Constellations No. 16

Feel the Charge

Hello and Welcome to Constellations No. 16 —

Spring unfurled slowly in Northern Michigan, so the arrival of today’s solstice, and its corresponding long, full days, feels right on time to me. Everywhere and everything is green– trees dense with foliage, wild ferns and grasses lanky from rain.

With the help of my Mom, a dedicated, lifelong gardener, and my friend Megan Gilger of Perma Studio, a regenerative landscape creator, I am slowly learning how to tend new plants growing around our home. My evolving relationship with the garden has brought me a satisfying and palpable sense of wonder. It feels important to focus my attention on small, tender flora; my increased awareness of the multitudinous life cycles occurring here reminds me of my relative place in the intricacies of the universe, much like looking up at a sky dense with stars. There is so much to observe and notice in just a single plant, let alone a forest.

I recently read Amina Cain’s pithy novel Indelicacy. This time period-less allegory traces its female protagonist Vitória’s evolving identity as a writer, and her search for creative autonomy. When the story begins, Vitória is a cleaner in an art museum who goes home each evening to write voraciously about the paintings she observed during the day. As she writes, she begins to recognize her writing as its own, separate creative work; writing about art allows her see herself as an artist. Later on, Vitória notes, “I would look out the windows of the museum, the paintings behind me reflected in the glass. It meant something to me to see myself with them.”

Cain writes a layered story about the act of writing itself, deftly interrogating self-identity, creative autonomy, struggle and sacrifice, class, and gender via Vitória. This passage has echoed through my head since I put it down.

from Indelicacy, by Amina Cain, pg. 173

Asserting,“For things do charge, you must feel that too”. . .“Still in the process of becoming, the soul makes room”, Cain forms a conceptual parentheses around Vitória’s written interlude that articulates the act perception itself. Perhaps Vitória is all of us in the head rush of trying to make sense of what we see, and how to express it.

This is the two-pronged sensation I feel when I notice a sprout turn into a stem turn into a branch that grows feathery leaves, and the buzzy thrill of attempting to translate the enormity of it.

This is perception laid bare, residing mysteriously as it does, at the intersection of all that we take in (“things do charge, you must feel that too”) and meaning-making (“running wildly toward it with all of its being”).

Existence is always a process of becoming. To make meaning, the boundaries of the soul will and must be ever-expanding. Perception is an infinite and continually-evolving ripple.

Happy solstice, happy summer,

Lindsay

UPCOMING

V Gallery’s Saw It In A Dream group exhibition

I am happy to share that two of my new paintings will be included in V Gallery’s upcoming Saw It In A Dream group exhibition, on view June 27 through mid-July.

V Gallery is housed in a historic clapboard building in nearby Omena, Michigan that was originally founded as a general store in the late nineteenth century. I’m honored to have my paintings on view amongst the work of friends and artists I admire. If you’re in the area for the opening on June 27, I hope you’ll stop by from 4-6 pm.

A BRIGHT LIGHT

Framing the Ephemeral, a documentary film by Gerrit Schreurs

Stills: Lois Dodd’s hands (0m:44s), her New York studio (1m:32s), installation view from Kunstmuseum den Hague (32m:53s).

If, like me, you are shattered that you did not get across the Atlantic to see Lois Dodd’s epic retrospective at Kunstmuseum Den Hague earlier this year, take solace. Framing the Ephemeral, the eponymous documentary film companion to the exhibition by filmmaker Gerrit Schreurs, is now available for all of us to watch.

Throughout the short film, 99-year-old Dodd sits on her porch and tells us the story of her life in her distinctive, matter-of-fact way. Guest commentators including the writers/critics Faye Hirsch and Roberta Smith, and Director Emeritus of The Whitney Museum of American Art, Adam Weinburg, punctuate the film, shedding light on how Dodd’s work was overlooked for far too long, and her enduring legacy as a key figure in the canon of American modernism.

A prolific painter, Dodd returns again and again to motifs and subject in her immediate surroundings - windows, rooflines, flowers and trees - but her observations never feel trite. In the film her longtime gallerist, Phil Alexandre, discusses her gentle refusal to defend or explain her painterly choices:

“You ask her about a painting, you ask her about a composition, about a color, something odd about the painting, and she will not go there with you. She always talked about the kind of factual reality of the painting…she could remember with absolute specificity…what she did before she made it, what she did after she made it, where she was, what the weather was like, the light was like.”. . .“What she doesn’t do; what she leaves for you to do, for me to do- is she won’t unpack it. She leaves the deeper meaning to the viewer.” (35m:22s)

Unflinchingly committed to painting what she sees, Dodd’s brushwork never betrays her unique perception and framing. As if she is seeing with the bristles of her paintbrush itself, her brushstrokes are assured, actively looking. She reflects:

“Maybe it’s like dancers and their bodies…Your hand moves a certain way, it refuses to do something else—it only will do what it will do. Each person has their own hand writing, so to speak. And mine is kinda scratchy and thin.” (28m:59s)

Some rainy night this summer, give yourself the gift of spending 45 minutes with this hero who is completely, unapologetically herself.

POEMS FOR THE MOMENT

summer solstice
by Jenny Zhang


will be significant
im going to release something
soft and radiant
and true
into the world


from My Baby First Birthday, by Jenny Zhang (Tin House Books, 2020)

---

ON A PINK MOON
by Ada Limón

I take out my anger
And lay its shadow

On the stone I rolled
Over what broke me.

I plant three seeds
As a spell. One

For what will grow 
Like air around us,

One for what will
Nourish and feed,

One for what will
Cling and remind me—

We are the weeds.


from The Carrying, by Ada Limón (Milkweed Editions, 2021)

A SUMMER POSTCARD

love,

1985 me