Page 9

Awright Mike! I knew I could count on you.  So we agree that the essential elements of of sound are; transmitter, medium, and a perceiving receiver (elephnat, human, whatever).  Because cancer articles have been jumping out at me lately, I read recently about a new treatment for prostate cancer that uses super high-frequency sound waves to heat the tumor up to near boiling.  So I wonder what should we call this kind of vibration that is so high frequency that, presumably, it can’t be heard as it boils you alive?  Why do we call an ultrasound an ultrasound?  I’m pretty sure nobody hears that.

A friend of mine signs all of his emails with a quote from Samuel Beckett, “The danger lies in the neatness of definitions.”

Okay, on to the topic at hand.  I’ve gotten a ton of calls from friends too timid to comment on the blog, wondering what’s become of the friggen’ lost eye.  They found it.  Apparently it was delivered just after xmas when the  hospital labs and offices were all  near empty, and it got delivered  (have I told  you that  body parts are shipped Fed-Ex?)  to the wrong desk.   So they’ve had it  for two weeks now and still I have no word on test results.   You see,  this is why pirates, with their missing eyes and limbs are so nasty.  First their hands and legs get lost by Fed-Ex, and then the lab takes forever with them.  It’s enough to drive me to rum.

My friend Mike is now thinking, “Dave, it never took much to drive you to rum.”

I’ve also within the past two weeks had a scope-down-the-gut thing, and a PET scan.  No word from those either.  “ARRRRRGGGGHHHH!”

peace,

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Page 8

 They lost my friggen’ eye!

The hospital here in KC says they sent it to the hospital in SL on the 24th, xmas eve, and the hospital in SL just called and said they haven’t received it yet.  Today is Tuesday, January friggen’ 8th.

So…

This how I start every first presentation to students, in their school classroom, before their first museum visit to introduce the project they are about to embark on:

They see a photo of a close-up of the hood of a red sports car, not the whole car, just a small part of it that shows some line and shape. Of course they can tell right away it’s a car but I ask them to forget that for a moment and imagine it is just an abstract painting. Now, give me single-word adjectives describing feelings this shape gives you…where, how…? Of course they soon find themselves describing an abstract object in terms of physical responses to elements of art; line, shape space, color, and texture. The objective is to see all designs as naturally and physiologically communicative through the basic visual symbols of art.

Looking at a diagonal line I ask for a volunteer to try to make that line with his body. “I can’t.” Why not? “I fall.” Of course you do. And everytime you see a diagonal line your body feels motion, tension, depth. That’s why perspective lines make you believe you see distance.  Other demonstrations try to get them to realize that the abstract elements of what you see effects you physiologically, and therefore psychically, emotionally, in the gut, in your memory.  That is how art can communicate with you regardless of when, where, or by whom it was made.

I say it communicates WITH you, as opposed to TO you, because this way of looking at art asks you to bring your own memories and psyche to the experience to, in a sense, complete the work.  If a tree falls and no one hears it does it make a sound sound? No.  Because of the technical definition of sound requiring a receiver.  Is art art if no one looks at it? Does it need us?  Do we complete it?

In my book, no, yes, yes.  It’s kind of a quantum mechanical situation;  the state of the thing is dependant on our experience of it.

Unfortunately, this doen’t apply to everything.  Wherever my missing eye is, there is something in it that I need to know about. Wouldn’t it be great if getting lost in the friggen’ mail made the cancer disappear?
peace, love, patience,

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Page 7

There’s a great song by Lyle Lovett (sp?) about enjoying this great party, seeing all his great old friends and relatives he hadn’t seen in so long, and by the chorus, of course you realize he’s at his own funeral.

I live my life looking at beautiful things, which includes most everything, and teaching others to notice and appreciate their visual world. It bugs me that people pass by and don’t notice beauty, coolness (as in coolness), wonder, humor in the things around them. And it bugs me that I’m guilty of the same.

Thank God it’s not at a funeral that I’ve been reminded of the many, many, many beautiful, cool (as in cool), wonderful, funny, caring, thoughtful, beautiful, people surrounding me. Thank God it’s not at a funeral. All I’ve lost is about a 1/2 ounce and a little peripheral vision. Thank God for what I’ve been reminded to see.

(I just realized it would be great poetry to celebrate that I can no longer see the far-right!)

Thank you all who have called, written, offered, reminded me of some very important things.

So let’s see, update: I know I’m healthy because I still want to eat and drink everything in sight, but I think I still feeling some of the anesthesia because I really can’t take in as much as I wish I could but shouldn’t anyways. I’m driving a little but my left eye still get fatigued real quick. Still no word from the latest biopsy via eye-mail. I’m planning on more scans of various types to make sure there’s nothing else going on inside me. My right eye is the prettiest blue/black/purple. It’s amazing how kids can rise to the occasion and be sensitive when it counts. The kids and I have made a couple good-sized snow-bunnies. They all have two eyes. Maryanna is the most beautiful support system in the world.

Thank God.

peace,

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Page 6

Hey , thanks for the calls and notes! After a few very barfy hours last night I’m doing well. There’s a little ache when I move my eyes (eye) too fast. There’s a silicon ping-pong ball in there that the muscles are trying to move.

Yesterday, no, Thursday, I went into the galleries for just the second time and confirmed something I though I was seeing the day before. With one eye I am much more aware, or maybe perceptive, of the power of color to suggest space; the ability for colors seem to recede or push forward, especially when composed with other colors and in suggestive lines and shapes. Looking at Julie Mehretu’s Dispersion I was swept up in the cyclone and blown yards up and out of the picture plane ans swept back in deeper than the gallery walls could possibly contain. I swear I had to comb my hair afterward. I ran (sorry security people) to the Kandinsky Rose and Gray, and for the first time understood with the certainty of the artist himself how colors can make time and space and sound. I ran back to the Bloch Building to look at what have always been the two most powerful paintings for me; Franz Kline’s Turin seemed positively dangerous with its weighty timbers barely holding and the blackend shards jutting out at me, and the Rothko – all I can say is time really stood still as the shifting brown/purple/black surrounded me and swallowed me.

I’m not making this stuff up folks. Cammie’s (my boss) sandy orange sweater was a froth of blue, red, yellow, and orange pebbles. Why didn’t any tell me about this? It’s really quite cool; one consequence of being a cyclops that I hope I don’t adjust to.The only trouble is I’m all too aware of this red bloody (bloody!) bandage I have to wear till Monday.

So, yeah, the surgery went well. So far the biopsy tests are not completely conclusive, so the eye is going (via eye-mail) to St. Louis for more testing, and I am planning on more scanning and poking and prodding here, just to make sure there was just the melanoma.

Until then I’ll just enjoy the pretty colors.

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Georges Rouault Wars, Dread of Mothers

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

 

It’s now my favorite work of art in the Museum. It’s small, it’s temporary, it’s easy to miss the gallery where it hangs for the short time it can be seen, and it’s one of those things that can be taken in and understood on a certain level immediately, but then, if you are lucky enough to linger in front of it, it will take you beyond the obvious, beyond the title, which no longer begins to explain the piece, beyond even second-level associations and references which can be recognized after only a few seconds looking. Its textures and values, at first heavy or accidental, become rich descriptors of strength, weight, light, intent, resistance, support. And then there’s the lines; Rouault is always about the lines.

The lines are what always pull you into a Georges Rouault work. I think I have only seen Rouault paintings, where the heavy, exclaiming lines are on the same plane, pictorially and narratively as the heavy-as-a-club colors. But in Wars, Dread of Mothers, 1927, the lines are only the beginning. They present and separate spaces that tell us things, like a stained glass window. The stories are within the lines, and segue through them. The lines exclaim the spaces.

In this small (26” x 20”) print, the real story to my eyes, (eye) is in the baby’s arm. The space of the white flesh is emphasized by the thick black outline. It is that contrast, the confident, reaching arm, that begins to tell me more of this story than the title or the obvious Madonna and Child reference. The arm of the baby is strong, reaching, directed, as is his eye. His back is straight, resolved.

The mother seems softer, supporting the resolve of the baby boy. Her mid-gray spaces stand out less against the heavy outlines. Her body droops toward the baby.

I suppose a printmaker may explain the textures differently. To me these quasi-accidental blendings and blurrings and flowings lend a tactile reality, a down-to-earth-ness to this Madonna and Child. There is shadow and shading and form and dirt and none of it is contrived, all of it seems as naturally occurring as the couple themselves. It is a lovely thing to touch with my eye.

The scene reminds me somewhat of a common one, of a baby, full of life interested in and reaching for an unseen locket on the mother’s breast, the mother watching the baby’s hand, supporting his strong body. But the contrast holds me.

The contrast between the stark, motivated, forward-looking baby and the gray, drooping, supportive mother in value, rigidity, action, and focus is telling.

There are three subjects presented here; the mother, the baby, and a building in the background that helps define a space. And there are three nouns in the title; Wars, Dread, and Mother. I see the Dread in the Mother. Where is the War? Perhaps it is in the memory of the mother, or perhaps it is in the presumption that it will continue into the future, evidenced in the forward motivation of the babe, the reach, the focus. Dread is a future-based emotion. It is of something to come.

She gave birth to, and now supports and balances the child whose hand reaches for her heart. She watches his hand, and there, perhaps are the Dread and the Wars.  She dreads because she knows it must continue.  It must continue because she holds its continuance in her lap.
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Page 5

A lot to update you on.

Biopsy results, half of them at least, are in. They tested for carcinoma, a cancer that would have spread from somewhere else in my body, and they tested for melanoma, which would be on its own in just my eye. Obviously the hope was for the melanoma. Well it took the pathologist at the Barnes Institute four days but as I was leaving work yesterday my cell phone rang. The Doctor told me the tests for carcinoma are negative. The tests for melanoma were not readable and have to be re-stained. My understanding is that it is a redundancy thing; a make-sure.

It looks like I’m clean outside of the eye.

What is certain is that we are going ahead with the surgery. The eye comes out on Friday morning. This Friday.

I’ve been exhausted all day today. I’m guessing that while waiting for the test results I’ve been running on nervous energy, and now that I can relax a little and move forward the energy that has been making me feel rather vibrant and productive the past few days has left me.

I’m eager to get this done. I’m looking forward to xmas and new years feeling like this is behind us.

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Page 4

Maryanna noted, rather uncomfortably, that I seem nonchalant about the prospect of losing an eye.

The foundation of a connection to a work of art, the most essential skill, the most important thing I say to people learning to look at art is, “Trust what you see.” You weren’t around when the work of art was made, you don’t know the artist personally, you can’t really even be completely sure of the information written on the card next to the art on the museum wall. Like they said in the ’60’s, “Question authority”. All you can really trust is what you see. So slow down and look; look carefully, notice details, notice proportions and textures. Describe what you see. And trust it.

If the thing in my eye is a melanoma, it is my decision to lose the eye rather than kill the tumor with radiation. The doctor tells me that radiation can kill it and save the eye. The problem is that the radiation necessary would damage my right eye to the extent that my vision out of that eye would be no better, and perhaps worse that before. Most people though still opt to keep the original equipment. I guess most people don’t take so seriously the desire to trust what they see. If what I see is a compromise between one good eye, and one that wants to warp, blur and color things to its own whim, I can not trust what I see. Going through life with only a left eye may mean seeing less, but I can trust what I see.

So that kinda’ worries me. It’s a sort of quality-versus-quantity issue. And most people seem to opt for quantity. Perhaps my point of view is the result of the luxury of working in a place where I am surrounded by the visual products of great minds from around the world. I am surrounded by quality. But really, the point of my teaching, my core belief as an educator, is that we are all surrounded by beauty, by quality, by intriguing, evocative, provocative, and visually awesome things. Look. Really look. Notice. Stare. It’s an amazing visual world we live in. Check it out.

I have to be careful to remind students though, there is a difference between trusting what you see, and taking for granted what you see. You really need to get used to looking at what you see. Really look and notice details and relationships. That is looking you can trust.

The biopsy went well. I’m still waiting for results. The pathologist is looking carefully and closely.

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Page 3

 

 

I have a love/hate relationship with irony.

The irony of a Claes Oldenburg sculpture pushes you toward a new way of thinking about the things you take for granted in your everyday life; a thing is not what it is, or what you think it should be.  I love the irony in an abstract painting or instrumental piece of music having at least as much meaning as a detailed depiction or verbal description.

I recently worked with an eight-grade girl making a movie about the power, pride and passion communicated by the black slashes of Franz Kline’s Turin. Feelings of strength, eternity, death and decay all came out of the dozen or so quickly made strokes on the white canvass and spoke to her, moved her. Yet this is the painting I hear most often provoking the,”My child could make that…” response from viewers.

How can a thing so shallow and meaningless be so deep and meaningful? Gotta love the irony.

What I hate is when God gets ironic.

The two activities that most define me are music and art. I’ve been a drummer and a drawer and looker my whole life. About ten years ago while climbing a tree to get an apple for a neighbor kid, I tore a tendon in my left wrist. I’m doing a mitzva, right? The doctors realized it was torn a year later, when it was too late to repair. The worst injury I have had till now was to my wrist. To this drummer, who works pretty damn hard trying to get to know God, that’s a very un-funny irony.

Now have this wonder job, looking at, talking about, and connecting others with art. A tumor in the eye is ironic.

So, Let’s think about this… It seems that irony, whether intentional or unintentional that is man-made, is revealing, transcendent, at least funny. Irony on the part of Nature is pretty ugly.

My MRI came back negative; there’s nothing to worry about in my brain (except maybe to some authority figures). The doctor still doesn’t know what this tumor is though. Tomorrow I go to Saint Louis to a specialist in needle biopsies.

I plan to be back in KC in time for my kid’s band concert. He’s a pretty promising horn player. Just the kind of guy God would give a fat lip.

(cont.)

Page 2

Higher-order thinking skills are great; they are what we all should strive to facilitate in our students, children and world leaders. Synthesis and evaluation of our visual environment is at the heart of the latest and greatest in art education; Visual Culture. My problem though with all latest and greatest saviors of our childrens’ education, (largely written by lab coats who don’t really seem to have actual contact with (ewww!!!) real kids) is that these new writings rarely pay the respect due to what has come before, and often must lie under these higher order goals. If you’re talking about classroom discipline and control, believe it or not, a little behavior mod has to be a part of the equation that will hopefully, maybe before the end of the first quarter, more fully function by intrinsic control. If you want kids to analyze the birth and growth of the civil rights movement, a little rote memorization of some important dates and names from Abe Lincoln on is a helpful ingredient in the mix for a foundation upon which an analysis can be based. And believe it or not, great gurus of Visual Culture Education, experience and confidence in formal analysis and media manipulation is an instructive place to start if we want our kids to really notice and think about their visual world.

When I teach people, young and old, to interact with works of art, which includes their cars, tennis shoes and office buildings, I first facilitate observation and description. What do you see? Give me adjectives, adverbs and similies. Think about what associations these descriptions bring to mind. Connect with your descriptions, then you will find you are connecting with the art. Knowledge and Comprehension (looking and describing), Application and Analysis (connecting what you see to other aspects of your world and experience), Synthesis and Evaluation (creating and expressing a personal response and interpretation to the work of art). This is how I see Mr Bloom’s intended taxonomy; higher-order thinking is hollow without lower-order basis. Even after all the hours I have spent looking at art from around the world, I try to not immediately interpret the art (I wasn’t around in China a thousand years ago, how can I possibly truly interpret?!) but rather I interpret my description of and connection to the art Be it a thousand years old Chinese temple sculpture, or my child’s drawing.

So last summer I noticed, while sitting on my front step, what I immediately described as being very much like the yellow baby-barf stain that all parents know, on my right shoulder. The problem was that I didn’t have a stain on my shoulder. When I looked down, it was gone. A few weeks later, in synagogue during Rosh Hashanah services, I noticed the bright purple glow coming from the prayer book of the lady to my right. It was very cool and neon, like a scene from a fantasy movie about a magic book. Trouble was, it really wasn’t glowing at all. It was the same prayer book as mine. This kind of thing went on and, while I knew it wasn’t right, it was not in my way and was actually kinda cool. It was not until a few weeks later that I noticed while taking a shower that the vertical tile grout lines to my right bowed and waved like a Bridget Riley painting and realized I should probably have this looked into (pun intended).

A trip to the opthamologist led to a trip to a retinal specialist, which leads me here. And not really knowing where “here” is is punishing. Except “punishment” is a behavior mod thing right? No, that avenue won’t take me anywhere.

I meet today with a member of our Museum IT department. My hope is that Kyle will buy into my goal of making my New Dimensions program Web 2.0 active. Creating and expressing personal responses to the Museum’s collection, based on careful observation, and creating on-going dialogues involving people around the world who have never heard of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art about the art. Spreading the Museum, the art and the kids expressions around the world,

like a cancer.

I just got the call to set up an appointment to meet with the retinal guy to talk about my MRI next Tuesday, 4 days away.

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Page 1

back

Writing a blog is something I’ve been putting off. Now’s the time; for a few reasons.

I want to incorporate podcasting and blogging into the program I manage at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, so it’s probably time I start wading into this stuff.

And, I just found out I have something growing behind my retina; it’s got me a little frightened. Maybe writing about it will help me think it through.

I say with no reservation I have the best job in the world; a museum educator in a world-class art museum. My job is to create programming for teenagers that brings them into the museum multiple times, gets them used to the idea of looking at art, and finding meaning and connection, and to facilitate projects that express their meanings and connections.

My first day on the job (this after 15 years teaching art in public high school) my boss came to me and said, “David, there’s one more thing. You have to go look at the art. Seriously, it’s why we are all here.” Um, okay. I get paid to think, to be creative, to teach others to think creatively, and to know art.

And I’m afraid I have a tumor in my right eye.

I have always felt the the best lessons, especially for teens, are those that result in real, authentic, important products that can be useful and appreciated by others. Right now we help the kids make videos and websites expressing ttheir responses to works of art from around the globe. The kids are taught that if they base their connections and expressions on their observations, and if they write to make their observations clear to a stranger, their writings are real, they are valid, they are important, they are useful. When I work with schools and teachers I stress that the CD-ROMs and DVDs the kids are more than reports. They are multi-media, cross-curricular peer-to-peer classroom resources. They are learning tools.It’s all about learning to look, really look, trust what is seen, trust the descriptions of, and connections to what is seen, and express a unique, personal response.

I get the results back from my first MRI in two or three days. I hope the writing helps.

d

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