The Gift

The exhibition Martina Nehrling curated at Lake Forest College Sonnenschein Gallery demonstrates to me what can happen when work has a chance to both percolate and circulate. It becomes something greater than its parts.

I have been reading Lewis Hyde's book The Gift and he discusses the state of unkowing that Judith has many times described to me. He says..."the imagination is not subject to the will of the artist. To accept the fruits of these things as gifts is to acknowledge that we are not their owners or master, that we are, if anything, their servants, their ministers." and "The fruit of the creative spirit is the work of art itself, and if there is a first-fruits ritual for artists, it must either be the willing "waste" of art (in which one is happy to labbor all day with no hope of production, nothing to sell, nothing to show off, just fish thrown back into the sea as soon as they are caught)..."

I find it very difficult to hang in there in this state, and tend to look for distractions, chores that "must" be done, dishes, laundry, walking dogs...

Yet I know I have been here many times before and I know it is temporary.