one thousand worlds 525

Dream      1052

Drawing      one thousand worlds 525

Dreamer     Anna Rice-Yaffe

Strolling and Chatting with Jean-Luc Picard

He had wanted me to take stage-flying classes, so of course I went along with it.

I ran into Jean-Luc Picard, who remembered me from a play I was in (he directed, I think) when I first moved to New York. I was on my way somewhere (maybe yoga class?) and I was wearing a long, white silk dress; kind of ’30s, kind of hippie.

Jean-Luc remembered that even though I was new at the theater, I had been really happy to be there, and when they put me on the flying ropes at the last minute, I wasn’t scared. I was game and loved it—going around a few times more than I was supposed to. He had wanted me to take stage-flying classes, so of course I went along with it.

He asked what I had been doing since I had been in the theater with him. I had done a few other small plays before becoming a clothing designer (which I no longer am) but I think in my dream I was now an artist. He couldn’t believe that I have a 13-year-old son (Julian). I told him I had gotten pregnant right after our play was done (not true). At this point he was standing at a cash register trying to figure out how old I was when I got pregnant (14) and how old I am now (43). He told me I could pass for much younger. (I’m actually 47.)

My hair was in braids wrapped into flat buns on each side of my head (more peasant than Princess Leia). The left side kept coming undone. I mentioned it to Jean-Luc the third time I was re-doing it with no mirror. (It’s hard, by the way, to re-do your hair with no mirror when you’re talking to someone and feeling self-conscious about your hair). He said he was ‘worried that would happen.’

We walked, arm in arm, to the place where I was to take flying lessons (I wasn’t going to yoga class after all). Narrow, stone block streets led to what looked like an abandoned building with off-kilter wooden doors. The paint was peeling in a lovely way. Inside was the biggest, most gorgeous theater draped in blue velvet and soft glowing light. It seemed like there was something risqué in the air, but the dancers on the stage were ballerinas, practicing in beautiful Victorian tutus. Jean-Luc left me at the women’s dressing room door (which was opened by the theater matron, who was clearly a man in drag— totally benevolent and mothering). He said he was going to go surfing but would come back to get me.

Then I woke up…feeling so happy!

 

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Dream of the Drawing for Everything alchemies dream-like things: images and texts and films and sketches and philosophy and half-thoughts and visions and moments and fragments of all kinds. Resting and exploring here may deepen your relationship with the oneiric and, therefore, all apparent reality. Resting and exploring here may augment your psyche’s healing tendency—as Jung called it—through highlighting and delighting in humanity’s hallucinatory creations. (Without them, after all, neurologists assure us we would go starkers.) It is time there was a potentially infinite, intimate museum to what cannot be seen. Welcome to the museum.

Dream of the Drawing for Everything is some of the collaboration between artist Nuala Clarke & writer Crystal Gandrud. Our work arises out of what dances on the edges of perception and our collective attention gravitates to the dream-like nature of human experience. We have been in collaboration since 2010. Our merged practices of visual and textual art unfold on a continuum, as part of an interconnected series evolving over time. Both performed “Fair Shouldered One” (a book which is not a book) at the &Now Literary Festival in Paris, 2012 and installed “Between Spaces”, a Yeats inspired dreamscape at the Hamilton Gallery, Sligo, 2013. Most recently participated in the Find Arts Project in Castlebar, Ireland. Our public art installation of words and images printed on linen, “Woven Found”, hung on Castle Street. The project won the best commissioning practice award from Allianz Business to Arts, 2014.

Nuala Clarke

Nuala Clarke, visual artist, lives and works between Co. Mayo and New York City. Educated at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, she moved to New York City in 1993. In September 2007, she received a fellowship to the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Mayo and began returning to Ireland from NY to work every year. Clarke has been represented by Boltax Gallery, NY since 2005. Recent shows include, Amid a Space Between: Irish Artists in America at the SFMoMa Artists Gallery, San Francisco, (2012); to Tremble into Stillness, a WB Yeats related show at Hamilton Gallery, Sligo; RHA invited artist; and A drawing for Everything, Ballinglen Arts Foundation (2013). BLINK, a public art installation at the Westport Arts Festival, Co. Mayo (2014). Upcoming shows (2015): Impressions of Yeats, Hamilton Gallery, Sligo; Of this place, Sligo and Madrid.

nualaclarke@gmail.com

Crystal Gandrud

Crystal Gandrud, writer, lives in New York City and Normandy, France. She holds an MFA, Creative Writing and a BFA, Classical Theatre. Recent publications include “Yeatsian: Numberless Dreamers,” The Encyclopedia Project, 2014, “Here,” Lost Magazine, and “Idiom: Woodbird Flies Early,” The Encyclopedia Project. Her dissertation, “Murdoch: the Mandala Maker,” was presented at Kingston University’s Iris Murdoch Conference (2006), London. At the most recent Murdoch Conference, she performed a multi-media excerpt from a work-in-progress entitled “The Forgotten Man,” inspired by Murdoch’s philosophical writings. She is under contract for a memoire entitled “Astonishment: A Litany of the Uncanny.”

gandrud@actuallyorange.com

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