Shuster Studio

2011-06-21T18:07:00.000-07:00

painting by Zao Wou Ki

"The existence of sensitive people is an advantage for humankind because it is this group that best expresses humanity's creative urges and needs. Through their instinctual responses the world is best interpreted. Under normal circumstances, they are artists or artisans, seekers, inventors, shamans, poets, prophets. There would be valid and powerful evolutionary reasons for the survival of genetic material coding for sensitivity. It is not diseases that are being inherited but a trait of intrinsic survival value to human beings. Sensitivity is transmuted into suffering and disorders only when the world is unable to heed the exquisitely tuned physiological and psychic responses of the sensitive individual." - Gabor Maté

image of painting found at Marlborough New York gallery website
passage by Gabor Maté found in his book Scattered

2011-06-11T08:19:00.000-07:00

Private lessons and small group classes
for adults, teens & children
in Hudson and NYC

please visit here for more information

and, to read students' thoughts on study with Shuster, please visit here

please don't hesitate to call or write with any questions.
i look forward to working with you.

Charcoal:
the Willow Branch Speaks

Summer Drawing Intensive
for adults & teens

one week or two
in Hudson, NY

visit here for more info

2011-03-16T11:28:00.001-07:00

UPCOMING & CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Shuster will exhibit charcoals in a 2-person show in Hudson, NY at the end of the summer, into September. details soon.
stay tuned...
also visit Recent Exhibitions

2010-12-31T10:13:00.000-08:00

The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar’s House

by Howard Nemerov

in memory of the painters Paul Klee

and Paul Terence Feeley

The painter’s eye follows relation out.

His work is not to paint the visible,

He says, it is to render visible.

Being a man, and not a god, he stands

Already in a world of sense, from which

He borrows, to begin with, mental things

Chiefly, the abstract elements of language:

The point, the line, the plane, the colors and

The geometric shapes. Of these he spins

Relation out, he weaves its fabric up

So that it speaks darkly, as music does

Singing the secret history of the mind.

And when in this the visible world appears,

As it does do, mountain, flower, cloud, and tree,

All haunted here and there with the human face,

It happens as by accident, although

The accident is of design. It is because

Language first rises from the speechless world

That the painterly intelligence

Can say correctly that he makes his world,

Not imitates the one before his eyes.

Hence the delightsome gardens, the dark shores,

The terrifying forests where nightfall

Enfolds a lost and tired traveler.

And hence the careless crowd deludes itself

By likening his hieroglyphic signs

And secret alphabets to the drawing of a child.

That likeness is significant the other side

Of what they see, for his simplicities

Are not the first ones, but the furthest ones,

Final refinements of his thought made visible.

He is the painter of the human mind

Finding and faithfully reflecting the mindfulness

That is in things, and not the things themselves.

For such a man, art is an act of faith:

Prayer the study of it, as Blake says,

And praise the practice; nor does he divide

Making from teaching, or from theory.

The three are one, and in his hours of art

There shines a happiness through darkest themes,

As though spirit and sense were not at odds.

The painter as an allegory of the mind

At genesis. He takes a burlap bag,

Tears it open and tacks it on a stretcher.

He paints it black because, as he has said,

Everything looks different on black.

Suppose the burlap bag to be the universe,

And black because its volume is the void

Before the stars were. At the painter’s hand

Volume becomes one-sidedly a surface,

And all his depths are on the face of it.

Against this flat abyss, this groundless ground

Of zero thickness stretched against the cold

Dark silence of the Absolutely Not,

Material worlds arise, the colored earths

And oil of plants that imitate the light.

They imitate the light that is in thought,

For the mind relates to thinking as the eye

Relates to light. Only because the world

Already is a language can the painter speak

According to his grammar of the ground.

It is archaic speech, that has not yet

Divided out its cadences in words;

It is a language for the oldest spells

About how some thoughts rose into the mind

While others, stranger still, sleep in the world.

So grows the garden green, the sun vermilion.

He sees the rose flame up and fade and fall

And be the same rose still, the radiant in red.

He paints his language, and his language is

The theory of what the painter thinks.

III

The painter’s eye attends to death and birth

Together, seeing a single energy

Momently manifest in every form,

As in the tree the growing of the tree

Exploding from the seed not more nor less

Than from the void condensing down and in,

Summoning sun and rain. He views the tree,

The great tree standing in the garden, say,

As thrusting downward its vast spread and weight,

Growing its green height from the dark watered earth,

And as suspended weightless in the sky,

Haled forth and held up by the hair of its head.

He follows through the flowing of the forms

From the divisions of the trunk out to

The veinings of the leaf, and the leaf’s fall.

His pencil meditates the many in the one

After the method in the confluence of rivers,

The running of ravines on mountainsides,

And in the deltas of the nerves; he sees

How things must be continuous with themselves

As with whole worlds that they themselves are not,

In order that they may be so transformed.

He stands where the eternity of thought

Opens upon perspective time and space;

He watches mind become incarnate; then

He paints the tree.

These thoughts have chiefly been about the painter Klee,

About how he in our hard time might stand to us

Especially whose lives concern themselves with learning

As patron of the practical intelligence of art,

And thence as model, modest and humorous in sufferings,

For all research that follows spirit where it goes.

That there should be much goodness in the world,

Much kindness and intelligence, candor and charm,

And that it all goes down in the dust after a while,

This is a subject for the steadiest meditations

Of the heart and mind, as for the tears

That clarify the eye toward charity.

So may it be to all of us, that at some times

In this bad time when faith in study seems to fail,

And when impatience in the street and still despair at home

Divide the mind to rule it, there shall be some comfort come

From the remembrance of so deep and clear a life as his

Whom I have thought of, for the wholeness of his mind,

As the painter dreaming in the scholar’s house,

His dream an emblem to us of the life of thought,

The same dream that then flared before intelligence

When light first went forth looking for the eye.

painting by Paul Klee

image found here: painting by Klee

2010-12-06T11:51:00.000-08:00

painting: "Rising Moon" by Hans Hofmann

We need a culture of creativity. We NEED Art.

We need art, and by that I mean both making and experiencing art. We need art not in another time, past or future, not when times are better, or more stable, or happier, but now. Art and art-making are not adjuncts to our lives, not extracurricular, or frivolous, but integral to our lives as fully realized, surviving and thriving, beings. If art and art-making are treated as just another form or way to make a commodity, then, it becomes, or is, just that - production. Art and art-making as creative endeavors are an altogether different experience. It’s the difference between heart and object, intuition and an instruction manual, yellow and purple.

We need art and art-making to inspire and to exercise our imaginations, to move us differently, and to stimulate our creativity. Experiencing art or making art takes us down different paths in our hearts and minds, and our bodies travel different paths as we experience and make art too. We go deeper or differently into our emotions, we use different parts of our brains, otherwise difficult to activate, setting off reverberations in body and mind and community. What do we need in times of trouble? Creative thinking and moving and being. We need people, minds, imaginations that can see and move differently, people who can imagine a better future and, further, a better NOW. Experiencing art and making art increase the flexibility of our minds to see possibilities, to stir our natural born powers to create, to fly into new realms - to “fly” into territory, inner and outer, previously unexplored. Art, when the process is rooted in deep exploration and contemplation, shows us ways not to re-create or resurrect a broken system or past, but to create something that fits this moment, to create anew with learning and seeing and recycled material, to create something fresh and vital out of the ashes, something that is born of now.

Art and art-making are for the feel of the material in your hands, the sound in your ears, the meaning that touches your heart. These open us. And when we are open, naturally, we can receive. When we are sensitive, we can feel, and when we can feel, we understand our impact on everything and everyone in our surroundings and theirs on us. We feel more palpably our natural interconnectedness with all.

Peace, art and lively creativity for the New Year.

Wendy

painting by Hans Hofmann, "Rising Moon"

image found at Hans Hofmann website

2010-11-26T09:31:00.000-08:00

This is impossible. Let's get started.

A sentence pairing that we cannot hear enough - particularly given the exhilarating outcome here! One of many memorable and inspirational moments from the film, Man on Wire.

See the film. I saw it last year and found myself recently sharing details with friends. I highly recommend it. It holds brilliant messages, insight and inspiration for all of life's endeavors, big or small.

go to Man on Wire website

2010-11-10T12:46:00.000-08:00

Abstract expressionists at the MoMA in NYC

wandering the rooms of paintings, I find a few fine Ad Reinhardts, a luminous painting by Philip Guston with direct relation to late Monet, a striking Lee Krasner… Jackson Pollock seriously dances through space in a couple of paintings … I see a kinship between my mentor’s work and that of Norman Lewis.. dynamic work by Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler… among others…

The exhibition is up through April 25, 2011. There's a lot to see - several visits are in order..

image found on the MoMA website

2010-10-06T06:25:00.000-07:00

Two new paintings of mine are hanging in Hudson through Sunday, October 17.

You'll find them at:
Vince Mulford's very fine shop - 419 Warren Street Hudson NY

They'll be lit up in the windows night and day. If you're in the Hudson area, I hope you'll stop by to see them.

Shop hours: friday, saturday & sunday, 11 - 5

to see more images of my work, go to: images of SHUSTER's work

2010-10-04T15:11:00.000-07:00

i have just seen my faith in humanity and the universe boosted.

since my dear old red pick-up truck finally laid down its weary head for the long sleep several weeks ago, i've been exploring the various ways of getting around without a motor vehicle - while living in the countryside, in a county with almost zero public transportation ... so i've been walking and biking and relying on the kindness of friends. well, today, i decided to give my thumb a try. i had an important appointment 30 minutes away (by car). i am happy to report that it took me a total of 45 minutes in each direction via a rapid succession of lifts (6 in total) from kind strangers! not only did i get where i needed to go, i met 8 new people and re-met one person (who i haven't seen in 10 years) who live in my community. almost all have had their own experiences hitch-hiking and enjoy returning the favor.

so, if you're driving around columbia or dutchess counties, or maybe some other part of the world, and you see a gal with her thumb pointing that-a-way, it could be me or some other kind soul who'd love a ride and to share a few minutes of conversation with you...

film poster found here: Even Cowgirls get the Blues

2010-09-21T07:31:00.000-07:00

CSA/Community Supported Artists

There's Community Supported Agriculture and now I propose Community Supported Artists.

Naturally, I am always seeking funds to continue on doing the good work of painting, teaching, writing about art and art-making, readying for exhibitions, and also setting up or maintaining a working studio and a teaching studio.

As with farmers, oftentimes for the artist, there is a time of investment and intense preparation and cultivation - for an exhibition, a workshop, or research grant deadline, say - and then, a time for harvest, or sales/teaching fees/residency/grant, for example, in the artist's case. The first period requires time, dedication and funding to make the second period fruitful. And, yet, it is often a time when money is not incoming. In addition to the funds needed for the art-making and preparation, there are all those other bills that continue to pile up! - even given the materially simple existence that I, for example, live.

Also, the relationship to the arts in this society can be rather fickle. Just when it is most needed, people turn away thinking that the arts are only meant for the high times, for the times when we have sure footing. But this view suggests that art is mostly entertainment, something superfluous or extracurricular, when, in fact, art and creativity are integral to our beings and necessary to a surviving and thriving culture. It's in times of trouble that we need art and art-making and the liveliest creativity. You can read more of my thoughts on this subject here: We need a Culture of Creativity. We NEED Art. As a result of the low value placed on the arts in our society, the government is of little help - particularly compared to the investment that other countries make to support the arts and their artists.

A CSA of the artist variety allows you to support an artist during the fallow period - which, mind you, is fallow only in the sense of currency earned - creatively, it's a mighty juicy time. The share you buy will pay fine returns in the form of inspired class study or a work of art in the future. Consider buying a "share" for, say, $250 or $500 or $1000 that would be an advance on lessons/classes or a painting/drawing purchased or a portrait commissioned (or some combination thereof) in the future. It would be seriously helpful and much appreciated.

Thank you for giving this idea some thought!

***********************************

Along these differently thinking-moving-being lines, I'm also starting up a "barter central" list of folks in the Hudson area who are interested in barter. And, I'm going to offer a weekly community drawing class, on a "pay what you can" basis, to reach a wider, more diverse audience and to encourage more art-making, creativity and seeing differently in this time that begs serious change.

Wendy Shuster

POB 1202

Hudson, NY 12534

2010-09-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

I participated in a candlelight vigil near ground zero on friday night - in memory of the victims of 9/11 and its aftermath, to stand for freedom of religion, and against the hatred being directed at muslims. a committed group of about 2,000 were present.

disconcerting, as always, is the pen in which the police put you to carry out your freedom of speech rights. you have to ask for permission (ie. file for a permit) to express yourself and then you're given something the size of a postage stamp on which to dance - fenced in and surrounded by police. feeling like sitting ducks. the paradox is nauseating. it's an ongoing struggle - but obviously well worth the effort...

the photo was found at: the gothamist

2010-08-27T11:52:00.000-07:00

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem, “Renaissance”

All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see;
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And -- sure enough! -- I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
I screamed, and -- lo! -- Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest,
Bent back my arm upon my breast,
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of Eternity.
I saw and heard, and knew at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The Universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense
That, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence
But could not, -- nay! But needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out. -- Ah, fearful pawn!
For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire, --
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each, -- then mourned for all!
A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.
I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
And every scream tore through my throat.
No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
That, crying, met an answering cry
From the compassion that was I.
All suffering mine, and mine its rod;
Mine, pity like the pity of God.
Ah, awful weight! Infinity
Pressed down upon the finite Me!
My anguished spirit, like a bird,
Beating against my lips I heard;
Yet lay the weight so close about
There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered death, but could not die.

Long had I lain thus, craving death,
When quietly the earth beneath
Gave way, and inch by inch, so great
At last had grown the crushing weight,
Into the earth I sank till I
Full six feet under ground did lie,
And sank no more, -- there is no weight
Can follow here, however great.
From off my breast I felt it roll,
And as it went my tortured soul
Burst forth and fled in such a gust
That all about me swirled the dust.

Deep in the earth I rested now;
Cool is its hand upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead.
And all at once, and over all
The pitying rain began to fall;
I lay and heard each pattering hoof
Upon my lowly, thatched roof,
And seemed to love the sound far more
Than ever I had done before.
For rain it hath a friendly sound
To one who's six feet underground;
And scarce the friendly voice or face:
A grave is such a quiet place.

The rain, I said, is kind to come
And speak to me in my new home.
I would I were alive again
To kiss the fingers of the rain,
To drink into my eyes the shine
Of every slanting silver line,
To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze
From drenched and dripping apple-trees.
For soon the shower will be done,
And then the broad face of the sun
Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth
Until the world with answering mirth
Shakes joyously, and each round drop
Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.
How can I bear it; buried here,
While overhead the sky grows clear
And blue again after the storm?
O, multi-colored, multiform,
Beloved beauty over me,
That I shall never, never see
Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,
That I shall never more behold!
Sleeping your myriad magics through,
Close-sepulchred away from you!
O God, I cried, give me new birth,
And put me back upon the earth!
Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd
And let the heavy rain, down-poured
In one big torrent, set me free,
Washing my grave away from me!

I ceased; and through the breathless hush
That answered me, the far-off rush
Of herald wings came whispering
Like music down the vibrant string
Of my ascending prayer, and -- crash!
Before the wild wind's whistling lash
The startled storm-clouds reared on high
And plunged in terror down the sky,
And the big rain in one black wave
Fell from the sky and struck my grave.
I know not how such things can be;
I only know there came to me
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save happy living things;
\A sound as of some joyous elf
Singing sweet songs to please himself,
And, through and over everything,
A sense of glad awakening.
The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,
Whispering to me I could hear;
I felt the rain's cool finger-tips
Brushed tenderly across my lips,
Laid gently on my sealed sight,
And all at once the heavy night
Fell from my eyes and I could see, --
A drenched and dripping apple-tree,
A last long line of silver rain,
A sky grown clear and blue again.
And as I looked a quickening gust
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard-breath, and with the smell, --
I know not how such things can be! --
I breathed my soul back into me.
Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I
And hailed the earth with such a cry
As is not heard save from a man
Who has been dead, and lives again.
About the trees my arms I wound;
Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;
I raised my quivering arms on high;
I laughed and laughed into the sky,
Till at my throat a strangling sob
Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb
Sent instant tears into my eyes;
O God, I cried, no dark disguise
Can e'er hereafter hide from me
Thy radiant identity!
Thou canst not move across the grass
But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,
Nor speak, however silently,
But my hushed voice will answer Thee.
I know the path that tells Thy way
Through the cool eve of every day;
God, I can push the grass apart
And lay my finger on Thy heart!

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, --
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat -- the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

the photo of the red-shouldered hawk was found at Share the Road

2010-08-25T15:27:00.000-07:00

Drawing - a window into seeing what is

Aman-Jean, 1883

Georges Seurat (French, 1859–1891)

Conté crayon on paper

The earth shifts beneath our feet (literally or figuratively speaking) and sets off vibrations in each of us. How do we receive, even embrace these vibrations, these rumblings? How do we see them, know them, work with them, and create with them?

Drawing offers a window into what is, a window into new possibilities. When we work honestly and sincerely we live more deeply inside the present moment and inside our true selves. To see well and clearly and to express what is seen has its own powerful vibration in the world, affecting change far beyond what we might imagine.

The space "in between" is the shaping "force" - the "between" is the relationship, the character or quality of that which comes together in any given moment to make a particular color, shape, value, drawing.... what lies between makes a life, what lies between is the vast and intricate network of interconnections that weave our world.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

drawing by Georges Seurat, found in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

24 1/2 x 18 11/16 in. (62.2 x 47.5 cm)

Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960 (61.101.16)

Source: Georges Seurat: Aman-Jean (61.101.16) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/seni/hd_seni.htm

2010-08-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

Château Noir by Paul Cezanne

Merleau-Ponty discussing Valéry’s and Cézanne’s reflections on the activity of oil painting:

“The painter ‘takes his body with him,' says Valéry. Indeed we cannot imagine how a mind could paint. It is by lending his body to the world that the artist changes the world into paintings... ‘Nature is on the inside,’ says Cézanne. Quality, light, color, depth, which are there before us, are there only because they awaken an echo in our body and because the body welcomes them. Things have an internal equivalent in me... I would be at great pains to say where is the painting I am looking at. For I do not look at it as I look at a thing; I do not fix it in its place. My gaze wanders in it as in the halos of Being. It is more accurate to say that I see according to it, or with it, than that I see it. Rather than looking at it, I enter into an interplay with it. In so doing, I begin to look beyond it or through it to see other things in my world in its light; it can become, one could say, a guiding or directing agency in my looking; it gives me a new and unique way of looking. I look at other things now with it as my guide. This is not to say that I see other things by following its contours, but I see them in accord with the same invisible anticipations it responsively arouses in me. Thus, as (G.) Steiner suggests, “the streets of our cities are different after Balzac and Dickens. Summer nights, notably to the south, have changed with Van Gogh... It is no indulgent fantasy to say that cypresses are on fire since Van Gogh or that aqueducts wear-walking shoes after Paul Klee”.

this passage found in the essay titled:

Goethe and the Refiguring of Intellectual Inquiry:

From ‘Aboutness’-Thinking to ‘Withness’-Thinking in Everyday Life

by John Shotter

Janus Head 8

http://www.janushead.org/8-1/Shotter.pdf

2010-08-06T08:13:00.000-07:00

transformation

inspired by a recent, fantastic face-to-face with a cecropia caterpillar and my own ruminations on transformation, among other collaborative elements, here's Nabokov speaking on the subject of transformation as experienced by a caterpillar/butterfly. may we all take heart and inspiration, and have courage.

the cecropia

On Transformation (Vladimir Nabokov)

There was a Chinese philosopher who all his life pondered the problem whether he was a Chinese philosopher dreaming that he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming that she was a philosopher.

...

Transformation ... Transformation is a marvelous thing ... I am thinking especially of the transformation of butterflies. Though wonderful to watch, transformation from larva to pupa or from pupa to butterfly is not a particularly pleasant process for the subject involved. There comes for every caterpillar a difficult moment when he begins to feel pervaded by an odd sense of discomfort. It is a tight feeling -- here about the neck and elsewhere, and then an unbearable itch. Of course he has moulted a few times before, but that is nothing in comparison to the tickle and urge that he feels now. He must shed that tight dry skin, or die. As you have guessed under that skin, the armor of a pupa -- and how uncomfortable to wear one's skin over one's armor -- is already forming: I am especially concerned at the moment with those butterflies that have carved golden pupa, called also chrysalis, which hang from some surface in the open air.

Well, the caterpillar must do something about that horrible feeling. He walks about looking for a suitable place. He finds it. He crawls up a wall or a tree-trunk. He makes for himself a little pad of silk on the underside of that perch. He hangs himself by the tip of his tail or last legs, from the silk patch, so as to dangle head downwards in the position of an inverted question-mark, and there is a question -- how to get rid now of his skin. One wriggle, another wriggle -- and zip the skin bursts down the back, and he gradually gets out of it working with shoulders and hips like a person getting out of a sausage dress. Then comes the most critical moment. -- You understand that we are hanging head down by our last pair of legs, and the problem now is to shed the whole skin -- even the skin of those last legs by which we hang -- but how to accomplish this without falling?

So what does he do, this courageous and stubborn little animal who is already partly disrobed. Very carefully he starts working out his hind legs, dislodging them from the patch of silk from which he is dangling, head down -- and then with an admirable twist and jerk he sort of jumps off the silk pad, sheds the last shred of hose, and immediately, in the process of the same jerk-and-twist-jump he attaches himself anew by means of a hook that was under the shed skin on the tip of his body. Now all the skin has come off, thank God, and the bared surface, now hard and glistening, is the pupa, a swathed-baby like thing hanging from that twig -- a very beautiful chrysalis with golden knobs and plate-armor wingcases. This pupal stage lasts from a few days to a few years. I remember as a boy keeping a hawkmoth's pupa in a box for something like seven years, so that I actually finished high school while the thing was asleep -- and then finally it hatched -- unfortunately it happened during a journey on the train, -- a nice case of misjudgement after all those years. But to come back to our butterfly pupa.

After say two or three weeks something begins to happen. The pupa hangs quite motionless, but you notice one day that through the wingcases, which are many times smaller than the wings of the future perfect insect -- you notice that through the horn-like texture of each wingcase you can see in miniature the pattern of the future wing, the lovely flush of the groundcolor, a dark margin, a rudimentary eyespot. Another day or two -- and the final transformation occurs. The pupa splits as the caterpillar had split -- it is really a last glorified moult, and the butterfly creeps out -- and in its turn hangs down from the twig to dry. She is not handsome at first. She is very damp and bedraggled. But those limp implements of hers that she has disengaged, gradually dry, distend, the veins branch and harden -- and in twenty minutes or so she is ready to fly. You have noticed that the caterpillar is a he, the pupa an it, and the butterfly a she. You will ask -- what is the feeling of hatching? Oh, no doubt, there is a rush of panic to the head, a thrill of breathless and strange sensation, but then the eyes see, in a flow of sunshine, the butterfly sees the world, the large and awful face of the gaping entomologist.

In March of 1951, in the first year that Nabokov taught his Masterpieces of European Fiction course at Cornell, he included three stories involving transformation: Gogol's "The Overcoat" (with his habitual hyperprecision he preferred to translate the title as "The Carrick"), Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," and Kafka's "The Metamorphosis." Here he introduces the subject of transformation for his students. -- Brian Boyd

published in the Atlantic Monthly in 2004:

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2000/04/nabokovside2.htm

The Hyalophora CECROPIA! transformed to moth...

Check out the life progression of the Cecropia here. The final stage of this process is happening in my backyard at the moment... http://www.wormspit.com/cecropia.htm

first photo in this entry published by Michael Hodge on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mhodge/1235150779/sizes/m/in/set-72157600801457373/

second photo found on http://lifecycle.onenessbecomesus.com/indepth.html

2010-07-26T16:52:00.000-07:00

Upcoming Workshops & Classes, and Private Lessons

Summer

LIFE DRAWING WORKSHOPS
A two-week Life Drawing Workshop is now scheduled for July 2011 in Hudson, NY
and another 3-week workshop is in the planning stages, to take place in Montana. Stay tuned!

These will be intensive and extensive periods of study, immersed in charcoal and deep seeing.
Juicy, eminently useful, eye-opening and soul-nourishing study.

HUDSON VALLEY

Charcoal: The Willow Branch Speaks

JULY 11 - 22, 2011

10am - 5:30pm, Monday through Friday

20 three-hour sessions/60 hours of study in total

Hudson, NY

for adults & teens (16&up)

See. Move. Create. differently.
Deepen seeing.
Expand creative imagination.

In study with Shuster, students learn how to continually draw more out of that which seems familiar, experiencing the depths of the world observed closely and felt intimately. The work is rooted in an exploration and deepening of seeing. This process takes on a contemplative character as the eye and hand travel the shapes, values and lines of a given “landscape,” and the focus is less on the end as it is on what each present moment offers to the eye and the heart.

This extensive and intensive workshop for adults & teens explores our visual world, the meaning residing within the visual, and the artistic expression that emerges through this seeing. Drawing with willow charcoal, we will explore an indoor and outdoor landscape with model. Shape, pattern, line, value and the relationships between will be the focus, and will be complemented by attention to surface preparation, space and composition. As we open our eyes to new ways and shapes and compositions, our perspective on the world too will shift. The workshop will be kept small to allow for individualized attention within the group setting. Each student's path in class will be built on his/her previous explorations and insights. Students of all levels are welcome.

instructor: Wendy Shuster

MONTANA workshop

A three week-long drawing workshop in Bozeman, MT -- 15 days (30 three-hour sessions, ie. 90 hours) in total - is in the works for June 2012

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PRIVATE LESSONS & SMALL CLASSES
offered in the Hudson Valley & NYC

in drawing, painting and sculpture
for adults, teens & children

In study with Shuster, students learn how to continually draw more out of that which seems familiar, experiencing the depths of the world observed closely and felt intimately. The work is rooted in an exploration and deepening of seeing. This process takes on a contemplative character as the eye and hand travel the shapes, values, lines and color of a given “landscape,” and the focus is less on the end as it is on what each present moment offers to the eye and the heart. In addition to the joy and insight found in the process, learning to draw, paint and sculpt, makes one a more creative, whole-brain thinker. Each student's path in class will be built on his/her previous explorations and insights. Students of all levels are welcome.

If you're interested in studying privately in your home, or mine, or if there are two, three, four or more of you who would like to work together during lessons, please let me know.

The rates vary depending on how many people are participating, and there is a sliding scale depending on what you can afford.

Please call or write for rates or with any questions. I look forward to working with you.

Drawing and painting workshops also offered throughout the year.

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Please keep in mind that one of my top priorities is that I have a chance to share art and art-making and a different way of seeing with all who would like to learn and create. If you have any questions, thoughts, ideas, or proposals about classes, learning, or how to make that affordable to you - please share them with me! If your heart calls you to draw or paint, we'll find a way to make that happen.

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Community DRAWING class
for adults & teens (16+)

9:30am-12:30pm every Friday

Hudson, NY

instructor: Wendy Shuster

please call or write with interest.

pay what you can: $5-35 per session

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Students' thoughts on study with Shuster:

1. "As a teacher of dance at a liberal arts college for over thirty years, I have a high regard for the value of teaching the arts to students of all levels. I have studied, on several different occasions over the years, drawing and painting with Wendy Shuster. She is one of the best teachers it has been my privilege to study with. Great teachers, in my opinion, work equally well with professional-level students and with newcomers to the field. They treat their students with respect and consideration, while demanding of them hard work and discipline. They are able to blend professional expectations with their passion for the the arts in a unique and exciting way. They know when to step in, when to leave the student alone, and what kind of mix of criticism and support will be appropriate with each student. Wendy is one of those teachers. I recommend her highly to teach drawing and painting in any setting--teenagers, adults, beginners, intermediate or advanced level. She is, without a doubt, a master teacher."

2. "Wendy’s approach to teaching is unique, eye opening, simultaneously multi-layered. Wendy’s teachings make it possible to develop as an artist. I have learned to recognize and interact with a world of visual relationships far more fascinating and complex than anything I could name or invent. The visible is astonishing! The elements of design appear before me like a series of clues promising to unlock and reveal the structure of the universe, not unlike an equation to a mathematician or a law of physics to a physicist. The opportunity to “see” becomes available in other aspects of life; Life and Art become one."

3. "It has been my pleasure to be instructed by Wendy drawing in charcoal or should I say in 'seeing in charcoal'. What Wendy teaches is seeing and I use this in my life everyday to look beyond what are the 'optical delusions' of life that keep us from seeing what is clearly in front of us."

4. "Wendy is exciting to work with because with each class or workshop she truly does lead you to a different way of seeing. She engages you with a variety of possible approaches to your subject whether you’re drawing or painting. Then she works with you individually to stretch your process and further your artistic development. She creates a supportive classroom atmosphere that’s conducive to in-depth work and experimentation. She’s an enormously talented artist/teacher."

5. "Working with Wendy Shuster has been a gift. The mind is a powerful thing, sometimes the way we think can create a filter over our conception of the world around us. Wendy has a gift when it comes to aiding others in shifting these mental boundaries. The process she shares opens up the possibility of seeing the world clearly, in detail, as it is.. and for me, in a much more colorful way! I can not express fully enough what a joy the heightening of my sensitivity to color has been (and still is). Overall my time in Wendy's studio has been a delightful, fascinating experience. I am so grateful I have had the opportunity to work with her."

2010-06-09T08:20:00.000-07:00

Recent Exhibitions

Solo exhibition of work by Wendy Shuster
"In between"
paintings & mixed media
April 7 - May 21, 2011

Arno Maris Gallery
Westfield, MA

Gallery photos...

Exhibition at Arno Maris Gallery, Westfield State University in MA

25 paintings in the show. only a few shown here in these photos...

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The Dance Continues...

charcoals on paper by Wendy Shuster

May 11 - June 7, 2011

Oriole 9

Woodstock, NY

2010-04-04T10:34:00.000-07:00

A Time to Break Silence - Martin Luther King, Jr

today is the 43rd anniversary of a very important speech given by Martin Luther King, Jr.
it's not known nearly as well as many of his others.
i hope that you'll read this in its entirety, and/or tune into youtube or some other site where you can listen to the speech. and see/hear that much of what he says is relevant today, and to today's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
and consider the ways - however big or small, in whatever realm, on whatever subject - that you might break the silence that is betrayal.
peace.

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

By Rev. Martin Luther King
4 April 1967

Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City
----------------------------------------------------

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

The Importance of Vietnam

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the "Vietcong" or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Strange Liberators

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators -- our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change -- especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us -- not their fellow Vietnamese --the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go -- primarily women and children and the aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one "Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them -- mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force -- the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?

Now there is little left to build on -- save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front -- that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the north" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them -- the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

This Madness Must Cease

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.
Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.
Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary.

Protesting The War

Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove thosse conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

The People Are Important

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out deperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the callling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.

2009-12-05T11:46:00.000-08:00

image for thought, feeling...
by me

“No sooner than the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs, touched my palate, than a shudder ran through me and I stopped. Intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me, an exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me – its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory. It was me – I had ceased to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal; whence could it have come to me all this powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake but that, infinitely transcendent of savors, it could not indeed be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize it and apprehend it? I drink a second mouthful in which I found nothing more than the first, then the third which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop. The potion is losing its magic. It is plain that the truth that I am seeking lies not in the cup but in myself.”

from Marcel Proust’s book, The Search

2009-09-20T09:48:00.000-07:00

the power of a single line

… picking up a crayon as a child to make your first mark on paper; seeing a painting, a drawing, a hand-crafted bowl, an intricate and lovingly stitched quilt; hearing a song, singing a song; moving your body to music (or without), and in spontaneous and intuitive ways; pretending to be another person, an animal, insect, plant, mineral; being transported for even just a few seconds by a painting, a song, a poem, dance, play, a beautiful and lovingly crafted meal or garden … how do these moments move inside us? how do they move our thoughts and feelings and our bodies? where do we go that we may not have gone without the experience of creative exploration or expression, or art? and what does this mean for our individual worlds and for the larger world? Each of these moments, however large or small, can open our eyes and hearts, deepen our sensitivity, and enliven our creativity.

The deeper I go into my own explorations in charcoal, for example – and, of late, particularly, the dance-drawing series – the more I feel the potential and realized poetic resonance of a single line/stroke... the power that that one line can have to move and shape another moment, another line or shape or thought or feeling, or call up a memory, an association, an insight – and with that single line, I'm launched, launched down a path… If the line or stroke is honest and my eyes are alive and lively and aware, the path often takes me into previously uncharted territory. Then, I throw a pack on my back and go, explorer on the move… into strange and wondrous worlds, that wind spiraling into the utterly familiar and then around again to worlds curiously reminiscent of those exquisitely light and devastatingly dark moments of childhood, that then drop away into the unknown, to hidden corners, delicate luminosities, gentle breezes…

--- w.s.

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

–From “Little Gidding,” T. S. Eliot

***

2009-07-31T20:10:00.001-07:00

Shuster's work (a small selection)
PAINTINGS, MIXED MEDIA, DRAWINGS

Keep in mind, what you see here are mere digital images, pale representations of the real. Please write or call if you'd like to see more images or arrange for a private viewing. A price list is available upon request. Sales, of course, are always welcome as they support further individual and collaborative work.
Current & upcoming exhibitions can be found here.

charcoal DRAWINGS on paper

hudson dervish

in and out conch whispering in my ear

tower of babel

the charcoal drawings above
emerge from explorations with modern dancers

“Drawing with charcoal on paper, I work directly from and with dancers. My own movements, and the lines and shapes as they emerge, are also a kind of dance. It is the figure in space, the space in-between, the accumulation of line, and the collaboration of present moments in charcoal that engage and intrigue me. I delve deeply into the improvisational potential of any given moment and the movements of all kinds in the immediate environment. With luck, I touch or re-inhabit deeply intuitive moments of my childhood. It’s collaborative, interactive work—the two languages of drawing and dance improvising in concert with one another. From this interaction come the traces that evolve into these drawings, that continue to dance...” (W.S.)

"There is something at once ancient and timeless about them. The primitive simplicity of the materials recall the cave paintings of Lascaux; the fluidity of movement, Japanese ink drawings; and their complexities, the intricacies of Arabic designs or some futuristic architectural masterpiece........ they also remind me of the mindboggling patterns obtained in particles accelerators....
It's as if she was speaking in a language I understood perfectly and yet that I didn't even know I possessed...."
- Jean Marc Larivière, filmmaker, Ontario

oil PAINTINGS

riff

oaxaca bloom

1+1=2

jester's retreat

There is a point of departure. And a pattern perceived, a movement explored, a pattern and movement made. From within, a life born and found. Between. Between visible and invisible, known and unknown, one and two. There lies a tension, a complementary ease, a dynamic equilibrium. There lies dream, reality, dream-reality. Between. There lies my drawing and painting.

MIXED MEDIA on paper

house divided

there emerges, pacific orange

soul's shores

"the world is a whole greater than the sum of its parts because the parts are not merely summed - thrown together - but related, the whole is a pattern which remains, while the parts come and go, just as the human body is a dynamic pattern which persists despite the rapid birth and death of all of its individual cells. The pattern does not, of course, exist disembodiedly apart from individual forms, but exists precisely through their coming and going - just as it is through the structured motion and vibration of its electrons that a rock has solidity." from Nature, Man, Woman, by AlanWatts

all images, copyright: Wendy Shuster

2009-07-07T03:42:00.001-07:00

rise to the occasion!

I speak to myself too as I write these words.....

We've arrived, we've collaborated to bring ourselves to a critical juncture; our existence, the planet's survival hangs in the balance (or maybe it's just us who could seriously lose out?). It is for each and every one of us, no matter how much we believe we have already done to change ourselves and our environment for the better, it is for all of us to look at our lives, to look at how we speak and move and feel and touch the world. what choices big and small do we make in our daily lives? how do these choices shape our lives? shape our environment? what do we consume and how much and from where? what do we support with our purchases? what are our priorities and do we live them? what are our fears and how do they rule our lives and so our environment? who do we love? how do we love? do we love - genuinely, freely, unconditionally?

Listen to yourself, listen to each other, and the animals and all the creatures of this planet, and the plants, the wind, the water, the land and the stars....

It is with increasing awareness that different action emerges.

With awareness and joy and above all living love - our predicament can turn on a dime - we have that power within our collective selves --- to move the earth, to convert what is currently a negative charge to a positive one. Anything is possible. Everything is possible!

Live it. Love it. in your special way.

--- w.s.

2009-05-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

Mother's Day Proclamation
by Julia Ward Howe, 1870

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Dear Mothers, Mothers-to-be, Women who were/are mothered and Women who mother in all those many ways --- all ye WOMEN!,

The idea of a Mother's Day was born from several different women's attempts to organize and inspire women to activism. Julia Ward Howe's effort in 1870 emerged from her distress over the devastation of war - particular for her at the time was the Civil War. She wrote the proclamation above to inspire women to act for peace, and to establish a Mother's Day for Peace.

peaceful and peace-inspiring Mother's Day to you.

Wendy

2009-05-02T11:49:00.000-07:00

spontaneity

" … the socially problematic spontaneity of little children is as yet unco-ordinated and "embryonic." We then make the mistake of socializing children, not by developing their spontaneity, but by developing a system of resistances and fears which, as it were, splits the organism into a spontaneous center and an inhibiting center. Thus it is rare indeed to find an integrated person capable of self-controlling spontaneity, which sounds like a contradiction in terms. It is as if we were teaching our children to walk by lifting up their feet with their own hands instead of moving their legs from within. We do not see that before spontaneity can control itself, it must be able to function. The legs must have full freedom of movement before they can acquire the discipline of walking and running or dancing. For disciplined motion is the control of relaxed motion. Similarly, disciplined action and feeling is the direction of relaxed action and feeling to prearranged ends. The pianist must therefore acquire relaxation and freedom in his/her arms and fingers before s/he can execute complex musical figures, but much abominable technique has been acquired by forcing the fingers to perform piano exercise without preliminary relaxation.

Spontaneity is, after all, total sincerity - the whole being involved in the act without the slightest reservation - …"

"… when we say that a pianist or a dancer has perfect control we refer to a certain combination of control and spontaneity. The artist has established an area of control within which he can abandon himself to spontaneity without restraint."

- Alan Watts, Man, Woman and Nature

2009-04-17T09:16:00.000-07:00

joy and ecstasy of creativity

some beautiful and stirring thoughts from Matthew Fox (from Listening to the Land, by Derrick Jensen):

"... What's the opposite of inertia? Zeal. Aquinas says zeal comes from the experience of the intense lovability of things. And of intense beauty.

... without a cosmology, without permission to be mystical with nature, we don't realize the whole matrix for our sexual being. Until we recover that, the environmental revolution is not going to go anyplace. It's going to be about duty and not about pleasure. And pleasure, or delight, is how you change people the most radically.

... we also need spiritual practices and ritual, because authentic work has to come from the inside out. You recover delight in life through the self-empowerment that comes through creativity, through art as meditation. And through ritual experiences, with which you can rediscover your child inside and that child's relationship to the universe and to a place.

... Art is the only language we have for awe. I gave a talk at the Chicago Art Institute two weeks ago. It was a wonderful experience. I said three things to the artist. First, I said, Thank you. Second, I said, Welcome back, because you've been banished during the Newtonian era. Then third, I said, What you're here to do is teach us to behold being, to go into grief, and show us the intrinsic power of creativity. Art is not for art's sake, it's for creativity's sake, which is for evolution's sake."

2009-03-24T13:16:00.000-07:00

Making a mark on paper - drawing charcoal across a surface, bringing paint to canvas - it's a mystery, and a beautiful one, how utterly and deeply I'm moved by this simple act.... it touches the deepest part of me and often prompts song and spontaneous thanks .... and, if I'm lucky, with time, song emerges on my paper or canvas too... Of course, I don't mean to say that every moment in the studio is a joy. But to work from and for one's heart, that's truly a blessing, both grounding and liberating…

I hope you'll join me on another occasion to explore our world, ourselves and that wondrous, simple act of making marks on paper.

o glorious spring!

For the Love of Art
life drawing workshop

for adults & teens (ages 16 & up)

May 15, 16 & 17 (friday, saturday & sunday)
10am-5:30pm each day with break for lunch

Art and art-making open our eyes, and stir our hearts and our minds in unexpected ways. They are vital resources for the individual and the community. While art-making is an act of creating, it also provides inspiration for further creativity of all kinds in all facets of our lives. As we know, creativity is essential to life, creativity is life. In this time, when the earth seems to be moving beneath our feet, it is a fine time to tap into our greatest ingenuity, our highest spiritual and creative selves, and to revel in the beautiful simplicity of charcoal on paper.

2009-01-25T14:01:00.000-08:00

Harold Pintor
Nobel Peace Prize in Literature 2005
lecture:

Art, Truth & Politics

In 1958 I wrote the following:

'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.

Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me.

The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is 'What have you done with the scissors?' The first line of Old Times is 'Dark.'

In each case I had no further information.

In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors and was demanding their whereabouts of someone else he suspected had probably stolen them. But I somehow knew that the person addressed didn't give a damn about the scissors or about the questioner either, for that matter.

'Dark' I took to be a description of someone's hair, the hair of a woman, and was the answer to a question. In each case I found myself compelled to pursue the matter. This happened visually, a very slow fade, through shadow into light.

I always start a play by calling the characters A, B and C.

In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a stark room and ask his question of a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa reading a racing paper. I somehow suspected that A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof. This was however confirmed a short time later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max), 'Dad, do you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you something. The dinner we had before, what was the name of it? What do you call it? Why don't you buy a dog? You're a dog cook. Honest. You think you're cooking for a lot of dogs.' So since B calls A 'Dad' it seemed to me reasonable to assume that they were father and son. A was also clearly the cook and his cooking did not seem to be held in high regard. Did this mean that there was no mother? I didn't know. But, as I told myself at the time, our beginnings never know our ends.

'Dark.' A large window. Evening sky. A man, A (later to become Deeley), and a woman, B (later to become Kate), sitting with drinks. 'Fat or thin?' the man asks. Who are they talking about? But I then see, standing at the window, a woman, C (later to become Anna), in another condition of light, her back to them, her hair dark.

It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author's position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort.

So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time.

But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot.

Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonising has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function.

In my play The Birthday Party I think I allow a whole range of options to operate in a dense forest of possibility before finally focussing on an act of subjugation.

Mountain Language pretends to no such range of operation. It remains brutal, short and ugly. But the soldiers in the play do get some fun out of it. One sometimes forgets that torturers become easily bored. They need a bit of a laugh to keep their spirits up. This has been confirmed of course by the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain Language lasts only 20 minutes, but it could go on for hour after hour, on and on and on, the same pattern repeated over and over again, on and on, hour after hour.

Ashes to Ashes, on the other hand, seems to me to be taking place under water. A drowning woman, her hand reaching up through the waves, dropping down out of sight, reaching for others, but finding nobody there, either above or under the water, finding only shadows, reflections, floating; the woman a lost figure in a drowning landscape, a woman unable to escape the doom that seemed to belong only to others.

But as they died, she must die too.

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here.

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America's view of its role in the world, both then and now.

I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.

The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.'

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. 'Father,' he said, 'let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.' There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.

Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.

Finally somebody said: 'But in this case "innocent people" were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?'

Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,' he said.

As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not reply.

I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: 'The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.'

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.

But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days - conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally - a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading - as a last resort - all other justifications having failed to justify themselves - as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.

Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,' said the American general Tommy Franks.

Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you're making a sincere speech on television.

The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.

Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, 'I'm Explaining a Few Things':

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!*

Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda's poem I am in no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I quote Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians.

I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.

Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force - yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.

I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man's man.

'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'

A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection - unless you lie - in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.

I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called 'Death'.

Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Extract from "I'm Explaining a Few Things" translated by Nathaniel Tarn, from Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems, published by Jonathan Cape, London 1970. Used by permission of The Random House Group Limited.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html

2008-11-25T10:41:00.001-08:00

photo notes

by shuster

2008-11-24T13:26:00.000-08:00

the Teaching Studio

students at work

student work - by children

2008-11-18T10:53:00.000-08:00

Students' thoughts on study with Shuster:

"No eyes that have ever seen beauty lose their sight." Jean Toomer

2008-11-18T10:28:00.001-08:00

HEADS, Portraits by commission
i work directly from the person. this creates the finest, most lively result.

to see more of Shuster's work, go to: images of Shuster's work.

upon request, i will be happy to share more images.

please call or write with any questions
or to commission a drawing or painting.
shusterstudio@yahoo.com
518-567-1332

HEADS in Charcoal & Oil by Wendy Shuster

Heads, CHARCOAL on paper

head 2

head 3

head 4

Heads, OIL Painting

head of anna

head of anna 3

head of ruth

2008-09-04T14:36:00.001-07:00

Upcoming Exhibitions

Oaxaca Bloom, oil
by Shuster

April 7 - May 7, 2011

Opening reception:

April 7, 5:30-8pm

Gallery Hours:

tuesday - saurday. 2-5pm

Arno Maris Gallery
Westfield State
577 Western Ave
Westfield, MA 01086
413- 572-5236

2007-06-27T14:58:00.000-07:00

The Invention of Culture by Roy Wagner

from the chapter "The Assumption of Culture"

"...this feeling is known to anthropologists as 'culture shock'. In it the local 'culture' first manifests itself to the anthropologist through his own inadequacy; against the back drop of his new surroundings it is he who has become 'visible'." (p. 7)

"Culture shock is a loss of the self through the loss of these supports."

(the anthropologist) ... "whether he knows it or not, and whether he intends it or not, his 'safe' act of making the strange familiar always makes the familiar a bit strange. And the more familiar the strange becomes, the more and more strange the familiar will appear." (p.11)

2007-06-10T15:28:00.000-07:00

from THE ART OF SEEING by J. Krishnamurti:

"We were saying the other day how very important it is to observe. It is quite an art to which one must give a great deal of attention. We only see very partially, we never see anything completely, with the totality of our mind, or with the fullness of our heart. And unless we learn this extraordinary art, it seems to me that we shall be functioning, living, through a very small part of our mind, through a small segment of the brain. We never see anything completely, for various reasons, because we are so concerned with our own problems, or we are so conditioned, so heavily burdened with belief, with tradition, with the past, that this actually prevents us from seeing or listening. We never see a tree, we see the tree through the image that we have of it, the concept of that tree; but the concept, the knowledge, the experience, is entirely different from the actual tree....."
Madras
January 3 1968

2007-05-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

Celebration of Subjectivity

I had been writing Memory of Fire for a long time, and the more I wrote the more I entered into the stories I was telling. I was already having trouble distinguishing past from present: what had happened was happening, happening all around me, and writing was my way of striking out and embracing. However, history books supposedly are not subjective.

I mentioned this to Jose Coronel Urtecho: in this book I’m writing, however you look at it, backwards or forwards, in the light or against it, my loves and quarrels can be seen at a single glance.

And on the banks of the San Juan river, the old poet told me that there is no fucking reason to pay attention to the fanatics of objectivity:

"Don’t worry" he said to me. "That’s how it should be. Those who make objectivity a religion are liars. They are scared of human pain. They don’t want to be objective, it’s a lie: they want to be objects, so as not to suffer."

by Eduardo Galleano, The Book of Embraces

2007-05-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

"In a certain way, works of art would make fools of us were it not that their fascination is proof - unverifiable, though undeniable - that this paralysis of the intelligence combines with the most luminous certainty: what the certainty is I do not know."
- Jean Genet

2007-05-18T12:53:00.000-07:00

"folds fall open and close"
by Wendy Shuster

This charcoal painting of mine was selected to accompany an article in Contact Quarterly Dance & Improvisation Journal.
Please visit CQ to read this fine article written by a dancer/choreographer/teacher about dance/movement explorations with prisoners.

The article is entitled "Surrender." You'll find it here: CQ Journal website.

2007-05-08T17:25:00.000-07:00

A Global Democratic Movement Is About to Pop By Paul Hawken, Orion Magazine
Tuesday 01 May 2007
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/050107EC.shtml

Something earth-changing is afoot among civil society - a significant social movement is eluding the radar of mainstream culture.

2007-04-18T17:03:00.000-07:00

Words from Poet, Martin Espada

“Poets can play so many different roles. We are used to the idea that poetry accomplishes nothing, accustomed to feeling powerless and helpless as a poet. And that point of view is encouraged by a certain element in the poetry community that invites meaningless poetry. You write meaningless poetry, of course it’s not going to have any effect on the world, and so the thing to do is to establish meaningless poetry as a standard, to write poetry that caters only to the obscure and self-indulgent. A poet can do so much more, and if you travel around the world you see the effect that a poet can have on their society. A poet can be a teacher, a historian, a journalist, an organizer, a preacher, a caretaker, or a bard. And a poet can be a political activist, one who participates in the great changes that the world is always going through.”
- Martin Espada, poet
Quoted in Brooklyn Rail, April 2007

Martin Espada: “In order to write poems, you have to make yourself very vulnerable. There are many poets today who are afraid to take risks, who are terrified of expressing emotion openly. They are terrified of appearing vulnerable on the page. They are ultimately afraid of being accused of sentimentality. That’s the greatest crime in our contemporary world.”

Rail interviewer: “You have to be a cool customer.”

Martin Espada: “Exactly. Detached, hip, cynical and absolutely invulnerable. And we all know that’s a dishonest pose.”