I dug a single hole yesterday, been on my heart of months. It will be the front right corner of my new studio at Fair Haven. It was a sacred act, one of the most sacred I have ever made. I had put it off for years trying to decide if an ancient man can fill a studio. Not fill it with stuff but fill it with himself, is there enough of me left to make that leap of faith possible? What’s left of me is maimed, paralyzed, numb, stiff and broken and art takes hard grizzled stuff, fought for stuff, deep stuff. But I have come to acknowledge that the artist in me is better than the me that houses him and so I dug the hole. A single hole upon which I am sure, bent and gnarled, I can yet be.
Building a studio is not like building a shed. It is more akin to driving a stake into the central matter of the universe. It declares you are here for the expressed intention of making sense of it all, for adding to the universal explanation, for guiding humans forward and upward. Making art is not for the skillful but for the burdened. Skill is reserved for the proud; burden is the mantle of pious humility. Try as we may, I see no avenue by which art can be separated from God, the One True God nor artist from the all-out pursuit of Him.
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