|
The Artist’s
Almanac
April 2008
download and print this installment as
a PDF
(you will need Adobe Acrobat reader to open this file, you can
get
it here free)
I love the sticky little leaves as they open in the spring…
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Nashville may be the most beautiful
city in America in April. The visitors to Warner Park, those who
run and walk Belle Meade Boulevard, enjoy for free the beauty of
bloom that lines it. Hosts of jaunty daffodils lead spring’s
parade, followed by the delicate Akume cherries, the ones the
Japanese sent to grace Washington’s tidal basin. The rich redbud thrums against the black cedars, with
exuberant dogwood to follow. Now the tulips make their regal
appearance. Stunning iris and sumptuous peonies will follow.
Spring is not an appointment to be
rescheduled. Like our youth, we either savor it or we do not; soon
it is gone and we turn on the irrigation and air conditioning to
struggle through summer.
The trees are at that fleeting
moment when we can still see distance through their delicate
limbs, while their crowns are gauzed with tenderest green. Last
night the new moon held the old moon in her arms. I looked up
through the graceful branches of my hackberry at those familiar
constellations I count as old friends, standing, as did the
ancient Psalmist, in awe of their splendor.
Try as we may we cannot bottle
beauty. The painter tries feebly, as does the composer. Beethoven
came closest, perhaps, in the second movement of his sixth
symphony, the Pastoral, which floats down a sparkling creek in
springtime. The challenge faced by every artist is the sudden
surrounding and overwhelming of all the senses by springtime. Once
I tried to record the melodious and varied song of an elusive
migratory woods thrush, but the result was one-dimensional. It
lacked the dark of the deep woods below me, the drift of blossoms
on the gentle breeze, the perfume of flowers, the light filtered
through the pear blossoms overhead and the movement of clouds
above the swaying green treetops.
Having dammed the floods with
concrete and encapsulated light in electronics, we think ourselves
superior to nature. Having regularized moon-and-sun-time with our
digital watches and scheduled it with our handheld computers, we
now treat it as something we own. Then comes an unplanned surgery
which sidelines us for months or the news that our concrete dams
upstream are decaying and that we, like Noah, should make plans.
The recent wide tornado, which
ground its way through 125 miles of Middle Tennessee, cut like a
surgical knife through our complacency. Its wake reminds me of
nothing so much as the devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki I saw
during the Korean War.
Nature can be grim and cruel, with
earthquakes, fires, hurricanes and plague. But there are times
when she smiles, and when she does, we should enjoy her warmth and
smile back at her.
Events
-
Central South Art Exhibition National –
Tennessee Art League, 808 Broadway, Nashville, May1st –July
27
-
Art In The Garden - A Garden Party to
Benefit Cragfont – Castalian Springs, Tennessee, 5-8 PM,
June 14th 2008, see below
-
Fall Into Art – Hendersonville High
School, October 3-5
|
