I am teaching painting at a summer program at the University of California at Santa Barbara. There is an out of control forest fire up there at the moment. So we have been painting it. It is hard to feel this is a natural phenomena, but when it flared up in the middle of the afternoon to that sublime-- beyond remembering type experience. We all were lost in painting it and some part of--.
Later that weekend looking at photos we could remember the height it reached, it sounds corny but we marveled at the memory. Cliche and archetype are so very close together in reality.
I am often dangerously close in my making, to that cornball moment. I remembered the cover to Susan Sontag's, Volcano Lover, I remembered it as a neapolitan type of Italian gentility, an artist"sketching" with crossed legs-- as the fire roars out of control.
Oh, this is also the ranch Edie Sedgewick, the Warhol star grew up, adding a strange flavor to it all.
No comments:
Post a Comment