Pictures for Frontline's "The War on the EPA"

Frontline recently aired a documentary, "The War on the EPA." It was disturbing to say the least. What was poignant to me, however, was not just the actions taken to dismantle a regulatory agency, but the language used to justify it. The title, "The War on the EPA," is perhaps an ironic answer to the phrase "The War on Coal," bantered about by the fossil fuel industry and a rallying cry for support of the Trump administration.

There is no "war on coal." That is a fiction, just as this administration’s support for coal miners is a fiction. They support the industry CEO’s who benefit from the labor of the latter. Industry gets more money from deregulation, miners get a nod towards their healthcare but without saving their pensions: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/retired-coal-miners-get-health-care-fix-pension-problems-remain/. And does not the repeal of the steam protection rule simply allow industry to pollute the environments where coal miner’s live and work? http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/319938-trump-signs-bill-undoing-obama-coal-mining-rule Considering the insult, it would seem to be almost obscene that this administration trots out coal miners at ceremonies to dismantle EPA protections. It causes me to wonder at how they get away with this.

Getting away with stamping out environmental and health protections appears to be about message and the money to buy that message. An interesting feature about the fossil fuel industry, for instance, is that they never used the phrase "fossil fuel." I noticed. I think this is their way of pretending that we don’t actually have a limited supply of the stuff. A number of science sites that I’ve read recently give our planet about fifty more years for oil, about the same for natural gas, and about a hundred and fifty more years to exhaust the coal supply. The caveat here is that after the first two are expended, we may not have that much time left on the last one after all. Here language such as the oxymoron, "clean coal," serves to gloss over the increased CO2 emissions from burning all that back up coal, thereby fueling climate change. And industry money helps send out a smoke screen to obscure and confuse the science of anthropogenic climate change to great effect.

Money buys effective anti-environmental protection propaganda and effective legal protection as well. In industry funded attack ads, environmentalists are depicted as demonized "elites" who care nothing for the working man or woman. It is apparently quite effective in garnering support. Perhaps some day we who care about the health of our environment and the well being of our citizens can come up with more effective messages of our own. For now, my charcoal drawings of fossils are just a bit irreverent.

Tiny Art to Break the Tedium for People with Tiny Budgets and Lots of Friends

It has been a while since I have done a serious inventory of my work. Inventory. Just the sound of the word gives me shudders. It evokes the torture of tedium. I grumble as I leave off making art in order to count, repair, sort and tabulate. Then I feel a certain sense of shame as I go through old mailing lists, taking out people who have moved or passed away. Inventory is vantitas - forced to confront one’s foolishness at not keeping things in proper order while joyously creating art that will most likely simply accumulate. 

Inventory subjects the artist to a comeuppance of facing unsold works, missing works, forgotten work, good work and not so good work.

After a period of delving in to boxes of stuff, however, I begin to make modest works of tiny art. What could it hurt? It certainly does not take up much room. And the nice thing about tiny art is that it can be done quickly, with a freedom to experiment. Most of these works are about 3" x 5" or so. They’re like grace notes of mixed media. I’ve posted a number of these already on my Etsy site as the season of gift buying is just about upon us. I even created a separate category of "Small Works" for that site. Tiny art for tiny budgets or for people with a lot of friends. 
https://www.etsy.com/search?q=Janet%20Kozachek%20Small%20Works

East Art West Art

A friend recently posted something on social media about the difficulties he faced teaching art in China. I am being rather loose in paraphrasing here, but the chief complaint was that although his student’s work was technically proficient, he felt that it lacked a certain creative spark and spontaneity. The students, he lamented, were also not versed in art history as well as he would have hoped.

Having spent so many years studying art in China, this post and the responses interested me very much. During those years, I was impressed by the depth, complexity and ancient origins of Chinese art. Several lifetimes of study could not even begin to serve it well. What also impressed me was how poorly understood and isolated Chinese art was outside of the specialty disciplines of art historians.

Judging from the response to my friend’s post, this is still true in large part today. My friend was most likely teaching oil painting and perhaps some history of western art. I cannot evaluate the quality or depth of his student’s painting because no images were posted. I do recall that all those years ago, when I was studying Chinese art and language, oil painting was taught by professors trained by the Soviets. The gist of the post did make me wonder whether or not that legacy was still an influence.

What did surprise and disappoint me were other conclusions that Chinese artists do not understand spontaneity, improvisation, or ingenuity. How, I wondered, could anyone conclude such a thing given the improvisational nature and spontaneity of calligraphy? Or the ingenuity and spontaneity of ink painting? I mentioned such things on the thread...to the sound of crickets as the saying goes. I then had to remind myself that the writers were most likely not aware of Chinese art history at all, let alone the history of Chinese writing.

I suppose what perturbed me for a few days after reading the above comments was the unspoken is art history. Perhaps from a western perspective, and a western understanding of art this is so. But could not this grip be loosened just a bit in order to at least acknowledge that other cultures have a history and art equally complex, equally compelling as our own?
thought that Western art history

For a few days, I completed sketches I had made previously of early Greek and Hellenistic statues. But I included a new twist in order to complete them. On the kneeling figure I wrote ancient Chinese seal script characters, signed my name in Cyrillic, and made a cross cultural linguistic pun in Chinese and Latin. On the back view of the kneeling figure I wrote Chinese calligraphy in running hand (script) style. I do hope these drawings have nuance - although more likely they are now just obscure!

The Mediterranean Campaign of 1944 in Charcoal

Today’s charcoal drawing of a street scene in Italy, circa 1944, was inspired by my father, Walter Kozachek Sr and is based upon his World War Two photo journal. This drawing follows the original composition rather closely, although I gave the nuns a little more space.  I was rather taken by how my father included those two nuns walking up the street to the far right.  The drawings I am doing now alter the composition somewhat.

There are ninety-two photographs in my father’s collection. I am hoping to cull about thirty of these to compose large charcoals. With only four completed, the road ahead seems as if it will be a long journey.