Floored

I am an avid listener of Public Radio, often while I am listening a story will grab my attention and off I go exploring a new topic.  Today's revelation was that a new hoard of precious metals, stones and other goods has just been found Staffordshire, England which is located in what was Mercia, near the River Trent.  (For a map of Anglo-Saxon England click here.)

Image originally in the article by DAILY MAIL REPORTER sited at the bottom of the page.

What is so stunning is the size of the hoard, there are an estimated 1,500 pieces, with over 5 kilos of gold alone. This find is also 1300 years old.  Most other large finds from the period are burials, generally of royals, where the grave-goods make up the bulk of the find; this what is known as a hoard, someone buried this for safe-keeping, likely intending to come back for it later.

Last summer I had the opportunity to visit the British Museum in London, England, there I was privileged to see a portion of the Sutton Hoo burial and other artifacts from this period.  Seeing these artifacts was a profound experience for me, as this period and place have been an object of fascination of me for many years.      Hours, days and even weeks have been filled with images, stories, re-enactment and archeological research  about this stuff. Seeing it in person, the patina on the metals, the craftsmanship, the way light glints off the incised knot work, this is the stuff of dreams and inspiration.

Now this hoard has been brought to light, and it is compared to finding another Sutton Hoo, or Tut's tomb, both finds revolutionized our concepts of those cultures.  Archiologists are awed and stunned by the find, there was no clue it could be there, and it was found by an unemployed man with a metal detector.  That makes my mind whirl.  What else is out there, what more can be found, when next will history be reshaped or clarified?

According to the British Museum is will more than 20 years before the full implication of the hoard is known.  Considering that each piece has a story to tell, that is outstanding and more than enough fodder to fuel my muses for a while to come.

This is one of the more in depth articles I have found so far on the subject:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1215723/Staffordshire-hoard-Amateur-treasure-hunter-finds-Britains-biggest-haul-Anglo-Saxon-gold.html

Information on the Sutton Hoo burial at the British Museum

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pe_mla/h/helmet_from_the_ship-burial_at.aspx

Art?

Warning: Philosophical and academic hyperbole to follow in this post.

What is Art? The loaded question, art is used in so many contexts that it makes my head spin. Is it based on creativity, or skill, or the knack of arranging elements or what? What qualifies as Art? Why am I an artist, not a tradesman or craftsman? What defines Art? And why am I capitalizing it?

I find that the most heated debates can rise from a difference of definition. In an effort to head off some of this conflict I will attempt to define Art in this context before going further, as it applies to me.

To start with the easy question, I am capitalizing it because Art embodies a collection of ideas that is so central to my way of being that I feel it has become a collective entity. In this case the capitalization reflects the tendency of pre-20th century writing to use capital letters to indicate emphasis.

In this case Art is defined as the attempt of one person in a specific time to communicate with another person and/or moment. How is that for vague? I am trying to say that it is when something is created, (an image, poem, novel, sculpture, play, speech, etc.) in an effort to preserve or transmit information for another.

Sometimes the communication is secondary to function, such as in the design of a chair, some times it is primary as with a poem. But it is the use of skill to craft this in such a way as to convey more than mere purpouse.

Designers use this when they use a particular color to invoke a response from their audience. If I were to see a woman wearing black I get impressions associated with that color, like night, shadows, mystery, Audry Hepburn in the dress from Breakfast at Tiffany's, the beatnik movement, Goths, mourning and a host of other things that I probably will not consciously register in the moment.

Manipulating color to create a response is one of the Elements of Design, which along with the Principles of Composition, create the core of a classical art education. For a basic discussions of these things see http://www.goshen.edu/art/ed/Compose.htm where a simple handout gives basic definitions of these things as they apply to the visual arts. I say visual arts because I have the most experience with these, but they can apply to other disciplines as well, just with some modifications. I will not go into these more in depth because I spent the last six years trying to learn about them, and only recently have been able to manipulate them with any, pardon the term, Art.

Anyway. So Art is using rules (or purposefully bending, breaking and rearranging them) with skill to communicate (with yourself and/or others). O.K. so is that ambiguous enough?

What I am trying to say is that for me it Art is a way of connecting the interlacing strands of the Universe and showing them to others. How A, influenced B, which is reflected by C, connects to M-Z and back again. It is this intricacy that defines my life, how no one thing is isolated that comforts me.

A play called Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare is based on the idea that if knowing someone is one degree of separation, and two steps is knowing someone who knows someone then everyone is connected by at most six from anyone else on Earth. It is also called "Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon" You can make your own on Facebook's Friend Wheel. This model is used by biologists, market analysts, web managers and others within their own field to find connections and influences. I, like others, take this further and apply it to everything, sometimes it takes a few more steps but it does work when given a chance.

So you see, sometimes these things get away from me, and I get a bit lost out amongst the connections. This leads to long rambling posts that I hope still get my point across before everyone looses interest.

And Away We Go

Here we are, the launch of a new blog, me officially getting my rear in gear to talk about art in general, crafts, history and anything those topics bring up (which covers just about everything).

After moving away from my core social support group, I have turned increasingly to art and crafts to structure my life. Since I was very young art has had a prominent part in my life, be it coloring, posters in my room, photography, sewing, embroidery, making clothes for my stuffed animals or reading books with my parents.

Then college, first an associates degree in technical theatre, where I discovered art history durring an elective course. From there to state school first in art history and then back to theatre, this time as a designer. This is where I became addicted to art, before it was only to theatre, there it was a facination with the people and the rush of shows, but design blew it all open for me.

I saw the connections spreading out, how history, art movements, psychology, color theory, anthropology, writing, architecture, social structures and the whole world lay interlaced in awe-inspiring beauty, stunning in its complexity, elegant, tangled and wonderfully obscure. I saw that nothing stands isolated.

It is in this world that I now live, having chosen to revel in it. It is from here that my creativity comes, from another artists work, an event on the news, the play of light through a drop of water, the clank of machinery out side my window, the colors of a frog, or a random internet blog.