What is the meaning of a work of Art?  Does it mean what an artist intends or does it take on its own independent meaning separate and distinct from the artist’s will?  Can the meaning of an artwork evolve over time?  Or does meaning stay fixed to the artist’s intentions?

The story begins just after the last Summer Solstice when I created my latest installation for the Stoney Rocks Museum.  The museum concept involves evolutionary stonework wherein I destroy a large stone sculpture and build a brand new stone sculpture from the pieces of the destroyed sculpture.  I’ve had this one pile of rocks evolving for a couple of years  now so it has gone through several different manifestations.  The newest version was going to be called “The Dance” as I wanted to depict two stone humanoids dancing joyfully in a forest.

I was very clear in my intent upon creating.  Two people dancing joyfully.  The previous sculpture I destroyed was called “organic life form” and it seemed appropriate to follow that up and use its pieces to depict a joyfully dancing couple.  Out of the one comes two….  The metaphor was rich, the metaphor was deep.  It almost seemed like my evolving sculpture was telling some kind of grand mythic tale.  There was no doubt or wavering in my mind.  The vision was clear throughout the whole building process. I had the pieces left over from the destroyed organic life form all I had to do was put them together and execute the vision. 

And I did it.  And it came out great.  Awesome.  I totally loved it. It looked like I imagined it would look.  Two people dancing joyfully together in the forest.  Indeed, I loved it so much I wondered if I would be able to destroy it when the wheel of time turned to the next Solstice and I was called upon to continue the evolutionary stonework ritual of destruction and creation. I loved it so much that I sent photos and videos off to friends.  I was so excited, I invited my neighbors and nearby friends over to see it,  I pulled complete strangers off the street passing by to ask them their opinion.  I was absolutely over the moon happy with what I had created. 

The viewing audience, however, was not so impressed…. While everyone claimed to like it and be impressed.  Nobody saw two humanoids dancing in the forest in the sculpture.  Everybody else saw something different.

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What do you see in the video? Some people just saw stone towers with no humanoids or animal figures at all. Lots of people saw the two faces and thought it was some kind of two headed monster or creature or animal.  Some people saw the faces and the two intertwined bodies but interpreted the relationship between the two figures as an aggressive one or a sexual one.  Several people thought they were fighting, and one person thought the scene depicted one person stabbing another in the back.  Nobody, except for me, the creator, saw a joyfully dancing couple in the scene.  Of course, after I pointed it out, everyone would agree and immediately say oh yeah, of course, I see it, a couple is dancing in the forest.  But they would only see it after I had pointed it out or suggested it out loud.  Obviously, my not so skilled execution of the creation was rather flawed if nobody could see the truth in the creation without my prompting. I had failed in my attempt to portray a realistic enough scene that people would understand when looking at it.  Maybe I should change the name of the sculpture to “the embrace”.

When I built the sculpture, it was early summer and I was at the peak of my physical and psychological powers.   That’s why I thought it was my finest creation ever and was so gosh darn proud of it.   It didn’t matter if nobody got it. I could see it and it was beautiful and that is all that counts.  Strangely enough,  my psychological/spiritual well-being tends to follow the seasons of the year.  It is not an infrequent occurrence that my mood and persona does a deep dive into despair during the months when sunlight fades and this year was one of those years.  I maintained my superman stone artist attitude all through the months of August and September.  But then, sometime in early October it was like passing through a portal in the Universe. Suddenly, everything started to go wrong.

I can’t really pinpoint the exact date and time.  It was right about when we got back from our mini-vacation on Cape Cod and I started work on a blue stone walkway.  My whole body started to ache with random pains in strange places.  The bluestone delivery was wrong.  All the top pieces were an inch short on each side and I couldn’t return them and get replacements.  Then, the pick up truck died and the rentals were all reserved and I couldn’t get a stone dust delivery.  It started to rain a lot during the day.  And I just plain felt physically horrible.  What was wrong with me?  And then the gates of Hell opened up in the Middle East and I started seeing dreadful photos of horrific war crimes on my cell phone all the time.  All of a sudden, the wonderful beautiful world that I lived in had collapsed into chaos and misery.

My descent into despair continued throughout October and November.  I struggled to complete my few remaining stonework projects of the season despite the random physical pains that were racking my body.  The weather turned wet, cold and shitty.  No fun to work in. The horrific images on my telephone continued in a constant stream. I started to have lots of weird anxiety about my own health.  Am I dying?  What is causing these strange random pains?  I probably have a deadly disease?  Or it’s a heart attack getting ready to happen.  My body is going to give out.  I could not stop thinking about those poor Palestinian children.  Trapped under rubble of bombed out buildings.  Imagine the ones that are still alive but trapped unable to move to die slowly of hunger or thirst or both combined.  Put yourself in their place.  Think about that! 

Did the meaning of the sculpture change/evolve on its own or was it just a transformation in my mind?  I stopped seeing a couple dancing in the forest so much and started seeing more of what lots of other people seemed to see…. Some kind of crazy, two headed monster that is fighting or struggling with itself.   

My stonework season ended in mid November and I began my long awaited period of rest and recovery.  Traditionally during this time, I abstain from my usual bodily intoxicants (sugar, caffeine, cannabis, and alcohol) in order to cleanse my system and I spend my time doing yoga, stretching and breathing exercises instead of the heavy lifting of stonework.   It usually takes a week or two for all my muscles to relax and for my system to clean itself out but then I usually feel pretty good. This year, however, I was feeling particularly bad at the start of the cleanse so I wasn’t expecting to feel good quickly.  After three weeks, I still felt dreadful.    My whole body ached and I had rather unbearable death anxiety.  I would sit upon my stone bench and look up at the Sculpture and think about all those poor innocent humans buried dead and alive under the rubble of bombed out buildings.  Shame on you Israel and shame on you America for making this horror show happen.

It was the end of November when we found the tick bite bullseye and learned that I had Lyme disease. Wow!  What a Relief?  Lyme disease is a truly horrible and dreadful thing. But there is a standard medical treatment for it that usually works if they catch it on time.  But how long did I have it?  I had been feeling crappy since early October.  Could all my pain and misery for the past two months really just be Lyme disease.   I started taking doxycycline and felt like my old self in three or four days.  I couldn’t believe it.  I was saved.  No more weird pains.  No more death anxiety.  I didn’t realize how bad I had felt before until I started feeling good again.  It was like emerging from a cloud of pollution into fresh clean air.  Doxycycline had saved me physically.

But it didn’t save me mentally.  The dead and living Palestinians were still buried under the rubble of buildings destroyed by American made bombs.   And that truth oppressed me.  That truth depressed me.  I would sit outside on the big stone by the sculpture and ponder my part in the whole horror show.  Is it my fault somehow?  Why do I care so much about the hell unfolding in Gaza?  There are wars all over the world.  What’s so special about Gaza?  Why do I let it bother my conscience so?  I can’t do anything about it.  It’s not my fault.  It has nothing to do with me.  It’s happening way over there.  I’m here.  In America.  The land of the free…

The Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday season was now upon us and that reality intensified my depression.  I never much liked the celebration of glittery consumer capitalism that is the American Holiday but this year it seemed particularly shameful in light of the ongoing carnage in the Middle East.  The monster of my conscience tormented me… How can you feast on junk food and indulge in plastic consumer products while children are being massacred in your name?  Shouldn’t you be doing something useful?  Helpful. Instead of ignoring it and pretending like it’s not even happening. You could be writing letters and articles and posting information on the internet.  You  could be going to peace marches or rallies.  You could be participating in non-violent civil disobedience disrupting the economy. You could be filing lawsuits in multiple courts.  You could be sending money and clothes and food to useful charities that are helping out on the scene.   You could do lots of things.  Many things.  Don’t you see.  This is genocide.  We all have to do something to stop it.  Do what you can.  Whatever you can? What can you do?

I did a three day food fast right before the Winter Solstice and offered the experience up to the starving Palestinians. I realize this provides no practical benefit because they don’t get to actually eat the meals that I forego.  Nevertheless, I am a great believer in the idea of solidarity and the spiritual suffering I endure during 84 hours without food somehow connected me in a very real way to the suffering Palestinians.    

It is hard to pinpoint the exact moment of my inspiration but a series of tangent circumstances converged upon the situation to make the course of action unfold as if pre-ordained by some cosmic plan.  I completed my food and intoxicant fast and the Winter Solstice arrived. I drank whiskey, smoked weed and lit candles all around the giant stone sculpture to celebrate.  Meanwhile, the Biden Administration vetoed a Security Counsel Resolution for a cease fire in Gaza and turned around three hours later to sell 900 Million dollars worth of ammunition to Israel so they could continue their massacre.  The news of this felt to me like a punch to the gut… no, more like a knife to the guts, a big greasy knife jabbed in my guts and twisted around.  How is this even possible?  Now don’t get me wrong?  I lost faith in the goodness of America long ago.  Some would even call me a dissident for my constant critiques of my home country’s foreign policy. But this is worse than  bad foreign policy.  This is worse than shameful and disgraceful.  How low can they possibly go?  This President man claims to speak for the soul of America. This President man claims to represent me.   And he went ahead and did that.  Shame shame shame on him and his whole gang of co-conspirators.  It makes me want to scream in anguish.  It makes me want to cry out in pain.  It makes me want to break something or smash something.  It makes me want to take a sledgehammer to a giant stone sculpture. 

Truth be told, the destruction of the sculpture called “the dance” had been originally planned for on or about the Winter Solstice because that’s the way my evolutionary stonework project  had been unfolding.  Every six months, I destroy the existing five ton stone sculpture and re-build a new one in its place.  I try to tell some kind of story in the process about transformation and re-birth.  I like to think of it as a spiritual exercise as well as an artistic and physical one.  According to the program I had laid out, the time for “the dance” was about up.  Nevertheless, I had decided to postpone “the Dance’s” destruction until the next Spring.  Partly because I had not yet decided on its replacement. Partly because I liked it so much that I couldn’t bring myself to destroy it.  But mostly because the process of evolving a five ton stone sculpture takes four or five days of intense physical and psychological effort.  Considering my weakened and depleted state, I just did not think I was capable.  I was kind of hoping for a big snowstorm so I would have a good excuse to put it off.  But one way or another, I was gonna wait until I had a design planned for the replacement.  I was just not ready to destroy “the Dance.”

But then, on the actual Winter Solstice, something remarkable happened.  Lit up by candles for the change of seasons, the sculpture called “the dance” transformed.   It changed into a whole new sculpture.  Somehow, it became a symbol of the Israel/Palestine Civil War.  It became the two-headed monster of conflict brought to life in stone.  Was it all in my imagination?  Or did the sculpture in fact change?  Therein lies the question.  What is the power of artistic intent?

Around midnight on the longest night of the year, I stood before a glowing peace sign, a bright moon and a distant bright light in the night that was probably a planet. From my perspective, the lights lined up like an arrow of peace shooting towards darkness in the sky.  It seemed somehow an appropriate time and place to make a wish or say a prayer.  To God… or to the Gods… or to something out there.

 

Does a prayer have power?  Does a prayer mean anything?  Does Art have power?  Does Art have meaning?  I honestly don’t know but I believe so.   And if you make a request of God or the Gods, aren’t you supposed to complete some special important task before you can have your request granted? Aren’t the tasks we perform for God or the gods what Art is all about?  I was making a big ask and I was troubling the powers that be to intervene in a situation that was far away from my immediate circumstances.  Wouldn’t it be easier if I just asked for good health for myself and my family and friends?  No.  Not me.  I had a chance to ask the Universe for something, I had to go big.  I asked for peace in the Middle East. 

The following morning before dawn, I went for a walk in the public forest near my house.  I reached the hilltop just as the sun was rising on the first morning of Winter.  It was during that Sunrise when I had my inspiration and knew for certain what I was going to do.  I didn’t actually hear a voice in my head or visualize something in particular. I wasn’t struck by lightening or magic or a bolt from the heavens.  But somehow, I just knew what I was going to do.  Perhaps I knew all along and only became aware that I knew during that first morning sunrise. But there was no longer any doubt in my mind.  I was going to destroy the symbolic monster of conflict and replace it with a symbol of peace.

After the sunrise, I returned to my house to look at the calendar and the weather forecast.  A full moon would be rising on Christmas night and the week before New Year’s would be warmish in the the forties.  No snow forecast. The circumstances of the universe were all in alignment.  I’d let the stone humanoids have one last dance in the moonlight.  But then I would destroy them.