Le Livre Ouvert

A Beginning by Eric Needle, co-founder, curator, Blue Earth Society

Life is an open book. No endings, just journal entries. Thoughts, ideas, notions, this is as close as we'll get to a manifesto. What is art? We think art is life. Art is the visual representation of all the stuff inside us that we want to share, to communicate, that we have to get out.

Years ago, as I was hiking up to my 3rd floor studio at the University of Central Florida's Fine Art building. Balancing home-made stretcher bars, canvas rolls and an Artbin full of brushes, Johann Eyefells, one of my favorite professors, asked me, "Why are you doing this?"

Why go through all the trouble. Why struggle to make something, in the hope that others might see its message, perhaps its light? For a grade? In art school I was obsessed with making art and if the assignment was a painting a week, I would bring in ten. The professor would have to address some of my work. What is the point? What does it mean to make art? Why do we do it? Perhaps this book will answer this.

For me, art is something inside me, something inside each of us. Only by listening to our inner voice, our conscience, God maybe, can I express, can I process, or just deal with the chaotic ever moving thing we call life. This tiny sliver of the internet is meant to be a place where we can jog down a few thoughts, random, scrutinized or otherwise.

This  book is not meant to be exclusive, rather the opposite. Share your thoughts, and add to this, just send an email.

Articles

The Power of Verse
By Eric Needle

I stumbled onto a site, looking for the lyrics of a Sixpence None the Richer song. Whenever it comes up in my iTunes shuffle, I sing along, whether I know the words or not. Since Puedo Escribir is in Espanol, even my abilities to butcher the real lyrics were hard pressed to make sense of it. What is this haunting melody singing about? An epic story of love lost, words of praise or teen angst amid a storm of grief.

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Seeking the Divine
By John M. De Marco

“To an unknown god.”

The ancient Athenians erected many shrines to various deities that gave power, perspective and no small dose of fear to their collective psyche. Early in the first century A.D., the Jewish philosopher Paul of Tarsus, a follower of Jesus Christ, stumbled into their city and observed the many places of devotion to the unseen.

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Dance of Life
by Rachel Golub

When I paint, I go beyond what the eyes visibly see. I feel the flow of infinite energy, the continual renewal of the universe. Molecules, atoms and cells always in motion, nothing is real and still as it visually appears. Life is simply flowing energy. That is what I paint.

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The Artistic Life
By John M. De Marco

Each breaking dawn demands of us the tasks we must accomplish, the problems we must solve, the relationships we must manage.

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What Is Art?
by Michael Golub, co-founder

"Painting to me is a very physical means of expression. I get messy and dirty. I scrape and scrawl and struggle with the canvas until a thing of beauty is produced, which stands on its own and has its own life and meaning.

The smell, the texture, the intensity, of paint is like nothing else. I like to climb inside the world of the canvas, the larger the better. Insane."

Eric Needle's "Spring"

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Our writings...
This book does not have end, only a beginning. It is a compilation of our thoughts, and the thoughts of others who have inspired us. We will continue to write it and others after us. Life is its focus.

Art is the universal language.
It transcends country and culture.
It crosses boundaries of race,
gender, religion and politics.

We believe art is more than craft.
It is communication, it is reason.
It is song and poetry.
Behind expression is meaning, emotion, message.
Our reason for being is simple,
To move others to action and promote feeling.
Art is a celebration of life!
There's so much more to it than we imagine.

- Eric Needle

Few things communicate truth to us as powerfully and effectively as forms of art. Without the regular nourishment of creative expressions, we find ourselves starved into mediocrity. We descend into bitter normalcy; we allow life to be reduced to a bite-sized journey bordered by zero lot lines—a microcosm of the blandest suburbia, a “walking shadow…a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.”  - John M. DeMarco

...at the point that art starts representing something else it goes in a different, away from purity. It is tainted. It is no longer itself. It seeks to portray to validate its existence. Isn't’t this then the way humans are, we need to label ourselves and validate ourselves and we have such difficulty just existing and being. I’m looking to get around all of that garbage. I’m looking for purity, at least in my art. - Michael Golub

We believe in showing the positive, negative dark art is out. We have no time for it.
The dark side is easy to tap into. It's easy to offend, so much more of a challenge to create something that stirs love, faith, hope, joy.

Painting to me is a very physical means of expression. I get messy and dirty. I scrape and scrawl and struggle with the canvas until a thing of beauty is produced, which stands on its own and has its own life and meaning. The smell, the texture, the intensity, of paint is like nothing else. I like to climb inside the world of the canvas, the larger the better. Insane. - Michael Golub

There is an area of the nervous system to which the texture of paint communicates more violently than anything else. - Francis Bacon

There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was. It was a fine compliment. Only he didn't know it. - Jackson Pollock

My works are language links and barriers and straight continuity of my daily life. It could happen that thoughts, diverse feelings and also death may end or start with them. The fact of not comprehending them totally would not make me feel uncomfortable but as part of lifetime revelations they provide the magic to understand God and the universe. - Carlos Alfonzo

Life is so amazing, so fleeting. Our time could be a song. A joyous refrain in the creation epic.That's why I paint. That's what I paint. - Eric Needle

It is a mirror, in it we see ourselves, preconceived notions have vanished. The mind stops and time does not exist. All labels drop. We are in the presence of art, and we are the art and the artist and this is our magical universe. - Michael Golub

Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals. - Aristotle

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. - Albert Einstein

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art. - Paul Cézanne

I understand what Clifford Still was doing. It’s all about freedom and expansiveness, possibility, and stillness. The possibility of simplicity. The possibility of freedom. The freedom in the silence. The idea of a work of art having total solidarity, with the entire universe existing in one place at one time representing all places at all times. The artist commands this universe and his actions thoughts and intentions bring it into being. He is the channel or creation the channel for the voice of God Almighty. - Michael Golub

Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels. - Francisco de Goya (1746-1828)

The best reason to paint is that there is no reason to paint....I'd like to pretend that I've never seen anything, never read anything, never heard anything...and then make something....Every time I make something I think about the people who are going to see it and every time I see something, I think about the person who made it....Nothing is important...so everything is important. - Keith Haring (1986)

My art is about my constant search to discover the true nature of the universe. It is about questions. I think the right questions are like keys. We discover the truth by questions. We save the world by asking questions. Art will save the world. ….

I will question the nature of art the nature of all things, and the nature of what is beyond all things. By pushing the visual envelope I court chaos and question even my own visual standards, and in the process seek the light for in the suspension of all of our “systems” there is light. There is no chaos. At a distance “out there” all is in perfect harmony really. Formal order is irrelevant. There is only peace. That is the place that I go, the place that I take you through the ritual of my art, the ritual of creation, which is the divine act. - Michael Golub

What if we've got it all wrong? What if it's all an elaborate setup?

This whole notion of heaven and hell, angels and devils. We think, yeah, those fallen angels, what a bunch of chumps... I mean, how can you be, in God's presence and want to leave? It makes you almost feel sorry for them; What a stupid decision. And then it dawned on me. What if we, are the fallen?

Think about it... humanity is separated from our Creator, yes? We live on this earth, the creation, perhaps seduced by it, to be here. Maybe angels and us are the same creatures, "made in our image".

And are we there in heaven with our Maker? No. Does the world seduce us? Yes. Were we kicked out of Eden and didn't that serpent make it all happen?

As a Christian, I can even take it a step further. When Jesus vistied us, was he not pleading with us, giving us one more chance to return to the Father? Come back, you prodigal sons. It gives more meaning to my sense of personal, original sin.

If this were true, then we're in a lot more trouble than we ever imagined.

Our existence much more precipitous than we allow ourselves to think. I bet you sit back and say, yeah, I'm saved, I've got it all figured out, but isn't that exactly what Screwtape would tell us? Wouldn't he try to make humanity be lulled into complacency? Isn't that where we're at?  - Eric Needle

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. - John Muir

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