Winter Comes to R50

Standing at the Threshold

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This time of year for creatives can be particularly challenging. It sometimes seems as if everyone is hustling to take advantage of the "biggest art buying season of the year" - and for some of us this can be paralyzing. It can be tough to balance purpose with commerce or get lost in the haze of creating for an audience.

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Or is it just me?

 

I recently received a bit of advice from someone had who had received it from someone who had noticed his wandering about, struggling to recall his purpose at the moment. Her directives were to take a beat, retrace your steps back to the doorway you walked through and pause. Linger a little, let your mind settle, and allow your purpose for walking through that door return. 

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His translation was : 

"Learn to linger in life’s liminal spaces until both memory and motivation becomes clear. Go stand in the doorways. Linger in those liminal spaces until your spirit and mind catch up with your body. Wait, until memory returns, before you move on."

 

As both an artist and a curator, I have found that instead of joining in the rush to "create for commerce", taking a beat and lingering in the threshold to catch my breath, refocus my vision, and let the art, muse, & purpose have their way. 

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Tis the season -

To Linger, to listen, to create.

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dj haynes

Editor

 

Music: What a Difference a Day Makes - Dinah Washington

Meditation: When Life Gives You Liminal -  Adam Mixon 

                 https://mministry.org/when-life-gives-you-liminal/

Art/Artist: Resisting Lfe Forces #3  -  Betty Blayton-Taylor (1937 – 2016)

Most commonly known as a founding member of the Studio Museum in Harlem, Betty Blayton was also an accomplished abstract painter. Her works—“spiritual abstractions,” as she called them—were made through a process that combined monotype printing with traditional painting.

In these abstract prints, Blayton plays with the graduation of hues, often a single color or color family. Viewers are left hypnotized as they sink into the swirl of color, ink, and water that conjure the otherworldly, as evident in Resisting Life Forces #3 (2000). An accomplished educator and curator, Blayton was a foundational abstractionist for many New York–based artists in the late 20th century, including the legendary Jean-Michel Basquiat, her former student.