With some reflection on the past year, it’s easy to become invigorated about pushing my work into the new year. In some way, there is a bit of “renewal” and goals to make in order to set off on the “right” path. This is the beginning of a drawing that reminds me that I need to keep working; especially considering the last year taught me so much about allowing myself the time and space necessary to create.

William Kentridge

Sign Painter Chancey Curtis working in a Mankato Minnesota theater, 1930′s. Personal collection of Mike Meyer.

For a full report, please view The President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities Report

This report gives an overview of the current state of the arts and humanities in the United States, as well as the important roles working artists play in arts education.

http://www.nowness.com/day/2011/10/7/gerhard-richter-painting

There is something in the air of this clime which fosters life kindly: there must be something, too, in its dews, which heals with sovereign balm…Not grotesquely fantastic are the forms of cliff and foliage; not violently vivid the colouring of flower and bird: in all the grandeur of these forests there is repose; in all their freshness there is tenderness…

The girl sat, her body still, her soul astir, occupied, however, rather in feeling than in thinking,– in wishing, than hoping,– in imagining, than projecting. She felt the world, the sky, the night, boundlessly mighty. Of all things, herself seemed to herself the centre,– a small, forgotten atom of life, a spark of soul, emitted inadvertent from the great creative source, and now burning unmarked to waste in the heart of a black hollow. She asked, was she thus to burn out and perish, her living light doing no good, never seen, never needed,– a star in an else starless firmament,– which nor shepherd, nor wanderer, nor sage, nor priest, tracked as a guide, or read as a prophecy?…

She gazed abroad on Heaven and Evening: Heaven and Evening gazed back on her. She bent down, searching bank, hill, river, spread dim below.”

(Emily Brontë’s Shirley, p 406-407, 1849)

This colossal passage out of Shirley takes on the ethos and places it directly within the earth. Throughout the text, Brontë uses objects to describe the land, human features, etc., but it is in this passage that the land itself is the key to reach out beyond one’s self, as the character of Shirley attempts to explore in a written composition.