Happy New Year...

Just a word to thank those of you who check in on "Persist: The Blog" from time to time. I trust that, if you find no current entries, you toggle over to The Buddha Diaries, where I write entries almost every day. All of them, I think, are relevant to the issue at hand here. In today's entry you'll find a wish for the New Year. I wish you all the most creative and successful of all years!

Please Note...

... my guest post today at Sweep the Dust, Push the Dirt.

Good Artist/Bad Person?

For those who were interested in the dilemma I referred to a couple of days ago, in my entry titled "Distraction," a follow-up piece in today's entry in The Buddha Diaries may also be of interest. It's called "Speaking of Nazis..." With reference, particularly, to the life and work of Martin Heidegger, it raises a familiar question: is it possible to be a really bad person and a good artist--or, in Heidegger's case, philosopher/writer? Conversely, does being a really good person preclude the possibility of being a really good artist? (I don't come up with an answer!)

"The Marriage Artist"

Please, today, click over to my entry on The Buddha Diaries for a review of The Marriage Artist, an excellent new novel by Andrew Winer.

Distraction

It's not that I have forgotten about Persist: The Blog; it's rather that I have been choosing to keep up with my posts at The Buddha Diaries. But Thanksgiving came along to remind me just how easy it is to get distracted, and how easily distraction can slip over into laziness and neglect.

It's a problem I know I share with virtually every other creative person on the planet. Oh, I know there are some writers and some artists out there whose discipline--obsession?--is such that nothing will ever distract them. They keep at it seven days a week, rain or shine, holiday or no holiday, despite family and friends. I'm not among them. Actually, the truth is that they kind of piss me off! They hold up an overly polished mirror in which I readily see all my imagined faults. There is some part of me, I confess, that's out to shame me for not sharing that dedication. The part that nags at my conscience, whispering "you should..."

Should I? I have to ask myself what I want for myself as a writer. Is there some truth in the argument that to be the true artist, the successful artist, I must abandon every other aspect of my life, including family and friends, and dedicate myself exclusively to my art? The stories of such people are legion--and legend--along with the havoc they wreak in their own lives and the lives of those they love. When I feel envious--and there are times I do--of writers whose names are better known than mine, and whose bank balances are much healthier, I ask myself if I would have met with more success had I chosen to follow their example.

And I do think that may be what it takes to achieve true greatness--the pursuit of one's vision to the exclusion of everything else. It's just not something I'm built for. Family means a great deal to me, as does the time I devote to pursuits other than my writing. For me, then, it's a balance; and like all balancing acts, it requires constant vigilance if I'm to avoid toppling over and falling off the wire. I do need awareness if I want to "persist" in the work I'm given to do; I need to watch my mind when it attaches to the distractions that inevitably come along, and bring it back gently to where it needs to be.

The Big Time?

(Cross-posted at The Buddha Diaries)

I was utterly astounded--and of course delighted--to find prominent mention of my "other blog," The Buddha Diaries, in the lead-in to a featured article in the New York Review of Books by Janet Malcolm, "Comedy Central on the Mall." It refers to my entry on November 1st about the Jon Stewart Rally to Restore Sanity, and occupies the first two paragraphs of the article. Reading the whole piece, I regretted only that Malcolm had not read the follow-up article I wrote on 11/11, after seeing a recorded version of what took place onstage--a disappointing affair, I thought. Still, wonderful to find so prominent a mention of the blog. I would perhaps not have stumbled across this without a tip from my friend and fellow blogger, Bill Harryman, at Integral Options Cafe. My thanks to him!

I hope you'll help me celebrate by forwarding the link to others who might be interested.

Miriam Wosk: A Follow-Up

I hope that my post today on The Buddha Diaries will be of interest to readers of Persist: The Blog. Just the click of the mouse away! My friend Miriam was the model of "persistence" as an artist...

BREAK ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE

Today's entry is a contribution to the blogging event "Break On Through to the Other Side: What inspired you to create a career outside the confines of the corporate world" instigated by Greg Spalenka, Artist as Brand blogger. Other participants include:

Miss Mindy-Pop Surrealist/Cartoon Folk Artist

Lillyella-Jewelry Maker and Champion of the Handmade

Anna L. Conti-Artist, San Francisco narrative painter

Maria Brophy-Art licensing Expert and Blogger, helping Creative People design their dream life.

PLEASE CHECK OUT ALL THESE OTHER SITES!

So, yes. The Doors. It was The Doors, wasn’t it, who did the song? The door is the great, abiding metaphor for those occasions in life when we stand on the threshold of something new, when we are asked to risk dropping the baggage we have brought with us thus far and step on into the unknown.

The greatest of all doors in my own life opened for me in the mid-1980s. It was a terrifying and exhilarating moment. Greg’s question of the day is this: what inspired you to create a career outside the confines of the corporate world? Well, to tell the truth, I was never in the corporate world. I was in academia. Does that count? Perhaps it does. Academia, sadly, has become something of an industry these days, something of a sausage factory where fresh, raw meat goes in… and comes out at the other end neatly processed, packaged and labeled for the market place.

Am I too cynical? Perhaps. But I spent twenty-five years in academia, and I do know something whereof I speak. It has now been almost another quarter century since I was inspired to take the chance to be the writer I had always known myself to be, and I have not regretted that choice for a single day. I describe myself these days as employed more full-time than I ever used to be—though usually without pay. It works for me.

Okay, that “inspiration.” Again, that’s not really what it was. I had been “inspired” since the age of twelve. I knew then that all I wanted was to be a writer. I just got side-tracked—by the social expectations operative in those days, back in the 1950s. By parents. By my own inhibitions and fears. By thinking that poetry and money don’t mix (I started out as a poet, and poets notoriously don’t make much of a living.)

So I went first into grammar school teaching. I was attracted by the long holidays, when I’d be able to do all the writing that I wanted. In my ignorance, I did not take into account the fact that teaching is an enormously demanding profession; that by the time the long holidays came around, I would be so depleted—physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually—that I would not have it left in me to write. When I discovered that truth, I migrated into academia. Onward and upward, I thought. I was too naïve to anticipate the same result!

“Inspiration” came finally in the form of sabotage. I had a series of truly wonderful jobs in academia, and I sabotaged them all. I was a professor of Comparative Literature at USC; Dean of the College (and later Acting Director) at Otis Art Institute; Dean of the College of Fine and Communication Arts at Loyola Marymount University… At LMU, it was my privilege to have the job of creating a whole new fine arts complex for visual arts, music and dance. My inspiration to leave came when I found the Academic Vice President in one of my brand new painting studios, pacing it out to see how many desks he could fit in there for academic classes. I went back to my office, called my wife, and asked her how she would feel if I quit my job and went on the dole…

It wasn’t so much inspiration, then, it was reality that popped up and slapped me in the face. I was always meant to be a writer. For years I had been trying hard to kid myself that academia was an okay option, a way to keep bread on the table for the family and money in the bank. I could always do the writing “on the side.” But the writing didn’t get done, or only in small, frustrating doses. And I chose, for all those years, to deny the hard reality of the spirit and soul: I was devoting my days and weeks and years to doing something I was never supposed to do. In my heart, I knew it. I just didn’t have the courage to recognize—let alone to act upon—the truth.

I quit. When it came to that point, it was really no longer a choice. It was a recognition and embrace of who I am. I like to describe myself, these days, as an academic in recovery. I have kicked the habit, but I still miss some of the perks. A steady income, for example. Health insurance. Retirement benefits. And even, yes, in part, the identity. Because when I stood at that threshold, that was the baggage I had brought with me, and it was hard to give it up. What I have come to understand since I crossed that threshold is that it’s always necessary to leave some part of myself behind when there’s a new one waiting to be born. And that it’s all about freedom, and the joy that comes with finding it, piece by precious piece.

Miriam Wosk: A Tribute

I want to share some thoughts about my friend Miriam Wosk, who died last week after a long battle with illness, at far too young an age. Her loss will be deeply felt by the many people whose lives she touched with both her great spirit and her contribution to the art world as a generous patron and as a uniquely imaginative artist. Miriam was a woman who made art not only in her studio, but of her life. To know her was to be infected with her passionate energy and the joy she took in everything that responded to her hunger for beauty in the world.

And her hunger for beauty embraced seemingly everything. To feed that appetite—and, importantly, her art—she was a voracious collector. She collected colorful baubles and images, scraps of material and pages from obscure, esoteric texts, buttons and ribbons and sequins and anything else that sparkled, glittered or shone. Her studio was a storehouse of these objects, organized and categorized on hundreds of shelves and drawers and plastic containers, all within reach for the moment they were needed. The bulletin boards were an always changing collage of the images that caught her wide-ranging eye, and the walls hung generously with whatever Miriam happened to be working on, or whatever she might need to have in her line of sight in order to find inspiration.

And she found inspiration everywhere. Typically, her art was an assemblage of images and objects that reflected whatever was in her heart and on her mind at any given moment. Her talent was first to find them, then to allow them to come together in both consciously created patterns and intuitive bursts of action from the unconscious mind...

She drew not only on the brilliant sense of design she developed early in her life as a top New York illustrator and designer, but also on the dreams she was devoted to exploring in all their richness and depth. She was able effortlessly to combine her fascination with science—both its history and its cutting edge of contemporary discovery—with an unembarrassed love of kitsch and a refined taste for the highest achievements in art, from which she learned freely and sought tirelessly to emulate.

A visit to Miriam’s library made it clear that she was at pains to be knowledgeable in a vast range of topics, and made no bones about pouring everything into her work. She loved books, with or without images, and brought everything she learned from them back with her to the studio. Her work was an insatiable search for meaning as well as for beauty. Call it "metaphysical," because it is at once intensely physical in its use of—and appeal to—the senses; and at the same time transformative of the physical world in which it so delights. Call it "rococo," call it "baroque" in its passion for ornamentation and its uninhibited excess.

There is a dark side to the aesthetic of exuberant excess and of this, too, Miriam was unafraid. Her work is as much about decadence and entropy as it is about the proliferation of life. Eros and thanatos thrive there together as partners and complements...

The skeletons, the anatomical prints and cross-sectional studies of bodies—whether human or animal—that appear so frequently in her work are a reminder that the flesh is transitory and that life is short...

Miriam, I am convinced, was more in tune with the spirit that informs life than the rest of us. She saw what we did not see, and heard what we did not hear, and understood what the rest of us did not understand. She saw, particularly, that death is no more than the flip side of life. Her gift was to share those insights in the art she left behind. And that is quite a legacy.

A Lecture--and an Exhibition

Please go to my entry in The Buddha Diaries today, for a report on my latest lecture--this one at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita--and for a quick look at a remarkable art show.

INTENTIONAL CONVERSATION

“Inspiration, Instigation and Interaction: The Relationship of the Artist to the Audience, Reader or Viewer”

(This is the talk I prepared for "The Intentional Conversation," sponsored by Marymount College at the Los Angeles Cathedral yesterday, Tuesday, October 19, 2010. I decided, once I got the sense of what was needed, to discard what I'd written in favor of a more informal introduction. But I thought it would do no harm to post it anyway.)

I’m a writer. I’m known principally as an art writer. I have been writing about art and artists for a good number of years. For many of those years, I was employed in academia—a one-time professor of Comparative Literature, a one-time Dean of Otis Art Institute and Dean of the Arts at Loyola Marymount University. I like to think of myself as a recovering academic. For the past nearly 25 years, I have been fully employed and disastrously underpaid as a freelance writer.

My most recent book is called “Persist: In Praise of the Creative Spirit in a World Gone Mad With Commerce.” It’s relevant to our theme today, because it’s about the predicament of the artist in a cultural climate in which celebrity and money count for more than skill, or dedication, or substance, or any of those other values we normally associate with art.

How many creative people of all kinds—writers, painters, actors, musicians, dancers—are cut off from an audience these days because they lack the track record of established financial success, or the celebrity of, say, a John Grisham… or a Sarah Palin? There is a myth abroad to which some artists and some writers subscribe: they say, “I do it for myself.” No, I do it to communicate something “of myself” to my fellow human beings, and I ask that they share of themselves with me.

Many years ago, I found myself in a workshop at the Esalen Institute led by a Huichol Indian wise woman. It was one of those no-accident accidents. I had gone to Esalen to lead a workshop myself, but it had not attracted sufficient interest so I was at a loose end for the weekend. And this seemed like an interesting thing to do.

I actually remember nothing about the workshop except for a single moment. The shaman was talking about the Huichol Indian custom on the arrival of a new child. Instead of “giving the child a name,” as we do in our Western culture, the Huichols wait a while and then ask the child this question: Tell me who you are.

And this was one of those great moments of epiphany for me because I realized that this was exactly what I expect of all good art and all good writing. I want you to tell me who you are. I want to tell you who I am. This, as I see it, is at the center of all human communication. It has been the focus of everything I have written since; and, looking back on it, I realize that it was the secret intention of everything I ever wrote.

I say this with the realization that the goal might seem a small one—even perhaps a self-interested one. But here’s my thinking: the first step in telling you who I am is the inner journey, the journey into the depths of the self. And the closer I get to the core of self, the more I discover about the humanity I share with you; the humanity I share with every other human being. The more I’m able to tell you who I am, the more you will recognize yourself in me, the more we will come to a common understanding. And the same is true, of course, from the other perspective: the more you can tell me about yourself, the more I stand to learn about me. I see myself in you.

As I said at the start, I am known chiefly as an art writer, and people are often curious about what kind of work I respond to, and why. It’s simple, really. I respond to work that tells me who the artist is. And I don’t necessarily mean the story of their life—though that may be a part of it. An artist who paints abstractions may just as easily be telling me who they are. It may be necessary to make a deep inner journey to come to that abstraction. The evidence of the journey will make itself known to me, if I take the time to look and listen to what the painting has to tell me.

And then it comes to writing about the art I like. I long ago learned this adage as a writer, and it has always been my touchstone: How do I know what I think ‘til I see what I say? So the process of writing is also an inner journey. It’s a journey whose vehicle is language and whose destination is unknown until I reach it. It’s an attempt on the part of this “me” to come to a place where I share common ground with that “you” you’re telling me about. It’s a place that, in another aspect of profound and authentic human relationship, is called by another name.

It’s called “love.” It may be shared with a single person. It may be shared with many. It’s a mutual act of giving, an act of generosity which brings the greatest rewards when practiced with the most open of hearts. This is the place where we can be our most perfectly human selves.

Release The Beast-Rick DiBiasio

Many thanks to Rick DIBiasio, creator of Middle Aged-Crazy for participating in our interview series. Enjoy! Below are the questions I asked Rick followed by his humorous, honest, and enlightening response.

On your website Middle Aged-Crazy you describe the discovery of your creative spirit as an experience that was somewhat instantaneous. Can you describe that experience? You say "expressing yourself creatively finally bubbled over." What was it that held it down for so long?

And the image of the creative spirit as a Beast...where did that come from? Why do you choose to draw that comparison?

You are a writer, but what other creative outlets have you discovered that really connect with your Beast? How did you find them? Or how did they find you?

You explore your ideas through a lot of mixed media on your blog. Lots of videos, images, and audio. What made you choose to represent your ideas online this way?

How did you meet your Spirit Guide "Paul." What have you allowed Paul to bring to your life and in what ways has he changed it?

Rick D: I'M A BIG FAN OF PETER'S AND I'M HAPPY TO BE HERE TO TALK WITH YOU! (I should tell you that I have decided to do all interviews in a very poor Maurice Chevalier French accent and you are really lucky these answers are all in typed form.)

I don't know if it was completely instantaneous. I was a Wall Street guy, but I've always been a little "different" than most of the guys in that profession. I knew I wanted to be a writer someday, but I wasn't writing. (Well, I was writing some pretty good investment newsletters and sales proposals). I loved music but I wasn't a musician. I had, in short, always followed the path of least resistance, and, in my case, that path led me down a business road as a sales person. Years went by and I never did get around to that writer, musician, philosopher thing. In 2007 I went to a Jack Canfield event called Breakthrough to Success and I decided that I had to acknowledge I was really living someone else's life, I wasn't being true to my soul.

The instantaneous part came because within 45 minutes, 4 different people at this event (there were 400 people there from 14 countries) approached me and said, virtually word for word, "Rick, I'm very creative but I'm not very good with money, could you help me understand it?" I decided someone was sending me a message and, within three months of the event I wrote The Affluent Artists, got Jack to write the forward and found a publisher. Since then, I've been a writer who has a financial planning office; ask me what I do and I'll tell you I write books. Releasing my inner passion as a writer has made a huge difference in how I see the world and how it sees me.

I see the world through an artist's eyes now, I have found my true calling in life and I am lucky I did. That's where the new project comes from, Middle Aged Crazy is the opposite side of the Affluent Artist coin. The Affluent Artist was designed to help creatives get comfortable with the principals of financial planning, M.A.C. is a little more auto biographical, it's designed to help the people who have ignored their inner creative being for too long. I held it in for too long because I had bills to pay and ladders to climb, and, there's that whole path of least resistance thing. I'm a natural talker and I could make quite a bit of money as a financial planner, I wasn't exactly suffering. As I grew up, I'm 54 years old, the internet didn't exist, there were no blogs, it was difficult to just declare yourself to be a writer. It's different now, it's much easier to follow your passion and find your audience without all of he middle men that used to be the gatekeepers of the art world.

The Beast is the creation of artist and friend Betsy Streeter, she'd read some of my work and contacted me about it. We had a great conversation and, before I knew it, she'd created this wonderful little slide show with the Beast.

I was working on the Affluent Artist at the time, but I had this really weird inspirational experience. I was in my boat last March, cruising on the Banana River (near Cape Canaveral here in Florida) when I heard a voice that said "Shut it Down". I knew this voice, it's my guardian angel, a guy named Paul, who has appeared to me and other people on my behalf. (There is person who channels angels in Utah who he kept up all night once talking about me). So, I shut the boat down. He said, "Not the boat, The Affluent Artist."

"Man, that's my baby."

"I know, but your work there is done, I have something better," and he laid out the whole Middle Aged Crazy thing, including the title. His first instruction was to call Betsy and she agreed to do the logo and be part of the project. We've never met, she's a Mom in San Francisco who used to be the art director for EA Sports. She has "gotten it" regarding Middle Aged Crazy from the beginning. I think the Beast is such a perfect analogy because if you don't let your real reason for coming into being come out, you will never know true happiness. Trying to keep your creative beast locked up is a very dangerous thing. You are creating a life anyway, why not create one that makes your soul happy?

This whole Paul thing is really weird, I had been at a conference in California where a friend told me about an angel book, she said if I asked my guardian angel to introduce himself, he would. SO, on the flight home, as a I got in my seat, I skeptically said, "Ok, who are you?" Before I had the question out, I heard "PAUL, PAUL, PAUL!" and I was blown away, the thoughts I had were loud and almost audible. I decided that this was either a new voice in my head or an angel, either way, it was going to make the 6 hour flight home interesting.

Since then, Paul seems to come and go, although he claims he is always there, I'm just not listening sometimes. He claims that I am writing this book for him, that I am going to build a following of people who need to hear my message. He has awakened me in the middle of the night and not let me go back to sleep until I wrote what he told me to write. One time, he had me write 10 fairly random things, and, the next day, when a prospective publisher asked for my table of contents, I realized Paul had given it to me, word for word and in the correct order.

You've got to understand that my friends in the financial community would sooner take poison than admit to listening to Angels. I'm not a particularly religious guy and I am not one to believe in elves, hobbits or UFO's, but I believe that Paul is a messenger from God and I am humble enough to listen to him. I have learned that listening to inspiration is not something I've done very often, it took a really loud angel to get my attention. I wonder how many people actually listen to inspiration in their lives? Now that I listen, I find it everywhere, having something to write about is never a problem.

I love to write, but I am in awe of other great communicators, speakers, artists, songwriters and musicians. On my blog, I try to find songs that say what I'm trying to say. Recently, I used a Dave Mathews song called Grace is Gone that perfectly matched a particular heartache I had. I wrote about Grace in a positive, uplifting way, but the song explained the true emotions I was feeling, I was afraid I had lost grace and would never know it again. Dave Mathews said that better than I could.

I know that not everyone is a reader and my narrated slide shows are a fun way to make a point every once in a while, it's fun to find creative ways to make my point.

When I was a Wall Street guy, I was a "High A", aggressive, take no prisoners kind of guy. It was about making my monthly goals, making my clients money and finding more clients. I was a pretty unhappy, overweight guy with high blood pressure and the heart attack to validate it. I was miserable, even though some envied me and my life, I was going so against my nature that I had no governor, I didn't know how to moderate. Now that I have released my creative beast, I can't wait to get out of bed every day.

My biggest challenge with Middle Aged Crazy is trying not to offend the agnostic or the fervent. I've found that it is difficult to discuss inspiration and creation without being labeled as someone who is a Bible thumper or who "isn't Christian". Gee whiz, some guy last week said that "meditation" invites the Devil into your mind. Someone else said that a "Spirit Guide" (Paul) isn't Christian. Then others say I'm trying to force Creationism on them. It's something I am learning to handle with Grace, but it's a learning process.

I play guitar now, poorly, but once in a while I stop thinking and let my soul play the song and that's pretty magical. When I am in "Flow" writing-wise, I can go for hours, I don't often know what is coming out of my fingers until they strike the keys. The most unexpected part of all of this? People actually read what I write and seem to like it. Almost everyday I get a wonderful note from someone who said my words made a difference in their life and I am so humbled by that. I love words, I love to build sentences and communicate from my soul with them. I never really imagine that someone else might actually be listening! I think that's all Paul's doing, I know what artists mean now when they say they are simply channeling from a higher source. It's an honor to be the instrument that is going to help so many people release their inner creativity.

Three Facilitators of Creativity: Nature, Music, Sport by Patrick Frank

Many thanks once more to Patrick Frank for sharing his wonderful insight.

Three Facilitators of Creativity: Nature, Music, Sport

by Patrick Frank

"I Feel so near, to the howling of the wind, I feel so near to the crashing of the waves, I feel so near to the flowers in the field...I feel so near..."

The above quote is from a Celtic song lyric. It speaks to the first facilitator of creativity--for me, and perhaps for many others: intimate connection with nature. Cut off from nature completely, and my creativity starts to dry up.

Today, riding back from Hardee's in Lake City, SC on Route 52, I passed beautiful brown and dappled horses, standing quietly underneath a stand of trees. Yes, I admit, I took my eyes off the road. When I see these horses, I sense their peaceful spirit, and the peacefulness enters me. I would like to go out to the field and pet them, feed them apples, but we're talking private property. That's okay. It's enough for me to to observe them in the green pasture.

Lately, I have been taking our cat, Fiona, out in the back yard on a long rope, so that she can have the intimate experience I am referring to. I do this because a neighbor lady has threatened to call animal control on our cats, because they wander into their yard and sometimes do their business, and because she fears that they have some disease. I thought she mentioned shooting them twice, but can't be sure i heard it right.

Anyway, I take Fiona out back, and this gets both her and me out of the house. I feel a gentle, cool breeze blowing through our pine and oak trees--the whisper of the wind, and the sound leads me into a kind of revery It does not matterthat they scold her and me sometimes; that's their nature, after all.

When I come back into the house, and sit down at the screen, I know that these experiences open me up inside and make me want to share--through my own music and writing.

One time when I worked at a mental health center I did therapy with a woman confined to a nursing home. She had the desire to write haiku. I would wheel her out to the sidewalk, next to the green and flowers and dragon flies and butterflies and birds. She loved it and wrote some great haiku. Sorry to say after I became homeless for a period of time, I lost a copy of her work. But HER spirit lives inside me.

Yes, nature is one of the facilitators. And I want to say that nature exists in the city, not only in rural South Carolina. I think of Tupac's book of poetry, "The Rose That Grew from Concrete." I expressed the same concept while living in Springfield, MA, and playing basketball on the "bad' side of town," across from Burger King, on State St.. I was aware of the flowers and grass, seemingly growing up through the concrete. But look up and you will also see the gang signs scrawled on a wooden fence nearby. It is a mixed bag in the city, desolation and beauty. If you open your eyes you can find the latter.

By the way, I only wish Tupac had lived. He would have grown into one of our great artists with broader influence in our culture. He would have grown, as Malcolm X grew, gaining a broader perspetive on the issue of racism in America and around the world.

I always play basketball outside, because of the proximity to nature. That's another facilitator of creativity for me, sport, in particular, basketball. Focusing on the basket, in the rhythm, letting my worry dissipate while I strive to make the shot. Yes, the worry fades in and out, as it does in formal meditation, but that's okay. When it fades in, I process it, in a different kind of way, gaining a kind of perspective. Then it's on to the next shot, and all around me, I am aware of grass and trees and birds and butterflies and dragnflies, and sometimes the cool breeze. And let me not forget sunlight. I admit that I much prefer to play when the sun is shining, or in twilight, when light is interspersed with shadow, and the purple and sometimes vivid red and yellow appear, and one senses the sliow transition to the realm of night, which has its own beauty, and if you're lucky, the stars and moon.

I have walked beside the ocean. I grew up in a beach town, and later in my life fell in love with Naragansett, RI and East Matunuck Beach, with its long jetty. I used to dive for crabs along the rocks, with my net, and sometimes bring them up. I'd like to go back and try that again someday.

There are more experiences I could tell you about, but I'll stop here. I know that other writers and artists have had their own unique encounters with nature, and I hope you will write about them, or paint them or draw them, or make a song out of them, or dance and share how nature has enhanced your creativity and underlying spirit.

***

So I have identified two facilitators of creativity, at least for me:

nature and sport. Above is a third facilitator, music and lyrics, implied because because I was also inspired after listening to Scottish performer and songwriter Dougie Maclean's great song, "Feel So Near"

...listening over and over while driving up and down route 52, and singing to the lyrics, especially the chorus...

feel so near to the howling of the wind

feel so near to the crashing of the waves

feel so near to the flowers in the field

feel so near...

For my personal enjoyment, and to help me move more deeply into the experience of singing, and creating a song, I listen over and over to the songs that happen to touch me at a particular period of my life. The ones I carry around in my car right now are Dougie's, along with...

*Born to be Wild: by Steppenwolf

*Hallelujah (in Shrek 1), perormed by Rufus Wainwright/John Cale and written/composed by Leonard Cohen

*Tuesday's gone, performed by Lynyrd Skynyrd and written/composed by RonnieVan Zant and Allen Collins

*Lost, written/composed and performed by Michael Buble

*I'm Yours written/composed and performed by Jason Mraz...

along with several others that I won't mention here.

There is a saying that I can't get out of my head: "Without music, life is a journey through a desert." (Pat Conroy)

Great music inspires me through its metaphoric aspect, in that it leaves room for the working of the listener's imagination, and allows for individual interpretation and application to one's life. (The metaphoric aspect of music is mentioned in Daniel J. Levitin's interesting book, "The World in Six Songs") As a poet, I am inspired because great lyrics also constitute poetry, and reading/listening to great poetry opens the door to my own poetic way of giving expression to the flow of life; I also am inspired because the music itself draws out deep feelings, and somehow permits the imagination to take flight.

So music is a third facilitator of creativity for me, and I suspect for many others with a creative bent (and suddenly I realize that I have forgotten to include creative scientists in this discussion).

So three of the facilitators of creativity for me are:

*Nature

*Sport,

*and music

So, Yesterday Afternoon...

... I printed out the last page of a full-length draft of "This is Not Me: Shedding Delusions," a collection of some two dozen essays adapted, for the most part, from ideas or sketches that first appeared in "The Buddha Diaries" and "Persist: The Blog." In manuscript form, that's about 225 pages. The title comes from my favorite mantra, often repeated here: this is not me, this is not mine, this is not who I am. I believe and hope that it hangs together as a book. I am now looking for readers who would give me feedback. If you are a person who would take pleasure in that, please let me know privately at PeterAtLarge@mac.com. Meantime, my plan is to enjoy a weekend's vacation, and return to my blogging activities next week. I hope that word will spread that "Peter's back!"

Metta to all, with wishes for a wonderful weekend...

Video of my TEDx Talk "Heeding The Call" Hosted by the Fine Arts Division at Fullerton College

For those interested, here's a link to the video of my TED talk, Heeding the Call, at TEDx Fullerton, hosted by the Fine Arts Division at Fullerton College, Fullerton, CA.

The Call

Here's a link to my essay, "The Call," as it appears in today's Cultural Weekly. Please check it out.

TEDx Talk Sept. 10th, 2010

Below is the text version of my recent TEDx talk. Enjoy!

I wonder if you can remember the last time you were truly and completely happy?

And I’m not referring to those wonderful moments of rapture we experience from time—when we stand looking out over the ocean at a magnificent sunset, for example, or when we walking into the awesome space of a cathedral. Or even when we’re making love… or during meditation.

No, I’m wondering if you have ever closed your eyes and traveled back through time and space to what I might call your personal Eden, before the loss of innocence—a time when the sky was cloudless, when there were none of those familiar worries gnawing at the edge of consciousness, about money, or job, or your relationship, or the kids… a moment, then, when you felt completely at one with yourself and the universe…

When I was first invited to do this exercise, I found myself on a swing, suspended by long ropes from the branch of a tall pine tree overlooking the red sandstone country church where my father was Rector, and past it over the green landscape of rural Bedfordshire, in England, where I grew up. Behind me is the redbrick Victorian rectory, where we lived. The big kitchen window stands open and through it I hear the voice of my mother, who is calling me in for elevenses, or afternoon tea, or supper…

If I start here, in my own personal Eden, it’s because the place in me that responds to this “calling” of my name is the same, I believe—because we’re talking here about the “real me, the core self”—is the same as the place where I respond to that other, deeper call, the one that tells me not only who I am but what it is I’m given to do with my life. It was not for nothing that I was “called” Peter, as I hope you will come to understand.

It’s my conviction that each one of us has a calling—a mission, if you will, a purpose for our lives—and that we can each hear it, if we stop to listen closely. Those who are the happiest among us, I believe, are those who have listened to the call and who have learned to follow it.

I happen to have been called to be a writer. I have known this since I was twelve years old, not because I actually remember it from that age but because my mother—yes, that same mother whose voice I heard calling me from the Rectory kitchen!—was at pains for the rest of her life to remind me of what I told her at that age: that I wanted to be a writer.

And indeed, I was a writer as a teenager. I wrote poems. I wrote poems about love and war, all those things I knew absolutely nothing about. By the time I got to university, my sole aspiration was to be a poet and, indeed, I wrote a great deal of poetry during my undergraduate years and began to publish it in undergraduate magazines.

But then, alas…! I was ejected into the real world! In my last year at university, I was confronted with the awful truth that poets—even the best of them—do not make a great deal of money. I would need to find some other form of employment if I wished to make my way in the world.

I considered my options. The first was to use my talent with words—such as it was—to make a living. I considered journalism. But then I recalled the face of a wizened old Austrian count in a Weinkeller in Vienna, where I had spent a somewhat inebriated summer as a student, gazing at me through a haze of cigarette smoke and shaking a finger under my nose. “Sie sollen NICHT Journalist werden,” he warned me. You must NOT be a journalist. You’re a POET. And so, from the dizzy heights of literary ambition, I chose not to prostitute my talent.

Instead, I went into teaching. A noble profession, I thought, with the dreadful condescension of the youthful intellectual, and one that would afford me wonderful long holidays in which to follow my true vocation. What a delusion! It took me hardly any time at all to discover that by the time the long holidays came around, I was so depleted, emotionally and in every other way, by the demands of an extraordinarily demanding job, that I had no words left to write…

I left teaching… I cast around a bit, then ended up returning to graduate school, buying myself more time to be a poet at the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. I also embarked on a doctorate. University teaching, I imagined, was the ticket. Longer holidays! Fewer students, more receptive and more intelligent!

Ph.D. in hand, I came to California to teach Comparative Literature at USC. I began to climb the academic ladder. It took me several years to conclude that this was not was what I was supposed to be doing with my life. The same feelings of vague, sometimes acute dissatisfaction returned—the feeling that you get when you know you’re out of place. But I chose to misinterpret it once more. I was more interested in art than in literature, I convinced myself. I was, however, totally unqualified to teach art, so I moved over into administration. I became a Dean.

Smart move!

I was appointed dean at Otis Art Institute. And later, Dean of the arts at Loyola Marymount University…

Here I interrupt myself. Because while I believe firmly in that “calling” I have been talking about, I’m equally convinced that we ignore it at our peril. We get to be unhappy, sometimes even bitter people, who walk around wishing we were someone else, or somewhere else, or doing something else…

I also believe that in addition to the call, we’re offered all kinds of hints along the way—signposts, as it were, that say NO EXIT, ONE WAY STREET, or DO NOT ENTER; or else they say THIS WAY, THIS WAY…

But we have to pay attention. We have to be watching for them, or we drive right past and end up in the familiar cul-de-sac.

Let me offer some examples of signposts I have ignored, and signposts I have paid attention to.

It will be obvious by now that I ignored, for many years, some very clear signals about my academic career. I don’t wish to sound churlish or ungrateful for the opportunities I had. It was in most respects a wonderfully rewarding path. I climbed the ladder with increasing recognition and success. I was nearly at the top when I decided to quit. I was being invited to interview for top jobs, even presidencies at some truly great art schools around the country, and I was bemused by my inability to accept the offers that came my way. But when I started to think more closely about what had been happening in my life, I could not escape the conclusion that I had managed to sabotage every job I’d ever had. You’ve heard of the Peter Principle. I was the living, breathing Peter. I had kept rising just beyond my level of competence. Well, not so much competence, because I believe I managed to do a decent job. But it just did not feel right. Experience was trying to tell me, at every pivotal point along the way: STOP! YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE! YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE DOING THIS WITH YOUR LIFE!

But I chose not to listen. I chose to listen, instead, to the fear—the fear of not having a job, of not having the income, the security, even, perhaps, the identity, in which by this time I had a great deal of my self wrapped up. Only in retrospect would I begin to see things clearly. Academia, even that special branch of academia represented by the art school, was not my calling. It was what I had settled for.

So I did manage to quit. Let me tell you another Peter story. It happened nearly twenty years ago, at one of those moments in life when everything seems to be falling apart. I had finally committed myself to my calling as a writer but was still floundering, unsure what direction I should take or “what to say.” My mission to be a writer was clear to me. That felt good. But what was still not clear was my mission as a writer. It was a matter of, Okay, I’m a writer. So now what?

January 1^st, 1992. A propitious date. I went to my desk in the morning to check on my to-do lists. One of them was a list of telephone calls to be returned. There were five names on the list—and every one of them was a Peter. So I joked to myself, this had to be the year of Peter.

Well, it happened that I was commissioned that year to write a piece about an art installation in Rome. It was a big, ambitious light and space installation in the ancient Trajan Market and the artist was Los Angeles-based Peter Erskine. It happened that another LA artist was having an exhibition in Rome at the same time—Peter Shelton.

So there we were, three Peters from Los Angeles in Peter’s city, in the year of Peter. I had been in Rome a couple of years before and had wanted to find the church with Michelangelo’s Moses. I had seen the David in Florence—the epitome of young male virility and strength—and wanted to see Michelangelo’s vision of masculinity at the other end of life, which I had always imagined the Moses to be. But I had failed to find the church on that previous visit. This time, I was determined to find it.

And I did. It was the church of San Pietro in Vincoli—St. Peter in Chains. I was with my wife, Ellie. We found the Moses, and admired that spectacular work of art. Then Ellie wandered off in one direction, I in another. And I found myself looking down into a crypt chapel, where there was a reliquary—a large glass display case which contained what purported to be the very chains from which Peter, the saint, had been released from prison by the angel of the Lord…

Well, I was born on the Anglican feast of St. Peter in Chains. I was given my name by my Anglican priest father for that reason. I realized at that moment that I was looking down at my own chains—the chains that had restricted me as a man, as a writer, for my whole life; and that it was time to free myself from them.

A big epiphany, then. A very big one. I returned to Los Angeles with the realization that this was the purpose of my writing—indeed, the purpose of my life—to search for the freedom that each one of us longs for and few of us achieve. I stand here now, in front of you, as a result of having dedicated myself to that long search. It’s a search in which I am still obviously engaged. I do not expect to ever reach the end.

Not all epiphanies are so big, of course, nor so immediately and completely life-changing. It’s the little ones, the ones that come along every day of our lives, that are the important ones. I have come to believe that everything, every event, every object that we stumble across in our lives, can be read as a signpost; that if we only pay attention, we have something to learn from something as small as a gum wrapper dropped on the sidewalk. (Do I walk on by? Do I make a judgment about the person who dropped it there? Do I stop to pick it up and put it in the trash? Do I reflect a little more deeply on the way we humans trash up our planet? My behavior in that instant, if I examine it, will teach me a lot about who I am and the skillfulness of my actions in the world. It may teach me to modify my ways, to become just a little bit more skillful in the future.

So what I have come to talk about is essentially the examined life. I have come to understand that there is absolutely nothing in this world I cannot learn from, if I listen to what it has to tell me. Because every single thing I look at offers me the opportunity to reflect on the action of my mind.

As I was preparing this talk, my memory took me back to a poem by the 19^TH century French poet, Charles Baudelaire. As I see it, in part at least, it’s about those things that call out to us as we pass through the real world, at once acknowledging our presence and asking us to pay attention to them. So let me, in closing, just read a single verse from that poem—first in French, because it happens to be beautiful, and I’m sure there are plenty in the audience who will understand it. And then in English:

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
 Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
 L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
 Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Nature is a temple in which living pillars 
 Sometimes give voice to confused words; 
 Man passes there through forests of symbols 
 Which look at him with understanding eyes.

So there you have it. Everything calls to us. Our own voice calls from within. The real world calls to us constantly from out there. And this world, I believe, would be a better place if we each learned to pay attention to the call.

Holding Events: A Discussion Reflecting on How to Get the Most Out of Events at Independent Bookstores by Patrick Frank

Below we have a guest submission from Patrick Frank, a poet-essayist-songwriter from Kingstree, South Carolina. In addition to leading creativity workshops and being an active musician, his poetry and prose have been published in more than sixty periodicals. He also writes actively for OpenSalon where you can view his current online publications. Today, Patrick shares some advice on the process of holding events at independent bookstores and discusses what has and hasn't worked for him. I'm hoping that readers will want to join in the discussion with their own experiences.

Patrick Frank:

Having now engaged in five music-book-poetry events at independent bookstores in North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina, I think it is possible to look back and reflect on what has worked and not worked, to explore how I can make these events more fulfilling for everyone involved—including me.

The purposes of my events are three-fold:

*to explore the creative process with participants, while sharing a few of my original songs and poetry

*to support independent bookstores, which have been enormously stressed by big chains and Amazon

*to sell copies of my book, On the Blue Ridge Line, published under my own imprint, Beckoning Dove Press, in 2010.

On the Blue Ridge Line consists of a series of brief essays on the creative process, followed by a compilation of my original country-folk-blues songs, composed between 1981 and the present. The book is produced “on demand” by CreateSpace/Amazon.

Let me acknowledge that I have been struggling to find the right format and mode of preparation for these events. Some things have worked, many things have not. But I will treat the initial five events as an opportunity for learning and proceed from there. Here are some of my reflections…

*Preparation and focus are enormously important. When I have been lax in preparation, things have fallen apart. When that happens, it feels like I am an actor who has forgotten his lines. As a former drama major, I can tell you that is a nightmare.

*My music and lyrics are a strong suit, and performing relaxes me, so it makes sense to lead off with a song or two, and then proceed with a brief presentation of ideas, then return to performance, then back to discussion, but this time encouraging the sharing of attendees.

*When I have had a large crowd or just two or three attendees, I have allowed this to throw me—a big mistake. I should be prepared for and welcoming of any number.

*I should put “Blue Ridge’ in the attendees’ hands at the outset, and utilize the content of the book (beyond the lyrics) to a much greater extent. There is nothing wrong with reading a brief passage from one of my essays. I have a tendency to want to move on to something new as a basis for discussion, rather than drawing on insights from the book.

*I decided early on that I am not comfortable with sitting at a table and signing books. I am not some famous author and that is simply not me, to be so passive. I want to engage with attendees and hope they will become participants. I would love for them to share an original poem or song.

*The issue of how and when to engage in publicity should be worked out well in advance. I have not had a decent flyer to distribute up to now, and I made a decision to pay an artist to design one for me.

*Long distance publicity is hard for me to handle, so I have begun become more forthright in asking the bookstores to do as much as they can on my behalf. I will provide a flyer, a synopsis of the book, a few comments on the book, and information on my background.

*It costs a lot of money to travel around the South, not to mention beyond my region. To make these trips cost effective or at least to break even, I need to schedule several events.

*As I am also a music performer, I am not averse to setting out a “tip jar” to help with travel expenses, if the bookstore is okay with that.

*But selling my book is not forefront in my mind, when I am engaged in the event. I am there to share with the attendees, many them probably writers, artists or musicians in their own right. I am there to to support independent bookstores. And finally, I am there to sell books.

*One spin-off from conducting these events is networking with like-minded people. I am very interested in creative collaboration, and I always am on the lookout for individuals I might be able to join forces with on a project.

*I realize that I must continue writing and sharing new work. Engaging in daily blogging on the Open Salon site has stimulated my continued growth as a writer, and I am now assembling material for a second book of prose-poetry. This time, I plan to seek an outside publisher.

*I locate independent bookstores through the IndieBound site. I have experimented with various ways of approaching the bookstore owner or manager. Sometimes, initial email contact works, sometimes not.

*I have met some wonderful independent owners, very down to earth and welcoming, others who strike me as the opposite, and some “in between” welcoming and stand offish. Once on the scene, I can't worry too much about rapport or lack of it with bookstore staff.

An Interview with Roland Reiss

ROLAND REISS is, first and foremost, a distinguished artist whose work has been widely exhibited and critically acclaimed since the 1960s. He has also been an important presence in the world of contemporary art for many years as one of its key teachers, a long time faculty member and department chair of the art school at the Claremont Graduate University, which has launched the careers of many of today's significant artists. He was also the moving spirit behind the celebrated summer program, "The Painting's Edge."

Here at "Persist: The Blog" we're truly grateful to Roland for joining us in our continuing pursuit of persistence in the spirit of creativity, for the depth of his knowledge, and for sharing his thoughts on "persistence" with us. I hope he won't mind that I describe him as one of the art world's greatest elder statesmen. He looks back, from retirement, on a long career in art, with the wisdom of one who has persisted despite all obstacles. His responses are worth careful reading and attention. Together, they make up one of the most complete and thoughtful statements on human creativity that I have read.

PERSIST: THE BLOG We are all about persistence, as our title suggests, and we’re asking all kinds of people what it takes to keep persisting, as a creative person, in a culture that is not always welcoming or encouraging. You yourself have been “persisting” as an artist for a good number of years. In your experience, what does it take?

ROLAND REISS: My first thought is that there may be a genetic component to persistence: that one must continue no matter what. My second thought is that some of us have been given the gift of work. The idea, in my case, from my father, that one defines oneself in the process of working and that work itself provides meaning to existence.

Each of us is faced with discouragement. I have known my share of disappointment. During such moments I have found relief and even joy by pouring myself into my work. Belief in oneself is essential. It requires a sense of personal integrity usually based on self-knowledge, self respect and the fragments of support one receives from others in the field. It is important to remember that many extraordinary artists received little or no support in their lifetime and sometimes devastating criticism. Ultimately one must enjoy the process of making art, secure in the knowledge that one is really good at it whether others perceive that or not.

It is important to completely embrace the idea that you are an artist. That it is your way of being in the world. That you are a living medium for society’s expression of what it means to be alive. In order to persist and to avoid a creative block it is important to practice creative openness and flow. Openness means the ability to continually produce and entertain new options, new possibilities. Practicing divergent thinking and pursuing the answer to “what if” by going beyond known limits. Flow means continuous working, staying sensitive to the nuances of your medium and ideas, allowing things to have a life of their own, unfolding before your eyes; and then focus, zeroing in at points and bringing all of your resources to bear on what you are making. Next, bringing it to a very high level, one which takes your breath away and makes you want to return again and again to the moments of excitement and of satisfaction that your effort has brought to you.

When you know once and for all that you are a maker, a maker of things, a maker of form, then you will have no choice. You will realize that it is only in the process of making that you find true fulfillment. The resulting product makes that process manifest and the enjoyment of it available to others. Persistence wanes under fear of failure or mediocrity. Wanting to succeed outside your self, in the eyes of others, at a very high level can become a terrible burden. It is a burden which can crush the creative spirit, replacing joy and confidence with fear, a sense of inadequacy. Fortuity, geography, contacts, publicity and aggressiveness probably have more to do with success today than the actual quality of the work. The desire for professional success can produce a sense of defeatism in the face of career disappointments. Unfortunately, most artists blame their work for not being able to overcome their problems in the social-professional sphere.

Probably the greatest drag against persistence is the constant fear of what others, especially critics, will think about what you have made. The belief is that professional opportunity and success flow from what others think. It is the feeling that one cannot control what others think; they may not like what you have made or what you have to say for a huge variety of reasons. Worse yet, is the relative indifference about what you have done. Those who persist manage to keep “they” out of their heads most of the time. “They” are not the most important people in your art. You are the important one. “They” should not be invited into your studio. If “they” are there, you can ask them to leave. Just keep working, if you finally get tired of what “they” will think, it will be time to trust yourself, to enjoy who you are: an art maker.

Years ago, I came across a definition of art that has served me well: Art is anything that intensifies, clarifies, and extends the nature of human experience. The capacity to produce all three of these elements in the work not only makes it art, it makes for really good or great art. When I was a graduate student, instructors would come up behind us as we were working and intone the question, “What is your statement?” like the voice of God. It took years to learn that this was the wrong question. It should have been, “Who are you and what do you find really interesting in life?”

PTB: As a teacher, you have made a lasting contribution to the lives and work of literally hundreds of studio artists. Aside from the technical skills they need as artists, what have you most wanted them to take away from their experience of working with you?

RR: I have wanted my students to see that the connection between whom they are and the art they make is a natural one. They must understand that art is a special and idiomatic way of producing meaning. Making art and sharing it are two sides of the same coin. I have wanted then to understand that aspiring to great things can only come from the capacity to appreciate great things. If they find in themselves something creative to bring to the table they will have achieved some measure of greatness. I want them to be players in the world of contemporary experience, to appreciate their contemporaries as the best that our society has to offer and for them to create the art that is appropriate to our time. I have wanted them to know that though we have one voice we may want to sing many songs. Art is a lifetime adventure and it may take you many places.

PTB: Looking back at former students who have moved on into lives of recognition and acclaim and others who have had to struggle with less favorable circumstances, do you have any insight as to what qualities contribute to a studio artist’s success?

RR: It is difficult to predict which students will succeed while they are in school. Some are great at being student artists but not as professionals after graduation. Fate can play a hand in success so predictions are not to be trusted. In retrospect and given my interaction with some younger, highly successful artists, I would make the following observations: Likelihood of success is greater if the art is really good. It is possible for an artist to tell if there is a strongly favorable reaction to their work even if it is not good. If it is not so good it absolutely must play into the current critical dialogue of curators and art writers, if it is to succeed. There must be a strong professional commitment on the part of an aspiring artist. The artist must be constantly productive.

Given good work and productiveness, it is essential that artists pursue their career outside of the studio. There is a certain type of artist whose lifestyle and career moves bring them considerable attention. These artists network at the highest professional level. They seek out people who can help provide them with opportunities: art writers and critics, museum directors and curators, important collectors, owners of top line galleries, highly successful artists and artists who are receiving a lot of attention. They are extremely well organized and focus intensively on their work and careers. They usually are financially secure or receive family support. They seldom teach or do so part time. These artists are highly intelligent, mobile and reasonably attractive. They usually score an important gallery early on in their careers along with attention from museums. Most are socially adept and able to advance the cause of their art in the art world.

PTB: Is teaching a good alternative path for those many artists who need to make a living but have little prospect of doing so with sales of their work? In your experience, what are the sacrifices a teaching career requires of an artist? And what are the rewards it offers? How do they balance out against each other?

RR: Teaching is a great path for those who need financial support or those who are raising families. Full time teaching will seriously limit the professional possibilities of young artists starting out because it will absorb their time, energy and availability. It does not get better as time goes on. The professional art world does not give any importance or respect to teaching except in China. Many dealers consider teaching to be a detriment to the artist’s productivity and professional life. Let me be clear, there are two kinds of art teachers. The first are those who teach from the beginning of their careers and perhaps because they love doing it. The second are those who become highly successful artists first and then obtain highly paid professorial appointments with light teaching duties and the time and freedom to pursue professional opportunities.

Aside from the detrimental effect on professional life, teaching art is an exciting and highly rewarding activity, and, in its own way, it can be as satisfying as art making. Sadly, for many artists, its satisfactions can be seen to replace the desire to persist as an artist. I believe that every artist does not make a good art teacher but in order to be a really good art teacher, you have to be an excellent artist, whether successful or not. In a truly active professional career, there is no balance; teaching must be on the lighter, less committed side. If not, you may have a wonderful life as a teacher with a secondary career as an artist.

My own experience has been that sustaining an artist/teacher career requires a great amount of energy and considerable amount of sacrifice, that means less reading, movies, traveling, art openings, social time, sleep and, above all, less time with family. I was unable to take advantage of many career opportunities that came my way. On the other hand I was probably born a teacher. I have the deepest appreciation for my own teachers and I have gratefully carried the torch they gave me. My students have taught me more about the future than I could ever know and they compelled me to stay alive to current art developments and dialogue so that I could support their growth and achievements.

PTB: Now that you have retired from teaching, does full-time commitment to studio work bring any special challenges? Or is it all pure bliss?

RR: Retirement has its double edge. While there is more time to make art, and I believe I am making the best art of my life, with retirement comes age, diminished physical energy, and less endurance. The thrilling part is I know more about art making than ever before and I love art more than ever. I now fully understand that art is my life’s work.