Representative of Humanity/Flower of Life Series 3/19/2024

This is one of my latest colored pencil drawings.

Karin Jarman

Gallery

Alexandra Villarreal Interviewing Stephen Hawks Concerning AI in Art and Design

Artificial Intelligence In Art and Design

Although I am far from an expert on AI, I have thought about it even recently as it has been in the news. I have only had a few conversations briefly about AI with others including my oldest daughter and I was glad to have this opportunity to have this rather long dialogue with Alexandra Villarreal. I tend to digress quite a lot and was somewhat depleted by the first week of fall semester, but to her credit, she is a good listener and kept me on topic. I thought that others might be interested in what is discussed, a counterpoint to what is already out their in the larger discussion. There are a few places where I never completed a specific thought, so I ask the viewer to give me the benefit of the doubt, that behind what may seen ramblings at times are valid and logical progressions of thought.

Alexandra Villarreal is a Communications major with a minor in design at UTRGV where I teach design and ceramics. She chose to interview me and other colleges from a faculty list. That said, this is the first time I have ever met her, all-be-it through the internet. She is mostly on the campus in Edinburg and I in Brownsville.

Elegy for An American Dream

Free Speech

We in our lifetime create
A hierarchy of images.
We catalogue and characterize
That which we see
And what we make,
A pencil drawing,
A scrambled egg,
And digital flickering lights.
Having travelled only in the states
And not so much the wide world.
On the one hand
I’ve passed through,
Lived in, seen
The Rocky Mountains,
The Appalachians, and the southern swamps,
But Venetian waterways and Catholic meccas
Like the Sistine chapel,
I have seen and feel I somehow know,
The Florentine baptistry doors,
Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Master works,
Staring back in silence
Through a veil of light,
Or from some dog eared
And decaying Folio,
Like crumbling edifices of stone,
And this, not mentioning the Greeks,
The Alhambra, The Goetheanum,
The Hagia Sophia,
Nor the Russian saints,
Post-Byzantine.
I’ve, visited the habitations
Of the Southern Cult,
But not the Mesoamerican
Pre-Columbians I taught.
We, somehow make things all the same,
Tear down, build up
Our past and present lights,
Replace the sacred with profane
And general sights,
And yet,
the power in these
May be the same,
May be the reason for our present history,
Post history, post-modernist,
Post-colonial, post Kant,
Neo spiritual in which
We merge with everything and nothing-
Nothing,
Not a thing at all,
This self-negating paradox,
Can separate us now from God,
Not even when we cannot say:
“God is!”

Jenny Floch

In February 2023 I ran into a colleage at the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art durring my exhibition there. While explaining some of the ideas behind the work, he mentioned that he had a family friend that was both a potter and an Anthroposophist. I asked her name, Jenny Floch, and later researched her work on the internet. After emailing her, I was eventually able to call her and have a conversation. I collected some images of her work from the internet but also asked her to send me images, which she did. I have been meaning to post these and write an article about our conversation but have had trouble accessing my account. Here are those images. I enjoyed our conversation. If I can decipher my notes, I will write more later.



Presentation

At the Threshold of Consciousness

Threshold of Consciousness

This Exhipit is comprised of Paintings, Drawings, Ceramic sculptures, pottery, and installation.

Description of Instalation:

Elegy for An American Dream, Installation 2021-2023:

• American Dream Totem, Ceramic
• Altar, Wood
• Chalk Drawing on Black Paper
• Jacob and Boaz Candle Holders, Ceramic
• Chalk on Black Paper
• Worn Braided Rug by Catherine Hawks (artist’s mother), Hand and machine sewn, braided cloth

The installation is somewhat based on a dream I had at least 2 decades ago. It is an altar and a hearth with a totemic work incorporating the 4 seraphic beings as well as a coyote, an American trickster being, standing in for Anubis, a spirit guide. This is flanked by 2 candle holders with candles, referencing the 2 candles in Masonic Temples, Jacob and Boaz, They are entwined by 2 monsters as described in Revelation rising up from the land and water, representing the temptations of mind and body, the physical and the sensual, Lucifer and Ahriman (The Persian name for Satan). Written on the altar are the words “That Good May Become”, a quote from Rudolf Steiner’s Foundation Stone Meditation. There is a braided rug made by my mother in front of the altar, that personalizes the piece and reiterates the idea of hearth and home. Behind the piece is a large chalk drawing on black paper of a minimalist representation of an American gothic country church floating in the stars with the tunnel of light from near death experiences above and to the right. Beside this are 4 ceramic platters, 2 on either side, with images of the seraphic beings again, also historically referred to as the 4 evangels representing Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John.

It is, as all altars, indicative of a gateway to the spirit world. It is called an Elegy because it is meant to evoke an experience of great loss (but also potential) in the face of great temptations placed before America at the threshold of consciousness, in the wake of any unifying spirituality or culture, whether Indigenous, European, or otherwise. There is also intended, an echo of the Great Awakening of the late 19th century within the work.

Fredrich Schiller on the Aesthetic Education of Man In a Series of Letters

I resently finished this book, Schiller being of interest to me in relation to Goethe and to the phenominon of Weimar Classicism, and its historical importance in the present world. I serindipidously found this book at the Freinds of the Library store, in Brownsville Texas. Who else was reading Schiller here I couldn’t say. Even though the ideas embodied in Weimar Classicism were centered in and applied by specific artists and writers in Weimar durring Schiller’s and Goethe’s lives, the ideas stretch backwards and forwards in time and are, through interpolation and application, relevent today.

One of the main things I noticed and identified with is his deliniation between the sensual and the cognative experience of art, and a higher experience that assimilates both. This is perhap a gross simplification but it is remenisiant of Hegalian dialectic and Nietzsche’s aesthetics. For me these aesthetic perspectives resonate, as I also associate them both historically and in relation to Anthreoposophical aesthetics, specifically Steiner’s group sculpture and related sculptures and paintings.

Historically, the context may be interpreted in the dicotomy of the romantic and the classical movements in art. This can be deduced and applied forward and backwards in time ad infinitum. Some specific art historical examples might be, a comparison between Greek and Roman art of an earlier age, or the impressionist’s rebellion against accedemic art or even Courbet’s realism in contrast to the impressionists and impressionism v.s. post impressionism. Another past example would be Renaisance v.s. Manerist art. Michael Angelo encompassed both. These shifts between the sensual and the cognative or ideal can be seen even within art movements and practitioners. They are never simply a duality, for instance synthetic cubism v.s. analitic cubism. In post-modern art there is an argument that designates an end to the avant guard and this duality is less distinguishable between consecutive movements. However, the ideas can still be observed or applied, the sensual is always present in visual art. Even the most profoundly conceptual has visual componants. The most idealistic art relies heavily on sensual experience to convey concept. Conversly, often the most sensual art raises us to heights of contemplation. It is also inherrant in art that we deal atavistically, and towards fuller conciousness, with the sublime and with essential. and experiential spiritual realities.

I have digressed a little from the content of Schillers Letters. They are not an easy read, and if I do not do them justice here I appologize. For those interested, they are worth the effort.