It has been a very busy couple of weeks, less with art than I would like, but I have been able to squeak out a couple of new works in the past couple of weeks – another ‘eye’ painting and a drawing on panel.

The rainy season is coming upon us in Seattle now, and with the Daylight Savings change, the days are short, dark and wet. I get into my day-job when it is just light, and when I leave it is already dark. Everything smells musty and damp. This is for me the hardest transition point of the year, which oddly leads into my most productive period. Once I get adjusted to keeping indoors amidst the pouring rains and extremely brief days, the studio becomes a haven.

It seems that lately things come in waves – there are lengths of time in which I show little but produce a good amount, and there are times when I can barely make anything but the shows come up in a flood. Now I am experiencing the latter. After all of the events of the past couple of months, I am in two exhibitions opening in the next 24 hours: one, ‘Crime Scene,’ is a group show of work examining… crime. I have a drawing I have been working on the past couple of weeks. I am sending an (a teaser) image of it with this entry. It is a long horizontal work of graphite and ink on a gessoed panel, framed in a thin black frame. There are three vertical strips of image, three slices from three different

suspense films. Together they build a fresh drama. The images are all towards the left side of the panel, and, on the right, at the bottom, is a line of text I wrote and transferred to the panel. It reads: “on this cold morning the air was punctuated by the flapping of wings”.

I am also in an exhibition my wife organized along with one of my best friends, Christian French, of ‘Art Night’ artists. I think that about 12 people are participating. Christian had a line on a gallery that needed a month filled, and we took the opportunity.

My Thursday night should be busy – rushing back from work through traffic, direct to the galleries, dancing between them in some odd social waltz.

The piece I have in the Art Night show is a photo-derived drawing I did of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I have not shown it publicly before and have had it hanging in my studio for months… I am very fond of it. For those who are wondering who Bonhoeffer is, he was an influential Lutheran leader/pastor in Nazi Gemany, who struggled heroically against the fascist regime, helping shuttle Jews from Europe to safe locations, and even assisted with a group who plotted to kill Hitler. He was imprisoned and hanged in a concentration camp in 1945. His writings were/are influential to many people – Martin Luther King noted his influence upon him, and Liberation Theology owes him a debt as well. He believed that the church should aim "not only to help the victims who have fallen under the wheel, but to fall into the spokes of the wheel itself”. Even though I don’t share the same theological background, I find his thoughts and actions provocative and uplifting.

It is part of a broader portrait series I am slowly proceeding on for my own pleasure – a series of personal heroes, of sorts…

I am also including a detail of the Bonhoeffer piece … the major difference between the source image and the drawing is out-of-frame – a large flock of birds over his head, upward-heading. It makes me think of evenings in late summer, just as the weather begins to turn cold. The birds begin to make plans for warmth and company and leave in tremendous numbers, gliding upon the currents simultaneously. I often wonder what flows through the brain of the lead bird in the flock, followed by hundreds, perhaps thousands of other birds. I think of their immense resolve and solidarity to head towards more suitable climates.

So, there I will leave you for a short time: cold weather, quiet days, flying birds, hopes for social enlightenment, and art… much, much art.

Website http://demiart.com if you are so inclined...

Image 1: Studio shot, including new work for the 'Crime Scene' exhibition, piece untitled © Demi Raven
Image 2: Detail of 'Bonhoeffer' © Demi Raven 2005, Graphite on Panel, appx. 26" x 4" x .5"