It's About Feeling
Recently we had the pleasure and good fortune of having two of our dear friends from Austin stay with us for a few days. I played hooky with them one afternoon and we spent it out and about in Tucson. One of our stops was the Tucson Museum of Art where currently are displayed more than 100 prints from a private collection by Ansel Adams.
Perhaps you are a huge fan of Ansel Adams's work. The pristine beauty of his subjects coupled with his tireless dedication and discipline produced some of the finest photographs that there are. He has inspired and influenced countless photographers that followed him. He was a remarkable individual with tremendous vision for which he had the talent to develop on silver for the rest of us to enjoy.
Or perhaps you feel overexposed to the legacy that is Ansel Adams feeling as if you can't possible take another trip into the black and white world of our national parks. Do you indulge in the silent blasphemous pleasure as some do within the safety of our own thoughts?
If I have to look at one more God damn Ansel Adams...
Whichever your inclination, I recommend getting downtown and seeing this show on display before it closes in mid February. Not only are there likely some pieces that you have never viewed before, but quite possibly, one of them will become a new favorite. Even if you think you've already seen all you can stand of Ansel Adams.
More important than the photographs themselves was the feeling that the space and the works and viewers in it produced. There was a reverence, as often there is in a museum, by all of its visitors. Quiet. A hushed awe. A stillness slowed even more by the tranquility of the scenes. These inspired works convey a peculiar state of consciousness.
We ambled through softly, taking in the subtleties of the photographs — noting to each other our impressions about the images, the thoughts that they may have conveyed, our own memories that were triggered. I think now of what Stephen King wrote in his book "On Writing." He says that writing is nothing other than a from of telepathy. Writing is to clairaudience what photography is to clairvoyance. Ansel Adams communicated a family of states of consciousness that many of us would perhaps otherwise not be exposed to. Or, they remind of us states we experienced and cherish, grateful for the opportunity to hold embrace them once again.
And, if so fortunate, they can even open our imaginations up to such an extent that a living, truly wakeful state is induced, where bliss resides which may completely overtake us our every living cell should we allow it. It is this final possibility that fuels all of my remaining interest in art and my own process of painting.
My friend Max walked past me as I was taking in the vibrations — those around me, those within. As he did, without altering his pace, he said to me quietly in his thick, lazy Texas accent (which I absolutely adore)...
"Isn't art incredible?"