Visual Art | Shawndra Miller

I’d been thinking about filters. How we see the world through them. How this present moment is filtered through my old unconscious stuff, clouding my emotions, my thoughts, my physical experience. How crucial it is to get closer to the real thing, to bring consciousness to those old patterns and shift what I can.

Then along comes a filter on Zoom, unintentionally causing an international sensation! That kind of filter gives us much-needed absurdist fun. Oh, that laugh did me good. A moment of wackadoodle joy in the middle of a winter that had started to feel a bit like an endurance test.

Lately, though, I’m discovering how fun it is to really look at someone, unfiltered. Zoom allows me to do this, to focus on someone’s face more than I would in face to face interaction. From behind my screen (filter?) I can look hard and see: where does the smile show up, what does the face do in resting, what are the eyes saying now?

I’ve taken to sketching these beautiful faces, as best I can. It brings me so much joy to put drawings into my notebook, alongside words. I never thought I had any aptitude for visual art.

I did have a brief interlude with oil painting, where I was shown how to see colors and values. I understood then that objects we think of as a particular color—red barn, blue sky, white snow—are actually made up of many many colors.

And this is echoed in ornithologist Drew Lanham’s words (below), when he talks about really looking at a sparrow, realizing: it isn’t just a brown bird, it is many colors. It is many experiences too, many wingbeats unknowable. As are we all, every last human on this planet, taking so many untold steps on our walk.

A week ago, I walked toward the setting sun on the golf course, half blinded by glittering snowpack, mesmerized by sunlight after many overcast days. I realized (again) that shadows in snow appear more blue than white, and that there are actually many sheens within a snowy expanse, as the glitter reveals pinpricks of amber, purple, red, blue, and green all glinting.

White snow isn’t white. Brown bird isn’t brown.

And this seems extra deep to someone who is so new to really looking. I mean, as a writer, you’d think I’d be observant, but it turns out I am not terribly visual. I’m the kind of person who has to go check when someone asks me the color of my guest room walls. (Which maybe wouldn’t sound too clueless but for the fact that I’ve spent nearly every day for a year in that guest room-turned-office, working away at my desk.)

That lack of visual awareness might be changing. Maybe I’m noticing more. It’s a gift of the pandemic, I suppose, to have the chance to see people’s faces in my screen several times a week, and devote myself to their examination.

I want to say too that there’s more to this, like how I inevitably find my friends’ faces beautiful, even when they themselves are critical of their appearance. How I want to (in Valarie Kaur’s words) “see no stranger,” only friends, and wonder about the journey they’ve been on, as Lanham wonders about the birds in his yard.

How I hope to shed the filters (though I’m not above using a Zoom one to be playful) that keep me from being fully here. To love because the pen loves, each stroke approximating that human mystery in front of me. A flesh and blood person animated by the same Source as me.

“… It’s sort of like the sparrow that appears brown from far away and hard to identify, but if you just take the time to get to know that sparrow, then you see all of these hues. You see five, six, seven shades of brown on this bird. And you see little splashes of ochre or yellow or gray and black and white, and all of these things on this bird that at first glance just appeared to be brown. And so in taking that time to delve into not just what that bird is, but who that bird is, and to understand, to get from some egg in a nest to where it is, to grace you with its presence, that it’s taken, for this bird, trials and tribulations and escaping all of these hazards. And so I try to think about people as much as I can in that way — that each of us has had these struggles from the nest to where we have flown now, and the journeys that we’re on.”
Drew Lanham, On Being podcast

I’ve been wanting to tell you about some of my creative cohorts at Playa, but first I think I need to speak about ART.

A chair made of pebbles, created by a prior resident on the dry lakebed.

A chair made of pebbles, created by an earlier Playa resident on the dry lakebed.

Art plays a critical role in the world’s remaking. I don’t mean just literary nonfiction depicting stories of people pulling together to build resilience (though that happens to be my particular project).

I mean novels that show us how to be authentic people, teach us to feel deeper into ourselves, open a side of humanity we don’t normally see, or introduce a culture we’ve never encountered.

I mean visual art that cracks the heart wide open for its beauty. I mean performance art that rearranges something inside us. I mean music that connects with something buried deep within.

Art moves us, and movement is much needed—now more than ever.

I once read a book about the state of the world that laid out the problems in great detail, and then listed the titanic changes needed. The author recommended eschewing novels and other “distractions” in favor of educational books addressing the many issues we face.

But I return again and again to the Barbara Kingsolver character who asked, “What is the use of saving a world that has no soul left in it?”

Clothesline poetry in the high desert.

Art is the soul, and artists its keepers. Without this vital work, we are diminished.

As author Barry Lopez has written, “Sometimes we need a story more than food to stay alive.”

During my two weeks at Playa, visual artists, performance artists, poets, and writers of fiction and nonfiction all fed each other stories and sustenance. We gathered around the table to talk about topics great and small. We took in each others’ work, and drew inspiration from it. Just a few who inspired me:

Belle’s poetry brought the world into sharp focus—like her poem “Sacred Cows,” exploring questions of ethics and culture around beef consumption. Hailing from Hong Kong, Belle taught a few of us chi gong one night in the Commons.

Belle after leading us in chi gong.

Portland-based poet Jen created innovative sound recordings and poetry whose shape mirrored landscape. She works for an environmental nonprofit, and her writing possesses a keen eye and ear for the natural world.

That same reverence for life is captured in the visual artists’ work. Susan’s small drawings depict The Ten Thousand Things. In the Tao te Ching, The Ten Thousand Things refers to all of creation. She remembered me snapping a photo of this bird drawing, and kindly gave it to me before we parted. I treasure it.

Susan’s exquisite drawing on rice paper. She makes one a day after walking and observing.

Emily’s watercolors evoke wild desert beauty in both postcard-sized landscapes and largescale topographical representations. She gave me one of her postcard pieces, the view of Playa from her balcony. I can look up from my desk and see that blue sky anytime I want.