Heat Stress

Draught of Fire

Once a muse, Helios now beats a tyrant drum.
He bears down not with warmth, but with warning
To the vine
That ancient dancer of dreams. 
Rooted in ritual, the rhythm now falters.
Its green hands curl inward
Like a body shielding its heart.

Inside, the breath grows shallow.
Stomata close their tiny mouths
In quiet desperation,
Refusing to exhale what little life remains.
The chant of abidance becomes a quiet whisper that all strain to hear.

The children of sweetness shrink into themselves;
What once were gentle kisses have become lashes.
Skin thickens and the soul retreats.
Their bright notes of song melt away
Through the bars of a brimstone cage.

Twisting under a cloak of the pharaohs
Dried linen bandages offer solace.
The vine is not dead
But surrenders 
Into the moment for survival.
Dreams of cooler dawns haunt its sleep
Remembering the soft touch of rain.

What do you do when it gets too hot in the studio? Stay home and write poetry in the A/C.

Seriously, though. The summer has been full. Full of sun, of travel, of long, blazing days that somehow swept me away from my studio. The oil paintings in my Vita Vinea series have been sitting quietly, waiting. Even with an air conditioner, the studio can heat up like the Sahara and make work difficult during these midsummer afternoons. It reminded me of grapevines under heat stress; how they shut down and basically hibernate during the worst of it to wait for more ideal conditions. Most of the time they stay fairly green and it’s not too noticeable. When it goes on too long, however, that’s when some damage can happen. Leaves turn dry and brown, grapes wither like raisins and lose their acidity and moisture, turning into overly-sweet bland fruits.

Art can be the same way. My studio feels dry and brown with little pebbles of raisinated paint rolling around. There are days when working up in that old warehouse becomes truly unbearable for extended periods. And the art suffers. Rather than create sloppy, careless work, I chose to take a break from the worst of it. I send my energy back down into my roots. But I need to find a way to keep the creativity alive during these spells.

In my interview for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, I had a fabulous conversation with the reporter. Jared had asked me at one point, “Do you think art has ‘terroir’?” (I answered with an emphatic “YES”, but defining what exactly that means and how it translates is a little trickier. Is it the medium that an artist works in? Could be. My pencil sketches and my paintings each have their own look and feel. But that might be just the grape variety. Is it my studio? Maybe. The light plays across the walls according to the season and the temperatures rise and fall. But maybe a studio is just the winery. I have had many studios with very different characteristics, yet my work has more or less remained the same, so I feel like that’s probably not the “vineyard”. Is it the artist themselves? One could argue, but I see artists as winemakers in a sense, taking wild creativity and inspiration and harnessing it into reality.

Looking to the French, their term is “Vigneron”. It doesn’t literally translate to wine-maker, rather, it means wine-grower. The Vigneron believes that the wine is made in the vineyard, and we are just coaxing it into existence. I believe the same about art. We, as artists, tap into a greater creative collective (the “Muse” as many refer to it). It channels through us, and together we create something new and unique. So maybe the true nature of the terroir of art is a partnership between us and the divine. Sun, rain, soil, studio, medium, artist, winemaker- it all creates the whole.

Regardless, I, like the vines, need to come up with coping strategies for midsummer and rest when needed; all the while keeping one eye open to rain on the horizon.