Ron loves Lisa

Understanding Lisa

NOTE: This was an essay written for the volunteers who are supporting us with their time, love and energy at the "BUSY BEING" event being held on November 1 & 2, 2014.

In order to understand her artwork, you have to understand Lisa Bacon, and in order to understand Lisa Bacon you have to understand what an Artist is all about: Artists do not think or look or see like other people. When Lisa walked into a room she would not just look around. She would see everything all at once- completely- everything! And I suspect she even saw the molecules of air, because she was not only aware of every object in the room, but also its relationship to every other object in the room, and so forth.

If you had the good fortune of meeting Lisa and she heard your name she would never forget you-ever; if she saw you two years later, five years later, she would remember your name. And because she was always totally present, she would remember the exact circumstances, place,conversations, and even what you were wearing that day.

The objects you're going to see are not arts and crafts tchotchkes but the works of an artist, and an artist of the dimension of a Picasso, Vincent van Gogh or Toulouse-Lautrec. In every century there are few great names remembered and I think that Lisa Bacon will be one of them. No, she is not well known right now. Why? Because she didn't spend any time trying to sell her stuff. She didn't spend any time out there promoting herself. But- when she was out there, she did sell like crazy, and people were enchanted by her work, as you will be.

As we venture through the house and you are looking at a piece of sculpture- really pay attention. If you do, you will see it speak to you. Keep looking at it. Notice all the detail. Notice how it is put together. Keep noticing it, and listen: listen because it will speak to you. Lisa said that about all her pieces. She said that they spoke to her. They told her what they wanted to look like.
They told her what they needed, and she literally believed that! I'm not talking figuratively I mean she literally believed that.

Another one of the interesting things about Lisa was that she enjoyed change so much that she could not resist moving any object- chair or table- or whatever it was- even our thousand pound grand piano... just to see how it would look in all kinds of arrangements- not just how it would appear in relation to the other pieces in the room, but how the light would bounce off of it- how it would talk to the other pieces in the room.

Is that easy to understand? Are you present every second? Can you tell me what you did when you walked in the room, where you stopped first, which foot you were standing on. She could do that.

What if you are present every second. I mean really present- really- really- really present. For example: How am I standing? Is my weight on my right or left foot? She could tell you. Can you tell me? This is what an artist is all about. They are always present. They are always aware. They notice everything.

So these are not just cute little hobby items. These are not just tchotchkes that you buy in a novelty store. These are not machine manufactured things. These are amazing objects made out of junk- trash- stuff people threw away and then she took all these things and put them back together in a new form. That's kind of rebirth isn't it?

Artwork made from recycled materials has a metaphysical connotation: Think about it in relation to life. Think about it in relation to the Earth. Does not the earth keep coming apart and putting itself back together in new configurations?

Plowed fields become full of volunteer growth if left unattended -full of everything from sunflowers to forests lush with life. And down below us going down thousands of feet – even miles – there are all these critter guys rearranging everything all the time. Think about that: what is going on beneath your feet down to the depths of miles around you in every direction. Creatures busily changing the landscape and you got a landscape busily changing itself. You got plants sowing their seeds in the wind, letting them blow all over the place, so you get a new configuration all the time. When you visited Sedona a year ago it looked different than today. If you visited 10 years ago, my goodness what a change! 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 5,000 200,000 years! The intense, the immense changes that occur every day. Yet are you aware of them? Most of us are not. But artists notice everything. They notice every change in the season. They notice the change in every day.

Lisa would get excited about the tiniest things. “ Ron come look! Come look! Look, look at the stove! Look at that! Look at the... look at the... look at the boiling things! Is that not beautiful! The way that water bubbles around. My goodness, look at the way the light's coming on that! It's so great! I've got to get a picture! Ron, can you, for goodness sake, can't you take a picture of this?”

Lisa would take pictures of the strangest things with her camera. She would spend hours noticing how- when the ceiling fans rotated- the shadows changed on the wall as the sun moved across the sky. She got all kinds of pictures of shadows on the wall- light things bouncing off the things- all kinds of weird stuff- stuff that artists are interested in. I'm not talking about your Sunday painter or your student of art. I'm talking about your Picasso here, where every object on a plate of food required recognition, and every object on the table could be reconfigured endlessly under busy hands.

When she sat down, she would play with her napkin or the objects on the table. She could not leave anything alone. When she went into a store, she had the touch everything, because she not only saw it, she smelled it, and had to be touched. She needed to feel everything, because to her, everything felt back. This was her way of seamlessly integrating herself with the universe.

Artists may look like other people but they aren't. And there aren't many of them around, and we should rejoice because there was one in this house who lived here for many years, creating stuff all the time, all day long, rearranging every object in the whole house, changing every piece of furniture, modifying how it was covered with materials or pillows or objects or how it was catching the light. It drove her nuts because certain things couldn't move- like the big TV. Why, when she was strong enough to move it. Didn't matter if it weighed a thousand pounds: she could move it. But the big TV couldn't move because that's where the TV connection was and it was too big to fit anywhere else... I had TV connections all over the house and we had smaller TVs, you can bet they moved all over the house and it drove me nuts. You never knew where the TV was.

So we want you to - before we enter the house to a look at this collection of amazing stuff- to understand what it means to be an artist. And we want you to know who this artist was, and understand that these are not tchotchkes; these are not things you can buy in the store; these are Museum pieces- works of art- and they have enduring qualities even though they all will disintegrate in time, because they are made of materials that disintegrate in time, thank you. Thank you.