Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 515
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
“Under [General Francisco] Franco,” he said, “attendance at Catholic holidays was obligatory and much Catalan folklore was banned. People avoided the religious processions and, once they were no longer mandatory, ignored them… Marvesa’s [Spain] festive license of demons and dragons is no longer of darkness. If Franco claimed the mantle of Catholic light, then to party as Catalan devils is a happy celebration of freedom.
Demons and dragons are a customary feature of saints’ days and Corpus-Christi festivals throughout Spain and its former empire. They are also common in Carnivals. Indeed, it is partly because of the presence of demons, dragons, and other masked transgressive figures that Carnival has been so often designated – by defenders and detractors alike – as a pagan or devilish season, a time of unrestrained indulgence before the ascetic penances of Lent.
Julio Caro Baroja, the father of Spanish Carnival studies, scorned the antiquarian notion that the masked figures and seasonal inversions of Carnival were “a mere survival” of ancient pagan rituals. Carnival, he argued, was first nurtured by the dualistic oppositions of Christianity. Where it survives – for when he wrote it had been banned by Franco – it still enacts these old antagonisms. “Carnival,” he concluded, “is the representation of paganism itself face-to-face with Christianity.”
... Peter Burke, one of the more lucid historians of popular culture, has proposed that “there is a sense in which every festival [in early modern Europe] was a miniature Carnival because it was an excuse for disorder and because it drew from the same repertoire of traditional forms.
Max Harris in Carnival and Other Christian Festivals: Folk Theology and Folk Performance
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Posted in 2022, Inspiration, Pearls from Artists, Quotes, Source Material
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Pearls from artists* # 353
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Creativity is freedom’s most primal expression, though not the freedom we were sold under the banner of democracy. True freedom is less a license to do as one pleases than the power to be what one has no choice but to be, the capacity to follow one’s own inmost desire. It is the freedom Nina Simone compares in “Feeling Good” to the shining of a star, a fish swimming in the sea, or the scent of a pine.
J.F. Martel in Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action
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Posted in 2019, An Artist's Life, India, Inspiration, Pearls from Artists, Quotes
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Q: You have spoken about learning to fly at the age of 25. What airplanes did you fly?
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust
A: I learned to fly at a small airport in Caldwell, NJ. Flying is expensive and since I didn’t have much money, I sought a job at Liberty Aviation, the local flight school, in exchange for flying lessons. For every three hours I worked, I earned a flying lesson. At the time it cost $25/hour to rent a plane, plus $10/hour for an instructor, and I was fortunate to find an excellent flight instructor who offered to teach me for free.
After I completed ground school at Clifton High School, I took my first flying lesson. It was on April 1, 1978 in a (two-seat) Cessna 150. During the following months I flew every chance I could, in Cessna 150s and newer Cessna 152s, and also occasionally in Piper Cherokees. On September 24, 1978 I received my private pilot’s license.
Then I got checked-out in a larger (four-seat) Cessna 172. For my instrument training I flew Cessna 150s and 172s. I received my instrument rating in April 1979.
Next I trained for a commercial pilot’s license and a multi-engine rating. I flew Cessna 172s and a twin-engine Piper Seminole and obtained my license and rating in May 1980.
In December 1980 I began Boeing 727 flight engineer training at Flight International in Atlanta, GA. Most of this was in Boeing-727 flight simulators with Delta airline pilots as instructors. My check-ride was in a Boeing-727 owned by FedEx. I received my flight engineer’s certificate in February 1981. At the time I was the only woman in the entire school!
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Posted in 2014, An Artist's Life, Photography
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Q: Please speak about your background as a Naval officer and aviator and how that has informed your sensibility as an artist.
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust
A: At the age of 25 I got my private pilot’s license before spending the next two years amassing thousands of hours of flight time as I earned every flying license and rating I could, ending with a Boeing-727 flight engineer certificate. I joined the Navy when I was 29. I used to think that the 7 years I spent on active duty were wasted – during those 7 years I should have been working on my art – but I see things differently now. The Navy taught me to be disciplined, to be goal-oriented and focused, to love challenges, and in everything I do, to pay attention to the details. Trying to make it as an artist in New York is nothing BUT challenges so these qualities serve me well, whether I’m creating paintings, shooting and printing photographs, or trying to understand the art business and keep up with social media. I enjoy spending long solitary hours working to become a better artist. I am meticulous about craft and will not let a work out of my studio or out of the darkroom until it is as good as I can make it.
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Posted in 2013, An Artist's Life, Black Paintings, Creative Process, Gods and Monsters, Inspiration, Studio, Working methods
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