Monday, June 28, 2010

Portrait of an Angel








Portrait Of An Angel
Mirror, Shoes, Oil Crayon, Poem by Summer Knight


I originally started working with this piece this spring, and actually it started brewing as far back as last year when I found the poem. I am finding that patience with an idea is amazing, because time is truly a benevolent friend. My first attempt to work this poem, did not feel right. The work was hauntingly beautiful, but it literally felt like being punched in my chest. The feeling wasn't right, it was too personal and painful. I didn't recognize the discomfort correctly at first, I thought it was fear and I wanted to push through fear, but a lucky accident occurred and I was given the chance to cool off and sit with the "finished" piece before showing anyone. The longer I sat with it the more I felt the truth of what wasn't working and in turn saw a clearer vision. Then I put the project on the shelf and haven't touched it in 4+ months.
Today, I decided to take it out.......
I started off with my "idea's" but in the process I let go of form and "saw" what I needed to literally see "You Like Me" and the piece emerged! But what shocks me is that it aligned itself in a way it couldn't possibly have any time sooner, and its meaning and significance to me in this moment is what it was whispering to me all along....ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

I am not certain what to call this work, is it an installation, a sculpture??? The audience is also an integral part of the piece, because it is the viewer reading the poem and looking at himself in the mirror that completes the piece.

I am continuously grateful to my beautiful sister Summer who endlessly inspires me with her beauty, honesty and courage. Everything I do from my heart is with love for her.

I want to share excerpts from another poem, which has been ringing in my soul.

If you put on shoes that are too tight
and walk out across an empty plain,
you will not feel the freedom of the place
unless you take off your shoes.

People at a distance see you walking there
and wish they were out in the open like you,
but as the saying goes, They are not in your shoes.

Your shoe-constriction has you confined.
At night before sleeping, you take off
the tight shoes, and your soul releases
into space it knows. Dream glide deeper.

.............

Normally when a horse gets the scent of a lion,
it keeps a distance. But there are exceptions.
Every now and then a horse comes
that will gallop into the blazing moat.

Do not hold back what you know to say
about your inmost self. Say everything,
no matter how much hypocrisy and hesitation
you sense is here. Don't guard the mystery.

Heat the horse so hot it rises off the track
into the emptiness of the soul.

(The Freedom Of Place by Rumi)


LOVE LOVE LOVE

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