The Beauty of Attention

Good morning,

I've been thinking about quiet.

Last weekend, I went to the ocean.

The water was calm. Everything seemed slower. I hadn't realized quite how much I needed the rest until I was there.

And somewhere in that quiet, I found myself thinking about my paintings.

This is how I want them to feel for people.

Not necessarily paintings of peaceful things. But paintings that create a little space for peace.

Then I realized that this is how I want people to feel when they walk into the gallery, too.

Not hurried. Not overwhelmed. Not pressured to understand everything immediately.

Just given a little room to breathe, to look, and perhaps to stay awhile.

I've been thinking about that ever since.

Maybe quiet isn't quite the right word.

I've also been thinking about Lanai, a place that has stayed with me long after leaving it. About long meals. Real conversations. The ocean. The luxury of having nowhere else you need to be for a little while.

And I've been wondering whether what we're actually seeking is attention.

Time to notice things.

To have a conversation without looking at a phone. To sit over a beautifully prepared meal. To look at a painting without immediately needing to interpret it. To notice the color of the sky.

To be somewhere without wondering where we're supposed to go next.

Perhaps slowing down isn't really about doing less.

Perhaps it's about experiencing more of what is already there.

I'm still thinking about this one.

A new installation at SFMOMA caught my attention this week.

Artist Jacob Hashimoto's Giant Arc is made from nearly 75,000 individual kite-like elements, each constructed from bamboo and Japanese paper and suspended together to create an enormous floating cloudscape.
[See the photo in my online journal post.]

It is the largest installation of Hashimoto's career, filling the museum's Roberts Family Gallery from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Visitors can walk, sit, or even lie beneath it.

What interests me is the contradiction.

The work is enormous, intricate, colorful, and visually complex. Yet Hashimoto describes it as both chaotic and meditative, something people can spend time with rather than simply pass by.

Perhaps quiet doesn't have to look quiet.

And I love that something so monumental is built from tens of thousands of small, handmade things.

There is something reassuring about that.

Perhaps the ocean started this, too.

Blue has been on my mind. So has grey.

Deep ocean blue. Cloud grey. Slate. Mist. The almost indistinguishable blue-grey that appears where distant land, water, and sky begin to dissolve into one another.

I took a photograph from the hills of Lānaʻi, looking across the water toward Molokaʻi, which I've returned to several times lately.

The colors are remarkably simple.

And yet they aren't simple at all.

Why can one blue make us exhale while another feels electric?

Why can grey seem melancholy in one setting and peaceful in another?

As a painter, I work with these questions instinctively. But lately I've wanted to understand them more deliberately.

I'm beginning to wonder whether color creates an emotional architecture of its own.

There is much more here.

I suspect we'll return to this.

A very different story caught my attention this week.

The Studio Museum in Harlem has opened Dreams of This Future: The Collection of Peggy Cooper Cafritz, drawn from the extraordinary collection assembled by educator, activist, patron, and collector Peggy Cooper Cafritz.

Cafritz spent decades supporting artists, particularly artists of African descent, and ultimately gave the majority of her collection to cultural and educational institutions. The Studio Museum exhibition brings part of that legacy together.

It made me think about collecting differently.

A collection is obviously made of objects.

But over time, perhaps it becomes something else.

A record of curiosity. Relationships. Convictions. People someone believed in. Things someone thought deserved to survive.

At its best, perhaps collecting is another form of care.

For artists. For objects. For stories. For what comes next.

That's another thought I'm carrying with me this week.

Next Saturday, here in Salem, Linda Nishioka will give a free demonstration of Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, at the Bush Barn Art Center.

Ikebana traditionally uses relatively few seasonal flowers, branches, and leaves, paying careful attention to asymmetry, balance, the vessel, and the space surrounding the arrangement.

Linda is a certified instructor and vice president of the Oregon Chapter of the Ohara School of Ikebana. The demonstration will use local plant materials and explore the principles behind the practice.

After everything I've been thinking about this week, its appearance on the local cultural calendar feels particularly timely.

A few stems.

A vessel.

Space.

Attention.

Sometimes that is enough.

TO SEE
Jacob Hashimoto: Giant Arc
Opening August 22 | SFMOMA, San Francisco
Nearly 75,000 handmade bamboo-and-paper elements become a vast suspended landscape. The installation is in SFMOMA's admission-free Roberts Family Gallery.

CLOSE TO HOME
Ikebana Demonstration with Linda Nishioka
August 29, 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. | Bush Barn Art Center, Salem
A free demonstration exploring seasonal plant materials, balance, harmony, and the Japanese art of making flowers come alive. Registration is requested.

TO CONSIDER
Dreams of This Future: The Collection of Peggy Cooper Cafritz
Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
A collection considered not simply as a group of objects, but as the lasting record of a collector's advocacy and patronage.

Maybe that is what I'm carrying with me most this week.

Attention changes things.

It changes the way we experience a painting.

A color.

A flower.

A meal.

A conversation.

A collection.

Perhaps even a life.

[Enjoy my online journal post here.]

Have a wonderful weekend.

Christina

Christina Stefani
Founder, House of Stefani