Eye of the Eagle

There are side effect benefits to the practice of art. I’m talking merit here, keen eye development and intensified brain wave acuity.

Imagine that an ever increasing, expanding ability to see more, and thereby experience more of life, is at your fingertips, right now, immediately, without getting up, going to the gym, or enrolling in an institute of any kind of learning.

I’m confining this, at the moment, to drawing, and the magic in store as a result of immersion. Call it fine tuning the existing senses. Or adding to what you’ve got in the certainty that none of us have to put up with what we’ve got as all there is or may ever be.

Drawing is about the cheifest direct contact to the brain and the subconscious, extended out to the immediate environment, I’ve ever found. It will put you in touch with what you’re feeling, and your relationship to the rest of what is in view and what is beyond. It is a way of understanding ourselves.

With all the discoveries based on our need to adapt to and improve on this whirling anchor in outer space we still don’t know why we’re here or how we got here or what to do Tuesday next. Why God wanted to make human beings the eternal questioners and seekers, with such extraordinary layers of inner complexity, is equally unknown. How can a hundred plus pounds of flesh have so much going on. Migrating animals have something very specific in mind when they leave for the coast. Compare that to a human who has no idea what’s in store when leaving the familiar behind, or what will be done there, and that it’s bound to be thrilling. And what is the unidentified gene that makes us the only sentient life with literally endless ideas on how to build suitable shelter. I mean, you take a beaver from his river in Idaho and put him in a river he never met in Michigan and he’s going to build the same house every time. The casual onlooker can identify a bear’s den, a fox’s hole, a rabbit’s warren from encyclopaedic descriptions that do not vary. There are some birds who will refuse to mate if the nest isn’t just so, the way it’s expected. Contrary-wise, the human animal is scorned for fabricating row houses and tract homes and houses make of ticky-tacky. Variety, change, and originality count big with us and we sure have got it in us.

Pen. Paper. Current internal equipment. Hand. Eye. Endless possibilities. Freedom.

Up Next: Training the hand as receptor

The civilized world is about to achieve a brand new silly bit of back to the future. In the news this morning, following ‘extensive research’ and no doubt considerable rarefied polling, creators of the indispensable dispensable are introducing the eco-friendly look of a simpler, rougher era: ergo, kraft-brown toilet paper. A look, by the way, mostly confined to eastern block Europe in by-gone days, if you could even find it. 

America’s genius for inventive manufacturing and the perfectly tuned sales pitch has evolved a simple household necessity from whatever to divine. What was standard scratchy when Beaver and Wally were in (a clean, well-run, education-oriented) public school has metamorphosed into the playthings of polar bears and thickly soft enough to float a family of four straight to Nirvana. What used to be whispered is now competitively proclaimed for its various un-shy attributes. The code used to be T.P. because saying “toilet” was considered crass but we’ve come a long way, baby. Tampons, condoms, Viagra, and sex toys cast a long shadow on any prohibitive constraint when it comes to the very public marketing of pampering to very intimate function.

The cost has skyrocketed along with dizzying variety. Colors, scents, patterns, political statements, and the occasional villain image have been stamped on bathroom tissue for fresh appeal. Somewhere along the line, hysteria erupted about potential injury of color dies to hitherto unmentionable parts of the human body, the same parts now joyfully demoed in film, song, emails, and phone cameras operated by grade schoolers. I mean really. We are living through what will one day be celebrated as the most holy era of anal sex about which, currently, enough good can hardly be spoke and any disdainful word will require sensitivity training, add taxes to your church, or get you fired from MSNBC. Is it any wonder that toilet paper is right up there in the world consciousness, ever ready for change, rehab, and progress.

If anything, anything at all can be the penultimate convincer of the American public that we are in a downward spiral to third world status, that we are becomingly and proudly equal to miserable civilizations who still crap with paper bag wipes, newspapers, or dry leaves, it is the advent of brown toilet paper in the homes and apartments and RV’s and yurts of our fruited plains. Lets see how it flies at home, and if there’s a fan-base.

Whitney Houston

This stunning song bird of paradise burst onto center stage like a hurricane with a presence so bright she outshone the sun. First view, I almost fell on the floor. I don’t do that much. Then there was the immaculate Star Spangled Banner. I can still hear her high notes in my head and my heart.

Memory maybe reshapes the image but I see it still, Whitney dressed in some tight shimmering little suit, broad shouldered like a swimmer, hips narrower than a young birch tree, tall as the sky and overwhelmingly electric with life, passion, indescribable beauty. And Jesus God, what a voice!

Thanks for the wow, Whitney. For loving America. For your heavenly visitation…we weep at its briefness. Thank you for soaring so high in front of us.

It’s that unfairness we mourn too, that you flew like that publicly and we loved you when we saw it now you’ve taken it away. Everyone has the right to die, make their own journey down even unbearable trails. It sure hurts the left behinders. Today, someone had to say the words, Your mom is dead. Her mom has to say the words, My daughter is gone, forever.

Whitney Houston was born the same year Edith Piaf died, 1963. She outlived The Little Sparrow by a year and four months, Piaf made it to 47. Houston to 48.

Didn’t you get that you made us care.  I wish that alone had kept you going, sweet soul. I will always love you, but love isn’t always enough.

http://www.redbubble.com/people/tinnieopener

“I live and work here at Cradle Mountain in the north-west of Tasmania and have been part of the small local community up here for 3 and a half years looking after the needs of people who come to stay and enjoy the area.”

Get a grip. My oft-maligned 60′s generation was out in the world misbehaving ingeniously at a far more tender age. In the sixties, 17 year olds were forming communes, exploring farming, building log cabins, geodesic domes, houseboats and– our primo art form –making rock and roll. We were sewing our own clothes, swilling about in Woodstock muck, marching on Washington, discovering Appalachia, driving to Mexico in uninsured no-seat belt jalopies, brewing potato moonshine and dandelion wine and sharing drugs. Why the gap.

Well, well, we have come to this. We observe today’s adults who never managed a thing on their own for their first 25 years. Who don’t even have the sand to fury at being included in parental or government guardianships until they’re nearly thirty! That alone would have turned us all Bolshevik.

I left home at 17 and drove across country from California to New York. The highways of America were littered with us on this pilgrimage, this rite of passage. We were on a full speed run from convention toward individualism. We learned guitar, built harpsichords, outfitted school buses for homes, restored barns/basements/attics….we reveled penniless and brainless in the exhilaration of being unguardedly alive as we explored wilderness and urban jungles, read and adored French writers, gulped Pernod and puffed Gauloises and drooled for bohemian art and Italian filmmakers, martial arts, zen, dirt bikes, tai chi, and tried it or tried imitating all of it. There was nothing so exciting or free or dangerous as being on our own. A lot of living got done badly, but hey, that turns out to be how life works, and you figure out how to make good bits out of disasters. And get better at doing it.

When I hit the East Village at 18 I found thousands of me in variation who were building a brilliant underground that included the start-up Village Voice, weekly newspapers filled with scurrilous outrage and cartoon strips; directions to free dental clinics in Jersey and the nearest ER for serious bleeding. How to install a toilet in a loft. How to sand floors. We were remaking fashion, rewiring ceiling fixtures, turning storefronts into apartments and taking showers at St Jame’s pool. Turned out you could sit in the 42nd Street Library or big museums or Weisner’s Bookstore on 14th Street reading all day in comfy chairs. Word was out there for cheap apartments, where to hear Janis Joplin, watch Cocteau and Fellini films for a buck or how to time it right to see Lenny Bruce get pulled out in handcuffs from the Jewish Theatre on Third Avenue after performing with the exuberant use of four letter words.

You’d take to the sidewalks of the city night and day to watch the entire world around you. Find cheap Chinatown meals that delighted the senses and pirogi from Ukrainians on Third Avenue and real Egg Creams on the corner of St Mark’s. The cheapest place for paint and canvas. Old wool army and navy uniforms for warmth. Where to hear Gene Krupa and Thelonius Monk free and listen to Bob Dylan become a legend; where Buckminster Fuller’s last book could be found. Fulton Fish market discards that fried up good. And you’d wash dishes in a really scuzzy 42nd Street nightclub in exchange for food and likely be starting your own band when the shift ended.

We’d gather to spread info and rumor then span out to find out about living it. And we were happy! Ridiculed, upsetting grown-ups, having trouble finding work, piss poor, scared, but happy! Not dependent on prescriptions and medical plans and not getting sick, or being so damn needy, either. By the time most of us were twenty-five we were employed and raising families.

The 60′s generation that’s been raked over the coals for being ne’er do well incompetents didn’t destroy life on the planet after all, and turned out, in sharp contrast to what’s around now, to have been a lot inventing, independent, free spirited youngsters who abolished segregation, went to the moon, worried about fascism and loss of privacy, came up with Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood and Bridget and Ursala and Sophia, Captain Kirk, Mr Spock, James Bond, Evil Knieval, David Bowie, Mort Sahl and Robin Williams. We made art forms never seen before, owned politics du jour, making the occasional disaster of much along the way. But at least did something more than getting a tattoo! We changed the status quo, and that generation in most every country did the same, all over Planet Earth.

Let’s see the world’s next 18 year olds head into the unexplored country, the future, with some gusto and fervor. Honestly, listen to me, you don’t need seat belts, or GPS, or college degrees, or vitamins, or bottled water, or protective helmets. Bounce around on the front seat of your 25 year old car, eat Twinkies and bacon, risk dehydration, learn something on your own, fall on your head and skin your knees. And for God’s sake, start protesting the stupid laws that steal your independence and coddle you into oblivion.

HOORAH FOR THE SIXTIES. Drop out and tune in. Never thought I’d be saying that.

Delighted to report on things remaining the same…and VASTLY improved….along with the fine drama of change.

The new gallery, THE HAWKS PERCH III, is now up and running in beautious Carmel Valley.  Despite petulant volunteering of directions from the old Big Sur locale, I am being re-discovered in the new digs the intrepid and faithful. It’s wonderful here, painting sales are brisk, new students for the pen and ink classes, and a beautiful gallery to show my work and welcome visitors.

I’m off Carmel Valley Road by just a few feet, it’s called Robinson Canyon Road, six miles east from the splendid coastal town of Carmel. Lovely group of small old western wooden buildings painted barn red and trimmed in white. We’re bordered by meadows, Carmel Valley River, beautiful gardens, Buddhist Temple, Episcopalian church (and someone doing lovely call to the faithful chimes on Sundays), and Carmel Valley’s most famous asset, perpetual sunshine.

Come visit, see all the new paintings (dragonflies, hummingbirds, ladybugs, bees, butterflies, oceans, stormy skies) and stop in on Tuesdays 5-6 pm for the pen and ink drawing classes. I look forward to seeing all the old friends, and welcoming the new ones. THE HAWKS PERCH III is ready to rock. And it’s true, the really good stuff never dies.

I’ve got 2 websites with my TOTALLY UNIQUE  Expressionist Paintings and Drawings on Clothing, Posters, Ipod cases, & Greeting Cards. MERMAIDS! BILLBOARD PAINTINGS! FLORALS! SEASCAPES! RedBubble is a fabulous Australian site, they do beautiful work. Zazzle is USA. Both deliver speedily, I’ve used them for years. Easy shopping on line with PayPal.

Click on:   Australia’s RedBubble

and Zazzle: The Hawks Perch Clothing Line

To purchase an original Sparhawk oil painting or drawing, please email: hawk@hawksperch.com. to be sure the paintings are still available and discuss details.

The HAWKS PERCH Gallery of Big Sur is closing. It’s been an absolutely stunning, wonderful 2 year run, and I thank all the spectacular visitors who have come in to talk, to visit, to buy my paintings and drawings, for all you have added to my life.

This is your last week to buy paintings at The Hawks Perch Gallery in Big Sur (Highway 1, near River Inn). But never fear…the HAWKS PERCH lives! opening early December in a new location.

Added NOTES:  If you have a painting on hold, please come in soon to pick it up if I have not reached you.

NEW PEN & INK DRAWING CLASSES start December AT THE NEW STUDIO/SCHOOL.

COMMISSIONED PORTRAITS OF PEOPLE & PETS – will of course be honored with some brief schedule adjustment. Please call if I have not reached you. Christmas Commissions will be delivered on time, as promised.

And thank you all again for adding so splendidly to a terrific two year Big Sur run.

Sunset and Cypress and Highway One

most glorious goodbyes I’d ever seen.

There were close to zero clouds, nothing to catch the brilliant color against wisps and puffs, an empty sky but for that stunning sun. I don’t ever remember seeing that before, no clouds, only the slightest line of fog near the highway. And blazing unobscured sun.

Returning home was equal to it, a night of stars and moon lighting up the ocean, catching white wave tips.

In less than an hour I was at the easel to record the black and green cypress clump just above the beach that framed the orange orb with Highway 1 rocketing in front of it all.

The first time I met Andy Rooney was 1980, in the basement of the old CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th. There used to be little candy, cigar, cigarette and newspaper stand on the bottom floor, and the raised up chair where customers sat for the shoe-shine man who worked miracles on leather. The building had once been a dairy including cows. It still had metal ramps, concrete floors…an industrial kind of interior that made a lot of noise. In fact in Murrow’s day, they’d develop their 35mm negatives in the left-behind water troughs. But back to Mr. Rooney. We bumped into each other, literally.

Andy was a perpetual motion whirlwind. A kind of combination of Alice’s White Rabbit, Davy Crockett, and Benjamin Franklin, who knew so much, who knew how to make the complex simple. Looking like a one man band, his arms were overfull, files and folders were caught tight under his elbows, an umbrella dangled from his wrist, suit pockets were jammed with lumpy recording devices, odd wires hanging out. Andy was always loaded for bear and mischief, eyes electric with the joy of life. His camera crews were the same, jockeying for position, trying to hold onto all kinds of equipment and keep track of the boss.

I used to wear a lot of odd stuff, even at CBS where I shared the elevators and halls and lunchroom with Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters, Captain Kangaroo, Walter Cronkite, Bill Moyers…all groomed to the teeth for on-camera.

That particular day, I was wearing a favorite pair of light gray velour culottes, maybe a black sweater, definitely tights, and my favorite ankle high, high heeled cowboy boots. I was buying a pack of Camels at the little kiosk and Andy comes roaring down the staircase with a crew and the usual hubbub. He stopped smack in front of me, and looked me up and down with only the kind of wonder a guy confronted by his first view of culottes might possess; then with his bright blue all Irish delightfully twinkled eyes: “Say, wait a minute. I like your…pants! Who are you?” And I said, “Well I’m not much here yet, but you’re Andy Rooney and I adore you. The pants are culottes.” “Nice!!”, says Andy, good and loud.

Andy had his famous, much photographed office down there somewhere I think. We’d run into each other and he’d say, “Hey! I’m starting in on (something), know anything about it?” or, Who’s running the (whatever) these days, or how about… an improbable NYC related traffic jam, pot hole, or civic stupidity, He engaged everybody with his curiosity and enthusiasm.

When I started at CBS, the average age was 26 years old and the news division was partial to pretty girls and Harvard boys. They didn’t think much of Andy. He was considered rough around the edges, outspoken, never politically correct, and determined not to be caught up in the finesse that was everybody else’s bread and butter. He’d get scolded and fired and suspended by annoying the big boys. But the ratings dropped without him, and he had more fans around the world than any of them, except maybe Kurault, cut from the same fine cloth.

So I’m reading these dreamy CBS obits by guys who couldn’t hold a patch on Andy Rooney, and most likely wished he’d gone far away sooner, anywhere. They rarely cut him any slack, made him feel like an outsider and outright didn’t like him. But he spoke a lot of truth and did it brilliantly, and the public who tuned him in would get to the end of Andy Rooney’s stories wishing that channel and all the others had more decent people like him. Straight-shooters.

He was a splendid original. Bucking the system all the way and making it work for him. Like Mark Twain, these men get carried on the shoulders of a grateful public who love them for their humanity, and humor, and kindness, and truth. Even righteous anger. And darn it anyway, a willingness to get sidetracked by an odd garment that delighted his fancy. So very Rooney.