Speaking in Silence

Many years ago, a friend of my grandmother's had moved to Hawaii and had subsequently sent this Hawaiian doll to her (see image, actual size 10" high). Later, after it came into my hands, the doll became almost synonymous with the domain of my childhood spent with grandmother. I had immediately acknowledged the importance of this doll, an object that for all of its solidity, now really existed only fleetingly in my memories from long ago. Speaking in silence, the doll and I had re-imagined childhood scenes together. Partial as these remembrances may have been, and certainly warped by years gone by, there was something magical about being in "conversation" in such a deep ephemeral realm.
A few years after graduating from art school, I painted a realistic version of this Hawaiian doll (greatly enlarged to cover a 5'x10' canvas), sewn onto a piece of fabric which was later embellished with appliqued patterns. Any realization of the madness of this act eluded me at the time, but I had thought at length about how the scale of this newly enlarged image had produced such a surprisingly dynamic energy that could perhaps be seen as something even rather menacing. There was a terrible fearlessness in the force of this forthright, sinister, painted figure, and yet, something innocent and even fragile as well.
What is serious about the adult at play, the artist as inventor? It seems to me that just the act of open-ended exploration can reveal a hidden dimension that is otherwise inaccessible to an artist. Some would call that act a negotiation with our eternally changing condition in order to mete out some unrequited need. Others would see it as a kind of happy hour where inspiration meets enchantment. Who is to say?

Puppet Person

Here is my 2D puppet drawing. Why a 2D puppet you might ask? I don't know. However, like other puppet figures, mine moves about unpredictably, hands waiving and then suddenly still again. Well, perhaps that only happens if you stare at it long enough.....(remember the famous etching of the head of Christ, his eyes closed, a linen cloth draped in the background area? His eyes open, so I was told, if you stare at it long enough.....)
I had been reading the Kenneth Gross book called Puppet, an essay on uncanny life, which talks about our willingness to bring something as inanimate as a puppet to life. Further, we breathe life into many other objects as well - typically - our house, our cars, and our boats. We name these things and we even talk to them: "Come on Fred (the car), I'm late for work!" But, the puppet as uncanny, as seemingly supernatural, can reenact stories about our world with an existential innocence. We agree to believe in that innocence because the puppet seems child-like, a diminutive substitute for the child we once were. "The puppet is without history, existing in the moment...." The puppet comes briefly to life because we want it to do so. We want to go along with the world that the puppet seems to invent for himself and the audience. And, we especially agree to allow feelings to freely emerge as we participate from a safe distance from the puppet stage. This pact that we have made with mysterious, inanimate objects, regardless of their short lived time span, helps as to recognize our connectedness to everything. The differences between living things and inanimate objects are indeed minimal. Just ask a physicist.