Brancusi*

Personal aesthetic: that what I make should make me happy

Just yesterday I made a bird that couldn’t fly. I saw after I’d made it that I’d given it no wings. Apparently I didn’t want my bird to crash into a window it couldn’t see, as birds sometimes do.

It’s April in the Rockies. I’ve learned to expect nothing from April, as it tells me the same lies I tell about myself. 

On one side of April’s window, the inside, it’s warm, and the bright spray gun of spring paints the prettiest picture imaginable. But on the other side of the window, the outside, it’s cold no matter how brightly the sun is shining.

The cold elongates time. I had to wait all day for the verdict: was it a bird or wasn’t it? 

 All day my little red bird kept hopping around the studio, until finally the verdict was rendered.

*Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), French-Romanian sculptor, creator of ‘Bird in Space’, one of the most iconic art images of the 20th C, credited with saying, “Simplicity is complexity, resolved.”