Spring\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Bee Hiving Moon<\/p>\n
(50th anniversary of human spaceflight)<\/p>\n
An encyclopedic museum like the MIA has such a broad collection–by definition–that gaining familiarity with all of it is a practical impossibility.\u00a0 This may sound like a disadvantage, but from my perspective, it’s pure joy.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because it means I get to discover new art and new artists, even if they’ve been in our collection for a very long time.<\/p>\n
Case in point.\u00a0 John B. Flanagan, a graduate of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (1916-1919), a hard luck story wedded to artistic success and an early death.\u00a0 The New One, brand new to me, has been in our collection since 1951.\u00a0 I found it because I have a sculpture tour on Thursday and, since I’d never done a sculpture tour, I had to poke around the many, many sculptures we have.\u00a0 In the process I discovered this artist and our example of his work.<\/p>\n
He attempted to keep the personal distant from his work which he saw as searching for the unity that exists in nature.\u00a0 This unity led him to the belief that a powerful organizing and vitalizing force could be found in all creatures, not just humankind.\u00a0 This small sculpture, 6 x 11 x 6 inches, shows the unfolding of a fetus.\u00a0 His work shows no identifiable influence, so wrapped up he was in this quest for what nature could reveal.<\/p>\n
Flanagan and his search for the heart of the natural world expresses in stone a search I identify as my own.\u00a0 How do we, all of us, living and non-living, express a link, a bond, the link, the bond that finds us all born of the same atoms and, in our decay, returning those atoms for use again and again and again.<\/p>\n
This is not pantheism, as one art critic labeled Flanagan’s perspective.\u00a0 It has no need for a deity, rather, it grasps the kernel of sameness that makes us all one:\u00a0 star, toad, stone and whale.\u00a0 What a wonder to find someone on the very same path as your own, someone skilled enough to turn stone into personal vision.\u00a0 Miraculous.\u00a0 Delightful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spring\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Bee Hiving Moon (50th anniversary of human spaceflight) An encyclopedic museum like the MIA has such a broad collection–by definition–that gaining familiarity with all of it is a practical impossibility.\u00a0 This may sound like a disadvantage, but from my perspective, it’s pure joy.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because it means I get to discover new art … Continue reading The New One<\/span>