Originally appeared in Issue 5:Excess of Cantanker Magazine
The Silence is Deafening
Editorial
When I was a kid I would watch my grandmother quilt for hours, poking the needle though the fabric, her face so calm she seemed to be in a trance. When she was finished with a quilt most of the time she gave it away. You could say the thousands of stitches embodied her sense of selflessness, but I like to think that she had a more selfish reason for making quilts: the process of quilting was a bit of stolen time where the whole world was reduced to only her and the push and pull of the needle and thread. That action had the power to make the world fall away.
There is nothing like being able to lose yourself in something; having the ability to shed the skin of the world and exist, even for just a moment, without all the "stuff" that normally penetrates everyday life. The devotion of the self to a simple action can often be more powerful than all the frivolities we desire.
Take, for example writer Tom Robbins' character Turn Around Norman. He comes to the same spot every morning and begins to turn; his turn, though, is so slow it's nearly imperceptible. He begins facing east. At noon, he's completed a semi-circle and is facing southwest. By dusk, he has completed a full circle and the performance is over. He transcends time, stretching this simple gesture to the point of, well…excess.
In this issue we’ve devoted a lot of time to exploring the overdone and the extreme, the massively quantified, consumerism-influenced, blaringly tremendous side of excess, but there is the other side - the side of the excessively, brilliantly simple. Donald Judd and his perfect, gleaming boxes, Ellsworth Kelley’s giant monochrome canvases without a single visible brushstroke, Andy Goldsworthy’s stacks of various sizes of rocks - the results are so pure, yet these ideal results often require a phenomenal effort. For those of you who don’t believe that statement, I leave you with a quote from the third season of the television show Futurama, said by the most excessive being in the universe, God: “When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.” And that is what I love about art.
Enjoy the issue- and if you’d like to argue about the validity of minimalism, send me an email at [email protected].
Debra Broz
The Silence is Deafening
Editorial
When I was a kid I would watch my grandmother quilt for hours, poking the needle though the fabric, her face so calm she seemed to be in a trance. When she was finished with a quilt most of the time she gave it away. You could say the thousands of stitches embodied her sense of selflessness, but I like to think that she had a more selfish reason for making quilts: the process of quilting was a bit of stolen time where the whole world was reduced to only her and the push and pull of the needle and thread. That action had the power to make the world fall away.
There is nothing like being able to lose yourself in something; having the ability to shed the skin of the world and exist, even for just a moment, without all the "stuff" that normally penetrates everyday life. The devotion of the self to a simple action can often be more powerful than all the frivolities we desire.
Take, for example writer Tom Robbins' character Turn Around Norman. He comes to the same spot every morning and begins to turn; his turn, though, is so slow it's nearly imperceptible. He begins facing east. At noon, he's completed a semi-circle and is facing southwest. By dusk, he has completed a full circle and the performance is over. He transcends time, stretching this simple gesture to the point of, well…excess.
In this issue we’ve devoted a lot of time to exploring the overdone and the extreme, the massively quantified, consumerism-influenced, blaringly tremendous side of excess, but there is the other side - the side of the excessively, brilliantly simple. Donald Judd and his perfect, gleaming boxes, Ellsworth Kelley’s giant monochrome canvases without a single visible brushstroke, Andy Goldsworthy’s stacks of various sizes of rocks - the results are so pure, yet these ideal results often require a phenomenal effort. For those of you who don’t believe that statement, I leave you with a quote from the third season of the television show Futurama, said by the most excessive being in the universe, God: “When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.” And that is what I love about art.
Enjoy the issue- and if you’d like to argue about the validity of minimalism, send me an email at [email protected].
Debra Broz