Walking with Thiebaud

I was walking around with an art project all week teaching in various classrooms, until I ended up in one with the power and wifi out and a very loose lesson plan. Something told me I would need a lesson plan this week, and its nice when everyone's wondering what to do, to sayyyy "Well we could do an art project.." and have everyone go yes! Let's do an art project! And then paints are coming out and paper, and we are taking about art.

Wayne Thiebaud is a California Artist...

What I like best about Thiebaud is the edge of his objects. I've looked at some of them closely and you see so many colors in thin lines around his objects like electric yellow, sap green and cotton candy. To me it gives his objects a kind of electric life, a vibration. You also see this in his landscapes as if he has captured all times of day somehow.

“They’re fighting for position,” he says of the colors. “That’s what makes them vibrate when you put them next to each other", he told Smithsonian magazine in February of 2011.

As usual, I did not take any pictures of the art the students made. I told them a bit about Thiebaud, and showed them some pictures of his work. Then I showed them how to draw cupcakes and layer cakes and slices of cake. I think drawing these shapes give a strong lesson in geometry as well as perspective. Once the paint comes out things are hectic and fun, and everyone is working, and people need more red, and yellow and glitter. And you get inspired to show them more techniques, like scratching back into the paper with the other end of the paint brush to make lines. We were working on black construction paper with red, green, and white paint to make Christmas cakes, and using yellow paint and gold glitter for decorations. I have done the Thiebaud project now with two different classes and they both really enjoyed it. The other one used watercolor. It was extremely difficult to get them to do anything else once they started painting. I think Thiebaud appeals to kids through his subject matter as well as they way he depicts the world. His painting show a world that is some how comfortable but interesting. Here are some of the discarded works. I will take more pictures one of these days. Right now here we are in the busy busy days before Christmas.

Little Tree

Ningishzida 

Study of the Libation Vase of Gudea,( Neo-Sumerian era, around 2120 BC) JMH

I have to clear out some of these blogs, thoughts and ideas are ranging too far afield. I'm like a spider whose web is stretched to thin between too many trees.I've started so many posts and finished so few lately.

I was thinking about the Rod of Asclepius.This is not a Greek sex movie it is the staff with serpent twining up it that belonged to Asclepicus the Greek God of healing. The original Hippocractic oath is sworn to him, his Dad Apollo, and his children."I swear by Apollo the Physician and by Asclepius and by Hygieia and Panacea and by all the gods...."

I was thinking about the Caduceus. Here in the US, the Caduceus which is a symbol for the God Mercury, and is associated with commerce and industry, is often confused with the Rod of Asclepius, which represents true healing. Healthcare in the US can be described as truly, madly, and deeply confused at this time. With its Government agencies that are charged with protecting the public good asleep at the wheel. 20 doctors are committing suicide here in the US every month. Many people are suffering within this healthcare system.

I was thinking about the difference between the two symbols. I got to wondering about what the first image of snakes around a staff or stick, and came across a vase in the Louve, the Libation Vase of Gudea. It had an interesting image on it, that I painted so I could sort out what I was looking at.

Two gryphons hold Ningishzida whose name in Sumerian means Lord of the Good Tree. The Caduceus the gryphons are holding represents the God himself. Sometimes he's shown as a serpent with a human head. He is a Chthonic god (UK /ˈkθɒnɪk/, US /ˈθɒnɪk/ from Greek χθόνιος khthonios [kʰtʰónios], "in, under, or beneath the earth", from χθών khthōn "earth")^[1] literally means "subterranean". wiki

The deity's name is usually understood to mean "Lord of the true/reliable/right tree" (Wiggermann 1998-2001b: 368). His name is usually spelled ^dnin-giš-zi-da, but the /da/ is occasionally omitted. Syllabic spellings suggest a pronunciation of Niggissida or Nikkissida. The Emesal TT  name is Umun-muzzida. Other associated epithets include ^dgiš-bàn-da, "Little Tree" (Wiggermann 1998-2001b: 368-73) 

.http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/ningizida/ 

Up in Ur country where this God sprang the land was known for its fruit orchards. Serpents winding up apple trees, where have I heard that before? And why do reptiles figure so prominently in worldwide mythology everywhere? Serpents and fruit trees.

     

Veriditas,Water color and polished rocks JMH 7/4/16

Revolutionaries are Sun Wukong Monkey Kings

Enter the monkey.

Valentine by JMH, Watercolor

 Gung hay fat choy! I am wishing you great happiness and prosperity. Last year was the Ram year which was kind of like being bumped into over and over again by a goat. I felt it with SB277, I felt it with those strange shootings. Could this year be more playful please, can we do more swinging from trees and eating fruit? Because I am ready for a fun and prosperous barrel full of monkeys kind of year.  But it's a Red Fire Monkey yea , so I guess it's burning stuff down, swinging from trees and eating fruit, . Perhaps there will be revolutionaries smashing things with magic sticks? Monkeys are us, right.

Monkey by EP, pencil on paper

Sun Wukong was the Monkey King made famous in Journey to the West. Written in the 16th century by Wu Cheng, it is considered one of the four great novels of Classic Chinese literature. The text describes a journey to reach Vulture Peak and obtain the true scriptures from Buddha. The travelers are a Monk, a Monkey, a Pig and a character called Sanzang, which means the Heart, sometimes a whole pile of hearts. The heart keeps getting captured by demons and desire. The Pig is the instinctive core of a human, pleasure seeking pain avoiding sensual beast, it goes with you everywhere, hungry for food, sex, and distractions and can be quite a drag on the way to vulture peak. The Monkey is also known as Monkey mind or Mind ape. Like other esoteric texts, there is a surface meaning and a deeper meaning to Journey to the West. It reads like an 1950's comic book adventure but is also about attaining enlightenment. Mao liked the comic book aspects of the Monkey King story. The Red Guard aspired to be like the Monkey King, and liked to smash things. The worse the mess the better. They aspired to be like a destructive monkey kings:

"Revolutionaries are Monkey Kings, their golden rods are powerful, their supernatural powers far-reaching and their magic omnipotent, for they possess Mao Tsetung’s great invincible thought. We wield our golden rods, display our supernatural powers and use our magic to turn the old world upside down, smash it to pieces, pulverize it, create chaos and make a tremendous mess, the bigger mess the better!"

Red Guard Manifesto
Tsinghua University
Peking, June 24, 1966
Do revolutions based on smashing things actually work? Using the People's Revolution and the French Revolution as examples, aren't these kind of revolutions merely ways of putting other cliques in power, smashing the old order, and beheading enemies? Perhaps a new revolutionary spirit is called for based not on the comic book Monkey King, but for a new kind of monkey?

"To the ape's immortal body is matched a human mind: That the mind is an ape is deeply meaningful." (Journey to the West) 

Chairman Mao wrote this poem about the Monkey King. 

            "A thunderstorm burst over the earth,
So a devil rose from a heap of white bones.
The deluded monk was not beyond the light,
But the malignant demon must wreak havoc.

The Golden Monkey wrathfully swung his massive cudgel
And the jade-like firmament was cleared of dust.
Today, a miasmal mist once more rising,
We hail Sun Wukong, the wonder-worker."

An alternate translation of the poem appeared in the New York Times in 1964, in an article by Ian Stuart called Lines by China's Poet Laureate:

"Ever since a thunderstorm developed on the great earth,

There has been born from the heap of white bones a ghost.

The ignorant Monk may be enlightened,

But the ghost of a devil must cause disaster.

The Gold Monkey wields his mighty club;

The world is cleaned of dust over 10,000 li.

Today the Monkey King is being hailed Only because the evil clouds reappear."

I like comparing the two translations because it  gives me a little idea about how the Chinese language operates

This version sounds less about Journey to the West, and more like oblique talk about the world political scene. This is what a Chinese Critic said Mao's poem written in 1961 meant:

 "In the story the White Bone Ghost tricks and cap­tures the Monk by turning himself into a young girl and then an old woman. The Monk is rescued by the Monkey King."

The critic's interpretation: “In this story the White Bone Ghost trans­formed itself into human beings to trap people. Is it not U.S. imperialism of today in its painted skin of peace? Do not those who have highly praised the wisdom and policy for peace of the U.S. President resemble the Monk in the story ? What force does the Monkey represent? Is it not too apparent?”

With this lead, the critic's readers should have had no difficulty in castng the U.S. as the White Bone Ghost, the Soviet Union as the Monk and Com­munist China as the Monkey King:

The critic said Kuo Mo‐jo, a leading literary figure in Communist China, had written a poem aimed at “criticiz­ing the modern Monk and exposing the modern Monk.” Chairman Mao's poem, the critic added, aims principally at “exposing” and “pointing the spear­head” at the modern White Bone Ghost, the “modern monster.”

Mr. Kuo's poem said “the Monk should be chopped into 1,000 pieces,” according to the critic, but Mao said it “may be enlightened.” On the other hand, there is “no question of enlight­enment by education” for the U.S." I guess we'll see about that. For some reason the American People loom large as heroes in my mind, though it seems as though we've been taught for years to hate ourselves.

A British critic once luke warmly praised Mao's poetry by saying they were "not as bad as Hitler's paintings." Hitler's paintings as I have seen, show very good technique, but are almost like architectural drawings, as they depict a world of orderly houses sans people. Mao on the other hand used to write poetry, while his Red Guard slaughtered millions of people who represented the Four Olds, old customs, thoughts which were essentially Chinese culturally ideas and ways that developed over hundreds of years of Chinese History. The Four Olds, were never clearly defined, making it easier to fight against them. They were first mentioned in an Editorial in the People's Daily Newspaper called "Sweep Away All Monsters and Demons" , which is what the Monkey King would do. Perhaps he had a different idea of what constitutes a demon, leaders often do.  

Monkeys are us right

The word:

monkey (n.)

is from the 1520s, likely from an unrecorded Middle Low German *moneke or Middle Dutch *monnekijn, a colloquial word for "monkey," originally a diminutive of some Romanic word, compare French monne (16c.); Middle Italian monnicchio, from Old Italian monna; Spanish mona "ape, monkey."

"Arabic maimun "monkey," literally "auspicious," a euphemistic usage because the sight of apes was held by the Arabs to be unlucky [Klein]
"1890s British slang, to have a monkey up the chimney meant "to have a mortgage on one's house." The Online Entomology Dictionary

"In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey" Beck

Ideas flow from the East to the Indian Peninsula. In India you have Hanuman, The Monkey Demon God who looks and acts a lot like the Monkey King. When I was little I remember reading Hanuman comic books at the Self Realization Fellowship Lake on Sunset. They had a little shop that sold Indian stuff. When I am six years old reading I sit reading Hanuman Comics backstage by a giant cardboard box of dying flowers, while Mom interviews a Swami. I learned from the comics, what I know about Hanuman, he's a lot like us, animal, Human, God spark, demon, a complicated cat, always fighting evil.

He thought the sun was a ripe mango and went to get it, and ended up always being on fire. He healed Rama by bringing back a medicinal herb covered mountain. Was Ramas best pal and loyal servant. Loyal  Hanuman, the son of the wind,  the Monkey King. The Journey to the West describes the journey of a real Monk, Huanzang who traveled to India looking for the original scriptures of Buddha's teachings.

I was standing out front in the garden I just planted, and it was that time of day, when the houses are casting shadows. My front yard garden is my own Fruit and Flower mountain,(where the monkey king hailed from BTW). At the far end of the street a kettle of about twenty five vultures started to slowly tip down the street towards us. The sun was tipping their chocolate colored wings with an orange glow as the slowly circled between us and the half moon. It is such a blessing that they fly over the house every day. Looking up and watching them circle over you, is like being in the best kind of tornado there is. In Journey to the West the four travelers are climbing to the top of Vulture Peak. In many cultures the vulture is considered a symbol of a higher level of consciousness. The head of a vulture along with a cobra are affixed to the third eye of Tutankhamon, and women in Ancient Egypt wore elaborate jeweled vulture shaped headdress. Why,  because they soar, and seem to be able to carry our thoughts up to heaven. There are many rivers to cross, treacherous mountain passes and even demons on the path to Vulture Peak. In Journey to the West,  the monkey is there to protect the heart on the difficult journey, and he is given the name Sun Wukong, which means Monkey Awakened to Emptiness.Which Monkey King would you dear reader like to emulate, would your Sun Wukong rather smash things or become enlightened?

The Monkey King on Fruit and Flower Mountain JMH

Let the center of the umbrella represent the North Star.

  Rain cannot be explained in words. If you try to describe the magical transformation of a landscape by grey clouds dropping water, it will not be adequate. If you could make the drops pause like in the Matrix movies, even then, when you see a clear illustration of how life is moving and it's energy vibrates all around and inside of us. It cannot be told. It is too multi-sensual. Freud never interpreted rain as a dream image but others have said it represents grace reigning over us. He did assign some meaning to umbrellas though.
"All elongated objects, sticks, tree-trunks, umbrellas (on account of the opening, which might be likened to an erection), all sharp and elongated weapons, knives, daggers, and pikes, represent the male member"...Sigmund Freud, The Interpetation of Dreams

Umbrella #2, Watercolor, glass beads, the stuff on the bottom of the jewelry box, JMH

 Afuri, short for afuri Jinja is how you say rain in Japan. There are Rain dragons and Rain Wizards in Japan. Rain Shrines prayed to in times of drought just like spruce branches pull in rain for the Hopi.  Some rain gods like the weeping Hyades sisters in Greece deify rain as sad. In Japan, some stones are thought of as umbrellas, and have spring water poured on to them to make rain.

Everyone in this house is in love with Japan. I was just looking at the seven or so books on Japan I got Child#1 at the library book sale. The lonely planet guide, kanji character dictionary, an astronomy book, learn to speak, and Japanese culture.. I learned about Shinimiri.
Shinimiri is a complicated word but one of it's meanings is the feeling one gets watching rain pelt a field, garden, or landscape.

 Around Christmas times, we learned about Yokai Umbrellas.
Yokai came to my attention lately because child#2 got a loud toy wristwatch that 'spots' different Yokai when you slide plastic disks into it. I have heard a lot of shouted Japanese and English phrases repetitively especially in the car while driving.

 Made up of two kanji that mean" bewitching, attractive, calamity", and "apparition, mystery, suspicious", Yokai are a group of supernatural beings from Japan. My favorites are the umbrellas. Hone Karakasa  骨傘ほねからか, is a tattered umbrella that flies through the air on blustery days. Traditional Japanese umbrellas have 30 to 70 bamboo ribs, "Hone" means bone, because the ribs look like fish bones. "Karakasa" is an abbreviation of a phrase that means magical umbrella. Hone Karakasa, are "obake", which means thing that changes. Hone Karakasa fly into the air on stormy days coming to life like wild animated kites. Naturally, Hone Karakasa are thought to be an omen of bad weather.

Umbrella #3, Watercolor, JMH

The other umbrella Yokai is called Karakasa-Obake (唐傘お化け)
 In Japan when objects exist for one hundred or more years, it is believed they take on freewill, and a life of their own. They are called Obake, thing that changes, umbrellas, even futons and clocks, can become animated, no longer doing what they were made for, running around, kicking people, creeping them out, and sometimes being oddly helpful, " in Mizokuchi, Tottori Prefecture (now Hōki, Saihaku District), there is a story about a yōkai called yūreigasa (幽霊傘, "ghost umbrella") that has one eye and one foot like the kasa-obake, but it is said that on days of strong wind, they would blow people up into the skies.^{[5]"  Wikipedia} 

Kanō Enshin ([狩野宴信, Japanese, †1761)

 I've started painting with watercolors now instead of oil. I will probably be learning watercolors for a long time. Watercolors are more difficult than oils, less forgiving, more unpredictable. Water just cannot be controlled as easily. Here in California we love the sound of rain. People here talk about rain as a mystical experience. It means we are winning. The sound of rain is unmistakable, percussive, and carries the subtle scent of every plant it falls on. The worst thing about the drought is watching the trees suffer so without the rain, many trees look like they are dying. Everyday I pray for rain, storm after storm, with time to dry out in between.

Umbrella #4 JMH

Purple Madder Alizarin, Winsor Blue(Red Shade), Carmine. Husband keeps coming into the studio and telling me the painting is really good. He says he wants to buy it. He says, time exploding, the plane wreck from lost, old car at the swimming hole. This scares me so I stop working on it. It becomes "my precious" and I start navel-gazing. Hoping to get a little more work in tonight while waiting for it to rain in one hour. Rain, please, please, please.


I might have to just work on a little canvas again.
Seeing old pictures of yourself on the internet is strange.
Especially when they're, um, in black and white.
Oh the duality.

This is what I made last time I got scared of the time painting. A drawing of a Scarab, swimming in planatary seas with stained glass. Sometimes I get one color stuck in my head and think about it endlessly. Plus I love the blues and I've been hearing some amazing music this week on radio. Saw the light of the sunrise on the underside of the wings of crows this morning. 

The new painting is about Time

I was trying to just paint a straight up pretty landscape type painting for once and JUST...couldn't do it. The painting is about a moment in time and the associated emotion felt at that moment, but it wasn't really working, and so it is now semi destroyed. Sometimes I like to figuratively burn my paintings to the ground and build them back up again. The noise it produces now is not burning flames but a clank like gears and time passing. It is large and is sort of taking forever.

Meanwhile on Facebook, its trying to sell me a t-shirt that says 50 is the new 30. I am almost there and can report that it is not. Well only if you are a moron. A lot has happened in the last 20 years. I feel like I have lots to say about it too. As I watch #1 daughter grow I gain in understanding. As I watch myself changing and becoming, I can see the gears moving, that had remained invisible for so long.

Husband is spooked by some show on Fox, Sunday night, leading to a discussion on whether the devil exists. Esoteric reading suggests that this is in fact the case. That the devil, symbolized by the black cube and the planet Saturn is in charge of Time. Which is why evil doers seem to go on and on and never pay for their crimes. Karma is the law of the universe, but since Saturn spins the wheels and gears, it exerts its own control over things. Saturn is also known by the name Chronos, the guy with the long white beard from Greek mythology who devoured his own children. Lots of artists have done some ugly sad bloody paintings of this guy over the years, but not me. Saturn in my paintings only appears as a clock face, or a planet, which is quite beautiful in it's deadly non-life supporting way. What with its poison gas atmosphere and 1000+ mile per hour winds. See if you can spot him in my last painting...

#1 daughter drew this new picture for me in pencil and I inked it. Its Sobek and Horus.

 The fight between the Sun and Saturn keeps asserting itself into my consciousness for some reason-- Kaypacha the astrologer was transmitting from the Kom Ombo temple, the temple of Sobek (Saturn) and Horus. He said there are many stone carvings representing  the rivalry between Sobek the crocodile- headed god of the Nile, and Horus the hawk-headed sky god. In his cosmology Horus represents Jupiter, The ruler of Sagittarius, meaning festive, jovial, abundance,expansion. I always picture him as the ghost of Christmas present from Dicken's A Christmas Carol. I have also heard Horus represents the Sun so it gets a little confusing.  I've mostly heard him referred to as a Christ-like Sun God. When looking at these ancient mythologies you have to consciously set aside your 21st century eyes, and try to grok concepts such as the ancient Egyptian's keeping crocodiles in jeweled pools to worship. The Egyptian Gods are confusing and shift around a lot to my eyes. In this quote, blogger David Mathisen compares Osiris as Saturn to Horus as Christ

"And so, in the symbolic language of ancient myth, our incarnate existence is a struggle between the undeniable fact of our imprisonment in the underworld kingdom of Saturn, the tyrannical lord of time who devours his children and turns them to dust by his inexorable turnings,  and the equally undeniable fact of our internal Christ-like nature, this "Horus principle" or "Christ consciousness" within, which urges us to transcend this underworld existence, and tells us that this earthly prison is not ultimately our true home. However, in order to rise up like Horus, we must first descend into the realm of Osiris: in order to become a Christ, we must descend into the kingdom of Saturn. " David Mathisen

So can we say when we look into the battle of Sobek and Horus we are seeing the battle of good vs evil, Satan vs Christ. Again 21st century eyes. We have been encouraged our whole lives to look at the world as a battle between Heroes and Villains, and you must take that programing into consideration. I feel that if current trends continue we will soon be witnessing an age of  happy medicated autistic adults and humanoid robots locked in battle with reptilian satanist alligators.  Wait I'm not sure who's side the robots are on.
  So Husband asks me "Do you believe there is a Devil?"And to my surprise I can't even answer. An other-worldy other-dimensional source of evil? There seems to be some in our hearts, but I've never really seen, you know, solid evidence. Except that one time, when I was riding my bike late and there was that being that looked like a man made out of  the blackness of space. Who knows what that was, but it had the bad  feeling of being from somewhere else. There seem to be centers of evil on this earth, Hollywood is one, London is another. Not all evil those towns, but in parts you know there's soul killing stuff that goes on. Probably there's nothing more evil on earth than the people who hurt children. And I wonder how that stands. I guess if the devil were in charge of time.

Back to the painting, oh I'm so obsessed! It is exciting to me to try and paint Time. Its like trying to paint the Wind.
Will it ever be finished!?
Time will tell.

Alanis Morissette - Thank U (Official Music Video)