Samhain Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice
So beautiful. The moon floats above our cottonwood trees, a thin sickle, its horns pointing to the east. I’ve never seen any art object that can compare to the sleek curves and understated lighting of a sickle moon.
When I ran out of sleep a couple of days ago, up for a while in the morning, I set up today. After my two tours at the MIA, I’m worn out, tired, a bit dejected. Losing sleep fiddles with my emotional monitor, I become more sensitive, less able to assess accurately how I’m feeling or doing.
The Thaw exhibition has proved a puzzle for me. I don’t seem too good at touring it and I can’t quite figure out why. I base this on the flatness of all three tour’s responses to my guiding them, a flatness that is out of character for most of my tours. I love this show and the objects in it. They fascinate me and they shine with a fierce enthusiasm, witness to the powerful visions of people who live close to the land. But somehow what I’m doing doesn’t convey my excitement. I may approach this show too analytically, too much absorbed in the art historical arguments about native masterpieces and how to view native art. Maybe. I just don’t know.
As I said, when I’m worn out, like today, the negatives surface with ease and have more endurance, that may be an aspect of this problem, but it’s not all of it. Perhaps I need to reconstruct my tour on different grounds, use different objects. Maybe I need to develop actual questions for each object, something I resist doing because I prize the conversational atmosphere, just folks walking through the gallery sharing what we see and what we know. That usually works well for me. Not this time.