Cloud Appreciation

A nice section of an interview with Cullom Gallery artist Binky Walker in Charles Mudede's article today in The Stranger, The Cloud Appreciation Society.  When I showed Binky's ethereal drawings of clouds in 2009, the gallery was still new as was this blog.  If you missed them then, here are a few images of the artist's beautiful meditations on the ephemeral nature of clouds. 

Binky Walker.  Triptych no. 1.  Graphite on paper.  Each panel: 8 x 8 inches.

Binky Walker.  detail, Triptych no. 1.  8 x 8 inches

Binky Walker.  Triptych no. 3. Graphite on paper.  Each panel: 8 x 8 inches.

Binky Walker.  detail, Triptych no. 3.  8 x 8 inches

The exhibit at Cullom Gallery was titled, ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world, in a reference to the original pictures of the floating, or fleeting, world that were Japanese woodblock prints of the 18th and 19th centuries.  You can read more about the exhibit here, here, and here. 

Recently, Binky is hard at work on a new suite of single drawings, which we hope will be ready for exhibit at Cullom Gallery in late 2012.  The artist's new body of work continues her close observation and meditation on natural phenomena, this time looking at the transcendent properties of light.  I have been watching her progress with great excitement; the suite is perhaps her best work to date!

Finally, on what is a windy and rainy day here in Seattle, I couldn't resist including this short study for one of Binky's video projects in progress.  Title is Seeing the Wind.  Please stop by the gallery to see more by this talented artist.



Seeing the Wind from binky walker on Vimeo.

Here is the third and final portion of my email conversation with Binky Walker, my thoughts in gray, hers in black. The exhibit of her drawings, ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world continues at Cullom Gallery through October 31st.

The pun is literally your floating ukiyo - clouds - and the pictures (the 'e' in ukiyo-e) you have produced of them. But further, the ideas you have turned around in your mind are much the same as those originally attached to ukiyo: the beauty found in sadness. The coming awareness that we and all things are temporary. You are finding peace with this I think. And certainly you are finding beauty in these ideas and teasing it out for all of us to consider.

Seems you teased out not only the title for this show and its reasons, but something more subtle. That these drawings reflect a contemporary interpretation of ukiyo-e as a re-appropriation of the original intent of ukiyo: to remove the profanity and experience fully the profound beauty and underlying sorrow of our own transience.

The moments (days, months, years) drawing the clouds I rested in a state of intense awareness of that sorrowful beauty. Both the sorrow and the beauty were almost more than I could bear. Simply looking into the sky brings me to tears, knowing what I see will only happen this once in all of eternity. It felt a blessing and responsibility to have been chosen by the clouds to bear witness. This intensity is overwhelming and brings a desire for the profane . . . for "stylish pleasures." To escape what I cannot escape, to disregard that I am bound to the floating world.

The twisting of the ideas of ukiyo that occurred during the Edo period in many ways makes a mockery of its original ideas. By the 18th and 19th centuries it had come to mean a blend of hedonism and laissez-faire. And the contrast between its old & new meanings I think, only heightens the poignancy of the idea in its nascent form; in the heyday of ukiyo-e, the period saw incredible growth of urban centers, industry, politics, and a refinement of decoration and pleasure seeking. In the end these are just gaudy diversions from the true beauty of impermanence.

Your last sentence says it all so beautifully.

About the process

In lieu of an artist's statement for the exhibit, ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world, the artist, Binky Walker, and I prepared excerpts from our correspondence leading up to the show. We felt that it might be interesting for those not involved, to have a glimpse into the collaborative process engaged in between gallery and artist: me, toward an understanding of her artistic process; she, toward an awareness of her indirect connection to centuries-old Japanese ideas; and for both of us, through this back and forth, an intriguing acknowledgment of a convergence of ideas, across cultures and centuries. I will post segments of our conversation to this blog over the course of the next week.



Why do I muse on clouds, or attend to what is fleeting?

The impulse of my mind is to grasp onto what I believe will not change, transfixed by what I hope will never leave me. Impermanence is too frightening: I cannot fathom a self this precious and so determinate. Yet in comparison to the billions of light-years that are but a moment in the heavens, my human life is more fleeting than I experience the clouds.

what I believe will not ever change
what I hope will never leave me
determinate
interior resonance

determinate - what does this word really mean?

precisely determined or limited or defined;
not continuing to grow indefinitely at the apex;
being final or conclusive

All our human measures are determinate - years into seasons into days into hours into minutes into seconds - subdivided infinitely to make smaller and smaller measures of permanence. Clouds defy language, remain unfixed in their beauty. Despite these increments and measures, clouds cannot be pinned down in time. Perhaps it is a condition of humanness to be shocked by mortality.

Is this your struggle? It seems to me that you have found peace in your exploration, in the real self of the clouds, and your real self.

Are you still struggling?

When I understand muself as part of...as cloud...there is nothing to struggle against -- only peace. But my mind does not rest here. Even with all this evidence, even in peace.