A New Art Movement

Inside the New Studio

2009-05-09T20:28:00.001-06:00

Looking from the back half to the front half. -North

Opening June 1st

2009-03-14T07:47:00.000-06:00

New Studio... now featuring elbow room

2009-03-08T10:47:00.002-06:00

I was in some timeless space, timeless face of my embrace
Held empty air and empty space, all on a sunny day
There's a lifeline that I know and it holds me back and lets me go
Whatever I do I don't let my lifeline stray
So it goes as lifetimes pass from heart to mind and back again
My restlessness becomes a flame letting my lifeline show
-Gordon Lightfoot

It has been a while since my last update. Something I would have found unforgivable a year or two ago, when these posts were a daily occurrence. Ultimately, it has all been sidestepped in the name of art or at least the malnutrition of my lifeline.

Fortunately, I believe I have finally found a time and place in which to remain, at least for longer than usual. I have rented a downtown storefront for my next art studio. Something with a thousand square feet to work on the large scale installations that my waking dreams have only alluded to during spats of semi-consciousness. The idea is to finally have enough space to create and document the works, then dismantle and store while I market to various galleries and museums.

It also has another thousand square feet for gallery space and art classes. In a time when the economy seems to bring in fewer and fewer sales, it seems that a focus on providing summer art camps, after school lessons and adult night classes may be the best bet to paying the rent on a new and massive space primarily acquired to finally fulfill my longtime desire to work in cubic feet rather than square inches.

Works a comin’ so sit tight, we’re getting into uncharted territory. – North

Progress

2008-12-14T00:57:00.002-07:00

The house is temperate, despite the twenty-below weather, outside. I’ve missed the unforgiving manner in which life continues with an almost detached certainty of cold. Yes. Nearly a foot of snow, now, with drifts taller than my youngest son. It is scheduled to start again; at any moment – the eastern blowing momentum of snow and ice strained through a sieve before pelting glass and wood and pressed-aluminum.

The canvas is stretched and primed. The painted sketches, which I typically ignore in my madness to build deposits and sheets and layers of pigment, are nearly to a state of finish – something a sketch should never confusingly reach. The abstracted Hutterite half-truths need permanent visual explanation before they are buried with the short stories, biographies and landscapes that are lost among my memories of Southwestern arroyos, Southern deltas and previous Rocky Mountain winter blazes.

I may eventually consider sleep, if I can continue to deny this urge to step out into the dazzling midnight snow and cross the sixteen or so feet from the mud-room door to my awaiting studio. The wind chill will reach negative fifty, within another two hours.
-North

"The Boy with a Moon and Star on His Head"

2008-11-09T10:46:00.013-07:00

Tuesday’s election ushered-in a new moment of change for the nation. Then, almost as if by grand design, my family awoke to a few inches of snow the following morning. The powder wiped the northern slate clean, yet somehow, along this region called the Hi-line, the golden-white fields were limited to Glacier County – the only region of the north central Montana political map to turn blue the previous evening. The snow lasted for only that twenty-four hour period and I’m not one to believe in blessings, but I did stop and consider the gesture as appreciation.

Now, however, it is Sunday. The first fresh week as it starts after the election and so far nothing of depressing consequence has happened. There were no riots, there were no assassinations. There was only this humble resignation muddled with silent relief from my red-hued compatriots.

Under these thoughts and safely-missed illusions, I began this first new day of the week, listening to the album “Catch Bull at Four” by Cat Stevens.

"The Boy with a Moon & Star on His Head" by Cat Stevens

A gardeners daughter stopped me on my way, on the day I was
To wed
It is you who I wish to share my body with she said
Well find a dry place under the sky with a flower for a bed
And for my joy I will give you a boy with a moon and
Star on his head.
Her silver hair flowed in the air laying waves across the sun
Her hands were like the white sands, and her eyes had
Diamonds on.
We left the road and headed up to the top of the
Whisper wood
And we walked till we came to where the holy magnolia stood.
And there we laid cool in the shade singing songs and
Making love...
With the naked earth beneath us and the universe above.
The time was late my wedding wouldn’t wait I was sad but
I had to go,
So while she was asleep I kissed her cheek for cheerio.
The wedding took place and people came from many
Miles around
There was plenty merriment, cider and wine abound
But out of all that I recall I remembered the girl I met
cause she had given me something that my heart could not
Forget.
A year had passed and everything was just as it was a year
Before...
As if was a year before...
Until the gift that someone left, a basket by my door.
And in there lay the fairest little baby crying to be fed,
I got down on my knees and kissed the moon and star on
His head.
As years went by the boy grew high and the village looked
On in awe
They’d never seen anything like the boy with the moon and
Star before.
And people would ride from far and wide just to seek the
Word he spread
I’ll tell you everything I’ve learned, and love is all...he said.

I pass through life less as a visionary than an actual man, lonely for the past, pitiful yet anxious for the potential future. I miss my children, though they are within arm’s reach, I long for my partner, though I can still hear her in the next room. I wonder where the next painting will come from as I travel the outstretched prairie shadowed by the Rockies to the west and the Sweetgrass Hills to the northeast. I may confuse my left with my right - but never my true direction... it is bound to me where a soul should be. - North

Homesteaders

2008-10-26T14:20:00.001-06:00

Click the picture to zoom.
-North

Fulfillment

2008-10-19T19:41:00.001-06:00

-North

Rhymester

2008-10-18T15:10:00.001-06:00

-North

Before the Windfarms

2008-09-26T17:20:00.001-06:00

-North

Brothers

2008-09-25T17:51:00.001-06:00

-North

Again

2008-09-24T20:23:00.000-06:00

-North

2008-09-22T20:48:00.000-06:00

-North

New Work

2008-09-21T16:04:00.003-06:00

-North

Enlightenment from a Yogi Tea Bag

2008-09-13T09:01:00.002-06:00

The head must bow to the heart.

Sounds like Montana to me. - North

501 Posts, Have I Learned Anything?

2008-09-07T08:25:00.003-06:00

Actually, only a small minority of the human race will ever consider primeval nature a basic source of happiness… Mankind as a whole is too numerous for its problem of happiness to be solved by the simple expedient of paradise. – Robert Marshall, an early explorer of the Brooks Range in Alaska

Like most blogs, this page was established to give voice to the spinning wheels in my head. I was looking for a way to work-out-loud with my ideas of the visual, literary and conceptual arts. Sometimes it works beautifully, other times, not so much. Basically, a philosophical sketch of my past, present and future – everything changes, everything stays the same. It’s all about perspective. - North

2008-09-06T07:41:00.004-06:00

... I am bliss. - North

Gotta Love Small Towns

2008-09-03T19:51:00.000-06:00

From the local paper...

Friday, Aug 29: 12:03 a.m. - Officer is out with three individuals in a parking lot. It is a man and his two sons. Their vehicle broke down and all motels in town are full. Officer told them to go to sheriff's office and they will put down mattresses in the old judge's office and they can sleep there.

An Art Market is Not Decided by One Artist

2008-09-01T09:38:00.001-06:00

Damien Hirst Bypasses The Galleries - The End Of The Gallery System As We Know It? "What does it mean for the art market that a living artist bypasses dealers altogether and sells his wares directly at auction? There is some speculation that this might be a pivotal moment, like the end of the studio system in movies or the continuing decline of the record labels in the music business. Could the gallerist's traditional role as mediator between the contemporary artist and his market be passÃe?" Wall Street Journal 08/23/08

I’m not sure that it really means anything, considering the artist in question is Damian Hirst – a living artist that time and time again financially dominates the British art market. His conceptualized work has always been somewhere outside the traditional painting and sculpture gallery scene; how is this a huge leap? In fact, I dare say this may have a positive impact on the gallery market, in the manner in which it opens the playing field for other artists. - North

Samuel's 6th Birthday Wish

2008-08-26T20:37:00.002-06:00

Blackmail the Baker

2008-08-20T19:40:00.004-06:00

The dream is… Or rather it should be, dammit, like a fan club for philosophers. And poets. And painters. And maybe even rogue Hutterites. At least the ones we can catch – as they're draining a staggering number of pints (always Olde English) in the dark corner of the local pizzeria.

Like home everywhere. But not too much.

This place where Rod serves unlimited spaghetti dinners and can win free loaves of french bread like he’s blackmailing the baker. Then the next evening, playing Texas Hold’em, late into the darkness, with two Mormon missionaries and the hint of a steady hand. - North

Fresh

2008-08-19T15:15:00.003-06:00

This house that saw less than eight hundred nights now searches for a fresh ten thousand.

Brothers building yard castles from empty crates and boxes. Stacks of cardboard trapping their voices, releasing their ingenuity. The threat of a blistering reality removed. Though, I can still glimpse it – only distantly. Once imminent, now cascading as soap round the drain.

The neighbor’s stereo is never sleeping. He has it wired to pour music through outdoor speakers and illuminate our nights with jovial harmonic gestures that release a soundtrack to a new life. This old life. One that is not revisited or retraced so much as reinvigorated. - North

The Portfolio Website has Been Updated

2008-08-18T23:40:00.001-06:00

www.danielnorth.com

Driving My Oldest Child Home

2008-08-16T10:49:00.004-06:00

The car sputters to a stop and we have passed to the moment after. My language is defunct. Words and phrases remain listless in their transition to time. The Ford hesitates, then turns over and we continue.

You ride with me, but I’m not driving. Our destination is sketched in blueprints and the side columns of a menu stolen from the diner outside Hungry Horse. The prairie lies east; but I can’t see it through the tinted glass and mountain pass.

To the south, they built Teddy a cock. I tell you it is an obelisk and shield your eyes. I petition the rocks and streams for the moment before. When the house was yellow, the sky was full of light and the minutes were less. - North

Buried

2008-07-19T22:51:00.005-06:00

Beyond the vinyl siding lay the remarkable. Where planters don’t require satellites and crops are small enough to avoid the call of migrant workers. Dyed diesel is a myth, but my wood shingled roof has a fresh coat of paint infused with linseed oil.

The red jammers are full though the road curves to dreams of avalanche. I imagine they’re playing golf again not far from where I picnicked amid a ruptured flock of aspen. A forest is waiting.

I hear stories of the huckleberries falling off the bush before ripening. The hinterland looms within reach of the curious. Milk and honey live in legend. Brush and grouse and wolves live in here. - North

2008-07-15T15:35:00.003-06:00

“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”
- Matsuo Basho

A New Art Movement

Inside the New Studio

Opening June 1st

New Studio... now featuring elbow room

Progress

"The Boy with a Moon and Star on His Head"

Homesteaders

Fulfillment

Rhymester

Before the Windfarms

Brothers

Again

More

New Work

Enlightenment from a Yogi Tea Bag

501 Posts, Have I Learned Anything?

Gotta Love Small Towns

An Art Market is Not Decided by One Artist

Samuel's 6th Birthday Wish

Blackmail the Baker

Fresh

The Portfolio Website has Been Updated

Driving My Oldest Child Home

Buried