoon a steady flow of friends and acquaintances made their way up the stairs and stood about, wine cups in hand, their eyes occasionally searching the room for chairs that were not there.  As the story of Rita’s behavior circulated, useless words of consolation and support, varying only in tone and timber, were repeated.

“There must be some good reason she would do this, Stan.”  Gail P spoke placatingly.  “No one could be that cruel and inconsiderate without reason.  Are you sure David wasn’t covering up for something more serious?” she asked.

“I wish he were,” I replied  “but no, I don’t think so.”

“Unbelievable!” Timothy N, my artist friend, ranted as he acted out his own anger.

Projecting his own difficult experiences upon the situation he exclaimed,  “To hell with her, Stan.  She has a crappy gallery anyway.  You’re better than her.  Your better off without her.  Who the hell does she think she is anyway?  All these dealers are out of their minds.  You can’t trust any of them.”

“Not all dealers are out of their minds, Timothy.” I said, finding his tone decidedly unhelpful.  “I have to ask myself if Rita has been trapped as well, drawn somehow into my own scenario of what to expect out of dealers.”

“Your being way too generous.” he said, and I had to agree.

Ron P offered reasonably, “The work looks great, Stan.  Its too bad you couldn’t get some other dealer here to see it before taking it down.”

“Who would I call at this late hour?” I asked helplessly.  “It’s Impossible, Ron.  Besides, I just don’t have the strength to go through this again.”

“Its too late.” I added sadly.  “Its just too late.”

David P called late in the day.  “Have you heard from Rita?”

“No.” I said.

“Can I come tomorrow and see what you’ve done?”

“That’s not necessary.”

“But I’d like to see what you’ve done, Stan, and talk.”

“There’s no time, David.  The work needs to come down first thing in the morning.  It’s final inspection tomorrow.  I leave the next day.”

“Can I come at 8 AM?  If I come will you be there?”

And so David came the next morning.  A trash bag filled with paper cups and empty wine bottles lay half full in the center of the room.  The kitchen counter top was still littered with yesterday’s debris.

“Has she called?” he asked.

“No, she hasn’t.”

“Damn, what’s wrong with her?” he said, frustration in his voice.  “I’ve told her she needs to call you.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Several times yesterday I told her.”

A moment later he added, “I’ve given her my notice.”

“David, don’t throw your job away over this.”

“I can’t be a party to this kind of behavior, Stan.”

“You have a good job with her.  Don’t throw it away over this.  You have to watch out for your own future.”

“I have to live with myself.”

“David, not for me.”

For the next hour we talked, he in the only folding chair and me atop the cooler; a sad long talk about our years in Santa Fe and the courage and cowardice with which we had each lived them.  I distractedly wandered about the room as, out of obligation, he looked at each painting and tried halfheartedly to discuss them.  Hearing no response from me he soon gave up.  ‘Its too late for that, David.’ I thought as I looked out the window to the street below where I noticed Mary, his wife, asleep in the passenger seat of their parked car.  An early morning for her as well.

“It’s OK, David.” I said as my eyes scanned the deep blue morning sky to the Sandia range, 50 miles south.  “This is not between you and me.  We’re good.”

The paintings had been loaded into the bed of my pickup truck.  The holes where they had been hung were patched and painted and the cement floors had been mopped one last time.  The final inspection had been successfully completed.  I had spent the night on Timothy and Trisha’s couch where my suitcases now awaited me.  As I drove to the storage shed with this one last load of paintings, my cell phone rang.  “Stan,” Rita’s voice spoke too close to my ear.  “This is Rita.  Do you have a moment to talk?”

Surprised, I replied nervously, “I don’t think I have anything to say to you.”

“Well,” she went lightly on, “David told me how upset you are and I just wanted to apologize for not making our meeting.  Last week was just so hectic and our appointment simply slipped my mind.  And then I was tired and it was …..”

‘This is not an apology.’ I thought, and hung up.

Moments later the phone rang again.  ‘Shit, I don’t want to do this.’ I thought.  But as the phone rang a second, third, and fourth time I thought, ‘All right then.  Let’s get this over with.’

“Hello”  I said as I pulled my truck to the curb.

“This is Rita.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I want to apologize.”

Silence as I waited.

“I was thoughtless, Stan.  There is no excuse for my behavior.  I owe you an apology.”

“Yes.” I said and thought to myself, ‘For what, woman?  Say it out loud.  Show me you understand.’  Rita went on.

“I know what I did was wrong.  There’s no excuse for it.  But I didn’t intend to hurt you, Stan.  It’s just that I had forgotten and then I really needed a day off and …..”

“If there’s no excuse then stop making them.” I said with irritation.

“OK” she replied, disarmed.  And another silence settled as I refused to prompt her.

Rita began again.

“I told David to explain the situation and if he didn’t properly apologize, as I thought he had …..”

“Don’t bring David into this.  This is between you and me.”

“But I told him to explain my situation and it seems he didn’t …..”

“It’s not his job to do your dirty work.  David and I are good.  He made the effort to call me back and then to come over.  He made the effort, Rita.  You didn’t.”

‘And David’s threat of resignation is the only reason we’re talking right now.’ I thought, as another silence followed.  I’d had enough of this obfuscation.

The sun beat down comfortingly upon my closed eyelids as I waited, without hope, for Rita’s next words.  For one brief moment I expected her to hang up, but instead she spoke again.

“Stan, I promised you another look at your work.  We had an appointment and I stood you up because it was inconvenient for me.  I was rude and inconsiderate but, please believe me, I didn’t intend to hurt you.”

‘These are only words.’ I thought.  ‘These words are cheap.  They have no value.  This is not nearly enough.’

“Stan,” she hesitantly went on, “I can only imagine how hard you worked.  I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Rita, its too late for this.” I said.  “What do you want?”

“I don’t want this to be hanging between us.” she replied, and in the tone of her voice I heard the spiritualist I had so liked the month before reappear.

‘So this is how it will be.’ I thought.  ‘We will discuss as equals this ugly matter.’  and at that moment a profound calm descended.  The sun, flooding through the truck windows, warmed the steering wheel, my lap, and the left side of my face.  I turned off the engine and, in the ensuing quiet, the phone, pressed against my ear, commanded all my attention.  My nervousness and anger melted away.  What remained was a terrible clarity as sharp and dangerous as the bright noonday desert light.

“Rita,” I said, “I can’t recall ever being treated this badly.  What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t.”

“That’s not true and you know it.  You knew what you were doing.  You just didn’t care.”

“But I do.”

“You had every chance to call and make another appointment.  Why didn’t you call?”

“Well, David told me you were angry.  I wanted to give you time to cool down.”

“Rita, you didn’t call because you didn’t want to disturb your day off.  No matter what I had done, it was not going to be important enough to get you out of bed.  You didn’t call because you didn’t want to reschedule.”

Silence.

“You had the morning to make it right.  You had 3 hours to call, then put on some clothes and come to the studio.  You knew this was your only opportunity to see these paintings.  You knew that last month you’d encouraged me to do all this work.  You knew that to now stand me up would be the worst kind of insult.  But you did it anyway.  Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking.  You just didn’t care.”

“Stan, I’m sorry.  I didn’t want to deal with your anger.”

“I’m not angry with you.  After a short time, I wasn’t angry with you yesterday.  I’m terribly hurt and disappointed, and confused.  What could I have done to deserve this treatment from you?”

“You know, Rita, I had an open house in the afternoon and everyone there knew what had happened.  I wasn’t walking around calling you ugly names.  I wasn’t speaking badly of you.  I was simply stunned that you could be so cruel.”

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“But you did.  Rita, last month, when we had that long visit, I found myself genuinely liking you.  I actually thought you would make a good person to work with.”

“I felt the same towards you, Stan.”

“Then you pull this shit.  Why did you turn around and treat me with such disrespect?”

“I didn’t mean to.  If I could take it back I would.”

” ….. Rita, I don’t know what else to say.  Why are you calling me now?  What do you want from me?”

“I want you to forgive me.”

“Forgive you?”

“Yes, I want your forgiveness.”

I could not find a handhold on the face of this cliff suddenly put before me.

“I don’t know how you can ask that of me.”

“Stan, I don’t want you to leave with this between us.”

“Rita, this comes at the worst possible time.  I can’t deal with this …..”

“I like you, Stan.  I respect you.  I want us to be friends.”

“But we aren’t friends, Rita.  A friend would never treat a friend the way you’ve treated me.”

“But I like you, Stan.  This is poison.  I don’t want this hanging between us.”

“You know, this is a difficult time for me.” I replied cautiously.  “I’ve given up my studio and I’m walking away from the only home I’ve known for 25 years.  I feel as if nothing I’ve done has made a damn bit of difference to this community.  I’ve never felt more vulnerable in my life.  At one time I thought it was enough just to do the work well; that the work would bring an audience along in its wake and in that way I would have success. But every scrap of attention I’ve gotten in this town I’ve had to fight for.  I’ve never had an ally I could count on.  I’ve failed.  And now, just at my lowest point, as I’m on my way out of town, you carelessly stab me in the back.  You did it as if it were nothing.  Just a flick of the wrist.”

“This was not my intention.”

“But there you have it, intended or no.  All you’ve done is remind me how cruel this place can be and how little I matter.  Now you ask me to forgive you, like that’s simply there for me to grant.  I can’t.”

Pleadingly she asked, “What can I do to make this right?”

“Nothing.  It’s too late.  There’s nothing you can do.”

“There has to be.”

“You had your chance.  Now its literally too late.  The paintings are in my truck.  This is my last trip to storage.  From here I leave town.  What are you going to do, Rita, run down here and pretend to look at them in my dark storage shed?  Represent me because you feel guilty?  Of course not.  It’s too late to make this right.”

“But I don’t want us to part like this.”

“Rita, you hurt me as badly as I’ve ever been hurt, and you did it because you just didn’t care.  And now you care only because of the consequences to yourself.”

A small, strangled cry of frustration and grief came from the phone.

“Ah, God!”  she said, her words strangled, dreading every moment of this.  “At times like this I hate this business.”

“I understand.” I said reasonably.  “But don’t kid yourself.  This isn’t about the differences between artists and dealers.  This is about people treating each other respectfully.”

I had said all this with such calm and uncompromising clarity that now all I wanted was for this conversation to end.  ‘Let her walk away.’ I thought.  ‘Neither of us need more of this.’

“Look, Rita, you don’t need my absolution.  You’ll do just fine without it.  You’ll hang up the phone and go about your life like nothing’s happened.  And if there’s a lesson for you in this then, that’s terrific. Take it to heart and don’t ever do this sort of thing to anyone else ever again.  But don’t ask me to accept your apology.  There are some things you can’t take back.  Sometimes there are consequences.”

“Isn’t there anything, Stan?  Just tell me what I can do.”

“Its too late.” I said.  ”If you want forgiveness, look to yourself.  I don’t forgive you, Rita.  You don’t deserve it.”

“But, Stan, ….”

“What?  What, Rita?  What is there left to say?”

“Nothing, I guess.”

“Then goodbye.”

I sat there for a time in the warmth of the truck, my eyes closed to the sun.  For months I had been traveling through treacherous waters, my calloused hands upon the oars of a clumsy boat.  I had forced it, by sheer will, through rapids, clinging seaweed, and difficult tides to this moment.  All resistance had suddenly disappeared and, released, I drifted effortlessly out onto the smooth mirrored surface of a still lake.  In no direction could I see a shore.

Eighteen days later, I lay in the darkened bedroom of my friend’s house, sirens sounding in the city about me, and realized, much to my surprise, the substantial personal price I have paid for my belief in the power of art in the world.  I have exercised tremendous faith in art’s ability to rescue me from my own personal demons.  What if I’ve been wrong?  All my life I have stayed focused on becoming a painter of substance.  What if painting has no power to transform but is only a metaphor, a shadow of the real thing?  What do I do with that?

I am at a turning point.  I have no idea if I have been a great success or a total and utter failure.  I don’t know how to measure it.  There have been such monumental successes, the film being only the most obvious and public of them, yet I find myself at this strange crossroad asking this most basic of questions, “If a tree falls in the forest…..?”

……….

We spent Tuesday night in a redwoods grove.  I love the fact that they call them groves; makes me feel like a hobbit.

……….

Wednesday night I crashed on Damian and Kelly’s couch in Arcata.  That afternoon, while waiting for Damian to get off work, I drove several miles, then hiked a short distance over a sand dune to discover one of the most spectacular beaches I have ever seen.  An infinity of sand stretched off in each direction, eventually disappearing into moist atmospheres.  Surf sliced the shore in progressively layered and constantly moving tears upon the water.  Cool winds tossed my hair and blew my jacket open like a kite.  The gearing in my head went ‘click’ ‘click’ as tumblers fell into place.  An hour later, as I climbed the hill back to the truck, a large group of cottages appeared across the road and my heart jumped.  If I could, I would gladly stay here a month.

So I drove around the neighborhood, talked with some residents and found all these cottages were owned by a lumber company and, “No, not a chance I could get one for just a month.”  Still, it’s a place to which I might return.

It was terrific seeing Damian and meeting Kelly for the first time.  For several years Damian was my studio assistant while he attended The College of Santa Fe.  Now he has become a Rastafarian potter and my friend, a good man with a great laugh.  The three of us spent the evening over beers, sitting at their rough kitchen table in their tiny house, a wood-burning stove warming the room.  They are living their lives as exuberantly as a young couple with few resources can.  Bless them both.

Since Arcata, I have kept to the coast, the sound of the surf a healing tonic to my sore spirit.  I am staying an extra day in a hotel overlooking a beach in northern Oregon.  Last night I fell into a dreamless sleep listening to the persistent murmur of the gentle surf filtering through the open patio door of my second-story room.

Dear Trisha,

I am sitting in The Lodge Cafe in Dawson Creek, British Columbia.  There is a sign as you enter town, ‘You are at Mile 0 of the Alaskan Highway‘.   Perpetually muddy streets describe a town more on the frontiers of civilization than anywhere I have ever been.  All around me are big men driving big trucks.  Every door posts a sign, ‘Please remove muddy boots before entering‘.  There was a black rubber mat inside the door to my motel room.  Heavy blackout curtains tucked tightly around a constantly working heating-air conditioning unit left me with the distinct impression of being in a sleeping chamber carefully prepared to block out the perpetual light of summer or the relentless cold of winter.  This town is industry.  It is big hands handling hard steel in cold darkness.  These people are roughnecks.  They play and work hard, crashing through an unforgiving physical world with money to be made and a price to pay.

What am I doing here?!!!

……….

Vancouver is an attractive city, though rather tame and composed.  Its architecture is 60s modernism taken to its lofty, airy, most livable conclusion.  The effect is that of small rectangles busily floating about in space like tiny pieces of some much larger puzzle.  After a day of gallery-hopping, I had found nothing of interest and went to bed disappointed.  In the morning, as I prepared to leave, I decided to check out Granville Island, the only part of town I had not been to.  Much to my surprise I found two working printmaking co-ops, several galleries, an art college, and a foundry.  I was stunned!  It was very Canadian (meaning very civil and careful in the making) but very exciting.  After good talks with several artists, I left feeling hopeful and interested again.  I am surprised at how much I miss The Printmaking Center in Santa Fe.  Its closing may be a much bigger part of my leaving than I had imagined.  Wherever I land I am going to need a print studio and group of artists to share it with.

I took Route 99 North out of the city and gassed in Lillooet, a small mining town set into a cliff overlooking a most extraordinary canyon.  I’ve never much liked the mountains, with their deep shadows capturing the daylight too late or losing it too early, but as I rounded the last hairpin turn, this place (a convergence of two rivers, each dropping down from vast high plateaus) opened onto a view of thousand-foot vertical stone cliffs lit by the late afternoon sun.  Above these canyon walls rose row upon row of ever-greater mountains tumbling off into the distance.  It was a space so perfectly described it could be held in the chest.

Somewhere around Williams Lake, the light became chrome.  By Dawson Creek, the sun had not set at 10 PM.  Dusk is lasting for hours.

……….

In Port Charles I met a young woman.  She was my waitress at a deserted restaurant the night before I caught the ferry to Vancouver Island.  She could not have been more than 27.  She had 3 children ages 11, 5, and 6 months.  No husband.  Her boyfriend had just moved 50 miles south, leaving her alone with the new baby.  She had worked her way through college in Wisconsin getting a degree in studio art and had a particular affinity for printmaking.  When I told her I was an artist she could hardly contain her enthusiasm, starved as she was for this thing she had felt for so passionately.  There was hunger in her eyes for a conversation she’d not had in a long time.  An admirable woman.  My heart went out to her.

While driving through rural Canada, I have continued to catch glimpses of young girls, dressed as nicely as they can manage, some in high heels and dresses, pushing baby carriages down the gravely streets of these small isolated towns.

In Clinton I took Dixie for her evening walk up a dark street behind my motel and passed a dilapidated one-bedroom house.  A ‘For Sale’ sign was posted in an unkempt front yard strewn with plastic Wal-mart baby toys.  An open garage had no car in it.  Through a curtain-less picture window, I saw a young woman sitting on a tattered and sagging couch in a room of empty and damaged walls lit by the stark yellow light of an unshaded lamp.  Her attention was transfixed by a TV placed below the window I was looking through.  I saw her vacuous face full on and wondered if she was there at all.

I have been seeing you, Trisha, twenty years younger, in each of these girls.

These are only instances, but they have strung together like odd misshapen pearls and have gotten me thinking of our last conversation which, for me, was about personal responsibility and the nature of reality.  Your contention that each of us, consciously and subconsciously, choose every experience of our lives contradicts my own sense that we live in a world where innocent children are often born into cruelty and natural disasters reach out blindly to claim the lives of the unprepared.

I need to tell you before it’s too late that, knowing something of your difficult childhood and the sexual abuse you endured, I have nothing but the deepest respect for your remarkable tenacity in refusing to be a victim.  I understand what you have done.  In assuming responsibility, even for your powerlessness, you have gained power over those people and events that sought to oppress you.  As a child you stood in fields beneath the blazing summer sun and, like a tiny tree with your feet planted stubbornly in the earth, you indulged your overwhelming anger.  You huddled alone on cold winter nights under blankets too thin to protect you from real and imagined monsters and made your bargains with God.  By disrupting the flow of life’s habitual behaviors you have steered yourself from the mundane currents of everyday existence.  In your awakening you have created for yourself the opportunity to peal away those layers of childhood trauma to find the truth of your life.  In viewing the child of your youth through the lens of time you have gained perspective and, with it, forgiveness, self love, and healing.

You own your life as well as anyone I have ever met, and you have been willing to do the work and pay whatever price that might exact.  My deepest respects to you.  Truly, my deepest respect.

Sometimes it is the hardest thing, to wake up from your own dream.

……….

The last two nights were spent in motels so miserable I cannot begin to tell you.   It has been a strange drive since Dawson Creek.

The Alcan Highway consists of hundreds of miles of scrub trees with moments of spectacular beauty, followed by hundreds more miles of mosquito-infested forest.  It is five days of hard driving from its beginning to Anchorage.  Northern Canadians are some of the most gracious and friendly people I have ever met, but those people on the highway are of a different sort, especially those in the small outposts.  The people who inhabit these villages along the highway are there because there is a gas station or a campsite that needs a convenience store.  For this meager reason, they have to prepare for the harshest of environments.  I passed by a roadside restaurant today at the top of the Continental Divide.  Standing next to this building was a two-story metal barn with wooden steps leading to a single door in its face, no windows, and above the door, painted in big red letters, the word HOTEL.  I burst into laughter at the ridiculousness of it until it dawned on me that this actually serves as a rescue place for people stranded in blizzards.  It has certainly saved lives.

I stayed in a motel in Watson Lake, “Gateway to the Yukon.”  To check in I had to walk a gauntlet of drunken natives chain-smoking cigarettes in the hallway while white men in hunting cloths watched television in the sparsely populated adjoining bar.  A young girl who cleans rooms in the morning stood flirting with the concierge, a marginal character with a sharp wit and dangerous little mustache.  With mud on the floor and the sun still out at 9 PM, it all seemed so sad, sleazy, and wasted.  Of course, it was Friday night and the only party in town.  There are some beautiful lakes and mountains, but to live here would be certain hell.

Today I found a B & B just outside Whitehorse.  They’ve put us in a cabin in the woods just off a fair-sized lake.  I am told Martha Stewart did her thing here.  After the last few nights it feels like heaven.

It is 9:20 PM and a strong beam of sunlight is falling on the kitchen wall.  Below this light is Dixie in her bed, looking up at me with a tired and confused expression.  She knows this is not natural.

____________________________________________

Aberson Exhibits “A Natural History Part Five”     Tulsa, OK     2009

Farrell Fischoff  Gallery “Unbroken”     Santa Fe, NM     2007

Joseph Gierek Fine Art “Commencement”     Tulsa, OK     2006

Lincoln Center “Paintings From OFF THE MAP”     New York, NY     2005

Miami Dade Community College - Mary Washington College Museum - The Wisterieahurst Museum - Anna Marie College

“Egg Tempera: An Enduring Tradition”     2003

The Foothills Art Center “Northern New Mexico Printmakers”     Colorado Springs, CO     2003

Butters Gallery “A Natural History Part One”     Portland, OR     2001

Joseph Gierek Fine Art “Another Horizon”     Tulsa, OK     2000

Galerie Mireille Batut d’Haussy “First Seed”     Paris, FR     1999

Marie Park “Serial Style”     Dallas, TX     1999

Site Santa Fe “A Tribute to Monothon Printers”     Santa Fe, NM     1997

Stan Berning Gallery/Studios “Nine Shows”     Santa Fe, NM     1990-94

……….

Selected Public Collections

Merrill Lynch

Bank of Tokyo

Hilton Hotels

Hallmark Inc.

MCI Telecommunications Corp.

Volvo of North America

Hyatt Hotels

U.S. West Communications

Compaq Computer Corp.

United Airlines

]]> http://blog.aboutartbook.com/2010/01/31/a-brief-resume-presentations-stan-berning/%/feed http://blog.aboutartbook.com/2009/09/25/the-arc-about-painting-and-the-paintings-themselves-stan-berning/% http://blog.aboutartbook.com/2009/09/25/the-arc-about-painting-and-the-paintings-themselves-stan-berning/%#comments Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:21:01 +0000 stanberning http://blog.aboutartbook.com/?p=362

I am beginning this letter in late September.  The days have become dramatically shorter as the sun, angling over the canyon, travels an ever lower parabola.  It’s light, in contrast to the metallic silver light of high summer, has softened to a gentle hue of gold.  Temperatures have dropped and all the plants are rushing to their finish.  Mice are beginning to appear in the wood pile and tall grasses surrounding my house.  They are looking for ways in.  The creatures of the forest have begun turning their attention to winter.

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The story of how these paintings came about begins in the winter of 2002 - 2003:

The late-days of the high-summer of my career find me in a 2000 square foot studio in Santa Fe, NM.  From the skylight, 20 feet above my head, I am bathed in a perfect well of light.  I stand at my work table mixing paint.  Before me on a large rolling easel sits a 4′ x 6′ painting.  Described within the plane of this picture are vast tectonic plates moving and shifting as they contend with one another; a subtle and endless movement before the eyes intended to hold the viewers attention… forever.  The painting, divided nearly in half by aggressively incised lines made with a large metal straight edge and the nub of a blunt plastic pen, has reached the stage where all egg tempera paintings eventually must go.  I work in silence, carefully mixing the paint to exacting hues and, with a small brush and infinite patience, carefully modulate these final moments in search of a perfect balance.  An admirable journey of thousands of images done over the years has brought me to this one painting.  It is not the best painting I have done.  It is only another painting - a link in a chain of paintings - but it is the last painting of this series of wildly popular images which has been 15 years in the making.  I am not aware, at this moment, that this painting is the last.  I am 50 years old.  I do not realize summer is coming to an end.

The brushes have been cleaned and neatly returned to my work table.  The painting has sat, all night, in the darkness, waiting passively as I have slept.  Over my first cup of coffee I take one more hard look and decide it is finished.  It is moved to a corner of the room and out of my field of vision.  I pull out another white gessoed panel and place it on a second paint spattered easel.  During the course of the day I have lunch with friends, take my dog for a walk, and mix the mud of five different pigments which has become my black and my starting point.  Towards evening I take the largest brush from my can of brushes and begin to slap large quantities of this mixed-black upon the surface of the board.  I then take my aluminum straight-edge and make my first cut… and stop.  I have seen this mark before.  I make another mark, this one dissecting the first at an odd angel, and stop.  It is so familiar!  All evening I search and find no new point of entry.  During the next few weeks I try several different mediums.  I return to the print studio, which had always before jarred me awake.  Much to my chagrin, the door remains closed to me.

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The medium in which I first discovered my voice is watercolor.  This fluid paint, rich in the mythos of unintended consequence, taught me to believe in the accident as a tool to enlightenment and forward progress.  I have explored all mediums and methods and, stretching my arms wide, I have embraced all ‘isms’ while championing none.  This was the first time an approach I had chosen un-chose me!  What is an artist to do?  It seemed I had come to know myself too well.  When the tools of image building (brushes, pigments, etc.) and the elements of image building (composition, texture, etc.) are put in the service of ‘product creation’ it becomes possible for a person to know a thing so well that he looses the awareness of the broad world of unknown possibilities which surround him.  In the surety of my own hard won competence I had lost sight of The Mysteries; all those things we do not know, the discovery of which is the true source of creativity.  Perhaps, while I had slept that night, I’d had a dream which awoke in me some restless spirit.  Perhaps I had simply run out of steam.  For whatever reason, my way had been firmly blocked.  And so began my long search for a new aesthetic vocabulary.

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The subject upon which I chose to hang these new explorations was the human figure.  I chose the figure for its quality of opposites to the minimal architecture of my recent past work.  ”Perhaps,” I thought, “a new point of entry is on the the opposite side of this thing called image building.”  The medium I began with was the monotype for, as I have said before, it tends to jar me awake.  I first cut stencils based on the contours and silhouettes of the naked body and these were then inked, flipped, turned and printed using multiple passes through the press.  I kept the process as spontaneous and unpredictable as possible.  This work led to a series of 250 prints and an oddly familiar result.  As the images resolved they became, again, just as in my earlier series, volumes of space contending with one another within the picture plane.  What, in the geometries, were tectonic subsurface volumes of strata became, in the figurative context, volumes of sky and cloud.  A new door had opened but I had walked into the same room!

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This change of subject had the result of presenting a much different face to the world, but my language had not expanded.  Buried within this imagery lay the seed of further disappointment.  I twiddled with this new imagery for several years, thinking to somehow commandeer these images in the quest for a new and more satisfying approach.  Eventually I had to face the fact that I had not turned over new soil.  I was contending with a kind of self-limiting view (the sense of horizons placed too near me) created by the use of similar tools put in service to similar ends.  This room I was at first attempting to get back into had, by then, become one from which I was trying to break free.

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…..

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In 2006 my grip upon the known world began to loosen.  I began attending 5 life drawing groups a week.  Out of this intensely focused practice of seeing-for-the-sake-of-seeing, came a kind of selfless abandon.  In 2007 I painted a show consisting of oil pastel studies over grid works of pen and ink drawings.  These explosive color-works consisted of contour figure drawings executed, one over the other, with the expressed intent of achieving a kind of moment to moment forgetfulness.  They became, for me, a spiritual exercise in letting go of expectation and fear.  I wrote during this time, “After another day of drawing and painting, I stood looking into an oil pastel of lush oranges, pinks, and whites as aggressive and juicy as any De Kooning.  It is as if I had somehow gotten the fingers of my hands wedged between two parts of the painting process that, up till that moment, had fit together seamlessly and, like two flaps of skin, pulled them apart to expose the gut.”

Which brings us to 2009 and this new body of work.  In this show I have returned to those figurative monotypes of 7 years past.  Using them as a foundation over which the image is built, I continue to work with the live model, letting the contours, shadows, forms, and feelings found there to excite the page.  For a year I have refused to speak of them, even to myself in my journal.  They have accumulated in a stack at one end of my work table, each placed there when finished and not looked at again. They have been, to my mind, only artifacts; what is left over from the act of staying in the moment.  I have not asked anything of them.  I have not studied them, fearing that to reason them out would be to murder them.

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As I have been signing and preparing these paintings to hang, I have been struck by their lucidity and the pure joy with which they embrace those long studied elements of color, hue, texture and light.  These improvisations - for that is surely what they are - are about abandon; not the practiced abandon of the well trained craftsman reproducing a known energetic stroke in pursuit of a desired result, but rather, a true and complete abandon which can only come to those who have nothing to loose.  With no thought of preserving the mark just made nor any expectation of the mark to come; with my mind preoccupied in ’seeing’ the figure before me and thus distracted from the normally contemplative judgments of image making, I have danced for that hour or three on the edge of failure, as close to the spirit of pure improvisation as I have ever come.

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In the doing of this body of work I have rediscovered the joy and excitement of true risk taking, and I have realized something quite surprising.  All substantive art has, at its source, a kind of improvisation.  Those architectural images of my past, which in many cases were so laborious to complete, began as acts of improvisational play.  The excitement and appeal they still convey to the viewer is the result of the joy I felt while drawing out of those muddied black surfaces an image new to the world.  For years I had played with that series till one morning I awoke to find the ability to play had left me.  I’m sure someone had told me sometime in my past, “Stan, have fun, take risks, be joyful.”, but I had either not heard or, more likely, I had simply forgotten.

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I’m often shocked by how long it can take to learn a lesson.  It can be even more difficult relearning a thing which has been forgotten.  This creative life - this life of learning through discovery - is not an easy one.  Some revelations are years in the making.  Some knowledge is gained by circuitous routes.  The world is full of rabbit holes.  In life, as in art, surprises abound.

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There are Indian Summers, and places on this earth where summers never end.  And there is the summer carried within our hearts; an ecstatic summer which only demands we keep the child within us safe, and play with him from time to time.  I’ll not soon forget the lessons of joyful play which lie at the heart of these paintings.

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Stan Berning - September 2009