reverse threading

the path back is the path forward

Tag Archives: artistry


by 1 Comment

squeaking. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

“squeaking with joy, ” cousin kate wrote – all in caps – “the turtles are back!”.

at the exact time she sent that, we were on our trail, on the bridge over the river, gazing down at the turtles. we had seen a couple earlier in the spring, but then it got cold and they disappeared. now, they are back – seemingly for good – and we, too, are squeaking with joy.

earlier in the winter, i had written:

“i think about the turtles. they are there in the warmer months, sunning on logs and rocks that jut out of the river. but, when it dips below fifty degrees or so – and stays there – they disappear. apparently, they dive down to the muddy bottom, their metabolism slows down, they require less oxygen. their mucky homes keep them safe as they bide time, these wise, long-lived creatures of the water and the land.

we know they are there – somewhere – in hidden spots, places they feel sheltered and secure. i think about what they might be doing. they are silent and the fallow is long. i trust they are sorting what is next, kind of like us.

time keeps moving, though, and i keep hope that when it warms up and the turtles have a more secure sense of themselves in the world they will reappear, out of the suspension of presence. i’m hoping for an early spring.

and waiting. and the river freezes. and then it thaws.“

and then i had this idea walking down the hall the other day. it was a the-turtles-are-back idea.

in my mind i named it “out of fallow” or “out of the mud” or even “the relevant challenge” or “on the fly” but the name is fluid. the idea floated around and landed tiny feet on my brain, so i eventually told david about it.

it’s relatively simple. we choose ten destinations – in wisconsin, in the midwest, on the northeast coast, in the high mountains, on quiet southern beaches, in the canyonlands, in the grand national parks – all different projects. taking a yamaha portable battery-operated keyboard (with recording/disc drive capability), ten canvases and paint, both laptops, and a couple spiral notebooks – we go to each destination for a pre-determined amount of time (say, three hours). while there, i compose on the fly – what that place feels like – and he paints on the fly – what that place feels like. on the fly – spontaneous creation – is not for the meek at heart. it requires focus, has a terminal product necessary at the end – a short time after beginning – and necessitates a degree of letting go. it pushes us back into the active-art-place and pushes us past edges. it gets us out of the muddy bottom. it produces the raw pieces of an album to be orchestrated and a collection of paintings to be framed. it needs some support to get off the ground. it has me pondering, swimming to the surface with the turtles.

our snouts will pop out of the river and we’ll look around some, trying to figure it out. we would definitely need some encouragement, some warm sun, some help.

and, if we move forward, out of the suspension, we – turtles, too – will definitely be squeaking.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY

turtles love coffee.


by 1 Comment

green eyes and creativity. [merely-a-thought monday]

“workers might want to consider these top 10 skills, which employers say are rising in importance over the next five years: 1. creative thinking.” (jane thier – fortune magazine)

mm-hmm. yup. #2 is analytical thinking. i’m pretty certain that without creative thinking, analytical thinking would hit dead-ends every time. and self-destruct.

the other night, in the middle of the night, the wee hours of the night when one is supposed to be sleeping, i was – shockingly – wide awake. we had a long conversation, chatting about places we had lived way-earlier-on, jobs we had way-earlier-on. i talked about eating lots of kellogg’s cornflakes and he talked about mountains of pbj sandwiches. we have both had histories of piecemeal, making-it-work, scrappy artists weaving a tapestry of living with rough-hewn shreds of granola-cotton, jute, hemp, fabrics not fine or finished but with torn edges and maybe a little holey.

larkfield road in east northport made it possible. many of my jobs – early-on – were on this road. i worked at the music store, the camera store, the dive shop, one of the churches – all on this road – before i left long island. i bought my cornflakes at the king kullen and my gas at the corner citgo, splurgy pizzas down the road and sub sandwiches next to the post office. i drove all over teaching piano lessons and saved whatever i could at the bank that gave away plates for deposits on the corner of larkfield and clay pitts. none of it was fancypants. but it gave me a different expectation bar and it was all setting the stage for a creative life.

it’s funny to me that it takes a fortune magazine article to espouse the merits of creative thinking. the number 1 top skill rising in importance – as if it’s something new. ahhh. but, perhaps it is.

for we know, better i’d say than many, the difference in actually choosing a creative path. creativity, artistry – these lead you in a direction that is unrevealed, a direction that is vulnerable, a direction that has no guarantees.

an accountant, say, knows that any amount of time spent on a project will be remunerated. time spent = time paid for. it’s really a lovely equation. and both of us have had positions in our lives when this equation was in place.

but the instant we list back to the artist side, all equations dissipate into a fog and people – the same ones who turn to the arts in watershed moments of their lives – suggest we might consider exposure of our work our form of payment. i imagine writing to the wisconsin energies company – “i’ll give you ten exposures for this $326 bill.” more so, i imagine their response. yikes!

and so, here we are. the workworld – so to speak – is catching up a tiny bit. employers are beginning to recognize the value of creative thinking…maaaybe. the COO of fortune, dan shapero, is quoted, “the long-term trend is pretty undeniable that the demand for skills outpaces the supply of skills.”

perhaps he – representing employers everywhere – is not looking in the right places.

creative thinking is found in creative people, the ones exposing their work to the world, the ones who scrimp and bring to fruition projects that started in a thought bubble, the ones who don’t have the same organizational principle applied to their vitae and whose vitae, perhaps, would go the way of bot-trash, but who have a thru-hiked life (sometimes many, many years of life – decades even – making age yet another employment challenge) – with creativity their north star.

as people-with-active-resumes we note that our schooling is bachelors and masters degrees – framed and unframed- in bins in the basement somewhere. our work experience is a little bit of that tapestry i was talking about. it’s been garnered in educational settings, in corporate settings, in public service, in non-profits like theatres and churches, in software startups, on stages and on radio, in studios with canvas and studios with microphones. our creative output is found in albums, in paintings, in books, in blogs, in cartoons, in plays, in workshop projects.

we get creative thinking.

i passed green eyes down to her. he got his eye color from his dad. both of them are wildly creative. their lives have already been a tapestry of edges. i couldn’t be more proud.

“the most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” (mary oliver)

*****

happy birthday to my beloved girl.

read DAVID’S thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

coffee or share or follow or chat with us if you’d like 🙂


by 1 Comment

we are all in our underwear. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

with great fervor, he said, “we are all desperate to make sense out of this life.”

“play the fool,” ethan hawke’s words of wisdom.

every day of this mysteriously unknown-unrevealed-unmapped extended journey of life we have been granted – we are seeking to make sense.

and – in the moment of moments – the ones when the abyss is evident or the peak is present, the ones when confusion reigns supreme, the ones when you cannot imagine any more bliss or any more dread or any more ardor or any more devastation, the ones when complexity is the starting gate, the ones on the roller coaster you wish someone would stretch out flat – in those moments none of this – any form of art – any medium, any life-giving expression of creativity – is a luxury. it surely does sustain, heal, breathe life into the motionless heart of fear or sadness. it is the music, the paintings, the photographs, the lyrics, the poetry, the clay pot in your hand, the dance. it is what the pads of your fingers touch just simply by seeing, hearing, reading, smelling, tasting, watching. necessary. of the essence. crucial. fundamental.

“give your heart to everybody you meet. the rest is pretense.” (e.h.)

and – the creators – each of us – stand by, fools all of us. humankind. finding who we are, what we love, expressing, connecting.

“showcasing a piece is allowing it to come to full bloom, to let it breathe in the world, to share it. but showcasing a piece is not for the meek at heart.

in the way you would likely feel standing in your underwear in a town square, introducing the world to some new piece of your heart is raw. on old wooden stages with a piano and a mic, centered on a wall with a tiny price tag placed nearby, during poetry-reading night in the corner of the general store, sharing with the novel-writing club every first thursday, skating the first performance on ice, tapping “publish” on a blog each day … pieces of your heart float shakily about as you try to hold onto sisu and stay grounded. it matters not how many times you have done this. your heart has been unbridled and you are allowing others in. each and every time.” (the underwear moments* – kerri sherwood)

“but then i thought about beauty. i thought about how artists dive below the surface, try to find the depth of meaning, try to hear and see that which others might pass by, not noticing. i thought about stages and boom mics and connection and standing in front of a diebenkorn – or a robinson – deep inside, marveling. i thought about arvo pärt and his absolute tug on my heart. i thought about john denver and simplicity. i thought about recording studios and soaring string sections, cello lines that make clouds rearrange to allow in light. the weaving of intricate relationship between people and nature, between people and art in any form.

there have been moments – and i can actually remember them – when i have been driving and listening to a song and i weep or hiking and seeing something so stunning i stop and cannot move. these moments when i know, without a doubt, that it was right to turn down the business-school-accounting-program acceptance. these moments when i know, without a doubt, that i will not have the same security as the person-i-would-have-been following that route. moments when i feel a sense of pride to be a tiny part of the tapestry of what people turn to in time of rejuvenation, of rest, of crisis, of pure bliss. these moments when i know, without a doubt, that somewhere along the way what i have done with my time has touched someone, has opened them, has taken them diving with me. below the surface of this great big world – to beauty.” (the gig economy tapestry – kerri sherwood)

“…boldness. the uninhibited freedom of expression – artistry come to fruition in the moment of utter sharing. terrifying and liberating. raw and real. the underwear moments.”(*)

this great big planet earth. sedimentary layers of beauty. we are all in our underwear.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY

www.buymeacoffee – a link or this QR code – if you wish


by 1 Comment

we are naked trees. [two artists tuesday]

it is entirely and utterly exfoliated. delaminated. naked.

the slender tree stands alone in the marshland, like a graceful ballerina in allongé. barely a side branch, it is stunning against a blue blue sky.

and, yet, in all its raw nakedness, its vulnerability, it stands proudly, stalwart, determined. it is still alive.

we stand next to our canvases, in front of microphones, in recording studios, on wooden stages, at qwerty keyboards, poised in front of 88 keys, with ballet shoes or tap shoes or jazz shoes, behind the cine-camera, in front of the cine-camera, at the potter’s wheel, baton in hand, holding sculpting tools or playscripts, focusing lens and aperture, holding written words in our fingers.

we are naked trees in the marsh. we stand – vulnerable to the elements – unprotected. we brave lack. we brave abundance. we withstand the inbetween.

we are exfoliated every single time we put it out there. we are artists.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY


by 2 Comments

beyond the edge. [d.r. thursday]

this installation was beautiful. stunning. olafur eliasson’s rainbow bridge was in a room full of light and the spectrum of color was immediately striking. and then, we walked into the room further and all the color disappeared, instead spheres of glass reflected the windows and the water outside the museum. “the appearance of the spheres is unstable, slipping between clarity, colour, and blackness in response to the slightest movement of the viewer.” (olafur) if you stand right in front of one of the twelve spheres, you can see your reflection upside down, teasing you to make faces and play. we could have visited with this piece all day – moving around the room, standing still, watching the light waltz and dip as the hours wore on.

“its [the extraordinary] concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formlessness that is beyond the edge.” (mary oliver- upstream)

and so, when we finally moved on, past the sunlit rainbow, i’m quite sure we were both in that dreamy place – the place where you linger in all the vast possibilities that are out there – combinations of color and sound, notes joining together, brushes brushing, harmonics floating above you and bass notes stabilizing your foothold. it is a place of creation, where you feel the tendrils of ideas, of paintings, of songs, of melodies of piano, of sweeping strings and mournful french horns, of spattered acrylic, of photographs with intense depth of field. it is the place we visit on the trail, on the mountains, on the seashore, in our studios. it is beyond the edges of billpaying folders and mortgages, student loans and job searches. it flies past all the details of everyday mundane. it is nebulous and it is visceral.

we moved out of the room – newly equipped with dream – refreshed because someone else had “put it out there”. someone else – also – had vision and the impulse to express it. someone else – also – had stood for long hours, sat for long hours, pondered for long hours in front of canvas or a piano or on a wooden dance floor or waiting for the perfect snapshot. someone else had composed – the extraordinary – from out beyond the edge. and its whisperings fell on our ears, encouraging our response to it and reminding us to jump.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

earth interrupted VI

visit the ongoing construction on david’s website


by 1 Comment

the icing on the cake. [merely-a-thought monday]

it’s 925 miles from the corner of sixth avenue and west 55th street, but it displaced me in an instant. there i was – back sometime in the 70’s, in new york city, seeing robert indiana’s love sculpture for the first time. i loved love then. i love love now. (could that be any more redundant?!)

a part of sculpture milwaukee in 2018, this sculpture has returned and was permanently installed at the milwaukee art museum in 2019. we saw it for the first time last week. life and covid interrupted our visits to mam. we were really happy to be back. seeing love out the window facing lake michigan’s lakefront was the icing on the cake.

there are nearly fifty of these sculptures around the world. people travel far and wide to have their photographs taken next to the iconic stacked word. it became a u.s. postal stamp in 1973. it has big history. its artist has big history.

the success of this giant – yet simple – sculpture begs questions for me: what musical gesture might be equivalent to this sculpture? what rhythmic or melodic motif has this kind of powerful impact? googling these questions produces a plethora of suggested lists – everything from classical to motown to the beatles and beyond. i suppose it’s a truly personal thing.

any listener of albinoni’s adagio in g minor or j.s. bach’s air on the g string or arvo pärt’s spiegel im spiegel or ennio morricone’s gabriel’s oboe or john denver’s annie song or leonard cohen’s hallelujah or carole king’s you’ve got a friend or aretha’s r-e-s-p-e-c-t or the beatles’ here comes the sun or, for that matter, eldar kedem’s you and i or any piece composed and played or sung by giant artists or tiny independent artists …. any listener of anything arrives at the place of listening – the dropped-down-out-of-the-universe of their own world – individually. we tote along with us our lives-at-the-moment, our busy schedules, our worries, our longings, color and breath and heart, a distinctively different set of ears. we hear and we listen and we are transported by music to worlds away, places and times stored up, a chorus of commentators in us telling silent stories in viewmaster snippets, our hearts grasping the filmy tails of memories. impact. giant impact.

the love sculpture means something different to everyone who poses in front of it; every person’s story has different details, a different emotional spectrum. how we connect to this emotive piece depends largely on where we are when we visit with it, what we bring to it, how open we are to its energy.

the love sculpture stands outside the museum and i know that each time we now visit, it will demand our time as well. we will stand and gaze and visit with it. and we’ll keep loving it. it’s simple. it’s that kind of piece.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY


by 1 Comment

getting it. [saturday morning smack-dab.]

i was one of them.

the first time i walked by i was a misunderstander, a glancer, a critic.

i thought – and spoke aloud – that it seemed elementary to display canvasses with the primary colors…large canvasses at that, lots of wall space, valuable real estate for an art museum.

it only seems right that ellsworth kelly, in a conversation with john cage (i mean, who gets to talk to john cage!!) said, “i am not interested in painting as it has been accepted for so long – to hang on the walls of houses as pictures. To hell with pictures – they should be the wall.” and so, ellsworth created big multiple panel paintings – murals – to cover walls. they are stunning and i have been enlightened – by sheer experience of his work. you need just stand there a few extra moments and it hits you. his “austin” temple of light is on our list of places to visit. minimalism. color. breath.

we visited the milwaukee art museum and the two of us, ellsworth, richard diebenkorn and mark rothko all hung out together. their notoriety far surpasses anything we could dream of – yes, yes – by miles and miles. but they love hanging out with people who get it and we were happy for their company.

we talked about art and music and simplicity and air and light. we talked about the ocean park series and rectangular color fields and bigness. we talked about communicating basic human emotions in our work. we talked about journeys and life and times of passage, evolution. we rued the difficulty of transitions and obstacles. and then, though sans museum ticket but clearly listening in, john cage stopped by and reminded us, once again, to “begin anywhere.”

and then it was time for us to leave, to go sip wine at the public market and to talk about the magic of getting it.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this SATURDAY MORNING

SMACK-DAB. ©️ 2023 kerrianddavid.com


by Leave a comment

carrots and bottom lines. [k.s. friday]

someone peeled carrots into the pond and then it froze over. shavings of those multicolored organic rainbow carrots on the ice surface, just below the surface…it made me laugh to see so many carrots in one place. only they weren’t carrots. they just looked like carrots. instead, it was bits of bark and dried grasses and small sticks – no nutritional value or nurture to bunnies and squirrels and chippies, deer and birds.

it brings to mind the children’s book “the carrot seed” – the little boy plants carrots despite the fact that practically everyone around him tells him – basically – that the bottom line is that they won’t come up, despite his care. the last frame of the book shows him – having persisted nurturing the seeds he had planted – pushing a wheelbarrow with the biggest carrot you’ve ever seen. the value – the power – of true nurture.

nurture: to care for and encourage the growth or development of someone or something.

at this moment, for me, it is a hop, skip and a jump from there to thoughts about healthcare and insurance, keeping wellness forefront.

insure: to secure or protect someone against (a possible contingency) this definition would lead one to believe that “to insure” is somewhat parallel – or at least supplementary – to “nurture” – seeking to keep someone safe, healthy, attempting to look out for someone’s best interests.

“insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. it is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent or uncertain loss.” (wikipedia)

“insurance plans will help you pay for medical emergencies, hospitalization, contraction of any illnesses and treatment, and medical care required in the future.“(an insurance company)

our current (and unfortunately necessary) gap coverage insurance company states they are dedicated to a simple goal: “making health care easier for the people we serve.”

the insurance plan that will take effect in five days believes that “health connects us to each other” and that “what we all do impacts those around us”. and so, they say they are dedicated to “delivering better care to our members”.

nevertheless, the united states seems to have a grotesque insurance problem. the earnings pie – or say – the carrot cake only goes so far, particularly with major medical insurance. but then, there’s dental insurance, vision insurance, life insurance, home insurance, car insurance, major appliance insurance, small appliance warranty insurance, laptop and tablet insurance, recreational vehicle and boat insurance, travel insurance, personal, general, property damage liability insurances. americans are slicing away at their own cake…for most, never quite big enough to start with.

and then there’s business insurance…various insurance plans that companies, organizations, institutions purchase to cover costs associated with property damage or liability issues and to keep their employees safe and healthy – because companies and organizations and institutions care about their employees and want to look out for their best interests.

“your employees may be your business’ most valuable asset.” “… protect your employees …” (an insurance company)

yes.

ahh, but here’s the rest of that insurance company’s statement:

“your employees may be your business’ most valuable asset.” “… protect your employees – and your bottom line…”

hmmm.

though it may look like carrots, there are no carrots there. no nurturing. no nutritional value. just a bottom line.

just dried marsh grass and sticks.

*****

NURTURE ME ©️ 1995 kerri sherwood

download music from my little corner on iTUNES

stream on PANDORA

read DAVID’S thoughts this K.S. FRIDAY


by Leave a comment

3D. [d.r. thursday]

it lay in the snow, the last of the sun’s rays dancing across it. it was merely a single pinecone. but the sun drew me to it and the way the light played on it called attention to the texture. up close and personal, it is a painting.

reading reveals that pinecones are the safe place for the seeds of the tree, that pinecones can remain on a tree for even ten years, that pine cones open and close depending upon moisture. more complex than you might think.

though ever-important for the proliferation of pine trees, pinecones are one of those things we pass by, often not noticing. what else are we missing – passing by the ordinary, not stopping to really look.

because we know our favorite trail well, we see the tiny shifts, the changes, the transformation. we watch the light play on the cattails and marsh grasses and catch the shadows as they fall. if one note in the woods is different, one tint of color, we draw up, stop. there are days we are stopping often, capturing the transitions, watchful.

we don’t buy a lot of new things. we are sorely behind the fashion curve – i suspect our target jeans are a few years behind-the-times. instead, we accumulate these moments of noticing. our breath is not connected to the facets of diamonds, but rather to the way underbrush berries stand out against the snow. we don’t reach for the keys of a porsche; we reach for our backpack to take on the trail. we do not watch a larger-than-life screen tv; our big-screen of choice is outside.

we look for the paintings in the snow, in the sky, in the stand of trees. we listen for the song of the breeze, of wildlife sharing space with us. the wind stings our cheeks and makes the tips of our fingers burn. we are grateful for the quiet and this path through the forest, across the marsh, along the river.

we immerse in the 3D canvas nature is providing us. no virtual reality needed.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

and his site construction continues….


by 1 Comment

rooting for midwest express. [two artists tuesday]

it’s exactly how i draw horses. back in the day i had a book that taught me how to draw them. i was horse-crazy and i studied this book and practiced over and over. i did not retain much of all that study – or all of the other books i read about horses – but i can still draw a horsehead. so when we flew over this island on our approach to the tampa airport, i was astounded to see the first vestiges of my own drawing. i named it van gogh horse – for obvious reasons. high tide and angle and an active imagination helped, but i sure do think it looks like a horse.

it had been three and a half years since i had flown. we’ve read many articles about aggressive passengers and, i must admit, that doesn’t sound too enticing. i can’t imagine being rude to people who are tending to your needs as you zoom through the sky. not to mention all that recirculated air and the folks in the seat behind us hack-coughing. ahem. so it was a little nerve-wracking.

but it was also magical. you forget. i spent a lot of time looking out the window, mesmerized by the cloud formations and the landscape below, checking the flight plan on my phone to see where we were (technology is pretty amazing!) and taking photographs. i looked – i am sure – like the quintessential tourist-on-the-airplane. but i didn’t care. we have driven everywhere in the last years so it was like a small miracle to jaunt from milwaukee to tampa in two hours and forty minutes.

i remember days i flew often. midwest express airlines and real plates and real silverware and gourmet meals and mimosas in the morning or wine in the afternoon. and, the pièce de résistance…warm chocolate chip cookies. it was an experience – a whole experience. i flew midwest as often as i could, flights to los angeles and nashville and south and out east.

the most memorable experience was the – only – one time the airline lost my luggage. i had concerts and appearances in boston and all my attire was in my suitcase. a midwest express representative – jimbo – who is still my friend on facebook – immediately set to helping me, told me to go buy some necessities, including concert attire, and send midwest the bill. i am mostly a jeans-wearing performer – though there were some exceptions that particular trip – so that kept the costs down a bit, but they covered every last thing i needed. customer service at its best. i called all those items “my midwest express collection” and flew midwest loyally until the airline was no longer.

in a memory-filled moment with the smell of baking chocolate chips in my mind’s eye, i googled the milwaukee-based airline and was jazzed to see it is hoping to make a comeback one of these days. i wish them well. here is the best news:

“the airline plans to bring back the cookies if it starts flying again.” (milwaukeemag.com)

i know that can take some time and some luck. but warm chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the airline’s tiny kitchen could encourage me to start flying more again. i mean, people can’t be ornery with cookies.

if i had to draw an airplane experience – even though i am clearly not gifted at drawing – i would draw people in cushy two-across-seats, trays down, real plates and silverware, coffee cups and mimosas, warm chocolate chip cookies, linen napkins. smiles and horses out the window.

i am rooting for midwest express.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY