Clouds
The Official Cloud Creator of the Tattoo Garden of Capella traces ink across the vapors in his fire and brimstone cavern, colors the clouds greens and shades of blue, adds a touch of ruby red and lipstick, forms ripe sunset papayas, Mexican yellow, Waimanalo orange, and fleshy Kapoho, gathers the mangos, peaches and pears, dips them deep into his molten liquids, lets them simmer and flame, then opens each lid one after the other, inks the clouds with color and lets them float into the sky. Why must a cloud be a shade of gray? he yells, his arms exuberant, White? Cotton made? Why must the sky...
Read MoreSometimes the Messenger Deserves Killing
Once you start stabbing people who deserve it, where do you stop? So many worthy candidates. Macbeth’s problem. At least he had a wife to blame. There are always going to be witches, cackling over cauldrons, to set you thinking, woods to get lost in mid-life, battles to come back from with your mind on chores left undone back at the castle, scores to settle, slights to avenge. The moat needs draining, the murder holes are low on oil, and that distant relative chained to the dungeon wall has a dentist’s appointment. No need to question where these messages come from, this clarity that...
Read MoreEighth Century Horse on Leaf of Handscroll
Tiny threads of rein and bridle look as if added in a later world to arrest his bucking head, to calm his terror-filled eye, white-haloed. He is the very picture of fear and is tethered to a pole so his four feet, levitated for flight, are frozen in time. Could I know what frightens him if this print were more than detail, if the characters of black brush stroke and red pictorial stamps were of my time and language? The story reflected in his eye is mine, though, speaks that moment when all is not as we long held.
Read MoreFeatured Works: Week of Oct 19 (Contemplation)
Amid the global uncertainty of the past several months, we have at times become overwhelmed. For many of us, it has also been a time of reflection and contemplation, as demonstrated by this week’s contributors. “On Gary Hume’s ‘The Whole World’” by Brian Cromwall delves into the all-encompassing qualities of our brains. “Those Unheard are Sweeter” by Thomas DeConna explores the inner world of a man whose deep thoughts are mistaken for shyness. “Somewhere in the Night” by John Hawkins takes a nocturnal bus trip that explores the narrator’s place in the...
Read MoreOn Gary Hume’s “The Whole World” (2011)
Usually I prefer the image to go off the edges of the panel, for it to be larger than the space I can capture it in. - Gary Hume The brain is a soaked cabbage, its iters ancient mazes beneath new gloss of orbits gentle in dark magenta space. Why are this world’s edges so close? Below, nothing else interrupts; we nearly fall off the old thought into color, a race of slaw slowly watching its own wrinkles age, age into forever’s...
Read More