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The sounds of painting, poetry, and piano come together in this sound piece created for my first CD.  The piano was recorded at Paragon Studios in Chicago, the voice at home in Wicker Park studio, and the sounds of painting were created the first month Rio and I were married.  As a sound man, he was surprised at the texture that my painting created as I gessoed canvas, and the canvas rumbled. I was working on a commission for a Set Painting for the TV Series, “SABLE”. Rio recorded 8 hours of the sound of painting which we then used in this sound piece for the album, “I & I”. I am working the next in the series of this genre which is closer to where my visual art is going at this time. I have posted a sketch of the new addition to this series concept…

The only way I can have you listen to the original version,

is to take you to the link on youtube: enjoy….

EMPTY & WILLIN’

The SYMPTOMS were evident

In the Arts, In the Political Structure, the church, and the Family

It was the calm before the storm

The CRISIS before the TRANSFORMATION of an entire civilization

Doomsday speakers had their say

There is always a place in this world for the negative

It was the ones who thought positively

They were the TARGET!

To THEM we represented the PAST

The CONFRONTATION between the YOUNG and the OLD

FREEDOM and CONFORMITY

TRUTH and DECEPTION

But even as we grew, and became more a part of the system

They didn’t see us for who we really were

If they had listened to the voices in the sky who had inspired our minds

PERHAPS we would have spared the world such pain

But our world was set up

From the START our PLANET was involved in a CONSPIRACY in HEAVEN

That SHE took no part in

THAT WAS THE ANGEL’S BATTLE!

Those were Cosmic consequences that the planet had grown up with

EMPTY & WILLIN’

(A new sketch poem…)

In The Sky

This round sphere spinning

Traveling around the great sun

Older than we realize

Hiding truths yet be revealed

In this time of man

The long history of earth

So Many stories and legends

Each one a part of the truth

Revealed over centuries

Millenniums

We think we know the story

We only know parts of the story

We have forgotten

Or lost

Most of the truth…

Buried and forgotten

Under the sands

Hidden from view

Lay the history of our planet

Under the sea

A world still so deep

Unknown to us

The hidden caves

Over time we discover

Bits and pieces of Ancient Texts

Cracked and dried out skulls

Traces of lives lived and lost to time

Mummies that reveal strangely shaped heads

And the Art

Everywhere

In every culture

Revealing something

Out there in the Sky

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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WHEN DID YOU DECIDE TO LIVE?

There have been many “Becoming-Rain” moments in my life that could be referred to as “deciding to live” moments.

My first memory as a very small child was noticing the first bud on a tree branch in the very early Spring in the backyard.

It is an indelible memory that triggers each year after the winter solstice.

I think I decided that I was living and knew that I was a part of something bigger than me.

I began to live when I first saw the lights of a theatrical stage, and danced my first ballet.

I decided to live when dance became my language as young girl.

I began to live when I stepped on an airplane at the ripe age of 18 years old and headed out west in the middle of my senior year of high school. I stepped away from a male dominated family, and culture, and began the journey I am still traveling today.

I decided to live when I remained there, and in the end, attended University of California, Berkeley; priceless years, most of the great artists and scholars I studied with have passed on, but they were some of the ground breakers in Modern Art.

I began to live when I stood up for the rights of the Filipino people under the dictatorship of Marcos…as an ex-peace corps volunteer using my voice to speak through my music…

People Power followed that movement…

I began to live when I walked into the studio of Peter Voulkos,

His energy and huge personality filling my senses with the possibility of Art as a life…

And I decided to live as an artist in the darkened art history auditoriums of the great art historian Peter Seltz. Wild haired and magical, he transformed my vision of how it was possible to transform the world through Art.

I decided to live when I committed my life to Art, through teaching, through creating, by exploring many mediums, and continuing in the search for meaning in my art making, no matter the medium.

I decidcd to live when I gave Bob Dylan a painting, and he thanked me from the stage.

I bought a guitar and began my musical journey.

I decided to live when I took the stage for the first time at The Earl of Old Town in Chicago and became Patti Rain.

I decided to live when I married Rio.

I decide to live when we committed to the Wicker Park house and created a beautiful home out of rubble.

I decided to live when I took on two adopted children, both special needs amidst teaching 1200 kids a year

I decided to live when I retired from CPS, and chose to focus on my Art.

I decide to live when I accepted the LRMFA program’s invitation…

I keep on Living ….through the pain, and the memories…and the joys…

I continue to make the decision to live.

Making the decision to live for me, happens each time I make the choice that will allow me to continue to grow as an artist. There is always the dilemma of time and place, there is never enough time. But when deciding to live you accept the inevitable that time requires and try to use and bend time. The artist clock is an eternal and internal clock connected to nature and the seasons, connected to the pulse of humanity, each time we choose to live, we expand our possibilities as humans and the possibilities of what can contribute to the other humans on the planet.

Deciding to Live is a decision to BE.

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ATTENDING TO THE SOUND

 

The day begins

I crawl through the opening

A barrier between this plane and this reality,

Into the dense images produced through

Attentive Listening

 

Listening for the portal, I jump through

Allowing my body to become the tool

Automatically stretching the sound in my ear,

To the touch of my fingers, through the pen

I am in my body

I imagine space

 

A dark background, the stars like smoke or fog, so dense, so thick, almost cloud like

Pushing and pulling sound

Like a Hoffman painting, thick with color

Meant to open the channels of inner space

 

That one low range

Always the lower chakra

Hitting and stirring sensations

Moving now into a spiral form

Each note expanding

 

Push

Pull

 

 

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A Collage of Images meander through this video of Dylan’s 1991 unreleased “Series of Dreams”.  The images and video presentation move the viewer through the poetry and into the mind through the music of the Artist…here TIME is fractured seamlessly.  40 years or more woven into one beautiful tapestry of iconic images.

 

 

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“THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS”

PATTI RAIN  recorded April 2015

This is an original composition,  thinking about TIME, looking back, searching through the mist for a connection to a different time in my life, distant, but a time still so relevant and still so embedded into the fabric of who I am as a person, a woman, and as an artist….

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Pay Attention
The waters are receding
Pay Attention
The Bees are dying
Pay Attention!
The Last Black Rhino stands alone
Looking back into my memory of a gentler time
A time when Evolutionary Dead End was not such a possible idea

Pay Attention
The soldiers gather
They are so very young, not yet 13, with seething anger
They pick up their Russian made weapons
They scream threats to us as we drive through the throng of children Eyes red with tears
Parents laying dead on the ground
Brother gone
Sister gone
Family no more

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“I & I”

PATTI RAIN
RECORDED APRIL 2015

My work is a desire to bring the viewer into a space where they become open to the forces IMG_3001of Imagination and Spirit. I believe Art can transform us, Art can awaken in us a new awareness, create new sensations, and even new revelations, through Color and Form. For me, the act of painting is an act of spiritual practice, because I enter the painting with body and mind, searching for the images as I wander through the Canvas.

In my effort to create an environment that would induce AWE in the viewer, and in myself, I have not yet abandoned the figure. In my desire to elicit a response from the viewer, I employ the basic compositional elements of narrative, in Abstraction, inviting the viewer to “take in” Color and Form, Creating a visual vocabulary, allowing the viewer to form their own narrative, and there by gaining an insight into my investigation of the Spiritual in Art.