In the quiet dark,
His kisses are all that is—
Pinpricks of fire.
Exile of the Deer, Tricia Cline. Porcelain. 2008.
I recently stumbled upon Tricia Cline’s porcelain sculptures (thank you, art pinners on Pinterest!). Her work has a quality that I tend to (mostly subconsciously) seek out and appreciate in all art forms, which is perhaps best described as “otherworldliness” — often lovely, but a little strange, unsettling, maybe creepy, though not in any particularly obvious way. Which is, incidentally, how many of my stories have been described. I guess it’s my thing. Anyway, I went to her website and was even more intrigued by her work after reading the artist’s statement for her most recent series of sculptures, Exiles in Lower Utopia. It’s beautifully worded, so instead of paraphrasing, I’ve decided to provide it below in its entirety:
This body of work is an ode to the Animal, its ability to perceive, and our return to that perception. An animal is its very form. Its function is its form. A dog runs at full speed, a distinct scent or sound alters its direction. The legs, the nose, the ears of the dog are its function, its bliss. When an animal recognizes another animal it reads with an instinctual eye the character in the form- the essential nature in the form before it. Its text is not a concept about what it’s looking at but a full-bodied response to the shape, smell, movement, and stance of the image in front of it. The language of animals is the language of images. An image is not an idea with a defined meaning, it is itself an animal.
This is the ode–to reconnect with our own animal perception is to clarify and heighten our perception of who and what we are in the moment… to go beyond the limited mental concepts of who we think we are… to an awareness of oneself that is infinitely more vast. The Exiles migrate between the human world and the animal world and carry this awareness on their backs. They are the silent embodiment of this Quest. They understand the language of animals and are self-appointed ambassadors from that world. They are firmly seated, in the language of animals, the language of imagery. They have succeeded by virtue of being.
The key points for me are: 1) to read something by its image is not necessarily to limit because “an image is not an idea with a defined meaning, it is itself an animal” [sic], and 2) reconnecting with our animal selves is a task that, rather than taking us backward, moves us forward into a deeper understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe. By understanding an image (that is, one’s perception of a thing) as an animal itself — something complex, evasive and in constant movement — on its own terms, rather than trying to define and redefine it through static statements that ultimately fall short, we come closer to seeing things as they truly are. In this way, Cline’s Exiles function as envoys and icons to remind us of our secret, truer selves whose virtues are merely being and seeing.
Literature has its place on this path as well, in spite of its form being limited to words (which is what makes writing so difficult — it’s the least sensual medium of all). As with other art forms, the key to creating truthful literature is to create images, and to do this, one must avoid making direct statements about things. We have to beat around the bush, to talk around a subject — not to evade, but to more clearly illustrate the ineffable. Creating literature — stories, poetry, essays, plays — is not about making some single, absolute declaration; it’s about creating, out of nothing, those image-animals that breathe on their own, that have layers of secrets and truths. It is to create something that allows others to create their own image-animals.
Flannery O’Connor said in her speech-turned-essay “The Nature and Aim of Fiction”: “It’s always necessary to remember that the fiction writer is less immediately concerned with grand ideas and bristling emotions than he is with putting list slippers on clerks” because the truth of the clerk is best communicated by literal details like his wearing list slippers than any abstract and frankly stated “grand ideas and bristling emotions” that a writer might thrust on him. We humans are sensual creatures, just like the other animals around us, and in spite of our impressive ability to think abstractly, we still (and have always and will always) respond most strongly to that which we perceive with our senses. And so it is through complex, free and living images liberated from vain abstractions (e.g. “bad,” “ugly,” “moral,” “beautiful”) that we perceive truth. Our labor is to see things as they are — in all their complexity — and then hold our tongues, rather than whittle them down to concrete terms.
You can view more of Cline’s images on her website (linked above). And you’re welcome to share your thoughts on her work (and my words) below.
My husband and I recently had a discussion/debate with a friend of ours who, on the subject of legislating compassion (or, more specifically, legislating in the name of compassion), pretty much said that without all of our elevated, civilized, moral compassion, we’d be “nothing more than animals.” While I’m a big proponent of compassion, I don’t think our morals necessarily make us more compassionate, and I think that there’s often as much compassion in non-action as there is in action, which is to say that sometimes not doing something is more compassionate and beneficial than blindly forging ahead (although, really, the best route is to combine the two with careful discernment).
I also don’t think it’s a bad thing to try to be more like animals, to get in touch with our animal sides. After all, animals aren’t the ones destroying our environment and each other on a species-wide level; they aren’t the ones enslaving each other (except for the slavemaker ants, of course); they aren’t afflicted by the overwhelming greed and viciousness that plagues humanity. If animals are greedy, it’s on a limited, usually reasonable level; if they are violent, it’s for survival — not spite. Animals are the innocent ones. And, really, whether we want to admit it or not, we are animals — complex, astoundingly creative animals, but still animals. I’m not saying that humanity is the lowest of the low in terms of animal virtues, but I do think it’s pompous to assume we’re that much more morally elevated above the rest of the natural world just because we can build complex tools and think in terms of the imaginary and intangible. I think art, which is arguably a uniquely human construct (although it depends on how you define art and whether or not the female bowerbird’s appreciation of her male’s bower can be considered artistic appreciation), is great; I think technology can be great. But I also think that what makes (human) art great is that it expresses and seeks to explore our deepest animal impulses; the best art gets us in touch with our animal selves and analyzes it, rather than denying it. And technology is really just a complex result of our basic animal survival instincts.
I think compassion is the greatest and most necessary quality a person could have, but I don’t like “morals” because they’re prescribed. It’s cold legislation rather than natural compassion, which comes from an organic and personal impulse. Compassion is simple and small and daily — not some elevated, authorized virtue. In its purest form, as in the animal world, compassion is unconscious and exhibited on an animal-to-animal basis. And while not all animals are compassionate in the way we define it, they’re not uncompassionate, either. As I’ve said above, they don’t hate; they aren’t (with few possible exceptions) unnecessarily cruel.
Anyway, the discussion reminded me of a Wallace Stevens poem I love:
“Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit”
If there must be a god in the house, must be,
Saying things in the rooms and on the stair,
Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,
Or moonlight, silently, as Plato’s ghost
Or Aristotle’s skeleton. Let him hang out
His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.
He must be incapable of speaking, closed,
As those are: as light, for all its motion, is;
As color, even the closest to us, is;
As shapes, though they portend us, are.
It is the human that is the alien,
The human that has no cousin in the moon.
It is the human that demands his speech
From beasts or from the incommunicable mass.
If there must be a god in the house, let him be one
That will not hear us when we speak: a coolness,
A vermillioned nothingness, any stick of the mass
Of which we are too distantly a part.
The only thing I would add to Stevens’ argument is that we aren’t naturally alien — we’ve made ourselves so — and that we can get back to that wholeness and freedom of being as long as we’re willing to loosen the noose of our morals, let wordlessness stand in for language (not forever and always, but more so than it does) and forget our pompous attitudes about our own superiority. If we can let ourselves be smaller, more quiet and basic, we’ll be closer to and more a part of that unlimited god that Stevens describes.
But I don’t harbor any illusions about doing away with law, society and technology and living like squirrels or bears. As our friend correctly said during our conversation, “The change has happened. We can’t go back.” I just think that we’d more benefit ourselves and the rest of the world if we tried to emulate the plant and animal life around us a little more, rather than trying (in vain) to conquer nature both beyond and within ourselves. I think we’d all be better-off without legislating and politicizing compassion — that is, deciding in black-and-white terms who is deserving of understanding and compassion and who isn’t and using that to justify political action. Because if we select an object for compassion, we’re necessarily denying compassion to something else. If we bring compassion down from the moral pedestal, stopped flinging it at other people like a weapon, and considered it on a personal, daily level (asking ourselves if we’re being indiscriminately compassionate enough and how we can be more compassionate, especially to the people whom we feel least deserve it), then the world really would be a better place. We just need to think smaller and be humbler, and it’ll build on its own. But we have to build from the bottom, beginning with ourselves.
I think I should also say that my friend, if he were to read this, might not actually disagree with me. Sometimes when the three of us (myself, my husband and our friend) sit in a car together for too long, we start to disagree for the sake of disagreement — either because we’re playing the devil’s advocate and testing each others’ convictions or because we just want to get the other’s goat — which is how the whole compassion-and-animals discussion began in the first place. But it makes for a good blog post, I think.
Feel free to leave your comments below!
Okay, it’s been a while. The past couple of months or so have been pretty stressful emotionally and mentally, and I found it necessary to turn inward and shut the external world out for the most part. So I really wasn’t thinking at all about writing a new blog post (not that I post prolifically anyway) or spending much time communicating at all, except to my husband, family and a few close friends. Nevertheless, that old guilt about having a blog and not using it has been quietly building up inside me. So, in order to quell the guilt while expressing some of my current preoccupations, I’ve decided to showcase an artist who is a new (very) favorite mine.
Born in Spain in 1908, Remedios Varo (full name: María de los Remedios Varo Uranga) spent her early childhood traveling around Spain and North Africa, living wherever her father, a hydraulic engineer, found work. Her family finally settled in Madrid, and while there, she studied painting at the Academia de San Fernando. She left Spain for Paris in the early 1930s to immerse herself in Surrealism, but returned to Spain in 1935 to live in Barcelona and joined the art group Logicophobiste. Varo returned to Paris in 1937 to escape the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and in 1941, she was forced again to relocate, this time to Mexico to escape the Nazi occupation of France. She lived in Latin America for the rest of her life, becoming friends with fellow artists Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and others, especially fellow ex-pat Leonora Carrington. Varo’s beautifully haunting style matured throughout the 1950s and reached its height in the early 1960s. She died in 1963 of a heart attack. Despite having a well-developed, distinct style, Varo is not well known. Male Surrealists (and others in the art community) often considered the work of their female colleagues to be inferior, making it difficult for female artists to promote their work, and so many Surrealist and similarly aligned female artists like Varo suffered in obscurity. Only recently has an interest in their work begun to develop.
Varo’s paintings are highly allegorical with a wide range of influences, including pre-Columbian art, Surrealism, Sufism and the I-Ching as well as the theories of analyst Carl Jung, medieval German theologian Meister Eckhart and Russian theosophist Helena Blavatsky. Varo viewed all of these sources as avenues to self-realization and the transformation of consciousness. Her paintings portray fantastic, often female or ambiguously feminine characters in isolated, confined environments, usually in some act of creation, as in Creation of the Birds (1957). Much of her work is interpreted as an expression of her frustration at being marginalized as a woman and as a female artist — themes that are certainly expressed in paintings like Visit to the Plastic Surgeon (1960) and Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst (1961).
But what interests me most about Varo’s paintings are not their social or political statements, but her emphasis on the mysteries and potential of the mind, especially as it finds expression in the arts. The creation of art is rendered as a kind of magic in her paintings, depicted as both a mechanical and supremely natural process. It is a way to both act on the external world and transform and nourish the self. It is a kind of alchemy, taking base materials (for Varo, masonite, oils, brushes, colors and shapes; or for me, leaves of paper and a pen, a laptop and combinations of letters that essentially mean nothing except whatever meaning we give them) and manipulating those elements to create something new and meaningful, to express the ineffable.
I discovered Varo’s work not too long ago (around the same time that the difficulties I mentioned above arose, or maybe a little before) and, in turning inward, I’ve been considering the same kinds of things that Varo depicts in her work. Many people are suspicious of fantasy, but it’s such a necessary tool for exploring ourselves, the world around us and the connections between the two.
Below are several examples of Remedios Varo’s work; click on the images to view them larger. For more information about Remedios Varo and her paintings, here’s a helpful link. And, as always, you’re welcome to leave comments at the bottom of the page.
Creation of the Birds - 1959
Visit to the Plastic Surgeon - 1960
Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst - 1960
Solar Music - 1961
These homeless cats' lives are a lot harder than mine and they complain less.
Yesterday, I suffered a minor disappointment: a short, low-key vacation I’d been thinking about and planning for a few weeks has turned out not to be the practical thing for financial reasons and therefore isn’t going to happen this year. It’s not a big deal; I know that now and I knew it then. Still, when the disappointment was fresh, I did what I usually do when I don’t get my way: I pouted and wallowed in self-pity like a five-year-old. And what I usually do to counter my wallowing in self-pity like a five-year-old is distract myself — watch TV or take a nap — which has the same effect as slapping a bandage on a bruise: it doesn’t solve anything, except provide a little padding.
Knowing that it wasn’t a big deal and that I was acting like a spoiled child, and acknowledging that this wasn’t the first time that I’d reacted this way — that handling disappointment isn’t my forte and that minor tantrums are a bad, if infrequent, habit of mine — made me realize that I needed to figure out how to grow as a person and not regress to juvenile behavior. So, instead of allowing myself to be bitter about my circumstances, or doing something lazy and self-indulgent to distract myself for a while rather than solve the problem, I decided to do the exact opposite: I did things I didn’t want to do, but that needed to get done. Because the world doesn’t stop for disappointment, and doing something puts me in the present and applies that built-up energy toward something useful. So I swept and vacuumed the floors, did another load of laundry, started the dishwasher, and made a grocery list. I also did a few sets of pull-ups and crunches.
And I felt better afterwards. Part of it was probably due to the rush of endorphins activated by light physical activity, but an even bigger part of feeling better was realizing, while doing the housework, that the source of the problem wasn’t that I didn’t get my way, or that I’m childish for being disappointed; it was that I’d invested too much emotional energy in a projected (rather than actual) future. I hadn’t even made reservations yet (although I did reschedule a dental cleaning for it), but I’d allowed myself to spend a good deal of time thinking how nice it would be to get away from the city for a while, to sit in the quiet with my husband and my dog for a few days, to relax under the stars, wrapped in blankets, and drink a glass or two of wine, and not worry about real life for a while. If I hadn’t allowed myself to get so wrapped up in what could be, the disappointment wouldn’t have been so hard to take.
I don’t think I’m the only one who does this, which is why I’m sharing, and it goes beyond little vacations to larger life issues. It’s a perspective and a cycle fostered by cliches like, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” In reality, sometimes you can’t. Sometimes things don’t work out exactly the way you’d imagined they would. And just planning and dreaming about something doesn’t entitle you to receive it. Sometimes you’ll be disappointed. And, quite often, achieving those dreams requires lots of time and sacrifices you won’t want to surrender; it doesn’t necessarily come easily.
But that doesn’t mean that life sucks. I think the way to prevent disappointment (not entirely, but a large portion of it) is by not investing so much of one’s emotional energy in the projected future. I’m not saying that it’s bad to want things, to hope or plan for things — that’s not true at all. What I’m saying is that by wanting something tenuous so deeply, by steadfastly committing ourselves to a dream, we’re only hurting ourselves. Instead, we need to focus most of that energy on finding satisfaction in the present, in things that are, rather than what might be. Because it’s true that life — even a life that lasts 120 years – is short. There are so many small, simple pleasures around us — like drinking coffee or tea in the early morning and watching the world wake up around us — that we miss if we only look forward to things that might happen, to things we might have someday. By living in the present, appreciating what is around us — what is – the projected future matters less. It allows us to look forward to things without investing ourselves in them, so that if they don’t work out the way we wanted them to, we can more easily shrug our shoulders and move on. It’s true for both big disappointments as well as small ones. Because, yes, we are the creators of our own happiness, regardless of our situation, regardless of what happens to us.
A quote to close:
“And to serve your own mind so that sadness or joy do not sway or move it; to understand what you can do nothing about and to be content with it as with fate — this is the perfection of virtue.” (Chuang Tzu, Section 4, trans. by Burton Watson)
Thanks for reading. As always, you’re welcome to leave a comment below.
I not only play
Crosswords in pen, but also
Write them in red ink.
My mom has been the unofficial family historian for my immediate and extended family for some time, and she recently handed over most of her records to me (genealogy papers, handwritten letters, old photographs, etc.) to keep and add to as time goes on. I was looking through some of it this morning and found the following undated letter from my great-grandmother, Florence Packard (nee Nelson). Letters fascinate me, partly because people don’t really write them anymore, and because you get a sense of who people are by how and what they write. Anyway, I thought I’d share it.
______________________
Dear Ele;
Have wanted to get at a letter to you for some time but too many upsets.
I imagine you have heard about the fires we are having here, is terrible. Are practically on our doorstep.
Some small towns around us had had some houses burn and have been evacuated. The whole country is thick with smoke.
It all started last Sunday evening when we had an electrical storm which was long overdue. Usually if we have a few days of extra hot weather we have a storm. But I cant remember when we have had a day that wasn’t in the 90[s] or 100[s]. Our hottest was 105 some days in a row.
We are down in Crescent City now, just got here thru thick smoke three fourths of way. We had planned on coming here to spend the Labor Day week end anyway but kind of left ahead of time. That smoke was too much.
Seems funny one lightening storm can set about half the state on fire but it was terribly dry. I don’t know when we had a rain.
Bob [1] has been taking radiation treatments for cancer inside his nose for over a month & is thru now & is supposed to come back in six months for results. I sometimes wonder if it was in time.
Bobby, Evalyn & Steven [2] were here for about a week a couple weeks ago. Was so hot & couldn’t get anything done. Had so much canning to do.
The tomatoes are finally starting to ripen & have canned ten pints so far & brought a big sack of them down here.
Jill [3] wants some of them also so will give her the ripe ones when we get home. She gave me two big boxes of peaches last week & I canned thirty gls of them so wont have to buy any this year.
Have been canning different kinds of pickles & have got about all of them I need, but hate to see them go to waste…
Being on jury duty doesn’t help matters any. They excused me for this week so could be down here.
Was surprised to hear of your auction. How did it go? Are you still going to live there?
Is so nice down here but cant help thinking of them at home in all that smoke.
Dennis [4], his son & grandson are out fishing & will have Dennis take me to town to mail this letter when they get back.
The grandson lost a nice ling cod yesterday which made him sick as catching one of them is a prize.
Well will close this & mail it when Dennis gets back.
Love,
Flo.
__________________
1. Her Husband, my great-grandfather
2. My grandfather (her son), grandmother and uncle (mother’s brother)
3. My great-aunt
4. My great-uncle
I doubt this is going to become a weekly thing, but today is Friday and this is some flash fiction I wrote, hence the parenthetical subtitle. Anyway, I’d love it if you’d read this and tell me what you think. Thanks!
———————————
They kept their voices low, her mother and father, and the sheriff, too, when he showed up. They didn’t want her to hear. They drank coffee in the kitchen and their voices were dark, as if there was a shadow lurking in them somewhere. Luckily, she had good ears and could make out almost all of what they said, standing where she was in the doorway between the hall and living room and leaning against the edge of wall that divided the two.
They said that there was a severed cow head in the pasture, just outside the edge of the forest. It wasn’t one of theirs. That was the strangest thing, her father said. He couldn’t understand why someone would just dump a thing like that in someone’s field in the middle of the night, way off the road.
The sheriff said they must have carried it, too, because there were no tire tracks.
Her mother said it made her sick to think of something like that.
It was Saturday morning, late fall, and the wind blew a shower of yellow-brown leaves from the tree in the front yard. She could hear their soughing through the window. The leaves looked like butterflies as they fell and sunlight trembled on the grass like a living thing.
She stood up straight and went to her bedroom, climbed over her unmade bed and opened her window. It was especially cold in the shade. She put on her boots and a sweater, popped out the screen, and climbed out. She was still in her flannel nightgown and she crept across the backyard, pretending she was a cat, then climbed over the fence and into the wide golden field. The air was earth-sweet and the frosted dew on the close-cut grass crunched under her boots as she ran. Halfway across the field, she thought she heard a far-away, ringing cry that might have been her mother’s voice.
The head was just a small, black lump in the distance until the final few strides, when it finally became what it was, as if it had popped into existence at the last moment to prove itself to her. It was lying sideways; its eyes were closed; and the mouth was open, its flat white teeth showing and the tongue sparkling with frost, lolling out for one last lick of grass. The skin was shredded at the nape. The meat and bones were glossy and smooth with varying shades of red and pink and fat-white, like the petals on a marbled rose, and the tag on its ear was blue. It barely stank.
She had expected to feel something bigger. There was a tingling in her feet, like they were being tickled, and a sense that she was made of air, that she was small and floating inside herself somehow. But she wasn’t afraid and she didn’t feel sick. She wondered if maybe it was because it didn’t seem real, but it did. It was plain as anything. She felt sorry for the cow; there was a sore feeling in her center, just above her stomach, and it made her feel better when she felt it. But it went in and out, and it was out more than in, and when it was out, there was nothing to replace it.
She wondered if it would prove something to touch it. She squatted down, the cold creeping up under her nightgown, and reached out and ran her fingers over the fur. She didn’t want to touch the meat, she realized. The fur felt both smooth and coarse, and aside from it being very cold, there was nothing different about the feel of it from a live cow. Again, she waited for something to come and knock into her, but there was nothing. Somehow death had turned out to be a plain thing.
She sat down and stretched out her legs, her feet on either side of the head, and felt the hard yellow grass scratch her skin where it was exposed. She sat there until her father came and picked her up by her shoulders and made her stand. She could feel the fear inside him slip out when he asked her what the hell she thought she was doing. It made her ashamed of herself; she couldn’t look him in the face.
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a beautiful, delicate novel that addresses human frailty and futility, the impermanence of beauty and life itself, and the unbridgeable social, intellectual and emotional gaps that divide people and keep us from ever really understanding one another.
The form of the novel is frequently compared to the haiku style and for good reason: the scenes are brief and beautiful with crisp endings that resonate in the white space of line breaks between episodes, and more is suggested than explicitly stated. Also like haiku, which is celebrated for its clear, concrete imagery, the scenic descriptions are lucid and breathtaking. If you’re not familiar with the northern Japanese hot springs in the early 20th century, this is a great book to pick up for the specifics about what this region looked like at that particular time and how the people there lived.
While some readers might be annoyed by the occasional “telling” rather than “showing” style of characterization — and I think it’s important to note that this isn’t wrong, even if it’s one of those easy, frequently cited “rules” of contemporary Western literature — in becoming distracted by this, one misses the more subtle ways in which Kawabata renders his characters. Because characterization is rendered so delicately here, the characters may seem flat or opaque at first glance, due to the novel’s very removed third-person perspective, and one has to read between the lines to perceive the characters’ quirks and sensitivities. While this might be frustrating to readers who prefer literature that puts the reader very clearly inside the characters’ heads, this perspective is executed skillfully and with a purpose: the novel is about missed connections and unbridgeable distances, after all.
The dialogue is both beautiful and painfully realistic, as neither Shimamura nor Komako ever really says what they really mean; they speak more in loosely connected soliloquies than actual dialogue. One gets the feeling that they’re trying very hard to communicate, to connect, but they get in each other’s way in their desperation to do so.
I can’t recommend this novel highly enough — it’s elegantly, achingly beautiful, full of lucid, evocative descriptions and subtle shifts in mood and meaning. But it does require a reader willing to do more than coast through it, one as willing to plumb the depths as the writer himself. Still, it’s not a difficult novel and I think that some meaning can be gleaned in even a more superficial reading.
I also recommend reading Edward Seidensticker’s excellent introduction, but only after you’ve read the novel. There are some spoilers in there, but the information about the significance of the elements (the cold north, the hot springs, the cultural perception of geisha, etc.) is central to getting all you can from this novel, especially if you’re not familiar with traditional Japanese culture.
Rather than painting realistic images on canvas, taking surreal photographs, or painting renditions of well-known art on human bodies, 24-year-old Washington, D.C., artist Alexa Meade has brought the three together, painting her subjects as artistically rendered versions of themselves and then snapping photos of them in a variety of painted and unpainted settings. It’s a fresh mix of acrylic painting, performance art, and photography that asks us to reconsider the relationship between art and reality.
One piece, Transit (above), features an elderly man standing in a subway car, looking entirely convincing as a two-dimensional image, and I love the reactions of the unpainted people around him, who aren’t sure what’s going on but are trying to seem indifferent. The painted man, on the other hand, seems isolated, almost like a cardboard cut-out. The photo asks: “What if art really lived among us? Rode the subway with us, like anyone else?” It takes art off the wall and goes for a walk with it, just to see what happens: how it interacts with its environment, or doesn’t, and how its presence alters our perceptions of everything else.
Meade has also made several self-portraits. Of these, Alexa Split in Two (right) has perhaps the most to say about the give-and-take between art and reality as we compare the unpainted self with the painted self: there’s a kind of textural movement in the stillness of the image that we likely wouldn’t have noticed without the paint; we can better see the play of light and color on her skin and the contours of her bone structure. Visually, it’s the left half that has more life and it enriches our impression of reality. The image shows us how Meade views the world — with sharper, more sensitive and sensual eyes — through her versions of herself as both art and artist.
What do you think of Ms. Meade’s work? How does it affect your views of reality and art?
To see more of Alexa Meade’s work, visit her website or her Flickr page. And feel free to comment below.
