A very, very happy birthday to Rose Lamb, whose birthday is on Sunday.

Rose, your strength, class, and kindness are an inspiration to us all.

Thank you for the light you bring into the world.

Much love on your special day --

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A reader congratulates Matt on the opening of the showplace for the future Dali-Lamb Museum in Chicago.  Is it important, the reader asks, for an artist to live to see their work acquired into a museum’s permanent collection?

Matt responds:

I believe it was my friend and art mentor Simone Nathan who said, “Most artists aren’t recognized until they’re long in their graves—and there are some art critics who won’t even look at an artist until they’ve been dead 25 or 50 years.”

So I think everything is selective.I used to think there was a lot of what I called “bullshit art.”  I went to museums and saw ripped canvases with nothing on them, and then I would look at traditional Balinese paintings and carvings where every inch, every micro-inch, was painted with minute detail.

One side of me, the materialistic sense, thought that if someone were to buy a painting of mine on canvas, I’d want to spend as much time as I possibly could decorating it with my figures, because it costs that much, and people should get their money’s worth.

The other part of me is saying, “I’m going to tear this canvas up, and if you don’t like it, stick it!”

So I saw with my own flawed judgment at the time that if these are all acceptable in a museum, then everything from one side to the other is acceptable.

Who makes the decision?  I believe that’s probably a great discussion in a school of art.

As far as I’m concerned, I don’t know and frankly, I don’t care.

I think most decisions are made politically.  The political decision always seems to come down to “Me me me me me me me...  What do I like?  If everybody likes it and I don’t, then I’m the door keeper!  It make me feel more powerful!”

If it’s a dedicated museum, I would expect that if I walk into the Picasso Museum I’ll see all Picassos.  And then you have great scholars of Picasso discussing everything he did, why he named it what he named it, why he chose the colors he chose...  It’s a great way to spend your life.  It gives people something to do.

Because of my lack of knowledge, I don’t know what the touchstones are, but I must say as I go into museums, people wander about, supposedly haphazardly but probably gravitating toward that which they most love.

Why does everyone go to see the Mona Lisa?  So they can go home and crow that they saw it.  Or Michelangelo’s David.  Does that, after a while, become the thing itself?  You went to the Grand Canyon and saw it, you went to Niagra Falls and watched the water fall over it.  Does that make you more powerful?

I think all of that is tied into the museum.

We’re in the process of opening Dali-Lamb Museums, and there are historians writing about the philosophies of Dali and Lamb.  They claim that aspects of the points of view and imagery complement one another.

I’m not qualified to speculate on that, although as a layman, before I got into the arts, I looked on Dali as very bizarre character.  Maybe that’s why we’re soulmates.

Matt

"Abiquiu" by Katherine Treffinger

Hello, bloggers!

Recently I had an exchange with painter Katherine Treffinger...

www.katherinetreffinger.com

...who recently started painting again after being waylaid by foot problems.

I was really glad to hear that she is back in the studio and exploring new territory because it reminded me of times when I had adverse situations that happened to me.

What I found was that these things are learning mechanisms sent by the spirits to get us to either change direction, slow down, get faster, or whatever.

Things that we think at the time are the worst things that could happen to us, very often turn out to be not “down” times but up times, learning experiences, empowering.  Even though we are disabled for awhile in our art pursuit, we are still living it through our imaginations, our memories, and our exploratins in our heads.

Sometimes it’s a gift that tells us, “Get off the horse for awhile and relax!”

I went through that last year with my back.  It had to do with my ability to bend over and do the heavy work that I have to do in my painting.  But I found new ways to manipulate my old body and look at objects, procedures, and movements in a new way.

I think we are all growing, and the only way we don’t grow is to think that we have arrived at some mythical goal.  I don’t believe there are any goals; everything just is what it is.

At the time, it seems like a pain, but it could be really a blessing, although we probably won’t know the reasons until we leave this dimension and go on to another.

So congratulations to Katherine for getting back up to speed and inspiring the rest of us!

Onward and upward,
Matt

In response to Matt’s message from “the other side” about the drips in his paintings, a reader asks whether Matt ever talks back to the spirit voices that sometimes engage him—and whether he is ever afraid of them.

Matt responds:

The talking is absolutely a part of the process, but it is not physically articulated; it is more of a realization of the reality of the spirit communications.  They are very specific.  They’re not universal.

The spirits are very cognizant that each person is an individual.  Each person has their own way of responding to the spoken and the unspoken.  The spirits are in complete communication with our inner selves.

Therefore, the way they communicate with me and with someone else, would be completely different.  They know that I am base, that I come from the rough-and-tumble Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago, and so when they talk to me, they use salty words that would be offensive to some people.

But for me, there’s no wiggle room.  There is no way for me to miss what their message is.  The spirits are not going to talk the same way to prim and proper people as they talk to me because if they did, they would be disregarded as vile creatures.

We all come from a certain standpoint of what the reality of our own reality is, what is good and bad based on some spoken or unspoken culture or processing.  In many cases, I feel these things are superficial and are used to dazzle us and defeat us and control us.

Christ, in his ministry, called certain people “whited sepulchres,” white and seemingly pure on the outside and decayed on the inside.

I think there are two different spheres:  the material and the spiritual.

In the material world, we act and talk in a certain way.  But in the spiritual world there’s a completely different mode of communication, and when the spirtis enter our small minds, they have to use the simplest programs they can find.  It’s like talking to your dog or your baby:  “Goo goo ga ga...”

The spirits come into our minds and communicate to us in the unspoken specific.  My unspoken specific could not be preached from the high altar, but it’s very well known to the gang members or other people who I try to influence to come into the light from the dark side.  So the spirits use the same approach with me.

It may put off some people, but it is impossie to please all people with the spoken word, no matter what it is.

I used to think that the words “peace,” “love,” “tolerance,” and “hope” were universal, I have found that even those words have other meanings around the world.  We have to discuss them, debate them, and sometimes change them because they might mean something completely different to another culture than they do to us.

Am I afraid of the spirits?  No, I’m never afraid of them.

Do I talk back?  Usually I keep my mouth shut but sometimes I debate and push when it comes to what I think my reality is.

I find it very exciting and I always look forward to their visits.  I know they’re not going to give me a nice kiss on the cheek.  It’s usually a big kick in the ass!

Matt

A disease fatal to democracy:  diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain.

We are excited to announce that the showplace for the future DALÍ-LAMB MUSEUM has opened in Chicago, Illinois.

Please visit us at River East Art Center, across the street from the Navy Pier, at 435 E. Illinois Street, Chicago Illinois  60611.

Hours are Monday through Saturday 11am to 6pm, and Sunday 12 noon to 5pm.

This showplace of the DALÍ-LAMB MUSEUM is a tantalizing prelude that offers an invigorating and thought-provoking taste of what the museum will look and feel like.

On view are artworks by the great surrealist master Salvador Dalí and the contemporary painter/sculptor Matt Lamb.

The museum follows on the heels of a succession of exhibitions in Spain and the United States pairing the two artists, overseen by Professor Josep Felix Bentz, renowned Dalí scholar and president of the Reial Cercle Artistic de Barcelona.  The formal and thematic affinities beween Dalí’s and Lamb’s concerns, which Professor Bentz and others have ellucidated in recent symposia, essays, and talks, will be highlighted in the rotating exhibitions.

Visitors will also be able to learn more about Matt Lamb’s work for world peace and will be invited to sign a “peace wall” that will become part of a traveling exhibition.

Sight-impaired visitors are encouraged to touch certain Lamb paintings, in the same fashion that visitors do at the Lamb Museum for the Blind in Germany.  With their extraordinary textures, these paintings afford a rich tactile experience that communicates much about their essence.  Some sight-impaired visitors, even those who are completely blind, say they can feel the vibrations of the colors themselves.

DVD’s and other media related to Dalí and Lamb may be viewed at the showplace.

Private showings may be arranged, and private parties may be booked at the facility.

For more details, please email Sheila Lamb Gabler at slg5@comcast.net.

In addition to the photos throughout this post, we invite you to view a larger selection of photographs at:

http://www.mattlamb.org/dalilamb.htm

We look forward to seeing you soon!

On Sunday I was awoken around 3 or 4 in the morning by a message from friends on the other side.

The message was:

Lamb, you are the drip.  The drip is your life.

You and you alone are responsible for your actions; there’s no one to praise or to blame.  Whatever you do are your actions, so if you have everything around you supposedly under control and you’re not in your mind, then it’s your fault, nobody else’s.

The drip is an anomaly.  You can love it, hate it, change it, embrace it, or shove it, but it is you.  Things will continue under your control or out of your control.

The basic message is:  Love it or lump it, you are the drip.  You are the one who defines it, and whatever you do, it is your life.

In the dimension that you’re in, the drip is your life.  You can soar to the highest points singing Alleluja, you can curl up into a fetal position and feel sorry for yourself; you can go somewhere and hide, or you can lead great parades.

Lamb, this is your life.  You are the drip.

You used to be afraid of color but then you embraced it as your friend.  Now the drip is your life.

Everybody seems to be going in one direction, and you’re going in another.  Don’t worry about it.  This is who you are.

It’s up to you, but while you’re in this dimension, that is what your task is.  When you succeed, you think it’s yourself who deserves the credit.  When you fail you think it’s somebody else who deserves the blame.  Well when you won, you won; when you fucked up, you fucked up.  Get over it.

If you look around and everyone is swimming to the right and you’re swimming to the left, you’re not wrong, but you can sing to the heights or curl up in the corner rubbing silk on your ear, or you can say, “This is the way it is,” or you can hide and say, “It’s too controversial.”  That’s the collective mind.  Well, fuck the collective mind.

As long as you stay in this crazy world, you are the drip.  It’s your drip, it’s your world.  You are responsible for yourself.  Your victories and defeats are your own.

The drip is the manifestation of the reality of your life.  The drip was always there.  Sometimes you ignored it, sometiimes you cursed it.

When you were an alcoholic, you couldn’t remember the end of the party and who you pissed off.  The drip was there but you couldn’t see it.  At that the point the drip was detrimental.  Other times, the drip was the work of the Holy Spirit.

Don’t expect that the whole world is going to follow you one way or another.  The world is going to do what it’s going to do.  The materials are going to do what they’re going to do.  Your job is to turn haters into lovers.

If you’re in a pool where everybody else is clothed in great garments and you’re in a Speedo, who gives a shit?  You will be noticed, but you might not be followed.

The message is:  Don’t worry if anybody is getting it.  Your job is to proclaim.

The counterforce is the devils telling you:  “Nobody’s listening to you, nobody gives a shit about your message, the human race is fucked up, you’ve lost; get the hell out of here, nobody’s gonna ever see this shit, you should be on the golf course, you should be across the street in the bar having a nice drink.”

Well, the more the demons piss you off, the more you know you’re in the game.  Let your spirits buoy you up when the devils are trying to get you down.  Just being with the spirits is a winning environment.

Hate and your fears reside between your two ears.  You must protect your happy button on the side of your arm because on the other arm is a sad button that the devils are always looking to push.

The drip is your life, and it’s a big gift.

It’s like going to some great sage and saying, “What in the hell am I doing?”  And they pick up a 2x4 and hit you over the head and say, “What is the most appalling part of your art?” and I say, “The drip,” and the sage says, “That’s who you are, asswipe!  You’re Moses—you’re on the way to the Promised Land, but you’re never going to see it.  You’ll get a glimpse, but if your goal is to be there, get a day job.”

And now, if we’ve agitated you enough for one night, sweet dreams, Señor Loco!

Hello, bloggers.

The drip has alwas been an enigma for me:  the good, the bad, the ugly.

When I first started out painting, to have a drip in a painting was like a fart in church:  something to be held in and never expressed.  If a drip appeared, I had to eliminate it because it wasn’t in a context.  That was back when I thought I was in control.

But as I freed myself from my own stupidity, I decided that the materials and I were equal and that I was the conductor and not the dictator.

As I stumbled down that path, the drip became more apparent to me.  I have studied it for years, and I know that if it unintentionally appears and is not wiped away, there’s an almost infinitessimal double line, which has to do with the curing and drying of paint.

Those lines used to flash out at me like laser beams and drove me crazy, but if I started eliminating them I got through the composition and came upon the raw canvas underneath, so that wasn’t a good thing.So then I decided to incorporate the drip.  It was like the old question with the interior decorator:  What do you do with the elephant in the living room?  You don’t hide it, you feature it!

This winter I’ve been working on a whole cadre of things in my Florida studio.  I’ve been purposefully hanging paintings on the wall and putting other paintings underneath, knowing that the ones above would eventually start dripping on the ones underneath, causing a change in the topography of the ones on the bottom and the top.

Knowing that I did this on purpose, I had to ask myself, were the ones on top sending down blessings or were they pissing on the ones underneath?  I thought they were pissing at first, so I thought I’d better go sit by the ocean and think about the question of where the drip is in the composition of power and meaning.

The drip by its very nature is dictated by gravity, so it always goes in a straight line.  It comes from the lack of curing of the paint, which is fine when it’s lying on its back—but when you lift it up, it becomes like a boil.  A boil is either ignored or punctured.  I always went for puncturing it and eliminating the residue to pretend it had never been there.

In my new way of thinking, as I let my mind wander, looking at the ocean, I saw all kinds of color, knowing that the water color is actually the colors that are underneath.  I remembered a documentary about Yellowstone National Park.  The thermal waters there are dictated by the algaes, the minerals, and all the chemical reactions.  You’re looking through the water at the wonderful blue; you’re not seeing the water.

What does that mean about the drip?  It, itself, comes out as a unified force.  The surface that it hits and runs across has already accomodated itself to all of the warring principles of my painting.  They have a skin, you might say.

The drip does not accomodate itself to anything because it is the dominant force, and it leaves its history all the way down.  With my regular paintings, they all accomodate themselves because they’re on the same plane, have the same viscosity, and are all fighting with their own weapons.

The drip is impervious to itself, so as it runs through the composition, it leaves the same line, which could be thought of as a distortion of whatever else is in there.  That creatses a dilemma.In my paintings, you’d be hard-put to find a straight line.  So the drip’s straight line and consistent color really create a new phenomenon in the paintings.

So I thought, What should I do about this?  I turned one of the paintings on its side, so the drip would go a different way, almost as if you get a tic-tac-toe symbol.  As you turn it again and again, you get different designs.  If you take a strong red or black and make a shadow color next to it, it creates tensions between the rioting colors of my Dip and the pole-like straightness of the drip.  But the outside interference of the mediator, me, instead of getting rid of it, becomes the composition.

Again, as usual, it solves one dilemma but leaves me with another one.  But that’s what I live for.

I can see that this is going to be a long, involved exploration.  As a very curious pilgrim, I’m never used to just looking at things and marching off; I have to figure out where they are in the system, in the universe, what is this trying to tell me, and how does it fit into the peace process?

If the paiting and the composition and I as the conductor can accept the drip, then I’ve come a long way in acceptance.  That is one lesson I’ve had to teach myself.

Physician, heal thyself; painter, open your mind.

Where is this going to take me?  I have no idea, and I love it!

Matt