Distinguishing Features

Here's another facade of one of the buildings in Balboa Park that I took on my walk last week. Seeing it here with the palm trees really does make it look as though it's someplace in Brazil or the Philippines or other tropical country. I like to take photos of some of the less obvious landmarks, sites. After all, everyone who goes to Paris takes a photo of the Eiffel Tower. I did too. But I like to take photos of other buildings, people, and conveyances in other countries, too. I like to ride along and think to myself, "how do I know that I'm in France, or Russia, or India, or California?" What are the distinguishing features.

I suppose you could say that's what art is about, seeing the distinguishing features and presenting them in a new way, helping people see that Paris is more than the Eiffel Tower, that Agra is more than the Taj Mahal, that a woman's eyes may not be the same size or on different sides of the nose, or that the arboretum is always east of the museum. That's my plan with my little copper pop-ups which today have been cutouts, like trees made of two flat pieces with slits in them that join at right angles to create a three dimensional object. I'd like to make a whole series of trees, plants, hills, buildings, all of which can be rearranged continually in an ever-changing landscape.

So tomorrow, I hope I'll feel up to going back to work. I have lots of paperwork to do, but I also have lots of artwork that I want to create. Landscapes of copper and brass, maybe everything fitting together on a copper "carpet" on which I've written one of my poems. I'm really excited about this project, providing I can get the look that I want. I can visualize how I want everything to look. It remains to be seen whether it will turn out the way I picture it.

I love drawing patterns on the copper. I need to do so much of it that I don't mind cutting up the pieces once they're etched, because the etched pieces add so much to anything I construct out of copper. It's so much more meaningful to add a piece that's already etched than one that's plain. So I need to get busy and etch more copper and not be afraid to cut up what I have already etched. I have a million ideas.

Yesterday I was listening to an interview that Terry Gross of NPR did with Leonard Cohen, the composer and musician. She asked him if he ever wished that his songs could come out more positive and not so sarcastic. Well, I'm not sure that's the word she used, but something like that. And he said that yes, he would like his songs to be different, but that when he sits down to write he just has to go with the energy that he has. That's something we all need to remember as artists. I can look at a pop-up book that I love the style of, but when I go to make my own pop-up book, it's going to be in my style, my "voice." And each of us needs to find our own voice in which to express ourselves. We can't copy each other because we each have a different voice.