...beyond my backyard
I wish to salute all fellow bloggers. This is a great project – a great responsibility too – and I am proud to be in it with you all. I can only hope that my contributions can be as meaningful as yours are to me. I had proposed in my previous blog to take you on a cultural tour of the enclave and to explain how things were subtly rearranged to allow for the establishment of an art forum in the far reaches of the island of Borneo. This may have sounded a little strange to some readers and may have come across as an arrogant statement on my part but one thing I have learnt in the five years since I left the comfort and the smooth existence I was able to afford back home is that the creative liberty most of us take for granted in the so called western world is far from being global.
Jose Freitas Cruz on 09.29.04 @ 09:58 AM EST [more..]
One of the great works of the nineteenth century , is the collected correspondence of the artist Vincent Van Gogh ( 1853 - 1890 ). His letters are the story of one of the most original and influential artists of European art whose creativity was unfortunately only recognised after his death. 874 letters allow us to enter Vincents world and discover the genius of this man who changed the history of European art and left a vast volume of work which is described in his long and revealing letters. Theo Van Gogh and his wife Johanna Van Gogh - Bonger were responsible for preserving the works and letters of Vincent Van Gogh. Without their support , we would probably never have heard of Vincent Van Gogh.
Last Saturday evening, I had just put the finishing touches on an blog, nicely wrapped, over art and mythology. Then, by curiosity, I browsed through the AbsoluteArts Visual Arts Café discussion forum where the issues of identity have recently been debated. An old nerve was thumped… I am white, male, over 50, heterosexual, never married, no children (no grandchildren), American, professional, and living in near obscurity. I often ponder how my art reflects these aspects of my being - issues of my personal identity… Is my art more of a reflection of myself, or rather, the world I observe in my midst? Will people be able to relate to my art who are Slavic, Gay, African, Lesbian, Latino, homeless, hungry, wealthy, or repressed? Should the breadth of my uniqueness portray objectivity most specific to my peculiar layer of human integration? Must my heritage be the most important focus of my endeavors of artistic expression? I come from a partial Jewish parentage, but I was raised Protestant - are either aspects important enough to be reflected within my art - possibly, but not in my case. I do reflect on the world around me - the human condition, and our treatment of this planet holds a great concern to me. Will that concern be echoed in my art as a matter of course because the process provides no other choice? Or, is my identity a part of a greater essence of how we have reached to the record of our inventions?
I'll simply begin by telling you my own art-story.
Rather than speaking to you about myself and my art I have chosen in my first contributions to the artblog project to describe to you the events that led to the creation of an art forum in the far off regions of Borneo and the resulting increase in artistic activity that has since ensued. Before we move on, however, I would like to share with you a few of the ideas that have occupied my mind for some years now and inevitably found their way into the fundamental structure of the forum and the spirit it wishes to keep alive. 
After our New Year celebration I spent several days meeting Michelle's friends, walking around Santa Fe and the Canyon road galleries. I'm afraid I wasn't terribly excited by the art. Maybe I was a little overwhelmed by the natural art forms I'd seen in the sky, the desert and mountains. We made another hike a couple days later up into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. This time we were even further up and everything was covered with snow. A couple Native American boys in a Toyota 4x4 invited us to drink beer with them but I knew they were more interested in drinking with Michelle than with me. Michelle had other plans.
On Sunday August 29 I celebrated the opening of my art exhibition: The Perpetual Table together with the launch of its accompanying CD-ROM, The Perpetual Table Volume 1. It was a first in many ways.
Traffic was slow and I was moving about 15 miles per hour when I happened to look out the truck window to see the most amazing vision. On either side of the sun in the sparse clouds you could see the two patches of pale rainbow refraction which is the norm for a good sun dog. But while they were not nearly as bright as some, because the sky was generally hazy, you could also see a sort of shadow bow just a few tones grayer that encircled the entire sun making a huge refractory ring, the subtle hues of the rainbow, around it in the Southern sky. The two sun dogs were the second brightest points on either end of a line dividing the circle with the sun in the center. It reminded me of the geometry of a Hopi Sand Painting with a bit of the promise made to Noah thrown in. Inside the ring it was a bit darker than it was outside the ring. I assumed Michelle would tell me what this meant in Native American Traditions. I'm not terribly superstitious but I couldn't help feeling this was good medicine for the rest of the trip....
Today his canvases and drawings are sold for millions. As an artist he struggled relentlessly against alcoholism, insanity, poverty and even hunger. He failed miserably when attempting to set up an artists colony with the painter Paul Gauguin. During his manic self - mutilation and eventual suicide, his brother Theo Van Gogh was a bedrock of loyal support. Sadly , he took his own life, aged 37 on Sunday 27th July 1890.
