Simply Unfinished

 

Inside a Burl - Susan Weinberg 2021

Process has always fascinated me. How do we get from here to there? And how does our understanding of process allow us to move forward? To replicate a successful experience? Or to get unstuck and start again when things don't work? 

In painting, much of the process occurs long before brush meets canvas. That is especially true of work within the Artists’ Lab where we use Jewish text to identify concepts related to a specific topic. This year the topic is from Brokenness to Wholeness.  

As we explore texts I try to organize learnings in my mind by forming them into statements. We carry our brokenness with us. When Moses came down the mountain with the commandments, he encountered the Israelites worshiping the golden calf and in anger threw the tablets to the ground, breaking them. The rabbis considered where those broken shards were housed, concluding they accompanied the intact replacement in the ark. This is indeed an exercise in metaphor. We carry our brokenness with us and it is the companion to wholeness.

 

The next lab session was during Hanukkah and we explored the lesser-known story behind that holiday. After the battle by the Maccabees, who fought for the right to practice their religion, they came to the temple which had been sacked, defiled. They began to set it right. They used their own efforts to clean, purify and rededicate it. Hanukkah in fact means rededication.  We had that discussion in December and upon my re-reading it a month later, I had a much more visceral sense of what it meant. I had watched the impeachment hearings and the videos of the mob attacking the congressional building, I had a new understanding for what sacking and defilement meant, for the emotions that accompanied it. When Congress resumed later that evening to finish the certification, it was an act of rededication. It is with our own agency that we set things right, decide to move forward into wholeness.

 

The most recent discussion was about related words and their meanings in both Hebrew and English. This came at a time when we have a deep appreciation for how words matter, how they can incite or conversely calm, console and unite. After the lab session, I met with my two granddaughters on these themes. They too are participants in this year’s lab topic, partnering with me in discussion and creative work for the lab exhibition. While the lab introduces me to text, I also explore more broadly. I had been awed by Amanda Gorman’s poem and her presentation of it at the inauguration and realized that it addressed the concept of brokenness and wholeness, a perfect vehicle for a discussion about words.  I began with an exercise where I colored each word of brokenness in her poem grey, each word of wholeness green. For example, Amanda asks, “Where can we find light in this never-ending shade?”

 

After I did that exercise through the rest of her poem, I looked at the words that remained in-between. They were words that spoke to the passage from one state to another. I colored that sea of words blue. I thought back to a discussion in the lab about how there are really three parts, brokenness, wholeness and that liminal passage in between. 

Within her poem, Amanda offers us an important line about process: “We've weathered and witnessed a nation that isn't broken but simply unfinished.”  Brokenness need not be a static state, it is a point in time and a point in time speaks to a hope for the future. I gratefully added Amanda’s line to my learnings.

There are many examples of brokenness surrounding us, far fewer of wholeness. But some have managed to reflect both. As I watched the impeachment trial, I was moved by the manner that Congressman Jamie Raskin channeled the emotion surrounding the recent loss of his son into meaning and purpose. His emotion gave his presentation power and authenticity. 

While I am mulling these ideas over, I am also painting. It is a left brain, right brain endeavor. Sometimes I find it helpful to take an image and explore it in a small painting. Each effort is a stepping-stone to a deeper understanding. What I’ve been working on recently is a piece called Inside the Burl. I painted it over a painting that never really worked, a new beginning. In the prior blog, I included an image of the inside of a burl, an image of many paths, some of which dead-ended and had to begin anew. I learned that a burl begins out of a bud unfurled, a potential not fully explored. 

The meaning of the word burl is derived from a knot. When we run into a knot we are stopped and need to redirect, our path is disrupted. The image itself reminded me of a labyrinth which of course led to me to look up the term. A labyrinth is an ancient symbol related to (drumroll!!) wholeness. It combines circles and spirals into a meandering, but purposeful path. It is often used as a meditation tool and my painting did indeed feel like a meditation, requiring a level of mindfulness that doesn’t come to me naturally.

 

But a labyrinth has a single continuous path that leads to the center. It is related, but distinct, from a maze which has dead ends, those obstacles you must maneuver around. Perhaps a burl is more truly a maze. That took me back to the question I've written of previously that Bruce Feiler posed in his book Life is in the Transitions.  What shape is your life? My life is a burl, probably most of ours are. There is potential unexplored, those paths not taken or partially explored until they fail to unfurl. There are disruptions that force us to find a new path and to redirect. The end point is not pre-ordained and there is most certainly not one path. We carry all of our experiences within us and we need not consider ourselves irrevocably broken, but simply unfinished.

A Thing of Beauty

The Survivor  2021   30"x30"         Susan Weinberg

As I wrote in my prior blog, the theme this year for the Artists' Lab is from Brokenness to Wholeness. That idea is running in the background of my brain at a low hum and it often pops up when I least expect it. 

I took a bit of a hiatus from painting during my retreat over the past year and am now trying to get back into it. I find the best way to do that is, well, to do it. I start by painting something, anything. Often I paint over it because it doesn't work, but I find painting takes on a life of its own once I start and sometimes I am pleasantly surprised by the results. While I delight in pleasing outcomes, the point is just to find a rhythm that I can maintain, trusting that it will eventually lead me somewhere interesting.

In the past, much of my painting was figurative, but I've diverged a bit from that by paintings the things that I notice on our walks. I've never thought of myself as a nature painter but on some level it is still perhaps figurative, just not people. I've become quite enamored with trees since our last lab topic on the environment and have been drawn to those that are marred in some way, a bit battle scarred. There is one on our route which has many bulbous, swirly growths on it.  It looks as if it had fallen on hard times, but survived wearing its scars with pride. I wasn't sure why it grew that way and if there was a name for these growths. 

Much to my surprise, I learned that they are called burls and its limbs were indeed burly. Now I knew of burls in finished wood, but it never really occurred to me to consider where they came from.  Burls are a wart-like deformed growth. They can be caused by a stress, injury or infection. The cells divide and grow in excess and often unevenly, not unlike cancer cells. In this case they don't necessarily affect the life of the tree, it just keeps growing.

The inside of a burl

I often look to the derivation of words for ideas and when I looked up burl, I learned that it originally meant a knot in cloth or thread and comes from burra which means wool. In this case it is a knot in wood. A knot is like a period, an end point. It requires a new beginning to move forward. If you look at what a burl looks like in wood you can see that the grain of the wood is twisted, it has a story, most definitely not a linear one, at least not in the sense of direct lines. Its original path is distorted, disrupted and rerouted, but it turns into a thing of unexpected beauty. It is not unlike a clam shell that produces a pearl from a stress. In this case the stress within the tree creates a burl. Burls  are considered very desirable in furniture or wooden items both for their beauty, but also their strength. The wood is stronger, less likely to separate, because of the many interwoven strands.

So what does this have to do with brokenness? In the lab we considered the fact that our brokenness and wholeness are interrelated. We all carry some brokenness within us, and I would posit that it is often the part of us that is the most interesting. It represents a journey, a history that is part of who we are and who we have become. The path is not always a straight one, it twists and turns as we find our way, and ultimately that can turn into a thing of beauty. Perhaps it is also that very journey that gives us strength to face the uncertainty of the future, trusting that we will find our way.