Nelson Meadows

Kalika

 

This is not the work of a teacher or a scholar; but with the eyes of a student I go about investigating that which interests me – re-creating and piecing together what is discovered.  Peering into the world in this manner I can begin to understand something beyond the level of my mind.  I create a form of “experience”, rubbing an idea and massaging it outward, engaging and provoking the imagined audience with my enjoyment and delight. 

 

Edgar Allen Poe says, “the poem is not about anything, it is something, it doesn’t say anything; it does something”.  This is an intimate journey come pilgrimage; a look through the eyes of a pioneer and into the mind of a mystic.  As Brother David states, “A mystic is not a unique individual; every individual is a unique mystic.  When we lose sight of the “individual” we lose the trees for the forest.  Every individual shares a deep trust in life and desire to express the ineffable; in order to come back into the present where we can awaken each other by living life fully”.  Excerpted from Marshall McLuhan – Playboy interview of March 1969…..I’m ready to junk any statement  I’ve ever made about any subject if events don’t bear me out, or if I discover it isn’t contributing to an understanding of the “problem” [subject].  

 

The better part of my work is actually somewhat like a safe-cracker’s. I don’t know what’s inside; maybe it’s nothing.  I just sit down and start to work.  I grope, I listen, I test, I accept and discard; I try out different sequences – until the tumblers fall and the doors spring open.

 

Art is the expression of an enormous preference – Wyndham Lewis (The Art of Being Ruled).  

 

This work is the “side effects” of my explorations; the casting aside and hi-lighting or “hoiking up” of momentary revelations.  The development particular to me –is my own peculiar style of construction for the book/box format reminiscent of the Book Arts tradition.  The one of a kind, hand- wrought work emphasizing the departure from the written word and the alphabet prison.

 

“Printing liquidated (400 years ago) 2,000 years of manuscript culture; as savage a blow as radio, movies, and TV to the (printed) book culture.”

 

Nelson Meadows is a US baby-boomer with a B.S. in Art