Day 26

Today began with bugs. Another morning invasion of carpenter ants in the studio. But I managed their elimination in what I thought was a fairly ingenious way: I used artist tape to pick them up as they crawled out of woodwork, landed on walls and floors.
This meant I didn't have to sweep their little carcasses afterward. I made a sculpture from the accumulated strips of tape which I intend to give away... to someone special. I don't like killing things, even bugs. Because not all of them died instantly on the artist tape, they wiggled, some for hours. A morbid curiosity took over, not to mention occasional sympathy. But they're not so nice, carpenter ants. I have a magnifying glass and it was trained on this one creature who unfortunately had only half its body damaged, the big black sac that held what were clearly its eggs. For one hour, with pointed little teeth and flicking arms, it ate its own eggs! Was it hungry? Did it think it would survive if it ate its progeny? Was it just pissed off crazy? In any case, it wasn't nice.

And the day ended appropriately, also with bugs. This time in my computer. After recounting the day for this Big Sur journal, the effort just suddenly evaporated into thin air.

My intent today, every day, was to create something artistic to show for my experience. Once again the weather was so mild as to find me sleeveless on a morning walk on Garrapata Ridge. (Forgive me, beloved friends in New York, the Midwest and Europe. This information could be too much for you to bear.) It feels like the residency is almost over and in many ways it has only just begun. I understand in certain art retreat experiences, the artist comes with a clear cut series in mind. That not having been my choice, the art I create here is closely aligned to my visceral experience of Big Sur. Alternately, it is grand, peaceful, vibrant with energy, wildly beautiful, mercurial in color, and often whimsical. (Big Sur, that is.) A theme that had been quietly generating before I came to Big Sur concerned the concept of "home," and included a symbol that has been making appearances in my paintings for years: the simple pentagonal shape that is a house the way children draw it. That symbol first appeared in a painting right after 9/11. A glowing white house inside a whorling crimson tornado. It was called "Longing for Kansas." In the last five years, other paintings with names like, "Homeland Insecurity" cathartically expressed my frustration with our country's direction, and this house shape is integral to their composition.

What I've mysteriously discovered in Big Sur is a persistent sighting of this "house" shape. It's everywhere, cast as reflection on the mirrored walls of Virginia's studio, bird houses, barns and cottages, shadows on mountain, altars. Consequently when this shape finds space in any of the work produced up here on this mountain, it doesn't hold the former emotions of fear, terror and dinintegration. For that alone, I am grateful for this residency.