Kickstarter

My upcoming artist-in-residency will be dedicated to the completion of a collage series using vintage stamps, drawings, watercolors and the codes of text messaging. Code-Talking will be a continuation of a series of collages I showed in Rota Fortunae last summer. http://art-spark.org/2010/07/rota-fortunae-3/

For a desert dweller, this artist-in residency retreat, is a rare chance to spend time in the lush wet Redwood Forest and the former home/studio of one of my favorite artists, Morris Graves. His work, his life connection to nature and solitude is a daily inspiration; I hope to channel some of his transcendental spirit while walking the paths through the gardens he created and seeing the ancient forest he loved.

To make the most of this excellent opportunity, my goal is to raise $3000.00 for: airfare; art supplies; roundtrip shipping materials; documentation photography; and framing.  The residency provides a nest in nature and meals for the week, but all other expenses are up to the artist to fund.

Like most of us, I have a foot in two worlds: nature and technology. This residency will give me an opportunity to unplug (except for music, no electronics are allowed) and meditate on the meaning of it all. I hope to come away with some new work, acts of ritual marked by time and the experience of opening to the beauty of this ancient fertile place. As John Muir said, "[g]oing to the woods is going home."  Of course I will be busy creating your rewards, a bright pleasure as it will feel like I am taking along a great circle of friends.

Here's more information about the residency: http://art-spark.org/2011/02/felicitaciones-to-deborah-gavel/

Thanks for everything Kickstarter and to all of you Kickstarter fans*!

With gratitude, 

 Deborah Gavel

* May your good karma offerings be most auspicious for you! 

A poem written by Jack Spicer after seeing Morris Graves' work in the mid-fifties:

Hibernation—After Morris Graves

Deeper than sleep, but in a room as narrow

The mind turns off its longings one by one,

Lets beautiful black fingers snap the last one,

Remove the self and lie its body down.

The Future chills the sky above the chamber.

The Past gnaws through the earth below the bed.

But here the naked Present lies as warmly

As if it rested in the lap of God.

Georgia O'Keefe said, "it takes time to see."  Thank you for supporting this nurturing pace in nature.

"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. 

We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative.

We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present, We are made up of layers, cells, constellations." -Anais Nin