Learning From Others

What Do You Do With It All?

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Joe Van Cleve has a problem. It is a good one. He has too much stuff. No, he’s not a hoarder. He writes, he photographs, he writes poems, he typewrites, he keeps doing it and keeping it all. Binders and folders of stuff he’s created. Scads of stuff, he has scads of stuff. All filling up space. And he does not know what to do with it.

So he made a video explaining his problem and asking his viewers for their input. I gave some. I don’t think it will be helpful. But maybe it can be helpful, just a bit.

Watch the 10 minutes below for his description of his problem. How much of it do you understand? I’m looking at you photographers.

Clyfford Still Museum

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Big Reasons to Go:

  • Clyfford Still MuseumYou’re a fan of Still’s work
  • In-house art-making space with encouraging and helpful staffer
  • The museum shows a progression of Still’s work – this is a great help if you don’t “get” abstract expressionism but are curious
  • Quarterly rotations of the displayed works
  • Great gallery rooms with beautiful lighting
  • The most helpful museum staff I’ve ever met. The guards aren’t there just to scold you away when you get too close.
  • They’ll fetch a chair if you want to sit and contemplate when the benches aren’t where you’d like to sit.

Find out more about it on their website, Clyfford Still Museum. I went last summer and remembered the pleasures.

Signs Precedeing the End of the Word

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A week ago I wrote about Herrera Land:

Their book Signs Preceding the End of the World begins with a woman walking down the street.


I’m dead, Makina said to herself when everything lurched: a man with a cane was crossing the street, a dull groan suddenly surged through the asphalt, the man stood still as if waiting for someone to repeat the question and then the earth opened up beneath his feet: it swallowed the man, and with him a car and a dog, all the oxygen around and even the screams of passers-by.
Opening sentence of Signs Preceding the End of the World


Could you stop reading there? I couldn’t. So I continued.


Three cheers for Lisa Dillman! She is the translator of the work and several others. Translators have a difficult craft to practice. Ms. Dillman does so well.

Self, in Herrera Land

I’m happy report that the book continues to tell the tale of Makina’s journey to the United States to find her brother. She’s street wise and winds her way past men.

It is great. I give it an unqualified recommendation.

From Painters, When They Talk

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“I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.”
~ Vincent van Gogh

“I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.”
~ Frida Kahlo

“Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? No. Just as one can never learn how to paint.”
~ Pablo Picasso

“When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.”
~ Pablo Picasso

“I want to paint the way a bird sings.”
~ Claude Monet

“Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.”
~ Edgar Degas

“I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”
~ Claude Monet

“Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.” 
~ Plutarch

“I want to be famous but unknown!”
~ Edgar Degas

All from 26 Painting Quotes By The Masters To Inspire You

Herrera Land

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One day reading through Facebook I found an intriguing link from Grace Emmual. It was of a Latin American canon of literature. It was organized with “if you like _____ try _____” As in,

If you have to read: Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Try: I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez

Remezla’s Website

Or

If you have to read: Beowulf
Try: Popol Vuh

Remezla’s Website

Or, the one that got me,

If you have to read: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Try: Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera

Remezla’s Website

There are more, many more, check them out at Remezla’s Website. I will certainly be back for more to read.

Their book Signs Preceding the End of the World begins with a woman walkig down the street.

I’m dead, Makina said to herself when everything lurched: a man with a cane was crossing the street, a dull groan suddenly surged through the asphalt, the man stood still as if waiting for someone to repeat the question and then the earth opened up beneath his feet: it swallowed the man, and with him a car and a dog, all the oxygen around and even the screams of passers-by.

Opening sentence of Signs Preceding the End of the World

Could you stop reading there? I couldn’t. So I continued.

Three cheers for Lisa Dillman! She is the translator of the work and several others. Translators have a difficult craft to practice. Ms. Dillman does so well.

It seems Patti Smith is also a fan of this book and other by Yuri Herrera. She is in “Herrera Land” (where I stole the headline) where you can find Kingdom Cons. Which is, fortunatly, avaailble at my local library.

I’m off to finish this book and hope the hold list for Kingdom Cons is not too long a wait.