poemimage

The visual & the poetic.

Category: Drawing

December 12, 2021

12/12/21 – 1/2/22 equals 21 days & All Best to You!

Update: I spent the last three days editing (in ‘real time’ on this blog) the poem that started as Ventilator, changed to Starlight, and ended up as Conversation With a Tree. I have a bad habit of posting first drafts then editing over the next few days.

Update: On June 2, 2021 I posted this: https://poemimage.com/category/x-steven-mccabe-1-10-complete-by-one-unit-of-measurement/

I was at that early point 1/10th complete painting a 33′ X 5′ roll of Italian mixed-media paper working left to right.

Today I am 75% complete. Gouache, watercolour, inks, water-soluble graphite crayon. Blues, whites, shades of black. Working title: Druidica Blue – Deja Vu. The themes of this painting carry great meaning for me.

I see light at the end of the tunnel. Soon 80% complete.

A slew of other things also require my attention.

I wish you well over the Solstice, Christmas and Hanukkah season. If I’ve missed your religious experience forgive me. I look forward to your postings when I return.

All best to you!

4 Comments
December 10, 2021

Conversation With a Tree

I was walking down the street on my way to the club,

though it was a bit early,

to see if my connection in the underworld

could score me a certain device

when I heard my name.

I looked up and saw a big face.

Tree said, ‘Where are you going?’

I said, ‘Canterbury.’

Tree said, ‘Wrong way. And you’re not Chaucer.’

I said, ‘Blake lives down that laneway. Maybe I’m William Blake.’

Tree took a step back and said, ‘William Blake!

Imagine I told you I was a reindeer or a shaman wearing

an enchanted curvilinear headdress.’

I said, ‘You could easily be

and still be Tree.’

Tree stepped back once more and said,

‘Imagine enchanted space all-round, horizontal & vertical.

Me pumping air, enough, for the two of us –

both of us, Blake & reindeer & shaman too

day & night.

So tell me what you really need.’

I considered the question and said,

‘ More so than a certain device

I need the light of one star

flooding my plum, smoke-swirled heart.’

Tree said, ‘In this you are not alone.’

Tree huffed & came up close again curvilinear & vertical

Pointing away, far, to distant golden sand,

horizontal beneath vast night, black as smoke, arcing.

Tree said, ‘Over there. Those three figures

on camel on foot

swirled up & fishing about

aimed into a brilliance

& trudging below,

sloughing into the vast night…’

Tree said, ‘Go.

And while you’re at it, stay away from the underworld.

I know about your connection.’

I said, ‘Okay Tree.’

Tree said, ‘Okay,’ also

in a voice rough as bark

familiar with the underworld.

2 Comments
December 8, 2021

Two Images in Combination, a Quote From Krishnamurti, the Missing Word Recovered + Yin Yang

One empty space binding two sounds

Two words bind silent-space sound

Three words missing in the empty field

Four words found in neighbouring silence.

It is no measure of ______ to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly ____ society.

Combination _____.

___________ image.

2 Comments
December 6, 2021

Monday Report

My posting last week (Bring Out the Trees in the Heart) went from jumble to rumble. From first draft to resonance of final draft in real time over two or three days online editing.

I decided to make chicken soup yesterday but found one potato only. Should I walk 20 minutes & save 1.00 on a bag of organic potatoes or 40 minutes & save 1.75 at a small store I like. Instead I went down to the lakeshore with my artist friends Charles and Marc. We walked around in biting wind & driving thin snow discussing, among other things, the artist Cecily Brown.

A young artist this past week told me about the new movie Trial of the Chicago Seven and wondered what I knew about the subject matter. One thing is connected to another. It brought back a flood of connections I shared with him.

I had an old doctors’ bag like this, although black, the summer I was seventeen and headed out for California. Instead I ended up in a traveling carnival, one of the many that no longer exist, working for an artist who had a psychedelic tent show and two other attractions. I met & dialogued with the (late) artist’s daughter on Facebook.

I remembered the doctors’ bag after watching a few clips of the movie Trial of the Chicago Seven on YouTube and instinctively compared now to then.

Mixed-media on cardboard 8.5″ X 11″ 2020

From jumbled mass

In biting wind & driving thin snow

intuitively

one of the many that no longer exist.

The reason I remembered.

Cha
2 Comments
November 19, 2021

GIF Experiments: 29 (Goodbye, a painting)

I said ‘goodbye’ to a painting this week. Sprayed it with four sweeps of archival varnish half an hour between on a warmish day and packaged it the next. I wanted to write the title on the back but couldn’t find it. So I just started calling the painting ‘Goodbye.’

The canvases with blues I’ve done the last couple years psyched me for using blues on the 5′ X 33′ roll (scroll) of Italian paper I began in late April. That work is now 70% complete. There is no chance of forgetting the title because I rework it often. One word is Druidica.

As for Photoshop 5 and troubles with ‘scratch discs’ – if I save a simple GIF to Web & Devices at the first warning the program won’t shut down on me. But no large files and nothing tricky! So it goes.

3 Comments
November 2, 2021

Perfume

Over the last four days I put long hours into my (mostly done in blues) Druidica painting on the 33′ X 5′ roll of Fabriano mixed-media paper.

Too much dark coffee and not enough water. I unrolled and rolled the paper like a scroll on the floor – mostly in silence.

A fellow down the street wheels his wheelchair into an alcove to stay out of the wind. Today he was playing music from a French composer. It sounded like a film score from the sort of movie that no longer exists.

I found the following drawing & short poem as a draft and moved a few words around.

I follow the star

to a newborn

oak tree.

Sunlight arrives

beaming through

deep space

perfuming the grove.

 

4 Comments
Image | October 27, 2021
Leave a comment
October 3, 2021

No Wonder My Hand Looks Old

I took photos this summer of flowers. They looked like flying bees. Or bee-like entities.

Sitting outside in a cafe patio this past weekend with my Hypnogogia Book 1 & Book 2 drawing collective buddies Charles and Marc I touched a tickle on my knuckle. Then a yellow jacket bit me. I think he bit me and stung me. Didn’t feel bad at first. At three in the morning I woke up with a swollen hand filled with pulsing needle-like pain.

Made a paste with baking soda. Soothing. The paste was dried in the morning on the plastic lid like terrain on a fragile planet. The powdery planet or maybe the paste planet.

My hand puffed-up like a blow fish. From one little bite! Or sting! Or both. What shocked me the most was how old my hand looked. How both hands looked old. The bigger and the lesser. In other news Bob Dylan is 80.

Last night I watched one of those ‘reaction’ videos. Younger people react to older songs. One guy loved Dylan singing One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below) in Rolling Thunder Revue.

Dylan brought his Rolling Thunder Revue to Toronto Dec. 1 & 2, 1975. One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below) is on the playlist both nights. I don’t remember which of the two nights I went. It was a long time ago. No wonder my hand looks old.

Watch here

When I was a boy in the Missouri Ozarks I disturbed a yellow jackets’ mansion down some secret hole in the dirt. They attacked. At that moment the mailman walked up and said, ‘You’re not going to let those little things bother you are you?’

Well, yes.

I remember amber-coloured sorghum syrup in a tin gallon can. Maybe aluminum. I remember tapping down the lid. We spread sorghum on bread and poured it over pancakes. Sorghum likes to grow in thin clay soil. Missouri has a lot of thin clay soil. When they boil down the grain for syrup it’s called ‘the long sweetening.’

I said this to myself right now in the cadence of the voices I heard as a boy. The long sweetening. Sounds like a phrase from long, long ago. No wonder my hand looks old.

5 Comments
July 15, 2021

A Memory from July 10, 2013

I am working on a new GIF to accompany 5 lines from Lyon by Pierre L’Abbe. The stanza he sent me is so evocative I keep creating new images. So a few more days until I post that.

In the meantime, in a file folder, I found a poem & drawing from July 10, 2013. Close to eight years ago. My dryer was broken, though not the washing machine, so I went to the laundromat with bags of wet clothing. I brought a pen and paper.

The memory of writing a poem in the laundromat impacts me more than re-reading the poem. The poem touches on loss. It was a big deal at the time. As big as the universe. The drawing seems to be about the future. And loss as well.

He examines something, a memory, maybe it belonged to somebody, while his body transforms. He’s growing wings made of fossils or maybe a spiked spinal column has departed. Disappearing. His tears fall channeled into ancient patterns. Or maybe those channels teach him new patterns. Giving him fuel. Leaves, or flames, grow from his eyes. A drawing about vision.

A quickly sketched ink drawing might express many secrets. Something unknown always at work.

2 Comments
July 10, 2021

GIF Experiments: 24 (The Ronettes… although)

I’m glad I was able to post a GIF today. I was working with a large volume of images interpreting five lines from Lyon by Pierre L’Abbe and need more time. I will (knock on wood) assemble that GIF this coming week. In the meantime I offer this ‘slow-moving river of a GIF’ featuring (ostensibly) The Ronettes, although they too were code for something else I suspect, considering when I drew them.

THIS GIF HAS SUFFERED SOME SORT OF DAMAGE OVER TIME. EACH PANEL IS SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE THIS (BELOW). I WILL FIX THIS (REPLACE) AT SOME POINT.

2 Comments