Dream land

Madmen Dye Happy (Siesta Key, FL) 
painting by Beth Surdut
28" x 40" fiber reactive dyes, resist, silk.

 

Wherever I've lived

I've learned about paying attention to moments 

so fleetingly beautiful,

 they seem like a dream.

My usual walkabout, Tucson, AZ.

Hummingbird Etiquette

Hummingbirds,  almost ready to fledge outside my studio in Santa Fe

      A hummingbird flew into my studio, landing on the wide window sill where she fluttered between the glass and a wood cut-out of two flamenco dancers. Her emerald wings winked at the edges of the woman’s ruby skirt.

To save her, I cupped that tiny bird made of air and magic in my hands.

Quiet, she brushed the side of her beak along my finger

Eyes bright and dark, she looked at me.

Curious, I think.

I wanted to ask her what she’d seen on her journeys.

I wanted to invite her to stay and build a nest out of spider webs.

What I wanted, though, wasn’t the point,

So I walked her to the open doorway and opened my hands.

          

See more intricate drawings and colorful creatures@http://www.bethsurdut.com/critters.html

Shapeshifting with Ravens

Three ravens photo by Beth Surdut 2013

Watching three black ravens ride the breezes near my studio, wings silvered by the sun, I think I would exchange my human form so I could swoop and play with them in the borderless New Mexico sky.
See my raven clan @http://www.bethsurdut.com/listening-to-raven.html

Rosh Hashanah

Aspen Vista by  Beth Surdut

The glorious carpet of golden aspen and evergreens accessed at Aspen Vista, just above the city of Santa Fe, is lift-your-heart gorgeous. Hikes from there can be an easy stroll or leg-burning and literally breath-taking challenges starting at over 7.000 feet and climbing upward.

Rosh Hashanah brings the anticipation of  another year as I create a custom tallit that contains a thank you-- Blessed are you, Adonai,  Ruler of  the Universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.

 Invitation by Beth Surdut

May you walk in beauty and be sustained through life's challenges.

Your wild life

I'll Fly Away (sold), was inspired by a Saturniid moth in my  Hawaii studio

Here in Florida, a place I’m convinced was never meant for human habitation, we just love to tell each other stories about the critters we’ve seen. When this rustic sphinx moth the size of a hummingbird landed on my front porch and sat on my arm for three hours, well, the neighbors came over to take a look and take pictures. Just the other day I stood in the middle of my street listening to a woodpecker ratatatat Morse code over the drone of traffic on 41. A landscape guy came out to his truck as I turned in circles trying to find the bird. He knew right away why I was doing my dance and told me as he put away his tools how sad it was that he had to bury a little owl he found when he was working in some other part of town. So I told him about the Barred Owl in my back yard and the Caracara hawk I saw feasting by the side of the road on Bee Ridge extension and…see what I mean? Here we are, paving paradise into that big hurricane attracting parking lot, and mostly what we want is to see and hear the very creatures that we’re moving in on and moving out.
Now one thing I’ve noticed is that when someone tells a story about a wildlife encounter, especially one that has an alligator, the story tells more about the person than the gator. Just about everyone here has a story, and in the telling, I learn about Florida, human nature and the human heart. Fostering the telling brings people together to celebrate this unique place, weird and wacky as it can be. In my opinion, a lot of people move here and just kind of use the place, not really interacting with the wonder of it.
When I taught that Writing for Radio class at the Peace River Center for Writers, and no one showed up with a story idea, I asked everyone to write about gators. A song-writing environmental lawyer and his guitar –playing buddy picked up a gator—not too small but not so big that it didn’t just fit in their beer cooler-- and drove it over state lines just to be able to say to an unsuspecting friend, “Want a beer? Help yourself. There’s some in the cooler.” After an old man with two hearing aids likened the gator in his trailer park to an old boot camp buddy, the stories rolled out pretty smoothly, with lots of laughter, surprise and recognition.
I could stand up and tell other people’s stories, which I’m happy to do, but mostly, I get a charge out of fostering storytelling. Though I can’t resist a good Liar’s Contest, it’s the true stories I’m looking to hear in a way that people can share with each other. My student with the two hearing aids said to me. “I’ve figured you out. You like to wind people up and watch them go!” He’s right.

Looking like Benazir Bhutto

Buffalo Beth in Bali
©Beth Surdut 2007
In 1999, after a trip to Bali where I was repeatedly told I looked like Benazir Bhutto, I wrote a somewhat snarky piece called “Benazir and Cher” about the public’s desire to identify me with famous people and my desire to be known for my own accomplishments as an artist. To my sorrow, but not to my surprise, Benazir Bhutto, born the same year as I was, was murdered in the last week of 2007.
The Balinese villagers who called me Benazir and held up their children to look at me as my driver negotiated through their festival parade were not the only ones who saw a resemblance. After 9/11, juggling a dual career as an artist and journalist, I was assigned to interview a Pakistani terrorism expert in Massachusetts. Before meeting him in person, I mentioned the Bhutto connection, thinking it might help us bond. He invited me to come to his home to meet his family and to break the fast at the end of Ramadan. As the day lengthened, he told me that the reason he left Pakistan was because he was informed that his death had been ordered by Benazir’s father. So much for bonding! I was thinking that maybe I should have picked a more benign famous person—you know, like Joan Baez--when he said, “I think you’re smarter.”
A couple of years later I was at a party chatting with a Pakistani journalist who had interviewed Bhutto extensively. An American man married to a Pakistani woman said, “I think Beth looks like Benazir Bhutto!” His wife and the journalist chorused, “No!” and decided I looked like Rajiv Gandhi’s wife. Has anyone told these women that they look like me?
I was emailed by a guy in India saying he was writing an article and asking for pictures of me if I really looked like Bhutto. Having seen that someone had landed on my website by typing the search terms “Bhutto+nude+pictures”, I suspiciously asked him what periodical he was writing for and, no surprise, he disappeared.
What I wrote eight years ago, seemingly flippant about a leader I truly admire, ended with this:
“In Hawaii, after being ignored by a maître d' of a restaurant that catered to the famous and infamous, I considered renting a limo and going there dressed as Bhutto... Then I reconsidered, figuring some crazed assassin would pick that same night to make a political statement to the world. I think after all I would rather be killed for who I really am.”
May her courage and spirit continue after her death.

Plane truth in Los Angeles

A few days after Mr. Moto sends me this rudder frame I've drawn here in anticipation for my Dream Vessel, I'm in a former airplane hangar converted into art studios and galleries at Santa Monica airport.I'm looking at a high-minded installation so minimalist I don't even realize it's there. The existentialism of it so overwhelms me that it takes a grand effort of politeness to control my Art Tourette's Syndrome. Never heard of it? It rears its ugly head when faced with bland public art or some whining self-centered visual exercise best discussed with a therapist rather than trotted out as cutting edge art.
I manage to get out the door before expletives burst forth punctuated with a combination of exclamation points and question marks. "Somebody gets paid for this sh-t!?" Once again, I have neglected to insert that filter between brain and mouth.
I walk across the street to lunch at Typhoon where aromatic Asian food scents the atmosphere as I look at the true art on the runway where small planes are lined up waiting to take off.The array of form, color, skill and imagination intrigues and inspires me. As the planes loft, I think of Icarus and Leonardo. Might as well burn up in a flash of beautiful fire than take up space in the garage.

Barbie the Bigot and the Big Idea of Spiritual Stewards

Halloween’s coming and guess who’s all dressed up as Barbie the Bigot, the newest in hazardous toys scheduled to be pulled off the market—that self-proclaimed Republican pundit Ann C, who told Donny Deutsch that Christians are perfected Jews. Hunh? So, what is the Big Idea here and why did she get any air time? Having interviewed some severely twisted people myself, I understand about letting them hang themselves.
So how does this tie in to what I do besides live on our ever warming planet? Consider the upcoming masquerade/opening of Myths, Masks, Rites & Rituals at Aurora Colors Gallery in Petaluma, CA. where you’ll find four of my best pieces at the gallery. My ongoing visual storytelling begins with a known mythology and adds new coloration. The painting shown here is Spirits of the Millstone. A friend came to my studio in Hawaii when she was writing a book about fairies. She asked me to create a painting to send around to her agent (who turned out to be tied into that whole little girl with wings concept), but our discussion fostered the idea of spiritual stewards of growth, like the garden devas at Findhorn, Scotland. That first painting, We Heard You Asking About Us, sold to a couple in Harvard, MA, where Amazon lilies provide a home for the eyes of the spirits. A few years later, in a quintessential New England town, a massive runic circle lay flat in my garden of peonies and nasturtiums until a well digger noticed it and told me his father collected the stones. Thanks to Archimedes and his fulcrum, the stone was uprighted, more nasturtium planted, and through the round window of the runic path I could see the pond beyond, where each year a goose couple flew in from Canada to breed, and each year the clever fox and the banshee screaming wolverine attempted (and sometimes succeeded) eating the goslings.
So in this time of need and beauty and global warming and ignorant varnished bigots masquerading as conservative intelligentsia, I contend that we are the guardians; we are the spiritual stewards of growth and the time for the spiritual warrior is now.
See you at the masquerade in Petaluma October 30th.