Outside Art- the Brut within

copyright:CynthiaLottVogel

I'm reading a book by a woman named Abigail Thomas....In it she talks about "Outsider Art"- or "Art Brut"

"Art Brut: literally translated from French means "raw art"; 'Raw' in that it has not been through the 'cooking' process: the art world of art schools, galleries, museums. Originally art by psychotic individuals who existed almost completely outside culture and society." Wikipedia

copyright: CynthiaLottVogel

One of the raw artists, the outsiders made the statement in the book, "What is art anyway, except not pounding the walls?"  This is truth.  As an artist I've been both an "Insider" and an "Outsider" - I have been trained as an artist but sometimes when I paint you see the artist and not the training.  You see the pain that bids me paint --or else I shall slice my arms and dip my hair in the blood to use as brush. When in these times, when I am creating in order to avoid pounding the walls...my art is real.  More true than it is beautiful.  More raw than it is refined.

copyright: Cynthia Lott Vogel

I do not paint like that often enough.  It brings me too close to emotions that can destroy me.  It frightens me.  But at times when I am mad, it gives me a bridge to sanity.  It is a rail to ride to keep from ruining myself. my life.  It is a link to a part of myself that knew what to do with images, paint and color.  The problem emerges when it links the part of me comfortable with line and form to the visceral piece of my innards that pulses raw and bleeding; that emotes and screams aloud as it traces desperate finger-claws down the padded walls and  pounds on barred windows of recollection.

By Stephen Judges

It is a fine tightrope walk....a tenuous balancing of scales over molten coals...and it is one that I need to delve more bravely....more frequently.  But to produce art like that you have to bring yourself to the point of wall pounding and then make the left turn to the pastels, the watercolors and be carried by those shudders of pain to the sanity seeking, lined learning, paint smudging, charcoal grubbing GRIP of the materials whose very tactility speaks to the ordering of my mind....That lost little girl who wanders amongst the images of people who dance in the light fixtures  and who finds her way out with a stick of vine charcoal on smudged and dusty white paper, grinding an unwilling eraser into the murk to seek form that has meaning.

In the hospital I turned up my nose at the dry magic markers and broken craypas.  The therapist said, "If you are a real artist; the materials will not matter....they will not stand in the way of creating art."  Her challenge bit me...tore through my snobbery and compelled me to accept the offering of the vine charcoal with humility.  I drew several pieces...one of which landed up mostly on the jacket of the inmate who leaned an unwary back against my picture hanging from its proud post there on the wall.

Art.

Sanity.

Gropings.

Treading one's path through the molten lava of madness and coming out on the other side with a relic of the path traveled.

Might I Share.....?

I know I said I was going to back off of the blog for a while...but I have a post crying to be written...so forgive me for reappearing unexpectedly.  This week was a tough week.  There was the continuing struggle with pain and the struggle to understand/accept that this is the way my life is going to remain...

I went to see my #2 Shoulder Surgeon (#1 had backed out of the surgery, feeling it was too risky)...This doc had summoned me back to his office when I had requested that he set a surgical date.  I had fleeting fears that he would back out....but tried to withhold judgement and wait to see what he said.  He came into the room with a very very sober look on his face and I knew he didn't have good news.  And no.  He didn't.

He told me that the surgery was bound to end badly, no matter what precautionary measures we took.  I stood to risk my life and my limb.  And therefore, as a surgeon pledged to "do no harm"...he would not be operating on me.  We both agreed that, since my joints were in such bad shape I should revert to a systemic medicinal approach.  So I went to see my Rheumy  in NYC yesterday.  I was in fervent prayer and in great hopes that he would summon the courage to confront the odds and give me a script for a biologic drug which my body desperately needs.   He examined me and felt that I was not in any worse shape than I was when he first met me...which is ridiculous. I am twice as bad as I was then...My arms are almost useless, my pain is indescribable and I can't walk more than 50 feet.

And then he told me no....he would not prescribe the med unless I was to see and be managed by an ID doctor at NYU...a colleague of his.  So he set out a bunch of hoops for me to jump through.  At great expense, wasting precious time and strength...and for an uncertain gain.  I went home in the dumps...only to find that the day program I was so much looking forward to....was not going to be a possibility either.  I was too distraught to cry.  Instead I slept.  For 16 hours and woke in a rotten mood...

My online friend tried to cheer me; tried to think of some way to lift my spirits. And I was bitter, hostile, and in despair.

My parents visited....which I enjoyed.
And then my aunt called.
Here you'll need a bit of background. My uncle--her husband--had terrible RA.(rheumatoid arthritis--a disease similar to mine) .He eventually died of it in his 50's.  But for all the time I knew him he sat in this one chair in the corner...a smile on his face, with twinkling eyes...and never ever complained.  His wife, Dorothy told me several phone conversations ago and she repeated it again today, "I'm so glad now, that I'm old, that I have arthritis too. (even though she has OA, a different thing altogether)...because now I can experience some of what he experienced.  I can share his pain."

Today I asked her if she had a wheelchair....and she said, "No, Bob always refused a chair and he managed to walk even though it hurt him terrible....If he could, then surely I can too."

I got to thinking about this. How if we are "married" to Christ; how if he is our greatest love; then my pain; my disability should be a joy.  Should be an honor.  Should be a means of knowing him better.  My greatest comfort...should be knowing that he walked through these deep waters first...ahead of me.  He is present with me here in my suffering....and somehow I am  keeping him company in his sufferings.  Even though in real time, his suffering is over....in some mystical way...I do believe that I know him in his death.  That I've experienced some of his pain...and that I too have joy set before me to look forward to.

Goodbye

I've been increasingly unhappy with what I've been writing here.  I have less and less to say and struggle more and more to find ways to say what I do say.  Maybe it's writers' block.  Maybe it's LIFE block.  At any rate my plan is to abandon the blog for now and to try to write journals once again.  There are things I need to work out....and they should not be worked out online in full view of the world.  Maybe there will come a time when I will have worked out these inner issues and once more will have enlightening words to share.  Right now....and it makes me really sad to say this because this blog has been a major part of my life for four years... I need to take a look at myself and my life and work some things out in private.  I am sorry to leave those of you who have been a part of my life for so long.  If you are someone with whom I've extended my relationship past the blog...please keep in touch with me.

Blessings to you who've shared my life and thoughts.  Please keep me in your prayers.

A New (Ad)venture

I am going to be having a change in my daily routine soon.  I have been accepted into a day program for people with schizophrenia.  I attended one such program many years ago while living in a group home.  Although I was supposed to continue attending that program, I dropped out of it not long after completing an intensive section of it designed for people who were recently discharged from long term hospitalizations or who were very unstable.   I "graduated" from "Hitler's Day Camp" (a derogatory term assigned to the program which was autocratically run by a man named George Neffinger--who, although he did his best to be a dictator--was in possession of a softer heart than he liked to advertise.)  Following my completion of this program, I was assigned to a group more intended for "Lifers"--people with chronic mental illness who needed a place to go to keep them out of the way of their housing staff or parents during the day.  This group was known by the initials of some title that I can no longer recall...in fact I recall nothing much of it, other than it was a completely hopeless assignment..a place where mentally ill people slouched around and bummed cigarettes.  I did not last long there.  It was too hopeless. It was meant for mentally ill schizophrenics  which I was not. (Just ask me--I would vehemently deny that description regardless of a list of hospitalizations as long as my arm....and three suicide attempts.)

But this place, I am getting the impression from the descriptions given to me by my case worker, is a better place.  A more positive, more optimistic place--with higher functioning people in it.  I am hoping it is a place where I will meet some people like me.  My husband completely doesn't "get" why I would have any interest in it at all.  But then he does not have to sit alone in a house 24/7 and he doesn't have to feel like an animal of a different species when he is amidst "normal" people on a daily basis.  I have wanted for quite a while to have a friend who also has this disease; someone who can have a clue what life is like for me.   I've never been one to compare symptoms and share war stories with people.  When I am in my pain management doc's office I put on my headphones and crank the volume and keep my eyes glued to my book.  Not the most friendly of postures, but I cannot abide those "my pain is worse than yours" scenarios that so frequently take place in such locales. 

And while it is a natural part of the camaraderie amongst people who share a diagnosis, to discuss with others like themselves, past events, hospitalizations, symptoms and delusions they have in common with others, there is generally not a competition to be the sickest one there.  Granted in some hospitals people of certain diagnoses do tend to compete for the spot of the most sick person on the unit....but people with SZ are not generally among those.  People with this disease are more often unassuming, keep to themselves, and are usually very nice.  The intake nurse at the last hospital I was in (several weeks ago) confided in me that people with schizophrenia are her favorite patients because of these very qualities. 

It is for reasons such as these--and because these people share in common with me symptoms that are alienating and isolating--that I would like to attend such a  group.  When you have a disease that society perceives as being bizarre and unusual--and are generally shunned from social inclusion--then it is kind of nice to be amongst others who have also experienced that. My husband fears, I think, that I will begin to act more "schizophrenic" and less "normal" as I go and am surrounded by MI adults. (MI=mentally ill).  I do not think that that will happen...and he doesn't know how I act now anyway since we do not see much of each other.

So yes, it boils down, largely, to loneliness and to boredom.  I do often long for other surroundings than my room in my house.  And it would be nice to hear someone say to me, "Good morning, Cynthia. How are you today?"  So I am going. With or without spousal approval or comprehension.  And if it turns out to be another program of despair and despondency...then I will not continue to go.  But I am going to give it a chance.

The Explicit Gospel: A Review

The Explicit Gospel by Matt Chandler

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book by pastor Matt Chandler was no disappointment for anyone familiar with his sometimes caustic and sometimes outrageous wit.  It is perhaps a bit of a surprise to find oneself roaring in laughter while reading a book of Christian philosophy and exposition....but that is exactly what I found myself doing on numerous occasions.  Granted, Matt had me trembling in knee-knocking terror at the understanding of the immensity of our God and about the tiny role we play in the grand scheme of things.  At a number of places as he pulled the rug out from under any Moralistic tendencies that I had, I found myself relieved that what I had perceived about God, just wasn't true.--  My heart has fairly frequently withdrawn from God rather than run to his arms as I should have, when I've fallen short and failed him.  I've felt unworthy at such times and like I needed to work harder to keep this demanding God happy.

Pastor Chandler was clear about the fallacy of such lines of thought.  And he also revealed the opposite danger, which was to weaken the gospel message and to pursue a social improvement type of faith, as so many mainstream Protestant churches are guilty of doing: creating a social gospel that eradicates the cross and our need for salvation..

And he did not have a weak conclusion as some books do, wandering into repetition of their points or into a mass of generalities.Rather Pastor Chandler pulled a hard punch about our need to be EXPLICIT with people when presenting the gospel.  As a mother and wife to unbelievers, it has been all too easy to presume that they understand and grasp the gospel....and when they have expressed thoughts about God that are completely off base --a hatred for a punitive God who should demand perfect actions in order to win his approval--I see that my assumptions that they are "getting it" were also radically off base.  It is critical that we verbally and with our lives demonstrate with clarity the Gospel of God's grace and the completeness of his work done on the cross on our behalf.  Otherwise, they just wont' "get it" and will rather listen to the misconceptions and lies propagated by a misunderstanding society.



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