As I continue to hear and read about the horrifying mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza and the violence also in the West Bank, I again turn to art. Sometimes I ask myself what the use of art is. Then I think “use” isn’t the word or meaning I’m searching for. It’s more like , what’s the point of making art? What I return to is that it’s got something to do with the spirit, though not in a religious sense.
The best I can say is that, for me, making art and experiencing artworks is a way to be with more of life than the everyday. Or maybe, it’s being with the everyday from different perspectives. I like what Peter Schumann who’s the founder of Bread and Puppet Theater says, ”Art is food, you can’t eat it, but it feeds the soul.”
So, here are two pieces of artwork I’ve made over the past years that have been coming to mind as I hear the dreadful news out of Gaza. The painting is one I made in 2008 that feels timely in its look of terror and grief.
And the poem is one I wrote in 1993 that still has meaning for me. And while I am not someone who is filled with hope, the poem is, for me, an antidote to despair. I carved five stamps with the words of the poem sometime within the last ten years.
In the turning,
may we have the courage to do our work,
to name the face of greed
swallowing our world,
to love,
to see what is heartbreaking
and not be swept away forever,
to believe that we may change,
to pass it on.
Arts of May 