Novo Veritas, My Son and I

Reflection

For the first week of November of 2016, I took a trip to Oregon to be with my son. It had been six years since I had seen him. During that time he had confronted his troubles as an alcoholic, about which I never knew a thing until he told me.

When I first encountered him at the airport, he was standing tall and alive, thankfully beardless, and handsome. I perceived him as only a Mother can view her son. All Mothers who understand that perception know that no words can describe the bond. It is strong; the love that is intertwined with lack of condition and overcomes darkness, the blight of past friction and opens into the light of infinitude.

That week our plans were to go with the flow of how any event would evolve and I relished every moment.

That week also happened to be one of the most active periods to date for his business, Novo Veritas.  He and his business partner, Betsy Hartley, were scheduled to give two presentations and appear on a radio show, with host, Mike Parker, the sports commentator for the Oregon State Beaver Sports Teams.

Both presentations showed the passion that both Spence and Betsy share about their own efforts to transcend the difficulties which have invaded their lives and about which they have developed heightened awareness that becomes keener day by day. The parallels which the two have drawn between the ramifications of alcoholism and of Type 2 diabetes respectively address hurdles that many have to jump in order to arrive at a place for fulfilling their lives.

This means choosing, making decisions, turning hard corners in order to uncover a healthy existence whose potential already exists, but which can blossom given incentive and support.


Novo Veritas Speaks

The groups in which Spence and Betsy talked were strikingly different.

The first presentation I witnessed was held in a small running apparel shop in Corvallis. The audience seated itself casually in a circle facing the two speakers. The situation was intimate. But the exchange between Spence, Betsy and several women in the audience proved powerful. One very delicate, fragile, small woman, who appeared to be weary of her stress, asked one question and then followed up with more. She was seeking guidance to move out of the place in which she seemed to be stuck. She shared only a general picture of herself. Both Spence and Betsy reassured her that moving forward hurts only after the initial steps and the continuation of healing oneself, finding that healthy and peaceful place is a matter of time, effort and will.

Another woman, who, as Betsy was and is, dealing with a weight problem, had just finished her first 5K running race, spoke up with confidence and belief in herself, aware still that she was in her "process" of reaching her goal...a testament to the coaching that Spence and Betsy can and do give individuals. The age of the audience varied but was within the range between thirty and fifty. The only man attending was a trainer with whom Spence and Betsy have both worked; he also contributed some positive ideas.

The concluding words to the audience were: We are here to tell our stories to help you tell yours. This sentence is a deep trigger: it makes me think.




The second presentation was held at The Portland Athletic Club in a far more formal setting. The athletic club is an establishment where members inherit memberships. So the audience was a mix of upper-crust attendees with you-and-me-kinda-people. Spence and Betsy were conscious of their appearance for this particular date, knowing that their message, no matter how essential, might go over well if their appearance blended into expectations of the environment. As an introduction, they showed their video, which is always a tear-jerker for me. Then they each went into more detail with their stories in a more audience specific version. Their primary interest is to create a conversation between them and the audience members. So they request questions, as unfettered and unbounded as possible because listening is a means to shape the next steps for growth. One question that I remember distinctly came from an elderly woman, who looks to be in shape and is really beautiful. The question was this: what if life has been good and one simply wants to determine who he or she is? That Spence and Betsy lay themselves open to these amazingly deep inquiries tests the strength of their beings, for often, the questions they are asked pertain to the kinds of questions they continually ask themselves, both individually and together of each other.

Running is the vehicle for Spencer's and Betsy's recovery from their individual statuses. Running implements their sense of self to develop their strengths, contemplate their weaknesses, hone in on their essential nature. This does not mean that their encouragement is directed towards running only for any of their clients or groups, like athletic teams, with whom they work. It means that they both have a starting point for unleashing their experiences. Spence and Betsy can be key to the raising of one's consciousness.

 Mike Parker, a recovering alcoholic himself, interviewed the two (Nov 3, beginning at 75:00) on The Joe Beaver Show midweek. Mike was thoroughly interested and serious about the effectiveness of Novo Veritas. His questions hit upon aspects of Spence's and Betsy's stories which evoked emotion and demonstrated their willingness to help people and do good. A lot of good.  Mike asked them about where they have been, what they are doing and where they want to go. No sensationalism was involved. Just the facts. It was great.

Hang-Time

Most of the time during the week, Spence and I just did stuff. One day we drove to Eugene so that I could replace my dead running shoes with new ones. Sure beat ordering them on the Internet! The hands-on service was terrific. Everyone in the running world knows Spence. He can talk to anyone about anything.

Driving with Spence involved a certain amount of silence because he thinks a lot. Our talking together acquires a special context because we live so far away from each other. Our lives are diverse, but seem similar in our mutual capacity for focus, accomplishment and fulfillment. We also share kindred emotions and personal psychologies: depression and anxiety. Communication about the latter jumps into our talking threads occasionally.

Toward the end of my trip, we spent an entire afternoon working on a trail he is carving out for himself in one of the many forests which pervade the rich vegetative environment where he lives. As we looked back on our work, Spence said: Hey, we must have gone a quarter of a mile! He dug and I widened and softened the paths; I moved fallen tree parts to act as guides for the direction of the trail. We stopped working at the crest of a hill where we could see mountains. Well, mountains are everywhere in Oregon. Not a strange event! And then we walked calmly back to the car, refreshed, revived, and glowing from our convention with nature.

On another day we traveled to a peak from which could be seen The Sisters in Bend looking east across the state and Mount Jefferson. The wind whipped around us as we walked to the top of the mountain on a less used trail. At the top, satellite dishes and lights  spoiled the atmosphere but are, in this day and age, necessary. The peak was barren. My heart was full. The view reminded me of the landscape that lay outside my studio window at CalArts in Valencia, CA.  I had traced the contours of the mountains on the window glass to make a mock drawing of what would influence the subject of the rest of my art-making life.

At the end of the week, we went to dinner on the nearby coast. It was raining cats and dogs. We floated on our journey as if we were on a boat. It was crazy to have come to the beach when the rain dropped in sheets and my raincoat billowed in the wind. But, hey, I took some pictures to document the fact that I had reached the Pacific Ocean. Dinner was lovely and quiet and full of joy. At no time did I ever think as a Mother that I would be having dinner with my mature thirty-seven year old son in a restaurant by the ocean to which he had driven me for a belated sixty-sixth birthday celebration. Age means nothing. We both know we are still growing up.




The Part Called the Ending

Telling this story touches on the reasons I have such immense pride in how Spence has stepped into the hole that is his disease and is climbing out of it to re-create the positive path that is his life.

Every photograph I took of him or of the landscape mirrors his history. Every word he uttered informed me of all the remarkable places he has been in his mind and body and all the unimaginable, unknowable destinations he will choose to travel to for himself.

My son stands out boldly against the bright clouded slate blue Oregon sky. He meets, as do I, uncertainty every day. Every day, however, with unanswered questions swimming around in his mind, he does not relent in pursuit of the next question. He leaves the questions he has remaining unanswered until the necessity for questions and answers disappear into the folds of what he has named the 'process' of living. His life will be long.

As Published in ARTEIDOLIA

Entrance to MASSMoCA, North Adams, MA

The Sol LeWitt Principle

On April 8, 2007, Sol LeWitt passed away.

With him went his ever-engaged mind; the seeds of creativity which took him from one drawing, one sculpture, one photograph, one word to the next with seeming ease.

In 1968, he created his first wall drawing at the opening of the Paula Cooper Gallery, a gallery which still represents his work.Sol’s Paragraphs on Conceptual Art were published in Art Forum magazine in 1967. Sol’s Sentences on Conceptual Art were published in New York’s, 0-9 in 1969 and in England’s Art & Language in May of the same year. Written with respect to his own work, manifestos for his own art-making needs, these words reached Biblical applicability to art of the time very quickly. He never claimed to be the Father of Conceptual Art.

Eadweard Muybridge influenced Sol. Below is Muybridge’s exemplary contact print of the Cockatoo in flight. It makes perfect sense that Sol might understand the logic and inevitability of change from one photographic frame to the next. At the same time, Sol recognized the sameness as demonstrated by his own early video piece of a nude woman, who has no identity, walking toward a camera frontally with no shadow, no angle that hinted at dimension. Only white was behind her. His nude stills of a woman walking forward implied the same kind of stop action movement.

Eadweard Muybridge, Cockatoo, Bird in Flight, 1872-85, Plate 758 from "Animal Locomotion. " 1887

Sol’s reputation evolved out of his invention of spare simple formulated systems applied to many contexts. Sometimes seen as minimal art, his cube sculptures qualified then and still do as a reason for being themselves. He made them at first on an extremely small scale; he glued the struts together and painted them. Like any artist, he worked within his means; at the time, he confessed once that he did not have much money.

His drawings were also concerned with formulated systems for which he eventually could make instructions so that he could detach himself from them; he could also mold the same drawings to different surfaces depending on how he envisioned the surface being used. He could expand his imagination of his imagery, his ever-changing vocabulary. This is the point at which the drawings leapt to the wall.

Although almost uncountable exhibits of his walls drawings have occurred, the 25 Year Retrospective of Sol’s wall drawings, which opened on November 16, 2008, at MASSMoCA, North Adams, MA, is exceedingly special. It was the result of five years of planning through Yale University Art Gallery, Williams College Museum of Art, MASS MoCA and Sol, who designed the placement of the walls and the placement of the drawings using a small model. The exhibit absorbs three floors of one building of the huge MASSMoCA complex; the building was renovated exclusively for the show.

Given the nature of the concept of the wall drawing, Sol birthed a wealth of possibilities or ideas within the concept. The exhibition at MASSMoCA offers a selection from the over one thousand drawings for which he has created instructions.  

The instructions for Wall Drawings fit into the context described by one of his sentences on Conceptual Art:

“28. Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist's mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.”

       Wall Drawing #11, 1969, detail of exact center

                                    

Wall Drawing #11, 1969, presents itself  at the entrance to the first “Early Work” floor of the three floor exhibit. In appearance, the graphite (always pencil #9H) wall drawing seems flat, even and uneventful. Then one’s eyes adjust and the intrigue is unavoidable. The closer one moves towards the wall, an entire world of detail widens to reveal itself. The viewer cannot possibly take in the whole drawing on the same level of detail. The instructions for this drawing are simple (as are they all): “Wall divided horizontally and vertically into four equal parts. Within each part, four kinds of lines (in four directions) are superimposed.” The size of the wall for this drawing can vary. But its ownership cannot, as is true for all wall drawings. This particular set of instructions, when applied in various forms throughout his career, became his signature by default.

Flanking the first drawing is a multi-sectioned one using color pencil leads and graphite. The directions for this one are as elemental as those for #11, but the patterning changes. The regularity of drawn lines creates an unpredictable, unexpected pattern formation, which transforms the drawing into a study of texture, arising purely from the commitment to process. The way in which the wall is divided into each section, where the combination of pencils and the directions of lines change, like the blink of eye, alters the way in which the lines are perceived.

“24. Perception is subjective.”

Each individual wall drawing propagates another. Turn the corner and the textures, patterns, density of lines modify the flat surfaces.

Walls. These are walls.

On another wall, four vertical columns of graphite lines are separated by four inches. Adjacent to that six vertical columns, sharing the same edges, using color and graphite lines in overlaid diagonal and vertical and horizontal directions, adjusts the perception of the wall drawing where columns are separated. One drawing strengthens the other. The aesthetics don’t matter. The impact does. The Zen of them matters. That they embrace the viewer is celebratory.

Each floor of the exhibit is L-shaped. The areas are arranged so that at least two, considering both sides, are the longest continuous area for display. The remaining walls are divided and, as a result, intimate spaces are created. On the latter walls, the repetition is not the endgame. But the longer spaces where larger walls stand explode with beauty, subtlety, and paradoxical tenderness. Somehow repetition is comforting. Even though each part within the repeated group of units is different from another, the core units are based on the same principles. So the repetition simply seems like it happens, although it actually doesn’t.

Evolutions. Evolutions. Evolutions. Unfolding imagistic poetry.

If one wanted to talk permutations, one could. A permutation is a word for analysis rather than appreciation.

“11. Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. They may set one off in unexpected directions, but an idea must necessarily be completed in the mind before the next one is formed.”

Not straight vertical lines approximately 10” long equal rain.

The adjacent drawing of randomly crossing graphite lines is like ice.

Crystalline hard form cracking next to a gentle purring slipping of water against glass.

Graphite or colors: red, yellow, blue.

Alternately, from wall to wall, the potential for intimacy becomes an explosion of controlled expressivity. Why not? Turn the lines into vectors, use a different material, undo and strengthen what has already been discovered. This is the drive of the artist whose mind is unfettered, who applies no bounds within the boundaries he sets. Whose art speaks to him and tells him where to go next, what to do next. And whose heart is so large that accommodating a relentless switching of gears might be troublesome at times but never ceases to be grounded and shaped and dealt with as viable direction, both literally and figuratively. (Sol would have said those last four words.)

The model for the retrospective is so small; perhaps 30” wide x 36” long x 10” deep, in three parts, one for each floor. The actual rooms though are oriented to the human body. Sure the walls are twelve feet tall to accommodate the ready-made floor to ceiling height. It doesn’t matter that the walls aren’t any taller. The constancy of image requires an input of humanity in order to be ingested. Not being able to reach the top of a wall does not mean that the size of the drawing is meant to be overwhelming. It is merely a means to lay out the combinations in full swing (Sol would have that) so that the surprise of pattern is blatant and the drawing becomes a dance rather than one image idea next to another.

The colors of the walls metamorphose as do the impact of the instruments using to draw give punch. An inexplicable extroversion abounds, espousing a belief in the wonder of the line as surpassing the necessity for maintaining a kind of “technique’. It is laughable to put Sol’s capacity for using line in the same sentence as technique. The power of the use of process and idea render technique an antiquated term.

“19. The conventions of art are altered by works of art.”

Logical moves: pencil to crayon to pencil again.

What was learned with the tools is reflected in the change of image.

Which is, in toto, his vision, only visible when the total work is seen in toto.

“20. Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.”

The utilization of the wall is complete no matter whether the idea calls to use marks on the entire wall or pull away from the edges of the wall. The emptiness is as important as participation. The emptiness allows the image to be framed. The frame is in proportion to the image. It is all measured. It is all intuited. It is all felt.

When the thin pencil lines expand outwards, the patterns expand. The distance between the viewer and the image can be greater for detecting the overall patterning made with repeated gestures. All measured, all regulated, all designed, all felt. Close up the expanded pencils lines never retract into old patterns. Ain’t no way. Because a new drawing has arisen.

“21. Perception of ideas leads to new ideas.”

Expansion and contraction become thematic hinges throughout the pencil drawings. The fluctuation creates a means for occupying the spaces between the lines (Sol would have said that) to push through even adjustments towards larger and larger graphic explosions.

Grander statements.

None more important than the ones that came before.

Ink and paint added to the collection of artist’s media.

Layers of pencil, layers of ink.

Coincidental principles of applying them.

“27. The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the piece or the process in which it is made.”

Wall Drawing #51, 1970, detail

The later pencil works developed into designs of other shapes. Strange aberrations within the whole yet evidence of the willingness to stretch and loosen up and unwind, even though the lines are straight, overlapping. And true to a source of form. Sol’s early drawings went through a mannerist phase when he verbally described placements of lines and/or points on walls and those words were written where the lines and/or points were placed. This perhaps is the beginning of the development of his concept of shape, isolated shapes on walls and shapes derived in relation to points on walls.

The media for drawing shapes were the same as the ones for drawing lines. Shapes were just shapes. Yes, the emptiness was filled with emptiness or crayon. But the shapes were a way to separate out the geometry illuminated by the linear analysis of architectural points as in the early chalk drawing, #51. This was a part of his training. Yet, when he stepped out of the geometry of architectural training, he was in a zone where his spirit spoke more than his knowledge.

The bases for his entire oeuvre exist on the first floor. One can see the way visual ideas penetrate all stages of his work. His vision is only visible when the total work is seen in toto. This is the reason that grasping the pencil wall drawings from the earliest period is vital to understanding the remainder of the wall drawings. And it is especially important given the way that his work is laid out in this museum context. This retrospective is different from any other.

The influx of ink as a medium was significant in his growth out of pure line. He covers more area more quickly. He layers the ink to produce colors that are produced from RYB, yet become expressionistic. A secondary palette:  purples, greens, blues arriving from a logically processed palette. Seemingly less regulated. More free. More in tune with a world where the self blooms through doing what one loves.

“25. The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others.”

The next step in Sol’s image making, when the ink-wash shape-oriented drawings began, the architectural space is stretched and emphasized by the natural expanse accompanying the drawings in it. The drawings become bold statements rather than invitations to move in and examine the details, even though one does.

In this exhibit, the way in which the specific walls are arranged on the floor make just as much sense, if not more sense, than the basic spatial structure of the building.  Even the lighting, thought it has been criticized, makes sense. The floorboards and the long florescent tube lighting are perpendicular to the verticality of the walls on which the drawings are. The windows magnify the regularity of the drawings and become a backdrop for the exquisite color performance in front of them, a backdrop for the play whose characters are the drawings. The results of the physical motion of installation emanate from the drawings. The ambient sounds, such as distant sound art, people talking, foot falls on the floor above or on the stairs are enough to offset the quietude that the wall drawings project. Although Sol likened his work to the music of Bach, especially early on, and no doubt he played music when he was working, no music comes out of the drawings. Only meditative silence.

Wall Drawing #51, 1970, detail

The third floor display, dealing with Sol’s Late Period, is replete with painted shapes. Paint cannot be washed over in layers like ink can be. The acrylic paint is placed in separate shapes. The first wall drawing seen upon entering the floor is a mixture of the various shapes that he has used throughout his art making career: arcs, rectangles, concentric circles, curves (or not straight lines) which form saw-tooth edges against rectangles on a third or so of the wall. The colors employed here are exuberant, bright and overwhelming; ready to be seen at close range and at the same time only appreciated at a distance. Perpendicular to this wall is a wall drawing of a yellow isometric shape, whose sides are painted with green, blue and red. The shape lies on a field of orange.

One cannot sit and appreciate these for long. The tendency is to want to move on. There is nothing to contemplate. The world is loud.

The flip side of the opening wall is the totally enveloping black and white “Parallel Curves,” #999, 2001. How extraordinarily expressive and free this drawing is in contrast to the multi-color collective wildness on the wall’s other side. The rigor of the curves translates into constrained shapes which simultaneously flow, move and melt into one another. This drawing’s intent seems to be closely derived from the pencil drawings of his early period, without borders but truly restrained. The curves on the upper edge leave the surface; on the bottom edge, they create new shapes.

Wall Drawing #999, 2001 (right) and #1005, 2001 (left)

Opposite these curves is the quadri-color “Splat,” #958, 2000. It is longer than “Parallel Curves.” It mixes straightness and fluidity on uneven terms; one does not know how to understand its makeup except perhaps in terms of a map, or of earth, air, water and fire. Our earth’s core.

As the dates of the pieces change, the treatment of the themes changes in size and approach. Iterations of original pencil drawing of four squares; lines in four directions in four squares, for which he is the most famous, appear: lines make the shapes, the shapes become the color and the colors become the shapes.

Singularly outstanding is an absolutely elegant single curve that divides the wall on which it is drawn into two distinct shapes. The upper is painted in black matte and the lower in glossy acrylic paint. One surface conveys two messages: absorption and reflection. Polar opposites. Simplicity and depth. Wholeness and duality. Calmness of yin and yang without the disparity of this side and that sharing a common edge. Sol’s Yin and Yang. Opposite this is a set of twelve “Wavy Lines” painted with the same medium: the curves are horizontal, vertical and diagonal, activating forty inch squares with the same kind of two phase blackness, the same kind of unity.

Wall Drawing #822, 1997

And then beckons the grandeur of the 1998 “Loopy Doopy,” Wall Drawing #880, the drawing that was opposite the elevators at the entrance of the Whitney Retrospective in 1999, where the colors used were purple and blue. At MASS MoCA, the variation is green and orange. Loopy Doopy, as the name implies, hints at Sol’s humorous side.

Imagine the glimmer of a smile on his face, for instance, when he would say to someone in a conversation: “Drop me a line sometime.”

The similarity that “Loopy Doopy” has with “Parallel Curves” exists; but, in a way, the curves are less serious, more freely drawn, less introverted.

Behind “Loopy Doopy” are two drawings that are the logical step from the ones that are contiguous with this section of the room. One is a black matte and glossy version of the four squares with lines going in different directions. Adjacent is a three sectioned piece: a horizontal curve, vertical curve and diagonal curve separate each of three large individual squares into primary colors paired with their opposite or secondary colors.

The conclusion of the exhibit is at the back of the “L” on the third floor. The bright color wall drawings are concentrated in the center of the floor’s layout. The colors move within bands, planes, squares, whirls, twirls, isometric shapes with the glaring characteristics of regularity and irregularity. Blasts of pure color, repressed subtlety: extroverted statements that speak of everything that is possible in Sol’s language.

There seems to be a search for solace in the content of the painted work.

Until the deeply introspective scribble drawings appear. They are dated towards the end of his life; some of them were installed posthumously for this retrospective exhibit. The scribbles are so dense one cannot see any unmarked area, except on close inspection between each scribble, which move from the outside in;  within the same drawing, the least density of scribbling creates the center.  One can see white, but never pure white. The scribble drawings glow. Shine. Become. Concentric circles within a square. Horizon within a square, vertical tension within a square, square within a square with rounded corners, an “X” within a square and one that echoes the ink wash drawings where isometric shapes are elicited: this drawing is executed like the ink washes with one layer of scribbles occupying the entire wall and succeeding layers of scribbles inscribed into overlapping shapes.

Wall Drawing #1247, 2007

 The last drawing on view, #1180, is the perfect drawing. In a circle that is approximately twelve feet in diameter, in the perfect center of the rectangular end wall, it retreats from the edges, but pushes simultaneously at the top and bottom of the circle. The directions: 10,000 black straight lines combined with 10,000 not straight lines.

10,000 means “many” in the Oriental sense of the word.

Black and white, the absorption and reflection respectively of all color.

Here are essential elements: Lines. They were the perpetual subject matter of Sol’s life’s exploration and adventure. The lines coalesced into geometry which he managed through the juggling of more lines. Lines were the beginning and the end. They were continuously present as the circle is round.

 “1. Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.”

Wall Drawing #1180, 2005

The Lines.

The Lines were his close friends.

The Lines were his allies.

The Lines travelled with him wherever he went.

The Lines led Sol everywhere.

The Lines empowered him and spread omnipresent creative energy throughout the universe.

Copyright 2016 Lyn Horton

Photo Credit: Lyn Horton

First published in ARTEIDOLIA

Sol LeWitt: A Story

It was in the fall of 1970 that Sol LeWitt visited California Institute of the Arts. The day I met him, he was sitting in a chair at the edge of a cluster of a dozen or so forty-inch square tables in the cafeteria. Students were gathered round, sitting and standing behind him and to his side.

On that day, Sol was picking out students to help him install his exhibit at the, then, Pasadena Art Museum. My memory of exactly how he chose people is vague. But the next image that pops into my mind in telling this story is of Sol, surrounded by gallery walls explaining how to approach his wall drawing installation, his arms waving, his fingers pointing. The walls we were to draw on must have been at least thirty feet high; they were opposite each other. LeWitt’s words on the first page of the small catalog described how they were to be used:

"Wall Drawing, 1970  

 Left wall, pencil, four colors

 Right wall, pencil, black only

           

The draftsman and the wall enter a dialogue. The draftsman becomes bored but later through this meaningless activity finds peace or misery. The lines on the wall are the residue of this process. Each line is as important as each other line. All the lines become one thing. The viewer of the lines can see only lines on a wall. They are meaningless. That is art."

Courtesy of Lyn Horton

I worked on both the right wall and the left wall, within the areas that I could reach. The remaining lines above me were drawn by the male draftsman who worked off scaffolding.

Sol continually guided us. Even though the straight lines of varying length were to be drawn “randomly,” they were drawn according to Sol’s idea of “random.” He would interrupt any one of us when he saw that the lines were being drawn incorrectly. We had to use the pencils given to us in a specific way: our hands needed to be relaxed and the pencils were supposed to float between our fingers. The lines had to be drawn with an even pressure so that the overall surface created had no dark or light areas, showing only moderate density. The walls were meant to have a delicate texture: my interpretation in hindsight.

Into the large gallery in which we worked was integrated a small gallery that bore the same architectural shape as the large one. In the almost elevator-sized space, Sol drew what I consider to be the most gorgeous wall drawing of those early years. It was its first installation. Or so I remember. He had created it for Eva Hesse, who had just died of a brain tumor. The drawing contained parallel vertical lines, not straight, not touching, not long, drawn with black pencil. The impression it gave me was of rain. To this day, I can see in my mind’s eye Sol beginning the drawing on the left side of the space. He could reach the ceiling. The drawing transmitted an unsurpassed intimacy. Probably a description he would not have assigned to it at the time.

We took lunch breaks during the installation process. I remember that I was the only person to go with Sol to lunch, particularly to the luncheon in the museum dining room. We were joined by, then, curator Barbara Haskell and artist David Hockney. It was quite wonderful. Maybe other draftsmen did come, but I was so awestruck by the situation that I can only remember Sol, Hockney and Barbara Haskell.

It took us a full seven-day week to complete the installation. There were only two draftspersons working by the end of that week. I cannot remember the name of the other fellow. Sol asked us both to join him at dinner with Doug Christmas of Ace Gallery in Los Angeles. I have no idea what kind of food we ate or where. I remember that the booth was tight. Doug and Sol sat on one side and the guy whose name I can’t recall and I sat on the other. Sol said to us that he would like to “take” us to dinner. I thought that he meant at another time as well. I said, “Why, thank you, Sol.” Then I realized he meant that he would pay for our dinners that evening.

On another day when we were not in Pasadena, Sol came to my little rented cottage in North Hollywood to see some of my work. He sat in a brown director’s chair and I sat on the floor. I passed one drawing after another in front of where he was sitting. He was mostly silent. At the end of the “showing,” he said: “I like these better than those.” And that was it. I said, “Really?” He nodded his head. I forget which drawings I showed to him.

After his visit, Sol wanted to go to critic Helene Winer’s house in the Hollywood Hills. I drove him and I got lost. Here I was with Sol way across the country from his home in New York City and he directed me out of my lost-ness. Funny. He kept saying, “I don’t remember this area.” I actually argued with him. He won. And I delivered him safely to his destination.

When Sol had returned to New York, he sent drawings to those artists who had helped him. Mine is small: lines of differing lengths, straight, parallel in ink. It was to be the first in my collection of Sol LeWitt pieces of art for which I gave him works of my own. This note, written on a thin piece of rag board, accompanied the drawing:

Courtesy of Lyn Horton

Sol and I corresponded over the years for the rest of his life.  In 1988, I worked on the team to install the ink wash wall drawing at the Williams College Museum of Art. On the first day of the installation of the drawing, he came to view the space chosen for his drawing. When he saw me in a group of people huddled around the staircase where his drawing would go, he said, “What are you doing here?” I replied, “I have come to help install your work.” He said, “Oh, great” and then quietly smiled.

Anthony Sansotta, Sol’s longtime foreman for installation of the Wall Drawings, came to Sol’s side. Both looked at the wall for a moment or two. Sol turned to Anthony and said: “Arcs, twelve inches, starting with yellow, then red and blue.” This is Wall Drawing #559. After lunch at the faculty club that day, Sol and his wife disappeared. I went to work with the crew. It was a blast, all five days of doing ink wash, for which there is also a definite LeWitt technique.

I received an invitation to Sol’s retrospective opening at the Whitney in 2001. I was not going to miss that. This was also the year hell had broken loose for me. After my Mother died in 1999, my husband, now ex, decided to leave and we were in the process of getting a divorce. When I found Sol midst the throngs of people who were attending the opening, I threw my arms around him in a big hug. With sweetness spreading throughout his face, he asked, unexcitedly, “How are you?” Somehow he knew everything that was happening in my life. I certainly had not written him about it. Astonished, I said “I am ok.” Sol said, “One day at a time.” With tears in my eyes, I said good-bye, looking back at him longingly as I walked away to leave the museum.

That was the last time I saw Sol.  But my heart is full with him. He left that much of an impact, I can only imagine, with everyone with whom he associated.

Copyright 2014-16 Lyn Horton

First displayed with my drawing: 70" Square Black & Gold, 2014, exhibited in the show "In The Studio: Artist's Dialogs," California Center for the Arts, Escondido, CA, 2014

Resurrection: My Son, My Words

 

My son, Spence, on Feb 11, 2016, McDonald Dunn Forest, OR
Photo: Patrick Means

On February 11, 2014, my thirty-seven year old son recognized that he needed to become sober. He possessed enough awareness so that he had the capacity to stop, step back and witness how he had been behaving for the years of his youth when his life probably could have blossomed with genius generated activities.  This was one of them.

The pain he had suffered aligned itself coincidentally with the pain I was suffering.

********

The grief overtaking me came with the loss in divorce of a husband to whom I was married for twenty-five years, the loss of my son who left the house to go as far away from me as possible to find himself, the loss of my domestic cat taken away by a wild night crawling fisher cat, the loss of my mother and father and the estrangement of my brother and my sister as a result of my own choice.

My mother died in 1999 at Roper Hospital in Charleston, SC. I was detached from her death because I did not witness it. I felt it coming though from fifteen hundred miles away at  my house in Massachusetts and called the Episcopalian minister minutes before she died to go to the aid of my father who attended her at her hospital bedside. I flew to be with the family at her memorial. Hundreds of her friends came from her past life in distant places to wish her well. It was a good time. We blessed her passing. It was calm and organized. It was not fraught with terror and anger like my father’s death was.

My father died in 2006. He called me to his side because his “girlfriend” was going to be away for awhile. It was one month to the day I arrived to take care of him that his heart, which had been strengthened in surgery when he was 85 years old, stopped beating, 1:47 AM, June 6. Hospice care intervened in the last two weeks of his life. The hospice nurses appointed me as the hands-on caretaker in their absence. I ushered him into his death. Dad and I did this. Everyone else, except for the nurses, sputtered and spewed and criticized me for how I was handling the caring.  Towards the end, I administered morphine to him in a dropper into the corner of his mouth. It was at that point that every morning after I arose, I peeked into his bedroom where he was lying in a hospital bed, to see if he had died.

The nurses described to me how to determine when his death was near: if I heard a marked change in his breathing, I was to call the nurses. That happened. In retrospect, it was remarkable that I could

hear that his breath changed then about midnight on June 5^th. No one else did. The “girlfriend” was patently absent from the scene. My brother hovered. After one of the nurses arrived, she sat on the edge of Dad’s bed. In repeated motions, she used her stethoscope to listen to his heart, listened for the beat to fade away.  I was lying on the chaise opposite Dad’s bed. I could not see his face, only the back of the nurse who was sitting on his bedside leaning into him periodically to listen to his heart. My brother was standing at the other side of the bed. He announced the time of death as if he were doing a sports cast. Sports casting was his job at the time.

Someone called the mortuary. When the undertakers came, a strange question and answer period occurred in the hallway and then they went about their business in the bedroom. The nurse said that neither my brother nor I should witness Dad’s body being removed from the house. My brother and I went to separate rooms.  Somehow though, an image is left in my mind: Dad was in a heavy duty black plastic bag, his body rolled out on a gurney through the short carpeted hallway from the bedroom onto the wooden floor of the room size entrance foyer to the house out the door. I heard the wheels of the gurney roll on the hard wood floor and over the metal tread anchoring the large front door.

The best time I ever spent with my brother was the week after my father died. My brother was hilarious-he told jokes and imitated characters we both thought incredibly funny. We traveled around Charleston preparing for Dad’s memorial a week later and taking care of his personal business with lawyers Dad had appointed as executors of “the estate,” which began a seemingly endless year long nightmare. I let go of everything my brother did to annoy me.

My sister went on her predestined way as an alcoholic. I have not seen her since my father’s memorial. 

Hardly anyone came to the church to honor my father. It was sad really.

The reception afterwards was held at Dad’s house.

My father was cremated. The service to spread his ashes seemed thrown together. When it was time, at my urging, the three siblings handed my father’s ashes from a plastic bag to the tidal creek behind his house. The ashes felt un-soft, textural, gritty. Final and incipient. They drifted slowly in the trickle of water leaving as the tide went out.

It has been my choice to separate myself from my brother and sister. My brother has his own dysfunctional family that I really have no interest in sharing. My sister is like a leech. She comes at me with affection and fond memories of childhood when all she really wants is for me to support her financially and consume and spend together. I would become an accomplice to enabling her addictive personality much less her actual substance abuses.

*******

My son has spilled countless words on his blog relating the story of his becoming sober. His words sometimes are hard to come by for him. I can tell. Yet, he manages to describe horrific, to me, experiences. Each blog entry circles a theme. At first, the theme was surrounded by sentences dipped in anguish, sorrow, regret and the willingness to get out from under a heavy cloud.

How do I poeticize the angst pulsating through my blood after I read his words? As I move through each day.

I am an artist.

I draw lines.

Line after line after line.

Never seeking the right drawing of them.

Merely desirous of seeing them in another phase.

The evolution of the lines is infinite.

I will be absent for infinity. Unless I am determined to meditate through it now. 

Every morning. 

Every day. 

Every aftermath.

Of passing, Loss.

Thorough astonishment at the occurrences in the world.

Thorough disbelief in the rudeness of youth that greets me.

Embedding myself in soft spongy intelligence to escape my own serious human misdemeanors.

Where did my life go?

I can tell the story. Or stories. Of this remembrance or that.

What I cannot tell you is how upset I was the entire time until now.

How upset I am at the false notion that I do not do anything about what I think my situation is.

The pressure not to waste time is at my doorstep.

The pressure to live in the present from every source and angle possible incites my anxiety so that I think that I am not living in the present moment.

That I am not thinking in the present tense.

That I am not happy.

That I need to be somewhere else other than here.

Son.

Running the second year in a row for twelve hours.

One for every month he has been sober.

Running in the palm of nature’s hand,

Where he has indoctrinated himself with appreciation of the steps he takes

Of the air he breathes,

Of the preoccupations with dread he is trying to dismiss.

To take the next step.

To move on the dirt path.

Past the pines. 

Over the dropped needles.

We.

My son and I.

Behold the unphotographable.

We rush to nowhere.

Touched by annoyances of the external world, made of numbers generated by computers even if in alphabet form. 

We let go.

Moving away from terrorizing, irritating, head wrenching moments of inflexible constraints of time which are only figments of our imagination.

We do this separately.

We are of the same blood.

We do our lives separately.

The value of this similarity between us will remain forever on into the universe.

The value is in the price of the energy we expend to feel.

To feel. 

To feel. 

Fulfillment.

Fear nothing. 

He said.

He repeated.

He embraces us.

He or The.

Spirit or Molecules.

All.

All of them things, essences, air.

Unnameables.

Unreachables.

There. Here. Everywhere.

We go.

We are.

And ever shall be.

Mom.

Son.

Mom and Son.

Son and Mom.

One of the never-ending omnipresent unconditional relationships

That we as humans might identify.

No story cannot be told.

******

I generate my words as if to reinvent the wheel because although the thoughts I have are already known to the universe, it is I who is thinking them for the first time and in the context of my own life.

In the delivery of the news of Martin Luther King's death to a crowd assembled in support of his run for President, Robert Kennedy quoted Aeschylus:    

“And even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart,
 until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

Those words mean something to me: that for the despair that I have felt, that the will to live somehow within the very next actions throughout my days of depression, have I not grown? Have I not overcome that which will bring me down so that I can see into the future of my last days in another location, a source for generating new vision, for capturing refreshed imaginations, for exuding the energy radiating from whatever wisdom I have accrued, not by effort, but by introspection through doing my work, experiencing the silence, exercising quotidian activities towards the moments that will inhabit the next times. The ones I knew not to look forward to but which I knew would come.

My son and I have comfortable conversations now.

The result of the passage of time during which each practices self-made ways of healing and being healthy.

In studio in front of large wall drawing, 2015,
one week after another partner of only five years left.
Photo copyright Lyn Horton, 2015.

Copyright 2016 Lyn Horton