Han-shan and Cold Mountain

                

It has been a crazy, hectic week in my world. Thank goodness for poetry! At the close of the day I have been dipping into the marvelous, lucid world of the Cold Mountain poems, by the T'ang Dynasty hermit/poet Han-shan (as brilliantly translated by Burton Watson). Regarded as the finest of the T'ang era Buddhist poets, his work was produced during the flowering of Chinese Zen and is still prized in contemporary Zen sects. Han-shan's own words express my feelings about his verses so well that I'll simply quote them here.

"Do you have the poems of Han-shan in your house?

They're better for you than sutra-reading!

Write them out and paste them on a screen

Where you can glance them over from time to time."

The following is one of the poems that recently been much on my mind. It is labeled #98 in Watson's collection of 100 selections, first published in 1962.

"In the late sun I descended the western hill,

Light streaming over the grass and trees,

Till I came to a dark and gloomy place

Where pines and creepers grew thick together.

Within crouched many tigers;

When they saw me, their fur stood on end. 

Not so much as a knife in my hand,

Did I not gasp with fear?"

The image above is a detail from a Chinese rug pictured on the website of  

Thomas Cole's Antique Rugs and Textiles. If you appreciate textile art at all, check them out at:

www.tcoletribalrugs.com

"Under Tree"

"Under Tree" is an aquatint etching done a few years ago. The image was drawn directly on the surface of a specially coated zinc plate, the sharp metal drawing tool removing the protective resin coating. The plate was then immersed in an acid bath to etch the lines into the plate. Once satisfied with the quality of the line, I sprayed layers of lightly diffused spray paint onto the surface, which when dipped in the acid gave the gray-tone effect to the appropriate areas.

The finished plate was hand-inked, wiped to remove the upper surface ink, leaving only the pigment in the etched lines and aquatint textured areas. The plate was then run trough an old hand-cranked printing press with individual dampened sheets of high grade German etching paper. This print is the result. This traditional handcrafted approach to printmaking is slow and labor intensive, but at its' best, highly rewarding. Each time you peel back a newly printed sheet from the plate it's a bit like opening a Christmas present, sometimes you get a fabulous gift, sometimes a lump of coal! (I've never actually received a lump of coal for Christmas, but my Grandfather, being a rather naughty young fellow,  did on several occasions).

The image itself comes from an experience I had on a night ambush in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, with a full moon illuminating the countryside and our small group of infantrymen positioned in the moon-shadow of a large old tree overlooking the area. I took my watch sitting up, motionless, looking and listening in a state of hyper-vigilance. I was repeatedly struck on the head by some sort of seed pod, often enough that I finally moved out from under the tree, and still I was struck several times more! How and why became a great mystery until the first rays of dawn revealed a wild monkey sitting in the branches of the tree, very upset at the strangers below who had surrounded his tree during the night. I must say that monkey had very good aim, I was glad he hadn't been throwing something softer, as I had seen his caged brothers do in the San Diego Zoo!

At the Mountains of Madness

One of my interests over the years has been printmaking.

Above is a "suicide print" I did a few years back, entitled

At the Mountains of Madness.

The odd term "suicide print" comes from the fact that only one block is used to produce the entire print. After printing each layer, one carves away that portion of the block which printed the desired color, repeating the process for each color. In the end, the image on the block has been destroyed by the process.