©2008

From "Ghost Ship" to "USS Hope"

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

- George Santayana -

2007

I listen to NPR most days in the studio. For several years now that means the background audio to my creative efforts has been the grating political theater of terrorism and war. The rhetoric has been red and blue, black and white, good and evil. Mostly I think art speaks best to transcendent themes that allow a perspective-building distance to current events, so I don't often take artistic aim at the squabbling of the day. There are times, however, when that static can't help but spill into the creative soup. While I made the best art I could dream up — refining my language of balance, movement, texture and form — I listened to stories of powerful people trashing our good system of governance; a system men much wiser than I dreamed up long ago and which has served us well through threats greater than any posed by Al Qaida. I listened to tortured logic in support of actions that have led to a deeply unhappy nation, at once defensive of its actions and mystified as to why they don't produce the desired effect.

Ships are about journeys, and I often think of the making of art as a creative voyage of discovery. As Ghost Ship took form, I found myself linking this particular journey to meditations about the history I’ve witnessed leading up to these sullen times. Idealism has had its articulate advocates in my lifetime. Many in my generation thought we were in an evolving era that would leave old ways of aggression, suppression and exploitation behind, give rise to more enlightened approaches to caring for each other and the world we share. While there’s still evidence of that idealism at work, what good can possibly be said for how we have saddled ourselves with these deeply unwise leaders who now act in our name? How did we settle for greed is good and decide that this guiding principle would solve all problems? When did a right to life end as soon as one escaped the womb or awoke from a brain dead coma? When did we start torturing the English language so we could torture our fellow man? When did Jesus become merely the lubricant for passing camels through the eyes of needles? And just when did this boomer generation transition from love and peace to shock and awe? When did we settle for basing our actions on fear rather than hope?

I call this sculpture Ghost Ship for now. While I don’t think she need only speak to the bleak politics of our time, I’m nonetheless enjoying her bold physicality lending a presence to my sense of frustration with current affairs. In my mind she floats, she seeks, and the ideal of peace is a guiding star. But she drifts, and the captain has yet to come forth that can hold her course. We the people, a sometimes mutinous and apathetic crew, have had a hand in that. One day, I hope soon, I am looking forward to putting some color into her finish, and refabricating her pennant in some brighter colors. Then I’ll happily send her off into the world with a more life affirming dedication than these rather moribund times have so far inspired.

                                                                

Election Day 2008

It’s a rainy November 4 in North Carolina although I sit solitaire in my office composing these words, I can sense the nationwide pause from the normal to vote and await the outcome of this election. Tonight there will be people who are disappointed and angry, and those who will be celebrating. I’m hoping my wife Clay and I will be among the latter.

There has rarely been such a clear-cut pivot moment in our political history. The very idea of America can either be broadened today, or shrunk. We can go forward, or backward. We can decide to tackle challenges with the full palette of creative options available, or we can limit ourselves to belligerence, conservative caution, and the freezing paralysis of problem solving governed by fear. We can converse and plan a set of actions with our friends – maybe even make some new ones along the way – or we can announce our intentions, tell others to support us or be prepared to be run over, and act unilaterally until our resources are exhausted and circumstances empower a more powerful bully.

We can invest in empowering someone with an active stake in the future, or someone whose worldview has been shaped by a past whose influence in our present - by people with very similar interpretations of that history’s lessons as John McCain’s - has been disastrous. We can place our faith in a sense of an expanded community of nations living on one planet, or the exceptionalism of isolation and a belief that we can act solely in our own self- interest with impunity. We can signal we really are a nation of equal opportunity that knows how to redress historical inequities, or we can revert to a status quo of white male power with a wack job waiting in the wings who has at least as much potential to damage women’s strides toward acceptance at the levers of power as to help them….

       

November 8, 2008

It’s a new day in America. This sculpture has earned a new name, and it’s first colors, and a new flag. Eventually we may get the full-color banner mentioned above made, but it feels good to have the stars and stripes up there now. Once called “Ghost Ship,” and looking rusted and adrift, we can have some hope a captain has stepped up to chart a new course toward a more hopeful future – one less defined by what we fear, and more governed by some sense of idealism and hope for a better, more profound tomorrow. The sacrifices to achieve a more perfect union will probably entail more than shopping with money we don’t have (George’s recommendation after 9/11), but I think we can handle it.

– Mike Roig

                                          

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