Another art show behind me, the third this year, and its time again for travel. A trip to Ashland, Oregon last week reinforced my need for sun. Shakespeare sleeps on Monday, yes, but luckily he sunbathes and eats quiche and homemade biscuits. The Inn we slept at provided a brunch only insiders get to try: Arden Forest Inn. Go there. Be filled. Mid 80s F.
In town, art pouring from San Francisco-sheik galleries burned richness into my pores – I am infused with chaotic colors, whimsy and creativity bursting from even the sidewalks. Pounding down each step was sun. Lifting up every stride was heat. Inducing every insight was energy. Red and black from the Bard sprinkled the streets. Chihuly neon shone like jewels through shop windows and gallery cases.
A lovely mix of early 20th-Century Panamanian-Naturalist earth tones told of Ashland’s golden years, fueled by being a stop along the Southern Pacific Railroad line until 1927, and formerly a stop along the California-Oregon Stage Company's route in the mid-1800s. After 1927, when SPR rerouted the line through Klamath Falls, Ashland lost momentum. Later, roots of art, culture and progress -- "Welcome to Oregon - Industry, Education, Temperance - Ashland honors those who foster these” – gave rise to the new Ashland, Shakespeare’s second home.
Today, I want to live there. It is sunny, Mediterranean-inspired, art gastronomy. It is bathed in minerals, earth, mountains and soliloquies. Painters haunt the alleys. Provincials open their bellies to post-modern influx. I drive home, leaving Siskiyou forests for Cascade Evergreens, stirring up dreams.
Some insights: When you write, you are art birthing yourself out loud, on paper or screen. It is taking form, the streams of energy gathering like mercury into puddles of reason. Even if your words make no sense to the rational mind, they are the outpour of what you know in your body, expressing with the tools consciousness grants you.
Remember: color is the visual manifestation of light… and insight.
