paint progress

Here is how our portraits are going. It is taking us 4 to 5 sessions to do a portrait -- 2 times with the model to paint the face, 2 to 3 more times to paint the background. It's really looking like a studio, with the finished portraits, half-finished portraits, and Wes's own paintings all around the room.

Xue Song

Beneath the cliffs


"The crescent high above shining all over the country alike, albeit there are households in bliss and sorrow respectively here on earth" -- line from a folksong


Every painting is a poem


Pavillion by the lake (click to enlarge)

I found a beautiful artist. His name is Xue Song. Oh my god. Visceral, strong, gorgeous, tied-to-death, joyful art.

Many of the fragments of paper in Xue Song’s collages have burnt edges, a feature of his work that originates in the tragic destruction of his studio by fire several years ago. All that remained from the blaze were charred fragments of paintings and piles of ash. To cope with the pain of his loss, Xue Song retrieved these remains and pasted them onto canvas. For him, ash is both a reminder of fate and a symbol of rebirth. Ever since, he has painstakingly burned the edges of the paper fragments in his collages. The main figures or characters in his painting are executed in a mixture of burnt wood ash and glue, resulting in a rough texture that contrasts with the smooth glazed collage background.

See here for more bio info.

Odin Teatret posts

Writings about the Odin before living there:
12/08/03 - Odin zero: Poland, Brzezinka, Gospels of Childhood

Writings about the Odin, now posts, while living there in 2004:
02/27/04 - Odin 1: Eugenio, Clelia, teachings
02/29/04 - Odin 2: Work process, breathing together
03/06/04 - Odin 3: Farm, lunch, languages, wind
03/07/04 - Odin 4: Missing home, learning how to have one
03/09/04 - Odin 5: Chekhov, great rehearsal, insights of space
03/12/04 - Odin 6: The apprentice actors, one huge Yes
03/12/04 - Odin 7: Grotowski room, dreamlord, dragons

Posts about the Odin after coming home:
05/27/04 - Picture of Eugenio and me
07/02/04 - Theatre of the Wind, Thor's theatre
07/28/04 - A performance for one spectator
09/10/04 - Theatre monastery
09/21/04 - Missing the Odin on its 40th birthday
12/18/04 - Andersen's Dream
12/31/04 - Blessings of 2004

Visiting the Odin again in 2005
04/30/05 - Each pilgrim kisses the black stone there
05/01/05 - Welcome Rachel
05/01/05 - Silence
05/01/05 - The Odin is a shared vision
05/01/05 - It takes a theatre to raise an artist
05/02/05 - A tree that must be taken special care of
05/05/05 - Rolling the die

Seeing the Odin perform Andersen's Dream in Bergamo, Italy
05/05/05 - Birthplace of the Harlequin
05/06/05 - Bergamo birthday, glimpses of Eugenio
05/06/05 - We don't know what we're making
05/08/05 - Gong
05/15/05 - Home green home
05/17/05 - Eugenio looks good

More posts mentioning the Odin or Eugenio
07/07/05 - Gnaw off your foot (Roberta Carreri)
08/04/05 - I have looked at actors for seven years
09/22/05 - Inside the Skeleton of the Whale
09/22/05 - Odin apprentices

portraits 1 & 2

portrait of Wes

The painting Wes, Shawn, and I made of Wes.

Neil Gaiman's got a blog

Neil Gaiman, sf/comics author of Sandman, The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, The Wolves In The Walls, and American Gods, has a blog. It's great to read how a writer who WRITES all the time, and is all warmed up, lays into it.

Here is his site. Here is his blog. Neil's advice to writers:

Write something.
Finish it.
Keep writing.

portrait

The picture Wes and I painted of me.

"There is one rule," he said, after the woman was done and before we started painting her background and clothes. "No blue on her clothes." Later -- "I broke the rule," he said.

That whole paragraph is actually a perfect portrait of me.

spring break

I just had a two-week spring break.

I had been thinking, the month or so before, that I have never actually had a true vacation. This was one. Sweet cold air, empty time, time alone, time away from home, new experiences, painting, chores.

When I get slow and still, and thoughts blow in wide disjointed leaps, I am the most clear. I wrote last night, "Things to remember," because I could see so clearly.

Bart Sher says that directing Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters changed him profoundly -- "We are all servants of at least two masters."

Cosi Fan Tutti, co-painting, Chopin's funeral

I guess you just have to write a certain amount of plays or operas until you get the hang of it. Even if you are Mozart -or DaPonti, I'm not sure whether the music or the lyrics came first.

Cosi Fan Tutti, last night at the Seattle Opera, was rollicking along. Great first half. Great start to the second half. And then -- just as the plot is thickening and we're deep in the story -- the soprano has a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnng introspective solo. Followed by several people's lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng introspective solos. After which the opera picks up and completes. I don't think a director on earth could fix that, without major cuts. It's just an early work.

This opera is like Shakespeare's early comedies -- tastes great, less filling. Mozart did not yet have the command of melody and truth that powers Don Giovanni.

The production was gorgeous. Modern day, in modern dress, having fun with the supertitles (substituting "Capitol Hill" for "Verona"). Young singers in young roles. Singing lying on their backs, bare-stomached, wearing long leather trenchcoat & shades and pink silk jackets. The soprano & mezzo duets were gorgeous. So were the baritone & tenor. The tenor and soprano were breathtaking. Great voices, great bodies, great acting. Cosi is famous for all its duets, trios, quartets, sextets. The harmonies are stunning.

A beautiful way to end a day of painting.

"You look like you just came from a deep rehearsal," said Scott. That's what the painting felt like. We're doing co-painting, where two or more people work on the same painting at the same time. Intimate & truthful. My painting yesterday was like Mozart's Cosi -- I, too, was just relaxing in harmonies and doodling. Not yet going for the guts and the truth.

When Chopin died, he requested that Mozart's Requiem be sung at his funeral. But the church did not allow women, and the Requiem is written with female voices. Chopin was adamant that it be sung as written. Two weeks after his death, the church finally said okay, as long as the women stood behind a black curtain, where they could not be seen.

Can you imagine Mozart's Requiem, sung at Chopin's funeral? Chopin's strange jazzy empty mourning washes of color and bone, their ashes sung by Mozart's hanging longing voices.