This afternoon I went down to Chattanooga's Hunter Art Museum to see an exhibit by Jeffery Morton, an art professor at Covenant College. The art work he had displayed was fascinating, especially how the colors he used drew me in as a viewer. His are was not necessarily representational--it was mostly more abstract, but it was also depicting things from life and landscapes. Two small paintings, both about tornados, showed layers on layers of paint, with the bold spiral swirls of the tornado lines on the top.
The largest work he has on display at the museum is "50% Chance of Rain", which is abstract, but shows the motion of bluebirds swooping down and finding bugs for food. There were also two pencil drawings of power transmission lines, on top of a field of arrows, where he had meticulously drawn a grid of squares and put an arrow in each square, thereby showing how the wind had been blowing that day, but also bringing to mind the electromagnetic fields created by the power lines. Amidst the lines were contant structural swirls of wind.
In his lecture he took us through slides of many of the paintings which have influenced his style, and then through the development of his painting over the years. He put particular emphasis on the influence of place in his work; when he lived in Japan he made landscapes that evoked the Japanese mountains, fields, and sea, then he lived on a Menonite farm and painted corn fields, and here in Chattanooga he has found himself increasingly drawn to air. He painted the air, and things in the air: fireflies, mosquitos, birds, wind, and power lines. It was wonderful to hear his wonder and reflection on place, and his painting and making art in response to the creation around him.
Have you ever opened a coconut? It can be quite an adventure if you lack the requisite tools and experience. My parents had a coconut, and after drilling a hole in it to drain out the milk, I took it outside to cast it into the air so it would break open upon impacting our concrete patio. At least that's what I was hoping for.
As the coconut hurled through the air, rising higher and higher, I realised that the trajectory upon which I had sent it was ill-considered. I remembered (after releasing the projectile) that objects thrown follow a more or less parabolic path under the influence of gravity, and considering the upward path of the coconut, my eyes rapidly completed the parabola, and I realised what I had done by launching it. My parent's glass topped patio table stood directly between the coconut and the patio beneath the table.
Naturally, the coconut continued on its course, regardless of the glass table top between it and the patio. The glass shattered, and the projectile passed through to the patio. As I surveyed the scene, I realized that (1) I now owe my parents a new table, (2) there is broken glass covering the patio chairs and the patio which will need to be swept up, (3) if the coconut had broken open it would be mixed amoung the shards of glass, and (4) the coconut had not broken open.
After checking the outside of the coconut for glass, I took it over and threw it downward onto the sidewalk, and there it broke open, though not into as many pieces as the table-top on the patio... and after all that, the coconut didn't even taste that great.
If I had a digital camera I'd have posted a picture.