Once Step Closer

The last week has been beyond taxing as far as the traveling schedule goes. I watched quietly from a distance as everyone wrestled with the demands. You gotta figure that in a group of so many people there are the obvious professional travelers, they are ones that take to it no different than a duck to water and then of course there are the white knuckle vodka drinkers that are praying from the moment they walk into the airport to the moment they walk out of one. Out of the posse, I would say we’re all relatively decent travelers. With Santa it’s always about her bag limit, with Pip she wants to fly the plane, with Isabel there’s never a drama. Tori has to travel with her mom hat on and I, well I’d rather not be around so many strangers. After the Oslo show Santa went off with Isabel to explore the Norwegian coast. Apparently Isabel had some friends that have quite a spread there, so they drove spend the night and then would meet us in Berlin. The idea of Santa in the countryside is a 7 on the 1-10 shock scale, however, I have been noticing some pretty odd behavior form her lately. The party girl that glimmers as the lights of a city rise appears to be in a more contemplative mood. Oh of course there’s a passion for all that is alive and breathing and sensual, but there’s something else there now, a pinning that’s just me, that’s just conjecture on my part. A strange occurrence went down over the last couple of weeks. Essentially some pro footballer mentioning no names and that would be soccer for those Americans reading this just flies in to take Santa to dinner. How they met up I don’t know, probably at one of Nef’s crazy gatherings. As much as I can tell, it’s strictly platonic from Santa’s end. The last time he came in and took her to dinner I heard her door open at around 11 in the evening. I had been doing some research on my computer and something in me just decided to look. I don’t consider myself a snoop. I try and mind my own business, but I just had to see for myself if this guy was flying in because he was getting a whole lot of something that she wasn’t telling us or if the platonic show on her part was really for real. I heard a pertly click of high heels go past. I quietly opened my door and there she was all by her lonesome, happy as a clam, going into her room. Now as we all know, some girls pop up to their room do a quick spritz and the gentleman comes knocking within fifteen minutes with chilled champagne. So fifteen minutes goes by and of all things, my phone rings.

“Clyde would you like to pop in for a nightcap?”

I acted surprised, “are you on your own?”

“Of course I’m on my own silly.”

We had our nightcap, after a few sips I gathered up the courage. I said, “Santa baby a star footballer does not fly in more than once, bearing gifts just to be friend-sies”

“Clyde I swear, hand on my heart, I am not leading this geezer on.”

“What have you told him then,” I asked her.

“Well, I’ve told him that I’m not in a place to start a relationship and I’m not sleeping with anybody that I’m not going to have a relationship with.”

I looked at her with my hands up in the air, “And…”

“And he says when you are ready, I’ll be there. I’ve told him I may never be there. I’ve also told him that it’s best if I don’t see him until we’re back in London because there’s a lot to deal with.”

I looked at her and said, “Because we’re closer to St. Petersburg isn’t it.”

She was noncommittal and waved me a goodnight. We leave Deutschland and begin entering into Poland, once step closer to Russia.

Black Forest

A picnic had been prepared by us with everything we would need for an overnight sojourn if required. Isabel and I drove; she had been here before. She has been anywhere and everywhere particularly if a wolf pack has ever traversed a particular terrain. Isabel, I’m convinced now, is a she-wolf disguised in human form. Some humans are closer to animals than to people or I should say, more trusting of animals than people. Laws of nature are ingrained in Isabel. She had seen that these iron miniatures in Vienna had caught my eye. I was compelled to purchase a few specific creatures from an out of the way art shop. Leaving Vienna she said, “we need to get you into the forest Clyde. Nature paints as well as any of your respected masters”.
With that statement she was exacting her plans into place. The Black Forest if I hadn’t been before I’m certainly am now convinced is alive with stories, or tales, or legends. Can legends be real life happenings concurrent to this modern age, but always on replay if you can cross dimensional space? I’ve been pondering. On the way into the Forest, Isabel informed me about the many editions of folk tales or fairytales that the Brothers Grimm had compiled. They had been compiling since the early 19th century. What I found noteworthy specifically was that the brothers were linguists. They stumbled into this gathering of stories, which are now read slightly less than the Bible and Shakespeare. With all of this historical information being explained to me on our drive, I wasn’t positive where I was being led…after the picnic and sufficed to say with Isabel’s picnics you can’t pinpoint which herb or which root or which mixture of both is affecting you. For the most part it can be subtle- for the most part. But then there are always those times when you feel as if you’ve walked into a painting and the painting comes alive, well this was one of those times. There I was in a waking dream state and the Forest was holding all possibilities open for me. I’ve never had a fantasy of being on a game show, any kind of game show where you can pick to experience what’s behind a curtain or what’s behind a door or how much money is printed on the inside of the box. The idea of getting it wrong makes me hyperventilate. But here I was watching Isabel’s long graceful arms reflecting the moon in the full light of day, forming an arch and pointing to different paths that I could take in the forest. I asked her “Can you tell me what each path holds for me?”
“No Clyde I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know what each path holds for you. It depends on your choices at every turn.”
I looked around; there were seven choices. In retrospect I believe now that there were seven tales, or stories that I could have walked into. I walked onto one and then something in me thought- I need to choose a more complicated path. So I crawled over some fallen wood, silently Isabel followed me and I looked at her and said, “Can you tell me the path that I didn’t take”.
She smiled and said, “You chose not to walk into the story of Snow White and Rose Red.”
I was disappointed I must say I’ve always loved that story.
I looked at her and said, “Can I go back and have that one”.
“Do you really want to?”
I said, “No I’ve chosen this one”.
“Alright then you will know soon enough.”
Within about fifteen minutes or so, there was no doubt in my mind that I had walked into Little Red Riding Hood. Hour after hour we got deeper and deeper and deeper into the story, watching it all happen before our eyes. I began to consider with every step the word Predator. This word gets used a lot in the animal kingdom. It is a word that when I say it, I don’t see animals. There is a specific set of eyes. I didn’t see the wolf for one moment, as anything but a representation, a human predator and that face will be different for each person that walks into this story. With different twists and turns on the path, I began to figure out that my choices would play out different versions of the story. I never knew how many versions there were of Little Red Riding Hood. As I approached the final chapter of the story, I heard the trees whisper- there is nothing to be afraid of, girls will become women, and no predator can stop that. Many hours later Isabel and I sat under the stars talking about the experience. She reached out for my hand and then took both of them, looked me in the eye and said, “You made the strongest choice you possibly could Clyde. You didn’t walk the victim’s path. Do you understand how you took control of the situation”?
I looked up at the darkness of the sky, the trees were still swaying, there was a warm breeze. We were staying in a little town within the Black Forest. I had chosen a version of Little Red Riding Hood that I had never heard before. You don’t know what you’re choosing until it is upon you because you walk onto a stone or around a tree and all of the sudden you’ve walked into the next dimension of the fairytale itself. How Isabel finds these worlds, I don’t know. But once you’ve made your choice you can’t walk back through the portal when you cross over into another chapter of the story. Then the events play out before your eyes. In this way you are a participant although you’re not one of the characters themselves. Little Red Riding Hood was in front of me at all times, just by inches. And she couldn’t hear me, but I could hear her as well as all the other characters and creatures. In this version, my little red riding hood saw through the wolf’s disguise, tried to escape by tricking her grandmother with the excuse that she needed to defecate and did not want to do so in her “grandmother’s” soft bed. The predator grandmother allowed my little red riding hood this quick release if she promised to come back instantly, while tying a string from her devouring paw to the little girl, around little red riding hood’s wrist. Clever Red slips the string over something else and got away.

Arguing with people is a waste of precious time. Fine you can be right if that's what you need to be. I'm off. Usually I go to this private gallery where I work right now. Surrounded by art all day takes me to places that I have never seen. All works of art start as potential. Similarly, all relationships start as potential. When I meet a person I try and see not their mask, with it's
             defences, but what's underneath. I get accused of refusing
             to acknowledge who a person is choosing to be right now.
             When that person is arrogant or rude or selfish then my
             friends say, "Clyde!!!!!! THIS is what this LOSER is
             about." But I say, hold on people..... this is only what this
             person THINKS they are about. Some of my friends, I
             know this for a fact, see this quality as a weakness.... a
             naïve approach to life. But you see I don't think it is sound
             judgement to close the window for change to anybody. So
             this so called Loser person is confused. But if no one sees
             their potential then they may not ever see it themselves and
             that would be tragic.

I can get lost in a picture and found again. After a painting has revealed its secrets to me, I am a
             woman changed forever.
The coveted job of working on the project "Women Artists: Late 20th and Early 21st Century" has kept me busy over the last many months. Featuring Minimal Art, Op Art, Performance Art, Media Art and Interactive Installations, and Artisan Handicraft to name but a few.
Although I have had the opportunity to work on women's installations in the past, the exposure I have had to the vision of these women has shaken me from slumber.
Paper strips coated with wax transparently hang.... covering a huge space and stops me in my
             tracks. The drawings of
trains, a chain link fence, a cityscape rendered with precision. The order of Toba Khedoori calms
             me.
The merging of cultures in the paintings by Mona Marsouk brings together the future and the past the east and the west that proves there can be a synthesis of the global dilemma that we have to wake up to and face daily.

The love I have for art was bred in me by my grandmother, affectionately known as Gran. Her
             father had taught her how to
look at art being an art critic himself and encouraged her study in painting. He of all people understood the plight of women painters. He would always take her to watch painters create and encourage her to take out her sketchpad that she carried everywhere. By the end of a workday he would come back and pick her up after she had been the mascot of that particular artist's studio for the day. This is how she really developed her stunning technique, by allowing the masters to tell her their secrets. Because this was before the second world war, Paris was teeming with painters and sculptors.... most of whom my grandfather got on with famously.
So the story goes, his uncle had been teaching at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture
             until the wave of the impressionists divided the art world in
             France in the nineteenth century.
Apparently his allegiance to the new movement of Impressionism alienated him from many of his colleagues. Uncle Claude, as Gran would call him, secured a position eventually at the Salon des Independents which was established in 1884. He lived to embrace PostImpressionism
             and Symbolism. Lots of isms...
Since that time someone in the family has been involved in the growth of independent galleries
             throughout France.
A cousin of mine outside of Paris has most of Gran's work saved for the generations to come. A thought of Gran and her other female contemporaries enters my mind when I am surrounded by modern women artists. The struggles that these women endured remind me of how far the woman's art movement has come and how far it still has to go. When I think of Lizzie Sidel in her struggle to be recognized as an artist in the mid to late 19th Century, it reminds me of the inequalities that women painters and sculptors have had to endure. The wealth now of art from women has not solely been shaped by the desires of men but from a back catalogue of women artists of the past. Women expressing and reacting to different emotions being liberated even indirectly by WW II were artists the likes of Leonora Carrington, Meret
             Oppenheim, Ithell Colquhoun, Toyen [Marie Cerminova],
             Tamara de Lempicka to name but a few.
These women among others gave the world a new way of defining female sexuality.
I can see the inspiration that these artists have had on some of even the most controversial female artists that are in the present exhibition that is about ready to open. Soon now, very soon
             now. Every breath of mine is devoted to this opening.
The museum has had all kinds of threats from different religious groups, (too many to name) from just pure ignorance. One of my best friends dropped by and security called me down. As I let
             her in past the protesters she exclaimed in disbelief,
             "Clyde, Dahling, can you imagine me, ME wanting an
             invite to the museum, But HONEY, this is the bomb."
             Nonononononononononono just rushed out of my mouth
             louder than I intended, but security backed off as I pulled
             my friend away whispering, "Just don't say the word
             bomb."