Before I got these cannoli at Ferrara's, while walking back through Little Italy, a yogini that looked like Reese Witherspoon fell on my head during a class at Kula yoga in Tribeca. You're lucky to get an inch between mats at many NYC yoga classes, and she was very apologetic.
Before she fell out of ardha chandrasana and onto me, I'd been admiring how high she flew on her jump backs into chatturanga. I felt like falling on my head was a good enough opening for asking. She told me she had bad knees, and because of that she had to really pull into her core. She said that drawing within was what allowed her to fly so high.
My East Village stroll ended with a celebration dinner at Arturo's. Arturo's has a special place in my heart, and I wanted to return on this reminiscing trip. My friend Ilira first brought me there, that summer when we were 19 and dangled our legs from the fire escape. We had many long wine filled conversations in those days, about art and love and where were we going, and how would we get there? I longed to wine and dine at Arturo's again, and remember that time when it felt like there was time.
For as long as I've known myself I've been fascinated with saints and sinners and the patterns of things. Especially the good within the bad, the bad within the good, and the way seemingly unconnected things connect.
"When the child was a child it was a time of these questions." I'm not sure when childhood ends, but the questioning hasn't yet. When does surrender to "what is" become laziness? When does focus and discipline become unyielding control? When does pining become whining?
These photos of a city park near Little Italy bring to mind a poem by Peter Handke, that I first heard in the movie Wings of Desire, an old favorite of mine. The movie is told from the point of view of angels in Berlin who comfort humans in distress, listen to their thoughts, and are a bit mystified as to why humans suffer so much when angels are right there, all around them.
When the child was a child, It was a time for these questions: Why am I me, and why not you? Why am I here, and why not there? When did time begin, and where does space end? Is life under the sun not just a dream? Is what I see and hear and smell not just an illusion of a world before the world? Given the facts of evil and people, does evil really exist? How can it be that I, who I am, didn't exist before I came to be, and that, someday, I, who I am, will no longer be who I am?
I get such a kick out of the crowd surrounding this artist in Washington Square Park. That's what it's like when you draw in public. It happens when I draw in museums, not crowds quite that large, but people do gather around, especially parents who want their kids to watch. And I do it too when I see an artist working. I want to see!
It's embarrassing and annoying, but sometimes I find myself making grand swooping gestures, or faking more confident decisions, just because I can feel someone watching.
The apartment from which we dangled our legs looked very much like this one. We couldn't help but see into the windows of our neighbors across the street when we were out on the fire escape. Their worlds cropped like live paintings, windows of glowing light. It was interesting to see how many beat the summer heat by hanging out naked in their apartments, and then there was the Ukrainian guy who waved his ladle from his window, always trying to invite us over for borscht.
The first time I visited Manhattan was with my dad, after I was accepted to Parson's School of Design. My dad tells me he was horrified when I came down the stairs in a white skirt, granny boots, pink sweater, extra wide belt, and a long strand of pearls. Then we got to the city and he realized I was dressed like everyone else.
We only went for the day, long enough to visit Parson's and walk around the corner to have a pastrami on rye, its six inches of meat a contrast to the flat bologna sandwiches I'd always known. We only went for the day, but when I returned to high school on Monday, I could feel that I'd grown taller somehow.
I found these mannequins on 2nd Avenue, just around the corner from St. Mark's Place, near where Love Saves the Day used to be. I lived on St. Mark's Place with my art school friends during our summer break, when I was 19. We had a seventh floor walk up apartment and loved to dangle our legs over the fire escape and watch the world pass by below. This walk, down St. Mark's Place and around the corner to 2nd Avenue, is the one Madonna took in Desperately Seeking Susan.
I'd discovered Madonna a few years before that movie came out, when she was a model in a fashion magazine. I was in awe of the way she wore black fishnets under ripped up jeans. I remember painstakingly copying her photograph in pencil in my sketchbook. I'd never seen anything like her. She made sense to me, and I began to wear pearls and black lace with my flannel.
When Desperately Seeking Susan came out I asked my dad to take me. I was in high school, not yet old enough to go alone. As the screen faded to black, we left the theater...my dad mortified, me feeling fully alive.
One of the hardest things, whether as a therapist with my patients, or with myself as an artist, is to know how hard to push. Sometimes pushing is exactly what's needed to get to the next place. Going straight to a coffee shop after work, even though I'm exhausted, and forcing myself to write sometimes leads to flow, and I leave with a spring in my step and thankful that I had the discipline. Other times it does the opposite, and I end up feeling aggravated, in despair, and like I've wasted my free time. The same goes for working with patients.
Sometimes the way I write when I don't know what to write is to write anything at all, then pair it with something else, like a monk on a wall.
From "The Language of Drawing," By Sherrie McGraw,
Drawing reveals the artist's thinking. It also helps the student discover how his own mind works. Tentative line reveals an unsure nature, and suggests a closer look before making a mark. Insensitive line indicates a lack of close attention to the subject and a stronger interest in results than in learning. Too much technique reveals a strong will that overpowers the subject. This behavior calls for humility. In this way, the beginner learns from his own work and becomes his own teacher. I enjoy looking at my own work now and noticing the parts I think work, and what I would do differently the next time. That's something I didn't enjoy at all at 22, when a "good" or "bad" drawing translated as success or failure, then attached itself to how I perceived my own survival.
When I'm walking or driving, ideas and images flash through my mind, ones I would be creating "If only I had the time." Yet, when I do have the time, I'm often left with nothing but a blank page, a big question mark, and the sound of crickets.
This pattern always makes me think of that singing, dancing frog from Looney Tunes. The one that performs only when his owner is watching. The owner gets so excited by how fabulous this frog is, but when he tries to show others and make a buck, all he gets is a "ribbit". Yes, that's right, the story of Michigan J. Frog.
I'd longed to draw at the Spring Studio ever since I heard of it a year ago. Life drawing sessions all day long, every day of the week! I love the idea of having a model to draw from whenever time or whim allows, whether it's a Friday night or Sunday afternoon.
The studio is downstairs and has great old wooden tables and easels. The shelves are lined with art books, and you can hear the rumble of the subway as it passes. It felt so good to go in early one morning, draw for two hours, then be on my way.
Have you ever had a canele? They're crunchy and chewy on the outside, soft and custardy on the inside. They get this way from being baked inside a copper mold lined with beeswax. They are heaven and they are French. I found this one at Balthazar on Spring Street.
Incredibly, you can now find a canele at a bakery in the town where I grew up. Not only in a bakery, but in a bakery in the laundromat in the town where I grew up. The laundromat where we had to go when the washer broke or the pipes froze. It's called Vergennes Laundry. Things really can change in such unexpected ways.
About light and shadow in painting David Leffel says, "As a general rule, shadow comes first. Without shadow there is no solidity. Shadow gives dimension and weight. Lights allow the eye to flow, darks stop the eye."
I love how that interplay between dark and light, solidity and flow, makes a painting whole. Like in yoga, where each pose is an interplay between stability and mobility, being grounded and free. I love how that makes us whole.
A few nights ago, the fire alarm in my building went on and off at random all through the night. The fire department came and determined there was a malfunction in the alarm and it couldn't be serviced until the company opened at 9 am. With only a few hours left before I had to be at work, I curled up in the closet with earplugs. I'd been out sick from work with a relentless migraine the day before, and the one thing I'd been looking forward to was a good night's sleep.
As I lay in the closet, fuming about the intensity of challenges that just don't seem to stop, I thought of the story of Julia Butterfly Hill, who lived in a redwood tree for two years to keep it from being cut down by loggers. Once, during an intense storm, as she clung terrified to the tree's branches fearing she was going to die, the tree spoke to her.
"Think of the trees," it said."In a storm, trees don’t try and stand up straight and tall and erect, they allow themselves to be blown with the wind. If they don’t, they snap and fall. Think of the trees, and allow yourself to be blown with the wind. Allow yourself to go crazy, do what it takes, allow yourself to blow with the wind, and know that I’m going to hold us up. I’ll hold us up and we’ll make it through."
That story helped me through the night, and it came to me again when I saw this photo. Mannequins in meditation, peaceful in Prada, one with the trees on Fifth Avenue.
Once, when I was 26 and in a terrible depression, I went to bed and said, "God if you exist, send me a sign." Believing in God wasn't part of my background, but I was willing to try anything.
I had a dream that night. It was one of those dreams that looks and feels exactly like your regular life, only different things happen. I was laying in my bed, as though I hadn't fallen asleep at all, when I heard an object drop into the cassette tapes that lay in a pile on the floor, near the end of my bed. A distinct "cachink" sound of wood and metal hitting plastic. I got up to look, and found that a small wooden ornament of an angel had fallen into the tapes. I picked it up, and as I held it in my hand, confused and in awe, waves of vibrating, shimmering light flooded the room. A voice, radiant from above and all around me, called out, "Please understand that this is the best I can do to show you, please understand that I cannot come down to you in physical form. Please, please, please, know that I am real..."
By this drawing I felt something shift. This was the feeling of artistry I'd been hearing about, the increased ability to tune in to what was essential to convey the beauty of the sculpture in front of me, of a pilgrim on his way to a temple. What to put in, what to leave out,rather than just copying light and shadow in a panic, hoping it would work out in the end.
I like that I captured the quality of marble here, especially in the hair and torso. The whole time I was drawing though, there was something that frustrated me and I couldn't figure out what it was. There was a sensual calm to the model that I wasn't capturing. The torso seemed too short, the leg too long. What was it?
After I finished the drawing I made another quick sketch, and found it wasn't the length of the leg but the angle that was throwing me off. Not a significant difference, but one that made my drawing look a bit like she wanted to get up and go somewhere, while the original sculpture seemed content in her seat.
These are tiny details that no one would notice if I hadn't mentioned it, but I can't resist solving a mystery.
My name is Anne Woods and I miss making art. I drew this self-portrait when drawing came to me as naturally as walking and dancing and breathing. This blog is an attempt to return to that place, and to see what might emerge from art making as a daily practice.
