Glad of My Day

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I am glad to have had a traditional studio practice of making art and sculpture. In the end, the urge to make things and touch people’s lives with them has disappeared entirely, replaced by connecting with my own inner life, for myself and only myself. My whole social media arc, from this blog to FB, Insta, YouTube and more only returned me to the beginning again; working in the studio, refining the essence and transforming to Qi.

I don’t say I’m a hero of anything. I do think that I am of the last generation which can say they created with only their own perspective in mind, feeling like they were original and pioneering in their observations and creations. I am glad I had my day.

Will anyone ever again make art from a purely personal perspective without regard for the audience and their social relation to the world at large? The difference in time from now to when I first came up, is as the difference from now to the 17th century. I felt closer then to the Renaissance than I do now to American and European Modernism.

Where are we now as creators? The panic over AI slop and fake music seems trivial to me compared to the massive wave of cheap and easy imagery enabled by digital tools like Photoshop, digital photography, and ubiquitous pointless video. The endpoint we’re at now was predicable in 2000. I did not deviate from my path and purpose then, nor will I be distracted by the promises that new tools offer, for their own sake.

The goal is unchanging; discover the self and cultivate our essential nature. All things withdraw to their core, retreat to their center, and return to their original form.

Pathway to the Original Self

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I am recovering the path back to my original self, before work & school & family, when I was 9 years old, and first aware that I was an individual, whole and independent.

There is always the same question. “What are you doing lately?”

I am un-conditioning my mind and becoming elementary and obvious in the way I see and act in the world.

The Way ►

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But… I don’t want to make an Art about the fury of chaos and apocalyptic energies. It is too negative. I muddled over this for nearly a year. How do I make this a positive expression for me the creator? I don’t want to drudge over this. This was while carving the Ouroboros Snake and I already had a set idea of change as circular and self-completing. I didn’t want a distraction.

But I definitely heard the message. Gradually at first, I thought to make a video short of the blast moment from the point-of-view of the survivor, in watching their shock and following their reactions. There would characters who would not be told that without warning they would be blasted with loud sound and blinding light… um, this way I could record their raw reactions and a narrative would follow? OK, slow down… What the hell Matt. How are you even considering this?

By Summer I’d thought of a million things while I basically was getting stoned and swimming at the lake. Still, the idea sat there like the pile of rubble at the site, untouched with an orange fence around it.

One day as I floated in the water, I began to think. Me, a small clot of self-assembling and somehow sentient proteins, immersed in water, surrounded by forest and earth, under the deep blue sky, overlooked by the radiant yellow Sun.

WATER – EARTH – AIR – FIRE

At that moment, I believed these fundamental symbolic elements of matter-enabled-by -energy, in vast concatenation and generation create reality – a creative force which is equal and opposite the explosive. It is the melting together. And that little blob, me, is the witness of this conclusive assembly and integration of parts, which is the World.

Now I have two drawings to do. One of rapid dissolution and one of steadfast concretion. So as not to be overwhelmed by the energies of either, I am working on them together, in balance. It is just a thing I do for my own discovery, like in a sketchbook, meant for self-study.

Exploded What?!

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What do I mean, the Exploded House? Not too recently a house in my neighborhood blew-up! 2AM! The old guy there was using propane tanks in the basement to run his furnace… and well, there was a leak. That’s what you do when the gas company cuts you off. Apparently, he’d been doing it for years. He survived with injuries.

The next day I went to see it. Four main walls were flattened like pedals of a perfect lotus flower, inner walls neatly stacked and aligned with them. The roof sat, semi-intact to one side, as if a soap bubble had burst. Pop! At the center, the basement, was an empty box. Everything else was blown in shreds about the yards like mist and rain. The perimeter trees were singed, the truck’s tires were melted. Smells of dust and charred wood.

I keep thinking about him, at 2 AM being shot out there, like from an ejection-bed. What did he hear or see or feel of that brief bright light and thunder! Sensations of abrupt and maximum intensity and overwhelmed perceptions doesn’t begin to cover it.

So, imagine the total blast of his momentary experience was YOUR experience, every day, all day long, you hear, see, and feel the fires of stars burning. That’s the exploding house. That’s reality being continuously torn apart and reassembled, and that’s your inner-self and spirit also. A supreme example of the Way, it is the elementary fabric undergoing transformations everywhere at all times. It is the engine that drives the Way and upon which the Way is formed.

Now, the question is… What would I do to incorporate these ideas into a work of Art? Do I need to? Is this a part of my narrative? What do I want to say?

The Exploded House

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I spent a year on a sculpture about change and evolution, the wheel of life and fortune, and yet, I have realized that I have not truly accepted or understood the meaning of those things in my own life. I did not take to heart, the message of my own efforts; I understood it physically and spiritually, in theory, but not in fact. I externalized it in a sculpture, but I did not absorb it into myself.

Change occurs; there are cycles and paths and journeys, and they are transformative. However, there is another type of change, which is total and complete, from which nothing follows. It is apocalypse. It is the exploded house. It is death.

Ouroboros / The Great Wheel

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Ouroboros / The Great Wheel, 2025, Wood, 15″x15″x15″, ©2025

To sculpt in a prestige material like wood, with legacy and tradition, gives me solid ground to stand on. The actual, measurable amount of labor, the love for tools, and abiding in the workshop, standing at the bench, measuring, eyeballing, touching, the smell of wood chips and sawdust, the grinding drone of power tools, the numbness in the hands and arms, coughing up the dust, the metronome of mallet on chisel, Wood is flesh and flesh is wood. Blood and sap and skin and bones, all merged together, the body of the tree and my body, the grain and the Qi.

THE GREAT WHEEL, isn’t only up and down, success or failure, it’s more of a turntable at a Chinese banquet, where the dishes come around periodically, and you can choose or not as things go by.

OUROBOROS, in global mythology, a snake 🐍 biting its own tale. But, not as simple as a wheel, more of a moebius strip or knotted coil, where the path around is hidden and not obvious.

Ouroboros build

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More, less, transformation, evolution, construction, reduction, growth, refinement, flow, creation, removal, enhancement, generation, destruction, before, after, process, chaos, resolution, disturbance.

These essential Qi elements govern all occurrences in the World.

The Great Snake Wheel consumes and generates itself in endless unfathomable repetition.

The Great Wheel

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THE GREAT WHEEL isn’t only up and down, success or failure, it’s more of a turntable, like a lazy-Susan at a Chinese banquet, where the dishes come around periodically, and you can choose or not as things go by.

Or like, in many global mythologies, the Ouroboros, a snake 🐍 biting its tale, the Circle of Life, re-incarnation, Infinity.  But, not as simple as a wheel, more a moebius strip or knotted coil, where the path around is not obvious, and hidden.