The Storeroom is Empty - W.Zell
Assembling this site has been an exercise in making-due-with-what-you-have - “enoughness”. Out of the numerous paintings and drawings that have come through out the years, I have only been able to take photos of a small few. Some are laying around that do not yet have homes and some others I’m saving since they hold personal meaning. So now there exists images of the images and I am to weave them into a meaningful or meaningless whole. This is what I have dug for myself.
Every so often due to cycling periods of prosperity and poverty I’d consider making art into a livelihood. In approaching galleries the director would inform me that I’d need to assemble a bio and portfolio. I would have to list my achievements and awards, impressive patrons that have my work (no ones refrigerator), the dates they were created along with dimensions, media, prices and other facts for potential buyers. I’d need to list any shows I had, which I never paid much attention to since I considered an artwork “always on”. Listing the homes of the people I gave, bartered or sold art to wasn’t that safe either. So, I’d start out photographing some work I had on-hand, start to wiseacre about my artistic statement and approach the market. But, eventually the need to be a smarter businesslike artist would peter-out shortly after the first or second rejection. I suppose my heart wasn’t into it. Well this site may be just another attempt to take inventory of the storeroom.
I have had to ask myself “Why I am going through the effort now?” The answer that keeps coming up is that there is something of a “grand-father” spirit pervading my consciousness. I have recently been experiencing a new stage of life that finds some value in sharing with others and myself (the distinction between these two entities is ever getting slimmer) the impressions of a life. Perhaps this is the social-animal instinct in us, perhaps vanity or a temporary remedy to a feeling of having created nothing. I do not know. The side effect however is similar to preparing oneself to die. The experience of reviewing ones work is like reviewing ones life, it can show a new way forward or at worst a nostalgic fantasy. Pondering the art and all that it is connected to takes one to some empty places inside, but, I wouldn’t have done it if it didn’t leave me with hope. Hope with strength.
Throughout this site it has sometimes been necessary to quote someone or relay an image of a painting rather than to re-interpret that thought through my own personality, subjective art style or understanding. Yet even in doing this, I don’t think I’ve completely communicated. It appears the essence of my influences exist through the communion of people and nature and will never be conveyed adequately through words and images on a screen. I am also reminded that what often makes something special is its mystery and that no one in particular can own it. Collectively I see that what is mine is also yours. it was always there for anyone with the determination to seek it out.
If there is one theme running through the site worth emphasizing it would be that there is something very interesting going on beneath the surface and to keep on scratching!
Once again I will rely on another’s insight to eloquently describe the process of assembling material for ones life work ie, site. The following is from Rudolf Steiner’s Theosophy - Chapter II, Re-Embodiment of the Spirit and Destiny.
“The human spirit grows through assimilated experiences, and although one cannot find past experiences in the spirit as if in a storeroom, one nevertheless finds their effects in the abilities that man has acquired.”
Destiny - Rudolf Steiner
“As preserver of the past, the soul continually gathers treasures for the spirit. That I can distinguish between what is correct or incorrect depends on the fact that I, as a man, am a thinking being able to grasp the truth in my spirit. Truth is eternal and it could always reveal itself to me again in things if I were to lose sight of the past and each impression were to be a new one to me.
The spirit within me, however, is not restricted to the present alone. The soul extends the spirit's horizon over the past, and the more the soul is able to bring to the spirit out of the past, the more does it enrich the spirit. The soul thus hands on to the spirit what it has received from the body.
The spirit of man, therefore, carries at each moment of its life a twofold possession within itself: firstly, the eternal laws of the good and the true, and secondly, the remembrance of the experiences of the past. What the human spirit does is accomplished under the influence of the two factors. If we want to understand a human spirit we must, therefore, know two different rent things about it. Firstly, how much of the eternal has been revealed to it, and secondly, how much treasure from the past lies stored up within it.
These treasures by no means remain in the spirit in an unchanged shape. The impressions that man acquires from his experiences fade gradually from memory. Not so, however, their fruits. We do not remember all the experiences lived through during childhood while acquiring the arts of reading and writing. Yet we could not read or write had we not had such experiences, and had not their fruits been preserved in the form of abilities. Such is the transmutation that the spirit effects in the treasures of memory. The spirit consigns to its fate whatever can lead to pictures of the separate experiences, and extracts there from only the force necessary for enhancing its abilities. Thus not a single experience passes by unutilized. The soul preserves each one as memory, and from each the spirit draws forth all that can enrich its abilities and the whole content of its life. The human spirit grows through assimilated experiences, and although one cannot find past experiences in the spirit as if in a storeroom, one nevertheless finds their effects in the abilities that man has acquired.”
Photo: Rudolf Steiner
