STANWOOD HOUSE

A Priest Walks By

19 1/2 x 13 1/4 in.
A monk from St. George’s Monastery. in a gorge running between Jerusalem and Jericho. The isolated Greek Orthodox monastery is carved into a cliff in a narrow canyon. The quote is taken from the parable of the Good Samaritan.

$20

Mt Zion

13 1/4 x 9 1/2 in.

$20

“Circles” 6 1/2 x 46 in.

The circle is the primary symbol of life and the ultimate feminine form. Ancient people had a cylclical view of the world. Nothing had meaning unless it replicated what had been from the beginning, and in the beginning was enacted by the gods. This cultural conservatism was first challenged by the Jews, who had a progressive view of history, even imputing a purpose, and thus an end. “Mandala” is Sanskrit for circle, and in Oriental religions represents wholeness, completion, wholeness, the wheel of life, and reinforcing the ancient approach to sacredness and truth, such a Mandala is symmetrical. It was Ptolemy, who lived in the first century, who not only discovered the ratios for measuring the circle and its segments, but applied his findings and observations to such pursuits as music and astronomy. Many of his discoveries are still in use today, but it has since been proven that, despite some signs to the contray, the universe does not revolve around the earth. Unmitigated symmetry may induce submission to a grand order, but in the end, prehaps, an asymmetrical approach is freer.

Cacti, Volunteer Park Conservatory, Seattle, 6 x 35 in. 

Judy on her 60th Birthday, 9 1/2 x 46 3/4 in.

Walking the Dog, 7 3/4 x 60 in.

From the Driver’s Seat of a U-Haul Truck Heading West at 90 mph., 9 x 106 in.

Britannia Mine, British Columbia (the Industrial Revolution, Capitalism, and Consumerism) 8 x 46 3/4 in. 

Florence (The Feast of Fools) 9 x 66 in.

Outside the Uffizi Gallery, where the line stretched around the block, the mimes invited tourists to have their picture taken while receiving a crown. I was not adverse to playing the fool, for a fool it was who was crowned on the ancient feast day of Saturnalia, which was celebrated on the first of January. It became known in medieval times as the Feast of Fools …

To the Chief Musician (Rhodis) 6 x 35 in.

From Yonnah’s Studio, 9 x 60 in.

Shipworm (pictographs and the evolution of the alphabet), 6 1/2 x 39 in.

Doll Stories (first pages) 10 x 41 in.

Deconstructed Family Photo (ca. 1953) 9 3/4 x 42 1/4 in.

Empty Toolchest (the gift of idleness) 6 x 44 in.

Yaquina Lighthouse (virtue and mortality) 8 1/4 x 46 3/4 in.

Gravel Pit (a granular dissertation on calcium carbonate) 9 x 42 1/2 in.

Through the Trees (lucid dreaming) 11 x 32 in.

Grainy Field (photography vs. painting) 12 x 35 in.

Steely Stilly, 17 x 44 in.

Memorial Day Parade, Catskill, NY, May 25, 1998, 9 x 60 in.   

Freedom and community are both desirable, but in the extreme they can be mutually exclusive. If freedom means unhindered opportunity for individual choice (as long as it does not cause harm to others) then it will eventually loosen or break the bonds of community that sometimes do limit individual expression. The Founding Fathers saw freedom as a God-given right; and it remains a fundamental doctrine in America that only revolt against tyranny makes this country inherently anti-authoritarian. However, authoritarianism does not necessarily define any authority, since without any authority there can be no community, family, organization. Traditionally, nations were agglomerations of tribes, that is, extended families that shared the same geography, religion, and blood. America was and is an experiment to create a new race on this continent, which is not bound by old hatreds and predudices. It is this vision that united the country more than an ancient tradition. In World War II, black, Indian, and Japanese Americans, all of whom faced discrimination both at home and in the armed forces, still fought bravely, often heroically, for those principles that had yet to materialize for their people. The real metaphor for America is the melting pot; Pluralism is just a byword for tolerance while the gradual assimilation takes place. American culture is also assimilation. For example, tap dancing is a combination of Irish tap dancing and African American dancing. The Broadway musical has its influences from talian opera and Yiddish theater. It was inevitable that this cross-breeding and popularization of culture would overspread this continent and offer itself to the whole world. To call it inevitable invokes the concept of “Manifest Destiny” and empire, and it is perhaps instructive to regard previous empires’ hegemony. The Assyrian Empire engaged in a strategy of forced assimilation involving transfer or ethnic cleansing -the removal and scattering of indiginous populations over the empire and their replacement by others. Both the Babylonians and Persians were more pluralistic, allowing the maintanence of ethnic and religious identities, although persecution and even genocide were sometimes threatened. The Greeks were so certain of the superiority of their culture that toward the end of their empire they enforced the practice of Hellenism, with its gymnasia and pantheon, and the ancient world continued to be unified through the homogeneity of Greek culture until the Dark Ages. Both the Romans and the Holy Roman Empire were, once again, more pluralistic, as long as the emperor or Pope was given his due. What is new about the American experiment is not democracy, but a progressively non-aristocratic expression of democracy. The disproportionate importance of money as the measure of all things in a populist culture was noted in the early ninteenth and twentieth centuries respectivelly by Alexis de Tocqueville in his book “Democracy in America” and Thorstein Veblen who coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption.” In the end, we can only be who we are.