Existing in Liminality

Big stuff….

• Today is my 50th birthday. I am fond of milestones and round numbers, so this is a good one.

• This week I hung work at a local restaurant, including the largest piece I’ve made. All the frames for the work, I made. There is a sense of accomplishment, and also a not-knowing of what to do or make next.

• And next week I will move to a new home, and turn it into a living studio space. So, it feels like changes are afoot.

Turning 50 seems like a Big One. You’re Definitely Middle-Aged, How’s The Eyesight and Do You Have It All Figured Out? … And yet, truly, I feel like a baby. … Not “youthful” but bewildered …. What IS all this? Why does the world seem so frantic and insane? Who are all these people and what is my relationship to them? What am I doing?

How do I navigate this place? How much longer have I got?

Perhaps the art-making is a part of learning to navigate life in a human body.

I am proud of the work I just put up … the linoprints are from a series called “Instructions for Awakening” that is perhaps best thought of as a poem (and not actual instructions). The giant You Are Love painting is acrylic on foamboard insulation and it was its own adventure, from weird materials challenges to figuring out how to move and hang it (foam-safe construction glue for the hardware, and my fingers crossed).

The lead-up to hanging artwork is like any deadline process, where the work takes exactly the amount of time you have left and concludes in a sprint. … one of the things I adore about making art is the sense of finishing something, being able to say “this is done” …. but what comes next? This morning I woke up to a studio in dissaray, the result of the last-minute rush. Should I put it all back together? But I’m moving soon, so probably not…

I’m not moving far. The Finger Lakes are home and my mailing address wont change (it’s over there on the right if you want to send me mail). … But the new place will offer more space and quiet and green. And, there is the opportunity to intentionally merge the studio space into the daily living areas and see what impact that could have on … everything.

And that’s that. What a week.

What comes next?

Accidental Cat ... Who Makes the Thing?

The entire experience of making art is kind of weird, if you really think about it. But it might be Most Weird, when you don’t think about it.

What is art? What is creativity? How do ideas and thoughts appear and disappear? How do we translate experience into image and object? … And then back?

Where does art come from?

WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?

The other day I had an experience which is oddly familiar. I was making wooden frames, which inevitably means lots of funny-shaped wood scraps. On a whim, I started glueing pieces together. Playing with glue. Just sticking pieces together, no intention or plan or thought to it. And then, from nowhere, the cat appeared.

Yes, that’s how the cat distribution system works. … But, genuinely, I looked down and realized that I had absent-mindedly made something that appeared to have been done on purpose. How does that happen?

Somewhat similarly, a couple of months back I was playing with a shape/idea and painted a small watercolor that was a pleasant-enough design but when I rotated it 180 degrees, with the blue (sky?) on top, it just … made sense. It clicked into an entirely different image, as though that was its intended orientation.

Perhaps the truth is, art doesn’t come FROM the artist, it comes THROUGH them. … even when the paper is upside down?

Writing is the same. The words come out when the thoughts stop. Painting is like watching someone else’s hand make the movements.

Maybe I am the stenographer, not the speaker? I cannot tell you about the art, I didn’t make it?

Where did the cat come from? The cat declines to comment. Typical.

Make a Small Thing, Well.

About six weeks ago the thought occured: “Make an object.”

Obviously, from a certain perspective, there’s no shortage of objects. All the art is an object. These words and images on my screen are objects, which create another object in your mind. Thoughts are just subtle objects, which move and perpetuate themselves in even subtler ways.

But in this instance … I wanted to make a physical object. Something that could be held. Could be witnessed over and over. Most of what I make, even though it starts “physical,” is ultimately destined for digital consumption. And that’s ok, but I was feeling the pull to make something that would spend more time on the physical plane, in manifested existence.

Maybe I’m afraid to die. Who knows why, from where, these urges originate.

This desire to create an object also merged with the studio cleanout, and I decided to make frames for some of my small works. Which was an interesting decision, as I didn’t own the needed tools and had never made a frame before.

But after several weeks of effort and non-effort and trips to the hardware store, I offer you this sample of the objects … call it Batch Zero, perhaps …prototypes.

“Don’t make it perfect.” That was another thought that really stood out.

As I started getting into the process of making these little frames — learning to cut a 45 degree angle, repetition leading to understanding the need for precision, taking the time to cut a line that was actually straight — it became clear that you can really get lost in the precision of making things with wood. Shaving a 1/8 of an inch, and then another, and then too much and having to make the piece again … I realized the worst thing I could do would be to try and make something perfect. Because (1) I would then likely never finish anything; and (2) if I succeeded in making it perfect, then I’d need to find something else to do.

Getting something too right, too soon, can be a curse. Iteration is creation.

Framing these little pieces transforms them, somehow. It adds perspective and dimension. A mental frame appears, along with the wooden. I think the frame ultimately changes the object that is created in the mind.

And I feel good about the work that went into them. Cutting and glueing and staining and painting, attaching hardware … exploring, learning, trial and error and error ….

None of these pieces are perfect, or even close. Straight lines are in short supply. Explosions of wood glue led to uneven surfaces. Blemishes anound. Few of those right angles are right-right. There are patches and flaws, and enthusiasm masking as functionality.

So yeah, I’m really happy with them and have made them available in the shop. They feel real; they are real. They were made with care and intention and curiosity and creativity. That seems important.

You can read about each piece in the shop (including its flaws).

This has all opened up other questions about where the creative output really resides. Has the creation of physical form become an intermediate step between my mind and the digital world? Can I shift my focus more towards the tactile? Do digital and physical objects have different potential densities for connection? Different emotional carrying weights?

Questions for another day, maybe. It is fun to make things.

Summer Studio Cleanout!

Summer studio cleanout!

Hello friends ... calling #littlefreeartgallery curators and lovers of small art and cosmic weirdness, in general ... I have undertaken  a studio cleanout, and have been going through hundreds of old pieces of work, doodles, scraps, studies, trying to muster the mustard to set the whole lot on fire in a freeing and exuberant call to the universe for space and enthusiasm and direction ...

In other words, I'd like to send you some art. Because while some of it does need to just be tossed (or, engulfed in the flames of artistic renewal; whichever) ... I have discovered whole projects that were never shared, and pieces that are finished but for a signature and stamp.

If you have a Free Little Art Gallery and are looking for work to share, please DM me! I previously kept a list of galleries as a resource for artists, but it is woefully out of date now. ... And if you just like mail and want to receive a weird postcard, send me your address.

Back in the Studio ... Changes: Fletch & the Long Process of Now

Change is constant. Every Thing, at all times, is changing. Attempting to hold on is the root of suffering.

That’s true and important — a fun intellectual concept! — and yet when it rains down change in my personal life I often go looking for an umbrella. It is a practice to face change with grace and fluidity, and I am still learning.

The overall process of change seems to result in new and interesting ideas developing, which then appear to filter into every part of our bodies and minds and actions, eventually showing up in whatever we create. But — for myself — the actual period of change can temporarily stylmie physical creation. Art tends to appear in periods of stability, reflecting whatever arose in times of change.

I have been considering a move — not outside the Finger Lakes, but to a new area or town within the region. The process has been challenging, consuming much time and energy. I am looking for a place where the art studio can be integrated into the living space fluidly, and an area with that ephemeral balance of community and solitude.

This past week I’ve been back in the studio, trying to restart the Inertia Machine. I find it is useful to return to familiar territory in these instances — pull prints from an old lino cut, or experiment with familiar forms and shapes and ideas. And then, once things gets moving, feed in the new fuel.

We shall see. These small watercolors feel familiar to me, but also new. I sense an intentional restraint in the minimalist version that I’d like to experiment with more.

Back to change, and how it occurs: I am reminded of this scene in Fletch, the 1985 Chevy Chase comedy about a reporter in L.A.

Doctor: It was a shame about Ed.

Fletch: That was a shame. To go suddenly like that.

Doctor: He was dying for years.

Fletch: But the end was very, very sudden.

Doctor: He was in intensive care for eight weeks.

Fletch: I mean when he actually died. That was extremely sudden.

If change is always occuring, there’s really no such thing as change. If everything ends, there’s no real end or beginning, only appearings and disappearings.

If Time = Experience Then Love = You

I printed another batch of these over the weekend. How many is that, total? I'm not sure. Several hundred. I carved the block in 2021.

You Are Love.

Each print is numbered.

Everything I make is numbered.

My days are numbered.

I like the idea that all of these prints are numbered and thus form a kind of crude temporal trail. You can't tell when they were  made in a calendar-sense, but you can tell the order in which they were created, when one came into being in relation to others.

Maybe days are like that, too.

When did Tuesday happen? From one perspective, the question makes no sense. 

It happened after Monday.

I tell the cats, "You're best friends, you just don't know it yet."

Maybe life is like that. It's all there, already. We just don't know it yet.

Maybe Time and Experience are the same thing.

Peace is not a find-able object ... chaos and anger and 2026

I didn’t find a lot of peace in 2025.

If you look around, that seems pretty understandable. The world is in chaos! Our systems are failing! … And yet, it seems pretty dicey to point the finger in that direction.

If I need “the world” to get its shit together before I can feel peace, then it isn’t going to happen.

For almost all of my life, I operated on the model that something happened “out there” and it caused me to feel something “in here.” … Injustice in the world caused anger in me, for instance.

Recently, there has been a shift in my understanding. I see now that the anger is in me, always – it simply needs a direction to be expressed. And so my duty, intention, is to steward my body and mind in such a way as to not disturb that anger and let it drive my actions.

And I have begun to suspect that, in some ways, the same is true of peace. It is always available, as though it stands just behind the chaos – at times shining through, and at other times appearing to be obscured. But always present.

Looking “out there” for the source of an emotion or for peace feels like it gives up too much power. Like it misses the point, somehow.

And so here we are in 2026, and just judging by the first few weeks …

The peace I seek is the peace of my own being.

The World Exists in the Fullness of the Present Moment

“The world exists in memory.” — Nisargadatta

Why does the World we experience appear to be consistent?

When I walk from one room to another, I am not confused by how I got there. This seems normal. But when I fall asleep at night and begin to dream, I likewise am not confused.

How do I know that the experience I am having right now is MY experience, and not someone else’s — not yours, perhaps?

The thoughts that buzz in my head — are they all mine, or have a few of someone else’s crept in? And if they did, how could I know?

My experience here, now, appears seamless. I sit in the kitchen, alone but for my sense of Self. There is quiet, but no silence — the moment is full, filled, whole. It can be viewed as a complete work of art. In the moment, there is a story of who I am and how I got here and It All Makes Sense.

It makes sense, it feels consistent. The scene changes; the sense of self remains; the consistency remains.

Is the consistency tied to the sense of self? Is memory?

Are “memories,” as we conceive of them, even real? We tend to think of a memory as an object, a copy of an experience — but what if they are actually the original experience from a different vantage?

There can be a sense of self without a belief in separation, but what happens when the sense of self goes? What happens to the sense of consistency, to the ideas that seem to glue together the story of Me and The World? Does it collapse?

And what remains?

I don’t have answers, but … intuitively, it feels that every moment contains within it the potential for radical, fundamental shifts in perspective.

The Cosmos ... Serendipitous Art & a Note to the Finder ...

I’ve been making and sharing serendipitous art for four years now — often leaving small pieces to be discovered in random spots around the village of Trumansburg, NY.

Mostly, this works great. People find and connect with the art pretty easily. But I do get the “What is it?” question sometimes, and so for this most-recent run of prints I made a little note to go along with it…

The idea is to remind people this isn’t Serious. You don’t have to commit to the art for eternity. You can like it today, and pass it on tomorrow — whether that means giving it away, throwing it in the garbage or setting it on fire.

Take it home, don’t worry. This isn’t a mistake — this was made For You.

A lot of art is intended to be Serious Business, and that is good. Most art isn’t, and that is good, too.

Sometimes, art that isn’t intended to be Serious can have a Big Impact.

Serendipity. Surprise Meaning. Unexpected Insight.

I’ll be sharing these around the village this week. The framed print is up for sale in the shop.

First Draft

A few weeks ago I completed the first draft of ... a book? A visual poem? A series of images?

Whatever it IS, the process to make it felt very new and fresh. I tried to design, carve and print the images without giving much thought to what the final piece would look like. I reminded myself that any "mistakes" could be changed. That no one ever had to see it, if that's what I chose. That I was making this for Me.

I am very happy with this little booklet, and want to print a small edition of them. I may edit and simplify a bit, but I'd like to start by printing 10 of them.

The Experience of Non-Knowing

The mind knows. The mind Knows Things. That’s what it does.

What happens when it doesn’t?

What happens when you see without knowing? I don’t mean “ignorance” but rather an undifferentiated observation. A pre-conceptual moment, before the mind slices and dices and gives everything a name …

It happens to me, sometimes, in art galleries and in particular around sculpture. Also in nature, when something organic appears angular and man-made.

Perhaps my expectations are subverted — or perhaps there were no expectations for a moment — but on seeing the object, the sculpture or rock or whatever it is, my brain just … stops. Or rather, it tries to go but isn’t in gear.

The apparent object is there, but I can feel confusion arise. There is an object, but what Is it?

The mind starts to race a little, even panic, trying to work it out. Like a car in neutral when you step on the gas. No gears to move it forward, just a high pitched whine and the RPM needle shooting up. … In this moment, the confusion is complete. I don’t know the object as a “weird sculpture” or a “strange stone,” there is just a blob of form and light and a racing mind.

And then something clicks. The object comes forward. The mind has given it a label, told a story. Whatever it is, it now has sharp edges and stands apart.

A moment of magic. To briefly see without knowing. Free, just observing — even observing the mind, stuck in neutral, accelerator jammed down, the loundest and biggest object in my awareness.

A Ghost Story .... Fear of the Dark, Fear of the Unknown

I grew up in South Carolina, surrounded by ghost stories. Some were family tales — heirloom rings mysteriously returned and rocking chairs that creaked and moved on their own. Others were embedded in the culture, stories of Alice and The Gray Man and other spookiness.

Perhaps as a result of these tales — or maybe it is generations of learning stored in the body — sometimes, I am afraid of the dark. And yet in my one encounter with a ghost, there was no fear.

Before I tell you about the ghost, let me talk about the fear.

To say “I’m afraid of the dark” perhaps sounds childish … and maybe that is the ultimate truth, the fear comes from an innocent aversion to the unknown. But here’s how it goes down: Imagine you owned a 200-year old farm house with a steep staircase into a basement of old stone and brick and low ceilings, with a dim, flickering light and shadowy corners … you get the picture.

For a few years, that was my basement. And sometimes at night I’d need to go down there.

So there I was, walking down the stairs. Dark at the bottom, dim light behind me pointing the way. And my body starts to feel this prickly sensation all over. It’s like my skin, my nerves, have gone into high alert.

What am I afraid of? I stand there on the stairs, looking for the threat. But it’s only in my mind — I can stand there and feel the fear, feel the body reacting. I can watch thoughts arise — anxious ideas of ghostly faces coming out of the darkness, scurrying noises, of bumping into an unseen body. Typical ghost story stuff, the images of jump-scare movies and childhood tales.

I pause. None of that happens. But the feeling of my body on high alert doesn’t change.

Eventually, I get what I need from the basement. Back upstairs, the feeling subsides.

I try an experiment. Back to the stairs, halfway down, pause. Look into the darkness below, feel the fear come back. Retreat to the warmth and light of the kitchen, and the fear relaxes. I try the experiment once more, same result.

Am I really afraid? The body is. Am I?

But moving on … This very old farmhouse where I lived had a coal stove in the kitchen/dining room, and so multiple times a day in winter I would crouch down in front of it and shovel in more fuel. A completely common event, adding fuel, adjusting the air intake, shaking the grates to slough the ash off the coals …

And then one night, I’m adding coal to the stove just before bed, when I remember that someone is standing behind me, watching.

I was alone — until I remembered that I was not.

The watcher behind me had already been there, but I had forgotten. How long had they been there?

There was no fear — what would I be afraid of, something I already knew? This wasn’t a hunch or a feeling, but a memory.

I turned around and they were gone. For how long, I wonder?

The Destructive Potential of Acceptance

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about acceptance — what it is, and in particular what it is not.

It is undersandable to think of resistance as the opposite to acceptance, but acceptance is part and parcel with our essential nature. From that perspective, it has no opposite

Who is it, then, that does the “accepting?”

Is acceptance a practice? Is it a doing?

Who is it that resists? And if that resistance changes to acceptance, is that resisting entity still there?

Is resistance just a story?

I sometimes think of acceptance as “destructive” because in acceptance is the absence (or, destruction) of the one who resists.

And, we can’t know the real implications of accepance.

Resistance is personal. Resistance is the belief that something shouldn’t be as it is. Hidden in that belief is the idea of ourselves as a tiny, separate entity. True acceptance (as opposed to tolerance) is not personal. And when resistance goes, with that also goes structures and beliefs. Or perhaps it’s the other way around.

Acceptance is potent stuff, in large enough doses.

How Long is a Moment? ... ‘Now’ is a Synonym for Eternity

How long is a moment? And for that matter, what IS a moment?

There is much talk about the importance of this moment, the present moment, living in the moment … All of this is undoubtedly true, but what is a moment?

Is it just a short slice of time, perpetually sandwiched between what just happened and what might?

Can we leave the this present moment? Or are we stuck, never reaching the imagined future and unable to return to a remembered past?

Are we mired in the Now, treading water in time?

Maybe, a moment is a pure action, unmarred by thought.

Perhaps, we should think of the present moment as the substrate for manifested existence. Now is a synonym for eternity.

What is Boredom? … on Metacognition, Expectation and Dissatisfaction … and Horses

What is boredom?

The other day I was talking with a friend about whether animals get bored … we often see horses standing for hours, alone in the same spot, for instance … and the question got me to thinking: What actually IS boredom?

Sure, most of us can use the word “boredom” in conversation and whatever we mean by it is similar enough that we understand each other. But boredom is not a concrete object; we are all describing our subjective experience.

What is it?

Perhaps boredom is a moment of inaction between active moments.

Maybe boredom is disengagement from action.

Expectation with inaction.

Dissatisfaction without expectation?

Dissatisfaction WITH expectation?

It would appear that satisfaction and expectation are mutually exclusive.

The way we often talk about boredom seems to require two facets: either action or inaction, AND how I feel about that. Most of us have said “I’m bored” while doing something we didn’t want to — and likewise, while not doing something we do want to.

So, perhaps boredom just requires one thing — dissatisfaction with the present moment. Then again, you can be dissatisfied without boredom.

And what about the animals? The horse that stands in the corner of the paddock for hours, munching grass and watching the world pass?

I would suggest most animals do not get bored because they don’t experience metacognition. Basically, they don’t reflect on their knowledge of their experience. But even this is debatable, as scientists say some species of animals do seem to have the capability for self-reflection.

One of my favorite things is simply sitting quietly. Feeling the body, ignoring the mind. There is no boredom, only aware resting. And yet, at a certain point I stand up.

Did I get bored and not realize it?

Can you be dissatisfied with peace?

Our Lives Pass Like a Falling Leaf ... Identification and Wholeness in the Woods

Sometimes I’ll be walking in the woods and the wind will dislodge a leaf from a tall tree. As it starts to fall, I notice it.

I watch it tumble end over end, or rotate, or spin, see the path it takes — maybe it hits a branch or two on the way down. But inevitably it reaches the ground, landing with an imperceptible BOOM among the millions of other leaves that have completed similar journies … and for a moment, I know something about that leaf.

There’s millions of leaves around me, but THIS leaf, I have a connection with. I watched it, I saw how it got where it is. For a moment, I am the leaf. That leaf.

But then the absurdity of it cracks open. I blink and the millions of leaves come flooding back. I lose sight of THE leaf, my leaf, and am engulfed by the totality of the forest.

Maybe this life of mine is the same. Tumbling and identification arise, fleetingly, from wholeness.

Your Life Flashes ... What if This is Our Second Time Around?

They say that just before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. What if that’s what this is?

It’s a thought experiement I’ve been considering: Suppose this experience of my life is actually a memory. In this moment I am dying, and this is my life flashing back. I cannot change anything, all I do is experience it a second time.

If that were true, and supposing one realized it, really KNEW it … it seems to me that life would be imbued with a sort of loving compassion. A fond wistfulness. More acceptance. Less resistance. And this way of experiencing it, again, would extend to all of it. Even events which were hard, I think the focus would shift and there might be gratitude—or at least, a little less suffering.

Remember, you can’t change anything. All you can do is experience. And this is IT, the last chance to see this movie. When the credits roll, you’re DONE.

What if that’s what this is?

Making Art & Sleeping in the Basement ... the Curious Patterns of Cats (and other beings)

Gonzo, my feline friend, is sleeping in the chair behind me right now. He snores gentle, delicate cat snores.

He has recently returned from a six-month stint of sleeping in the basement, and I have to say that I missed him while he was gone. I enjoy working with him in the studio. Painting and writing can be lonely work, and for a while we had a good rhythm: He snored, I worked, the deadlines got met.

And then one day, he started sleeping in the basement. … Was it something I said?

Of course not. Gonzo is a cat, and changes his patterns like the weather.

A cat changes its patterns, and I think nothing of it. What happens when MY patterns change? When I change?

Can I change, without resistance? Without trying to hold on to images and stories?

I haven’t shared a lot of art this year. Why not? Patterns change. … perhaps there is no reason. Perhaps more change is coming.

But there has been art-making and exploration, which is probably the more important part.

I experimented with trying to do less, and played with bits of nature — leaves, branches, flowers — to make monoprints and mixed media images focused on natural forms and the expression of what already exists.

Over the summer I hung some work at a local restaurant, including the new images and older work as well, and distributed a couple hundred more You Are Love prints, and about a thousand stickers.

And the perpetual exploration in and of consciousness, continues. How could it not? What else is there?

There is a cat. He is snoring in the chair behind me. For now.

Smooth Ray Says: Tidepools are a Conspiracy, and Architecture at the Edge of the Universe is Weird.

As you venture out towards the edge of the Universe, the architecture starts to get weird. Scaffolding becomes beautiful. No space is unfilled or full. Distant points occupy the same location.

Could you build a structure out of metaphors?

No souls are injured when Yesterday and Tomorrow collide.

You get used to it. Nothing happening amidst all the apparent chaos.

The Big Bang was on a Tuesday.

We need to talk about tidepools. You need to know the truth: They don’t exist.

Sure, an image search turns up hundreds of pictures, vibrant life, expressive, colorful. But in all your walks on the beach, have you ever found a tidepool teeming with life?

A conspiracy, no doubt. Probably the government.

“The body appears in your mind, your mind is the content of your consciousness; you are the motionless witness of the river of consciousness which changes eternally without changing you in any way. Your own changelessness is so obvious that you do not notice it. The universe is in you and cannot be without you. The world exists in memory, memory comes into consciousness; consciousness exists in awareness and awareness is the reflection of the light on the waters of existence.” —Sri Nisargadatta

A Wounded Dinosaur Emerges .... Experiments with Existence

Smooth Ray has been experimenting … There’s probably a real name for it, but thread or “string painting.” Take a thread, coat it in ink and drape across paper. Sandwich it between a second sheet of paper, hold the two together and pull the string out.

And what appeared was this wounded T-Rex.